The Pallbearers

Chapter 28

I dragged Jack across the park and over to the children's play area, and stood him next to the twelve-foot-long metal teeter-totter. Then I reached under and checked the bar fastening that hooked the teeter-totter to its base. It was still broken.

I'd been to this park two weeks earlier on a field interview and had watched some kids unbolt the seat plank on this piece of equipment. They had put it across a five-foot-high metal brace on the jungle gym a few yards away. They were using it to go way up in the air. It was dangerous, so I'd reported it to the Department of Recreation and Parks as soon as I left. But like everything else with this budget crunch, it had yet to be fixed.

Since it hadn't been repaired, I pulled the twelve-foot-long aluminum plank off and carried it over to the jungle-gym brace, setting it across the top just as those kids had done. Then I grabbed Jack, pulled one end down, undid his cuffs, and redid them by looping the chain through the metal support under the seat.

"What the fuck is this?" he shrieked. "Whatta you doing?"

"Not the right question, Jack. The correct question is, what are you doing?"

"I was solving the case, asshole."

"I told you we needed to go slow with those Mesa guys, but you go ahead and pull a black-bag job on their office anyway. Don't you ever listen to anybody?"

I saw him trying to come up with a way to play me.

Tin screwing around with you for two days, and all the time you're a federal bank fugitive? When did that happen? I thought you just got released. What'd you do, hit a bank up by Soledad on your way out of town?"

"I was broke. I needed cash. I had a disguise," he protested. "But they made me with a bank cam because of my arm tats."

"You must have sawdust for brains."

"Scully, you're focused on the wrong things. Wait'll you see what I got."

"Everything you took out of there is inadmissible!" I shouted. I was beginning to lose it. "You gotta have a search warrant to remove evidence in a police investigation."

"You gotta have a search warrant. All I need is a crowbar."

"You're fucking amazing." I went around to the other side of the teeter-totter and pulled the seat down, then got on it and lowered my end, hoisting him up by the handcuffs. His end was now almost eight feet in the air, and he was hanging under the seat, shrieking in distress, standing on his tippy-toes.

"Ow! Ow!" he bellowed. "This is police harassment!"

I bounced on the seat, pulling him a few inches off the ground with each bounce. He screamed in pain as the metal cuffs cut into his wrists. Then I lowered him back to his tiptoes again.

"Okay, Jack. Here's the deal. I wanta know everything you've done since yesterday. Everything you touched, every window you crawled through. I want your whole chicken-shit playbook."

"Nothing… I've done nothing."

"I figure you've been running amuck ever since this started. Tomorrow or the next day, I'm gonna be getting this case. I wanta know how much evidence you've lost or compromised, how many laws you've broken, how much of your shit I'm gonna be digging out of."

"Owww! Ow! Lemme down!" he screamed.

"You break into Diamond's office too?"

"No way! Lemme go!"

"You did, didn't you? You broke in there and went through her rebuilt files."

"No."

I bounced my seat a few times. He shot up and down, showing me his white belly like a prize bass on the end of a spruce fishing pole.

"Okay, okay. I did. But there was nothing there."

"How 'bout the NHB Gym? You pay them a little visit earlier tonight, before you went into the Mesa building?"

"Uh… okay, okay." He was squeaking slightly, hissing out the words through his teeth. "Put me down. I'll tell you everything. Please."

I lowered him until he was standing with both feet under him, but his hands were still stretched high above his head.

"I'm listening," I said, looking up at him from the low end of the teeter-totter.

"Okay, I… I… okay, I went to the gym. Man, you and Vargas really fucked that place up. The front window was all boarded up. I had to pick the lock in back. Some guy's trashed Indian chopper was in the office, leakin' oil on the cement floor. But it's just a fight gym, man. Nothing there. I found some drugs in the back room, stole a Rolodex, that's it."

"What kind of drugs?"

"I don't know. Prescription shit."

I bounced a few times.

"Some kinda polypeptides/' he blurted.

"Aren't they like human growth hormones?"

"The fuck would I know? I don't shoot drugs. I drink a little beer occasionally, couple a scotch shooters from time to time, but that's it. My body is my temple."

I looked at his temple dangling there, with numbers and pictures scrawled all over it. I took a minute and tried to assess the damage.

"Why would you break into Mesa Group after I specifically told you not to?"

"Because I've been trying to solve Pop's murder while you been sitting on your ass doing nothing."

"Eventually, I could have developed enough evidence to get a legitimate search warrant on that place. Now I can't use one thing you took! Everything you removed is inadmissible! Don't you get that?" I shouted.

"Scully, Scully, for chrissake, calm down and listen to me? Will you just listen?"

"I'm listening."

"Okay, look, you want the real truth? Here it is. I know you probably won't believe me but I wasn't the one who broke in there."

"The cops said you did."

"It wasn't me, okay? It was somebody else. Somebody I was following."

"You're a trip, Jack."

"I was following that MMA fighter guy you were talking about tonight. 'Ricochet' O'Shea. It wasn't something I planned. It just happened." He took a breath.

"Put me down."

I held him up there on his tippy-toes, then bounced him once to keep him talking.

"I was leaving the gym after going through their office and that Ricochet guy shows up for a late-night workout. He didn't know I was there so I hid. I wanted to see what his story was. He works the bags for an hour or so then leaves. I followed him. He went to the Mesa Investment Group building on Wilshire. It was almost midnight, and I'm thinking, what the fuck is this? So I decided to wait around outside.

"He musta tripped a silent alarm because half an hour after he went inside, two cop cars pull up and rattle the doors. A couple minutes later a security guard comes out and opens up for them. Five minutes later O'Shea comes flying out of the place through a side door. He gets in his car and books. I'm on the Harley, so I take off after him. He sees me back there and he throws something out of his car window, then escapes. It looked like a computer flash drive.

"I'm just gettin' set to pull over and pick it up when all of a sudden I'm in the middle of a major police action. I took off, but I laid my Harley down trying to get away. That's why I was on foot and why I called you for help, dude. I managed to ditch the cops for a while, but they're pulling in major backup. I'm ducking and jukin', running like a bastard, staying outta sight. Next thing I know, I see you in the park, and then ten seconds later we're both in the middle of a baton-and-pepper-spray party."

"That's your story?" I said.

"Yeah. What's wrong with it?"

I just glared at him.

"Swear to God, Scully. I'm not lying! It wasn't me who broke into Mesa Group. It was Rick O'Shea."

"Now you're just pissing me off." I sat down hard, yanking him high off the ground.

"Scully, I swear! It wasn't me!" he screamed.

"Right," I drawled.

"O'Shea threw the flash drive away!" he shrieked. "But Scully, I know where he threw it. We can go back there. We can get it."

"It's illegally obtained evidence. How many times do I have to say that?"

"How's it illegally obtained? It's just lying behind a Dumpster. You don't need a search warrant to find something some other asshole stole and ditched in an alley? C'mon, put me down."

I lowered him to his tiptoes again and studied him, hanging under the seat of the teeter-totter.

"I can't possibly look this stupid to you."

"Scully, you just gonna let the whole case disappear into some wino's pocket?"

"If you didn't see what was on the flash drive, how do you know it contains incriminating stuff we can use to solve Pop's murder?"

"Huh?"

"How do you know it's not just Rick O'Shea's Internet porn collection?"

"How?"

"Yeah, douche bag, how?"

"Because, because w-why else would he go in there at, at… at like midnight and like take something, unless he knew it was incriminating?" he stuttered.

I sat down hard again, lifting him for the third time off the ground. He was hanging by the cuffs, spinning around, shrieking.

"Okay, okay! Look, I know because I looked at the fucking thing, okay? I guess maybe it was me who broke in the Mesa building like you said at first, okay? The cops arrived. I downloaded the info and ran. Happy now?"

I dropped him back to his feet. Then I unhooked him from the teeter-totter and recuffed him with his hands behind his back.

I returned the long teeter-totter to its original location and led Jack back to Alexa's BMW. I got a beach towel out of the trunk and put it over the seat so he wouldn't bleed on her upholstery, then put him in the car. I got behind the wheel and looked off up the street.

"Whatta you doing?"

"Thinking."

He waited for a long moment, then said, "About what, dude?"

Tm trying to decide whether to bury you on a beach up in Oxnard or just dump you in a shallow grave close by, like under the Hollywood sign."

"Funny."

"You think its funny? You must not be picking up my vibe, dude"

After pondering this mess for another minute, I turned to look at him. "I don't know why the fuck I'm doing this, Jack, but okay. I'm gonna go retrieve those electronic records. You are gonna swear that you took them. Not me. After we take a look, I'm gonna book them as your personal property that you had in your possession when I arrested you for bank robbery. We'll worry about how, or if, they can ever be admitted as evidence in Pop's murder later."

"You're gonna book me on the federal bank charges?" he said, sounding incredulous. "I thought just now we were like in the zone or something, man, solving Pop's murder like a team. How can you take me in? That's pretty cheesy."

"Those cops turned you over to me. They're all witnesses to a custody exchange. You think I want to be an accessory after the fact on your two dumb-ass bank heists?"

"You could say I jumped you and got away."

I shook my head, and he sat there pouting. "You're not much of a friend," he said.

"You're finally seeing it," I shot back. "You're right. I'm not your friend. I don't want to have anything to do with you."

"I wasn't talking about me," he said softly. "I was talking about Pop."