Ballard sauntered over, timing it perfectly.
“Hey, Max,” she said.
“Renée,” Rowland responded. “You’re early. You have court?”
“No, I came in early to clean up some work. I owe you a case from last night but the Dancers thing blew up and everything got pushed sideways.”
“I get it. What’s the case?”
“An abduction and assault. The victim is a transgender biological male, found circling the drain in a parking lot on the Santa Monica stroll. She’s in a coma at Hollywood Pres.”
“Shit.”
Rowland just saw her exit to the weekend blocked. And that was what Ballard was counting on.
“Was there a sexual assault?” Rowland asked.
Ballard could tell what she was thinking: push this onto the sexual assault unit.
“Most likely but the victim lost consciousness before being interviewed,” she said.
“Shit,” Rowland said again.
“Look, I just came in to start the paper on it. I was also thinking I’d have time before my shift to make some calls. Why don’t you get out of here and let me run with it? I’m on tomorrow, too, so I could take it through the weekend and get back with you next week.”
“You sure? If it’s a bad beat, I don’t want to part-time it.”
“I won’t. I’ll work it. I haven’t been able to follow up on anything off the late show in a long while. There are some leads here. You recall anything lately with brass knuckles?”
Rowland thought for a moment and then shook her head.
“Brass knuckles... No.”
“What about an abduction off the stroll? She was taken somewhere and bound, then taken back. Could’ve been a couple days.”
“It’s not ringing any bells but you need to go up to talk to vice.”
“I know. It was my next stop if you let me run with it. What about the ‘upside-down house’? That mean anything to you?”
“How do you mean?”
“She said it. To the patrol cops. She momentarily regained consciousness while they were waiting for the RA. She said she had been attacked at the upside-down house.”
“Sorry. Never heard of it.”
“Okay, anything else on your plate like this? Somebody grabbed on the stroll?”
“I’ll have to think, but I can’t remember anything right now.”
“I’ll run it through the box, see what comes up.”
“So you’re sure you’ll take it? I can call a couple of my guys back in. They won’t be happy but those are the breaks.”
“Yes, I’ve got it. You go home. Don’t call anybody in. If you want, I’ll send you updates over the weekend.”
“Tell you the truth, I can wait till Monday. Going up to Santa Barbara for the weekend with my kids. The less I have to worry about, the better.”
“You got it.”
“Don’t fuck me on this, Renée.”
“Hey, I’m telling you I won’t.”
“Good.”
“Have a nice weekend.”
Rowland was always blunt and Ballard took no offense. Something about working sex cases had taken subtlety out of her personality.
Ballard left her there to finish packing up and went back to the second floor, this time ducking into the vice unit. Like the buy-bust guys, the vice cops kept odd hours, and there was never a guarantee that anyone would be in the unit. She entered and leaned over the counter to look into the alcove where the sergeants sat. She got lucky. Pistol Pete Mendez was at one of the desks, eating a sandwich. He was the only one there.
“Ballard, what do you want?” he asked. “Come around.”
It was his usual gruff greeting. Ballard reached over the half door to where she knew the lock switch was located and let herself in. She went into the alcove and pulled out the chair opposite Mendez’s desk.
“Ramón Gutierrez,” she said. “I’m working follow-up on that case. You guys hear anything about it last night?”
“Not a peep,” Mendez said. “But we were working East Hollywood and that’s a whole different kettle of fish from the dragon walk.”
“Right. When was the last time you were over there on Santa Monica?”
“Been about a month because things have been pretty tame there. But it’s like cockroaches. You can fumigate but they always come back.”
“You heard anything about a bad actor picking up pros and hurting them?”
“Not in a long while.”
“Ramone was worked over with brass knuckles. The guy was also a biter.”
“We get our fair share of biters but nothing comes to mind with brass knuckles. Is your he-she going to make it?”
“That remains to be seen. Still in a coma at Hollywood Pres for now, but they’ll be moving her down to County as soon as they realize they don’t have a paying customer.”
“That’s the way it goes. Her?”
“Yeah, her. You have a file on Ramona I could borrow?”
“Yeah, I’ll get it for you. But it’s under Ramón Gutierrez, last I checked. What else you got?”
“You ever heard of a place called the upside-down house? Ramona said it to the blue suiters who first responded to the call.”
Like Rowland, Mendez thought about it and then shook his head.
“Not that we know about here,” he said. “There’s an underground bondage club called Vertigo. Moves around to different locations.”
“I don’t think that’s it,” Ballard said. “Vertigo means dizzy, not upside-down. Plus I don’t think this was a club thing. It’s deeper than that. This victim’s lucky to be alive.”
“Yeah, well, I can’t think of anything else. Let me find that file.”
He got up from the desk and Ballard remained seated. While he was gone, she studied the schedule on the bulletin board next to his desk. It looked like vice ran operations just about every night in a different part of Hollywood. They put out undercover officers as bait and arrested the johns once they offered cash for sex. Like Mendez said, it was like cockroaches, something that never went away. Even the Internet, with its easy connections for free and paid-for sex, could not kill the stroll. It would always be there.
She could hear Mendez opening and closing file cabinets as he looked for a file on Gutierrez.
“How’d you guys end up doing last night?” she asked.
“Bubkes,” Mendez said from the other side of the room. “I think that thing at the club on Sunset scared people away. We had cruisers going up and down the streets all night.”
He came back to the desk and dropped a manila file down in front of Ballard.
“That’s what we got,” he said. “You probably could have pulled the whole thing off the box.”
“I’d rather have the hard copy,” Ballard said.
She would take a paper file over a computer file any day. There was always a chance that there was more in the hard file, handwritten notes in the margins, phone numbers scribbled on the folder, extra photos of crime scenes. That was never the case with a computer file.
Ballard thanked Mendez and said she would be in touch if anything developed on the case. He said he would keep his eyes and ears open on the streets.
“I hope you catch the guy,” he said.
Back on the first floor, Ballard had one more stop before she was in the clear to work the case. The lieutenant in charge of the detective bureau had an office in the far corner of the squad room. The room had three windows that looked out on the squad, and through them Ballard could see Lieutenant Terry McAdams at his desk, working. Ballard often went weeks without seeing her direct supervisor because of the hours of her shift. McAdams usually worked an eight-to-five day because he liked to arrive after his detectives were in and had gotten things going for the day, and then he liked to be the last man out.