Jet Sweep Page 3

  Rainey looked at me a little warily. “Yeah. That electric scooter company. Know all about them. They’re a little messed up.”

  “How’s that?” I asked. “Can’t run fast enough to hand them any speeding tickets?”

  “Smartass,” he said. “They’ve had a lot of problems, including thefts. We busted a ring that was grabbing them off the streets. But the bigger problem is a bunch of kids have been injured riding around on those contraptions, my kid included. And the riders leave the damn things in the middle of the sidewalks, the streets, the bike paths, everywhere. They cause a hazard. The city’s in the process of fining the company. Would love it if they just went away.”

  “Maybe you and whoever hired this guy Stoner have something in common.”

  “Uh-huh. Hey, Slick, did this Stoner guy leave you an address or phone number or anything?”

  “No,” I said, but I reached into my pocket and unfolded the photo Ron Medalie downloaded from the security camera. “But here’s an image you might want to run through facial recognition.”

  Rainey took the photo and looked at it. Joe Hartwick got up and looked over Rainey’s shoulder. “You pulled this off of a camera?” Hartwick asked. “Where?”

  “My office. Got it from building security. It was when he walked in from the street.”

  “Uh-huh,” Hartwick said, taking it back to his desk. “Sounds like you might know what you’re doing. The image isn’t that clear. But we’ll run it through and see what we come back with.”

  “Do you guys have a plan for tomorrow night?”

  Rainey licked his lips. “Putting one together. What time did he tell you to meet him down on Beethoven?”

  “Nine.”

  “Be there at 8:15. We’ll be getting set up.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Hey, I got to ask, Burnside. What happened with you back then? Must have been a decade ago when all that stuff went down. Lots of allegations, headlines, then you left the department. I was working up in the Valley back then. Lot of rumors.”

  I took a breath and sighed. This was a slice of history that would be shackled to me forever. I had made a poor decision, taking in a teenage runaway, Judy Atkin, who came out to L.A. to get away from a desperate situation and instead found one that was even worse. She turned to prostitution, which eventually led to her arrest, and my own spectacular fall from grace.

  “You ever come across a suspect who was falsely accused?” I asked.

  Rainey shrugged. “Sure. We all have. The world isn’t fair. Sometimes you get it wrong. You have good days and bad days. A few times someone gets falsely accused. So what?”

  I shook my head at the casual dismissal of poor police work. “Well, now you’ve met another guy who’s been falsely accused. Let’s just say, don’t believe everything you read in the news. There wasn’t much I could do about it. Luckily for me, the girl skipped town and I got released,” I said, thinking I had been released from one prison only to enter another, a curious one without hard walls.

  “That’s it?” he asked.

  “In a nutshell, yeah,” I responded, hoping to end this toxic discussion of my past.

  “You worked out of North Hollywood, right? You make Detective?”

  “Plainclothes. Never got the gold shield. But yeah, North Hollywood.”

  “And now you’re a PI, huh?” he said, his voice tinged with disdain. “Better leave the detective work to the pros. But I appreciate your working with us here.”

  “Your appreciation is duly noted,” I said as I got up, wondering just how professional Paul Rainey and Joe Hartwick really were. I also began to wonder if I was working to prevent a crime here, or unwittingly being drawn into a plot to commit one.

  *

  It was close to 4:00 p.m., so I hopped into my Pathfinder and hightailed it to Santa Monica in fifteen minutes to get Marcus from day camp. On the way, I called WAVE and left a message on Cody Groh’s voice mail to call me. After getting Marcus, we drove over to Costco, at what was likely the worst time of the day to go shopping. It took about an hour all told, and I picked up a plump, five-dollar roaster chicken for dinner, large packs of pork ribs for next Sunday’s barbecue, and a hundred and ninety dollars of various and sundry additional items that I hadn’t planned on buying. We needed AAA batteries for Marcus’s toys, although the thirty-six that came in the oversized blister pack would likely keep him entertained for the next few years. While I didn’t see a great need for a three-hundred-capsule bottle of Tylenol, it cost barely more than a bottle half its size at the drug store. I did, however, draw the line at Marcus’s request for a multipack of Sour Patch Kids, negotiating a frozen yogurt for him instead. He ate part of it in the back seat of the Pathfinder, slowly, as was his custom. He carefully scraped a dollop onto his plastic red, white, and blue spoon, admired it for a few seconds, and then slid it slowly into his mouth.

  “Daddy?” he asked as we were driving home.

  “Yeah, Marcus.”

  “Where’s Rome?” he asked.

  “In Italy,” I said. “Other side of the world. Why?”

  “My new friend Sam is going to Rome. For a … vay kay … something.”

  “A vacation?” I asked.

  “Yeah, that’s it,” he said. “Can we go to Rome, too?”

  I took a glance at him in the rearview mirror, and even though he was speaking to me, his eyes were laser-focused on his frozen treat.

  “Rome’s a long ways away,” I started, thinking it would also drain our savings to buy three international plane tickets and hotel stays. The last vacation we took was to Arizona, over Thanksgiving, to visit Gail’s parents, who had retired and resettled outside of Tucson.

  “How long?” he asked.

  I thought for a moment. “It’s probably a twelve-hour flight. And I think we’d have to change planes somewhere, too. You’d get pretty restless after a while.”

  “Have you ever been to Rome, Daddy?”

  “No,” I said, thinking that the only international trips I’d taken were a few wild weekends in Tijuana with some fellow cops. “I’d like to go one day. And I’d like to take you. I’m just not sure you’re ready for it. I’ve heard there’s a lot to see there, but a lot of it’s churches and art museums.”

  “Sam said Rome has the best ice cream in the world.”

  “Ah,” I responded, thinking we’d finally pinpointed the true reason for Marcus’s interest. “I think Sam’s referring to gelato. It’s like an Italian version of ice cream.”

  “Oh. Okay. So, when can we go?”

  I smiled. “I’ll tell you what, Marcus. Mom just started a new job, so it may be a little tough for her to get time off right now. But I’ll find us a gelato place around here. We’ll start at home. One day maybe we can all go to Rome together. We’ll see.”

  Marcus processed this for a minute and then returned to his frozen yogurt. One trick I learned from Gail was that saying “we’ll see” was a magic phrase that worked a lot better with kids than telling them “no.” Easy to employ once you learn it, but I had never been taught that. My own mother, a single mom with limited resources and a stressful job as an ER nurse, didn’t always have the time or the patience. With her, things were very black and white, and the yes or no answers served her better. She did the best she could as a mom, but Gail, the product of a large bustling family, simply knew more about how to talk to kids, and I was grateful for it.

  We arrived home just after Gail did. Marcus raced inside first and hugged her. “Mommy, guess what? Daddy said we can go to Rome!”

  Gail smiled down at him and then looked at me, hauling a large box stuffed with more things than we needed right now. “Rome?” she asked.

  I gave Marcus a look, now starting to reconsider the use of “we’ll see” when it came to a five-year-old. “I said one day. Remember, Marcus?”

  Marcus gave the hint of a little smile. “Yeah,” he said.

  “What brought this on?” Gail asked, starting to unload th
e groceries. She looked approvingly at a large container of blueberries and frowned at the half-eaten cup of frozen yogurt.

  “A new friend at camp is going to Rome with his family. Apparently, some of these kids are far more sophisticated travelers than I am.”

  “I suppose we’ll need to get used to it,” she sighed. “If he’s going to be at a private school, he’ll run across plenty of kids like this. Nothing wrong with it. It’s just going to be different from the way we grew up.”

  “Especially, me,” I said. If USC hadn’t offered me a football scholarship, I might be stocking shelves at Costco. Attending a university loaded with wealthy kids was an education unto itself. Growing up in L.A., it was hard to miss all of the wealth in the region, but I rarely witnessed it up close, and when I did it was more like gazing through a store window. But at USC, I was a quasi-public figure who couldn’t just blend into the background. So, I kept to myself, hanging around with teammates I could trust, mostly kids like me, who came from more modest backgrounds, Johnny Cleary being the one exception. I never felt comfortable at parties, never joined a fraternity, and experienced discomfort when people asked me about my background. Even the simplest question of what my father did for a living was not so easy for me to answer.

  “I know.” Gail stopped and looked at me. She was still in her work clothes, a nice fitting light gray suit with a blue top. Her soft gray eyes were clear and sympathetic.

  “I can’t change my background. Or what I do for a living. Or who I am.”

  “No one’s asking you to,” she said, suddenly looking at me hard. “But we’ve talked about this. And maybe that session tomorrow night might help.”

  I nodded cautiously. “Yeah. About that. Some work came up. I’m going to need to reschedule it.”

  “Oh?” she peered at me.

  “New client. It’s complicated, and it’s related to an SC player I coached back in the day. It’s not something I can reschedule. And I should be there.”

  Gail looked at me for a long moment. A few months earlier, I had totally lost control and instigated a wild brawl that involved multiple people. Outside of a Chuck E. Cheese of all places. It took an off-duty detective to step in and calm the waters, and had he not shown me his gold shield, I might have slugged him, too. There were no criminal charges filed, but a civil suit from the other father was settled, but one of the stipulations was for me to seek counseling for what some people call anger management. The last part was actually suggested by Gail. My first appointment was supposed to be tomorrow night, but the appearance of Mr. Stoner was forcing a change of plans.

  “I’ll call Dr. Rosenbloom tonight and see when we can find another time,” I said.

  “I think it’s important,” she said, “and not just because it’s court-ordered. I worry about you. I love you but I think there’s some issues you have to address. Partly it’s for Marcus. I don’t want him to be instigating any fights. He looks up to you so much. That’s mostly good. Except when it’s not.”

  I didn’t disagree. My work exposed me to some of life’s scuzzier elements, and sometimes the only thing these people respected was toughness. In certain instances, I escalated matters as a tactic to get suspects or witnesses riled up enough to talk; in other cases, I provoked people because I simply didn’t like them. As a police officer, I didn’t always have that luxury. As a private investigator, I had more latitude. But as a dad, I bore another level of responsibility, that of being a role model. And not having a male role model when I had been a child was now presenting me with rough terrain to navigate as a parent.

  “I get it,” I said, “although I’m not at all certain about the process, nor exactly how it will help. But I’ll give it a shot.”

  “Didn’t you have to go through this when you were with the department?” she asked.

  “Yeah, but it never went very deep,” I responded, thinking back to two incidents where I needed to use lethal force and my life was in danger. In one, a suspect came at me with a knife. In another, a suspect lunged for my handgun. Both episodes were traumatic, and both required me to have a few sessions with an LAPD counselor. I found that talking about the incidents with him provided only a minimal salve. He asked questions, I answered them, but the goal was to get me past any post-traumatic stress disorder and steer me back onto regular patrol. For me, the most effective therapy seemed to be throwing back shots of Wild Turkey with a few fellow officers, trading war stories, and burying any pain. At the time I thought the only people who could truly understand what I was going through were other cops, ones who had experienced a similar ordeal.

  “Hopefully this experience will be better,” she offered.

  I looked at Gail. “You told me you once were in treatment. You said it helped, but you didn’t give a lot of details.”

  She pursed her lips and took a glance into the living room. Marcus was playing with Chewy, our little black cocker spaniel. Marcus had thrown a tennis ball across the room, Chewy fetched it, brought it almost back, and was now playing keep-away. Gail walked over to Chewy and opened her palm. As if on cue, the dog dropped the tennis ball. It bounced twice before Gail snatched it and put it on a table where neither Marcus nor Chewy could reach it. She handed Marcus a brush and instructed him to slowly run it through Chewy’s fur. She did it twice so he could see and then handed the brush to him. Chewy liked it, Marcus liked it, and I liked it. If it were me, I would have had neither the patience nor the foresight to do this. Gail walked back into the kitchen and lowered her voice.

  “It was back when I met you,” she started.

  “Oh?” I asked, eyebrows raised.

  “Nothing to do with you, per se. I had a nice upbringing. Nice parents, good siblings, lots of friends. We didn’t have a ton of money, but we were okay. On my college application, they asked me to describe my biggest obstacle in life and how I overcame it. To be honest, I couldn’t think of anything. I had a good childhood.”

  “But UCLA accepted you anyway,” I pointed out.

  “I wrote down something innocuous,” she admitted. “But after school, I didn’t know what I wanted to do, so I joined campus security. Worked for Dick Bridges. That’s where I met you.”

  “Trust me, I remember.”

  “There was that incident, it happened shortly after we met. I wound up chasing down a woman who turned out to be a murder suspect. I tackled her and had to subdue her. It was ugly. I didn’t know if she had a weapon or what she was capable of. I managed to do it, but I had nightmares afterward. Especially when I learned she had killed someone.”

  I looked at her. “You were a hero. But it sounds as if you didn’t feel like one.”

  “I didn’t. The university trained me in self-defense, but prior to that, the only physical confrontations I had were keeping a few frat boys’ hands off of me. A college environment usually doesn’t involve a lot of life-and-death drama.”

  “And if I recall correctly, that incident was with Ashley Stark. Last I heard she was serving a twenty-year stretch up at Pelican Bay.”

  “Yes. But afterward, I decided to see a psychotherapist. We began talking about the incident, and that helped. I went back, and we began discussing my childhood. My adolescence. The more I talked, the more I learned.”

  “Like what?” I asked.

  She hesitated for a moment. “My first relationship. I was young, just fifteen.”

  I shrugged. “Some people are ready for that sooner than others. Was it with a boyfriend in high school?”

  “No,” she said, her eyes narrowing. “It was with a forty-six-year-old man. A friend of my father’s. He lived a few blocks away from us. I was walking by his house one day when he saw me and we started talking. He invited me in, made me a drink. I was feeling very grown-up and a little tipsy. I had known him for years, he was always nice to me. And then it happened. I wasn’t expecting it. I didn’t feel bad about it afterward, but I didn’t feel much of anything. I saw him on and off for a while, mostly when he called me. I gues
s I looked at it as just one of those quirky things that happen in life. But it was wrong, and it was wrong in lots of ways. And it affected me for years.”

  “I imagine it did,” I said.

  “Yes. I got the sense that this might be how relationships worked. That’s not the case, but no one taught me that. There’s a reason this is statutory rape. When a middle-aged man does it with a fifteen-year-old girl, it’s just wrong. For him, it was a casual fling. For me, it was a lesson on how life worked for adults. A bad lesson. He never should have done it. And I don’t think I had a normal relationship for years. I didn’t realize it at the time, but it impacted me.”

  I took a breath. “I’m sorry to hear about that. Not the best experience to go through.”

  Gail sighed. “There were some other issues I had. But that one had a big effect on me. I was too young to understand the implications.”

  “And the therapy helped change you?”

  Gail pursed her lips, took my hand, and gave it a squeeze. “It was a combination of things. You came along right around then. Combine that with the counseling, and I was finally able to move forward with a more normal relationship.”

  I took another breath. “I didn’t know this. You never talked about it.”

  “No. Some details are just too intimate. Too hard to talk about. And I was afraid you might go looking for that friend of my father’s, even though it happened to me years before.”

  I took that in and smiled a small smile. “I do believe in settling scores.”

  “Well, maybe therapy can help you with that, too,” she said and gave me a kiss on the cheek.

  *

  I spent the better part of the next day combing through a trove of public information about WAVE, but most of it was a hodgepodge of social media comments, good, bad, and ugly. I clicked through the online ads pointing to how easy it was to sign up for WAVE, that all you needed was a driver’s license and a credit card, in exchange for which they provided you with a passcode to unlock the scooter, and off you went on a grand new adventure. There did not appear to be any way of verifying if someone was using their own driver’s license or their own credit card. There was little about how to operate the scooter. There was also the not-so-small matter of the company failing to advise riders that they needed to provide a helmet for themselves. WAVE only said they were not liable for any injuries one might suffer. Or inflict.