As I walked through the dim parking lot, I could feel my anger settling and mutating into a profound sadness. I didn’t have the luxury to wallow in how Duffy fucked me over, however, because I had to focus on Li’l Eight. I didn’t want to wait until tomorrow morning to sit on his apartment. And I decided that I wasn’t going to call Ortiz. I didn’t know exactly what I was going to do when I confronted Li’l Eight, but I knew I wasn’t going to adhere to LAPD interrogation regulations. This case was personal for me, but it wasn’t personal for Ortiz. I was willing to get fired over how I sweated Li’l Eight; I wasn’t willing to risk Ortiz’s job.
I drove out to The Jungle, parked down the street, and opened my trunk. From a metal toolbox, I removed a small silencer that I had confiscated from a Belizian cocaine dealer and slipped it into my coat pocket. Light-stepping it to the building, I climbed up the stairs to Li’l Eight’s apartment on the second floor, looked in the windows, and determined no one was home. So I returned to my car, kept my eye on the front door, and waited.
I was jittery, nervously tapping my fingernails on the dash, but the longer I waited, the more I thought about Li’l Eight, the angrier I became. When I had first joined the LAPD, there seemed to be a code that criminals followed. If you held up a market and the clerk gave you the cash-you didn’t shoot him simply as an afterthought. If you knew a witness was going to cooperate with detectives, you threatened him first and persuaded him not to cooperate-you didn’t just blast him. If a detective came to arrest you, you’d probably run and maybe even shoot it out-you’d never tie him up and debase and assassinate him. I may not have liked some of the old-time crooks I had arrested as a young patrolman, but I realized now that many of them at least pulled their heists with a degree of professionalism, getting in and out of jobs quickly, with no violence. Li’l Eight symbolized to me the new breed of criminal. Since he’d decided to violate the code of street poker, I decided I wouldn’t simply call him. I would raise the stakes.
At dusk, I drove off to a gas station to take a piss. When I returned, the fog had rolled in, so there wasn’t much of a sunset, just a gradual darkening as light seeped from the veil of gray on the western horizon. At eight, I thought I saw someone enter the apartment. I climbed out of my car, but slowly crawled back in when I realized it was the apartment next door. A half hour later, I almost dozed off, so I opened all the windows and took a few deep breaths. The fog had misted up my windshield, limiting my visibility, so I kept my windshield wipers running.
Shortly after nine, I spotted a stocky black kid with a goatee, who was wearing a baggy, white T-shirt, approach the apartment. Jumping out of the car, I hustled down the sidewalk for a better look. It was Li’l Eight. As he began to climb the steps, clutching a key ring in his right hand, I slipped up behind him, stuck the Beretta in his back and said, “Put the key in the lock nice and easy.”
When he reached into his coat pocket, I jammed the gun in his back and said, “Hands out where I can see them.”
He opened the front door and I followed him inside.
“Surprised to see me?”
He gave me a contemptuous look.
“Sit down.”
He held his wrists out toward me. “You might as well cuff me right now and take me downtown. ‘Cause I ain’t sayin’ shit till I see my lawyer.”
I took a step forward and lifted up the right sleeve of his T-shirt. And there it was on his upper arm: The big CK tattoo with the C crossed out.
I was so enraged, Li’l Eight faded into an amorphous blur. I wanted to jam the Beretta into his mouth and blow the back of his head off.
He stood up, looked at me with a half smile, and muttered so softly I could barely hear, “Shoulda finished you off when I had the chance, punk-ass bitch.”
I slammed him on the side of his head with the barrel of my gun. He fell to his knees, wiped the blood off, and looked up at me with a smirk of superiority. “No beat down gonna make me change my mind. Nothin’ you can do to make me talk.”
I gripped my gun tightly and said, “You’re going to tell me all about how you killed that Korean liquor store owner and you’re going to tell me all about Latisha Patton.”
I thought of my old guru, Bud Carducci, and how he used to persuade recalcitrant suspects to talk. He’d figure out what they were most afraid of, then exploit that fear.
“Start talking-Li’l Seven.”
He shook his head. “That ain’t my name.”
“I screwed the silencer onto the Beretta’s barrel, reached over and grabbed Li’l Eight’s right wrist. I jammed the muzzle on the tip of his pinkie fingernail and pulled the trigger, spraying tissue and nail fragments over the front of his shirt.
He let out a strangled scream and flopped on the carpet like a landed fish, jerking his hand spasmodically.
“It will be if I have to pull the trigger again.”
“Mother fucker!” he howled.
I grabbed a towel from the kitchen and tossed it to him.
He wrapped his finger and fell onto the chair, writhing and yelping.
“You going to tell me?” I asked.
He looked up at me-blinking hard, lips quivering-and said, “Don’t know about no Korean and no lady named Tisha.”
“I just took the tip off. But next time, I’ll blow the whole pinkie off. Then I’m going for the ring finger and the index finger and the thumb. So you either tell me what I want to know, or I’ll keep blasting.”
He shook his head.
I wrestled his right hand out of the towel, stuck the muzzle just below his pinkie, and said, “You want to be known as Li’l Seven?”
“No!” he screamed. Reaching for the towel, he wrapped his right hand. “You crazy!”
“That’s right,” I said. “So you better start talking.”
“Just keep that piece away from my hand,” he shouted.
I pointed to the chair. “Get off the floor and sit down.”
He crawled to his feet and teetered onto the chair, his chest heaving with staccato coughs.
“You robbed that Korean market on south Figueroa, right?”
He nodded.
“Yes or no?”
“Yeah, I robbed it.”
“Why’d you shoot the Korean guy behind the counter?”
He looked down at the towel, now soaked in blood, and shook his head.
I jabbed my gun toward the towel.
“I don’t like slopes.”
“That’s it? That’s why you shot him?”
“Didn’t want to leave no wits.”
“But you were wearing a mask. He couldn’t identify you.”
He mumbled a reply, but I couldn’t understand what he was saying.
“What was that?” I shouted.
“I’d been in there before, buying shit and casing the place,” he said through gritted teeth. “Maybe he could’ve recognized my voice or IDed me later on. I didn’t want to take no chance.”
“Why’d you pick that place? It’s a ways from your ‘hood.”
“When I was in the joint, met a homeboy from that ‘hood. Said the slope kept a lot of cash in his register. I remembered that. When I got out, I went after it.”
“You killed Latisha Patton, didn’t you?”
He gripped the towel and shook his head.
I reached over, yanked off the bloody towel, tossed it on the floor, and stuck the barrel in the middle of his palm. “Tell me the fucking truth, or I’ll blow the whole hand off.”
He stared at the bloody towel, turned his head, and spit on the floor. “I had to cap that bitch. She talkin’ to the police. What I suppose to do?”
“Tell me where you found her?”
“I found out where she lived.”
“How?”
“Through the ghetto grapevine. She tole some friend in the ‘hood, who tole someone, who tole someone. So I go out to her place in the Valley.”
“You shoot her there?”
“Lemme think.” Crouching slightly, he balled up the towel and threw it at my face. He ran into the kitchen.
I chased after him, and cracked him on the head with the Beretta. He dropped to the floor, twitching and rubbing the back of his head.
“I’m sick of fucking around with you.” I tapped the barrel of the gun on the knuckles of his right hand. “Did you shoot her there?”
“Tied her up there,” he whispered. “Shot her at Fifty-fourth and Fig, cut her loose, and dumped her.”