The envelope had copies of Wyatt Johnson’s personnel file and the police report of his murder, about fifty pages stapled together. The cover sheet on the report warned, “Confidential. Operations-Headquarters Bureau. The Chief of Police considers this report to be highly confidential. Administrative use is limited to concerned staff and command personnel of the Los Angeles Police Department. Any other use is forbidden by the District Attorney. This report is not to be reproduced or copied. This report has a registered distribution.”
“Sounds intimidating,” I said. “Is it routine warning?”
He shook his head. “Only on officer-involved shootings and internal affairs cases. This is strictly in-house info.”
“How much trouble can Hector get into for bringing it out?” I asked.
“Lose his job. His pension. Wife’ll probably walk. That’s why this report doesn’t leave your hands. It doesn’t show up in a movie.”
“I didn’t ask Hector for anything,” I said. “What does he expect me to do with this?”
“I wouldn’t know. He left the envelope on the doorstep and took off. Now you have the files, suppose you read them.”
Wyatt Johnson’s personnel folder was interesting only because I had never seen a police employment file before. Johnson had graduated near the top of his police academy class in physical tests and on the firing range. Academically, he was in the lower third. After his rookie period on patrol, he transferred to traffic out of Central Bureau.
“Not a go-getter,” Mike said. “Traffic is easy duty.”
“He had good evaluations,” I said, reading through them. “Courteous, prompt, and clean. A note here from an accident victim praising his helpfulness and professionalism. A genuine paragon of police virtue.”
“Not quite,” Mike said. “I see he got beefed. He drew five days for hitting the hole.”
“Excuse me?” I said.
“He was caught sleeping on the job and got suspended for five days without pay. It’s no wonder. See these?” He pulled out half-a-dozen work permits. “He was king of the part-time job. Until he got caught sleeping and had all his permits revoked, he had the okay to moonlight at, count ‘em, six security jobs.”
“Not all at the same time,” I said.
“No. Probably worked more than one at a time, though. Look at his personal data. He’s a kid, twenty-four years old. He’s buying a house, buying a car, has a wife and baby. Keeping up with that takes a helluva lot more income than a rookie cop salary. If he’s like the rest of them, he works his eight-hour shift in uniform, then he goes straight to his next job and works eight more. On his days off, he works a third job. Doesn’t leave much time for sleeping.”
“Or for wife and baby. Did you have part-time jobs?”
“Shit, yes. Used to work morning watch, get off around seven in the morning. If I had court I’d find a place to grab a nap until I was called-sleep in my car, any empty office. One time a bailiff let me into a courtroom during lunch break and I slept on the judge’s bench. I’d collect overtime days doing court, take the days off and work security for the movie studios on location shoots.
“Most of the time, I’d go from my patrol shift straight to my next job, work five or six hours, then I’d go pick up Michael and coach his baseball team-I coached him until he was in high school. Eat dinner, take a nap, then go back to work and start all over again. I’d never get more than three, four hours of sleep in a stretch.”
“Hard on a marriage.”
“Too hard.” Dewy eyes again. “I wanted my family to have everything I never had. Nice house in a good neighborhood, new cars, the best schools. I wanted my son’s mother to be home for him. My problem was, I didn’t really know how to make that happen. Had no model to work from.”
“Maybe not,” I said. “But you did a great job. Michael is a wonderful man. You’re a wonderful father.”
He had a crooked, almost shy smile. “You should hear my ex’s version before you say that.”
“No thanks.” I turned back to the files.
“I worked nearly every waking hour, but I never made her happy.”
“Maybe if you’d been home more.”
“Once I had a mortgage, I couldn’t get off that treadmill.”
“I know how that is. Sometimes you have to make a leap, even if you can’t see where you’ll land. I did it once.” I was picking at the remains in the salad bowl. “During the last few seasons that I worked network news, I pulled down six figures a year for reading copy off a Teleprompter. I persuaded myself I was no better than a whore-tease up my hair, paint my face, and try to give the viewing audience a hard-on so they wouldn’t turn the channel before the commercials came on. Sounds ridiculous when I say it now, but that’s how I felt. So, I did the noble thing, and I quit.
“The first year I was an independent, I earned minus forty-thousand dollars and loved every minute of it. We nearly lost our house. My husband didn’t make the leap with me, though. He was so worried about impending fiscal disaster that he started losing his hair. He couldn’t get it up for a while, either. And you know what?”
“I’m afraid of what you’ll tell me,” he said. “But what?”
“That year I quit, Scotty made nearly two hundred thousand dollars all by himself. You’d think it would be enough to buy groceries, wouldn’t you?”
“You’d think.”
“Which brings us back to the point here. It doesn’t matter what you earn, it’s what you’re used to spending. Now, look at this nice young cop, Wyatt. Surely he and his family had become accustomed to a certain standard. How did he cover his obligations when he couldn’t work overtime?”
“Probably did what everyone else does. Cut back, put the wife to work, lie about the number of extra hours you work. Why? What are you suggesting?”
“Nothing. But it bears looking into. It still bothers me that that boy scout was in a public bathroom in a crummy neighborhood, in the middle of the night.”
“Maybe he was so worried about fiscal disaster that his hair started falling out and he couldn’t get it up.” Mike started to tickle me, holding me with one strong hand so I couldn’t get away. It had more to do with control than with fun. “Maybe he was looking for a hit man because his wife kept bringing up shit that bore looking into. Maybe he had to pee.”
I wasn’t laughing when I got away from him. My sides hurt from his tickling. “Mike, did you ever get beefed?”
“Not for sleeping on the job.” His voice sounded tight. I knew I was treading the line. I didn’t know how to phrase the next part of the question on my mind because I was afraid of the answer. Mike answered before I had to figure out an angle.
“I was a street cop for a lot of years, baby. Things go down that you can’t always handle according to the book. I did what I had to do to control the situation, keep innocent people from taking too many lumps, weed out some of the creeps. So, yeah, I got beefed.”
“For excessive force?” I was pushing it.
“That’s what the sheet says.” He gave it to me in slow, white-hot speech. “I gave my baton to a rape victim once and let her beat the crap out of her attacker. I took two weeks on that one. I broke my flashlight over a guy’s head when he drew a gun on me. Judge said I should have shot him and threw the case out. I got into my share of fights. A blow by blow make you happy? Is that what you want?”
I had backed up against the sink, as far away as I could get without leaving the room. He was big, he was fierce. Any kid in the room would be reduced to blubbering and tears-I understood that right away. Grown men and women would think twice about taking him on. He could scare me if I let him. But I faced him down, moved into him because it was all wind and fire. Mike would never touch me, that I knew that for an absolute certainty.
I said, “There’s only one thing I want, Mike.”
“Let’s have it.”