SUICIDE HILL

605

for days, watched him glom them Greenbacks, thinkin’ they was cash, watched him do his number with the tally slips and bankbook and computer. I’m thinkin’, ‘Too bad there’s only one of these scamsters,’ when this bookie workin’ the house tells me about Eggers bein’ way behind on his vig. So I think, ‘Gifts in a manger’ and nudge the bookie to nudge Eggers into the scam that Hawley pulls. Then I start tailing Eggers, and damned if he didn’t start pulling the same tricks. You dig?”

Lloyd said, “I dig. But you never saw Eggers with cash in his hands, right?”

“Right. His hands was out of sight when he did his rippin’. I just assumed that since he followed Hawley’s procedure, it had to be cash.”

“And it was about six weeks ago that you told the bookie to nudge Eggers?”

“Yeah. How’d you know that?”

“Never mind, keep going.”

“Anyhow, I never told the Eye-talians about any of this, and I cased the kidnap part of the deal real good—the bitches’ cribs, the managers’ cribs, the whole shot. Then I got me a partner, then he decided to take off a liquor store and got busted. You follow so far?”

“I’m ahead of you,” Lloyd said. “Wrap it up.”

McCarver lit a cigarette, coughed and said, “Homeboy’s a righteous partner. A little on the impetuous side, but solid. Except that he’s a fat-mouth motherfucker, which ain’t as bad as being a snitch, but still ain’t good. When I read about my plan gettin’ utilized, I called Homeboy at Folsom, got through ’cause he got this cush orderly job. I said, ‘Who the fuck you shoot your fat motherfuckin’ mouth off to?’ He says, ‘Who, me?’ I says,

‘Yeah, you, motherfucker, ’cause whoever you blabbed to utilized my plan, plus one other, and killed four people, includin’ two cops, and there is seventy thou in reward bucks on that motherfucker’s ass.’

“So . . . Homeboy tells me he talked to two paddy dudes in the High-Power Tank at the New County—Frank Ottens and Chick Geyer. I figure, righteous, those are cop killer motherfuckers. Then I back off and think, ‘What if those dudes blabbed to someone else, and righteous third-or fourth-or fuckin’ fifth-hand info was responsible for the utilization of my plan?’ So I call the jail, and they tell me Ottens and Geyer is still in High-Power fighting their beefs. So, big man, you find out who Ottens and Geyer blabbed to, and you find your fuckin’ cop killer. Now, is that a righteous tip or a righteous tip?”

Lloyd stood up and stretched. What would have cracked the case twentyfour hours before was now stale bread. The High-Power Tank adjoined the 606

L.A. NOIR

Ding Tank, where Duane Rice was incarcerated until two weeks ago. Gordon Meyers was the night jailer there, and he had incurred Rice’s wrath as a member of the overall robbery scheme or for some other reason—stale bread also, because Meyers was dead, and Rice was unlikely to live through the night. Everyone involved in the twisted mess was dead or marked for death, including himself. Thinking inexplicably of Louie Calderon’s “The kid was just too scared to say no. Don’t let them kill him,” Lloyd looked at McCarver and said,

“A righteously too late tip, but I’ll give you some righteous advice: walk real soft around cops, because nothing’s going to be the same with us anymore.”

McCarver said, “What the fuck,” and Lloyd walked out to his car and handcuffed witness. A crew of reservists were hanging black bunting on the front doors of the station as he drove away.

*

*

*

Pulling into his driveway a half hour later, Lloyd saw a stack of L.A. County interagency records sleeves beside his kitchen door. Killing the engine, he said to Rhonda, “You’re staying with me until Rice is kill—I mean captured.”

Rhonda rubbed her wrists. “What if I don’t like the accommodations?

You also mentioned money a while back.”

Lloyd got out of the car and pointed to the door. “Later. I’ve got some reading to do. You sit tight while I do it, then we’ll talk.”

The records sleeves were thick and heavy with paper. Picking them up, Lloyd felt comforted by the bulk of the cop data. He unlocked the door, flicked on the light and motioned Rhonda inside. “Make yourself at home, anywhere downstairs.”

“What about upstairs?”

“It’s sealed off.”

“Why?”

“Never mind.”

“You’re weird.”

“Just sit tight, all right?”

Rhonda shrugged and started opening and closing the kitchen cabinets. Lloyd carried the sleeves into the living room and arrayed them on the coffee table, noting that the paperwork came from the L.A. County Department of Corrections, L.A. County Probation Department, County Parole Bureau and California State Adult Authority. The pages were not broken down by the names of his four suspects, and he had to first collate them into stacks—one for Duane Rice, one each for the Garcia brothers, one for Anne Vanderlinden. That accomplished, he broke them down by agency,