Hinky (3)

“Yeah, that’s him,” Yates heard himself say even though he’d never seen the man in his life. On the drive up Figueroa to Fourth, he’d rehearsed every possible permutation and, in the end, Yates blurted out the only response he’d determined he shouldn’t give. He was, however, able to restrain himself from adding that he’d just eaten dinner with the guy who most likely murdered the victim.

“Did you make a stop?” the Lieutenant asked him.

“No, I checked for warrants and went to dinner. The car was clean.” God help him if the dead man’s car was discovered at the very location Yates had called Code 7.

“What happened to him?”

“Looks like he crawled under a car and died. The lady over there got in her car and couldn’t back out because something was blocking her wheels. By the way, what color was his car?”

“Eight shades of grey.”

Yates wasn’t worried about the time of death. Elvis Presley could have been driving the Mercedes behind dirty windows at the time he ran the plate and no one would have seen him. What did worry him was that Clive might have left the car sitting at the Pantry just to tie him to the situation. Yates took the Harbor freeway south to Eighth and made his way to the pay lot, which served the restaurant. No Mercedes and no Clive.

Yates then drove around the immediate area to see if the car had been abandoned within walking distance, but it hadn’t been. He headed north on Figueroa once again, this time aimlessly cruising while thinking about the events of the past hour or so. That’s when he noticed the white card tucked under the windshield wiper of his patrol car.

Yates veered to the curb with such ferocity that anyone seeing the maneuver would have thought that he swerved to miss a pedestrian. He leapt out of the car and tore the card from the wiper blade. It read: Sloan Used Tires. He turned the card over to find the handwritten scrawl of a seven-year-old. It read: To collect your Happy Birthday present come to Roscoe’s at 5 tomorow.

Later, when Yates returned to his studio apartment in a complex on Barham that catered to recently divorced men, traveling executives working their way down the corporate ladder and an assortment of women whose last lodging had been the Sybil Brand Institute, he found a message on his answering machine. It was from Horvath in Robbery-Homicide.

“Got some questions for you about a cadaver/citizen. He didn’t just die. Someone gave him a thirty-eight caliber assist. Call me when you get this; see me before your next shift.”

Yates turned on the television, which was already tuned to the Country Music channel, and settled into his lounger with a beer.

“Fuck you and the snake you rode in on,” he said in reply to Horvath, Clive and just about everyone else he’d ever met.

More to follow...

(c) 2006 Stephen Mitchell

Hinky (2)

Yates knew that anytime a cop was seen in public with a civilian, especially in a downtown restaurant late at night, the civilian would be perceived as a snitch by anyone interested enough to be paying attention. It would never occur to onlookers that the cop might be up to something. For that reason, Yates decided he would pay for the guy’s dinner, just to twist the knife.

“My name’s Clive,” the guy said after they were seated. He reached across the table to shake hands, but Yates ignored the gesture.

“The DMV computer says you’re Raymond Sloan.”

“I used to be Raymond Sloan, but then I saw Don Cheedle in this movie using a really bad English accent and I figured if he can do it, so can I.”

“You don’t talk with an English accent,” Yates observed.

“With a name like Clive, I don’t have to.”

The waiter took their order of New York steaks medium rare before Yates started in on Clive.

“Ever done time?”

“Do I look like the marrying kind? Jus’ cause you bought the whole program don’t mean everybody got to. Man, if you aren’t an ex-marine I’ll kiss a fat man’s ass!”

Yates studied the guy to assess his level of intoxication. His pupils were affected but he didn’t have a sweat going. The euphoria was probably manic rather than pharmaceutical in nature.

“Who do you like?” Clive asked him.

“Pardon me?”

“Marvin, Miles? Who?” When Yates didn’t register comprehension, Clive clarified with: “Music, baby. Who moves you?”

“Johnny Cash.”

“Fuck me! Jus’ cause you was born a redneck cracker don’t mean you have to stay that way. I read where people can change.”

“You read?”

“No. A woman I know heard it on Oprah and told me, not knowin’ I was gonna meet you.”

It suddenly occurred to Yates that he hadn’t given Clive a pat-down before entering the restaurant. Very careless, he thought to himself.

The steaks arrived and Clive poured half a bottle of the steak sauce onto his. He began eating with such relish that Yates might as well have been absent.

“From what I can tell, you’re a manic depressive, self-medicating section eight with a gift for gab and a twenty-year-old clunker that’s painted eight shades of grey. What have you got to say I should be listening to?”

“Don’t you like to eat?” Clive asked without looking up from his plate.

Yates could feel the anger in him swelling to the surface, but since this was the only dinner break he’d get that evening and a hot steak was preferable to a cold one, he set aside his question and began eating. It didn’t dawn on him that, since the very first moment of their encounter, he had been under the complete control and supervision of Clive, aka Raymond Sloan. Clive, on the other hand, had a full appreciation of the situation.

“Bet you’ve never been to Roscoe’s,” Clive said after he had finished his steak and signaled the waiter for coffee.

“Only to break up a disturbance,” Yates replied between mouthfuls. He didn’t like that Clive had finished his meal while he was still eating. It threw off his equilibrium.

“Can you take that to go? I got some bidness to talk about and I’m not gonna do it while you grindin’ your teeth on that steak.”

Yates could feel himself starting to disassociate from the environment. It was what the department psychiatrists had described as phase one of a manifestation Yates was to avoid at all costs.

“Bring this man some Styrofoam,” Clive told the waiter when the coffee arrived. Before Yates could stop him, the waiter took away his steak for packaging.

“Anyone can trip over a crack in the sidewalk.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning, it don’t matter how many shades of grey your ride is. If you find it, he will come.”

“What?” Yates thought he recognized a line from a movie his ex-wife dragged him to see.

“I found it and you came. You gotta believe in these things or they won’t happen to you. Dig?”

The waiter returned with Yates’ steak in a bag and Clive gestured the bill in the cop’s direction.

“Give him twenty-five percent. He’s lookin’ downhearted tonight,” Clive instructed Yates. “I’ll be in the head.”

Yates did as he was told and determined that the psycho brotha had five seconds to launch into his pitch when he returned from the can or he’d find himself booked into the Glass House for the duration. That thought put a smile on his face.

Yates’ pleasure was short-lived, for three waiters came to his table offering a slice of apple pie with a lit match sticking out of it, in lieu of a candle, along with a dismal rendition of “Happy Birthday to You”. They hadn’t finished the second bar before Yates tore off in the direction of the men’s room, which he found to be unoccupied. He was about to give in to an urge to destroy something when his radio chirped out his call sign.

“The plate you ran about an hour ago belongs to a black male whose body was just found under a parked car at Fourth and Hill. Can you report to the scene?”

More to follow...

(c) 2006 Stephen Mitchell

Hinky (1)

“What the fuck you doin’ in that uniform?”

It took Sergeant Yates of the Los Angeles Police Department a moment to register the fact that he hadn’t imagined the citizen’s question. Then, he repeated his own question.

“May I see your Drivers License and registration, please?”

“Nigga, please!” The man behind the wheel of the car shook his head in dismay. “I look at you and suddenly everything’s wrong with this country is plain to see.”

“Step out of the car.” Yates told him, using his command authority voice developed during two tours in the U.S. Marines. Yates took a half step to his right signaling an expectation of compliance.

“They got a man of your talents and experience drivin’ around in a monkey suit in the middle of the night with nothing better to do than hassle a black man.”

“The reason I stopped you was because of a broken taillight, but if you don’t step out of the vehicle right now, I’ll arrest you for felony resisting.”

The man behind the wheel of the car let out a squeal of delight. “Baby, that’s exactly what I told her last night! She like it when I talk to her like that! You married?”

“I’m not going to tell you again. Now, step out of the car or I’ll drag you out.”

The man behind the wheel of the car appeared to give some thought to what Yates said before replying, “Fuck that.”

“You are begging for some stick time, asshole.” Yates could feel destructive urges rising up within him that fed a need to purge several weeks of suppressed anger and unvented frustration. Passed over, yet again, for Lieutenant, it was certain he would never make Captain. There was a distinct possibility he could be demoted in rank if some in the Department had their way. Without realizing how it happened, Yates was suddenly aware that he was pointing his 9mm at the man’s head. With this awareness came a blinding flash of light.

“Smile! You on Candid Camera!” Yates saw that the man had taken his photograph using a flash. Without waiting for his eyes to readjust to the darkness, Yates thumbed the hammer back on the Beretta.

“I’ll bet you think of me as ‘the man behind the wheel of the car.” That stopped Yates from what he was about to do, which was to blow the guy’s brains out.

“How do you suggest I think of you?” It was a dumb thing to do, rising to his lame-assed bait. Immediately, Yates regretted it.

“You should think of me as ‘the man what’s gonna make you a millionaire and face all the possible repercussions should there be any, which there won’t.”

..

The man what’s gonna make Yates a millionaire and face all the possible repercussions should there be any, which there won’t reached under the seat, retrieved a bong and started to light up. Yates still hadn’t pulled the trigger. This surprised the veteran policeman, if not his new-found friend.

“What are you talking about?” Yates had heard more than his share of jailhouse shit, but never while pointing a 9mm at a guy who was more concerned with getting a good draw on his bong.

“Some niggas can see the future. I can tell it. An’ if you’ll open up your fuckin’ ears, I’ll tell you yours.”

“Do you know where The Pantry is?” Yates asked him.

“Man, I practically live there!”

“Lead the way. I’ll be right behind you.”

As Yates followed the twenty-year-old Mercedes over to Figueroa, he called in his Code 7 and thought to himself it would be just as easy to shoot the guy after dinner.

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More to follow...

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(c)2006 Stephen Mitchell