Vertical Coffin

Chapter 38

Jigsaw john was a genius. No wonder the guy cleared 85 percent of his cases. I sat in the park, looking up Union Street at Parker Center, trying to pin down the last pieces of the puzzle. Smiley had used identical weapons from his own armory to shoot Nightingale and Greenridge. Mr. Magoo couldn't remember the correct ages of the twins. He'd guessed too young. They weren't eight or ten, they were twelve. An easy enough mistake for an old grump with no kids. The Smileys moved away in one year because of the fiasco at Midge's school. Changed school districts, left Pasadena, went to Glendale.

My guess was that Jo Brickhouse was still out in Pasadena at the hospital. I called and asked for someone in admitting or records, did my badge number boogie, and was told that nobody from the L. A. Sheriff's Department had been there looking at birth records.

Okay-so, where was my strong-willed partner?

I called the Sheriff's Bureau, reached Jo's office at Internal Affairs, and asked them if they'd heard from her. Nada.

Where are you, kid? Then uneasiness struck. A sense of impending disaster swept down on me. A fluttering of dark wings in my mind, stirring dead air in my empty head.

Why did I tell her to keep her cell off? Stupid.

But I'd solved it. We'd solved it.

From here on it was just a straight-up system bust, put out a BOLO: Be on the lookout. Wait until some passing squad car made the spot, take Mr. Smiley off to jail, or if he wanted to do the dance, plant him right where we find him. Either way, Jo and I were out of it. For us it was over. Nothing bad was headed our way. I tried to ignore my premonition of disaster.

"You got five dollars?" a gruff voice said.

I looked up at a homeless man, about fifty, with matted hair and taped-up sneakers.

"I'm starvin'. Ain't et for a day."

"I know where you can get a good meal."

I reached down into the trash and fished out Alexa's uneaten hot dog. It was still warm and wrapped in white paper. I handed it to him.

"What the fuck am I gonna do with that?" he said.

"Eat it. Nothing wrong with it."

He shook his head. His expression, a symphony of disgust.

"Ain't the way it works, asshole." He dropped the dog back into the trash, turned, and limped away.

Yeah? So, how does it work? I wondered. I give you the fin, so you can buy more malt liquor? Keep you drinking malt 40s until your leaking kidneys finally rot? That how it works, asshole?

I had a moment of sweeping remorse. I had been so focused on the case for the last ten days, it had completely consumed me. Now that it looked like we had the answers, I was feeling empty and alone, sitting on a bench in a park full of strangers. Again, my case had moved on without me. I needed to clear my head, so I decided to call and see if Chooch was having football practice this afternoon. He'd said he would leave a message on the phone to give me the time and location. I called our answering machine and, sure enough, Chooch's voice greeted me.

"This is for Dad: four o'clock-same place in Agoura. It's looking up. I've got some real animals on this team."

Just as I was about to hang up I heard another voice.

"Hoss, this is Jo. I found Susan Smiley's address." She sounded jazzed. "I had someone in my office go through all the phone books. We found a listing. She lives in Inglewood, off Centinela, near Vincent Park. Three-four-six Hillside. Since we're running out of time, I'm on my way over there now. If you get this message you can meet me there. In the meantime, I'm going to go ahead and brace her woman-to-woman, see how much I can get. Wish me luck."

I hit the ground running before the message was complete. Jo didn't know that Susan was Vincent.

I reached the Acura and squealed out, jamming my finger on the GPS to bring up the map screen. The most direct route to Inglewood was straight down La Brea. It was just a little past one in the afternoon, so, with the lunch traffic, I'd probably make better time on surface streets than by trying to get over to the freeway.

I roared down Exposition, breaking lights, then hung a left onto La Brea. I don't have a MCT in my personal car, so, with no computer, I turned on the police scanner under the dash and put out a call for backup.

"This is L-nineteen. Officer requests backup at three-four-six Hillside in Inglewood. One plainclothes female officer with blond hair in a blue jacket is already on the scene. Perp at this address is a possible One-eight-seven P. Request a unit respond Code Three."

The RTO came back immediately and put out the call division-wide. Unit A-22 was assigned Code-3.

All the way down La Brea I cursed myself for having Jo turn off all her communication equipment, a complete breach of police procedure. How could I have been such a jerk?

I passed Slauson.

I was praying this was another Susan Smiley, but the way my luck had been running, I doubted it. Vincent had been Susan Smiley all the way through seventh grade. Susan was his alter ego. In trouble, hiding from the law, I was pretty sure he'd choose to be Susan again. If he did, then Jo Brickhouse was walking right into another vertical coffin.

After I passed Fairview, I heard a siren converging on my left. In the LAPD, only one unit at a time can go red-light-and-siren. The reason is, if two units both have their sirens on, they can't hear one another. As they both get close to the address, the chance of a high-speed collision grows exponentially. Way too many units crashed before this rule was in place.

I could hear the crosstalk on the scanner. One-Adam-22 was about four blocks to my right as I turned on Hyde Park. I was now inside of Inglewood. All the way down La Brea I had been trying to dial in my GPS. Finally I had the address programmed in. Hillside was about four blocks up, off Field Street.

I saw Field, hung a right, then turned right again. Finally I was on Hillside. I'd beaten the squad cars. Half a block away I saw Jo's green Suburban parked at the curb. I didn't want to come sliding in hot, squealing rubber because I didn't know what kind of a situation I had and didn't want to announce myself with a high-speed, tire-smoking stop. I pulled over half a block up, unholstered my Beretta, then made a low run across the street and up the grass onto the front porch at 346.

Nobody seemed to be home. The house was a small one-story, wood-sided number, badly in need of paint. The yard was overgrown. It looked deserted, but if Vincent had bought it as a place to hide out after the shoot-out, I didn't see him wasting a lot of time on maintenance.

Then I heard a gun shot.

Seconds later I heard a car start in the back of the house. I ran to the corner of the porch and peeked down the driveway. A huge black Ram 2500 truck, with high-suspension and dual tires on the rear, came flying right at me. Smiley was behind the wheel. At least I think it was him. He was wearing a woman's blonde wig, lipstick, and hoop earrings. Man-sized muscular forearms gripped the wheel. I jumped back as he roared past. Then I fired three shots at the fleeing truck. I broke some glass, but that was about it.

The black-and-white patrol car was just screaming up Hillside, going Code-3. Smiley steered the bigfoot Dodge right at it. In this deadly game of chicken, the huge, high-centered, pipe-grilled truck was bound to win. At the last moment Adam-22 swerved, hit the curb, and blew out its suspension skiding up on somebody's front lawn, tearing deep furrows in the grass. The Dodge disappeared up the street, smoking rubber around the corner. I knew Jo had to be in big trouble, but my first duty was to get Adam-22 back into the pursuit. I ran toward the squad car holding my badge out in front of me.

"LAPD! Take the black Acura. Go after him." I threw my keys at them. "He's a cop killer! Get it on the radio! Ida-May-Victor, five-eight-seven." I yelled the truck's plate number and immediately one of the cops was putting it out on the air while the other ran to my car. He got in my Acura, his partner finished his broadcast and dove in beside him. They squealed away up the street after the Dodge truck.

I ran back to the house with my gun drawn, heading up the driveway, moving fast, but carefully.

Jo was lying up on the back patio, a messy hole, high in her chest. I ran to her and kneeled down, put my hand on her throat to check for a heartbeat. The bullet had entered just above her heart and had gone through her lung, blowing out a large exit hole in her back.

After a minute, Jo opened her eyes, looked up at me and started to speak.

"Save your strength," I said. Then I took off my jacket and slid it underneath her, putting it over the larger exit wound in her back making a compress, pushing it tight.

She started to cough.

I grabbed my cell, dialed 911, ordered an ambulance, and put out an officer down. Then I prayed they'd get there in time.

Jo's face was turning pale and slick, her eyes were losing focus. I stroked her forehead and held her hand.

"This still ain't gonna get you laid, Hoss," she whispered softly.