“About what, ma’am?”
“You’re talking about the little white kid, right? The kid who killed that baby girl.”
“Troy Turner,” said Milo.
Anita Moss’s shoulders tightened. A fisted right hand drummed the seat. “Now you’re here?”
“What do you mean, ma’am?”
“Right after Nestor told me about it I tried to tell the authorities. But no one listened.”
“Which authorities?”
“First, at Chaderjian. I phoned them and asked to speak to whoever was in charge of solving crimes that take place in the prison. I spoke to some therapist, counselor, I don’t know. He listened to me and said he’d get back but he never did. So I called the cops- Ramparts station because Nestor lived here. They said it was Chaderjian’s jurisdiction.”
Her eyes blazed.
Milo said, “I’m sorry, ma’am.”
“I called because Nestor was scary. He was living with Mom, I didn’t want him doing anything crazy.”
Her eyes were wet. “It was hard to tell on him. He was my brother. But I had to think of Mom. No one cared then, and now Nestor’s dead and you’re here. Seems like a waste of time.”
“What exactly did Nestor tell you?”
“That he was a hit man at Chaderjian. That he got paid to hurt or kill people and that he’d killed a bunch of kids in the prison.”
“When did he tell you this?”
“Not long after he got out- a couple of days after. It was my brother Antonio’s birthday and we were at my mom’s, trying to have a family dinner, my brothers and their families, Jim and me. Mom wasn’t feeling well, she really didn’t look good, but she made a beautiful dinner. Nestor showed up late, with expensive tequila and a dozen Cuban cigars. He insisted all the guys go outside and smoke. Jim doesn’t touch tobacco so he refused but my brothers went out on the balcony. Soon after my oldest brother Willy came in and said Nestor was running his mouth about all kinds of crazy things, violent things, and he didn’t want Mom to hear, I should quiet Nestor down.”
She frowned.
“You handled Nestor better than anyone,” I said.
“I was the only one willing to confront him and he never got hostile with me. Maybe because I’m a girl and I was nice to him even when he was a wild little kid.”
“So you went to talk to Nestor.”
“He was smoking this gigantic cigar, making all this stinky smoke. I told him to blow it the other way, then I said stop talking trash. He said, ‘I’m not talking trash, Anita, I’m talking real.’ Then he gave this bizarre smile and he said, ‘It’s kind of a Christian thing.’ I said what do you mean and he said, ‘Hanging dudes up and letting them bleed is making ’ em like Jesus, right? That’s what I did, Anita, I didn’t have no nails but I tied up a dude and cut him and made him bleed.’
“It made me sick. I told him to shut up, he was grossing me out and if he couldn’t behave himself he should leave. He kept going on about what he’d done, like it was really important for him to talk about it. He stayed on the Christ thing, saying he was like Judas, got twenty pieces of silver to do the job. Then he said, ‘But he was no Jesus, he was the Devil in a little white kid’s body, so I did a good thing.’ I said what are you talking about and he said the dude he hung up was some little white kid who killed another little white kid. Then he pulled something out of his pocket and showed it to me. It was an I.D. card from Chaderjian, just like Nestor’s but with another kid’s picture on it.”
“Troy Turner.”
“That was the name on the badge. I said you could get that anywhere. Nestor went nuts, said, ‘I did it, I did it! Hung the dude up and made him bleed, look him up on your computer, smart girl, there’s gotta be something there.’ ”
A tremor ran down the center of Anita Moss’s throat. “He’d made me sick to my stomach. Mom had cooked this beautiful dinner, all her beautiful food and I felt like it was all coming up. I yanked the cigar out of Nestor’s mouth and ground it out with my foot. Then I told him to shut up, I meant it, and went back inside. Nestor left and didn’t return, which was fine with everyone. That night, trying to sleep, I couldn’t stop thinking about that kid’s picture on the badge. He looked so young. Even with Nestor’s always bragging and lying, he freaked me out. ’Cause of the details.”
“What details?” said Milo.
“He insisted on telling me how he did it. How he’d followed that little boy for days. ‘Hunted the dude like a rabbit.’ He learned Troy Turner’s routine, finally cornered him in a supply room off the gym.”
Her face crumpled. “Talking about it now makes me sick. Nestor said he hit him in the face to subdue him. Then, he…” She gulped again. “That night, after Jim fell asleep, I got out of bed and went on the computer and plugged in Troy Turner’s name. Found a short article in the Times and a longer one from a paper near Chaderjian. What they both said matched everything Nestor told me. Maybe Nestor didn’t do it, maybe he just heard about it and got that badge somehow.”
I said, “Knowing Nestor, you believe he could’ve done it.”
“He was proud of it!”
“Nestor said he’d been paid to kill other boys,” said Milo. “Did he mention any other names?”
She shook her head. “Troy Turner was the only one he wanted to talk about. Like that had been a real big accomplishment for him.”
“Because Troy was notorious?” I said.
She nodded. “He said that. ‘Dude thought he was a stone killer but I killed his ass.’ ”
“Did he say how much he’d been paid?”
Anita Moss shook her head. Lowered her eyes. “I came to hate Nestor, but talking about him like this…”
“Did Nestor ever talk about who paid him, ma’am?”
She kept her head down, spoke softly. “All he said was that it was a white guy and the reason was Turner had killed a baby.”
“Did he give you any details about this white guy?” said Milo.
“No, just that. I told the exact same thing to that counselor. When he didn’t call back, I phoned the police. No one cared.”
Her lips folded inward. She shook her head back and forth.
“That boy,” she said. “That picture. He looked so young.”
CHAPTER 23
Milo and I sat in a rear booth of a coffee shop on Vermont just north of Wilshire, drinking Cokes, waiting for Ramparts Detective Philip Krug. Krug had been in his car when we reached him and he welcomed the opportunity for lunchtime company.
The locale was his choice, a big, bright, half-empty place with puce-colored vinyl booths, cloudy windows, and the outward profile of a toy rocket ship.
He was twenty minutes late and I used the time to raise the issues Allison had brought up.
Milo said, “The premeditation thing’s interesting, but I don’t see where it takes us. Rand wanting to feel less guilty by blaming Lara could be important. If he tried it on Malley. What do you think about Nestor’s bragging?”
“Sounds authentic. He knew all the details,” I said.
“I was thinking about the white guy hiring him.”
“Revenge hit. It fits.”
He looked at his Timex.
I said, “Troy bragged, too, when I interviewed him in jail. Said he had plans to be rich.”
“You’re thinking he had hit-man fantasies, too?”
“I don’t see him planning for the Ivy League. Maybe he saw Kristal as career practice.”
“Goddamn little savages. What do you do with them?”
Phil Krug was a compact man in his forties with thin red hair and a copper-wire mustache so thick it extended farther than his crushed nose. He wore a gray suit with a navy shirt and a pale blue tie. The waitress knew him and said “The usual?” before he had a chance to sit down.