client with Lita’s murder, suggesting it could easily be planted. Captain Madrid had an alibi, supplied by her husband. Alexa called the DA and after a heated ten-minute discussion it was determined that we should hold off a day or so before booking Madrid. She was labeled a person of interest and we were instructed to let her go. The DA had cold feet and pointed out to us that we’d collected similar cups by Dumpster diving, agreeing with Moneymaker that somebody could have planted it. Of course Clarence Moneymaker forbade all future LAPD or DA contact with his client. After that, all that was left for us to do was start writing search warrants for Stephanie’s house and car. I would have loved to find a box of 9mm Hydra-Shok Federals like the ones we pulled out of Lita’s kitchen floor somewhere in Captain Madrid’s possession, but I didn’t think she, or Lester if he was involved, would be that careless.
One really unsettling thing happened as Hitch and I were heading out to get a taco for lunch. Lester Madrid was sitting on the bench in the atrium, across from the elevator, silver-headed cane leaned between his legs, waiting for us. As we stepped into the lobby, he stood.
“I don’t think you two ass wipes see what’s really going on here,” he said in his whispery growl.
Since I didn’t want to guess what he thought was
“Steph isn’t going down behind this horse-shit murder beef. She’s being set up. If I have to rip out a few yards of somebody’s colon to prove it, then that’s what I intend to do.”
“Stop threatening us,” I said.
“I’m not threatening, Scully. I’m promising. In SIS they said we were assassinating criminal dirtbags. But that wasn’t what we were doing at all. We were just eliminating problems. Cleaning up the city. You two idiots have been parked in a cul-de-sac, jerkin’ off while this fucking case went down the road without you. That means I’m gonna have to get involved and fix the problem. When I get involved there are consequences.”
He turned and left us, walking out of the interior atrium into the midday sunshine. Hitch and I just stood there.
“Isn’t that a crime, threatening a police officer?” Hitch asked.
“Yeah, Section Seventy-One of the Penal Code. I had one filed against me once in the Valley when I threatened to knock my training officer’s teeth out.”
“Then let’s hit that guy with a seventy-one and give him a ride in a squad car,” Hitch said. “I don’t want him hunkered down in my bushes tonight with a SWAT rifle.”
“It’s borderline. All we got is his promise to eliminate a problem and a warning of consequences. Let him cool off and we’ll take his temperature again tomorrow.”
Two hours later, we’d finished with the IA paperwork for Stephanie Madrid’s charge sheet. We filed it and took off early, both emotionally wasted.
When I got on the freeway, I thought I saw a gray Navigator a few cars behind, tracking me from two lanes over. I couldn’t be certain. I kept changing lanes, trying to spot it again, but it never reappeared.
I finally decided it was just my imagination.
CHAPTER 39
Ten minutes after I got to Venice, Alexa called to tell me she wouldn’t be home until later that evening. Deputy Chief Hawkins had put the Stephanie Madrid case under Alexa’s direct supervision, and she was stuck in the office working on a media plan with Bert Myer. The press had already scooped up the arrest report, which was now public information. An hour after that, Nix Nash had a mobile unit parked in front of the Police Administration Building and was doing shotgun interviews with anyone who he thought might conceivably touch the case.
I hung up with Alexa and, to take my mind off this disaster, was trying to decide what to do for dinner or if I was still even hungry. Just then the phone rang again. This time it was Hitch.
“Dawg, get your skinny ass up to my place,
“I was just gonna go down the street to get something to eat,” I told him.
“Got that covered,” he said, sounding excited. “Stop arguing and get up here.”
“All the way to Mount Olympus? Man, can’t we at least meet halfway?”
“No. Gotta be here. You’ll thank me. Just get moving!” He hung up.
I don’t much like being commanded, so in a self-involved show of indifference I wandered slowly into the kitchen, poured some orange juice, swallowed it down, taking my time about it. Then I ambled out to the Acura, took the keys off the visor, got in, and inched back slowly onto the street. I know, I know, pretty juvenile.
All the way up to Hitch’s place in Hollywood, I kept checking behind me for gray Navigators. Every time I looked in the rearview mirror, I remembered Nash’s bug sequestered in there. I’ve had these devices planted on my vehicle once or twice in the past. They can often be turned into a very effective source of disinformation. I was circling a few ideas as I drove.
Thirty minutes later, I parked in the drive of Hitch’s magnificent house and rang the bell. The familiar
“Come on in!” he yelled. “It’s open!”
I entered, leaving the
“In the kitchen,” he called out.
I went into his beautiful living room-sized, professionally outfitted kitchen and found him perched on a wood stool beside the stove. He had a drink in one hand and a cooking spoon in the other.
“You gotta fix that doorbell,” I said. “I go from
“Not Rachmaninoff, it’s Bach. Sonata Number Five in C Major.” Hitch set down the drink, then looked at me expectantly and said, “Well?”
“Well, what?”
“The smell. You recognize it?”
I took another sniff. “Kind of, but I’m not sure from where.”
“Lita’s house, man. This was what was in the curtains. It’s been driving me nuts. I’ve been combing through cookbooks ever since we found her. I finally came up with it.”
I realized he was right. This was the same smell that we’d experienced when we first walked into Lita Mendez’s living room.
“You’re right. It’s more pungent of course, because it’s still being cooked. But you’re right. It’s the same.”
“You know what it is?”
“Uh-uh.”
“It’s fucking gumbo, dude.”
“It is?”
“Yep. Look.”
He showed me the cookbook. The page was open to a recipe for gumbo.
“Besides the chicken, your main ingredients are garlic, onions, tomatoes, cayenne, okra, and ta-da-a … andouille.”
“What’s andouille?”
“A spicy country pork sausage. It’s what gives it that pungent odor. They use it in a lot of Cajun dishes.”
As I read the recipe, he removed the lid from the pot and waved some of the steam in my direction.
“I thought it was the bay leaf and garlic,” he said, grinning. “But I tried that and it didn’t do it. Then I found that recipe. It was the andouille.”
“Damn,” I said, smiling at him. “Lita couldn’t have had all these ingredients. You think the killer brought his own groceries?”
“Don’t know. Let’s eat this stuff before it gets cold. I’ve got the rice all steamed.”
