Rage

CHAPTER 22

Drs. Chang, Kim, Mendoza, and Quinones practiced in a one-story building veneered with shiny black ceramic tile. White graffiti stuck to the bottom of the facade like food-fight pasta. The sign above the door said, Easy Credit, Painless Dentistry, Medi-Cal Accepted.

Inside was a waiting room full of suffering people. Milo marched past them and tapped the reception window. When it opened, he asked for Anita Almedeira.

The Asian receptionist lowered her glasses. “The only Anita we have is Anita Moss.”

“Then I’d like to speak with her.”

“She’s busy but I’ll go see.”

The waiting room smelled of wintergreen and stale laundry and rug cleaner. The magazines in the wall rack were in Spanish and Korean.

A pale woman in her late twenties came to the reception desk. She had long, straight black hair, a round face, and smooth, sedate features. Her pink nylon uniform skirt showed off a full, firm figure. Her nametag said A. Moss, Registered Dental Hygienist. Lovely white teeth when she smiled; the job had its perks.

“I’m Anita. May I help you?”

Milo flashed the badge. “Are you Nestor Almedeira’s sister, ma’am?”

Anita Moss’s mouth closed. When she spoke next it was at a near whisper. “You’ve found them?”

“Who, ma’am?”

“The people who killed Nestor.”

Milo said, “Sorry, no. This is about something else.”

Anita Moss’s face tightened. “About something Nestor did?”

“It’s possible, ma’am.”

She looked out at the waiting room. “I’m kind of busy.”

“This won’t take long, Ms. Moss.”

She opened the door and walked through, approached an old man in work clothes with a collapsed jawline and an eye on the racing form. “Mr. Ramirez? I’ll be with you in one minute, okay?”

The man nodded and returned to the odds.

“Let’s go,” said Anita Moss, sweeping across the room. By the time Milo and I reached the exit, she was out of the building.

She tapped her foot on the sidewalk and fooled with her hair. Milo offered to seat her in the unmarked.

“That’s all I need,” she said. “Someone seeing me in a police car.”

“And here I thought we were camouflaged,” said Milo.

Anita Moss started to smile, changed her mind. “Let’s go around the corner. You drive a bit and I’ll catch up with you and sit in the car.”

The unmarked had taken on heat and Milo rolled down the windows. We were parked on a side street of cheap apartments, Anita Moss sitting stiffly in the back. A few women with children strolled by, a couple of stray dogs wove from scent to scent.

Milo said, “I know this is hard, ma’am- ”

“Don’t worry about me,” said Moss. “Ask what you need to.”

“When was your brother murdered?”

“Four weeks ago. I got a call from a detective and that’s all I’ve heard about it. I thought you were following up.”

“Where did it happen?”

“Lafayette Park, late at night. The detective said Nestor was buying heroin and someone shot him and took his money.”

“Do you remember the name of the detective who called you?”

“Krug,” she said. “Detective Krug, he never gave me his first name. I got the feeling he wasn’t going to put too much time into it.”

“Why’s that?”

“Just the way he sounded. I figured it was because of the type of person Nestor was.” She straightened her back, stared at the rearview mirror.

“Nestor was an addict,” said Milo.

“Since he was thirteen,” said Moss. “Not always heroin but always some kind of habit.”

“What else besides heroin?”

“When he was little, he huffed paint and glue. Then marijuana, pills, P.C.P., you name it. He’s the baby in the family and I’m the oldest. We weren’t close. I grew up here but I don’t live here anymore.”

“In Westlake.”

She nodded. “I went to Cal State L.A. and met my husband. He’s a fourth-year dental student at the U. We live in Westwood. Dr. Park’s one of Jim’s professors. I’m supporting us until Jim gets out.”

“Nestor got out of the Youth Authority three months ago,” said Milo. “Where did he live?”

“First with my mother and then, I don’t know,” said Anita Moss. “Like I said, we weren’t close. Not just Nestor and me. Nestor and the whole family. My other two brothers are good guys. No one understood why Nestor did the things he did.”

“Difficult kid,” I said.

“From day one. Didn’t sleep, never sat still, always destroying things. Mean to our dog.” She wiped her eyes. “I shouldn’t be talking about him like this, he was my brother. But he tortured my mother- not literally, but he made her life miserable. Two months ago she had a stroke and she’s still pretty sick.”

“Sorry to hear about that.”

She frowned. “I can’t help thinking Nestor living with her contributed to it. She had a history of high blood pressure, we were all telling Nestor to go easy on her, don’t stress her out. You couldn’t tell him anything. Mom wasn’t naive. She knew what Nestor was up to and it really upset her.”

“Drugs.”

“And everything that goes with that lifestyle. Out all night, sleeping all day. One week he’d be working at a car wash, then he’d get fired. He’d just disappear without a word, then he’d show up at Mom’s with way too much money. My mother was a religious person, she had a real problem with money you couldn’t explain.”

She plucked at her badge. “One time he threatened my husband.”

“When did that happen?” I said.

“Maybe a week after he got out. He showed up at our place late at night and demanded we let him crash there. Jim offered him money but wouldn’t let him come in. Nestor got mad and grabbed Jim’s shirt, really got in Jim’s face. He told him he’d be sorry. Then he spit on Jim and left.”

“You call the police?”

“I wanted to but Jim didn’t. He thought Nestor would calm down. Jim’s a really even person, nothing fazes him.”

“Did Nestor calm down?”

“He didn’t bother us again and a week later he showed up at the office and begged me to forgive him. He claimed he was clean, this time he was going to go straight, he needed a real job. I know a woman who runs a food stand down the block and I asked her if she’d give him a chance. She agreed but he screwed that up.”

“How?”

“Bad attitude, poor attendance. Now I don’t even go there for lunch.”

“Being Nestor’s sister was a challenge,” I said.

She exhaled and pulled at an eyelash. “Why are you asking me all this now?”

Milo said, “Do you have any idea where Nestor was living right before he died, and who he was hanging around with?”

“Not a clue,” said Moss. “Soon after he got out, he bought some nice clothes. I figured he’d sold some dope. A few weeks later he was back living with Mom and the fancy clothes were gone.”

“We’re looking into something Nestor might have done when he was locked up. Maybe he talked about it.”

Silence.

“Ma’am?”

“Oh,” said Anita Moss. “That.”

She sat back against the seat cushion. Ran her hand over her eyes. “I tried to do something about it.”

“About what, ma’am?”

“You’re talking about the little white kid, right? The kid who killed that baby girl.”

“Troy Turner,” said Milo.

Anita Moss’s shoulders tightened. A fisted right hand drummed the seat. “Now you’re here?”

“What do you mean, ma’am?”

“Right after Nestor told me about it I tried to tell the authorities. But no one listened.”

“Which authorities?”

“First, at Chaderjian. I phoned them and asked to speak to whoever was in charge of solving crimes that take place in the prison. I spoke to some therapist, counselor, I don’t know. He listened to me and said he’d get back but he never did. So I called the cops- Ramparts station because Nestor lived here. They said it was Chaderjian’s jurisdiction.”

Her eyes blazed.

Milo said, “I’m sorry, ma’am.”

“I called because Nestor was scary. He was living with Mom, I didn’t want him doing anything crazy.”

Her eyes were wet. “It was hard to tell on him. He was my brother. But I had to think of Mom. No one cared then, and now Nestor’s dead and you’re here. Seems like a waste of time.”

“What exactly did Nestor tell you?”

“That he was a hit man at Chaderjian. That he got paid to hurt or kill people and that he’d killed a bunch of kids in the prison.”

“When did he tell you this?”

“Not long after he got out- a couple of days after. It was my brother Antonio’s birthday and we were at my mom’s, trying to have a family dinner, my brothers and their families, Jim and me. Mom wasn’t feeling well, she really didn’t look good, but she made a beautiful dinner. Nestor showed up late, with expensive tequila and a dozen Cuban cigars. He insisted all the guys go outside and smoke. Jim doesn’t touch tobacco so he refused but my brothers went out on the balcony. Soon after my oldest brother Willy came in and said Nestor was running his mouth about all kinds of crazy things, violent things, and he didn’t want Mom to hear, I should quiet Nestor down.”

She frowned.

“You handled Nestor better than anyone,” I said.

“I was the only one willing to confront him and he never got hostile with me. Maybe because I’m a girl and I was nice to him even when he was a wild little kid.”

“So you went to talk to Nestor.”

“He was smoking this gigantic cigar, making all this stinky smoke. I told him to blow it the other way, then I said stop talking trash. He said, ‘I’m not talking trash, Anita, I’m talking real.’ Then he gave this bizarre smile and he said, ‘It’s kind of a Christian thing.’ I said what do you mean and he said, ‘Hanging dudes up and letting them bleed is making ’ em like Jesus, right? That’s what I did, Anita, I didn’t have no nails but I tied up a dude and cut him and made him bleed.’

“It made me sick. I told him to shut up, he was grossing me out and if he couldn’t behave himself he should leave. He kept going on about what he’d done, like it was really important for him to talk about it. He stayed on the Christ thing, saying he was like Judas, got twenty pieces of silver to do the job. Then he said, ‘But he was no Jesus, he was the Devil in a little white kid’s body, so I did a good thing.’ I said what are you talking about and he said the dude he hung up was some little white kid who killed another little white kid. Then he pulled something out of his pocket and showed it to me. It was an I.D. card from Chaderjian, just like Nestor’s but with another kid’s picture on it.”

“Troy Turner.”

“That was the name on the badge. I said you could get that anywhere. Nestor went nuts, said, ‘I did it, I did it! Hung the dude up and made him bleed, look him up on your computer, smart girl, there’s gotta be something there.’ ”

A tremor ran down the center of Anita Moss’s throat. “He’d made me sick to my stomach. Mom had cooked this beautiful dinner, all her beautiful food and I felt like it was all coming up. I yanked the cigar out of Nestor’s mouth and ground it out with my foot. Then I told him to shut up, I meant it, and went back inside. Nestor left and didn’t return, which was fine with everyone. That night, trying to sleep, I couldn’t stop thinking about that kid’s picture on the badge. He looked so young. Even with Nestor’s always bragging and lying, he freaked me out. ’Cause of the details.”

“What details?” said Milo.

“He insisted on telling me how he did it. How he’d followed that little boy for days. ‘Hunted the dude like a rabbit.’ He learned Troy Turner’s routine, finally cornered him in a supply room off the gym.”

Her face crumpled. “Talking about it now makes me sick. Nestor said he hit him in the face to subdue him. Then, he…” She gulped again. “That night, after Jim fell asleep, I got out of bed and went on the computer and plugged in Troy Turner’s name. Found a short article in the Times and a longer one from a paper near Chaderjian. What they both said matched everything Nestor told me. Maybe Nestor didn’t do it, maybe he just heard about it and got that badge somehow.”

I said, “Knowing Nestor, you believe he could’ve done it.”

“He was proud of it!”

“Nestor said he’d been paid to kill other boys,” said Milo. “Did he mention any other names?”

She shook her head. “Troy Turner was the only one he wanted to talk about. Like that had been a real big accomplishment for him.”

“Because Troy was notorious?” I said.

She nodded. “He said that. ‘Dude thought he was a stone killer but I killed his ass.’ ”

“Did he say how much he’d been paid?”

Anita Moss shook her head. Lowered her eyes. “I came to hate Nestor, but talking about him like this…”

“Did Nestor ever talk about who paid him, ma’am?”

She kept her head down, spoke softly. “All he said was that it was a white guy and the reason was Turner had killed a baby.”

“Did he give you any details about this white guy?” said Milo.

“No, just that. I told the exact same thing to that counselor. When he didn’t call back, I phoned the police. No one cared.”

Her lips folded inward. She shook her head back and forth.

“That boy,” she said. “That picture. He looked so young.”