Amor en Retrogrado
AMOR EN RETROGRADO
A. M. Riley
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Amor en Retrogrado
A. M. Riley
This e-book is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Loose Id LLC
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Copyright © January 2008 by A. M. Riley
All rights reserved. This copy is intended for the purchaser of this e-book ONLY. No part of this e-book may be reproduced or shared in any form, including, but not limited to printing, photocopying, faxing, or emailing without prior written permission from Loose Id LLC.
ISBN 978-1-59632-610-1
Available in Adobe PDF, HTML, MobiPocket, and MS Reader Printed in the United States of America
Editor: Georgia A. Woods
Cover Artist: Croco Designs
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Chapter One
Mid-January rains sluiced smog from the air over downtown Los Angeles, brought oil up from the well-baked asphalt, and contributed to several nasty accidents on the principal freeways. As familiar as the song of birds, residents rose to the wail of sirens.
At 4:00 a.m., the parking lot at the corner of Wilshire and Santa Monica Boulevards would have been completely empty if it weren’t for the considerable number of police cars and wagons scattered across it.
One of the men standing within the area marked out with crime scene tape took a wet cigarette from his mouth, frowned at it, and threw it to the ground. “Thought I’d left this weather in Seattle.”
The tall black woman standing near him clutched a long wool coat around herself and frowned at the asphalt which her partner had just littered. There were hundreds of cigarettes on the ground. A few spent condoms. Gum. Chewed highball straws. “Bet we get lots of DNA from this scene.”
“Half of West Hollywood, probably,” said the man, grimacing and searching his pockets for another cigarette.
Kate Crandall cast a glance at her partner. Bill Turner had made his views on contemporary crime scene investigation technology abundantly clear to her privately, but he seemed able to keep his opinions to himself publicly.
Now he managed to shield the flame long enough to light his cigarette, shook out the match, and said merely, “We got ID?”
“Vic’s name is Pablo Neruda,” said a uniformed cop, reading from a clipboard. “Of Compton. Twenty-three years old. His companion is at Queen of Angels with a gunshot wound and battery.”
2 A. M. Riley
“Ah,” said Kate, squatting down next to the corpse. “Eighteenth Street Bloods had their birthday last week.”
The LA gangs celebrated on the month and day indicated by the name of the street they took. Most of them were summer months, as the streets were far enough south to be in the high double digits. But the Eighteenth Street Bloods were an old group, spread out across several districts, and they celebrated in January.
A Latino man from Compton dead of gunshot wounds in a parking lot was almost a no-brainer.
“Payback,” said the cop.
“Almost a no-brainer,” said Bill, drily.
Kate quelled a smile. Only she could hear the sarcasm in that statement. Now Bill dug in the pockets of his coat and brought out a pad and pen. The pad was blue. All of Bill’s pads were blue, Kate had learned. And he always wrote in them with a blue Bic finepoint.
He walked around the corpse, studying the ground. Brains and blood and bits of Neruda’s skull were collecting in little puddles around his head. A foot away, the pavement seemed relatively clear. “He was already on the ground when he was shot,” said Bill.
Kate used a capped pen to lift the edge of the vic’s jacket. The face and neck were bloodied and bruised. The marks looked fresh. They had probably risen to the surface of the man’s skin after he’d died. They’d get a report on everything later, but nothing beat actually seeing things. “Somebody beat the shit out of him first. Look at his face, Bill.”
Cigarette hanging from between his lips, Bill gazed meditatively down at their victim.
“Crime of passion,” he said.
Kate dropped the vic’s jacket from the end of her pen. “Maybe.”
A cop with some kind of plastic wrapped around his visor hat came strolling up.
“Who’s the team on this?” he asked. “Me and Pete were first on the scene.”
“Smith hasn’t assigned it yet,” said Kate. “Who called it in?”
“Valet,” said the officer, jerking his thumb toward a young man outlined by cruiser headlights, rain pouring down around him, as he waved his arms excitedly.
“He a witness?” asked Bill.
“Said he didn’t see anything,” replied the cop.
Rain poured off the brim of Bill’s hat as he looked down at the corpse. “Anybody find the gun?”
“Nope.” The officer jabbed two fingers toward a pair of officers looking through a trash bin. “We’re combing the area now.”
“Was he robbed?”
The cop shook his head, frowning. “Still has his billfold. That’s how we ID’d him.”
Amor en Retrogrado
3
Bill squatted down and looked the body over with a practiced eye. Long, lean, tanned arms. Good, strong hands. Rain molded a gray T-shirt over a nice six-pack. “Drugs?” he asked dubiously.
“Didn’t find any on him,” said the officer. “Maybe in him. ’Course, they all take stuff.”
“They?” asked Bill.
The cop made a face like he smelled something sour and jerked his chin toward the club the parking lot belonged to. Bill squinted up at the sign. ARENA -- the rainbow-colored letters seemed to drip under the pouring rain. A fairly notorious upscale gay dance club, as it happened.
“Valet said a car crashed the security gate earlier. Just before closing. They’re pulling the surveillance tapes now. Maybe some guy tried to stop them from stealing his car.”
Kate frowned at the body. “Seems excessive for a carjack.”
Another one of the detectives on the scene sauntered up and gave Kate a smile. “Smith says this is yours, Crandall.”
“Oh,” said Kate. “Thanks, Jason.” She and Bill waited until he’d walked away and then exchanged looks that were the equivalent of pumped fists in the air.
“So, how we’d luck out?” asked Bill. “A real live dead body. You been flirting with the captain, Crandall?”
“Shit,” said Kate. They hadn’t had a decent assignment in weeks. Twice now, they’d been skipped over when their turn had come up in the rotation. “That man hates me, Turner.”
“I thought he hated me,” said Bill, stooping and tipping his head close to the ground so he could look under a car. “It’s dry under here.”
“Yeah?”
“We know where the owner is?” He rose and looked around the parking lot.
Kate waved the officer over and had them run the car’s plate. While they stood about, waiting, Bill pulled out another cigarette and attempted to light it without the rain dousing his match.
&
nbsp; “Those things’ll kill you,” said Kate automatically.
“One bad habit at a time,” said Bill around the cigarette in his mouth. He shook out his match.
The officer waved them over. “Car belongs to Neruda,” he said. “Merry Christmas, Loo.”
“Hey,” said Bill. “And I expected nothing but coal.”
“When did it start raining?” asked Kate. Nobody seemed to remember.
Bill, however, thumbed back a few pages in the ubiquitous notebook. “Five p.m.,” he said, snapping it closed.
4 A. M. Riley
Kate nodded. So her partner noted fluctuations in weather. No big deal, right? Probably all the police in Seattle did that.
They got somebody to pop the lock and the CSI techs swarmed over the van like hungry ants. Kate and Bill were standing there watching when one of the uniformed officers came trotting up.
“Just got news from the hospital. Your other vic’s gonna make it, they say.”
“Thank Christ,” said Kate. At least they’d have a witness.
“Check out the name.” The officer held out his clipboard so that she could see it. Kate read the name, then grabbed the clipboard, read it again, then groaned.
Bill’s frowned suspiciously “What?”
“Joseph Ryan,” said the cop, grinning. “The” -- he made quotation marks in the air with his fingers -- “life partner of Robert Lemos.”
“The Robert Lemos?” asked Bill.
* * * * *
“What was that?” Robert Lemos came running from his office into the front room. Barefoot and in boxers, the sleeves of the oversized T-shirt stretched over his biceps and the tail hung to almost the edge of his shorts. His knees hit the floor as he came to a sliding stop next to the man who squatted at the open window, pistol pointed toward the brilliantly lit front lawn.
“Somebody trying to break in, I think, Mr. Lemos,” said the man calmly. He turned molasses-colored eyes toward his employer, smiling.
“You shot at them? Jorge, this is not Nicaragua. You can’t shoot at people.”
“I didn’t hit them,” said Jorge. “I think the alarm went off.”
Sure enough, the phone rang in the hallway and Robert trotted over to talk to the security company.
“Lemos here,” he said, finding his glasses still perched on top of his head and laying them carefully on the hallway table. “We think we had an attempted…what?”
“This is Mrs. Pritchard, of Queen of Angels hospital,” said a voice. “You are listed as the emergency contact for a Mr. Joseph Ryan?”
A hospital instead of the security company? “Yes?”
“Mr. Ryan has been shot.”
Robert actually felt his heart stop, the thud of it hitting his rib cage and bouncing back, stunned and heavy, into his chest. He stared up at Jorge, who gazed back with those warm eyes.
“Is he…?” he asked.
Amor en Retrogrado
5
He managed to pick the words, “surgery” and “critical” from the flow of information coming over the line, then the voice seemed to drown in the sudden buzzing in his ears.
Robert’s knees were suddenly cold and he realized he was kneeling on the marble floor. Jorge kept saying his name. The phone hung from Robert’s hand. He stared down at it and saw Jorge’s manicured hand take the thing. Jorge began speaking into the receiver.
Then Jorge was draping Robert’s coat over his shoulders, handing him his pants, and guiding him gently toward the garage.
“Mr. Ryan is in surgery at Queen of Angels hospital, Mr. Lemos. Put on your clothes, and I will drive you there.”
The freeway separating Robert’s home from the Hollywood hospital seemed an endless seamless expanse of trucks and cars and sirens.
Robert had his body pressed into the corner of the backseat and his cell phone pressed to his ear. As if the combined pressure of fine leather interior and cutting edge technology could hold him together while his brain went white with the effort of not thinking about what might happen to JD.
He was on hold with the hospital, catching Jorge’s eye in the rear view mirror as he scowled at life in general. He saw the whites of those expressive eyes roll and then dip away.
Jorge’s shoulders sank just a little lower in his seat.
“Lighten up, Robert. The universe isn’t plotting against you.”
“Not the universe, JD, just the human race. Every fucker you see has an agenda.”
“Not always.” That smile, blue eyes bright with humor.
“Always, JD. They’re all just waiting for you to turn your back.”
“Only because they want to check out my ass.”
And, of
r
cou se, that had made him laugh, dispelled the scowl JD had been objecting to in the first place. “Fucker.” And his hand had reached out to cup and squeeze that ass. JD
pushing into his hand, eyes heating. “Nalga de angel,” Robert breathed.
Robert forced his mind to shut off the memory and pressed the “two” button on his cell. “Detective Lara,” snapped a voice.
Robert took a breath. “Yo. Chato.” There was a marked silence on the other end of the line. Robert actually moved his phone away from his ear to check to see that the cell connection hadn’t dropped as they passed through the canyons. No, Gabe was there still. He was just deciding whether or not he wanted to speak to Robert. Things had been a little tense lately.
Robert rubbed his eyes with shaking fingers. “Please, Gabe,” he whispered.
6 A. M. Riley
“I’m on duty.” Gabe’s voice sounded tired. “What the hell?”
“JD’s been shot,” said Robert. He heard the words he’d just spoken and squeezed his eyes shut, clutching the phone.
“Fuck, Roberto.” Gabe’s voice was sincerely sympathetic. “Where are you now?”
“Car.” Robert heard his breath wheeze as he inhaled. It sounded like a sob.
“Fuck, I’m sorry, Robert,” said Gabe sincerely. “I’ll check in with our shift officer and I’ll meet you…where are you going now?”
“The Angels,” Robert said tightly. “Why the fuck they took him there, I don’t know. I can’t find out what happened. No one will talk to me. He’s in surgery now. Fuck knows if I’ll even be allowed to see him.”
“Wait wait wait, mi amigo. What did you say? He’s in surgery?”
Robert nodded at the phone. He couldn’t think.
Gabe’s voice was slow and thoughtful. “They’ll let you see him, Roberto. They know…they’ll know about the arrangement, sí?”
“He’s on my insurance.”
“Mmm.” This wasn’t Gabe’s favorite topic of conversation. He’d accepted that his childhood friend was de los otros, homosexual, like you accepted the news that your buddy was blind, or had an incurable disease. But he’d always been there for Roberto, no matter what. “I’ll be there soon, Mosca. I’ll wait with you.”
“Que gracias, Chato,” breathed Robert. “Ciao.” He leaned his head against the seatback.
“Mr. Lemos?” asked Jorge. “Are you feeling ill?” Robert met his driver’s worried look in the mirror. He realized he was half sprawled across the seat, clutching the disconnected phone to his cheek like a wireless teddy bear.
“Señor Lara will meet us at the hospital,” he told him.
“Yes, sir. That is good, no?”
Robert leaned his head back against the cold glass of the back window as rain drizzled slowly down the pane. They’d stopped for traffic several blocks down from the hospital.
Neon proclaimed discount CDs on one side. Prostitutes and kids huddled in doorways on the other. Red taillights reflected in the damp streets before them, as though God had tagged Sunset Boulevard.
“The hospital called because Mr. Ryan still had me as his emergency contact,” Robert said wonderingly.
“Ah,” said Jorge, noncommittally.
“It doesn’t mean anything.” Robert spoke more to himsel
f than to his driver. “It’s just Jay being sloppy. He never keeps up on his paperwork. Always late filing taxes, doesn’t pay bills, respond to correspondence.”
“He always had you to do those things for him,” said Jorge.
Amor en Retrogrado
7
The car slid up to the front door of the hospital. Jorge boldly stopped in the dead center of the no stopping zone “Il a gente de la television est aqui,” said Jorge. They were huddled in the eaves, but now that Jorge had pointed them out, Robert clearly saw them with their microphones and handheld cameras.
“The media,” said Robert. Of course. Waiting to get a photo of Robert Lemos, human rights activist, dirty cop prosecutor, defender of the weak, rushing to his lover’s bedside. The tabloids would be jacking off over this for weeks.
Except JD wasn’t his lover anymore.
Robert rubbed his knuckles across his eyes. “Jorge?” The name encompassed a world of distress.
“I will be praying for you, Mr. Lemos,” said Jorge.
* * * * *
Kate gripped the corner of the hospital vending machine and gave it a discreet but fierce shake. This damned no-carbohydrate diet was for birds and reptiles, perhaps. But not for a fully grown woman with a physically demanding job. Since the call had come at 4:00 a.m., she and Bill had canvassed the remaining customers of the Arena, checked in with the coroner’s office, and sped over to Queen of Angels to get a statement from their second victim. Ryan, unfortunately, was still unconscious. So they waited it out. Kate was so hungry she’d swear her stomach lining was beginning to devour itself.
She gave the machine another hard shake, but the Snickers bar seemed determined to keep her on her regimen and refused to drop to the bottom tray.