“He stay to himself. I don’t pay no mind to where he go and with who. As long as he pay his rent on time.”
I gave the man my card and asked him to call Felony Special if he heard anything about Fuqua. Driving back downtown, I told Duffy, “Interesting that he moved a month ago.”
“That’s right before Relovich was popped,” Duffy said. “Probably figured he’d do the job and then disappear.”
“Any guesses where he is?” Ortiz said.
“Fuqua,” I said, swirling my index finger, “is in the wind.”
I returned to R amp; I and picked up all of Fuqua’s 510s-LAPD forms that we fill out after the arrest report, and include personal information such as the addresses and phone numbers of relatives, girlfriends, and ex-spouses, and other random data. I discovered that Fuqua’s mother and four sisters lived in South Central. A brother lived in San Pedro, which would explain why Fuqua pulled the burglary there. I figured that if I door-knocked the family, they would warn Fuqua and he would be even harder to find.
Back at my desk, I called the state Department of Motor Vehicles office and asked for the date of birth for Fuqua’s mother and sisters. One of Fuqua’s sisters would be celebrating a birthday on Friday. Now I had the opportunity to try an approach that had worked a few times for me in the past. On Friday afternoon I would stake out the sister’s house. If she had a birthday party, and if Fuqua showed up, I would be there in the shadows, waiting.
In the meantime, I had plenty of work to keep me busy. And if I was lucky, maybe I could even pick up Fuqua before Friday.
I slipped Fuqua’s booking photo into a six-pack, grabbed my murder book, and drove up Interstate 5 to the Pitchess Detention Center. I decided to see if the skinny junkie who I had interviewed at the Pacific Division station after the drug sweep could identify Fuqua. The junkie had described the man climbing into passenger’s side of the car at the end of the bloodhound’s trail as a tall, skinny Mexican and the other as shorter and stocky. Fuqua was listed as five foot ten and two hundred twenty pounds, so he fit the description of the driver. I decided that there was no point in showing Fuqua’s picture to Theresa Martinez because she said she didn’t get a look at the driver.
Pitchess is a sprawling jail complex set in the parched Castaic foothills about twenty miles north of downtown. I passed through the gates, deposited my Beretta in the metal locker, and waited in an interview room. A few minutes later, deputies brought out the junkie. The last time I had talked to him, he was extremely jittery, nervously tapping his feet, and picking at his nails. Now, wearing loose fitting jail blues, he walked across the room so slowly and sat down so deliberately he looked as if he were moving underwater. After deputies uncuffed him, I slid the six-pack across the table and asked if he could pick out one of the suspects. He carefully studied each picture.
“Now if I pick out someone, will you give me a Get Out Of Jail Free Card?” he asked, smiling slyly.
“Doesn’t work that way. I can talk to the DA, but I need you to be sure. If you can’t identify anyone, don’t worry about it. I won’t forget you. They’ll be other six-packs to check out. This isn’t your last chance.”
The man, again, studied each picture. He slid the six-pack back across the table. “Dang! I wish I could, but I can’t. Don’t know any of them dudes. I don’t even know if the guy I saw was a brutha. It was too damn dark.”
I returned to the office and spent the rest of the day studying Fuqua’s file. First I tried to determine if Fuqua had ever been arrested with a Hispanic so I could show the junkie witness the suspect’s picture. But I had no luck. Then I searched through the computer for all the information gleaned from field interview cards, which listed everyone at a crime scene, from witnesses to neighbors to suspects. Still no Hispanics were identified at Fuqua’s arrest.
After I made fifty laser copies of Fuqua’s photo, I drove over to the Southeast station and passed them out during the p.m. shift roll call. “Anybody who finds Fuqua,” I announced, “gets a case of beer of their choice.”
When I was done, an old-timer in the gang unit, a black sergeant named Chester Pinson, said he wanted to talk. I followed him to his desk and he pulled up a chair for me.
“I’ve been keeping tabs on Fuqua since he was a fourteen-year-old pooh butt. As you know, he did a nickel at Folsom a while ago. Since then, a whole new generation of gangsters have hit the streets. But I remember him pretty well when he was coming up.”
“What do you remember about him?” I asked.
“He’s one cold motherfucker. When C-Dawg’s moving down the street, everyone takes a step back.”
“What’s the C for?”
“Capone. The number one gangster.”
“Was he?”
“Well, he dropped eight people before he was eighteen. Who knows what the tally is now.”
“Who was he killing?”
“Mostly rival gangsters.”
“Ever get close to popping him for murder?”
“Naw,” he said, disgusted. “Those gang-on-gang hits are tough to put together.” Pinson grabbed a pencil off his desk and slapped it on his palm. “All those stupid fucking movies with the serial killers knocking off one vic after another in crazy-ass ways, taunting detectives, sending them cute little notes. You and I both know that’s bullshit. You get one of them dudes every decade-maybe. Now C-Dawg is your real-life version of a serial killer.”
“I got some information that Fuqua might have been working with a Hispanic guy. That sound right to you?”
“I don’t know. He just did a stretch at Folsom. The blacks and Mexicans are at war there. They fucking hate each other. If I know Fuqua, he cliqued up there right away. At Folsom, if a black hangs with a Mexican, he’ll get a shiv in the liver. From his own peeps. So he might be kind of hesitant, as soon as he’s kicked loose, to partner up with a cholo. You might see a black and a Mexican gangbanger capering in a place like Oakwood, where everyone’s on top of each other. But it’s a little unusual for South Central.”
“You said it’s unusual. I take that to mean it’s possible that Fuqua was working with a Mexican dude.”
“It’s possible.”
“You know that Relovich was the only detective who ever put together a good enough case to send Fuqua to the joint?”
Pinson nodded.
“You think that could be enough of a motive for Fuqua to gun Pete down?”
Pinson pushed his chair away from his desk and crossed his legs. “Could be, but I wanted to tell you something else. When I heard you found Fuqua’s DNA at the scene, I wanted to fill you in. Pete’s ex-partner is an old-timer name of Sam Doukas. When Sam was promoted to D-III, he got transferred over here to Southeast, so him and Pete had to split up. I got to know Sam, and he talked about Pete some. And he told me a story that I wanted to pass on to you. After Pete nailed down that robbery case against Fuqua that landed him in Folsom, him and Sam went over to Fuqua’s place to hook him up. Fuqua was with some of his homeboys and he was putting a good show on for them, mother-fucking Pete and Sam this way and that. He told them that if they didn’t have their badges and guns, he’d kick both their asses.”
Pinson chuckled. “So Pete handed his badge and gun to Sam and told him and the homeboys to wait outside. While they were outside they heard some whacks and some thwacks and some furniture breaking. Three minutes later, Pete had Fuqua-who was out cold-over his shoulder and tossed him into the backseat of the squad car. He knocked the black right outta that boy.”
“That’s hard-core,” I said.
“Pete fought Golden Gloves when he was a kid. At the California Police Olympics, he was the light heavyweight champ.”
“How come you didn’t tell me about this when I picked up the case?”
Pinson held out his hands. “I’ve been on vacation. Just got back this morning and heard about Pete.”
“I’d like to talk to Doukas.”
“You can’t-he died of a stroke last year. Two months after he retired.”
“So what do you think?”
“Fuqua claimed that Pete cold-cocked him when he wasn’t looking. But nobody believed that-not even Fuqua’s homies. As you know, on the streets, rep is everything. And Fuqua’s rep took a hard fall. So he lost a lot
