Vigilante

CHAPTER 23

Hitch lives in a multi-million-dollar house near the top of Apollo Drive in the lush development of Mount Olympus. Most of the homes up there are big, sprawling mansions. Last year, Hitch bought a beautiful Georgian two-story with Doric pillars that span a wide front porch. When I got my first look at this place I was insanely jealous. I subsequently managed to rationalize that feeling by telling myself that Hitch just got lucky when he drew a great homicide case and was smart enough to cash it in with a big-budget movie. Maturity and good sense have since prevailed, and now when I visit I’m only mildly pissed and momentarily disgruntled. It usually dissipates in less than ten minutes.

I left my Acura in the drive. Hitch’s hundred-thousand-dollar black Porsche Carrera was already parked under the porte cochere. I walked up to the front door and pushed the doorbell. Dum-de-dum-dum, went the chimes, sounding the theme from Dragnet. It struck me as being at odds with Hitch’s cosmopolitan style, but I’ve learned that even the most sophisticated of us can fall prey to moments of cultural whimsy.

I heard the classical sounds of Dave Brubeck’s jazz piano burbling away inside, once again revising my opinion. Moments later, my partner opened the door. He was wearing his Hollywood vines-leather pants and vest over a rich dark purple turtleneck. He looked like a celebrity contestant on Dancing with the Stars, but I guess it was a pretty good outfit for a show-biz screening at a mega-producer’s house.

Hitch greeted me with a frown, saying, “You okay? You look like roadkill.”

“You got one of those German lagers I can’t afford?”

“Sure. Come on in. Crystal’s on the back deck. I’ll get three and meet you out there.”

I walked through his beautifully furnished art-adorned living room while Hitch detoured to the bar to get our beers.

Outside I greeted Crystal Blake with a hug. She’s Hitch’s current girlfriend and is a pastry chef at a four-star restaurant in Hollywood. The restaurant was dark tonight and she had gone to Joel Silver’s party with Hitch. Crystal is talented, funny, and drop-dead gorgeous. Like Hitch, she’d been raised in South Central, but unlike Hitch, who’d used mostly charm and BS to claw his way out of the ghetto, Crystal had used a straight-A report card and a full academic scholarship to UCLA.

“What happened to you, sugar?” she said, holding both my hands and staring into my face. I must have looked worse than I thought.

“Just caught a depressing glimpse of my future,” I told her.

Hitch joined us with the lagers and handed me a foaming mug. “You looked so bad, I dropped a scotch shooter in there to add a little kick,” he said. “Don’t swallow the glass.”

I drained half of the beer and scotch as the three of us sat at a table on the edge of his deck, which commanded a spectacular view of Hollywood. The carpet of lights below his house twinkled like a jewelry store showcase.

I told them in detail about Nix Nash’s first show from Los Angeles and handed Hitch the Janice Santiago cell-phone video. He brought out his laptop and watched it.

“So we got totally schmucked by Chavaria and that bullshit story about the ceiling fan,” Hitch said after the video ended.

I nodded. “That whole ugly daisy chain was a setup. Worst thing is, we can’t prove anything against any of them.”

“Are you saying Nix Nash paid all these people to lie to you about a first-degree murder?” Crystal said, appalled.

I nodded.

“But why?”

“It’s good TV. It makes Hitch and me look like cowboys so it helps Nash sell his general premise that all cops are corrupt. He’ll spin it that we don’t give a damn who really killed Lita Mendez as long as we can hang it on somebody quick. Carla and Julio are minorities and were handy. That’s probably going to be his theme for show two.”

We sat in silence for a few minutes as I finished my beer.

“You guys aren’t going to take this lying down, I hope,” Crystal said.

“Hitch should probably resign. That would be my advice,” I said. “He should go into the movie business full-time like he wants.”

“Listen, dawg, not for nothing, but I’m just horsing around with you when I say stuff like that. Every time I hint that I’m gonna bail, your ears turn red. I gotta have a few yucks on a boring shift.”

“That’s very sweet,” I said ruefully. “I’m deeply touched.”

“Besides, this guy Nash is starting to give me a bad case of blood fever, which is what the head wraps on my old block in Watts called the need to bleed.”

Then I told him about the cold-case segment of the show and how Nash made a big deal out of voting by secret ballot when he selected the Hannah Trumbull murder as a second case to work.

“How’s that matter?” Hitch wondered.

“I ran into Hannah’s parents in the parking lot right after the show. They show up twenty minutes after Nash decided to work on their daughter’s murder.”

“I’m not getting it,” Crystal said. “How’s that change the Mendez case?”

“It doesn’t,” Hitch explained. “But it strikes to methodology. Nash already picked that case in advance, but he lied about it on the air.”

“Exactly,” I confirmed.

“I still don’t see how it matters,” Crystal persisted.

“It matters because it proves that almost everything on that show is managed content,” I said. “The whole Edwin Chavaria thing, the Sanchez bust, the ceiling fan. It was all scripted, just like the vote on the Hannah Trumbull case. My guess is it’s going to become a pattern with us, just like it was in Atlanta.”

It was getting cold, so Crystal went inside, but Hitch and I stayed on the deck and had another German lager. This time I declined the scotch shooter. I didn’t want to drive home drunk.

The drinks began to calm me, and the city view provided some needed perspective, spreading out below us, each twinkling point of light displaying another home full of dreams and fears.

After a minute Hitch looked at me and said, “What do you think we should do?”

“I don’t know.”

“We gotta pick our next move carefully,” he cautioned.

“I don’t know about you,” I replied. “But when I’m on a dangerous, tricky course, I like to find someone who’s seen the road up ahead.”

“Like?”

“Those two cops who got smoked last year in Atlanta.”

I looked at my watch. With the time difference, it was too late to call, so we decided to do it first thing in the morning.

As I was leaving, we agreed that with the arrival of the Janice Santiago video we had no case left against Carla and Julio Sanchez.

We called the jail. It was too late to get the release papers drawn up tonight, but we made arrangements to have the Sanchezes cut loose first thing in the morning.