White Sister

Chapter 15.

HOWARD JONES FIELD on the USC campus is where the Trojans football team holds summer two-a-days. Pete Carroll has open practices during July, so I parked behind an athletic equipment building and walked past the track to the field. It was nine-thirty in the morning and players in shoulder pads, practice jerseys, and shorts were huddled in separate groups working with their position coaches. I spotted Chooch with the quarterbacks. Steve Sarkisian was leading them through a footwork drill, teaching both three-and five-step step drops. As I approached I couldn't help a flash of pride. My son was handsome. He was the result of a one-time fling I'd had with a beautiful Hispanic call girl who had given up being an escort to become a confidential informant for the department. Five years ago before she died in my arms, she told me that he was a son I never knew I had. Now I watched him across the football field and marveled at how perfect he seemed. Six-three with his mother's dark good looks, he was even more beautiful on the inside where it counted. Chooch saw me coming, said something to the coach, and then sprinted in my direction carrying his helmet. He met me on the thirty yard line. Tension was etched on his face. "Did they find her?" "Not yet." His shoulders slumped. "Look, son, I promise I'll get to the bottom of this." "Dad, let me help you." "I can't. Since this happened, I've broken a lot of department regs along with a few low-grade criminal statutes. The acting chief is probably pissed, so there's a good chance the District Attorney could press charges. I can't have you mixed up in this." "Dad, how can I just " "I know. I know, it's tough," I interrupted. "But you've gotta trust me, Chooch. If I have something for you to do, I'll call. Until then I need to know you're safely out of this." "One of the guys had a radio on this morning. They're saying an LAPD undercover officer was found dead inside of a high-ranking female police commander's car. They made it sound like she's at fault sorta." I was surprised that the media had the story already. Usually the department tried to keep a police shooting under wraps until they had all the facts. Somehow, it had leaked. "There're some very tough characters on the edge of this. The press is going to blow it up into something it's not." "Whatta you mean?" "I have a bad feeling about the way they're going to spin it. In the meantime, I'm going to find your mom. That's my focus. If this goes the way I think it will, it may get a little uncomfortable for you, even here." "They're gonna say she killed him? That's ridiculous," he said. "In a high-profile deal like this, speculation often gets played like fact. The uglier it seems, the more the press likes it. I don't know what they're gonna say, but we've gotta believe in Alexa." "Dad, how can you say that to me? I know Alexa. I know who she is. I'll always believe in her." He had tears in his dark eyes. "I'll call you at least once a day." "No cell phones on the practice field. You've gotta wait until after eight, when we're out of the film room. Or send somebody out to get me." "Okay. Hang tough. I'll call you at eight unless it's urgent." I didn't hug him in front of his teammates, even though I wanted to. Instead, we shook hands. It felt awkward and forced. I turned and walked back to the equipment building where my car was parked. As I drove away and made the turn at the end of the field, I looked back and saw Chooch still standing there, holding his helmet, all alone, watching me leave. Driving out of USC I tried to get a number for William Rosencamp. I called a friend in Personnel and found out that he had moved from Devonshire to the old Newton Division. Newton used to be its own division, but was now reorganized as part of the Central Bureau. The area was bordered by the Harbor Freeway on the west and Florence Avenue on the south. The reorganized Central Bureau was a hot zone that now included South Central L. A. The streets around the Newton stationhouse were still notorious. As a result, it had retained its old moniker, Shootin' Newton. I needed more information on David Slade. On the surface he just seemed like a bad apple. I knew from reading The Blue Line, an LAPD magazine, that Rosey Rosencamp was the recently elected head of the Oscar Joel Bryant Association for black police officers. I was pretty sure that a wrong number like David Slade would be a special topic of interest for those guys. Since Rosey was an old friend of mine and had been in the Academy with Alexa and Slade, I was also hoping he might be able to shed some light on this guy and maybe point me in a fresh direction. I reached him on the first try. He was just heading out to get breakfast. With Slade's murder all over the news, he didn't have to ask why I was calling. We agreed to meet at a pancake house near the station. Driving through Newton, I realized that not much had changed here since I first pinned on a badge. Some areas are so infected with urban blight that there is no reclaiming them. As I drove down surface streets, I saw three guys in silver-and-black Raider jackets huddled in a doorway. They glared as I passed. A crack deal went down right under my nose when I stopped at a light on Fifty-fourth Street. Like everything in this neighborhood, the pancake house had seen better days. I parked in the lot, chirped my alarm, and walked into the half-empty dining room. Rosey was seated by the window, where he could keep an eye on his black-and-white parked on the other side of the plate glass. He was wearing his blue uniform with sergeant's stripes. Rosencamp was a big man and had put on a few pounds since the last time I saw him, but he was still a long way from fat. He had one of those stocky builds that made him a tough commodity on the street; hard to push around or move in a fight. He was well liked but had been stalled at sergeant for six years. He should have made lieutenant by now. I wondered if his membership in OJB had marked him as a troublemaker. The LAPD liked to pretend we were colorblind no white, brown, yellow, or black… just blue. Despite this carefully orchestrated fiction, nightmare incidents from Rodney King and the now-famous "Gorillas in the Mist" mobile computer transmission, to the more recent Rampart scandal and the OJ trial, had kept racial strife inside the department simmering. Nobody wanted it, but it was there just the same. Everybody on the job already knew that this thing with Alexa and David Slade wasn't going to help. "How're you holding up?" Rosey said, even before I sat down. "It's tough." "Gonna get tougher," he said. Then he filled me in on how the story had leaked. "The planets musta been lined up wrong after they found Alexa's car," he said. "Some still camera stringer jumped the first patrol car radio transmission, snuck up in the trees above Mulholland, and got pictures of the body and your wife's license. Sold his shots to the L. A. Times." He grabbed a paper off the seat beside him and dropped it on the table in front of me. It was all there: the BMW surrounded by cops and crime scene tape, David Slade slumped forward with his head resting on the dash. "They got Roxanne Sharp on the TV already," Rosey continued. "She's cutting up the department. Great White Mike's in full vapor lock. For a guy who loves being on the tube, he was stuttering and muttering worse than Elmer Fudd. We're about to get our big blue asses kicked. The real chief came through surgery okay, but he's gonna be out of it for weeks. We could sure use him on this 'cause Great White Mike's gonna get pasted." "Yep," I said, angry at myself that I hadn't even given one thought to Tony's surgery. I'd been too consumed with worry over Alexa. I knew that Rosey was right. Mike Ramsey was no match for the media sharks and political whores that were already circling. "You got any clue what Slade was doin' dead in her car?" Rosey asked, bringing me back. "I'm just getting started." "Yeah, and the way I hear it, PSB is lookin' to slow you down. Also heard the D. A. is studying it. Your best bet is to go right to the chief before he issues you a two-six." A two-six was a forthwith. Go to the chief's office on the sixth floor, Code Two, which was with all possible dispatch. Ignore a two-six and your badge goes into Lucite. "Rosey, I need your help." "Puts me in the dumper, I help you, Shane." "You guys at OJB must have a case file on David Slade." "You bet we do. I know this guy's one-eighty-one file by heart. He's the kind of police makes a nightmare for all of us. We talk about Slade least once a month." "I need some background." He hesitated, but then finally nodded. "Okay, but you didn't get it here." I nodded. "A lot of this goes back aways, to when Chief Brewer was on the job. Back then, Slade picked up seven or eight road-rage incidents in his PSB file. The way it would go down was some civilian would cut him off on the freeway and Slade would go postal, pull out his nine and wave it through the window at the guy. Start yelling how he's gonna cap the poor schlub. Trouble is, once the civilian made a complaint, it kinda just never got completely dealt with." "You're saying he's got juice down at the Professional Standards Bureau. That doesn't sound right." "Who the hell knows? This was under Chief Brewer. You know more than anyone what a corrupt bastard he was. Back then the chief had the power to reach down at will and adjust any Board of Rights finding. Couldn't make a penalty worse, but he could lighten it if he wanted to and that's exactly what Chief Brewer did for Slade. All eight times. Cut two flat-out dismissals down to thirty days off without pay. If you or I went and pulled a gun on some civilian over a lane change, we'd be working at Wal-Mart." "You think he had something on the department?" Rosey shrugged. "Anything else?" "All kinda stuff. You know he got in on that juvenile felony waiver." "I kind of figured that." "Slade grew up in Compton. By the time he was thirteen he was already a baby G doin' lookouts on dope deals. Cripped all through high school gets popped on two righteous felonies an ag-assault and an attempted murder. He does two years at the County Youth Offenders camp, gets out when he's eighteen. He was lookin' for new windows to break, sees our recruiting ad saying all is forgiven, and joins the department." "You knew Alexa in the Academy. In your opinion, is there any way she'd ever use Slade on an undercover assignment?" His brow furrowed. Something was going on, but he wasn't sure if he wanted to share it. "You got something?" I asked. "It'll keep," he finally said, and changed the subject. "Last scam Slade pulled should a got him bounced for sure, but again, he gets out from under it. It was just before Filosiani became chief." "Let's hear." "The story is that he was partying in Lou Maluga's house, way up on top of Malibu. Big place fountains, lawns all they don't have is a polo field. One night, about three years back, a guy calls nine-one-one and says he was just up there delivering pizza and some black dude jumped the fence and is running around waving a gun on the property. The caller says the intruder is six-one, two hundred pounds, and is wearing a maroon two-eleven suit. The Malibu sheriff rolls a car and when they get out there, sure enough, here's this black dude running around in maroon Fila acting all crazy. The cops don't see a gun, so they tackle the suspect, put him down hard. He motherfucks them up one side and down the other, takes a swing, and it gets nasty. Batons come out and these two cops start doin' a marimba on the homeboy's skull. 'Bout then the man identifies himself as David Slade, an LAPD sergeant." "I don't get it." "It'll make sense in a second. Next, he hires Nathan Red and sues the Sheriff's Department for a hate crime in civil court. He wants a million bucks. Stacy Maluga, who he's screwin', backs him in a statement and pays the attorney fees. She says she saw the whole thing." "Got it." "He set them up. It looks like a good beef that's gonna stick. The D. A. is circling and the press is all kneeled down in the blocks waiting for a starter's gun, and the city is talking about a big settlement to keep it out of court. Then somebody in our Internal Affairs who is familiar with this dirtbag's package calls the sheriff's investigator and suggests that they make a voice print on David Slade and check it against the nine-one-one call. Just like that, the fool is busted. Slade is the phony pizza delivery guy who phoned it in." "What happened?" "Sixty days off without pay. I'm telling you, if the rest of us had this kind of cover, we'd all start holding up banks for a living." "I might, but you wouldn't," I said. "Probably right," he said. "Got this dumb white hat all stuck down on my nappy head." Rosey grinned at me and then while we were looking at each other; the grin disappeared and the frown came back. "What is it, man?" I asked. "Something's bothering you." "I can't, Shane. We're friends. You got enough to deal with. I don't want to go and make it worse." "Alexa's missing. She may be dead. I've got the rat squad and maybe the D. A. chasing me with warrants. I don't have any time. How can it get worse?" He took a deep breath and then let it out slowly. "Back when we were all in the Academy, there was a rumor about David and Alexa." My heart was beginning to beat harder in my chest. "What kind of rumor?" "You know what kind of rumor. That kind of rumor." "You mean they were seeing each other?" "Lotta testosterone and estrogen flowing back then. Slade was definitely a lady's man. A mac daddy from Compton. We were all real young. Hard to keep your arithmetic in one column." "I don't think Alexa would get involved with some Crip gang-banger," I said hotly. "Maybe not. Like I said, it was just a rumor." The waitress came to take our order, but I had no appetite. I thanked Rosey, shook his hand, and walked out into the parking lot. I stood outside by my car for a minute, looking at the interior through the windshield. My face was reflected in the curved glass window, distorted and ugly. I didn't look like me. I didn't feel like me. And Rosey was right. He'd made it worse.