On The Grind

Chapter 18

Roeky contacted a beautiful, raven-haired lawyer named Carmen Ramirez. His abogada was only about twenty-eight but full of Latina pride. At one point I heard her tell Alonzo that even if Haven Parks city attorney filed these assault charges, it wouldn't prevent Rocky from running for mayor, 'in America," she explained hotly, "you are still presumed innocent until proven guilty, and a presumed innocent man is not prohibited from running for public office."

She promised Alonzo she would delay the trial for at least two years and finished by telling my increasingly glum partner that once Rocky was mayor, the whole crooked police department would be out of a job. None of this information did anything to improve Alonzo s demeanor.

Later, I noticed Rocky and his firebrand attorney talking in his cell. Years of police work have made me a pretty good student of body language. When she was alone with him she adopted a more open posture and as they talked, their nonverbal communicators conveyed intimacy. At one point, she leaned forward and touched his arm. It seemed Rocky had something going with his beautiful lawyer.

Carmen Ramirez quickly arranged bail, which for a felony assault in Haven Park was preset at one hundred thousand dollars. Because there was no loss of life involved, a court hearing was not required.

Rocky called Big Kiss, wrote a chcck for ten percent of the bond and kissed our jail goodbye. He was out of the police building one full hour ahead of Alonzo and me.

We finally finished our paperwork at two and when we walked outside into the afternoon sun, ten or fifteen picketers were already out front holding signs that said POLICE

PERSECUTION and FREE ROCKY CHACON.

"Told ya," I said to Alonzo, who was glaring at the picketers.

He didn't answer, but motioned to our black-and-white. We got in, cleared the station and pretty much blew off the rest of the day watch going code seven at one of the few Anglo-run restaurants in town, called the Coffee Barn. Alonzo said very little to me as we ate and sipped coffee from chipped mugs.

He had not considered the fact that until Rocky was convicted of the felony he could still legally run for mayor. The protestors outside the jail further underlined the fact that Rocky s I-room brawl wasn't going to disqualify him as much as endorse him. It gave Alonzo a lot to think about.

In the stifling silence of this meal, I realized I'd lost a lot of ground with him. It's never a good idea to sap your training officer, even if you're trying to keep him from killing an innocent civilian. As he poked at his greasy hamburger in silence I knew I'd have to find a way to make up the points I'd just lost and I had to come up with a way to do it fast.

At end-of-watch I loitered in front of my locker waiting for Alonzo. I figured I might buy him a few drinks at A Fuego and try to smooth all of this over, but I didn't see him. Somebody on the day watch finally told me Sergeant Bell had left Haven Park to see some people up in L. A.

I grabbed my jacket and walked to my car in the parking area next to the school. I got in and pulled out, heading to the Haven Park Inn, where I was still registered.

I was tired and angry as I climbed the stairs to the second level. My lip was killing me and my nose was swelling. I knew I'd probably wake up tomorrow with two giant shiners. I unlocked the door and entered.

The lights were off, but as I dropped my jacket on a chair, I knew instantly someone was inside the room. I spun and snatched my backup Smith amp; Wesson. 38 out of the clamshell holster at the small of my back, extending the titanium AirLight in the direction my senses told me the danger was. I almost fired. But at the last instant some instinct stopped me. As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I saw a man in silhouette sitting calmly across the room from me.

"Don't shoot," he said lazily. "I give."

It was Rick Ross. He was wearing a blue windbreaker, tennis shoes and khakis from the Gap. A Dodgers ball cap was pulled down over thinning blond hair.

"You just break in here?" I said, taking a deep breath to calm my nerves. "What the hells wrong with you?"

"We need to talk."

I was still trying to get my heart rate to slow. I didn't like Ross. I certainly didn't trust him. I hated that he thought he could just break into my room uninvited.

"I don't want you in here without asking me first."

"It's such a palace," he quipped, looking around. "I can certainly understand why you'd feel that way."

"Don't do it again. I was less than a second away from shooting you."

He stood and moved up to where I was standing. "You forget I rode with you for six months in the Valley. You aren't a shoot-first guy"

"What do you want?" I asked, still surging with wasted adrenaline.

"Brief me," he said, treating it as an order. "Let's go. I want to hear what you got. I don't have much time."

"You might want to slow your roll, Rick. I don't work for you. I'm here to help you if I can, but don't get the dimensions of this arrangement stacked up wrong."

"You're riding with Alonzo Bell," he pushed. "Start with that. Bell's a violent officer."

"I knew him from the job in L. A. Ran into him when I first got here. Since he's our day watch sergeant it actually worked out pretty well. Bell was a good shortcut."

"I hear you're on the pad with the Avilas."

"If you know all this, why did you break in here?"

We stood in silence looking across two feet of mud-brown carpet. I didn't want to tell Rick Ross anything.

"The jail sergeant called me this afternoon," Ross said. "He told me you and Bell shut down Mama's Casita on fire regs, busted Rocky Chacon for verbal assault and then got him for battery in an I-room."

"Pretty much what happened."

"Whose brain-dead idea was that?"

"Alonzo's," I said angrily. "He didn't exactly think it through."

Rick Ross hadn't changed much physically and maybe that's why I felt he hadn't changed emotionally. He was still a very twitchy guy who sent a strange vibe. "Alonzo's already leaked the I-room tape to the press," I added.

"What the fuck for?" Ross snapped. "That isn't gonna help put Chacon out of business. It's just gonna make him stronger, more of a hero down here."

All my warning buzzers were going off. If Rick Ross was on the level with me and was really trying to clean up Haven Park, then he should want Rocky to win the election.

"What do you want from me?" I said. "I can't control Alonzo. He's not real bright."

"You got anything else?"

"What's with this gang problem you've got? How come the South Side Crips are moving back in?"

"I'll deal with the Compton Crips," he said. "You're here to put the hat on Mayor Bratano and these crooked cops."

I stood there trying to sort out my mixed feelings. Finally, I said, "Is there anybody on the job down here I can look to for help or is the whole damn department in the cafeteria line?"

"There's one Hispanic officer, Oscar Juarez. He's a clean-cut kid. Most of the cops I've got are rejects from other departments who can't get employment elsewhere. Juarez started out here because he was born here. He seems to be heading in the other direction. He's applying to departments all over Southern California. So him, maybe. One other thing. His second cousin is Anita Juarez."

"Who's that?"

"She's a reporter on the Courier and Rocky Chacon's current girlfriend." That helped to explain the great press he was getting from that paper, not that he needed much help.

"What about his lawyer, Carmen Ramirez? It looked to me at the jail like that was more than just professional."

"If Rocky has a personal shortcoming, its women," Ross said. "He goes through a lot of them. He's left a trail of broken hearts. Anita is his current squeeze and her second cousin is Oscar Juarez. It might mean something. I don't know."

We stood in awkward silence, still studying each other. Then he asked, "You got anything concrete to give me? Something that could actually serve as evidence?"

I knew it was foolish to hold back on him, especially since he was the one who had arranged to put me undercover in the first place, but some part of me, some cop instinct, told me he might have an ulterior motive. If he wasn't just trying to carry out his original threat from ten years ago, maybe he needed me to cover his ass in case the FBI ever came against him, as they had with his predecessor, Charles Le Grande.

I decided not to tell him about the envelope with eighty bucks in towing kickbacks that I'd turned over to Agent Love for fingerprinting, or about Alonzo's scam of switching out the tags on the COz bottles at Mama's, or that the assault on Rocky in our I-room was really an attempted murder, which I couldn't prove anyway because it would come down to Alonzo's word against mine.

Instead I said, "I'm just working into it with Sergeant Bell."

"I'll check in with you later."

"Don't do it this way next time. Get a message to me. Set up a meet somewhere, outside where I can see it coming."

He nodded and walked to the door, but he stopped again before opening it. "I guess all this attitude is about what I yelled at you in the Parker Center garage all those years ago. You probably still think I've got it in for you."

"You said you were gonna see me dead, no matter how long it took. Hard to forget stuff like that."

"I was drunk. I was losing it. That's not me anymore. This isn't gonna work unless you start trusting me, Shane."

"Hey, Rick, you think I'd be down here at all if I didn't trust you?"

"I got eyes, man. You think I'm dirty. It's all over your face. But I've changed."

"The new Ricky Ross."

"Maybe that's your character flaw," he said, smiling slightly. "You lack the ability to forgive."

"Look around you, Rick. Lack of forgiveness is a big Haven Park problem. I'm just trying to stay alive in this fucked-up place."

"Good luck with that," he said, then turned and left.

Ten minutes later, I'd loaded everything in my bag and was checking out. I needed to find a better place to live.

I also needed to set up my meeting with Sammy from Miami. I was running out of time and my nerves were rattling like dice in a tin cup.