“He don’t trust cops.”
“He’s trusting me with you. Why did Londell pick me to hear this?”
She looked at Hood hard. “He said you were fly for a white guy and had some humor. And something ’bout your ears.”
He almost said that he was the one whose partner Londell was suspected of killing, that he was the witness who could help Londell to a lethal injection. But he guessed if he did, this might be the last communication he’d ever have with Londell Dwayne.
“He didn’t kill anybody,” said Patrice.
They were back to the ticket windows, so they started a second lap.
“Where is he?”
She was studying him again.
“It’s the only way to help him,” said Hood.
“I know what you think. But he treats me good. With me, he’s easy and funny and we don’t do drugs. And he doesn’t bring any weapons around. Lonnie doesn’t like weapons. You know he’s always in some kind of trouble but he’s gettin’ tired of it. He’s actually thinking about joining the union down in L.A. They got an ironworkers local taking ex-gangsters, and a bricklayers too. He sounds good in his voice when he talks about it. I can tell he means it. He’s not lazy.”
They continued around the stadium. When Hood looked over, there were tears in her eyes.
“See, Hood, I know him, and Londell can be something. He just needs to believe. Like, he’s got all kinds of Detroit Tigers stuff, but he never even seen Detroit. He just likes the way that D looks. He’s looking for his own respect, you know? World’s been calling him a piece of shit so long he’s afraid he’ll start believing it. D, man. D. To him it’s not Detroit, it’s Dwayne. ”
“And you were with him that night?”
“All of it. I’ll swear it if you let me, sign a paper.”
Hood believed that she was telling the truth about Londell, just like he believed that Erin was lying for Bradley. It’s all in what you see, he thought.
“He has to turn himself in.”
“Can you help him if he does?”
“He’ll get treated like anyone else, Patrice. I can’t do favors for him.”
He saw her gaze move to the listing old Mercury in the parking lot. She waved. The car started up and reversed out of the space and came toward them. The driver was a young woman wrapped in a Raiders jacket.
“Your sister?”
“Yeah.”
“She knows about you and Londell?”
“She’s the only one.”
Patrice reached into her bag and pulled out a plastic shopping sack that had some weight to it, and handed it to Hood.
“In there I got it written down-the names of the motel guy, Kevin, and the lady, Dolores, and what time we checked in and what names we used. But the best thing is we were messin’ with the digital, you know, and we got some shots with the date and time on ’em. You can change that stuff if you’re good with electronics, but we aren’t, but we also got shots of the TV in the background because we were making faces like the people in the show, and you can check those shows and the times and you’ll see we’re telling the truth about where we were. Show those pictures to the motel people. Ask them if we were there. Londell wasn’t anywhere near that guy who got dead. The proof’s in there. Our future’s in there. And we want the camera back.”
“None of it means anything without Londell,” Hood said.
He held the bag out to her but she turned quickly and ran to the idling car. She got in and slammed the door. As the Merc pulled away Patrice was pointing at him.
He turned to see Londell leaning against one of the counters at the ticket window.
“You passed an audition you didn’t even know you were having,” he said. “Otherwise you would never a laid eyes on me.”
“Well, here you are.”
“Yep, here I am. I give up, man. No way I can outrun two crazy girlfriends, a hundred hostile niggas and a million cops. Take me straight to the judge. I’m innocent.”
He turned to the wall and put his hands behind his back, then spread his legs. “I believe in America. Yes I do.”
On the way to jail all he talked about was his pit bull, Delilah, kidnapped by Terry Laws and later lost by him.
“She’s up in the hills with the coyotes after her,” he said. “I told Laws he was responsible. He said she’d be all right with him. Bullshit, man. A cop named Laws. Now she’s gone.”
27
The next morning Hood met with three men and a woman who had partnered with Coleman Draper over the past two years. The men all rated him as a competent reservist. They said he was professional, firm but polite with the public, familiar with LASD procedures and equipment. They said they’d ride with him again but would prefer a sworn deputy.
The woman was a thirtyish deputy named Sherry Seborn. She was attractive and wore no ring, had seven years with the department. She said she drew Draper at a roll call when she started nights just before Christmas last year. She too said that Draper was professional and well mannered with the public. They had pulled over a suspected drunken driver and when he had become belligerent, Draper had talked him down, gotten him cuffed and into the back of the cruiser.
But, as she and Hood sat in a corner of the substation cafeteria, she quietly said she’d rather not ride with Draper. She’d told her superiors not to pair her with him again. She looked out at the bright cool day. A distant passenger jet left a neat contrail in the blue.
“He impressed me at first,” she said. “The drunk was getting hotter and Coleman cooled him off. Just talked him right into the cuffs. That was early in the shift. Later, after we’d booked the guy, I asked him about the Eichrodt bust. He said it was a bloody mess and it got him working on his verbal skills. He said he didn’t want another battle like that, ever. Told me about his stitches and bruises.”
“None of that sounds too bad,” Hood said.
“Too good, maybe. That was what I got from Coleman-he was too good.”
“There must have been something more than that for you to go to the patrol sergeants about him.”
She looked at him and hooked a wave of thick brown hair behind one ear. “I didn’t give them a reason. I’m not required to.”
“Give me the reason.”
She sipped a soft drink and studied him. “I don’t love IA.”
“I don’t either.”
“I’ve seen some good deputies catch some bad stuff from you people.”
“I have too. Help me.”
She looked outside again, then back at him. “On first break, he made a cell phone call. We were at a coffee pub. He talked while he ordered, talked when he paid, talked when he picked up his coffee and put in the cream and a lid. He was talking to a woman, I could tell. He’d already told me he wasn’t married. His voice was smooth and encouraging, with Spanish phrases thrown in. I know Spanish. He said beautiful things to her. A lover. He said he’d be coming home to her soon. Fine. That was more than fine with me.
“But then, later in the shift, he made another call. I was driving, and when I glanced over he was staring through the windshield, very much wrapped up in his conversation, and he didn’t even glance over at me. The radio was quiet, so what am I supposed to do? I listen. He’s talking to the woman again, but his voice is completely different. It’s a voice of calm authority, and he’s giving her very specific instructions about how to handle a situation at her work. She’s bartending or waitressing or something like that, and a guy was coming on to her that night and he was telling her exactly what to say to him and what tone of voice to use when she saw him again. He called her by name-Juliet. And I thought, this guy’s a bastard, not because he was telling her what to do and controlling her with his soft fascism, but because she was a different woman. It had to be. About the time I realized that, I realized that Coleman was playing to me. He didn’t look at me, and he never turned to me, but he was pleased that I was listening. The kicker was, when he finally hung up, he slipped the cell phone back onto his belt and gave me a little smile. The smile said, No biggie, just you and me, babe. Then he said: ‘Sherry, choose life.’ I asked him what that meant and he just shrugged. I said something wiseass. But Draper gave me the creeps. Here’s this cute guy, plenty of money is my guess, playing cops and robbers on my shift, cheating on his women and telling me what to choose. What I chose was not to ride with him again.”