Unfortunately for the people of California, circumstances conspired to get Bobby off lightly. The arresting officers made a minor procedural error when they took him into custody, just the sort of thing to stir some judges to passionate rhetoric about constitutional guarantees. The district attorney at that time, a man named Kooperhausen, had been busy responding to charges of political corruption in his own office. Aware that the improper handling of the accused at the time of arrest might have jeopardized the state's case, preoccupied with saving his own ass from the muckrakers, the D.A. had been receptive to the defense attorney's offer to plead Bobby guilty to three counts of rape and one of manslaughter in return for the dropping of all other and more serious charges. Most homicide detectives, like Tony Clemenza, felt that Kooperhausen should have tried to get convictions for second-degree murder, kidnapping, assault, rape, and sodomy. The evidence was overwhelmingly in favor of the state's position. The deck was stacked against Bobby--and then fate dealt him an unexpected ace.
Today, Bobby was a free man.
But maybe not for long, Tony thought.
In May, one month after his release from prison, Bobby "Angel" Valdez failed to keep an appointment with his parole officer. He moved out of his apartment without filing the required change of address form with the proper authorities. He vanished.
In June, he started raping again. Just as easy as that. As casually as some men start smoking again after shaking the habit for a few years. Like renewed interest in an old hobby. He molested two women in June. Two in July. Three in August. Two more in the first ten days of September. After eighty-eight months behind bars, Bobby had a craving for woman-flesh, an insatiable need.
The police were convinced that those nine crimes--and perhaps a few others that had gone unreported--were the work of one man, and they were equally certain the man was Bobby Valdez. For one thing each of victims had been approached in the same way. A man walked up to her as she got out of her car alone, at night, in a parking lot. He put a gun in her ribs or back or belly, and he said, "I'm a fun guy. Come to the party with me, and you won't get hurt. Turn me down, and I'll blow you away right now. Play along, and you've got no worries. I'm really a fun guy." He said pretty much the same thing every time, and the victims remembered it because the "fun guy" part sounded so weird, especially when spoken in Bobby's soft, high-pitched, almost girlish voice. It was identical to the approach Bobby had used more than eight years ago, during his first career as a rapist.
In addition to that, the nine victims gave strikingly similar descriptions of the man who had abused them. Slender. Five-foot-ten. A hundred and forty pounds. Dusky complexion. Dimpled chin. Brown hair and eyes. The girlish voice. Some of Bobby's friends called him "Angel" because of his sweet voice and because he had a cute baby face. Bobby was thirty years old, but he looked sixteen. Each of the nine victims had seen her assailant's face, and each had said he looked like a kid, but handled himself like a tough, cruel, clever, and sick man.
The chief bartender in Paradise left the business to his two subordinates and examined the three glossy mug shots of Bobby Valdez that Frank Howard had put on the bar. His name was Otto. He was a good-looking man, darkly tanned and bearded. He wore white slacks and a blue body shirt with the top three buttons undone. His brown chest was matted with crisp golden hairs. He wore a shark's tooth on a gold chain around his neck. He looked up at Frank, frowned. "I didn't know L.A. police had jurisdiction in Santa Monica."
"We're here by sufferance of the Santa Monica P.D.," Tony said.
"Huh?"
"Santa Monica police are cooperating with us in this investigation," Frank said impatiently. "Now, did you ever see the guy?"
"Yeah, sure. He's been in a couple of times," Otto said.
"When?" Frank asked.
"Oh ... a month ago. Maybe longer."
"Not recently?"
The band, just returned from a twenty-minute break, struck up a Billy Joel song.
Otto raised his voice above the music. "Haven't seen him for at least a month. The reason I remember is because he didn't look old enough to be served. I asked to see some ID, and he got mad as hell about that. Caused a scene."
"What kind of scene?" Frank asked.
"Demanded to see the manager."
"That's all?" Tony asked.
"Called me names." Otto looked grim. "Nobody calls me names like that."
Tony cupped one hand around his ear to funnel in the bartender's voice and block some of the music. He liked most Billy Joel tunes, but not when they were played by a band that thought enthusiasm and amplification could compensate for poor musicianship.
"So he called you names," Frank said. "Then what?"
"Then he apologized."
"Just like that? He demands to see the manager, calls you names, then right away apologizes?"
"Yeah."
"Why?"
"I asked him to," Otto said.
Frank leaned farther over the bar as the music swelled into a deafening chorus. "He apologized just because you asked him to?"
"Well ... first, he wanted to fight."
"Did you fight him?" Tony shouted.
"Nah. If even the biggest and meanest son of a bitch in the place gets rowdy, I don't ever have to touch him to quiet him down."
"You must have a hell of a lot of charm," Frank yelled.
The band finished the chorus, and the roar descended from a decibel level high enough to make your eyeballs bleed. The vocalist did a bad imitation of Billy Joel on a verse played no louder than a thunderstorm.
A stunning green-eyed blonde was sitting at the bar next to Tony. She had been listening to the conversation. She said, "Go on, Otto. Show them your trick."
"You're a magician?" Tony asked Otto. "What do you do--make unruly customers disappear?"
"He scares them," the blonde said. "It's neat. Go on, Otto. Show them your stuff."
Otto shrugged and reached under the bar and took a tall beer glass from a rack. He held it up so they could look at it, as if they had never seen a beer glass before. Then he bit off a piece of it. He clamped his teeth on the rim and snapped a chunk out of it, turned, spat the sharp fragment into a garbage can behind him.
The band exploded through the last chorus of the song and gifted the audience with merciful silence.
In the sudden quiet between the last note and the burst of scattered applause, Tony heard the beer glass crack as Otto took another bite out of it.
"Jesus," Frank said.
The blonde giggled.
Otto chomped on the glass and spat out a mouthful and chomped some more until he had reduced it to an inch-thick base too heavy to succumb to human teeth and jaws. He threw the remaining hunk in the can and smiled. "I chew up the glass right in front of the guy who's making trouble. Then I look mean as a snake, and I tell him to settle down. I tell him that if he doesn't settle down I'll bite his goddamned nose off."
Frank Howard gaped at him, amazed. "Have you ever done it?"