The Quality of the Informant cc-3 Read online

  "For one of her Mata Hari-style interrogations," Kelly interrupted.

  "LaMonica makes a telephone call from her place," Carr continued, "and uses the name Bob French. He tells her he plans to leave town the next day." He rubbed his chin. "LaMonica came to L.A. to get something he needed, or maybe to sell a package of bad paper." He had a puzzled expression.

  "It could be anything," Kelly said, coming out of his fugue.

  "Four-Lima-four from Los Angeles base," blared the Treasury radio. Carr opened the glove compartment, pulled out the microphone, and answered.

  "Meet Detective Higgins at the L.A. morgue, third floor."

  "Roger," Carr said.

  Chapter 9

  Carr and Kelly stepped into the morgue elevator and waited for the doors to close. There was an odor of formaldehyde. "Hold it!" shouted someone in the hall. Carr pushed the "open door" button. A freckled man in a pale green surgical outfit backed into the lift, pulling a gurney with a sheet covering everything on it except a yellowed toe.

  Kelly grimaced and pushed the third-floor button.

  "You guys here for a murder autopsy?" said the medic. A surgeon's cap balanced precariously on a mop of curly red hair. His voice had a tone of anticipation.

  Kelly shook his head no. He stared at the yellow toe.

  "This turkey electrocuted himself," said the red-haired man. "He wrapped an electrical wire around his head, grounded himself in his bathtub, and lust put in the old plug. Zappo!"

  Kelly shook his head sadly. "Poor guy," he said.

  The elevator stopped. The doors opened. "He got a real charge out of it!" the doc said. He laughed and waited for the agents to join in. When they didn't, he rolled the body out of the elevator and headed the opposite way down a sterile-looking corridor.

  "That's why I hate to come here," Kelly said as they walked down the hall. "These people are all creeps. Real honest-to-god one-hundred-percent creeps."

  Carr nodded.

  Higgins, a fortyish, crew-cut man who was the size of a football lineman, beckoned them into an office. They sat down around a table covered with bloody knives in transparent plastic envelopes and enlarged color photos of death scenes. One photo was a close-up of the belt around Linda Gleason's neck.

  "I'm waiting to observe my second autopsy for the day," Higgins said. "Some gang murders that happened last night." He ran a hand through his stubble of blond hair. "I've got a few minutes, so I'll give it to you briefly. Your girl died of strangulation and she had multiple head injuries. The murderer bashed her brains in with a heavy lamp base. He did this after he choked her out with a belt. There were no fingerprints in the apartment except for hers and those of a couple of bartenders from the Castaways Lounge she was balling. I showed LaMonica's photograph to every resident of the apartment house. No one could identify him, including the old lady next door. She wasn't wearing her eyeglasses. "

  "What about the taxi dispatchers?" Carr said.

  "Just getting to that," Higgins said. "The taxi company logs show no fare to Linda Gleason's address all day, which probably means that the cabby who drove LaMonica over there pocketed the fare." Higgins stretched his arms over his head. "So unless you can capture LaMonica and talk him into giving us a confession complete enough so that we can corroborate everything he says, we have no murder case." He turned his palms up.

  Carr raised his eyebrows. He shook his head. "I've read all his previous arrest reports. LaMonica doesn't confess when he gets arrested. He always goes to the joint without saying a word."

  "Then he'll beat the rap," Higgins said. "It's doubtful we could prove motive because we can't prove he knew she was the informant. For means, the murder weapons have no fingerprints. Proving opportunity is out because no one can place him at the scene of the crime. Getting the district attorney to file murder charges in this case would be about as easy as finding a doctor who'd admit a mistake."

  Carr stared at the floor for a minute.

  Kelly took a photograph from the array on the table and held it up. It was a five-by-eight of a group of pigeons pecking at what looked like popcorn strewn along a blood-splattered sidewalk. "What the hell is this?" he said with a disgusted look.

  "Pigeons eating human guts," said the cop. "Couple of Mexican chaps disemboweled one another on Wabash Avenue day before yesterday. Machetes. A young officer took the photo to prove that he tried to secure the original crime scene like he was supposed to. But the birds showed up for the feast."

  Kelly tossed the photo down.

  Carr said thanks to the detective. Then the two agents headed out of the office and down the hall toward the elevator.

  "Next time we come here I'm going to wait in the car," Kelly said. "I'm getting too old for this shit. I really am."

  "Me too," Carr said. He gave his partner a punch on the shoulder.

  In the moonlight the water along the coast was inky, its waves gray, ominous.

  Paul LaMonica pulled off the El Camino Real highway onto a bumpy road that led to the beach. After a hundred yards or so, his headlights illuminated a stucco building surrounded by sports cars and Cadillacs. The structure was the size of a small tract house. For God only knows what reason, it had been built catty-corner to the water. Like the rest of Baja architecture, it looked unfinished. Like some revolutionary slogan, the word Teddy's had been painted in red above the entrance.

  LaMonica parked his car and got out. The sound of Mariachi music and drunken conversation mixed with that of the waves slapping against the rocks. He went in.

  Inside the dimly lit hangout was a circular bar and a few tables occupied by as many boisterous, garishly dressed women as men — mostly bikers and their broads. Three Mexican guitar players strummed in the corner.

  Everyone, including the musicians, had their eyes on LaMonica as he made his way to a table.

  Behind the bar, Teddy Mora filled shot glasses from a half-gallon tequila bottle. He wore a Stetson with a red band and feather, and gold necklaces over a T-shirt with a cartoon illustration of a man with an oversized, drooling tongue. He waved at LaMonica and everyone stopped staring. LaMonica sat at an empty table.

  A few minutes later Mora moved to LaMonica's table carrying a tequila bottle and two glasses. He set the items on the table and pulled a lemon out of his trouser pocket. Using a penknife, he sliced it into wedges. He looked around to see if anyone was listening.

  "I'm running out of twenties," Teddy said, wiping the wet knife on his T-shirt.

  LaMonica shook his head. "They're all gone," he said.

  Teddy filled the glasses and sprinkled salt on the back of his hand. Taking a lick of the salt, he tossed back a shot of tequila. He chomped on a lemon wedge and spit the rind on the floor. "That's too bad," he said. "Everybody wants 'em." He laughed. "I even tossed a few in with my bar receipts and deposited them in the bank." He laughed again.

  "That's what you can do with my newest thing," LaMonica said.

  Teddy Mora looked puzzled.

  "Traveler's checks," LaMonica said. "You can dump a few in with your bar receipts. Even though they're counterfeit, the traveler's-check company will pay off, stand good for them. If they didn't, all of you legit businessmen would refuse to accept them and the company would go out of business."

  "In other words, the company is willing to take the loss," Teddy said.

  "Exactly."

  "Then lay some of that nice paper on me, my good man. Teddy loves Paulie's paper." He stuck out his bony hand.

  LaMonica pulled an envelope out of his back pocket and handed it to Mora. "You're the only person besides myself who knows about these. You will not deal them to anyone else. Use them yourself or throw them away."

  "In other words, Paulie has bigger plans for the checks. Teddy gets the picture. Your secret is safe with Teddy," Mora said reassuringly.

  "Has Sandy been around?" LaMonica asked.

  "She stops in for a few almost every night," Teddy said. "She's got a new boyfriend. He sticks with her like glu
e. Do you know who I'm talking about?"

  LaMonica shook his head.

  "The spook that drives the gold-colored Caddy. I think his name is Cole," Teddy said, "but he calls himself Mr. Cool."

  "Never heard of him."

  "Typical spook weight-pumper," Mora said. "He just got out of San Quentin. Supposedly he's wanted for violation of parole."

  "How tight is she hooked up with this Mr. Spook or whoever he is?" LaMonica said. He drank a shot of tequila and bit into the lemon. Warmth rushed to his face.

  "From the looks of it she ain't just 'trying one out,'" Teddy said. "You'll probably have to go through him if you want to use her."

  A young man wearing a safari jacket slid in the door and surveyed the crowd. He had greasy duck-tailed hair and no color in his face. An Oriental woman in skintight clothing followed him, her T-shirted nipples pointing like camouflaged radar. The man gave a clenched-fist salute to Teddy and the couple sat down at a table with two well-dressed Mexican men.

  Teddy Mora shook his head. "Things are nothing like the old days," he said. "That asshole will sit right there at that table and will, without so much as lowering his motherfuckin' voice, settle on a price with those two pushers. Then he'll probably do the deal; yes, actually make the goddamn transfer, right out in the parking lot. He'll have his bitch drive the dope across the border tonight. When she gets busted he'll actually wonder why. And when she hands him up he'll wonder why again. It'll probably never occur to the poor dumb shit that he did everything wrong; that, for all anybody knows, half the customers in this place are federal snitches waiting to tip off the customs people at the border. To that young jack-off, life is what he sees on TV. All the young punks today are out of touch with reality. To them everything is just a game. Maybe it's because they all get probation the first time out these days." Mora leaned into another shot of tequila and bit a lemon wedge. "People have been dropping like flies around here," he said. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "There's gotta be a turkey in the crowd," he whispered, "but I just can't figure out who. Somebody gets arrested almost every day, it seems like. This place is getting a bad name. Couple of American narcs bust in here the other day with the Mexican cops. They handcuffed a guy sitting right at the bar and dragged his ass out of here like a dog-some fugitive from L.A. I mean, like how in the hell did they know he was here?" Teddy's eyes surveyed the other tables suspiciously. "When I figure out who it is, I'll have the cocksucker snuffed out." Teddy chuckled. "Thank God down here it only costs two or three hundred bucks."

  "Or just tell me and I'll do the job for free," LaMonica said. He smiled.

  Prune-faced Teddy licked the rim of his shot glass. "Remind me never to piss you off, Paulie the Printer," he said.

  Chapter 10

  After an hour or so of driving up and down the streets of Ensenada like a tourist looking for a room, LaMonica found the gold Cadillac with the MR COOL license plate. It was parked in front of a motel that looked like the others in town, a place with lots of rooms built around a swimming pool that was too small and a bar that was larger than the restaurant. He pulled into a lot across the street, where he could keep an eye on the rooms and the car at the same time.

  For the next couple of hours he watched the comings and goings of the guests, mostly blue-collar types: hefty men in Bermuda shorts and uninteresting women carrying straw purses. Everyone was in various stages of tanning. They splashed one another in the pool, chased kids, and passed around bags of potato chips.

  Leaning back in the seat, LaMonica recalled how he and Sandy Hartzbecker had first met. They'd been sitting on plastic-covered sofas in the dingy reception area of the federal parole office in downtown Los Angeles. His first impression of her was that she was a woman who would be impossible to describe. She was neither homely nor attractive, and her face, as well as her height, weight, bra size, and shape of hips, was totally unremarkable. Even her age would be difficult to guess. She had crow's-feet but it was difficult to tell whether they were caused by excessive exposure to sun and wind or the normal aging process. She wore a loose-fitting blouse and jeans, and cheap tennis shoes. Her mousy-brown hair was in pigtails, and her complexion was forgettable; unblemished and devoid of makeup of any kind.

  She was precisely the type of woman he had been looking for.

  He could tell by the form letter she kept folding and unfolding that it was probably her first post-release visit.

  "Who's your parole officer?" he said.

  She referred to the form. "Mr. Askew."

  "He's mine, too," LaMonica said. He lowered his voice. "He's big on playing big brother — a God-squad type. Cry on his shoulder a little bit and ask for advice on something. He'll love it. If you ask, he'll go for waiving the monthly visits."

  "Thanks for the information." Her German accent was muted and as dreary as her appearance.

  After his visit to the parole officer, LaMonica waited in the hallway outside the office. When she came out, they entered the elevator together. The door closed.

  "You were right," she said. "He went for it."

  "Where'd you do your time?" he said.

  "Terminal Island."

  The elevator door opened. They dodged through a crowded lobby onto the street. LaMonica offered her a ride and she accepted.

  "What are you into?" she said when they were in the car.

  "Paper." LaMonica started the engine and slipped into the halting downtown traffic.

  "I did some once," she said. "Hundreds. I passed them in clothing stores in the San Fernando Valley." She gave an amused smile. "I bought so many cheap blouses I could have opened my own shop."

  "What's your business?"

  "My old man's business was heroin. I did time because I carried for him. I saw the feds following me so I got scared and threw the bundles out the window. It was the stupidest thing I've ever done in my whole life. I just lost my cool. When they arrested me they told me that if I hadn't thrown the stuff, they never would have known I was carrying. Every time I think about it it makes me sick."

  "Who's your old man?"

  "He's dead," she said. "A rip-off. It happened while I was in." She sighed. "But it may have been for the best. If I was with him now I'd probably be right back in all the shit."

  LaMonica pulled up to a run-down apartment house in the shadow of the Ambassador Hotel. Without asking, he turned off the engine and accompanied her up some steps to her door. She unlocked it and he followed her in. The one-bedroom apartment was sparsely furnished: a worn sofa and chair, a stack of German-language paperbacks on an end table next to a framed photograph of Sandy holding hands with a black man and dressed in army fatigues. They were posed on a cobblestone street.

  "That was my old man, in case you were wondering," she said without emotion. She tossed her purse down and sauntered into the tiny kitchen. She opened a cabinet and pulled out a bottle of bourbon. "He was a dope fiend and pusher, but he was always good to me."

  "I guess that's what it's all about," LaMonica said in his most sincere tone.

  They spent the rest of the afternoon sharing the quart of bourbon. Red-cheeked and tipsy from the liquor, she recounted her life story: a small town outside Munich, a taxi-driver father whose goal in life was to sell enough black-market G.I. liquor to buy his own Gasthaus, a mother who ran away with the town butcher and later came back, a Roman Catholic school whose nuns administered swats at the drop of a hat, and finally the story of her sister. Sandy Hartzbecker told the tale as if she were recounting the success story of the century: "She tricked in a fancy whorehouse in Stuttgart for three years and saved her money. When she left, she had enough to buy a Mercedes-Benz and a new identity. She moved to Frankfurt and started life all over again; told everyone she was a widow, that her husband had been a doctor who lost his life in a car accident. She ended up marrying a rich lawyer. It proved to me that people can make something of themselves if they really want to. I knew that I could be more than a waitress in a G.I. bar for the rest
of my life. I left Germany and came to the U.S. with my old man."

  That evening after some sex talk he followed her into the bedroom. As they undressed he noticed her sinewy housemaid's shoulders, her proud, dark nipples. She threw back the covers and climbed on the bed. He joined her and discovered that her sexual abilities were pretty much along the lines of her general appearance: mediocre at best. Afterward, they lay in the perspiration-soaked bed. She lit a cigarette.

  "You're different than other men," she said.

  "Howzat?"

  "Because you're gentle," she said. "I loved the way you went for my tits. You took your time with me and didn't rush. A tit man is a gentle man. I hate to be just used."

  The next year of nights was a blur of hotels and motels from Las Vegas to Newport Beach, the days spent passing and selling counterfeit money. Passing one bill at a time at shopping centers and department stores, fast-food joints, grocery markets. LaMonica would wait in the car as Sandy Hartzbecker went from store to store getting change for a twenty or fifty. With package deals, he would make the arrangements with a buyer and she would deliver the bills to a phone booth or a rental locker or a hotel room and pick up the payment. All in all, it was just like the song: a really good year … until Sandy's arrest.

  A black man with an Afro that looked half a foot high came out of a room on the second floor. He glanced around suspiciously and walked down the stairs to the gold Cadillac. He got in the car and drove off.

  LaMonica locked his sedan and trotted up the stairs two at a time. He tried the door handle. It was unlocked. He pushed the door open. There was the smell of sex in the room.

  Sandy Hartzbecker got up off the bed. She was naked, but made no attempt to cover herself. "What the hell do you want?" she asked.

  "Just to talk," LaMonica said.

  She grabbed a pair of Levi's off the end of the bed and wiggled into them. "The answer is no," she said. Having yanked on a pullover, she strode to the dresser mirror. Angrily, she picked up a brush. Ignoring his presence, she yanked it through her hair.