Free Fall

CHAPTER 30

At twelve minutes after seven the next morning, I phoned Lou Poitras at home. Thurman didn't want to listen, so he went outside and stood in the parking lot. Crime is certainly glamorous, isn't it?

Poitras's middle daughter, Lauren, answered and asked who I was. I told her Maxwell Smart. She said, "Nyuh-uh. You're Elvis Cole." She's nine, and we'd known each other maybe seven years.

"If you knew who I was, why'd you ask?"

"Mommy told me always ask." These kids.

"Lemme speak to your daddy."

"Daddy was talking about you last night. He said you were an asshole." She giggled when she said it. These kids are something, aren't they?

"Let me speak to him."

The phone got put down and you could hear her running away, yelling for Lou and yelling that it was me. Lou Poitras came on maybe twenty seconds later, and said, "Where you calling from?" His voice was tight in a way I hadn't heard it before.

"Why, Lou? You going to have me arrested?"

"Maybe I should. You screwed up bad, Hound Dog."

"If not me, who? If not now, when?"

"Stop with the goddamn jokes. This isn't funny." There was a kind of fabric sound that made me think he was moving with the phone, maybe getting away from his family.

I said, "I need to see you, and I need to be certain that I'm not going to be taken into custody when I do."

"You gonna turn yourself in?"

"No. I'm going to talk to you about cutting a deal that involves myself and Joe Pike and an LAPD officer, and I need someone to take it up the line to the DA."

His voice went harder, and low, like maybe he didn't want his wife or kids to hear. "Are you telling me that an LAPD officer is involved in this?"

"I've got visual proof that Charles Lewis Washington was unarmed when he was beaten to death five months ago. I've also got eyewitness proof that since that time, Eric Dees and his REACT team have been participating with the Eight-Deuce Gangster Boys in an ongoing series of misdemeanor and felony crimes."

Lou Poitras didn't say anything for maybe forty seconds. Behind him, I heard his wife yelling for the kids to quit dogging it and get ready for school. Lou said, "You're sure?"

"Sure enough to call you. Sure enough to think I can get the deal." Nobody a good cop wants to bust more than a bad cop.

Poitras said, "What kind of visual proof?"

"Videotape from a black-and white surveillance camera."

"There wasn't a tape in the Washington thing."

"It was a hidden camera."

"And this tape shows the incident?"

"Yes."

"In its entirety?"

"Yes."

"Can I see it?"

"You going to come alone?"

"You know better than that." Giving me pissed. Giving me Had Enough. "There's a video repair place called Hal's on Riverside just east of Laurel in Studio City. The guy owns it knows me. It's early, but he'll open up to let us use a unit. Can you meet me there in forty minutes?"

"Sure." Most of the traffic would be coming this way.

Lou Poitras hung up without saying good-bye.

I put the cassette into a plastic Hughes Market bag, locked the room, and went out to the parking lot. Thurman was waiting in his car.

Thirty-five minutes later we pulled off the freeway in Studio City and found Hal's Video in a shopping center on the south side of the street. Lou Poitras's car was in the parking lot, along with a couple of other cars that looked abandoned and not much else. Eight A.M. is early for a shopping center. We parked next to Poitras's car, but Thurman made no move to get out. He looked uneasy. "You mind if I stay out here?"

"Up to you."

He nodded to himself and seemed to relax. "Better if I stay." It was going to be hard, all right.

I took the plastic bag with the videocassette and went into Hal's. It was a little place, with a showroom for cheap VCRs and video cameras made by companies you'd never heard of and signs that said AUTHORIZED REPAIR. Lou Poitras was standing in the showroom with a Styrofoam cup of coffee, talking to a short overweight guy with maybe four hairs on his head. Hal. Hal looked sleepy, but Lou didn't.

I said, "Hi, Lou."

Poitras said, "This is the guy." Some greeting, huh?

Hal led us into the back room where he had a VCR hooked to a little Hitachi television on a workbench. The Hitachi had been turned on. Its screen was a bright, motionless blue. Waiting for the tape. "Everything's set up. You want me to get it going?"

Poitras shook his head. "Nah. Go have breakfast or something. I'll lock up when we leave."

"Forget breakfast. I'm gonna go home and go back to sleep."

Hal left, and when we heard the front door close, Lou said, "Okay. Let's see it."

I put the tape in the VCR and pressed PLAY and Charles Lewis Washington appeared in the swivel chair behind the counter at the Premier Pawn Shop. I fast-forwarded the tape until Riggens and Pinkworth entered, and then I let it resume normal play. I said, "You know those guys?"

Poitras said, "No. They the officers?"

"There were five guys in Eric Dees's REACT team. Dees, Garcia, Thurman, Riggens, and Pinkworth. That's Riggens. That's Pinkworth."

"Is there sound?"

"Unh-unh."

A couple of minutes later Riggens left and came back with Garcia and the case of bullets. I said, "That's Pete Garcia."

Poitras's face was flat and implacable as a stretch of highway. He knew where we were going, and he didn't like it.

Charles Lewis Washington nodded to conclude the deal, and the three onscreen officers produced their guns and badges. Riggens went over the counter, and the beating began. I said, "You see Washington go for a gun, Lou?"

Poitras kept his eyes on the screen. "They're behind the counter part of the time. You can't see behind the counter."

Washington came from behind the counter, and Garcia whacked him into Pinkworth. Riggens and Pink-worth beat him as he held up his hand and begged them to stop. If he had a gun behind the counter, he didn't have one now. Thurman entered the picture. "That's Mark Thurman."

Poitras nodded.

"Here comes Dees."

"I know Dees."

"I don't see the gun, Lou. I don't see any aggressive or threatening behavior."

"I can see that, Hound Dog." His voice was soft and hoarse, and the planes of his jaw and temples flexed and jumped and he had grown pale. I quit while I was ahead.

Pete Garcia checked Charles Lewis Washington for a pulse and shook his head, no, there was none.

I pressed the fast-forward again and we watched the men moving and talking at high speed, like in a cartoon. Riggens left the shop, then came back with a paper bag. He took a gun out of the bag. He put it in Charles Lewis Washington's hand. I said, "There's the gun, Lou."

Lou Poitras reached out and touched the off button, and the merciful blue reappeared. "How'd you get this?"

"Mark Thurman and I stole it from Eric Dees's garage."

"How'd Dees get it?"

"A gangbanger in South Central named Akeem D'Muere has the original. He's using it to blackmail Dees and the REACT team into supporting his drug trade." I told him how Akeem D'Muere owned the Premier Pawn Shop, how he had had a surveillance camera installed, and how he had forced the Washington family to drop their suit against the city to protect Dees's team.

Poitras said, "Okay. What's all this got to do with you and the charges against you?"

I gave him the rest of it, from the time Jennifer Sheridan hired me to James Edward Washington and Ray Depente and Cool T, and being set up by Eric Dees and the Eight-Deuce Gangster Boys so it would look like I was trying to pull down a drug deal. Poitras said, "That's shit. Why set you up? Why not just kill you?"

"Akeem's a killer, but Dees isn't. He got into this mess trying to cover up for his people because of what happened to Charles Lewis Washington, and he's been looking for a way to get out. He's trying to control Akeem. He doesn't want to make it worse. He just wants to survive it."

Poitras's face split with a feral grimace. "What a great guy."

"Yep."

"So what's the deal?"

"All charges against Joe and myself are dropped, and the city has to do right by the Washington family."

Poitras shook his head, and the grimace came back. "You and Pike we can handle, but when you start talking a wrongful-death suit, you're talking the mayor's office and the city council. You know what that's like. They're gonna ask how much. They're going to try to weasel."

"Weaseling isn't in the deal. They have to negotiate in good faith. No weaseling, no disrespect."

Lou said, "Jesus Christ, they're lawyers. Weaseling is all they know how to do."

"If the Washingtons sue, they'll win big. The city can fight them and drag it out, but they'll still win and the city will look bad because of the fight. So will the department. Do it my way, and no one has to know about the deal. The department can claim they uncovered the tape as a result of an internal investigation, and use going public as proof that the police can be trusted to wash their own dirty laundry. The city makes a big deal out of apologizing to the Washingtons, and everybody ends up looking like a hero. Jesus Christ, Lou, those people have lost two sons."

Poitras gave a shrug. "I don't think they'll go for it, but I'll try. What else?"

I said, "Thurman skates and stays on the job."

Poitras's face went as flat as a stone wall. "Every one of these officers is taking the hard fall. Every one of them will do time."

"Not Thurman. You can fine him, you can demote him, whatever you want, but he stays on the job."

Poitras's eyes sort of flickered and his sport coat pulled across his shoulders as his muscles swelled. A fine ribbon-work of veins appeared on his forehead. I have known Lou Poitras for almost ten years, and I couldn't recall having seen him so angry. "These guys shit on the badge, Hound Dog. I don't want guys like this in my department."

"Thurman's young, Lou. He didn't have a hand in it. You saw."

"He's sworn to protect. That means you protect even from other officers. He just stood there."

"He froze. His team is like his family. Dees is like a father. He wants a second chance."

"Fuck him."

"You get four out of five, Lou. That's the way it works."

Lou Poitras's jaw danced and rippled and he looked at the tape in the VCR, maybe thinking he should just take the tape, but maybe not, maybe thinking he should just arrest my ass. But maybe not. He let out a deep, hissing breath and his jacket smoothed as the heavy muscles in his shoulders and chest relaxed. Making peace with it. He said, "Okay. Maybe we can make it fly. I'll have to run it up the line. It'd help if I had the tape."

"Sorry, Lou. It's all I've got."

He nodded and put his hands in his pockets. Wouldn't have to shake hands with me, his hands in his pockets. "You going to be around?"

"No place in particular. We escaped fugitives lead nomadic lives."

"Yeah. I guess you do." He thought about it, then said, "Call me at one o'clock. If I'm not in the office, Griggs will be there. I should know by then."

"Okay, Lou. Thanks." I took the tape from the VCR and we went out to the showroom toward the door. You could look out the glass there. You could see the cars, and who was in the cars. Poitras said, "Is that Thurman?"

"Yeah."

He stared at Thurman with empty eyes. He wet his lips and he stared.

I went to the door, but Lou Poitras didn't go with me. I guess there weren't many escaped felons he'd let walk away.

I stopped in the door and looked back at him. "Tell me the truth, Lou. When you heard about the charges, did you doubt me?"

Lou Poitras shook his head. "Nope. Neither did Griggs."

"Thanks, Lou."

When I turned away, he said, "Try not to get stopped for a traffic violation. Our orders are shoot to kill."

Ha ha. That Lou. Some kidder, huh?