In Vertical Coffin, detective Shane Scully is caught between a warring law enforcement divisions trying to hunt down a maniacal cop killer.
They rounded the last curve and saw The Rock Store. The parking lot was full. Almost a hundred bikes lined up like soldiers at parade rest, all dressed right, leaning on metal kickstands. Mostly, it was American iron, Harleys and Indians, with a few rice-burners.
The Rock Store was Mecca for Southern California bikers. It was the high church-hawg heaven. Maniac pulled in and, one by one, the Iron Pigs backed their bikes into a line, then shut them down. Silence filled their ears, laid tight against their skulls. Goat dismounted and turned to face the pigs.
"Ride captian buys the beers," he said. A cheer was followed by a round of vicious insults.
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When I arrived at the substation the ATF SRT truck was parked in the secure lot in a visitor parking stall. As I walked past it I banged on the side to see if anybody was home. Nobody answered. The back was a locked box that contained all their high tech toys and deadly ordinance. But I didn't want what was in the back. I walked around to the driver's side and checked to see if the alarm was set.
All SWAT vehicles have very sophisticated alarms, and the trucks were never supposed to be left unattended without that alarm set. However, this one was open, the alarm light off. Probably, with all the adrenaline overload, the cherry in charge of team security just forgot.
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It was ten o'clock on Saturday morning six days later, and Emo's funeral was scheduled for two that afternoon. I was sitting in the backyard of my little house in Venice, California. Our adopted marmalade cat, Franco, lounged at my feet, taking in the view of plastic reproduction gondolas floating in two feet of brackish seawater and narrow, arched, one-lane bridges spanning shallow saltwater canals.
Venice, California, had been built in the twenties by Abbott Kinney who had designed it to resemble a scaled-down version of Venice, Italy. It was an architecturally challenged throwback to the fifteen hundreds.
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The U.S. Federal Annex is on Spring Street. It's a large, turn-of-the-century Greek monstrosity with roof fresco decorated with frolicking satyrs. The winds had died down and the flags out front hung like dead pelts. I parked in the underground garage, stowed my gun in the trunk, and cleared security in the basement, then I rode the elevator to the twelfth floor.
Federal buildings always feel musty to me. Maybe it's all that in-line thinking. The tile halls were polished, the doors dark mahogany or oiled maple, I'm not sure which. The only woods I'm good at identifying are peckerwoods.
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The Sheriff's seventy-five-year-old crime lab is just east of Hollywood in a run-down three-story building near Elysian Park. The place is on its last legs. Since the department has already broken ground on its new, $96 million forensics facility next to the M.E.'s building on the L.A. State campus, this pile of bricks was not getting much attention. When I pulled into the parking lot I spotted deferred maintenance everywhere I looked.
The cream-color paint was peeling off brick siding. Cracked asphalt and faded, white hash marks lined the parking lot. Weeds grew in the landscaping. But this was still where most crimes were solved. The ultimate revenge of the nerds, where geeks caught cheats. It encompassed all major crime sections: firearms, biology, DNA, trace evidence, and identifications.
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I met Chooch, Alexa, and Delfina at Mijares restaurant for dinner. Chooch's sports-injury doctor was in Pasadena, and Mijares is one of the best Mexican restaurants on the east end of the L.A. Basin. I arrived last and was led to their table out on an enclosed patio. Chooch was wearing a new white cast and a glum look. I kissed my wife, said hi to Chooch and Del, then dropped into a wooden-backed chair and ordered a double margarita. Long day, so screw it. In the other room was a ranchedo duet, two guitarists in traditional dress, picking Malaguena Salerosa on humpbacked Martins.
"I see you didn't get the plaster off," I said.
"Nope." Chooch was staring morosely down at a Coke on the placemat in front of him. Delfina reached out and took his hand.
"But the doctor said in a week, maybe," she explained. "It's coming along good. The bone is almost healed."
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Twenty minutes later, Robyn DeYoung and her two dozen cadets drove off. We were standing down by our cars and Jo Brickhouse was combing dirt out of her hair, with her fingers.
"Come on, let's grab some lunch," I said.
She followed me in the sheriff's black-and-white to DuPar's restaurant off Vista Del Sol. We found a booth by the window and ordered. I got a hot Reuben sandwich, she had the seafood salad and a latte. We sat staring at each other like enemy generals, across a vinyl battelground littered with napkins and scratched silverware. This wasn't working.
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It was five in the afternoon when I called home, and Delfina told me that Chooch had driven out to Agoura High to run his first Pop Warner football practice with the Rams. I was only a few miles away, so I said good-bye to Jo and drove over.
The high school was in the foothills, not far from where this had all started. I parked behind the athletic building and around the big fieldhouse until I saw the practice fields on a terraced level about five feet above me. There were fences everywhere. The Agoura High football team was also running a practice using two full-sized fields, but the Rams were on a fifty-yard oveflow field on the right. The problem was, I kept hitting locked gates when I tried to get up there. I had to ask a student for directions.
"Gotta go around the administration building." He then added: "You can't get there from here."
Story of my life.
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The Twin Palms restaurant was developed by Cindy Costner in the mid-nineties. It's located on Green Street, just one block south of Colorado Boulevard in Old Town Pasadena. Old Town is one of the great redevelopment stories in Southern California. Back in the eighties it was a slum. Situated at the west end of Colorado Boulevard, it had become a hang out for winos, hookers and hugger-muggers.
Drug dealers hung on every corner selling bags of cut. Low-end secondhand stores were lumped in with all the urban decay, and the entire nine-or-ten-block area had completely slid off the human spectrum into some sort of environmental hell.
Then a group of entrepenuers saw an opportunity. They bought the land cheap and tore down the slums, while saving the period architecture. They lured in retail chains and designer shops and sprinkled in some upscale sidewalk restaurants with colorful Cinzano umbrellas shading decorative wrought iron tables. Presto! Four years later, Old Town became a shopper's mecca.
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Royal Oaks Manor turned out to be an upscale assisted-living facility. As I pulled up the drive I saw a large expanse of rolling lawns and neo-Spanish Colonial buildings. This wasn't your standard linoleum floor and vinyl couch old folks home. There were attractive, tile-roofed buildings separated by expensive floral landscaping. The residences all had their own two-car garages. There was a large medical facility off to the east side of the property, next to a tennis court and a large common patio.
I pulled in and parked between a new red Mercedes and black Lincoln Town Car, then walked up the manicured path to the main building. Inside the spacious contemporary lobby I found a house phone, dialed zero, and asked for Madge Kimble. A minute later I heard the familiar shouted greeting from her answering machine. I hung up and went to the front desk. An elderly man working over some papers glanced at me.
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Shane Scully's Tour of Duty - Vertical Coffin
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