Hood scrolled back through his almost four years with the Sheriffs trying to remember Mara Salvatrucha and the Crazy Boyz mixing it up, but couldn’t think of one incident.
“Haven’t seen much of this,” he said to Marlon. “Different gangs fighting it out.”
“I wonder if anyone walked away,” said Marlon.
“Funny they’d leave the guns.”
Marlon nodded. “If there was a winner, I’d put my money on the Salvadorans. I wish this guy could talk.”
They were standing next to a dead man dressed in a black suit and a white open-collared shirt and a pair of dull black dress shoes splayed out at the end of his thick legs. To Hood, shoes had come to seem irrelevant on dead men, of whom he had seen more than several in his twenty-eight years. The Racks in al Anbar wore sandals or nothing, so to him death was a shoeless thing.
He looked at the four holes in a diagonal line across the front of the white shirt, automatic fire from the Salvadorans almost for sure. The guy had no gun, apparently. He looked wrong here, like he’d wandered in from another place or time.
Without turning him over, Marlon worried out the man’s wallet and stood. “Barry Cohen,” he said. “ Hollywood. Cohen and Cohen Gemstones in the diamond district, says this business card. What’s a nice Jewish boy doing at this party?”
Hood had been thinking the same thing. “Maybe it was his party,” he said. “Him and the Asians. This is their turf. Maybe the Salvadorans crashed it.”
Marlon nodded but didn’t look away from the bodies. “Him and the Asians doing what?”
“Diamonds come to mind.”
“I wonder. The Asian Boyz wouldn’t pay him a tenth of what they’re worth retail. Barry’s got a fat markup for engagements and anniversaries.”
Hood considered. “How much cash did he have?”
“Eighty… three bucks.”
“Maybe Barry was paying for something with gems instead of money. To a broker, gems are cheaper than cash.”
“Maybe he was. And if tonight was the night he brought payment to the Boyz, then the diamonds are either here in this mess or went out with the winners. Good you sealed off the parking lot, Charlie. There might be some blood out there if one of these guys got away.”
“If he was shot, that would explain leaving the guns.”
Marlon put his hands on his hips and looked down at the bloody heap of dead men. “Looks like Cu Chi.”
“Or Hamdaniya.”
“Ten men. Jesus.”
Marlon had invited Hood one evening after work to a bar where they drank and agreed that war is worse than hell, because hell punishes sinners but war punishes everyone.
Marlon led the walk-through, and Hood gave way to photographers and videographers, crime scene specialists, coroner’s investigators, more detectives, an assistant district attorney and an LASD commander.
Hood followed Marlon at an increasing distance but listened and watched carefully. He knew that the proper deployment of personnel at a crime scene was something he’d need to learn. Here it was orderly and systematic, and people knew their jobs. But in Anbar province there had been sullen crowds and sudden lethal chaos, and Hood was hated not only by the people but by the soldiers whose actions he was sometimes called on to investigate. Sometimes it seemed like everybody wanted to kill him.
Two tours was enough. He had left a good job with the Sheriffs to go over there because his father was navy and his grandfather was navy. They put him in NCIS-Navy Criminal Investigative Service-because of his law enforcement background, though most of his time as a deputy he’d worked the jail. His last tour had ended almost three years ago, when he was twenty-five years old, but Hood still woke up in the dark sometimes with the echoes of IEDs and gunfire in his ears and the taste of Iraqi dust in his mouth.
He shadowed the Miracle Auto Body crime scene investigation for two more hours. Nobody found any evidence that the diamond broker had brought any of his wares. There might be dozens of other explanations for Barry Cohen getting together with the Asian Boyz, but Hood couldn’t think of one. It looked to him like MS-13 had ambushed the Asians and Cohen, like they knew something valuable was in the mix. But they’d been a little short on manpower.
He went outside to watch the physical evidence team search the parking area in the bright white of the searchlights. A generator hummed against the distant roar of the freeways. The coroner’s team wheeled the bodies out one at a time, the dead wrapped and strapped and jiggling as the gurneys came down the steps.
Half an hour later a faint pink haze appeared in the east, and the power towers stood in diminishing perspective against the growing sunlight, arms stretched and the wires drooping. Marlon and the commander came from the building. The commander was on a cell phone, and he stepped among the damaged cars for privacy.
Marlon waved Hood over.
“I’m bringing you on with us,” Marlon said.
“Great, sir. I didn’t know if it would happen.”
“Admin’s been slow but I’ll push it the rest of the way through. Wyte will okay it if I ask him to. We’ll have you out of patrol by the end of the week, so for now, you’ve got two jobs-patrol and homicide.”
“Thanks again.”
“You asked for it. The dogs will be glad to have you.”
Hood nodded. LASD homicide called themselves the Bulldogs because they never gave up. Even in law enforcement circles they were known to be indefatigable.
Marlon ran a comb back over his head, the black hair parting into neat, close rows, an old man’s ritual, thought Hood. Marlon blew through the comb teeth and slipped it into a back pocket.
“I stopped a woman tonight just before I came here,” Hood said. “She drove right by, kind of middle of nowhere. Came up clean but she could have seen something. I wasn’t sure what to make of her. A little eager to be on her way.”
“Local?”
“No, San Diego County.”
“Talk to her. You know these dead Asians?”
“I’ve seen three of them around. Wilton Street click.”
“Notify their families and find out what they know. The coroner will help with addresses. That part of it is lousy work, but welcome to the dogs.”
6
L upercio stood before the Bull with his hands folded in front of him, looking down at the crease in his trousers left by the tie of the machete scabbard. He repeated the license number of the yellow Corvette and watched the Bull poke at his PDA with the stylus. Lupercio wondered at the tools of men: a machete, a computer, a stylus. He didn’t know the man’s name.
Above him the Bull sat behind a very large brushed aluminum desk on a raised dais. The wall behind him was mirrored all the way to the ceiling, where recessed low-voltage bulbs blared down a bright white light. In the glass Lupercio saw the reflection of the Port of Long Beach behind him, the great cranes rising against the first rosy light of the morning, sunrise on steel. Even early Sunday the place was moving. Lupercio had heard that the longshoremen who ran the cranes got a thousand dollars an hour on Sundays and holidays.
“What model year was the Corvette?” asked the Bull. His voice was clear and forceful.
“This year,” said Lupercio. “The license plate holder said Gooden Chevrolet.” You’ll get a good’un at Gooden, he thought.
Now the Bull tapped at a keyboard. There were four flat-screen monitors on the desk, two on each side of him, and four keyboards. Four printers. Under the desk were four computer towers. All of the computers were housed in handsome brushed aluminum cases, finished in such a way to catch light and reflect it in soft colors, like a muted rainbow. They were nothing like you saw in the computer stores or on the TV, noted Lupercio. They made urgent humming noises. There were very few cable connections between them.