Crane stared through the windshield as if hypnotized. His right hand twitched and moved in slow motion toward the gun holstered at the small of his back.
Rucker took his gun from between his legs with his left hand. He said sharply, “Freeze! I want your piece, Leo. Lean forward.”
Crane oozed sweat as he hesitated. He realized he had been too obsessed with coke and Petra to get rid of his service revolver, which he had used to kill Leon. “Please, Russ, don’t do this to me.”
Rucker said harshly, “Put your hands on your knees and lean forward.”
Crane complied. Rucker removed his gun and dropped it into his jacket pocket. “Now give me your badge, you crooked sonuvabitch!”
Crane unpinned the shield from the inner side of his wallet and placed it in Rucker’s palm. Rucker pocketed it and holstered his own gun. Crane pleaded, “Keep this between us. I’ll resign. Please, Russ!”
“Sorry, Leo. You’ve got to pay for conspiring with Petra the hooker to commit the felony of obstruction of justice.”
Crane bent over to bury his face in his hands. He sobbed, “Sure, Russ, you’re right. I hope some con kills me when I get to the joint.”
Rucker studied him for a very long moment. “Leo, I’m still your friend. You don’t have to go to prison.”
Crane sat upright to look at Rucker. “What?” he exclaimed.
“Leo, I’ll keep your mistakes a secret between us, but I demand that you do certain things.”
Crane nodded vigorously.
“I want you to take a month’s leave of absence for your nervous exhaustion that I’ll explain to Lieutenant Bleeson. I want you to go into a coke rehab clinic for a week as an inpatient and five weeks as an outpatient. I want you to break contact with Petra and anybody else connected to drugs. Agreed? Here’s their card. They’re waiting for you. Check in as Pat Hensley.”
Crane took the card and glanced at it before he dropped it into his shirt pocket. They shook hands. Crane frowned. “Russ, thanks for the break, but I can’t cut the clinic nut. I’m broke.”
Rucker said, “I’ll pay for you. I must be paid back some bucks every month until you’re squared up.”
They shook hands again. Crane opened the door to leave. Crane said, “Russ, I’ve got myself together. Please, give me my badge and gun.”
Rucker shook his head. “I’m sorry, Leo. I’ll return them after you complete your treatment.”
Crane said, “I’ll check in tomorrow.” He started to step out of the car. Rucker said solemnly, “Leo, if you fail to keep your end of our deal, I’ll throw you to Bleeson. Understand?” Crane nodded and moved away.
Rucker drove away, thinking about Leon’s death and Rainbow, who hadn’t shown at his rooming house.
Crane went to his car, thinking about Petra, and how he could explain Rucker’s secret cop. He drove to a pay phone to call Petra. Inside the booth he hesitated before dropping the quarter. He had to tell her something, to get his usual coke payoff now instead of later in the evening. He needed rest, but after the Rucker encounter, his mangled nerves needed coke more than anything.
He dropped the quarter. He would tell Petra that a typist had failed to include the license plate of the undercover car driven by the cop who had busted her stablemates.
Petra sleepily answered the phone. She banged the receiver down when she heard his voice.
Crane drove to Ralph Rosen’s Record Shop on Hollywood Boulevard. He pounded on the locked door until his giant cousin drowsily stumbled from his rear living quarters to admit him.
“Ralph, I feel like dying. You got any medicine?” Crane said as he followed Ralph to his bedroom.
“Yeah, a little private stock. Sit down.”
Crane dropped down on the side of the bed and took a paper-wrapped syringe and spoon from his sock. Ralph got a pinch of coke from a closet stash. Crane injected the dope and got to his feet. “Thanks, buddy,” he said as he went toward the front door. Ralph followed. Crane stepped out. Ralph locked the door behind him.
—
The early-morning sun awakened Tuta in a Silver Lake motel room. She hadn’t slept well. Her junkie need sapped her strength and made her belly sick. She had used up Pee Wee’s gift of skag. Her regular trick who sold skag got busted the day she left Shetani.
She propped herself up in bed and lit a cigarette. She had money she had made working Ventura Boulevard, in the Valley. She hadn’t called Pee Wee, because she wasn’t sure she wanted or needed an intimate hookup with a woman. She also missed the security she felt with Shetani and the stable. She had thought about going back to Shetani and his big dope bag.
At noon, she glanced at the phone and wondered why she hadn’t heard from Pee Wee. She dialed Pee Wee. Petra, whom Shetani had installed in Pee Wee’s room on the chance that Tuta would call, answered the phone. Petra, the skilled maternal player, quickly promised Tuta that she would deliver some skag by cab and without Shetani’s knowledge.
Petra dressed and called a cab company based in Hollywood. Two minutes later, the dispatcher called Shetani to report that a cab had been requested from his address and the caller’s destination was a motel in Silver Lake.
Shetani told him to delay the cab for fifteen minutes. He assured the tipster that he would receive the promised hundred dollars before his shift ended.
Within two minutes, the twins stood in Shetani’s bedroom. He handed Eli a slip of paper and said, “I’m sure Petra got a call from Tuta. If so, here’s the address of Tuta’s motel in Silver Lake. Stake it out until she hits the street. Try to snatch her in a cool, friendly way if you can.”
The twins hurried away. A stakeout police car saw the twins pass in the van. A few minutes later, Detective Griffin’s tan Datsun took up the tail on Petra’s cab.
When Petra entered the motel, Griffin used his car phone to call Rucker at home. When Griffin mentioned the Silver Lake motel, Rucker was electrified. He remembered that one of the biggest busts in history had been made there in the recent past.
He had ordered twenty-four-hour surveillance on Petra, because he suspected her as being the drug courier for the hooked Shetani stable. He instructed Griffin to bust her if she exited the place before he got there.
Rucker hung up and went to his Lincoln. He drove toward Silver Lake and reviewed his motive for a spur-of-the-moment bust of Petra. He knew that even a fairly competent lawyer could beat a possession bust done without a warrant, using a defense of illegal search and seizure.
He was certain that the bust of Shetani girls the night before had been the first blow and money drain. The defense cost and bail for Petra, plus the loss of the investment in any heroin confiscated, would escalate the pressure on Shetani.
Rucker smiled grimly. He’d strike at Shetani at every opportunity until he sent him to prison or drove him out of the jurisdiction.
Inside Tuta’s motel room, Petra withdrew a needle from Tuta’s arm.
“Thank you so much, Petra.”
Petra, seated beside her on the couch, hugged her. “You’re welcome, baby.”
Petra handed her the glassine bag from which the injection dope had been taken. Tuta reached into her bosom and handed Petra three hundred dollars in fifties.
“On the phone you said Pee Wee was out. How is she?” Tuta asked as she leaned to put out a cigarette in a coffee-table ashtray.
Petra laughed. “She’s in Daddy’s jail for aiding and abetting an escapee, you.”
Tuta sighed. “That’s so dirty. She didn’t even know I was leavin’…When do you think she’ll get out?”
Petra heard despair in her voice. She put an arm around her waist. “Daddy says she will get out when she tells where you are.”
Tuta broke into tears. “Poor Pee Wee. I can’t let her suffer like that. I’m going home with you,” she blubbered.
Petra held her in her arms. She knew it had been a mistake to tell her about Pee Wee’s plight. She didn’t want Tuta to return and take Shetani off his emotional hook. She w
anted him to suffer. Now she had no choice except to take Tuta home and take the credit for her return.
“Well, let’s get you packed,” she said as she got to her feet.
Tuta shoved the glassine bag into her bosom. Petra called a cab and requested that it come in a half-hour. They finished packing a moment before the cabbie blew his horn.
They left the room and walked toward the cab. Burly Detective Griffin got out of his Datsun, parked down the street. He reached them as they were about to enter the cab.
“Police! You’re both under arrest,” Griffin said as he flashed his badge and seized Petra’s wrist.
At that instant, Rucker pulled abreast of the cab. He leapt out and pursued Tuta, who had kicked off her shoes to dash down the sidewalk.
In the van, the twins watched the scene from a crowded parking lot across the street.
“Hey, Eli, ain’t that pig chasing Tuta the same one that stopped us?”
Eli nodded. “Yeah. Remember we heard in the street that his name is Rucker, head pig of the ho squad.”
They watched Rucker gaining on Tuta. Suddenly she glanced back at him and darted into the street. A fast-moving pickup truck slammed into her, brakes squealing. She flew through the air and dropped in the opposite lane of traffic. A moment later, the wheels of a diesel truck rolled across her neck and upper torso. Her chest gushed gore.
Rucker stood above her and waved traffic around her. The diesel driver ran to Rucker’s side. “I couldn’t help it! It was like she fell out of the sky beneath the wheels of my rig.”
Moments later, a police car and paramedics arrived on-scene. Rucker knew that Tuta was dead before an examining paramedic shook his head and said solemnly, “This one’s for the morgue.”
Shortly after, the twins watched as Tuta’s remains were sealed in a body bag and lifted into a morgue vehicle.
An hour later, in the squad room, Rucker completed writing his report of Tuta’s death. He conferred with Detective Griffin, Petra’s arresting officer. They both believed that she probably had some connection to the heroin found on Tuta. Despite the fact that Petra was clean, Rucker decided to hold her on an open charge. Perhaps she would develop junkie sickness and a spirit of cooperation before Shetani’s lawyer forced him to release her.
The Brooks twins sat on a sofa in Shetani’s sunken living room. They watched him, ashimmer in gold satin robe and pajamas, as he sat on a thronelike red silk chair. He had stared trancelike at the ceiling ever since they had given him their eyewitness account of Tuta’s death. Cazo finally fidgeted and said softly, “Cap, ’scuse me for buttin’ in on your thinkin’, but wastin’ the pig that chased Tuta into the morgue ain’t no problem. Me and Eli will chill his shit anytime you…”
Shetani shifted his fearsome jade orbs from the ceiling to Cazo’s face to silence him. Shetani’s coal-black face was deformed by pain and rage. He whispered through his teeth, “You two forget about Rucker. I’m gonna do all the killing for Baby Sis…starting with that stinking black ho locked up downstairs.”
Eli flung out his open palms. “But, Cap, why Pee Wee?”
Shetani’s pearly teeth flashed in a hideous smile. “She poisoned Toot against me and encouraged her to leave me.” He paused to wave them away. “Now, both of you, get out of my face.”
The twins quickly left the room. Sorrow and murderous hatred ached his head. He groaned and ground his fists against his temples. He remembered the day in the Harlem hospital when he was told Tuta had died of leukemia. He saw the bloody vision of himself, in his late teens, when he returned moments later with a tire iron. He saw himself smashing the heads and faces and limbs of nurses and doctors at random for letting Tuta die. He remembered how he had to be force-fed in the mental hospital where he was sent to prevent his suicide by starvation.
Now he staggered zombielike to his bedroom and locked himself in. He collapsed on the carpet and bellowed his anguish. He thrashed and clubbed the walls with his fists. Finally, drenched in sweat, he got to his feet and took a .38 automatic pistol from under a pillow. He dropped a key to the basement into a robe pocket. He unlocked the bedroom door and stepped into the hall. His stable, alarmed by the racket of his grief, stood frozen as they stared at him.
“Master, are you sick?” Akura, a Japanese pixie asked.
He waved the gun. “No, I’m fine. Get out of my face!”
The scantily clad girls fled. He went to the stairway leading to the basement cell. He unlocked the door and was about to switch on the basement light when he heard the faint sounds of soul music. He started down and stumbled—nearly fell down the steep stairs in his haste to kill Pee Wee. Petra had the only other key. He’d punish Petra for providing the radio, he told himself.
He tiptoed on the concrete to the candlelit cell. That fucking Petra, he thought, would get double punishment for providing the candle. He went to the cell door and glared at Pee Wee, catnapping on her steel-slab bed, covered by a quilt provided by Petra. He aimed the pistol at the center of her forehead. His trigger finger started to pull when it hit him that the killer of Tuta did not deserve an easy death. He lowered the gun and held it out of sight behind his thigh. “Wake up, scum ass!” he growled.
She opened her dope-clouded eyes and instinctively threw a jacket across the contraband radio before she sat up. Her eyes made him realize she had conned him on his last visit that she was half dead from kicking skag cold turkey.
“Shit, bitch, Petra’s got you living fine and dandy down here with my China white and everything.”
Pee Wee shut off the radio. “Master Daddy, Petra ain’t gave me no medicine. I shot up the last today I had stashed from my stealin’ trip. Please, Master, let me out so I can hit the road and make you some more money.”
He leveled the gun at her chest. “Strip, and throw your clothes through the bars.”
She stalled, her big eyes oozing tears. “Please, Master, I’m a good bitch. Don’t treat me like this.”
He gritted his teeth and fired a round into the wall that scorched her hair. A spurt of her urine splashed on the concrete. She jumped to her feet and tore off her clothes down to her bra and panties. She pushed her dress and slip through the bars. He turned them inside out. He waggled the gun. “C’mon, bitch, I want you stone naked.” He fired a round close to her feet. A sliver of concrete slashed a bloody gash on her ankle. She stripped off her panties and fumbled with her bra. She palmed a packet of dope as she unfastened the bra. A syringe fell to the floor. She pushed the bra and panties through the bars. He reached and grabbed the other hand and twisted her wrist until she squealed with pain and let the dope fall to the concrete.
He stared at her and smiled as he thought of the way he would kill her. He rocked on his heels and imagined her screaming in a maw of flames that would cinderize her. “Tuta’s dead, crushed by a truck. You helped her to leave me. You killed her!”
Pee Wee dropped down heavily on the steel slab. “Please, Master, don’t say that…I wouldn’t hurt sweet baby Tuta. Have a little mercy!”
He grinned obscenely. “I’m gonna kill you, bitch, in a day or two. So live it up with your radio and candle. Now, ain’t that mercy?” He picked up the dope packet before he went toward the stairway.
Pee Wee listened to his footsteps on the stairway. She heard him lock the basement door. Immediately she began to use a bobby pin to try to pick the padlock that secured the chain that locked her in. Fear and boiling hatred made her try unsuccessfully for several hours to free herself. She told herself she had to escape and kill Shetani, for his death threat and for conning her that he would fire Petra and make her his bottom woman. No less worse than that was the possibility she could end up serving a life sentence in Wisconsin for killing the German while on the stealing tour for Shetani.
At midnight, she heard someone unlock the basement door. She blew out her candle. An instant later, someone switched on the basement light and came down the stairs. Pee Wee shook with terror in a corner of the cell. She burst into te
ars when Petra came to the cell door, dressed in pink work clothes.
“Say, girl, pull yourself together or I’ll take this turkey club sandwich and shake away,” Petra said as she placed a paper bag on the cell-door shelf.
Pee Wee came to the door, wiping tears away. She pointed at the bullet gouges in the concrete and her lacerated ankle. “He shot at me! He told me he was going to kill me because Tuta was run over by a truck. He blames me! Please, help me get out of here!”
Petra removed dark glasses to reveal black-and-blue eye sockets. “This is what that radio and candle cost me. He’ll cool off. I don’t think he would kill you. He’d kill me if you escaped…besides, I don’t have a key to that padlock. Listen, I’ve got to go. He could show at any minute. He went out with the twins to find out what Rucker, a cop, looks like so he can kill him for chasing Tuta into the path of the truck that killed her.”
Pee Wee reached through the bars to grab Petra’s wrist. “He’s gone crazy! He’s gonna kill me! Please, bring me something to smash this lock. He won’t know you helped me. I’ll take the lock and everything with me. Please!”
Petra pulled her wrist from Pee Wee’s grip. “It can’t work. The only way out of here is that locked door at the top of the stairs. Only he and I have a key. I sympathize with you, kiddo, but not enough to commit suicide.”
Petra moved in close to the cell door. “Pee Wee, I’ve watched Daddy’s head fall apart here in California, but I don’t think he’s crazy enough to kill you. I’m making plans to cut him loose. If you’re still locked up when I split, I’ll help you to escape. That’s the best I can do.” Petra turned away for the stairway.
“Petra, I don’t need to go out that basement door!” Pee Wee shouted. Petra turned back to face her. “I can go through that window.”
Petra stepped back to look at a tiny window off the front driveway. Petra shook her head. “You can’t get through there, Pee Wee. It’s only a foot or so high and no more than eighteen inches wide.”
Pee Wee grinned. “You mean it’s that big? Shoot, me and a pal sawed off one bar in a cell and went out after greasing with Vaseline. I’m a tiny bitch, baby. Just bring me some butter, or even cooking oil, and a hammer or a bumper jack. Do it before the sun comes up. Will ya, huh?”