'Probably never happened,' she said matter-of-factly. 'After we dropped the special circumstances and he copped to the murder, the plea went to my division supervisor, got signed off on, and shipped to the prosecutor's floor upstairs to get executed.'
'How about the lie detector test? Were you there when he took the poly?'
'No. He did that before he asked for an attorney, before I got the case.'
'It's also nowhere to be found,' I said. 'You ever see it?'
'He confessed to the crime. What part of that sentence is confusing to you? The confession makes the damn poly irrelevant.'
'Brian Devine told him he flunked the poly. He panicked. That's why he confessed. Don't tell me you've never seen that before. A ten-year veteran of Homicide is now standing here telling you the wrong guy is probably in jail. I think this VSL gangster, Mike Church, is the doer.'
She sat behind her scarred metal desk, still clocking me with machine gunner's eyes. 'Whatta you want?' she finally asked.
'You handled his case a year ago. I think it was a miscarriage of justice. I guess Pm over here attorney shopping. If I can get enough evidence to refile, how'd you like to have another swing at this? Go for a writ of habeas corpus and a new trial?'
'My division chief is going to love that,' she sneered. 'My job is to see how many of these things I can kick down and plead out. How fast I do it counts. It's all about plumbing around here. My boss doesn't like the cleared cases to bubble back up in the bowl. What goes down must stay down.'
'In Homicide, I've got the same problem. That doesn't mean either of us wants to see innocent people convicted of crimes they didn't commit. At least I hope not.'
She watched me for a moment, then sighed. 'Okay, Detective Scully, you get me something I can use, and I'm not talking about hearsay air-balls from Tru's old meth buddies or an alibi statement from his Aunt Bea. I need something watertight as a frog's ass. If it looks good, I'll take a shot. But don't waste your time coming back here with bullshit.'
Hardly Pippi Longstocking, I thought as I stood to go.
'Thanks. Gimme your card.' She did and I saw that her two years' seniority in the P. D.'s office had allowed her to rise to the position of Deputy Assistant. I started to go, but she cleared her throat, so I turned to look back.
'You know, Tru Hickman won me that month's loser pool,' she said.
'I'm sorry?'
'We've got a pool around here. Everybody puts in fifty bucks and picks a number. Then we ask every client who gets convicted how much he or she weighs. We add it all up and at the end of the month, the P. D. who comes closest wins the pool. I remember Hickman's case was finally settled and he was sentenced on the thirtieth of August. My number was twenty-five hundred pounds. Tru weighed one-sixteen. Put me a hundred pounds off the number. I won nine hundred and fifty dollars. Went to Vegas with two girlfriends, got drunk, screwed a guy whose name I can't remember. Don something. I always wondered if part of me accepted that plea so I could win the pool. Never been one hundred percent sure. After twenty-four months of shoveling human garbage, I still wonder about it.'
I stood there and looked at her, not sure what to say to that.
'Know what we called the pool?'
'Haven't a clue.'
'Justice by the pound.' She frowned. 'Some pretty cold shit, huh?'
Chapter 13
In the elevator on my way to the lobby, I reflected on the damage that working in the criminal justice system could do to the people who pulled the ropes and turned the wheels. Yvonne Hope had undoubtedly started out as a caring person. She probably went into the P. D.'s office with hopes of defending the downtrodden. But the endless supply of craven liars she got as clients killed the dream. Calluses had quickly formed to protect her from the ugly reality of her job. It had cost her a large measure of her humanity.
Nobody is immune. Cops also develop dark humor to protect themselves. After the probationer period and a rookie year in squad cars, a lot of it spent prying corpses off their steering columns or rolling in on the worst that mankind has to offer, it's hard to see things the way you used to. It says 'Protect and Serve' on the door of your patrol car, but after a short time, it's hard to know why you'd want to. After finally making it to detective you're then given the pleasure of walking into a crime scene where some dope-crazed lunatic has stabbed his wife in a fit of jealous rage and spread the remains of his three grade-school children all over the walls of the apartment. The humanity you once felt toward your fellow man slowly starts leaking out of you. Nothing seems outside the bounds of normal behavior.
After I left Vonnie, the memory of her was still with me. Those eyes were still glaring defiantly in the back of my mind. I got into my car and headed farther west. There was one other thing I wanted to check on while I was out here.
I'd looked up Valley towing services in the Yellow Pages earlier and had the name of one in Van Nuys that sounded like it might belong to Mike Church. The quarter-page ad pictured two tow trucks backed up to each other so that the towing arms formed a steeple in the center of the ad. The caption under the picture read:
CHURCH OF DESTRUCTION TOWING AND AUTO BODY WORK
This was followed by a lot of repair jargon: 'Bondo Specialists'; 'Qualified in Sparkle Paint Jobs'; 'We'll Pimp Your Ride'; 'Se Habla Espanol.'
The address at 6358 Midline Drive was less than two miles from Church's house. I wasn't that far away, so I headed over to take a look.
Ten minutes later I parked across the street from a very shabby-looking auto body shop with church of destruction painted in faded red lettering under the eaves of a tin-roofed concrete block building. There was one paint bay and two body and fender garages, both busy. Hispanic men wielding hammers and metal sanders were creating an symphony of screaming metal. The yard out front was a clutter of automotive junk and rusting Detroit carcasses. There were trashed motorcycles, dirty oil drums, and old lumber scattered in amongst the twisted wrecks. It looked like a backyard in Tijuana. Two heavy tow rigs, big, muscular eight-wheel monsters with rear-end dualies, stout suspension, and long towing arms were parked inside the gate.
I didn't stick around long. I just wanted to get a look. I put the car in gear and pulled away. After seeing the place, one thing troubled me. Why would Wade Wyatt have any work done on his five-hundred-thousand-dollar collector Mercedes in that automotive graveyard? It was a brain stopper.
When I got back to Parker Center there was a note from Captain Calloway on my desk.
6 o'clock — O'Herlihy's?
Cal
O'Herlihy's is an Irish green-beer joint two blocks from the PAB. Cal wasn't in his office, but the rumor about me getting beefed by Internal Affairs had spread to the fifth floor, and people were avoiding me like I had a flesh eating virus, so I left and walked two blocks east to the bar/restaurant.
Cal was in a back booth with his feet up on the bench and his back against the side wall. His shaved black head glistened while his Mighty Mouse muscles bulged the short sleeves on his shirt. The Hickman file was open on the table in front of him.
'Sit down,' he said.
I slid in. There was a half-empty pitcher of green beer already on the table with a spare glass, so I helped myself.
'This is fucking amazing,' Cal said, still looking down at the pages in the file.
'Isn't it?' I agreed, sipping some beer.
For the life of me, I can't get into green beer. It always looked like lizard piss to me. Beyond that, O'Herlihy's was an Irish cliche. Green walls, wood booths, sawdust on the floor, and 'Danny Boy' coming out of the speakers at least five times an hour.
