Bad Intent

Chapter 29

“I had it all wrong,” I said. While Mike put away the camera in the back of the car, I held the brownie he had carried away from Mrs. Rhodes’s buffet table. “I listen to your rowdy stories and I have to remind myself they’re ninety-two percent pure bull. Now and then I forget to do the math, so I get suckered right into believing them as told.”

“What are you talking about?” He took back his brownie. “You saying I’m a liar?”

“Yes. And I’m saying I’m deeply chagrined for entertaining for even a moment any notion that you might have abused LaShonda and Hanna. I walked you into that house wishing we had stopped to get your body armor, because the way you talk about what you used to do in the good old days-kicking butt and taking names later-I’m thinking it might get real ugly when these people set eyes upon you. But it was like a neighborhood reunion in there, Sugar.”

“You should have been chagrined, Miss Berkeley-has-a-big-dictionary. Hell, I know all their kids. Arrested most of them. We’re family.”

“Exactly my point.” I jabbed him with a finger. “Maybe you arrested eight percent of their kids. For jaywalking or something. The rest? Ninety-two percent pure bull. Some tough guy you are, Flint. You swagger in and swap brownie recipes.”

He laughed and I got a chocolatey peck on the lips before he unlocked my car door for me and opened it. As I climbed in, the string of bullet shells dangling from my neck tinkled like a wind chime. I pulled up the chain and looked at the shells again, being careful not to touch any of the brown stain I was certain would prove to be the blood of Wyatt Johnson.

“You know you can’t keep those,” Mike said, closing his door behind him.

I know.” I let the chain fall back against my chest. LaShonda had run right away in a panic, but Hanna had stayed behind, and not hidden in some old car, either. Not until later. It took a fairly cool head to scramble over and around the bleeding, dying body of Wyatt Johnson to collect her souvenirs-like collecting seashells.

The coroner thought it had taken Wyatt Johnson a minute or two to expire; long enough to pump out a lot of blood. Had Wyatt spoken to Hanna? Had he explained how powerful those spent shells could be-a ticket to the gas chamber if they could be tied to the shooter’s firearm? She was street-wise. Had she figured the angle all by herself? The big question on my mind was, who had she told? Who had known she had to be silenced?

“You’re quiet,” Mike said.

I was wrong about something else.”

“Two admissions in one day? Unbelievable. Did you and Mrs. Rhodes smoke something funny in that back bedroom?”

“I had persuaded myself that there had to be a second person in the restroom with Wyatt Johnson.”

“There was.” He chewed the last of his brownie. “You’ve got the proof of that hanging around your neck. Hanna went in there.”

“Before that. Bart Conklin told me how his brother used to hang around waiting for someone to commit a robbery, then he’d go in and rob the robber. Because of the missing shells and the way the body was lying, I thought someone must have been in the restroom with Wyatt. I thought maybe Conklin had interrupted Wyatt making a deal with someone, and ripped them off. Or tried to. And that the girls didn’t see the third man because they ran off. But Hanna would have seen him. Nosy little thing, she hung around.”

“I keep telling you, Wyatt was just taking a leak. It’s that simple.” Crumbs in his mustache eroded his air of authority. “Trust me, this is how it went down: Conklin sees Wyatt drive up in a nice car, and because he’s an asshole, he wants it. He follows Wyatt into the can, tries to hold him up. It goes wrong, Wyatt gets shot, Conklin runs the hell away. Period. He didn’t even know he’d killed a cop until he heard it on the street later.”

I must not have looked like a buyer. Mike sighed heavily as he turned from me to start the car. “I know you want something bigger, Maggie. But that’s all it was. Just a crappy heist that went wrong.”

I said, “But,” before I accepted the futility of arguing a point I was not clear on.

Mike turned onto Ninety-second Street. “Now that you’ve seen the new color on the walls, how do you like it?”

I said, “I wanted Kelsey to be there somehow.”

“That night? No way. You want a big drug deal, or some undercover scam, or at the very least a loose woman. But you can’t make it, baby. Not with Wyatt. Not with Kelsey, either.”

“Kelsey looks guilty. There’s more to his involvement.”

He laughed. “If looks could convict us, we’d all be in the slam. The only thing Kelsey was guilty of back then was drinking on the job. And another thing: You’re never going to know any more about what happened that night than you do right now. So, I want you to think about Wyatt’s family for a minute. Is it nice to go around suggesting things you can’t substantiate? It makes them feel bad, and what does it do for you?”

I slouched down in the seat and watched the scenery for a while. Maybe I would have to accept what he said about Wyatt, but Jerry Kelsey was guilty of a whole lot more than drinking on the job. I just didn’t know what. And for sure I was not ready to argue that one with Mike.

It was Sunday afternoon. Every church we passed leaked music. Family groups in their Sunday finest strolled along the streets. Very festive. But all I could see was LaShonda running off in a panic, and Hanna, braver, more street-wise, going in for a better look. Gathered up the bullet shells as her prize, blackmail currency if she got wise enough. Was she hiding herself in that derelict car, secreting her new treasures, or just taking a nap when James Shabazz called her name?

I said, “Mike?”

“Thought you went to sleep.”

“Hanna’s new affidavit is a fraud.”

“I know.”

“Someone didn’t want her to say so.”

“I know.”

“That’s why she died.”

“Uh huh.”

“What else do you know?” I asked. But he just smiled, a the way to South Pasadena.

We rejoined the painters at the South Pasadena house. A brother-in-law cum electrician had installed an upgraded electrical service. I spent the better part of an hour with him in my new work space, showing him where I needed outlet strips along the baseboards. I talked him into removing a piece of the hardwood floor so that I could have some recessed outlets in the middle of the big room. Before he got away from me, I also talked him into some strip lighting.

When I had pushed him as far as I dared, I joined the cadre of painters upstairs and worked on windowframes for a few hours.

There were people all around me, but I was left to my own thoughts for the most part. These men had been working together for three solid days. They seemed to have run out of chitchat and had moved on to topics that were more quiet, more serious, more personal I was something of an outsider. I didn’t mind and I didn’t want to intrude.

At around five, Mike made a sandwich run. When he came back, everyone gathered under the avocado tree to eat and rest. When I heard Mike’s summons, I put the lid on my paint can. But I stayed upstairs after the others had gone down.

Voices from the yard drifted up through the open balcony doors. With their baritone laughter for background music, I pulled out my big bag and sat down with it in the middle of the floor. It took some searching until I found the two documents that had been at the center of my thoughts. I put them side by side on the drop cloth beside me and studied them.

Both statements were short. Hanna’s first statement had been dictated to Mike, who handwrote it on a printed interview form. I read it through again.

“Me and LaShonda was back there and we heard the gun, like I say before. We go start to run over where her mama work because we was scared. But we run smack into Pinkie. He was running out of that toilet where he shot the man. Me and LaShonda look at that dead man and we start screaming and then she ran right off. I didn’t know what to do next. I think Pinkie has another gun and he shoot me, too. But he go jump in that old green car of his and he drive off. I go jump into this old Cadillac is parked there and I climb down in the back and cover up in some old rags and things and I stay there until LaShonda and James call my name and say, ‘Get over here.’ “

I was having a lot of trouble putting aside my partiality for Mike. I had admitted favoritism from the beginning. Even after factoring that in, for me the handwritten, ungrammatical, uncorrected document had far more credibility than the slick, typed, centered, spell-checked page that Jennifer Miller had sent me. If it was legit, then saying that Hanna had changed her mind surely must be taken literally: The language did not come from Rhodes, Hanna, five-time loser, sixth-grade dropout.

The affidavit began, “I was eleven years of age on November 6, 1979. I have forgotten some of the smaller details of the events which occurred that evening. In sum, however, my memory is very clear.

“I was at the above-named service station with my friend, LaShonda DeBevis. At approximately twelve-fifteen a.m. we heard shots fired. I estimate that five or six shots were fired. We were very frightened so we began to run, seeking safety. As we came from the rear parking area, we encountered a man in dark clothing leaving the service station restroom where the shooting occurred. I saw his face clearly, but I did not recognize him. I knew I had not seen him before, nor have I seen him since. Charles Conklin was known to me at the time. The man who ran from the men’s room was not Charles Conklin.

“I identified Charles Conklin only after relentless pressure and threats to do so from Detectives M. Flint and J. Kelsey. They frightened me. When they offered to buy me a new bicycle, I signed their prepared statement.”

Dated and signed in the Frontera State Prison for Women. The witnesses were Leroy Burgess and George Schwartz.

I put the papers away and began cleaning my paintbrushes.

“Maggie?” Mike came in with a wrapped sandwich in his hand. “Jennifer Miller just picked up her son.”

I exhaled a breath I think I had been holding on to for a couple of days. I didn’t know Jennifer Miller very well, and what I knew of her I didn’t respect very much. The magnitude of relief I felt upon hearing this piece of news caught me off guard. I asked, “Can we talk to her?”

“Not yet. They took her in for questioning.”

“Where’s LaShonda?”

“With Guido,” he said. “She’s okay.”

He furrowed his brow, made the deep crease that reminded me of his dad. “We miss you downstairs.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, hearing reproach. “I didn’t mean to be antisocial.”

I took him by the hand and walked down with him. We joined the circle on the lawn, finding a place next to Hector. Mike sat down with his back against the big tree, and I sat with my back against him. The conversation moved from the Dodgers to the department’s teams for the Baker-to-Vegas run, always with references to old stories that formed a sort of code for their jokes and their affection for one another. My only contribution was to laugh now and then. I wasn’t aware how often I was checking my watch until Mike caught my arm.

“Going somewhere?” he asked.

“Casey’s plane comes in at nine,” I said.

He turned my arm to look at the watch face. “It isn’t even seven. Relax. After the sun sets, then you can start worrying.”

Hector said, “The place is shaping up. When you moving in?”

“Tuesday, Wednesday.” Mike smiled contentedly as he looked up at the house, the fresh trim paint shining in the sun.

“We’ll have you all over for a house-warming next weekend,” I said. “Bring your significant others.”

With a wicked gleam in his eye, Hector said, “I’m bringing my new girl. Her name’s Olga.”

“By all means bring her,” I said. “I’d like to show her around the kitchen. Show her my new knife sharpener.”

Mike put his arms around me and knuckled my shoulder. “What should we put back here? One big table or a couple of smaller ones?”

“How about a pool while we’re at it?” I said.

Hector was staring at me, so I turned to him. “Don’t you like to swim?”

He seemed to shake himself. “You brought up something this morning with Mr. D.A. Marovich. I was thinking maybe this wasn’t the best time to talk about it.”

“We’re all family,” I said.

“I made a few calls.” Hector shrugged, as if to say he hadn’t made much effort. “Found a guy-you know Phillips, works out of Newton?”

It took a few minutes for everyone to remember Phillips and tell some sort of story about him before Hector could go on.

“So, Phillips says he knows this George Schwartz pretty well. Says he’s been a tweeny for Marovich for years, never does shit for the D.A.‘s office, only works for the boss himself. Does the dirty work, handles damage control. Phillips hates the guy. He says whenever Schwartz shows up, the case will get nasty, because that’s the way Schwartz likes it. Phillips also had a few things to say about Schwartz working for the Marovich campaign and some of the stuff he’s been up to for the boss.”

I got up and stretched. “Doesn’t matter. I don’t frankly give a damn about Mr. Baron Marovich and his campaign now that Conklin isn’t a usable issue.”

“Say what?” Mike frowned at me.

“The judge has to throw out his case.”

The moans and guffaws were like a Greek chorus-the one just before the hero leaps off the precipice or cuts his heart out. I appealed to the assembled. “What did I say?”

“Sometimes you democrats don’t get the big picture.” Mike knuckled my shoulder again, harder this time, and without a smile. “Do you know the judge?”

I felt a clutch inside; I had never thought to look into the judge who had agreed to hear the petition, and that was a big lapse.

“Find out what law firm he came out of,” Mike said.

I said, “Oh,” because that seemed to cover the territory. I mentioned Jennifer’s firm and got a new round of the chorus.

“Judge throws this out now, he’ll look like a fool.” Mike was the tough guy again. “You need a little refresher course in big city politics? Section One, Subsection A of the city charter says, ‘The facts, although interesting, are irrelevant.’ Remember that and you’ll do okay.”

I said, “I thought Subsection A was, ‘Anything worth fighting for is worth fighting dirty for.’”

“No.” He laughed. “That’s Sub B.”

“Now that you’ve explained things to me, I have something to concede,” I said. “You ready for it?”

Mike looked up at me, skeptical. “Three in one day is over quota.”

“Yeah? Well, I think you were right. From the beginning, it was a simple heist. And I don’t mean the shooting of Wyatt Johnson.”