Last Breath

23

Tanner and Chang were the first officers on the scene of the 187-California Penal Code parlance for homicide. There were three victims, only one of whom was deceased. The other two lay on the sidewalk, bleeding out, while a pair of paramedics waited at a cautious distance. They wouldn’t move in until cops secured the scene.

“Come on, tube these guys. Give ’em plasma or something,” Tanner yelled.

While the EMTs did their work, Tanner and Chang cordoned off the dead body with a length of crime-scene ribbon strung from a utility pole to a fire hydrant.

“Another lovely evening in the City of Angels,” Chang observed.

Tanner just shook his head. Working this part of town had made him something of an expert in the unending rivalry between the Crips and the Bloods-or more precisely, between the ever-proliferating gang cliques, called “sets,” that allied themselves loosely with one gang or another.

This stretch of turf was controlled by a set named the Neighborhood Crips. The three gunshot victims were part of that set, an allegiance they advertised by wearing the Crips’ color-blue baseball caps, blue nylon jackets, blue T-shirts underneath. One of them, the dead one, even had blue socks and sneakers.

Tanner knew the dead kid’s name, or at least his gang alias-Peep. He wasn’t sure how the boy had gotten stuck with that nickname. Now he supposed he would never know.

The other two, the survivors, were unknown to him. Chang thought one guy, who looked like the oldest of the three, might have been a banger called Jarhead, but he wasn’t sure. The guy hadn’t been carrying any ID, and his face had been messed up so badly that his own mother would have had trouble identifying him.

There were plenty of witnesses, at least. While Chang guarded Peep’s body, Tanner got busy interviewing them. Mainly he just needed their names, phone numbers, and addresses; the homicide detectives could follow up. But he asked enough ancillary questions to get the picture.

The three vics had been walking out of a video store with a couple of rented tapes, which turned out, unsurprisingly, to be pornographic movies of no evident socially redeeming value. They were strolling south on Hooper Avenue and had almost reached the corner when the gunshots started. It was a drive-by, but descriptions of the shooters’ vehicle varied widely. All anyone could agree on was that it was dark in color.

Multiple rounds were fired at the three teenagers, who went down without returning fire. The shooters flashed gang signs identifying themselves as members of the Shotgun Pirus, a local Blood set. Then their car veered around the corner and disappeared. Somebody called 911, and that was that.

As Chang said, it was just another evening in LA.

Homicide detectives normally took their time about getting to a crime scene, but tonight the wait wasn’t long. It was 6:30 when an unmarked Chevy Caprice wheeled up to the cordon and two plainclothes officers got out. Tanner knew them. Their names were Hyannis and James, and they worked Homicide out of the East LA Sheriff’s station.

Hyannis was the friendlier of the two, and the better cop, as well. Tanner gave him the rundown on what had happened, which was hardly necessary, since Hyannis’s pale olive eyes had seen it all before.

“No tag number on the shooters’ vehicle?” the detective asked.

“Not even a definite make and model. One guy thought it might be a jacked-up Monte Carlo, but someone else said an El Camino.”

“Okay, Tanner. Thanks for holding down the fort. We can take it from here.” Hyannis looked at the body on the sidewalk. “You know this asshole?”

“Yeah. Peep, they called him. I don’t know his real name.”

“Randall Washington.” Hyannis sighed. “I ran him in a few times. Sent him to Kilpatrick once.” Camp Kilpatrick was a county juvenile facility in Calabasas. “Know how old he was?”

“No driver’s license in his wallet. I’m guessing fifteen.”

“Fourteen,” Hyannis said.

Tanner looked away. “Shit.”

“That’s one way to put it.” Hyannis shook his head wearily, having long ago resigned himself to the city’s ugliness. “Have a nice night.”

“Thanks. Hey, Frank?” Distantly it occurred to Tanner that he had never used the detective’s first name before.

Hyannis turned. “Yeah?”

“Got a question for you. Out of left field, kind of. It’s got nothing to do with this.”

“Okay.”

“You ever hear of anything called the Four-H Club? I mean, not the actual club, but…” Tanner let his words trail off. He could see from Hyannis’s face that the man had heard of it, and what he’d heard, he didn’t like.

“Walk with me,” Hyannis said. Without waiting for a reply, he stepped away from the cordon, putting distance between himself and the small crowd of spectators.

Hyannis stopped near Tanner’s squad car. The light bar threw flashes of red and blue on the detective’s gaunt face.

“Where’d you pick up that expression?” Hyannis asked.

“Friend of mine.”

“Another cop?”

“Well, yeah. Not Sheriff’s. LAPD.”

“Your friend is in trouble,” Hyannis said. “He’s not supposed to be mouthing off about that. We’re trying to keep it contained within the task force. Tell him to shut the hell up.”

“It’s not a him, and she wasn’t mouthing off about any task force. She got an e-mail.”

“What?”

“She got an e-mail message that said something like, ‘Welcome to the Four-H Club.’ She thought it was weird-”

“Oh, Jesus Christ. She on duty now?”

“No, she’s home, I think-”

“You know her home number?”

“Sure, I called her twenty minutes ago.”

“Call her again. Right now. Tell her to wait in her home. Don’t let her go outside. Then call him.”

Hyannis thrust a business card into Tanner’s hand. In the pulsing light Tanner read “MORRIS WALSH, DETECTIVE III, LOS ANGELES POLICE DEPARTMENT.” Below it was a phone number with a Parker Center prefix.

“Tell Walsh what you told me,” Hyannis said. “But call the woman first. Go on, do it.”

“All right, but what’s going on, anyway?”

“Maybe nothing-a prank. I hope so. Call.”

Tanner had a cell phone in his car. He was digging it out of the glove compartment when Chang asked him what Hyannis was so worked up about.

“The Four-H Club,” Tanner said. “Mean anything sinister to you?”

“Nope.”

“Me neither. But I have a feeling it should.”

He dialed C.J. Osborn’s number, praying she was home.