The Islander Palms Motel
Uniformed LAPD Officer Joe Pike could hear the banda
music even with the engine idling, the a.c. jacked to meat
locker, and the two-way crackling callout codes to other units.
The covey of Latina street kids clumped outside the
arcade giggled at him, whispering things to each other that
made them flush. Squat, brown men come up through the fence
from Zacatecas milled on the sidewalk, shielding their eyes
from the sun as veteranos told them about Sawtelle over on
the Westside and Roscoe Boulevard up in the Valley where
they could find day labor jobs, thirty dollars cash, no
papers required. Here in Rampart Division south of Sunset,
Guatemalans and Nicaraguans simmered with Salvadorans and
Mexican Nationals in a sidewalk machaca that left the air
flavored with epizote’, even here within the sour cage of
the radio car.
Pike watched the street kids part like water when his
partner hurried out of the arcade. Abel Wozniak was a thick
man with a square head and cloudy, slate eyes. Wozniak was
twenty years older than Pike and had been on the street
twenty years longer. Wozniak was once the best cop that Pike
had then met, but now his eyes were strained. They’d been
riding together for two years, and the eyes hadn’t always
been that way. Pike regretted that, but there wasn’t
anything he could do about it.
Especially now when they were looking for Ramona Ann
Escobar.
Wozniak lurched in behind the wheel, adjusting his gun
for the seat, anxious to roll even with the tension between
them as thick as clotted blood. His informant had come through.
"DeVille’s staying at the Islander Palms Motel."
"Does DeVille have the girl?"
"My guy eyeballed a little girl, but he can’t say if
she’s still with him."
Wozniak snapped the car into gear and rocked away from
the curb. They didn’t roll Code Three. No lights, no siren.
The Islander Palms was less than five blocks away, here on
Alvarado Boulevard just south of Sunset. Why send an
announcement?
"Woz? Would DeVille hurt her?"
"I told you, a fuckin’ perv like this would be better
off with a bullet in his head."
It was eleven-forty on a Tuesday morning. At
nine-twenty, a five-year-old girl named Ramona Ann Escobar
had been playing near the paddle boat concession in Echo
Park when her mother, a legal emigre’ from Guatemala, had
turned away to chat with friends. Witnesses last saw Ramona
in the company of a man believed to be one Leonard DeVille,
a known pedophile who’d been sighted working both Echo and
MacArthur Parks for the past three months. When the dispatch
call had come in about the missing girl, Wozniak had begun
working his street informants. Wozniak, having been on the
street forever, knew everyone and how to find them. He was a
treasure trove of information that Pike valued and
respected, and didn’t want to lose. But Pike couldn’t do
anything about that, either.
Pike stared at Wozniak until Wozniak couldn’t handle
the weight any longer and glanced over. They were forty
seconds away from the Islander Palms. "Oh, for Christ’s
sake, what?"
"It isn’t too late, Woz."
Wozniak’s eyes went back to the street, and his face
tightened. "I’m telling you, Joe. Back off with this. I’m
not going to talk about it any more."
"I meant what I said."
Wozniak wet his lips.
"You’ve got the girls. There’s Paulette to think about."
The cloudy eyes flicked to Pike, as bottomless and as
dangerous as a thunderhead. Wozniak had three daughters and
a wife.
"I’ve been thinking about them, buddy. You bet your ass."
Wozniak shook his head, and, for just an instant, Pike
thought Wozniak’s eyes filled. Then Wozniak gave a shudder
as if he were shaking out his feelings, then pointed.
"There it is. Now shut the fuck up and play like a cop."
#
The Islander Palms was a white stucco dump: two stories
of frayed carpets, stained beds, and neon palm trees that
looked tacky even in Los Angeles, all of it shaped into an
‘L’ around a narrow parking lot. The typical customers were
whores renting by the hour, wannabe pornographers shooting
‘amateur’ videos, and rent-jumpers needing a place to stay
while they found a new landlord to stiff.
Pike followed Wozniak into the manager’s office, a
skinny Hindu who stared at the two officers with watery
eyes. First thing he said was, "I do not wan’ trouble, please."
Wozniak had the lead.
"We’re looking for a man with a little girl. His name
is Leonard DeVille, but he might’ve used another name."
The Hindu didn’t know the name, or anything about a
little girl, but he told them that a man matching the
description Woz provided could be found on the second floor
in the third room from the top of the ‘L.’
Pike said, "You want me to call it in?"
Woznick went out the door and up the stairs without
answering. Pike thought then that he should go back to the
car and call, but you don’t let your partner go up alone.
Pike followed.
The second floor was as dead as a fish in a dry pond.
They found the third door, listened, but heard nothing. The
drapes were pulled. Standing there on the exposed balcony,
Pike felt as if they were being watched.
They didn’t break down the door or any of that. Wozniak
took the knob side of the door, Pike the hinges. Wozniak
rapped on the door, identifying himself as a Los Angeles
police officer. Everything about Joe made him want to be the
first one inside, but they had settled that two years ago.
Wozniak drove, Wozniak went in first, Wozniak called how
they made the play. Twenty-two years on the job against
Pike’s three bought you that. They had done it this way two
hundred times.
When DeVille opened the door, they pushed him
backwards, Wozniak going first and pushing hard.
DeVille said, "Hey, what is this?" Like he’d never been
rousted before.
The room was tattered and cheesy, with a closet and
bath off the rear. A rumpled double bed rested against the
wall like some kind of ugly altar, its dark red bedspread
stained and threadbare, one of the stains looking like
Mickey Mouse. The room’s only other piece of furniture was a
cheap dresser edged with cigarette burns and notches cut by
a sharp knife. Wozniak held DeVille as Pike cleared the
bathroom and the closet, looking for Ramona.
"She’s not here."
"Anything else? Clothes, suitcase, toothbrush?"
"Nothing." Indicating that DeVille hadn’t been living
here, and didn’t intend to. He had other uses for the room.
Wozniak, who had busted DeVille twice in the past,
said, "Where is she, Lennie?"
"Who? Hey, I don’t do that any more. C’mon, Officer."
"Where’s the camera?"
DeVille spread his hands, flashing a nervous smile. "I
got no camera. I’m telling you I’m off that."
Leonard DeVille was five-eight, with a fleshy body,
dyed blond hair, and skin like a pineapple. The hair was
slicked straight back, and held with a rubber band. Pike
knew that DeVille was lying, but waited to see how Woz would
play it. Even with only three years on the job, Pike knew
that pedophiles were always pedophiles. You could bust them,
treat them, counsel them, whatever, but when you released
them back into the world, they were still child molesters
and it was only a matter of time.
Wozniak hooked a hand under the foot of the bed and
heaved the bed over. DeVille jumped back and stumbled into
Pike, who caught and held him. A rumpled overnight bag was
nesting in about a million dust bunnies where the bed had been.
Wozniak said, "Lennie, you are about as dumb as they get."
"Hey, that ain’t mine. I got nothing to do with that
bag." DeVille was so scared that he sprouted sweat like a
rainstorm.
Wozniak opened the bag and dumped out a Polaroid
camera, better than a dozen film packs, and at least a
hundred pictures of children in various stages of undress.
That’s how a guy like DeVille made his living, snapping
pictures and selling them to other perverts.
Wozniak toed through the pictures, his face growing
darker and more contained. Pike couldn’t see the pictures
from where he stood, but he could see the vein pulsing in
Wozniak’s temple. He thought that Wozniak must be thinking
about his own daughters, but maybe not. Maybe Wozniak was
still thinking about the other thing.
Pike squeezed DeVille’s arm. "Where’s the little girl?
Where’s Ramona Escobar?"
DeVille’s voice went higher. "That stuff isn’t mine. I
never saw it before."
Wozniak squatted, fingering through the pictures
without expression. He lifted one, and held it to his nose.
"I can still smell the developing chemicals. You didn’t
take this more than an hour ago."
"They’re not mine!"
Wozniak stared at the picture. Pike still couldn’t see it.
"She looks about five. She matches the physical
description they gave us. Pretty little girl. Innocent. Now
she’s not innocent any more."
Abel Wozniak stood and drew his gun. It was the new
Beretta 9-millimeter that LAPD had just mandated.
"If you hurt that child, I’ll fucking kill you."
Joe said, "Woz, we’ve got to call in. Put your gun away."
Wozniak stepped past Pike and snapped the Beretta
backhand, slamming DeVille in the side of the head and
dropping him like a bag of garbage.
Pike jumped between them, grabbing Wozniak by the arms
and pushing him back. "That doesn’t help get the girl."
Then Wozniak’s eyes came to Pike; hard, ugly little
rivets with something else behind the clouds.
#
When the two police officers went up the stairs,
Fahreed Abouti, the manager, watched from the door until
they pushed the blond man back into his room. The police
often came to his motel to bust the prostitutes and johns
and drug dealers, and Fahreed never passed up a chance to
watch. Once, he had seen a prostitute servicing the officers
who had come to arrest her, and another time he watched as
three officers beat a rapist until all the man’s teeth were
gone. There was always something wonderful to see. It was
better than Wheel of Fortune.
You had to be careful, though.
As soon as the upstairs door closed, Fahreed crept up
the stairs. If you got too close, or if they caught you, the
police grew angry. Once, a SWAT officer in the armor and the
helmet and with the big gun had grown so angry that he’d
knocked Fahreed’s turban into a puddle of transmission
fluid. The cleaning cost had been horrendous.
The shouting started when Fahreed was still on the
stairs. He couldn’t understand what was being said, only
that the words were angry. He eased along the second floor
balcony, trying to get closer, but just as he reached the
room, the shouting stopped. He cursed the fates, thinking
he’d missed all the fun, when suddenly there was a single
loud shout from inside, then a thunderous, deafening explosion.
People on the street stopped in their tracks and
looked. People pointed, and a man across the parking lot ran.
Fahreed’s heart pounded, because even a Hindu knew a
gunshot. He thought the blond man might be dead. Or maybe he
had killed the officers.
Fahreed heard nothing within the room.
"Hallu?"
Nothing.
"Is everyone all right?"
Nothing.
Maybe they had all jumped from the bathroom window into
the alley behind.
Fahreed’s palms were damp, and all his swirling fears
demanded that he race back to his office and pretend to have
heard nothing, but instead he threw open the door.
The younger officer, the tall one with the dark glasses
and the empty face spun toward him and aimed an enormous
revolver. Fahreed thought in that instant that he would
surely die.
"Please. No!"
The older officer was without a face, his remains
covered in blood. The blond man was dead, too, his face a
mask of crimson. The floor and walls and ceiling were
sprayed red.
"No!"
The tall officer’s gun never wavered. Fahreed stared
into his dark bottomless glasses, and saw that they were
misted with blood.
"Please!"
The tall officer dropped to his fallen partner, and
began CPR.
Without looking up, the tall officer said, "Call 911."
Fahreed Abouti ran for the phone.