The Delta Star (12 page)

***

Mario Villalobos had by now received the information he wanted regarding the credit card of one Lester Beemer. The card had recently been canceled upon notification by the secretary of Lester Beemer that he had passed away. The former client had been self-employed as a private investigator, with his residence and business addresses in Pasadena. The secretary of Lester Beemer had made no mention that the credit card was ever out of his possession and there had been as yet no unauthorized purchases made with the card.

Mario Villalobos took down the addresses and phone numbers and that was it. The only link was the mention of Pasadena. Caltech was in Pasadena.

There wasn’t much of importance on his desk and there were no other leads in the apparent murder of Missy Moonbeam. It was more than likely nothing, but he had an uncharacteristic urge to take it just one step further. Pasadena was fifteen minutes from Rampart Station when traffic was light.

***

By the time The Bad Czech and Cecil Higgins finally got out on the foot beat with the sound of Magilla Gorilla ringing in their ears, they had already heard about Wooden Teeth Wilma being belted around like a tetherball.

They didn’t know as yet the identity of the suspect, but they had a description supplied by the Costa Rican news vendor, and Earl Rimms was one of eight or ten people they suspected. The Costa Rican news vendor said that when the suspect started highballing it through the park, he almost fell on his ass. He wore what looked like brand-new brown and white patent wingtips.

“Brown and white,” The Bad Czech said. “There ain’t too many dudes around with brown and white shoes.”

“We kin take a look around Leo’s Love Palace,” Cecil Higgins said. “Git us a Alka-Seltzer while we’re at it.”

“Wooden Teeth Wilma wasn’t a bad old broad,” The Bad Czech said. “It makes me mad to think a somebody usin her like a tetherball. I’m feelin mad enough to murder any spade I catch wearin brown and white shoes.”

“Let’s jist hope Mayor Bradley don’t go out on the streets today with brown and white shoes on,” Cecil Higgins said.

And while The Bad Czech and Cecil Higgins started a search for Alka-Seltzer and spades in brown and white wingtips, the K-9 cops were getting tired of showing off their dogs to Jane Wayne and Dolly.

Gertie and Ludwig were having such a glorious time that they both had to be dragged toward their radio cars, heartbroken that their romp was over. The K-9 cops drove black-and-white Ford Fairmonts with the back seat removed. The animal stayed in the back and a metal mesh protected any potential prisoner in the front seat from the threat in the back. Gertie and Ludwig were both whimpering for each other when Hans and the other K-9 cop ordered them into their respective radio cars.

The other K-9 cop was nameless. All the K-9 cops were nameless to the people on uniform patrol. They knew the names of all the dogs, but the dog’s partner, unquestionably the less important half of the team, was nameless. It was “Gertie and Gertie’s partner.”

The only reason they knew Hans by name was that he chose to do his drinking in The House of Misery among other haunts downtown. To the cops in Rampart Station who didn’
t
drink at The House of Misery, the K-9 team would be “Ludwig and Ludwig’s partner.”

Rumpled Ronald would have stayed in Echo Park all day screwing off and watching the dogs work. The pension was officially his at 12:01 tonight. He was absolutely convinced that if he did any police work whatsoever on this day he was a dead man.

As they were getting into their cars, the call came crackling over the radio: “All units in the vicinity and Two-A-thirteen. Two-F-B-one is in foot pursuit of possible two-eleven suspect! In the alley north of Eighth Street and Alvarado!”

“That’s The Bad Czech!” Jane Wayne said. “Let’s hit it, Ronald!”

“Oh God!” Rumpled Ronald cried, reluctantly getting in the passenger side. “Oh God! This is it! I shouldn’t be chasing robbery suspects today!” Then he yelled at the snoozing Dilford, who didn’t even hear the hotshot call. “Dilford, clean out my locker if anything happens to me. Throw away the nude pictures of my
girlfriend
before you call my wife. She’d piss on my grave if she saw those pictures! Oh God, this is it! A good cop’s gonna die today!”

And as it turned out, Rumpled Ronald was right.

Cecil Higgins had spotted the suspect first. He didn’t know it was Earl Rimms. He just saw the tall black man with the mean-looking body shove a drunk out of his way when he came in the back door of Leo’s Love Palace. He could see that the man wore a stingy-brim straw hat and a sport coat, but that was all he could see until the door closed. Then the man was no longer backlit against the sunlight as he stood in the dark saloon trying to get his eyes in focus.

Cecil Higgins’ eyes were already in focus. He could clearly see that the man was wearing two-tone wingtips. Then he could see the man’s mean and threatening face. “Earl Rimms,” he said to The Bad Czech, who was putting away his second Alka-Seltzer along with a glass of tomato juice with egg. “Look at his shoes.”

The Bad Czech saw the shoes at about the same instant that Earl Rimms’ eyes dilated and he saw the beat cops at the end of the bar. The foot race was on.

Back out the door went Earl Rimms, followed by the monster cop, who was yelling and moving fast for his size. Cecil Higgins put out the “officers need assistance” call on the rover radio unit he carried on his belt. There wasn’t much point in his trying to keep up with The Bad Czech, who was thirteen years younger, so he tried to figure in which direction Earl Rimms would go once he realized that the alley off Eighth Street would lead him into a dead end.

Both K-9 units beat the others to the scene. Cecil Higgins had totally lost sight of Earl Rimms and The Bad Czech once they got to the alley. There was a ten-foot chain link fence at one end and though Cecil Higgins thought The Bad Czech was too hungover to scale that fence, he realized that’s what must have happened.

Unit K-9-1 arrived before any other car. It was to be expected, in that Gertie’s partner was super-hyped and burning for action. Gertie was fairly frothing by the time they arrived, even more hyper than his partner. The shepherd detected the radio urgency, the change in his partner’s breathing and voice level. The dog smelled the new sweat.

Gertie was stoked. Gertie wanted to go. He was ready to attack. Gertie was as wild-eyed as his partner when Cecil Higgins, holding his hat in his hand, waved the careening K-9 car around the block, yelling, “Drive south two blocks! If you don’t see them, head west toward Alvarado!”

Hans, being a more placid and plodding cop, was of course giving off enough vibrations to make Ludwig excited, but both members of Unit K-9-2 were in control when Cecil Higgins, standing on the corner directing traffic, waved them in a westerly direction in search of The Bad Czech and Earl Rimms.

Dilford and Dolly squealed around the corner at Park View and Seventh Street, and Jane Wayne along with a pale and clammy Rumpled Ronald (who thought he was looking straight into his own grave) began weaving through the traffic to the south.

“Why ain’t I driving? Why am I in the death seat?” Rumpled Ronald wanted to know. “Why am I in this Burt Reynolds movie?”

“I hope the Czech’s okay,” Jane Wayne said, biting her lip nervously while her blue eyes, lined severely with black eyeliner, swept the streets.

“I probably shoulda been better to my wife,” Rumpled Ronald said. “I know I shoulda been better to my
girlfriend
.”

It was Unit K-9-1 that first spotted The Bad Czech. He was lumbering north on Coronado toward Wilshire Boulevard. A black man in a stingy-brim hat and sport coat was fifty yards ahead of him.

Unit K-9-1 hit the siren, blasted past four panicked motorists, ran up over the curb to get past two cars at a red light, spun and swayed and straightened out, and skidded to a stop. The black and tan shepherd was given his command to attack.

“
F
u
ss
!” the cop yelled. “
F
u
ss
, Goethe!
Fuss
!”

Earl Rimms turned in horror when he saw the roaring mass of black and tan disaster hurtling toward him. He instinctively ran straight up to the front porch of a triplex, kicked open the door, entered past a screaming hysterical child, slammed the door shut, kicked through the rear door and was in the yard and over the fence while Gertie frothed and growled and barked at the front door. Then Gertie heard Earl Rimms plowing through the rear yard and the dog leaped from the porch, vaulted one fence, scrambled gracefully over another, and spotted the terrified mugger sprinting across the residential street.

Gertie pursued wildly. In full throat. Ecstatic. With abandon.

Gertie never saw the car. It didn’t have time to brake. Gertie was struck broadside by a Cadillac, lifted six feet head over tail and smashed against a metal light standard at the intersection.

Gertie immediately tried to stand on three broken legs. He pulled himself upright on the one good leg. Gertie dragged his bloody hulk down the sidewalk toward the fleeing Earl Rimms. After him still. Vomiting scarlet.

Jane Wayne had tried pushing her foot through the floor when the K-9-Unit broadcasted the sighting of The Bad Czech and the suspect. She was the first to careen onto Coronado and see the dog dragging his broken body down the sidewalk instinctively in pursuit of the man who had disappeared and was again scaling backyard fences.

She stopped the car beside the dog and said, “Oh, Gertie!”

The dog didn’t seem to hear her. The pain and shock were by now overwhelming. He could only whimper and vomit blood. And vainly drag his ruined body after the vanished Earl Rimms.

“Somebody should shoot him now,” Rumpled Ronald said.

Then they heard Unit K-9-1 screaming up behind them and Gertie’s partner was out before the car skidded to a stop, slamming into the curb. He was quickly down on the sidewalk, wrapped around the bloody dog, babbling to him and crying like a child.

“Goethe, Goe
t
he,” Gertie’s partner said, sitting down on the sidewalk, cradling the dying shepherd.

“He should shoot that animal,” Rumpled Ronald said.

“Shut up, Ronald,” Jane Wayne said.

It wasn’t necessary to shoot Gertie. His head was hanging loose and he’d stopped whimpering even before his weeping partner picked him up in his arms and carried him to the black-and-white.

Hans and Ludwig had arrived and Ludwig jerked Hans down the sidewalk like a puppet, despite the pinch collar Ludwig was wearing. Ludwig was whimpering and barking and growling all at once, and trying to get into the back of Unit K-9-1 with Gertie. Ludwig obviously was confused and bewildered, and ignored Hans’ commands. Ludwig almost pulled the chain clear out of Hans’ grasp and had to be wrestled away by Hans and Jane
Wayne and Rumpled Ronald before they could close the door on Gertie.

“Well, Ronald, you were right,” Jane Wayne said as they got back in their car. “A good cop did die today.”

***

Earl Rimms was by now as bonkers as The Bad Czech, and he was lots more scared. He’d gotten away from the dog, and every time he thought he’d eluded the monster cop he’d stop running and take a breather and wipe the sweat off his face and fan himself with his stingy-brim. And each time he thought it was cooling off, the giant beat cop would come scuttling around the corner and the chase would be on again.

They had run west on Wilshire Boulevard past the Sheraton-Town House Hotel, providing a great show for some tourists from Toledo. They were several blocks past the perimeter of search. They had run through apartment houses, in the front door, out the back door. They had crossed busy streets, climbed over walls, run through alleys. They had both been threatened by frightened dogs and had frightened humans when they scaled or crashed through fences.

The Bad Czech’s face and hands were bleeding and he was convinced that he was about a hundred heartbeats from a coronary, but he simply couldn’t stop himself. He was, like Gertie, a product of training and he pursued like a monster police dog.

Twice he almost had a shot at Earl Rimms, who leaped over a fence each time. Whenever they would get close enough almost to smell each other, the elusive mugger would manage to do something totally unexpected like dashing through the door of an interior design shop on Wilshire Boulevard and out the back while customers screamed. The Bad Czech yelled curses and threats at Earl Rimms and at a covey of shoppers who got in his way at Bullocks Wilshire.

It was a foot pursuit that would go down in Rampart Division legend. Particularly after its bizarre ending. It appeared that Earl Rimms had won. He left The Bad Czech at Seventh Street and Magnolia, with the beat cop staggering in exhausted bewildered circles. The sun and the smog and the traffic sounds combined to make the huge cop giddy and disoriented.

For a second The Bad Czech thought he’d been nuked. A noise in his head sounded like the incoming missiles back in Nam. He had to sit on the curb and put his huge head between his knees. The Bad Czech raised his sweat-bathed face after a few seconds. He was dying to kill. He wanted to murder.

So did Earl Rimms. After he’d won the pursuit, after his heart stopped banging in his throat and the fear subsided, he was murderous. He was mad at the whole world. At the old crazy who carried only dog food in her purse. At his own woman, who called the cops just because he knocked her down the stairs. At Los Angeles county, which didn’t give his woman enough welfare money to support him properly, thereby forcing him to whack old crazies around like tetherballs. At lunatic monster cops who just kept coming like police dogs.

Then he spotted the spic in the pickup. Earl Rimms would have preferred spotting an old woman in a Mercedes, of course. Someone he could grab by the neck and throw out onto the street. And have a purse left on the seat to make this miserable day worthwhile, while he drove a decent car out of this goddamn neighborhood which must be overrun by cops looking for him. But he didn’t see a single person sitting in a parked car on the old and seedy residential area around Magnolia and Leeward, except the spic in the pickup.

The spic in the pickup was a Durango Mexican named Chuey Valdez. He was a gardener and had the back of the pickup truck loaded with lawn tools. He’d had a bad day too. Two customers had stiffed him, promising to pay him next week. Chuey Valdez had found that money and mangoes were not growing on trees in Los Angeles as he’d been promised by the pollero who hustled him illegally across the Mexican border for two hundred American dollars. He was working his ass off in Los Angeles and he was cranky. He was not about to let some big sweaty may ate steal his battered pickup truck.

Chuey Valdez was eating his lunch of corn tortillas and cold beans and the treat of the week-one whole avocado-when Earl Rimms walked up to his truck.

“Okay, climb outa there, greaseball,” Earl Rimms said, his depthless black eyes snapping like a whip.

“J
oo
wan’ someth
eeng
?” Chuey Valdez asked warily.

“I want your neck. I want your balls. I want your fuckin blood
!
An I’m gonna have them if you don’t get the fuck outa that truck!”

So Chuey Valdez, as was his custom, shrugged in the face of overwhelming odds as if to say, “Si, senor.” He picked up his sandwich bag and his avocado and his tortillas and got out of the truck. Then Chuey Valdez reached into his sandwich bag and withdrew the kitchen knife with which he had been peeling his avocado.

When Earl Rimms, feeling as deadly as a white-lipped cobra, turned to give the little greaseball a shot of knuckles in the mouth, Chuey Valdez plunged that kitchen knife right into the sweating chest of Earl Rimms. Right under the sternum. Right up to the handle. Then he jerked the knife out and tossed it into the back of the truck and stepped away a few feet to survey the job.

Earl Rimms just stood there with his back to the truck, looking at Chuey Valdez. He clearly couldn’t believe it. He held both hands cupped over the puncture wound and said in disbelief, “You little spic! You stuck me!”

To which Chuey Valdez shrugged noncommittally and said, “J
oo
made me mad.”

“You fuckin little greaseball!” Earl Rimms said in wonder, and with each beat of his heart, with each word he spoke, a jet of blood would squirt out from his body and splash onto the asphalt.

Then Earl Rimms turned and began walking aimlessly toward Wilshire Boulevard while Chuey Valdez contemplated being a good American and calling the authorities, or being a smart wetback and getting the hell out of here.

As it turned out, he didn’t have to decide. Jane Wayne, who was by now crazy with fear for The Bad Czech, came squealing around the corner of Magnolia in her black-and-white Plymouth with her nearly comatose partner, Rumpled Ronald. Earl Rimms stopped, pointed to his chest and at Chuey Valdez as if to say, “That little greaseball stabbed me!” and staggered across the lawn of a stucco duplex, collapsing by the driveway.

Within five minutes there were a dozen police cars blocking the street, their red and blue lights gumballing in all directions. Earl Rimms had dragged himself toward the backyard of the duplex and was lying there, getting very cold, waiting for the ambulance.

The other cops kept back the crowd of rubberneckers, directed the traffic past the police ears and waited to wave in the paramedics, while The Bad Czech, battered and exhausted, stood with his partner surveying the inert body of Earl Rimms.

“He ain’t gonna make it, is he, Cecil?” The Bad Czech asked in the flattest tone of voice Cecil Higgins had ever heard from him.

“I don’t think so. He musta bled two quarts already. Course these miserable motherfuckers like Earl Rimms, somehow they live when anybody else’d cash it in. He might make it.”

Then The Bad Czech said, “Cecil, go ask Jane Wayne if she radioed the paramedics that he’s gonna need plasma right away.”

“It ain’t like you to be so concerned,” Cecil Higgins said suspiciously. But he turned to see whether Jane Wayne had informed the ambulance as to the nature of the puncture wound.

The Bad Czech looked dementedly down at the inert figure of Earl Rimms and said, “I think you ain’t breathin, Earl. You need CPR.”

The Bad Czech rolled up his shirt sleeves and knelt at the head of the mugger, and began giving him cardiopulmonary resuscitation. The Bad Czech pushed down on the bloody chest of Earl Rimms and the blood shot two feet in the air. The Bad Czech put the stingy-brim hat of Earl Rimms over the puncture and pushed down on his chest and the jet of blood clattered against the crown of the straw stingy-brim. The Bad Czech began rhythmically pushing on the chest of Earl Rimms and the blood pounded and clattered against the inside of the straw hat.

An elderly black woman, who lived in the duplex where Earl Rimms had fallen, finally got enough courage after peeking through the lace curtains. She walked out on her back porch. The Bad Czech sweated as he worked on Earl Rimms.

The old black woman was overcome with emotion. “Oh, that’s so wonderful, Officer,” she said to the monster cop, who looked up, startled. “You’re saving that poor man’s life!”

The Bad Czech turned his crazed eyes on the old woman and said, “That’s right, ma’am. He ain’t breathin and this is his only chance. If I can resuscitate him.”

“I’m going right inside and call the mayor’s office,” she said. “You deserve a medal.”

As the geysers of blood thudded against the crown of the stingy-brim, while The Bad Czech pushed on Earl Rimms’ chest, Cecil Higgins returned. He said, “Czech! What the fuck’re you do-in?”

The Bad Czech had his bloody hands pressed around the rim of the stingy-brim. When he straightened up and removed it, a hatful of blood washed over the body of Earl Rimms and onto the concrete driveway. The Bad Czech had to jump back to keep from getting splashed.

“You pumped him dry” Cecil Higgins whispered.

“Quiet, Cecil,” The Bad Czech said. “Don’t make a big thing outa it.”

“Czech! Czech!” Cecil Higgins said, grabbing the monster cop by the shirtfront, looking for a shred of sanity in those demented gray eyes. “That’s murder! Did anybody see this?”

“I think he was dead anyways, Cecil,” The Bad Czech said.

They heard the ambulance cut its siren and slide to the curb. A few minutes later The Bad Czech, Cecil Higgins, Jane Wayne, Rumpled Ronald, Dolly and Dilford, two detectives and a patrol sergeant were all in the street discussing the incident. The Bad Czech reassured Chuey Valdez that he wouldn’t even be charged with littering, and the only way he could’ve done better was if he’d taken Earl Rimms’ scalp like a fuckin Apache.

The paramedic walked out to the clutch of cops while his partner covered the body. “He’s long gone,” the paramedic said. “I never saw so much blood, even from a puncture like that. The coroner’ll have to go to his spleen for a blood sample. He looks like something from Transylvania got to him.”

Which caused Cecil Higgins to glance involuntarily at The Bad Czech, who said, “This ain’t been my day. I want a burrito.”

As they were preparing to leave, the old black woman who lived in the duplex hobbled out to the patrol sergeant and said, “I just want you to know that you should be proud of your men. That big officer there tried to save that poor man even if he was a criminal. That’s Christian charity. I want his name so’s I can write a letter to the mayor about it.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” The Bad Czech said shyly. “It don’t hurt to remember that we’re all God’s children.”

The Bad Czech insisted on getting a burrito from the roach wagon before they headed back to the station for all the reports. His uniform was a mess, but the paramedics had cleaned up the cuts on his face and hands. He’d drunk seven free Pepsis, much to the chagrin of the Mexican on the roach wagon, but all things considered, he looked remarkably fit after his ordeal.

Cecil Higgins was a wreck.

“Even when ya hung the wino, I thought ya wouldn’t really do it,” Cecil Higgins said, looking up at his belching partner, who had both cheeks full of burrito. “I mean really.”

“It ain’t easy to say about somethin really” The Bad Czech said, pondering it. “I mean what’s real and what’s really …”

“Don’t be talkin that crazy shit again!” Cecil Higgins yelled.

“Look, Cecil,” The Bad Czech said as he stared at the lake in MacArthur Park, groping for the words. “Consider the Laser Lady. Now she says the lasers are real. What’s more real than when ya feel somethin painful? Who kin say they ain’t real? It’s her fuckin bean the lasers are shootin at. That might be really real, know what I mean?”

“What’s that got to do with hangin winos and doin a Dracula on Earl?”

“Well, it’s hard to explain but … it’s like it ain’t really real. Stuff like that.”

“I ain’t ready for San Quentin,” Cecil Higgins said. “I ain’t ready to have a asshole big enough for Evel Knievel to pop wheelies in.”

“You ain’t gonna ask to stop workin with me, are ya, Cecil?” The Bad Czech looked alarmed for the first time.

Just then the sergeant drove up and parked at the curb. “Hurry up and get into the station, Czech!” he yelled. “The captain got a call from the old lady who saw you trying to resuscitate the suspect. He thinks it might make a good public relations story, so a television crew’s coming down!”

“Okay, Sarge, we’re on our way!” The Bad Czech said.

And when the sergeant waved and sped away, Cecil Higgins could only look dumbfounded.

On their drive to the station Cecil Higgins said, “I been thinkin, Czech. There’s a certain risk to workin with you. I got to face that. What could ya offer me if I’m willin to run the risk a spendin my old age in San Quentin with a asshole big enough for a bobsled race and the Lawrence Welk orchestra?”

“You’re the on
l
y one I kin talk to, Cecil,” The Bad Czech said eagerly. “I’ll buy ya a drink every night at Leery’s!”

“Ya do that anyways. Make it two drinks.”

“Okay, two drinks!”

“Maybe you’re on to somethin,” Cecil Higgins said deliberately. “You’re gonna be kissin babies and have your picture in the papers.”

“Cecil, this really ain’t worth so much stewin about.”

“But that old woman saw you suckin him dry. I mean you looked like a big ol blue vampire bat, but she saw a compassionate Christian hero.”