"If that's true, then we're fucked," Noah said. "There's no way we can touch her."
Frank silently agreed. Maybe this was the big thing she'd felt in her living room last night. If it was, that wasn't so bad. She could handle a crack lord. Narco had gone after Mother Love half a dozen times but the worst they'd done was make her lay low for a couple of weeks. Crackheads had hopped around the streets like fleas jumping off a dead dog, but within a month they'd crawled back under their rocks, back to sucking on pipes and bent antenna rods.
"You talked to her yet?"
Lewis shook her head, asking her partner, "We gonna do that today?"
"I'd hate to see all your hard work go to waste. Let's go talk to the upstanding citizens on your list before we hit the Mother. Maybe they'll drop something we can work her with."
Lewis nodded disappointedly, but seemed to understand Noah's logic. They broke up after another ten minutes and Frank snagged Noah.
"How's paperwork coming for the Colonel?"
"Unless Sister Shaft did it after typing her 40-page suspect list, it isn't."
"That's what I thought. You get it started. I'ma roll with your partner this morning."
"That's not much of a deal," Noah complained.
"You're right," Frank grinned, "but I want to see your girl in action."
"How'd she get to be my girl?" Noah grumbled. "You're the one that's a god to her."
"How's that?"
"Christ, she thinks you can walk on water." Noah's eye somersaulted when he said, "She says you're an inspiration and that she appreciates how you've kept your eye on her. That you picked her when you could have had any of a dozen vets. You're her angel for sure. She'll be flyin' backwards out there tryin' to please you."
Frank smiled, remembering her mentor. She'd have rather cut off and pickled her toes than disappoint Joe Girardi. Frank started prioritizing her day as Darcy stepped into her office.
"You wanted to see me?"
"Yeah. Sit down."
He settled easily into her old vinyl couch. She thought it curious he hadn't taken the chair on the other side of the desk.
"How'd you know about that .44 in the refrigerator?"
"Just a hunch." He shrugged.
"Helluva hunch."
When he didn't offer anything more, Frank said, "Explain it to me."
"There's nothing to explain. I just kept thinking about a .44 in a refrigerator. A stainless steel one like you'd find in a commercial kitchen. I knew Jill had a vie shot with a .44 and that they couldn't find the weapon. It was just a SWAG," he concluded, some wild-assed guess.
"That's all?" Frank drilled him with her blue beams on high.
"That's it."
Frank studied her cop a beat longer.
"Nice heads up," she finally said. "Leave the door open."
She watched Darcy leave. Her new cop came with a clean record. He hadn't given Frank any cause for suspicion, but then again, neither had Ike Zabbo, and she thought she'd known him a hell of a lot better than Darcy James. Lewis interrupted Frank's rumination.
"Noah says I'm riding with you this morning."
Frank grunted, "In an hour or so," and followed Lewis into the squad room. Frank wanted the time to get some background on Mother Love Jones. If Lewis was right, she was riding a pretty fast horse. Frank considered reassigning the case to Noah, but only for a second. She had confidence in Lewis. There were nuances she couldn't be expected to know yet, but under Noah's tutelage and Frank's watchful eye she felt Lewis could handle the case.
Frank pawed through the shelves of cold files. When she was brand new in the nine-three, Girardi had been sweating blood trying to build a case against the Mother. She found the murder book she was looking for and blew the dust off it. The binder was thin but probably had a good bio on Mother Love.
Someone had thoughtfully left a quarter inch of coffee to thicken and burn. Frank dumped it and made a fresh pot. She filled her cup while it still perked through the basket and settled at her desk with the musty binders.
Peter Gough, retired now, had been the primary on the case of an aspiring high-roller torched in his Monte Carlo. Gough had nothing—no prints, no wits, no trace. All he had was street talk. One of Gough's CIs, a confidential informer that was still working with Diego, had passed along what he knew as a minor player. Other CI's reinforced the talk, but it was all hearsay. The vie had burned MLJ—as Gough referred to her in his notes—coming up shy a couple keys in a coke deal. Then the vic compounded his mistake by bragging. A week later he was found chained to his steering wheel, crispy and still smoking. The only thing they knew for sure was what the coroner said, that the vie had been alive when he was immolated and had fought like hell to free himself.
Frank marveled at MLJ's rap sheet; conspiracy, felony possession, intent to distribute, assault with deadly weapon, fraud. Sixteen pages and not one conviction. Frank wondered if she had connections in the system.
Don't even go there, she warned herself.
Gough kept referring to an old case number and Frank delved back into the cold files.
"Whatcha lookin' for?" Noah asked. He was a good detective because he couldn't mind his own business.
"An old case involving the Mother."
"Oh, yeah?"
"Gough caught one when I came on. A baby-baller fried in his hooptie. He keeps referring to this other one. Here it is."
Frank blew dust again.
Behind her Noah asked, "You thinking what I'm dunking?"
"Probably."
Maybe because they'd had the rare LAPD opportunity to have worked with each other most of their careers, or maybe because Noah knew her better than any other human being, they shared an uncanny access to each other's thoughts.
"That if Lewis is right, and I'm thinking she might be, that this case could be a motherfucker?"
"Kinda like that," Frank agreed. "You should see her sheets. Multiples on everything and not one conviction."
"Think she's got an angel?"
"Don't even think that. If she does, she can keep him."
Frank was on thin departmental ice after exposing Ike Zabbo and had no taste for chasing the Mother up a conspiracy tree. She'd jeopardized her career enough with Ike and wasn't about to risk it again over a hustler's slit throat. Narco or the rats in Internal could take on the Mother. Frank wouldn't.
Noah followed into her office. They skimmed through the first case, a Honduran coke dealer who appeared to have fallen off a roof. The autopsy indicated a struggle, as did evidence on the rooftop. The case had been Joe's. Evidently he'd had a wit but she'd refused to talk.
As she considered how the Mother had burned her old boss twice, Noah chimed, "No wonder he wanted her so bad."
"Check on the wit. See if time's mellowed her," Frank said, scanning the Mother's brief bio.
Crystal Love Jones, nee Crystal Green. Married Richard Love in 1963. He died in 1964. Crystal Green inherited two Laundromats and a large property on Slauson Avenue.
"Set up pretty nice for a seventeen-year-old," Noah said, reading over her shoulder.
The young Mother Love, still just Crystal Love then, took over running the laundries and renting the Slauson property. Joe had pulled her income tax records. They were neatly organized by an accountant and showed she paid on time every year. Starting in 1968 the tax bills indicated a large amount of money moving through her newly organized nonprofit Spiritual Church of Saint Jude.
In 1976 she married Eldridge Jones. Four years later he was in Soledad on possession. Around that time the Mother started acquiring serious felony charges. In '80 the Slauson property became her legal residence and she began steadily purchasing a number of businesses—a liquor store, a beauty shop, another liquor store, a corner mart.