making him think it was his idea.”
He stared straight ahead, frozen, not even blinking
“Don’t bother trying to weasel out of all this. I know it’s true. You know it’s true.”
He leaned over and closed the blinds in his office. Raising both palms he said, “This is the God’s honest-” He stopped in mid-sentence and abruptly dropped his palms to his lap.
“Let’s stop shoveling the shit,” I said.
His face was contorted, as if he was struggling with an emotion that was somewhere between anger and anguish.
“God, I’m a stupid motherfucker. Worst mistake of my life. Damn, Ash. You know how often I wished I’d never got involved with that whore? Every fucking day for the past year.”
“You don’t know what I’ve gone through,” I said softly.
Duffy bowed his head. “That’s what’s made it so hard,” he said, his voice cracking.
“You can fuck anyone you want. But why did you have to tell her about Latisha? I just don’t understand that.”
He wiped his eyes with his sleeve and emitted a phlegmy cough. “We were out drinking one night. Christ, I’d downed so many I can’t even remember where we were or when. I don’t even remember talking to her about the case. It was a total fucking blackout.”
“You’re pathetic.”
“That’s not an excuse, I know. But that’s the truth. The next morning she brought up Patton’s name. I realized then that I’d totally fucking blown it. I tried to piss backward. But it was too late.”
“But why?”
He shook his head, frowning. “I guess I was telling her about some of the cases we were working, trying to impress her, an old man with a hard on for a young babe. She hung on my every word, and I kept gabbing.” He slammed a palm on the blotter, the tears spraying the edges of the desk. “Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!”
Watching Duffy sputter out an explanation, I felt an intense hatred for him. I wanted to grab him by the throat and smash that self-pitying look off his face. “What a prick you are. You just let me take the fucking fall. You took the easy way out. And, to be perfectly safe, you sent the case back down to South Bureau. You figured those guys are so overwhelmed, so overworked, they’d never have time to get to the truth. Then you wouldn’t have to deal with me or the case. You were just praying I’d never put it all together.”
Duffy unclipped his badge from his belt and dropped it on his desk. “You want my badge, Ash, you can have it. I mean it. You can tell Grazzo right now about all this. I won’t dispute it. I got twenty-three years in. I don’t deserve a twenty-fourth.”
Reaching over, I picked up the badge and walked to the door. I knew Duffy. He always liked to make the grand gesture. At the time he made a dramatic pronouncement, he usually believed it. Later, however, he invariably recanted.
I tossed the badge on the floor and walked out of the squad room.
CHAPTER 40
As I walked through the dim parking lot, I could feel my anger settling and mutating into a profound sadness. I didn’t have the luxury to wallow in how Duffy fucked me over, however, because I had to focus on Li’l Eight. I didn’t want to wait until tomorrow morning to sit on his apartment. And I decided that I wasn’t going to call Ortiz. I didn’t know exactly what I was going to do when I confronted Li’l Eight, but I knew I wasn’t going to adhere to LAPD interrogation regulations. This case was personal for me, but it wasn’t personal for Ortiz. I was willing to get fired over how I sweated Li’l Eight; I wasn’t willing to risk Ortiz’s job.
I drove out to The Jungle, parked down the street, and opened my trunk. From a metal toolbox, I removed a small silencer that I had confiscated from a Belizian cocaine dealer and slipped it into my coat pocket. Light- stepping it to the building, I climbed up the stairs to Li’l Eight’s apartment on the second floor, looked in the windows, and determined no one was home. So I returned to my car, kept my eye on the front door, and waited.
I was jittery, nervously tapping my fingernails on the dash, but the longer I waited, the more I thought about Li’l Eight, the angrier I became. When I had first joined the LAPD, there seemed to be a code that criminals followed. If you held up a market and the clerk gave you the cash-you didn’t shoot him simply as an afterthought. If you knew a witness was going to cooperate with detectives, you threatened him first and persuaded him not to cooperate-you didn’t just blast him. If a detective came to arrest you, you’d probably run and maybe even shoot it out-you’d never tie him up and debase and assassinate him. I may not have liked some of the old-time crooks I had arrested as a young patrolman, but I realized now that many of them at least pulled their heists with a degree of professionalism, getting in and out of jobs quickly, with no violence. Li’l Eight symbolized to me the new breed of criminal. Since he’d decided to violate the code of street poker, I decided I wouldn’t simply call him. I would raise the stakes.
At dusk, I drove off to a gas station to take a piss. When I returned, the fog had rolled in, so there wasn’t much of a sunset, just a gradual darkening as light seeped from the veil of gray on the western horizon. At eight, I thought I saw someone enter the apartment. I climbed out of my car, but slowly crawled back in when I realized it was the apartment next door. A half hour later, I almost dozed off, so I opened all the windows and took a few deep breaths. The fog had misted up my windshield, limiting my visibility, so I kept my windshield wipers running.
Shortly after nine, I spotted a stocky black kid with a goatee, who was wearing a baggy, white T-shirt, approach the apartment. Jumping out of the car, I hustled down the sidewalk for a better look. It was Li’l Eight. As he began to climb the steps, clutching a key ring in his right hand, I slipped up behind him, stuck the Beretta in his back and said, “Put the key in the lock nice and easy.”
When he reached into his coat pocket, I jammed the gun in his back and said, “Hands out where I can see them.”
He opened the front door and I followed him inside.
“Surprised to see me?”
He gave me a contemptuous look.
“Sit down.”
He held his wrists out toward me. “You might as well cuff me right now and take me downtown. ‘Cause I ain’t sayin’ shit till I see my lawyer.”
I took a step forward and lifted up the right sleeve of his T-shirt. And there it was on his upper arm: The big CK tattoo with the C crossed out.
I was so enraged, Li’l Eight faded into an amorphous blur. I wanted to jam the Beretta into his mouth and blow the back of his head off.
He stood up, looked at me with a half smile, and muttered so softly I could barely hear, “Shoulda finished you off when I had the chance, punk-ass bitch.”
I slammed him on the side of his head with the barrel of my gun. He fell to his knees, wiped the blood off, and looked up at me with a smirk of superiority. “No beat down gonna make me change my mind. Nothin’ you can do to make me talk.”
I gripped my gun tightly and said, “You’re going to tell me all about how you killed that Korean liquor store owner and you’re going to tell me all about Latisha Patton.”
I thought of my old guru, Bud Carducci, and how he used to persuade recalcitrant suspects to talk. He’d figure out what they were most afraid of, then exploit that fear.
“Start talking-Li’l Seven.”
He shook his head. “That ain’t my name.”
“I screwed the silencer onto the Beretta’s barrel, reached over and grabbed Li’l Eight’s right wrist. I jammed the muzzle on the tip of his pinkie fingernail and pulled the trigger, spraying tissue and nail fragments over the front of his shirt.
He let out a strangled scream and flopped on the carpet like a landed fish, jerking his hand
