The Pallbearers

Chapter 34

Wilmington is in a strange part of Los Angeles. Its basically a town that eaters to the South Bays large port facility and fishing fleet, but its sandwiched between a growing Crips gang area in Compton and the docks of San Pedro. Its an oasis of fishermen and dock-workers inside a festering maw of residential poverty and gang violence.

The businesses and restaurants are all no-frills. Wood turn-of-the-century houses line the blocks around Avalon Boulevard all the way to Anaheim Street. Wilmington was right on the way to Seal Beach, where this had all started for me years ago.

Alexa drove her BMW while I sat silently beside her, watching the exact same streets Yd watched as a kid when Pop had made this trip to the shore down the Pacific Coast Highway.

We turned onto Avalon Boulevard looking for Avalon Terrace. The cross street was so small we overshot it before I called out to Alexa.

She made a U and we drove down a seedy block, full of unkempt houses and old cars, until we arrived at 1386.

The house was a big, three-story, gone-to-seed, wood-sided Victorian that looked like it had been built in the late eighteen hundreds. It had a pitched roof, a sloping porch, and a loud party raging inside.

Alexa and I drove past and found a parking place up the street where we could observe the festivities.

There were a lot of run-down cars parked in front. A few yards from the house, I spotted Rick O'Shea's out-of-place, new, pimped-out maroon Escalade.

There were also half a dozen vintage Indian motorcycles parked off to the side on the dead front lawn. They all sported the popular Indian red and white or turquoise and white paint jobs. Most of the motorcycles were chromed and tricked out with studded saddlebags. Impressive rigs.

"Those look like the same bikes that were in Jacks video of E. C. Mesas garage," I said.

Alexa reached across me, opened the glove box, and pulled out a pair of Bushnell binoculars. She put them to her eyes and studied the Indians, then shook her head. "Too far away for me to read those bike plates."

I pointed to her little Beretta Bobcat still in the open glove box. "You should keep that. 25 loaded," I said.

"I wanted a new purse gun, but I wish I hadn't bought it," she said as she put the binocs down. "No stopping power. Won't blow an asshole out of his socks."

I smiled. Most guys don t have wives who could get away with a statement like that.

We've had this punch-versus-penetration handgun argument before. Alexa favors big-bore Magnums and Super 9s that carry a wallop. When I was in patrol, I did too. Like everybody else, I packed Dirty Harry style. But now that I'm in homicide I go for lighter, easy-carry weapons.

As far as I'm concerned it's not the size of the gun but the quality of the shooter that counts. Goliath got dumped with a slingshot. You just have to know what you're doing.

I listened to the rap beat pounding out of the house, fouling the neighborhood. I wondered how long the residents on this street had been putting up with this. But it was going to take a real set of cojones to pound on the door and demand that these animals dial it down.

As we watched the house, we saw women and men dancing to the music through the living room window. My eyes shifted back to the Indian motorcycles. They're rare. You don't usually see so many gathered in one place.

Indians had big V-twin engines and looked a little like Harlevs, but with long, deep-skirted fenders and distinctive fender lights. One thing separating the vintage Indians from their Harley competitor back in the day was the fact that the throttle and shifter were on the opposite side from where they were located on a Harley.

The people who loved Indians were fanatical about them, and I guess that included some of these fighters and, for some reason, Eugene G. Mesa.

Alexa put the binoculars back up to her eyes, scanned the cars on the block, and started calling out plate numbers, which I wrote down. After about ten minutes, we had all of the tags from the vehicles parked near the old Victorian.

"I'm gonna go check those bikes."

"Be careful," she said as I got out of the BMW.

I made my way across the street, staying in the shadows. 'Then I crept up onto the grass and approached the six bikes, which were tucked off on the far side of the dead lawn.

Plates on a motorcycle are about the size of an index card, which is why Alexa couldn't read them with binoculars from where we were parked half a block away. As I wrote down the

numbers, I was even more sure than before that these were the same bikes I'd seen on Jack's DVD.

I was just finishing with the plate numbers when I heard another motorcycle coming down the street. Before I could duck down, the headlight swept across me as it turned up the drive. I was caught in its beam.

The bike's engine shut off and the headlight went dark. It took a second for my eyes to adjust, and I used the moment to pull my Taurus. 38 snub-nosed Hy-Lite from its ankle holster.

When I could see, I got a shock. Standing in front of me, next to his pavement-scarred Harley, was Jack Straw. He pulled two six-packs of beer out of his saddlebags, and said, "Don't shoot. Strange as it seems I'm still on your side."

Part of me wanted to tackle him, put him under arrest, and drag him out of there. But any commotion on the lawn and I'd have the head-butt team from inside to deal with.

"Jack, what the fuck are you doing?" I whispered.

"Get out of here, Scully. This is a whack move."

Then the screen door opened, and I ducked back as I heard footsteps coming across the front porch to the railing.

"Hey, Jack, get yer ass up here with that beer. Where you been? You left over half an hour ago." It was Rick O'Shea.

I slid further away from Jack, out of sight under the porch, pushing myself quietly into the bushes that surrounded the house.

"Whatta you doing down there?" O'Shea said to Jack from the porch just over my head.

"I thought I saw something by the bikes. A huge rat of some kind." Jack smiled at me huddled ass down in the bushes.

"How big?" Rick replied. "Maybe it was just a possum. We got a lot of those around here."

"This was no possum, dude. It was a big, slimy, ungrateful rat."

I flipped him off as he turned and bounded up onto the porch with the beer and entered the house.

When I got back to the car, Alexa was looking worried.

"That looked like Jack," she said, the binoculars still in her hand.

"It was Jack." My heart was pounding from an adrenaline rush.

"Why didn't you arrest him?"

"Why didn't you?"

Both of us tensed, watching the party house.

"If we aren't up to our asses in trouble in the next two seconds, then I guess Jack is on the level," I told Alexa.

When nothing happened, I added, "It appears that our runaway bank robber is over here infiltrating these pecker-heads on our behalf."

"How's he gonna infiltrate this bunch?" Alexa said.

"Look at him, honey. He's one of them. He's just the kind of asshole they'd throw their arms around."

Nobody came out to hassle us. The party raged on. About twenty minutes later, Jack came out to stand on the front porch. He seemed to be motioning to us. I grabbed the binoculars and focused in on him.

All he was doing was giving me the finger.