As Cravitz turned to leave, Vargas said, “You have anything to do with this, Cravitz?”
“I’m a suspect, Vargas? I called you, remember?”
“Just humor me-you do this?”
“Naw, but there are fibers on the window from someone who did. Enough for Dockery here to make himself a skirt.”
“This Yippie’s place?” Vargas asked.
“My brother’s,” Cravitz said simply. “Yip was thinking about buying it. Cash let him try it out for the month-”
“Bullshit,” Dockery said.
“Stay where we can find you, Quick,” Vargas said.
“Yeah,” Cravitz replied.
Cravitz blazed past the afternoon traffic like a bolt of light. Cash was standing at his safe, smoking a long Cuban stogie, when Cravitz barged in. The safe was open. A 9mm pistol lay on the conference table.
“Where’s the smack?”
“Robbed,” Cravitz said.
“You messin’ with my money, lil’ brother. I could kill you, if you wasn’t kin. Might kill you anyway,” Cash said quietly, expelling a jet of smoke. His hard brown eyes turned black.
“You kill Yippie?” Cravitz said.
“What th’ fuck?”
“He’s murdered. You do it?”
“Why pick me, boy. I’m straight as a stick.”
“Bennita,” Cravitz said. “She put you up to this?”
Cash extracted a fresh cigar from his humidor, clipped it, and handed it to his brother. Cravitz hesitated, then took the smoke and bent over the table as his big brother lit it.
“Her brats wrecked the damn room. They was mad when they heard you took the yella dope,” Cash said. “Hi-C an’ nem had to bust ’em up a bit. You think Bennita and them punks whacked Yippie?”
“One of the killers stepped in the blood. That print is from the new Lebron James sneaker. Monster P had on a pair this morning when Yip and me had to spank them. Whoever did this got Esmeralda and the dope too.”
Cash buzzed in Hi-C and picked up his pistol. “Let’s go find these mutts,” he said to Cravitz.
Cash banged on Bennita and Bingbong’s fifth-floor suite with the barrel of his 9mm Glock. Then he used the pass key to go inside.
Brain splatter covered the walls of the suite. Bingbong Jackson lay dead in a pool of blood. A hole resembling a teardrop perforated his brow.
“Esmeralda,” Cash said.
“Bennita Bangs,” Cravitz said.
Cash got on the horn to his lowlife friends. He’d pay $5,000 to the snitch who led him to the killers.
Cravitz cellphoned Vargas. “I suggest your boys shoot to kill.”
Vargas said, “If you kill anyone we’ll arrest you, Cravitz-like any other thug. We’re bringing ’em in alive.”
“Umhum,” Cravitz said, and hung up.
He called his office manager, Betty Penny.
Within an hour, the Central Detection operatives had leaped into the hunt.
They hit the liquor stores and barbershops, the newsstands and pool halls-spreading the word that Yippie Calzone, the storied L.A. champion of the streets, had been ruthlessly cut down, by outsiders, busters from Las Vegas.
One of mothers of the boys that Yippie Calzone had killed went on TV and said it was God’s will, and that the pig should burn in hell. The other mother said that no one, not even a bad cop, should be murdered in his sleep.
Folks recalled good things Yippie Calzone had done.
He had mentored kids in South L.A.-black, brown, yellow, white. He was a good man.
The dashing new mayor, Arturo Quijada “Miracle” Mendez, a man for whom Yippie Calzone had been a boyhood hero, gave a public address.
“These are dangerous days,” the visibly shaken mayor told the people. “We ask for calm.”
Willie Song, one of the top gun dealers in L.A., called Cash to confirm he’d sold not one, but four shotguns to the Flo Boyz and they’d tried to pay him with some shit called “butter.”
Fast Al Townes, one of Central Detection’s top operatives, tracked the fibers that Cravitz had retrieved from the murder scene back to the Dream Closet, a Silverlake costume shop. A sales girl recalled renting four ninja costumes-now overdue-to some rude young men on Halloween eve.
Diss ’N’ Dats Records, the Vegas label that first recorded the Flo Boyz, FedExed publicity stills of the quartet, and Vargas emailed them to all the local news outlets.
A man named Francisco Hernandez called the L.A.P.D. crime hotline to report that he had sold a tan late-model Ford Falcon to una cabeza de quevo-a dickhead-named Monster P, from the Flo Boyz, the kids wanted on TV.
Flagg Jackson, dumpster-diving out back of the Amarillo Bar on Lankershim Boulevard, was the first to drop a dime. He called the Château Rouge and told Hi-C he’d seen the punks go inside the bar. Their jalopy was stashed behind his favorite dumpster. He was sure they were packing. Cravitz called Vargas and told him to meet at the Amarillo in an hour.
It took Cravitz fifteen minutes to drive the twenty miles to the Amarillo. Two dozen Harleys leaned against one side of the bar. At the end of the line of hogs, Flagg Jackson waved and pointed to the front of the bar.
Cravitz took a long pull from his cigar, cocked his Berretta, and headed for the door.
Behind a curtain of beads he saw four young men, each one at a corner of the bar, armed with shotguns.
About twenty customers were lined up against the walls. In the center of the room there was a pile of wallets and jewelry.
Cravitz pushed aside the curtain with his big Beretta and stepped in.
“Well, well, well. If it ain’t that bitch from the Château Rouge,” said Monster P, training his shotgun on Cravitz.
Cravitz could hear distant sirens, coming closer. He figured he could kill two, maybe three of the boys without any problem. That fourth would be tricky.
“Drop the guns, boys,” Cravitz said.
Now all four young men aimed their weapons at Cravitz.
“Tha’s a bad idea, fella,” a voice growled from behind the bead curtain.
Hi-C stepped in, his red satin top hat seeming to scrape the ceilings. He held a nasty-looking, TEC-9 assault weapon in his hands. Behind Hi-C was his boss, Cash Cravitz, followed by his crew, ready for a bloodbath.
“You got shit in your ears, boy? Drop them gats,” Cash growled.
All but Monster P complied. He cocked the shotgun and smiled. “I ain’t afraid to die. But I’m gonna kill you first, bitch.”
Cravitz smiled too. Lazily, he strolled up to Monster P and flicked the drooping ash from his Cuban stogie onto the boy’s pretty new sneakers. He hurled his 6’5” frame forward and batted the shotgun aside with his Beretta. In the same lighting motion, he smacked Monster P across the face with his free right hand. Monster P saw the flash of a broad, shadowy palm, then felt the blunt imploding thud of his head crashing against the steel base of the classic country-andwestern jukebox twelve feet away.
Uniformed cops took the other Boyz away in cuffs while the cops questioned Monster P and Cravitz at the scene.
Cravitz said, “Why’d you do it, you little shit?”
“That bitch was gonna cut me in,” Monster P replied.
“Bennita put you up to this?”
“Bennita? Hell naw. Some other bitch-” Monster P said.
“Other bitch?” Vargas said.
“-called herself Belle. Said we was gonna be rich, and we was gonna live in a fabulous house. Anyway, she knew I was pissed ’cause that old man tried to fade me. Fade me, Monster P!”
“Calzone dissed you so you killed him?” Vargas said.
“He called me Twinkletoes,” Monster P said, genuinely hurt.
Cravitz drove home in a funk.
He remembered something Yippie had said that morning: She had on a mask, but I recognized her. I don’t think she saw me. Suddenly his blunder hit him. He couldn’t believe what a fool he’d been. He got on the phone to Vargas.