Harbor Nocturne (21 page)

FOURTEEN

T
he discovery of
the body of a strip club dancer was covered by the
Los Angeles Times
the next morning. The story said that an unidentified source at the club indicated that the dancer may have been an undocumented Asian immigrant, and that her name and identification might be fictitious. It wasn’t a big story, but it was big enough for Brigita Babich to notice and read with her coffee, before Dinko and Lita had showered and dressed.

Dinko, entering the kitchen ahead of Lita, saw at once the grim set of his mother’s mouth.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Look at this,” she said, showing him the newspaper story.

“My God,” Dinko said, and crossed himself involuntarily.

“Now are you ready to take her to the police?”

“Yes,” he said. “Now I’m ready.”

Lita entered the kitchen wearing her jeans and her only tee that was clean, and asked, “Is okay if I wash my clothes today?”

“Sit down, Lita,” Brigita said. “Let me read this to you.”

As Brigita read, Lita’s eyes widened and the corners of her mouth turned down. After Brigita was finished, she put the newspaper down and, without a word, poured a glass of orange juice for Lita.

Dinko said, “We gotta call the police today, Lita. There’s no choice now. You gotta tell them you saw someone resembling Kim driving Daisy away. Understand?”

Lita nodded, her eyes glistening. “I have much fear,” she said.

“You don’t have to fear the police,” Brigita said. “They’ll treat you very well because you’re an important witness. They won’t be worrying about your immigration status.”

Lita said, “No, I have fear that Mr. Kim will find me!”

D2 Albino Villaseñor drove straight from his home in Montebello to San Pedro in the city car that he got to take home by virtue of his job as an on-call homicide detective. His detective partner would be attending the postmortem, scheduled to begin at 11:00
a.m
., where they’d be told officially what they already knew: she’d died from strangulation, probably on the day she’d disappeared. The contusions on her neck suggested that she’d been garroted.

Bino Villaseñor remembered back thirty-one years to when he was a young cop and the OGs used to refer to Harbor Division as “San Pedro PD,” as though, by virtue of its remote location, it was not part of the LAPD. He’d been told by coppers who’d worked Harbor Division that you were on your own down there if you needed an airship. By the time a police helicopter could get to a San Pedro incident, chances were good that the crisis would’ve been resolved in some other way. And the nearest LAPD division that could help you was housed at Seventy-seventh Street Station, a long way from Pedro, especially in heavy traffic. The Port Police was the closest agency they could depend on for faster emergency assistance.

In many ways, Harbor Division was sort of a police department unto itself. When Bino was a young cop, he’d always wondered what it would’ve been like to work way down there, back in the day when the Porthole Saloon on Sixth Street used to stay open until 4:00
a.m
. to illegally accommodate the Fish Town coppers. Now the Porthole was gone.

He found the Babich house easily enough, arriving just as Brigita was preparing a brunch of
cevapcici,
a kind of Croatian hamburger made of spicy pork, with a side of
blitva,
Swiss chard with potatoes and garlic and lots of special olive oil, and bread from an Italian bakery. Of course, she insisted that Bino Villaseñor have something to eat before his interview with Lita Medina, but the detective asked courteously if he might speak to Ms. Medina privately and then join them for the Croatian brunch.

Bino and Lita spoke outside on the patio, each with a glass of iced tea. The entire interview was in Spanish, and Bino was careful not to alarm the young woman with any hint that she might be in danger. He made it seem no more urgent than if she were making a routine police report on an annoying neighbor who was disturbing the peace with loud parties.

But he asked her twice in Spanish if she was sure that Daisy had yelled angry things in her mother tongue at the driver of the big black car with the shiny wheels.

And Lita answered, “
Sí, señor
.”

Then he asked her twice if she was absolutely sure that the driver of the car had said something to Daisy and that Daisy had looked fearful when she got into the car.

And Lita answered, “
Sí, señor
.”

Then he asked her if she’d seen enough of the driver’s profile to positively say that it was Mr. Kim. She hesitated and shook her head, indicating that the glimpse she’d gotten was of a big man with black hair who looked similar to Mr. Kim, but she could not swear that it was him.

Bino took down the address of Lita’s mother and brothers, and the telephone number of the neighbor in Guanajuato who could be relied upon to fetch Lita’s mother to the phone. This was just in case Lita Medina decided to escape the duty of testifying in a murder case and opted instead to return home to Mexico.

After they were finished, and Bino was satisfied that he had all that might help build a case against the elusive Mr. Kim, Bino and Lita joined Dinko and Brigita Babich in the kitchen.

Bino Villaseñor sat at the table, tucked a corner of a cloth napkin inside his shirt collar, and said, “This looks like the kind of midday meal my mother used to make on Sundays.”

Dinko said, “And this is Monday. You shoulda seen what she made yesterday.”

The detective was talkative, and told funny stories about police work in Hollywood. When it was time to leave, he thanked Brigita Babich. And he thanked Lita Medina, saying he would be in touch with her at the Babiches’ phone number. Then, with a subtle movement of his head, he indicated that Dinko should walk him to his car.

As soon as they were out of earshot of the women in the house, Bino told Dinko, “I don’t think you have anything to worry about. We’ll find William Kim if he’s still in L.A., but it might take some time. Half the population of Koreatown is named Kim and the other half is Lee, but his name doesn’t appear on any of the documents or records at Club Samara. Personally, I think that after hearing we found the dancer’s body, he might’ve already booked a flight to points west.”

“How would he know that Lita saw him with Daisy?”

“Ms. Medina made the mistake of telling too much of what she saw to the other roommate, Violet,” Bino said. “Like the fact that Daisy spoke Korean to the driver of the black car. I’m guessing that Violet coughed that up to Kim the second he gave her the bad eye or a couple hundred bucks. So we gotta figure that Kim believes that Lita can positively identify him as the guy who took Daisy on her last ride that day. Even though she can’t.”

“If he thinks that, it’s not good,” Dinko said.

Bino said, “But Kim might feel confident that an undocumented Mexican girl would be too scared to call the police. He might be lying low for a while to see what shakes out. What you have to understand about these organized crime foreign nationals from former Eastern bloc countries, and I’ll lump the Koreans in there with them, is that they don’t do business like our OC types. They’re basically cold war hoodlums. No matter what kind of show they put on with big cars, and tailor-made suits, and houses on Mount Olympus, they’re still thugs. Which makes them unpredictable. And that means that Kim could be very dangerous if he’s still around L.A. And if he’s guilty of the murder.”

“Can Lita get police protection?” Dinko asked.

Bino shook his head. “We can’t begin to prove yet that Kim’s the one who killed Daisy. He’s just another person of interest as of now. But if we can link him to her murder, this case will likely be taken away from me. It’ll involve federal crimes and human trafficking that caused the deaths of thirteen people in the container yard.”

Dinko said, “Is there
anything
you can do for us right now?”

Bino said, “I’ll personally contact the watch commander at Harbor Station and request that cars make frequent drive-bys at this address around the clock, even though from what you’ve told me, there’s no way Kim could know that Ms. Medina is staying here at your house. Still, be alert until we make contact with him or until we’re sure he’s fled the country.” He added, “And if our investigation clears him, I’ll let you know right away.”

“I don’t think you believe in that possibility,” Dinko said, but Bino only smiled and replied, “If it walks like a duck . . .”

Dinko said, “If he
is
the killer, will you find other evidence that’ll tie him to Daisy’s murder so that Lita’s testimony is not so important?”

“We’re hoping,” Bino said. “When they’re finished posting the body today, we might get some idea if there’s a chance for DNA evidence. If there is, it’ll take a while to get results, given the backlog and the process itself. On
CSI
they get DNA hits in about thirty minutes, but it doesn’t work that way in real life.”

“I really appreciate the way you’ve handled this with Lita,” Dinko said, shaking hands vigorously with Bino Villaseñor. “You were gentle.”

By way of a good-bye, the detective simply looked at Dinko and said, “She’s a very fine girl, son.” And then he was in his car and heading north from Fish Town.

It was a day that Hector Cozzo would never forget. He wasn’t sure if his life had begun to unravel at the off-the-hook Saturday night fiasco at his home, or if this was the day it happened. Hector had slept late after doing too much cocaine and vodka the night before, and he hadn’t read the morning newspaper, nor heard any news on TV. It was late afternoon when he decided to drive to the Mercedes dealer to show the service manager what some Armenian asshole had done to his car and to set up an appointment for bodywork. But when he got there he was told to first make a police report, which was required by the dealership’s insurance company.

He grumbled to no avail, but after stopping at a bar for a quick drink he drove to Hollywood Station on Wilcox to make the written report, precisely as he’d been advised to do outside Club Samara by the snarky Jewish cop and his little female sidekick. Hector parked on the street in front and walked across the marble-and-brass stars bearing the names of Hollywood Station cops killed in the line of duty. He entered, seeing two cops manning the desk in the lobby.

One of them was Asian and one was Latino, and Hector thought, Jesus! Isn’t there one fucking white Christian left in all of Hollywood?

The Latino cop said, “Can I help you?”

“Yeah,” Hector said. “Some Armo shithead keyed the hood of my Benz with some Armenian Power bullshit, and the dealer where I leased it says I gotta get a police report with a certain number on it before they’ll do anything.”

“Did the car dealer ask for a DR number?”

“Yeah, that’s it, I think.”

“It’s just an LAPD crime report number,” the desk officer said. “I’ll be glad to take care of you.”

Hector made his report, signed it, and left the lobby, thinking his luck just had to change somehow. And it did, instantly. For the worse.

The midwatch roll call had just ended and the six cars were pulling out of the parking lot, with the partners in 6-X-32 deciding to head north on Wilcox and maybe grab something at Starbucks to get their engines revved with an instant buzz from an
americano
. Hollywood Nate had always told them that a few shots of bitter espresso could wake up Sleeping Beauty and Rip van Winkle, but maybe not the Unicorn.

Flotsam was driving and Jetsam was keeping the books and filling out the spaces on the log when they drove past Hector Cozzo as he was getting into his car. They didn’t notice him, not with the setting sun glaring into the driver’s side window and careening off their windshield. But he noticed them.

Hector Cozzo clearly saw Kelly, the degenerate peg-leg guy, now wearing a police uniform. There was no doubt about it! And the other cop driving looked like the suntanned, trash-talking hoodlum that’d been chased down and put in handcuffs!

Hector Cozzo’s legs went weak. He had to sit down in his car and try to process what he’d just seen, and wonder in amazement how the cops could’ve known about Basil’s perverse fascination with amputees. And how in the hell could they even have a peg-leg cop working at Hollywood Station to sell the sting? And what were they after if not Markov’s entire cash business of selling upscale pussy, and that included the participation of Hector Cozzo? And now he was grateful that the crazy quack had shown up at his house on Saturday night and prevented any illegal activity from taking place in front of the fucking peg-leg cop!

It just became too much to fathom, and Hector cried out, “THIS AIN’T FAIR!” which scared away a hungry crow that was hopping around Hollywood Station’s Walk of Fame while pecking at a half-eaten taco lying on a brass-and-marble tribute to a long-dead cop.

Hector started up his Mercedes, but he was so shaken that he almost rammed another radio car exiting the Hollywood Station parking lot, and he had to slam on the brakes.

The passenger in that radio car, known to all at Hollywood Station as the Unicorn, looked out the open window of his shop and growled, “Pay attention, buddy.”

Hector muttered, “Yeah, okay.” Then, under his breath: “I hope you buy it tonight, you fat asshole!”

The defenders and colleagues of Officer Chester Toles—who knew nothing of Hector Cozzo’s curse—would later maintain that it was the case on trial in Los Angeles Superior Court on that very Monday that effectively ended Chester’s police career. They said that if he’d not been needlessly subpoenaed, and if he’d not sat through hours of terrible testimony that day, what occurred later that night on Watch 5 might never have happened the way that it did.

The preliminary hearing in superior court earlier that day had concerned the kidnapping and rape of an eight-year-old girl who’d been ambushed two months earlier while walking home from school with an older neighbor girl. Both girls were the children of Thai immigrants who were restaurant workers, and both lived in rented houses they shared with other Thai families in similar straits. The kidnapper had jumped out of his borrowed car and grabbed the girl, pulling her right out of her shoes.