“What did you hear?”
“I heard she a snitch.”
My mouth went dry. “Who’d you hear that from?”
“It was out on the street.”
“How’d it get out on the street?”
She jiggled a foot and said, “Will it help my case if I tell you?”
I slammed my fist on the metal table. “Where’d that information come from?” I shouted.
She glanced at me with distaste, pursing her lips as if she had just sucked a lemon. “A girl from ’round here, named Rhonda Davis, her sister work at your po-lice headquarters downtown. She a secretary. She work with all the kiddie cops.”
“Juvenile?”
“Yeah. That’s it. Well, she gettin’ down with one of your big shot cops there. A guy she call the Big Leprechaun. Rhonda’s sister hear it from him.”
As I walked back to my car, I was so stunned I had trouble walking. I tried to sort out what I had just heard, but I still couldn’t believe it. I took a few deep breaths, slowly exhaling.
I called Ortiz at the station. I tried to speak, but my mouth was too dry. Finally, I managed to croak, “Meet me on Second Street behind PAB.'
I pulled up at the curb and motioned for Ortiz to get in the car. I filled him in on what the woman told me.
“You sure she was talking about Duffy?” Ortiz said.
“I’m sure. That’s what the gangsters used to call him when he worked South Bureau Homicide.”
“What the fuck was he thinking?” Ortiz said.
“I heard Duffy was banging some twenty-two-year-old black secretary who works in juvenile, but I didn’t think he’d be dumb enough to actually talk to her about a case. He must have been on one of his fucking benders.”
“When he’s on one of those, he gets all drunked up and runs his mouth. What a stupid motherfucker. This is your case, Ash. It’s your call. What’re you going to do?”
“I’m going to drive out to this address,” I said, waving the piece of paper the woman gave me. “I’m going to bust Li’l Eight. Then I’m going to front Duffy.”
I shook out three Tylenol, swallowed them with a swig of warm water from a bottle in the backseat, and stared through the windshield, my head swirling with thoughts of Latisha, how I had convinced her to talk to me; how I had tried to protect her; how we’d awake in the morning, her head on my chest, our legs entwined; how I had found her sprawled out on a street corner, half her head blown off. I thought about the hellish past year. I had been so consumed with anguish, so tormented; I had blamed myself for her death and I had suffered grievously. Every single day. And then this. The anger would come later, I knew. Now, I was in a daze.
“You want me to drive?” Ortiz asked.
I slipped the key into the ignition and started the car.
“You okay?”
I gripped the wheel tightly, drove off, and didn’t answer.
“For what it’s worth, that bitch in juvenile got canned a few months ago. She got caught snooping into some department databases.”
Pulling off Crenshaw, I headed up to The Jungle, a run-down South L.A. neighborhood crammed with seedy two-unit apartment buildings. Residents originally gave the neighborhood its nickname because of the lush tropical landscaping-fan palms, banana plants, begonias, enormous birds of paradise-that surrounded the buildings. But soon the name took on a more menacing meaning when the neighborhood began to deteriorate. Rival gangs shot it out on the streets, dealers peddled crack in the alleys, and the shoddily built apartments fell into disrepair.
I pulled up in front of the apartment where Li’l Eight was staying, we climbed the steps to the second floor, and rang the bell. When no one answered, Ortiz and I peered into a few side windows and determined nobody was home.
I returned to my car, and parked down the street, far enough away so Li’l Eight couldn’t spot us, but close enough so I could keep an eye on the front door. After two hours of silence, Ortiz said, “You’re great fucking company.”
“Sorry. This Duffy thing’s got me turned around.”
“Why don’t we call in this address to SIS and let them sit on the apartment. They can bring Li’l Eight in for us.”
“I don’t want to interview Li’l Eight at the station. I want to talk to him right here. I’ve got a creative interviewing approach in mind for him.”
“Just don’t be so creative that they fire your ass.”
I turned toward Ortiz. “This was never just a homicide investigation. The stakes were always high for me. Now they’re higher. I’ve got to take care of it in my own way.”
Ortiz nodded. “I understand.”
After two more hours of waiting, I said, “Let’s meet downtown tomorrow morning at five and then hit him up. We should catch him in bed then.”
“You got it.”
I drove back to PAB, and we headed up to the squad room. Now was the time to confront Duffy.
CHAPTER 39
Duffy was in his office, hunched over a computer, typing furiously. I entered without knocking and sat down.
He pushed away from his desk, twirled his chair toward me and, with a theatrical motion, checked his watch. “It’s almost two. Where the hell you been?”
“I just figured out something.”
“What’s that.”
“That you suspended me last year because you were trying to get me to quit.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I think you do. You didn’t contact me this past year because you didn’t want me to come back.”
“Ash,” he said, his voice softening, “when you were just a kid on patrol, I pulled you off the street and brought you into homicide as a trainee. I shepherded you through and made sure you made detective. I was there when you got your shield. I brought you to Felony Special. We go too far back for you to come up with some crazy- ass conspiracy theory about me.”
Thinking back to all those years with Duffy, how I had trusted him, looked up to him, worked so hard for him to curry his approval, I felt betrayed and began to choke up. I couldn’t get any words out, so I just swallowed hard and shook my head.
“You’re paranoid,” he said.
I leaned forward and studied his face. “I know you were banging that secretary in juvenile. I know you told her that Latisha Patton was cooperating with me. I know she put the word out on the street that Latisha was a snitch. And I know, now, that’s why Latisha was shot.”
Duffy gripped his desk, kneading the edges. “That cunt’s a liar.”
“I didn’t hear it from her. I did my own investigation.”
Duffy’s hands fell limply to his sides.
“After I was suspended last year, you didn’t want me to come back because you were afraid I might stumble onto the truth. You figured you were home free when I quit. Then you heard that I started nosing around the case, that Latisha’s daughter complained, that the I.A. lieutenant warned me off. You thought I’d keep picking at the case. So you decided the best way to derail me was to hire me back on the job, where you could keep an eye on me and load me up with cases so I’d be too busy to chase the Patton case. You were trying to figure out how to get me back when the Relovich homicide landed on your desk. You used the case to manipulate Grazzo into asking for me,
