Kill the Messenger

37

I got the info on Davis,” Ruiz said as Parker sat down at his desk. “Besides a few minor drug charges, he’s got a history of assaults, with two convictions.”

“Working off his drug debt by beating money out of the rest of the pipeheads who haven’t paid,” Parker speculated.

“He’s been out of prison for about two years,” Ruiz went on. “And his attorney of record for his last trial was Leonard Lowell.”

Parker nodded. “Last known address?”

“He recently purchased a house in the Hollywood hills. He had to report the move to his parole officer.”

“And if I go up there to check it out,” Parker said, “will Bradley Kyle be there to greet me?”

He stared at his partner, waiting for an answer. Ruiz sighed and looked away.

“What do you want me to say, Parker? Robbery-Homicide can take anything they want—”

“Including my partner?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means I think your agenda and my agenda are not one and the same here.”

Parker got out of his chair to pace, to try to burn off some of the anger.

“I’m not going to lie for you to Robbery-Homicide,” Ruiz said. “What have you ever done for me? I’ve got to consider my own career.”

“And which career is that?”

She stared at him, appearing confused and frustrated, with maybe a little bit of fear in her eyes.

“You want to work Homicide?” Parker asked, pacing back and forth, hands jammed at his waist, shoulders tense. “Or is this just a field trip for you?”

A couple of detectives on the other side of the room had turned to watch the escalating argument. Ruiz’s eyes darted toward them.

“If you have something to say to me, Parker, I think we should take it into one of the interview rooms.”

“Why the sudden modesty? You’ll flash your cleavage in front of anyone, but you don’t want them to know to whom they owe the pleasure?”

“You’re fucking crazy!” she said, pushing to her feet. “Are you on crack?”

“Do you know Alex Navarro?”

Silence.

“I’ll take that as a no,” Parker said. “Alex Navarro is The Man working Latin gangs.”

“Oh, yeah,” she stammered. “I was too far down the food chain to have any contact with him.”

“Alex Navarro can name every set of every gang in LA. If you asked him who got killed on June first five years ago, not only would he be able to answer that question, he would tell you every single detail of the case right down to what brand of underwear the vic had on when he went down. Navarro has absolutely no recollection of Officer Renee Ruiz working with the Gang Unit.”

“So?” she challenged. He had to give her credit for cojones. “So I didn’t work with him. What’s the big deal?”

“You, Ms. Ravenous Ambition, who misses no opportunity to rub up against the nearest authority figure. You never made a move on the boss of bosses of your undercover task force?”

“Are you calling me a whore?” she said.

“That’d be a compliment,” Parker snapped. “I’m calling you a liar.”

“Fuck you, Parker!”

“I’m calling you a rat! Who put you here?” Parker shouted.

“What’s the matter with you? Why are you doing this?”

“Because I’m pissed off,” he said, getting in her face. To her credit, she didn’t back down. “I don’t like being played. What did you give Bradley Kyle when he came in here?”

“You fucking asshole. Why should I tell you anything?”

“What did you give him?”

“Everything you didn’t take with you,” she admitted.

“You told them about Davis, gave them his address?”

“I didn’t have a choice.”

“You always have a choice, Ruiz. You could have told them I had everything with me. You could have left out the information about Davis’s house.”

“They’re taking the case!” she said, frustrated. “Don’t you get that? It’s not yours anymore, Parker. What’s the difference if I gave them the information now instead of later? They still end up with the information.”

Fuentes stuck his head out of his office. “What the hell is going on here?”

“He’s crazy!” Ruiz said, then spouted off the Spanish version in case Fuentes hadn’t gotten it the first time.

“In my office,” Fuentes said. “Both of you. Now.”

“I’ve got to go,” Parker said, starting to walk away. “I’ve got a job to do.”

“In here, Kev. I mean it.”

Parker stopped and weighed his pros and cons. Fuentes wouldn’t do anything if he walked. But if he walked, Ruiz would have time to regroup. He wanted this over. Now.

They went into Fuentes’ office, Ruiz going to one side of the room, Parker staying near the door. He didn’t wait for Fuentes to set the tone. He faced the captain and said, “Where did she come from? Who assigned her here?”

“Don’t be so paranoid,” Fuentes said.

“He’s out of his freaking mind,” Ruiz said, crossing her arms tightly beneath her breasts.

Parker threw his hands up and turned around in a little circle. “Why will no one answer the damn question?”

“She came from the Gang—”

“Don’t bullshit me!” Parker shouted. “I know she didn’t come out of the Latin gangs task force.”

“If you don’t like the answers to your questions, stop asking them,” Fuentes said, a little too calm. “It is what it is, Kev.”

“Right. It is what it is,” he said, nodding. “I know she’s lying, therefore I can assume you’re lying too.”

Fuentes didn’t bother to object. “She’s your trainee. What difference does it make where she comes from? Your job is to train her.”

“It matters if that’s not the reason she’s here,” Parker said. “What are you, Ruiz? A Robbery-Homicide mole? An Internal Affairs rat? Take your pick of rodents.”

Once again no one answered him. Ruiz and Fuentes exchanged looks that said they clearly knew something Parker didn’t. He watched them, marveling at the fact that he could still expect something from someone, from Fuentes at least. He should have learned that lesson long ago. He thought he had. Maybe he had simply resigned himself, and now that he finally had a case where he could prove himself, the numbness was wearing off.

“Fuck this,” he said, and turned to the door.

“Parker, where do you think you’re going?”

“I’ve got a job to do.”

“You’re off Lowell,” Fuentes said. “You have to hand everything over to Robbery-Homicide before they get really pissed off and decide to charge you with obstruction.”

“They can do whatever they want,” Parker said. “I don’t know what their reasons are for taking this, but I’m starting to put the pieces together and I don’t like the picture I’m coming up with. I’m not just going to hand them the reins and walk off into the sunset.”

“You could lose your career over this, Kev,” Fuentes said. “Stay out of their way.”

“I don’t care,” Parker said, resting his hand on the doorknob. “Fire me if you want to, if you don’t want to take the heat. You can take my job, but this case is mine, and I’m seeing it through, even if I have to do it as a private citizen.”

“Kev—”

“You know, here’s what you should do,” Parker said. “Tell the brass I’ve finally flipped my lid. I’ll spend the next six months getting my head examined by one of the department shrinks. You can shrug it off. There’s no impact on you if I’m just bat-shit crazy.”

Fuentes looked at him and sighed. “I’m not your enemy, Kev,” he said at last. “You have to know when to walk away from something.”

Parker turned to Ruiz. “Don’t you have some wiseass remark? Aren’t you going to tell me this will go on my permanent record? Whoever you’re working for is going to be grossly disappointed in you.”

She had nothing to say to that, which was easily the most telling moment he had ever spent with her.

“Good act, by the way,” Parker said. “You turned me completely around. I never would have pegged you for a rat.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ruiz said impatiently.

“On the contrary,” Parker said. “I’m the authority on the subject of how to fuck over Kev Parker. I have years of experience.

“I’m leaving,” he told them. “If there’s no job for me when I come back, c’est la vie. God knows, I don’t do this for the money.”

“What do you do it for?” Ruiz asked pointedly.

“Is that what this is about?” Parker asked. He laughed, though it held no humor. “How does Parker afford a Jag? How does Parker buy a loft in Chinatown? How can Parker wear designer suits?”

“How do you?” she asked, blunt and unapologetic. “How do you afford your lifestyle on a detective’s salary?”

“I don’t,” he said. “And the rest of that answer is no one’s damn business.”

“It is if you’re getting that money—”

“You people are fucking amazing.” He stared at her, incredulous, shaking his head. “I’ve never been anything less than a damn fine cop for more than half my life. I come here every day, work my cases a hundred and ten percent, train little pissant shits like you to work your way up to where I should have been for the last half a decade. And you have the gall to investigate me because I don’t buy my suits at JC Penney?”

“I’m not apologizing to you for doing my job,” Ruiz said, getting in his face. “In the last three years you’ve paid off two mortgages—yours and your parents’; you’ve purchased a loft in a luxury building in Chinatown; you’ve started wearing designer labels; you drive a Jaguar on your days off.

“You’re not doing these things on what the LAPD pays you,” she said. “How could you not think Internal Affairs would be interested in you?”

Parker felt his face getting hotter and hotter. “Do you have one complaint against me? Do you have anything on file against me?”

“As a matter of fact, yes,” she said. “We have you screwing up a murder trial where a wealthy defendant walked away without so much as a slap on the wrist. Your income seems to have increased every year since. Do you need a pencil to connect those dots, Parker?”

“This is un-fucking-believable,” Parker muttered. “IA has been watching me with their hairy eyeball all this time. Giradello couldn’t get rid of me outright, couldn’t make me quit, so you people are slithering in the back door for him?

“I’d ask you why you didn’t just call me in and grill me,” he said, “but I know how IA works. Persecute first, ask questions later.”

“Would you have been any more cooperative than you’re being now?” Fuentes asked.

“No. I haven’t done anything wrong. I haven’t done anything illegal. And what I do with my personal time is my personal business. I spent too many years with nothing but this job, and what did it get me? Ground down, and left flat.”

“If you hated it so much, why didn’t you just quit?” Ruiz asked.

Parker shook his head, then clutched it in his hands like a coconut, thinking it might just crack open from the sheer frustration of dealing with such narrow-minded stupidity.

“Did you even think about that before it came out of your mouth?” he asked, astonished that people could be so obtuse. “I don’t hate the job. I love the job! Don’t you get that? Why would I stay if I hated it and someone else was providing me with a six-figure income? Why wouldn’t I tell you all to go fuck yourselves?”

Ruiz just stared at him, trying to look smug and superior, and pulling off neither.

“If you haven’t figured out why I’m still with LAPD, knowing what you know about me, knowing what you were briefed on by whoever sent you here,” Parker said, “you’ll never get it.”

In the old days he would have answered very differently. Back when it was all about him and his image and how many cases he could clear in a month. When all the flash had been stripped away from him, and he’d been forced to take a hard look at himself, it had gradually dawned on him that his career was really about something else, something deeper and more meaningful, more satisfying on a different level.

“What do you do it for, Ruiz?” he asked quietly. “The power? The control? The rush of climbing the ladder? I’ll tell you right now, that’s not enough. If the only goal is the big brass ring, what do you suppose happens to you after you catch it? What does it mean to you? What do you look back on? What do you have?”

“I have a career,” she said.

“You have nothing,” Parker said. “Look inside yourself. You have nothing. I know.”

He looked at Fuentes, who couldn’t quite meet his eyes. Just doing his job, Parker thought bitterly. The panacea for all people who couldn’t otherwise justify their actions.

“I’m taking the rest of the day.”

No one tried to stop him as he walked out the door.