Hollywood Tough

Chapter 11

Later that afternoon Shane returned to his canal house in Venice. He called out, but immediately knew that the place was empty. The house had that strange stillness that told him nobody was home.

It was five-thirty, so he took a beer out of the fridge, and again took his place in his chair on the back lawn. He was beginning to feel like a terrible creature of habit. Like one of those tired, dusty wharf pelicans who had finally given up foraging for food and sat on a concrete piling, taking French fries from tourists, never moving until, with clogged intestines, it finally toppled off the pier into the water. Shane sat on this damn chair way too much, looking at these same unaltered vistas. His view of this canal never changed, but in his mind, somehow it always looked slightly different. Maybe it was a new shadow on the water, or a shaft of sunlight through a cloud, or maybe he was just sliding into some early form of geriatric senility. He pulled out his phone and called Alexa, but only got as far as the X. O. at Detective Services Group, who told him that his wife could not be disturbed. She was in a briefing with the chief.

"Tell her that her husband called and-"

"Right," the sarge said, and was gone before Shane could continue his message. Obviously they had very little patience for the spouses of commanding officers right now.

There was a clipped irritation in the man's voice, which told Shane that all was not well on the sixth floor at Parker Center.

He spent the early evening going through the bills on his desk, trying to clear the decks for tomorrow's return to duty. His meager bank balance was $437.86. Depressing. Two hours later he put everything away in the desk drawer and locked it. It was after nine. He was looking at the phone on his desk, thinking he shouldn't make this next call, but already knew he was going to. A valiant little internal struggle ensued where the outcome was never really in doubt, so he finally went into Chooch's room, found his school phone directory, looked up Billy Rano's number, and dialed. Mrs. Rano picked up on the second ring.

"Yes?" Beth Rano was a professor of African Studies at Pierce College.

"Hi, Beth. This is Shane Scully. I need to talk to my son. I understand he's over there."

"Chooch isn't here, Shane."

His heart started beating faster. "He said he was spending the night with Billy."

"I'm sorry, I don't know anything about that. Billy's here, you want to talk to him?"

"Please…"

After a moment he heard Billy Rano's soft African-American lilt.

"Wassup, Mr. Scully?" the tall; quick wide receiver answered.

"Hi, Billy, I'm looking for Chooch."

"Uh, I left him at the library around five o'clock." "I thought he was spending the night over there." "He was, but he said something came up. Didn't say what."

"Okay, thanks," Shane said. "If you hear from him, tell him to call home."

"Yes, sir."

Shane hung up and his imagination immediately started to run away with him. What if Chooch went to see Amac?

Of course, that was about the stupidest thing Chooch could do with the Emes in a citywide war. But the more he thought about it, the more he was sure that was exactly what his son had done.

He dialed Chooch's cell phone, and it started ringing down the hall in his bedroom. His son hadn't taken it with him.

He called Amac's cell number and got an "out of the area" recording. He called Alexa again and this time, by claiming a personal emergency, was put directly into Chief Filosiani's office.

"I'm sure he's okay," she said after listening to his concern. "He's probably studying with somebody, or maybe he's at the library. Did you try to call him?"

"He left his cell here. I think he's with Amac," Shane said. Then he heard the back door slam. "Hold it. I think he just came in. Talk to you later."

Shane hung up the phone and met his son in the kitchen. "Where've you been, bud?" Shane asked with a little too much force, and got the teenage mantra.

"Out," Chooch stonewalled.

"Right, but out where? I called Billy. He said he left you at five. It's after nine."

"Don't you trust me, Dad?"

Shane had one of those parental moments. Did he want to make this a battleground where Chooch's word was at stake? "You know I trust you."

Chooch nodded, retrieved a soda from the fridge, then walked past him without saying anything else.

Shane wanted to be fresh for tomorrow's meeting with Chief Filosiani, so he went to bed at ten and was sound asleep by 10:02.

He had an unsettling dream.

Chooch was dragging a big mahogany coffin up the hill at the New Calvary Cemetery, tugging it up to the edge of an open grave. When he got it there, he looked at Shane and smiled.

"It's called a Heaven Rider," his son said proudly in the dream. "My eses will all come. Vatos will talk about my bravery. They will celebrate my life." Suddenly, the chapel bell started ringing, and then it sounded more and more like a telephone.

Shane opened his eyes and looked at the bedside clock. It was almost eleven. The phone kept ringing. He sat up in bed and fumbled the receiver out of the cradle, noticing that Alexa still wasn't there.

"Hello," he said.

"Is this Sergeant Shane Scully?" a woman's voice asked. "Yes. Who is this?"

"Detective Carla DePass, Homicide."

Uh-oh, Shane thought, but said, "What can I do for you, Detective?"

"My partner, Detective Lou Ruta, and I are working a homicide at West Eleventh Street, just east of Hoover. We'd appreciate it if you could roll on this, right now."

"I'm not assigned to Homicide. In fact, I don't even go back on active duty till tomorrow."

"We don't need help investigating the murder. We need some help identifying the vic. We're at 2635 West Eleventh, Los Angeles. How soon can you make it here?"

"That's gonna take me half an hour."

"Don't let it take any longer," she said, and was gone. He sat up and rubbed his eyes. That address was somewhere down in the Rampart Division.

Then he had a dark premonition as to who'd died.