SUICIDE HILL
541
“I don’t know. The important thing is that he’s scared. He’s between Lieutenant Buddy “Bad Ass” Bagdessarian and me on one side, the robbers and getting a rat jacket on the other. We’ve got to put a twenty-four tail on him—your men—he’s too hip to local cops. He’s an old homeboy, a criminal with contacts, and he may damn well not be our gun dealer, but be able to put the finger on him, or he may snitch off the robbers straight out to save his ass with Buddy. Either way, we’re set. How soon can you implement the surveillance?”
“As soon as you drop me off at Central Office. What are you going to do?”
Lloyd hit the ignition and gunned the car out onto Tomahawk Street.
“Read all the paperwork again, then write up my ideas for Brawley at Van Nuys dicks. Then I’m going to visit an old pal of mine. He’s a superior court judge, and he’s senile and a right-wing loony. He gets his rocks off issuing search-and-seizure warrants. I buy him a case of Scotch every Christmas, and he signs whatever I ask him for. Right before Louie’s forty-eight are up, I’m going in his front door with a .12 gauge and due process to seize every scrap of paper he’s got. You like it?”
Kapek was pale; his voice was shaky. “Jesus fucking Christ.”
“You said that before. One other thing. I’m almost positive that the reason Calderon didn’t want us in his office is the red phone. He’s either taking bets or running a bootleg message service.”
“What’s that?”
“A two-way answering service. Mostly it’s used by parole absconders and their families. He had a clipboard with writing on it next to the phone—messages for sure. Calderon’s house is right next to the garage, and he’s probably got someone there monitoring an extension all the time. Sometimes those numbers are legit Ma Bell handouts; sometimes illegal hookups that can’t be traced. I want a tap on all Calderon’s lines. That requires a federal warrant—
your side of the street. Can you swing it?”
Kapek’s color was returning, but a thin layer of sweat was creeping over his forehead. He wiped it off with his sleeve and said, “Monday at the earliest. Federal judges all go incommunicado on the weekends to avoid warrant hassles. You really want these guys, don’t you?”
Lloyd smiled. “I’m probably getting stress-pensioned soon, against my will. I intend to go out in true hot-dog fashion.” He pulled up in front of the downtown F.B.I. building, and Kapek got out. Highballing it to Parker Center, the junior G-man’s pale face stayed fixed in his mind, and he knew he had taken over the investigation.
542
L.A. NOIR
With twenty-eight sleepless hours behind him, Lloyd pushed his investigation for another twenty-four flat out. At Parker Center he checked the “monicker” file for every nickname variation of “Shark,” coming away with a large assortment of data pertaining to black youth gangs. Useless trivia. An R&I check of male Mexican registered sex offenders with a cunnilingus M.O. yielded seven names, but three of the men were currently in prison and the other four were in their fifties—way above Sally Issler’s and Christine Confrey’s “late twenties, early thirties” appraisal. The only remaining option was to add the “Shark” and oral sex abuse facts to the roll call reports and distribute the word to all L.A.P.D. informants. Peter Kapek called in the early evening. Louie Calderon was under constant rolling surveillance. The agents would be keeping a detailed log on his movements and would be running vehicle and address checks on all persons he came into contact with. A team of agents was going over his record for possible armed robbery connections. The Likable Louie angle was covered, as were continuing probes into the recent pasts of Robert Hawley, Sally Issler, John Eggers and Christine Confrey. Come Monday, Channel 7 Eyewitness News would leak its “cautionary” report on the bank robbery/extortion gang, without mention of the sex assault facts. This would leave the families of the male victims open for interrogation on the investigation’s “Big Question”: how did the robbers get the in- formation on the two extramarital affairs?
At home late that night, Lloyd phoned in the vice squad query he had mentioned to Kapek, then read the existing files and applied his thinking solely to that question. He came up with four logical answers: Through connection to the victims’ families;
Through connections to the victims’ friends and acquaintances; Through connections at the two banks;
Through the random factor: overheard conversations at meeting places such as bars, restaurants and other public gathering spots, and through informational sources that the four suspects have either consciously or unconsciously refused to reveal. Knowing that the fourth “answer” was the most likely, Lloyd read through the case file two more times, then wrote out a memorandum stating his conclusions. 0330 hrs; 12/11/84
To: S.A. Peter Kapek, Det. Lieut. S. Brawley