Bayliss’ career in law enforcement began as a seventh grade gym teacher. He had a tight, compact body, piercing gray eyes and a well-earned reputation for the liberal use of lanyard on ass cheek. When Bayliss’s uncle, a local hack politician and part owner of a roofing business, got himself elected to the local Civilian Police Review Board, he fast-tracked his ambitious nephew out of the gym and into the penal system. In the wake of the corruption scandal in the mid-90s that involved too many high ranking cops and too many hookers in hot tubs up in Arcadian Fields, Bayliss’s appointment to the job of assistant chief was LA politics at its purist. His uncle, by then sitting on the city council, made him a compromise choice over two men and a woman who were far more qualified than he, which is to say qualified at all.
There was a three-seat wooden bench outside the chief’s private office. Morty Greene was sitting on that bench, his left wrist in a metal cuff.
“Oh Jesus,” Stein sighed. “What the hell is going on?”
“Well look who’s here,” said Edna Greene. She was sitting beside her boy almost entirely eclipsed at first by his frame. “Mister no suggestion of wrongdoing.” Stein felt the sting of her rebuke for trusting him.
“Edna, I’m here to fix this.”
“It’s Mrs. Greene to you.”
Stein pushed open the door to Bayliss’s private office and marched in.
“Coach. What the fuck?”
Bayliss glared up at his long-time adversary. Over the years, by design or coincidence, Bayliss had been the victim of Stein’s most celebrated pranks. His original “Victory Garden” had been grown behind the parking lot of Bayliss’s first precinct; the “Pot in every Chicken” happening was staged at his promotion dinner.
“You don’t ‘what the fuck’ me, Howard. I ‘what the fuck’ you!”
The door was ajar and Edna clapped her hands in ironic appreciation of the performance. “Look at the two white boys arguing with each other. Oh, yes. I’m convinced.”
Bayliss kicked the door shut. “Don’t call me Coach. I will have you in a cell ‘till you’re ninety.” Bayliss was short and cold as the month of February. He prided himself on remembering the full first name of everyone he had ever arrested. Stein wisely withheld correcting him until he had gotten what he had come for.
“I just thought I would tell you, the guy you’ve got handcuffed out there isn’t Nicholette Bradley’s killer.”
“And you would know this, how?”
“Trust me.”
The hoarse gust of wind that wheezed out of Bayliss’s throat approximated an ironic laugh. Bayliss glared before speaking. The temperature in his eyes rising to the melting point of tungsten.
“I was up at the victim’s house the night she was killed. It was me who made the 9-1-1 call.”
“What in hell were you doing in that house, Howard?” Did you kill her?”
“Yes, coach, I did. You’ve busted this case wide open. Shall we call a press conference?”
“You think you’re so goddamn clever. Do you know how long I can put you away and not have to tell anybody why?”
“I’m coming to you as an ally.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way. But were you always this Jewish?”
“How could I take that the wrong way?”
Bayliss eyes half-lidded into a smile of savage mirth. “I know exactly what kind of athlete you were, Howard. Eleventh man on a nine-man team. Splashing oil on the base paths and thinking it’s funny to see other people fall. That’s what you are, Howard. You’re a disrupter.”
“I appreciate where you’re coming from. If I were you looking at me I’d think the same thing. But I am sincerely here because I know who killed Nicholette Bradley. She came to me earlier that day. She thought her friend was in danger.”
“She thought her friend was in danger and she came to you? How did that work out for her?”
Stein took the cheap shot and did not return fire, which quelled some of the chief’s animosity, though he remained healthily wary. “If you are fucking with me, Howard, I will have your Sammie’s tacked up to that bulletin board.”
“I’m here. Why would you think I’m fucking with you?”
“Because a prick can only do two things and you’re not pissing.”
“Why are you holding Morty Greene? He didn’t kill her.”
“You’re so sure of that?”
“Yes I’m sure of it.”
“His truck was stopped under suspicious circumstances.”
“Carrying a load of designer shampoo bottles?”
“Yeah. How’d you know that?”
“This is what I’m saying.”
“In the course of a legal search, the deceased’s name was found written on a piece of paper in the glove compartment of Duluth Greene’s truck.”
“Give me a fucking break. By that logic I killed Chiquita Banana and Jennie Craig.”
“Nobody’s charging him with any crime yet. We want to talk to him.”
“And that’s why he’s handcuffed?”
“You see the size of that boy?”
“Coach, I’m going to repay you for every bad thing I ever did. You’re going to be a national hero.”
Stein gave Bayliss the streamlined version of the connection between Morty and the counterfeit shampoo bottles, and what had happened that gruesome night when Michael Esposito and Paul Vane had killed Nicholette. It choked Stein to mention Paul Vane’s name in connection with the event, but in the spirit of full disclosure he did. The only minor detail he omitted was that he had come to his revelation stoned on Goodpasture’s orchids.
The funeral cortege played on Bayliss’s TV in the background. His office was sparsely furnished with the impersonal essentials, desk, metal chairs, file cabinets, a phone with six buttons, a computer- highlighting the chief’s tenuous interim status. Celebrities and common people alike pronounced eulogies for the slain woman. From PETA, from the pope, from parents of children with anorexia. It was a revelation to Stein that she was so much more than just a pretty face.
The desk sergeant who was not O’Bladovich blew into Bayliss’s office, all red-faced and puffing. “Chief, there’s a civilian loose in the building.” Then he noticed Stein standing there before him. He put two and two together at the speed of a battleship trying to change direction. He finally came up with, “Oh,” and reckoning that his work had been effectively done, he hitched his pants up over his belly and exited.
Bayliss had never taken his eyes off Stein. “Why are you telling me this, Howard? Maybe to set me up to arrest the wrong people in the biggest case of my life?”
“Not this time, chief.”
“What’s in it for you?”
“The people who killed Nicholette have my daughter.”
Stein saw the two movies running alongside each other in the chief’s internal Cineplex. In Theater 1 he is a decorated hero, parades in open cars, fear and respect in the eyes of the world and the interim tag is removed. In Theater 2 Stein is pointing at him and laughing hysterically.
“I swear to God, Howard. If this is you being you I will see you burn.”
Bayliss ’ S assembled task force was all in military black, adorned with gas masks and automatic weapons. Stein felt the room begin to shudder. He thought at first it was his heart but it was the police chopper revving up on the helipad. Bayliss strapped his flight helmet in place.
“Where’s mine?” Stein asked.
“You’re not going anywhere.”
“It’s my daughter. What about our deal!”
“We had no deal.”
“And if she needed an appendectomy would you do it yourself? No, you leave it to the professionals.”
Stein hurried along in their wake. Morty Greene was still handcuffed to the bench outside the office. “And let this guy out of his damn cuffs, for chrissake!”
Bayliss nodded subtly to his sergeant and Morty was carefully uncuffed.
“Thanks for nothing,” Morty said, and wouldn’t look at Stein.
