I drove behind the market and parked beside the weed-strewn lot. A few minutes later Pardo pulled up, climbed out of his unmarked Buick, carrying two Styrofoam cups of coffee. Wiry and bowlegged, he slowly made his way across the lot looking like a cowboy who’d just hopped off his horse. Handing me a cup, he gripped my shoulder and said, “Glad you’re back on the job, Ash.”
We leaned against my Impala, tore holes in the plastic lids and sipped the coffee, looking out at a soot-darkened landscape of rundown apartment complexes, check cashing shops, and crumbling storefront churches.
“Good work on Relovich.” He flashed me a thumbs up. “I knew Pete and I knew his old man—they were both damn good cops. I’m glad they put a pro like you on the case.”
“So what’s up with the Patton and Sung homicides? Any progress?”
“Hey, you’re the big thinking Felony Special guy,” he said with a smile. “I’m just a lowly ghetto cop.”
“Now that we got that out of the way, tell me what’s going on.”
A cockroach scuttled past us, and Pardo ground his heel on it, crunching it into the dirt. “When the two cases got kicked back to us, me and my partner didn’t have much to work with. And when Latisha was dumped down here, people figured out real fast that talking to us on this case was hazardous to their health. No one would open their doors to us; people wouldn’t even—”
He stopped in mid-sentence and gave me a worried look. “You know I’m not blaming you for this. There’re some careless-ass detectives out there. I know you’re not one of ’em. I’d work with you again. Any time. Any case.”
“I appreciate that, Tommy.”
“After a few weeks of the silent treatment, we picked up another homicide. Then another. Then another. Then another. You know how it is, Ash. You worked this division. More than a hundred murders a
year and only four teams. After those first few weeks, to be honest with you, we didn’t have a lot of time on this case.” He made a circle with his thumb and forefinger. “That’s where we’re at right now.”
“I wished they would have kept it at Felony Special.”
“Probably should have. But when Latisha’s family filed that lawsuit and their shyster lawyer started blasting Felony Special on the five o’clock news, the department figured they’d better get the case out of there, ship it back down here, and bury it.”
I kicked a rock and sent it flying across the lot. “That’s what I was afraid of.” I stared into the distance. I knew I was only a few blocks from where Latisha was dumped. I thought about her, splayed on that street corner, half her head shot off. Sweat trickled from my armpits down my side.
“Don’t worry, Ash, we’ll get ’em,” Pardo said without much conviction. “When things slow down a little, we’ll get right back on it.”
I asked him if he could spare a few minutes while I looked through the murder books. He pulled them out of the trunk, set them on the backseat, and fired up a cigar. Although Pardo had warned me, as I flipped through the pages, I felt increasingly disappointed. He and his partner hadn’t done much with the case. They conducted a few fruitless follow-up interviews and rustled up a handful of gangsters who didn’t know much.
After about ten minutes, he knocked on the back window. “Sorry, Ash, gotta be at the coroner’s in fifteen minutes.”
I shut the books, feeling frustrated. What the hell did I expect? Did I really think I could flip through some pages in the backseat of a squad car and unearth the golden key that would unlock all the secrets?”
I climbed out of the car and thanked him.
“Anytime. Next time we’ll grab lunch. I’ll bring the books, and you can check them out a little more leisurely.”
“I want to ask you for a favor, Tommy.”
“Sure.”
“Let’s keep this talk we’ve had on the Q.T. You know Duffy. He doesn’t like his guys poaching on other units’ cases. But this is more than just a case for me. So I want to nose around a little without him finding out.”
“No problem.”
“I appreciate it.” As I climbed back into my car, he said, “Hold up. I’ve got something for you.” He opened his trunk and handed me a paper bag with a flat plastic case inside.
“What’s this?”
“The DVD of the Sung shooting. I know you’ve seen it. But I thought you’d like a copy.”
As Pardo drove off, I flipped through my yellow legal pad where I’d jotted down Latisha’s daughter’s address. She was a fourteen-year-old freshman at Crenshaw High School named Darnella Ferguson. I recalled that although she had her father’s last name, she’d never met him. After her mother was killed, she moved in with the family of her best friend, a girl she called her play sister.
When I’d interviewed her a few months ago, she tossed me out of the house and called I.A. to complain. She blamed me for her mother’s murder. I dreaded seeing her again, but I knew I had to start there. If she heard about me nosing around the case, she might call I.A. again. I had to appease her, convince her that if she wanted her mother’s killer caught, she had to cooperate with me. And I needed her. Family members often know details about victim’s lives that are invaluable; they sometimes pick up critical leads on the street.
I cruised west on Florence, hung a right on Western, and a left on a side street, through a run-down neighborhood with cracked sidewalks and potholes big enough to crack an axle. I killed the engine in front of a white stucco box that looked like an enormous sugar cube.
I rang the bell, and as I waited on the porch, I heard rap blaring from a box in the living room. The door swung open and Darnella’s friend gave me a quick once-over and yelled, “Hey girl, that police is here to see you again.”
Darnella pushed past her friend, stepped out onto the porch, and slammed the front door. She had her mother’s high cheekbones and amber-colored eyes. She slapped a hand on her hip and said, “How many times I got to tell you, I ain’t talkin’ to you. You done enough already. You pesterin’ and pesterin’ my mamma got her killed.”
I felt so nauseous, I had trouble standing. Leaning against the wall for support, I said, “Can I come inside?”
“My mama talked to you, and look where it got her.” I could see a pulse beating on her forehead. “What you need to say, you say here.”
“I want to find out who killed your mother.”
“Some police been here a while ago. Tell me he takin’ over the case and you gone. Far as I know, he didn’t do shit. Now you say you takin’ over the case and he gone.”
“He’s not gone. And I’m not taking over the case. I’m just helping out. The more detectives you have investigating a homicide, the better.”
“Y’all a little late, ain’t you?”
“A murder investigation is never closed.”
“So what you want from me?”
“Before she was killed, did your mother ever say anything to you that you think, looking back on it, might be important?”
“Like what?”
“Did she ever see anyone following her? Did she mention any people she might have been afraid of? Did she ever get a phone call that frightened her?”
She shook her head.
“Did you ever see her talking to any officers besides me and the detectives from South Bureau Homicide?”
“No.”
I asked her a few more questions, but she had little to offer.
“Please, Darnella, I need your help,” I said, feeling my throat catch.
“Why you care so much?”
“This case is very important to me.”
“It’s very important to me, too.” For the first time, her voice didn’t have a tinge of hostility.
“Will you help me?”
“I’ll try.”
“All right. Anybody she was friends with who’s particularly plugged in?”
“Plugged in?”
“Well-connected in the neighborhood. Knows a lot of people. Hears a lot of things.”
“One lady I can think of. Juanita Patterson. She manages that thrift shop where my mama worked. They were friends. She know everybody in that ’hood.”
“She work Saturdays?”
“Six days a week, she there.”
I sped over to Figueroa and parked in front of the thrift store. I recalled interviewing Juanita right after Latisha was killed. She didn’t give me anything then; I hoped I’d have better luck a year later.
The thrift shop, which was lined with racks of shirts, coats, and trousers, and large metal bins filled with socks, belts, and T-shirts, smelled of cleaning solvents and musty clothes. I waited until Juanita, a heavyset woman with a red bandanna tied over her hair, finished ringing up a customer. Handing her a card, I introduced myself.
“I know who you are,” she said, eyeing me suspiciously. “You the cop who got Tisha shot.”
I slipped my hands in my pockets and made tight fists, trying to calm myself. “I’m trying to find out who killed her, and I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions.”
“I not speakin’ to you. Now or ever.”
“I think it’s important—”
“Get,” she said sharply, pointing to the door.
As I left the thrift shop, I recalled that they employed parolees from halfway houses to do the sorting. Last year, I’d interviewed a few of them. They weren’t much help, but I thought I’d try again. I walked behind the thrift shop and spotted two hard cases wearing tight T-shirts, unloading boxes of clothes from a truck. Both had the ripped chests and biceps of ex-cons who had thrown a lot of iron in the joint.
I introduced myself and asked them if they’d heard anything in the past year about Latisha Patton’s murder. They said “no” simultaneously, without looking at me, and continued to unload boxes.
I walked back to the street and was about to unlock my car, when I heard a low whistle. I looked up and saw one of the ex-cons, in the shadows of a narrow driveway squeezed between the thrift shop and a check-cashing shop, motioning for me with his forefinger.
“It be hazardous to a brutha’s health talkin’ to you in broad daylight.”
“I understand.”
“When I was comin’ up, I knew Latisha,” he said. “She friends with my big sister. She passed a few years back.”
He stared off into the distance. I waited for him to continue.
“I got sumpin’ for you. Month or two ago, friend of mine talkin’ to a neighbor of Sweet Maxine. She a nice ol’ lady who always baking cookies and such for the young ’uns in the neighborhood. It turn out that Sweet Maxine heard some fool talkin’ ’bout that Chinese who got capped last year.”
“You mean the Korean guy who owned the grocery store at Fifty-fourth and Figueroa?”
“Yeah. That the one. I know Latisha seen something on that killin’ and that why someone take care of her.”
“What did Sweet Maxine hear?”
“Can’t rightly say. All I know is the neighbor say Maxine heard sumpin’, but she ain’t talk to no police. She scared for her own self.”
The man told me where Sweet Maxine lived and disappeared down the back end of the alley. I clenched my fist and pounded it into my palm.
I drove a few miles west, through a working-class neighborhood where all the lawns were freshly mowed, and parked around the corner from Maxine’s house so neighbors wouldn’t see a police car in front. I walked up the steps to the porch of a tidy bungalow. When I saw the row of collard greens planted along the side of the house, I knew Sweet Maxine, like so many of the older blacks in South Central, had grown up in the South. Ringing the bell, I could see an eye peering at me through the peephole. I held my badge up.
A gray-haired woman in her seventies opened the door. She wore a powder blue cotton housedress that had frayed sleeves, but looked freshly ironed, and white orthopedic shoes. “How can I help you, young man?”
I showed her my badge. “Can I come inside?”
“Yes, you can.”
I followed her to the sofa and sat next to her. The tiny living room was immaculate, with plastic slipcovers on the sofa and the chairs. Grammar school and high school pictures of two girls, who I assumed were her daughters, lined a mantel over the fireplace.
“Do you have a card?” she asked.
Handing it to her, I was relieved when she studied it for a moment and dropped it on a coffee table. She didn’t seem to recognize my name or my connection to the case.
“I’m investigating last year’s murder of Latisha Patton.”
“That was a terrible, terrible thing,” the woman said, pursing her lips and shaking her head.
“I heard that you might have some information that could help me.”
She clasped her hand on her lap. “I don’t think so.”
“I understand that you heard something about the case.”
She stared at her hands. “Not really.”
“How long have you lived in this house?”
“My husband and I moved out here from Louisiana in sixty-one. Bought this place in sixty-six.”
“Neighborhood was a lot different then.”
“Sure was. None of this gangbanging and dope selling and gunshots at all hours of the night and young girls selling their bodies for rock cocaine and no-accounts killing each other in the street like they’re dogs. Back then, this street was filled with lots of nice families. Lots of nice kids.”
“You looked out for each other’s kids then.”
“Sure did. That’s the way it was back then.”
“Nobody’s looking out for Latisha’s daughter.”
“I don’t follow you.”
“Her mother was murdered and nobody will help the police try to find the killer.”
“It’s a different world today. Back then folks around here tried to help the police.”
I pointed to the pictures of her daughters. “If one of those beautiful girls were murdered, wouldn’t you be angry if a witness wouldn’t come forward to help the police? And what if this predator then killed another young woman?”
Maxine pulled a lacy white handkerchief out of the front pocket of her dress and gripped it in her right hand.
“Can you imagine how this would prey on the conscience of the witness?”
Maxine dabbed at her eyes with the handkerchief. “I’ve always been cooperative with the police. My late husband used to be a neighborhood watch captain. It’s just that I’m frightened. Latisha tried to be a good citizen. She tried to help. And look what it got her.”
“That will not happen to you. Tell me what you know, and I’ll do everything I can to keep your name out of the investigation.”