The Sticking Place Read online

  Luke had told her to take the threats head on, that she should spend more time with her peers after work. After she’d had a few drinks and developed a little camaraderie, she’d become one of the guys just by showing up and they’d eventually get tired of screwing with her and leave her alone.

  He was exhausted and hungry now though and had a more immediate problem of his own—to kill the last hour of his eternal graveyard shift. The local breakfast joints were opening and he could stay out of service, grab some breakfast and roll into the station. That was the smart thing to do, but he decided to go back in-service and request a code-7 so he could officially eat in peace.

  “Negative, 5-John,” the dispatcher shot back. “I need you to investigate an 11-46 behind the auto repair shop at Seventh and Market Streets. RP says the victim’s a white male, between forty and fifty-years-old. He’s slumped against the exterior wall to the rear of the shop.”

  Luke was starting to understand why the senior guys ate when out of service instead of asking for a meal break. If he’d done that, communications would’ve saved the call for a first watch unit.

  Handling dead body calls was a total drag with no potential upside. They took hours under the best of circumstances and now, he’d not only have to skip breakfast, he’d also be several hours late getting to bed. He’d just completed his second overnight shift in a row with all day court in between and hadn’t closed his eyelids for thirty-six hours.

  Luke eased toward the ramp leading off the Motor Machine’s rooftop parking lot. When the business was closed, officers wrote reports up there and some even napped on those interminable graveyard nights when they couldn’t stay awake. Its seclusion was perfect.

  Only a few civilians knew it existed and an enormous generator stood in the middle of the lot. With the San Diego-Coronado Bay to the south, and no high rises to the east or west, the north represented the only direction for potential sniper fire and the generator prevented that possibility.

  Luke played the call out in his mind as he stopped at the top of the ramp to put his paper work inside his metal clipboard. As first officer at the scene, he’d verify the guy was dead and make a preliminary decision about potential foul-play. In this case, with the body lying outside, no witnesses, and his status as a rookie, he’d have to call Sergeant Biletnikoff to consult on his decision. It was bound to be a miserable experience.

  Luke stepped out of his car and into the early morning light as the sun climbed past the top of the concrete garage behind him. The shop’s janitor, who Luke knew always arrived a half-hour before the business opened, came out the front and shook Luke’s hand. “He’s over here, around back.” The janitor wiped donut crumbs from his mouth and stuffed a dirty mechanic’s rag into his back pocket.

  The dispatcher had said to investigate a report of a body, so Luke had a pretty good idea what to expect. He just hoped it was something natural that wasn’t too gruesome.

  His wish was granted.

  It was just another drunk who’d died alone in the middle of the night, one of the many indigent downtown alcoholics who drove police officers, paramedics and ER docs nuts with their filth and squalor. But the Pendleton shirt looked familiar.

  The Professor’s rigid body was positioned exactly the way it was the first time Luke saw him in Balboa Park. Luke squatted to check the Professor’s vital signs. This time, the nearly supine man in front of him was dead, and the can of Olde English 800 in his grasp was empty.

  Once Biletnikoff arrived and concurred with Luke’s decision about a natural death, he’d call for the Coroner’s Office to claim the body. That would end the San Diego Police Department’s official involvement with the notorious drunkard at his feet.

  Luke told the janitor to go about his business. “I’ll take care of everything from here,” he said. It was the straightforward comment of a cop doing his job and precisely what Luke intended to do.

  Luke pulled a cigar from his equipment bag. He tugged the plastic wrapper off, lit the tobacco and leaned against the wall, hovering over the Professor. The Professor’s body only stunk a little this time, but the situation reeked.

  How many times had he made himself a fool over the dead man at his feet? How about the time he’d gone over Biletnikoff’s head to press the Lieutenant about the Professor’s ride-along? Only he would have the balls to go over his immediate boss’s head about that one. He’d gotten away with it too, but not without making Biletnikoff his enemy.

  How silly had he looked when he’d marched the Professor into the apartment to tell Denny he intended to clean him up and let him sleep on the couch? How absurd was their argument when he told his roomie that if Denny could keep his parrot, he could keep the Professor?

  Keep the Professor?

  If Denny could keep a pet, Luke could keep the Professor. How stupid had he seemed when he tracked down the Professor’s brother to demand that he take care of his sibling?

  Once the name-calling had subsided, the Professor’s brother told him they both had trust funds from a family endowment and money was deposited into their accounts every month. The Professor could have it whenever he wanted.

  Biletnikoff pulled up to find Luke puffing on the cigar and expecting a smirk on his boss’s lips. What Luke actually got came as a surprise. “I’m sorry,” Biletnikoff said. “I know he meant a lot to you.”

  Biletnikoff’s words carried no hint of insincerity and challenged everything Luke believed he knew about his immediate supervisor, just like the job challenged all his notions about what was good and bad and right and wrong.

  “Why don’t I call another unit to wait for the coroner?” Biletnikoff asked. “Maybe you should grab a cup of coffee and clear your head.”

  “This is something I need to do myself,” Luke said.

  When the Coroner’s Deputy arrived, Luke told her how to reach the Professor’s brother, gave her his department issued business card and said he’d claim the body if the brother declined.

  He was disgusted with the Professor himself. He could only imagine how his brother would feel. Luke knew the brother would decline to claim the body of the man who’d been a boy, a soldier, a student, a professor, an anonymous public drunk, then a mentor who challenged everything Luke believed, a known drunk who refused Luke’s help, and a dead man clutching the only thing that really mattered to him. The empty can of Olde English 800 was clearly his best friend.

  The call from the coroner’s office came three days later. Luke telephoned the Bradbury Mortuary to arrange to have the body picked up and cremated.

  He set the brass urn on the seat beside him the next day and accelerated toward the G Street Pier that jutted into the ocean where cool breezes whipped through to inter-mix with the stench of fish from a tuna cannery. The breezy aroma of the fresh breezes commingled with the stench of the dead and dying in an incessant battle to rule the air over the waters of the San Diego Bay.

  It was the perfect spot to spread the Professor’s ashes.

  Luke sucked in the pungent stench as he pulled his dilapidated Mercury Tracer into a parking stall next to the Tuna Fisherman’s Association Headquarters. He tucked the urn under his arm to stroll to the end of the pier, pulled the top off and tipped the ashes into the breeze. As the ashes spread over the ocean, Luke quoted something he knew the Professor would appreciate from the end of Oedipus Rex: “Count no mortal happy till he has passed the final limit of his life secure from pain.”

  39

  LUKE AND DENNY MARCHED INTO Biletnikoff’s office together.

  “I know Denny’s not exactly a model employee,” Luke said. His soft opening seemed to surprise Biletnikoff, who’d obviously prepared for a fight, and left Denny with his mouth gaping.

  “I can work with him,” Luke said. “He’s a good street cop who just needs to work on his report writing.”

  Biletnikoff looked like he might explode for a second before bellowing his response. “What the hell makes you think you can take responsibility for a marginal
employee? You’re still wet behind the ears yourself.”

  “I’m not trying to make this thing about me,” Luke said. “I’m trying to talk about Denny’s ability to do the job.”

  “Don’t kid yourself for a second this isn’t about you too,” Biletnikoff said. “I’ve got enough trouble on my hands with you challenging senior officers all the time and going over my head whenever you feel like it. Now you’re telling me how to do my job? The last thing I need on top of dealing with you is an incompetent cop. I’ve gone through Denny’s personnel record and Shimmer was recommending his termination way back in field training.”

  “Shimmer?” Luke said. “He’s an idiot and you know it.”

  Luke was always ready for a confrontation when conciliation didn’t work and Biletnikoff was clearly unwilling to negotiate anything. “Denny wants a Skelly. You know as well as I do the termination package he told me about won’t hold up.”

  Luke squared his shoulders and looked into Biletnikoff’s eyes. He could care less about his own probationary status. He knew right from wrong.

  “Let me ask you something,” Biletnikoff said. “As his roommate, are you aware Denny uses a department camera to take inappropriate photographs of women?” It was more than a question. It was a threat to discipline Luke if he knew about it and hadn’t told anyone.

  “I’m never around when Denny takes his pictures and I don’t know what camera he uses,” Luke said. His confidence apparently convinced Biletnikoff he was telling the truth. But he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

  “Is there any truth to that Denny?” Luke asked.

  “Any truth to what?”

  “Did you take pictures of women with the department’s camera?” There would have been a way around this if only Denny’d told him about it.

  “Well, I guess I sort of did that,” Denny said.

  “Why don’t you tell us why you’d do something like that,” Biletnikoff said.

  Luke wanted to knock the smile off Biletnikoff’s face.

  “I carry my equipment bag home with me every night and I carry the camera in the bag,” Denny said.

  “Whose film did you use?” Biletnikoff asked.

  “Sometimes I used department film, but other times I bought film and used it for work,” Denny said.

  Luke couldn’t believe his ears. Denny was standing there admitting he’d used department property to take pictures of naked women and acting like he couldn’t see anything wrong with it. Worse than that, Luke could have been prepared to deal with it if Denny’d only told him.

  There must be more to it.

  “There’s nothing about this in the termination packet,” Luke said.

  “I was trying not to pile on,” Biletnikoff said. “I’ve told Denny I’m willing to hold off on submitting this thing if he decides to resign.”

  That was it, his real agenda. Even with those stupid pictures, Biletnikoff knew he didn’t have enough to fire Denny. He wanted Denny to quit. He’d made this whole termination package up to please Chief Browner and he wasn’t about to get away with it.

  “That’s not enough to fire him and I think you know it,” Luke said. “I’d like to hear what the other cops at the movie set have to say about what went on there, then we’ll see what we’ll see at the Skelly hearing.”

  “Well, let’s see,” Biletnikoff said. “There were a few motor cops and another patrol guy there. Let me try and think who that was. Oh yeah, that’s right.” Biletnikoff turned to Denny. “Wasn’t Shimmer there with you?”

  Biletnikoff had obviously not interviewed the motor cops at the movie set for his termination packet because they wouldn’t be critical enough to support his outrageous conclusions. Shimmer was his ace in the hole. Biletnikoff knew Shimmer would back him if it meant getting rid of Denny.

  Luke wanted to vomit. Biletnikoff was playing a damn good Iago. But once they got to the Skelly hearing, the Captain would see what a shoddy investigation Biletnikoff had done.

  Luke motioned for Denny to follow him out the door.

  “Maybe you should see these before you go.” Biletnikoff tossed a white envelope on the desk. Several photographs slid out and onto the desk top.

  “How do you think Councilman Cleveland would feel about those going public?” Biletnikoff asked.

  Luke stood transfixed. He’d been sure he was right about Biletnikoff not having enough to fire Denny. Hell, in the real world he was right. But not in this strange world where naked pictures of a city councilman’s daughter got tossed onto desk tops in a police sergeant’s office.

  “You should tell Denny to resign,” Biletnikoff said. “It’ll save you a lot of personal grief and his chances of getting another job in law enforcement would be a lot better, don’t you think?”

  Luke had walked into a trap because Denny hadn’t had enough sense to prepare him for it. What was worse, Denny had made it impossible for Luke to help him.

  Luke knew Denny’s job meant the world to him. He’d been living the dream of a lifetime and now Luke was part of his worst nightmare. Denny was a simple soul really who couldn’t possibly fathom the hatred of a Hal Browner, the self-serving manipulations of a Constantin Biletnikoff or the unspoken power of an outraged city councilman. His inability to comprehend those things was as much his fatal flaw as his unwillingness to keep his pecker in his pants. It didn’t matter that Denny had spent half his weekends writing the practice reports Luke gave him and was really getting the hang of it.

  Why had Denny done something so stupid?

  The question boomeranged and the answer smacked Luke in the face. It was only partly Denny’s fault. Yes. It was true Denny’s dick controlled his behavior, which turned him into a moron sometimes. But that was only part of it.

  Biletnikoff hated Luke for going over his head to the lieutenant about the Professor’s ride-along and he hated him for speaking his mind all the time. Luke was a rookie on probation and he needed to act like it. Of the two of them, Denny was the most vulnerable, the easiest to cut away from the herd. Biletnikoff knew getting rid of Denny would hurt Luke almost as much as it hurt Denny.

  “I think you should go down to personnel and turn in your badge,” Luke told his roommate.

  Tears welled in Denny’s eyes.

  “I can walk down there with you if you’d like,” Luke told him and Biletnikoff seemed to think that was a darn good idea.

  Luke and Denny turned their backs to walk out.

  “Before you go,” Biletnikoff told Luke. “I’m partnering you with Shimmer so you can benefit a little from his experience.”

  40

  HORTON PLAZA SHUCKED AND JIVED LIKE any other night. Hare Krishnas bounced and begged for change. Pickpockets worked the bus stops and pimps huddled with prostitutes. A preacher proclaimed San Diego a modern day Sodom and bellowed that God’s vengeance was drawing near.

  Charles Henreid drove past the freak show on his way to die. He slammed his front tires into the curb and piled out of the car.

  Three transvestite whores argued over a baggie of marijuana in the doorway of the Golden West Hotel. Henreid stomped past several street punks as they jerked a nearly comatose drunk to his feet, rifled his pockets and called out for Henreid to give them a quarter or they’d take all his money. Which was what they intended to do anyway once he handed them the coin.

  Henreid ignored them.

  Tripping over his feet, he dropped his keys, along with the half-empty Jack Daniels bottle that fell from his belt to shatter against the sidewalk. He picked the keys up and tried inserting one into the keyhole, but the key ring slipped from his fingers and into the puddle of whiskey. The downward motion as he bent to pick them up again sent his thoughts into a spin cycle that tumbled together in a heap of confusion. He fell to his knees, found the keys and started to stand.

  He could see his wife screwing up her nose earlier in the day. She didn’t care that he’d really changed his life this time and she had no intention of giving him another chance. Coul
dn’t she have let him finish a sentence? Was she too stupid to understand everything would be better this time?

  “I’ve saved up enough money for first and last month’s rent on a nice apartment,” he told her. He had a really good job and was close to starting his own business again. If she’d let him finish one lousy sentence, he’d tell her how gambling didn’t control his life anymore.

  Had she actually said she couldn’t respect anybody she couldn’t trust and that she’d found someone else? Would his daughter be raised by another man? What other words came out of her mouth? Had she said she hated him?

  None of it mattered anyway. He knew what he had to do to make things right.

  Henreid inserted a key and turned his wrist, but nothing happened, so he tried the other keys. None of them opened the damn lock and it was no wonder because he remembered now, the contractor he used to work for took them away when he’d laid him off right after Henreid’s meeting with his wife.

  He knew how to get in and it was better this way anyhow. This would definitely trigger the burglar alarm. The cops would have to come and investigate once he shattered the window. They should’ve let him kill himself a long time ago.

  Henreid turned toward his truck, all the while cursing his stupid life and his stupid wife and his stupid self and those stupid cops who’d taken his livelihood from him and messed up his chance to kill himself. How could he have been so goddamned stupid as to think his bitch of a wife would ever take him back? He was a moron that was for sure.

  Henreid lifted a hammer from his toolbox as the street thugs finished their mugging and called out in unison, ordering Henreid to give them his money.

  Henreid turned toward them, the shadows splashing against his reflected smile in the window creating a macabre mask. He gripped his hammer tight. He’d be happy to take these punks out if it came to that. He stomped toward them and they marched away like a shoddily disciplined drill team.