When I stopped by the mall’s security office, Fringa said, “Let’s take a ride.”
I followed him through the dim, deserted mall, through a side door and into the parking lot. He hopped in a small, electric cart and said, “I gotta take a last patrol before end of watch.”
I climbed into the cart, and he began to cruise around the property. “Let me give you one piece of advice, Levine. Don’t fuck up like me. Or you’ll end up when you’re fifty driving a fucking golf cart at midnight around a mall. Do your twenty-five or thirty and don’t piss anyone off.”
“I’m trying.”
“Like I said, I asked around about you. I still got some friends in the department. Word on you is that you can act like a dickhead sometimes, but when it comes to doing the job, you’re old school. You’ll do whatever it takes to clear the case.”
“I think that’s a compliment,” I said, smiling.
“In my book, it is. Anyway, I’m glad you’re looking into Avery’s death. When you stopped by this afternoon, I wanted to make sure you’d do a righteous investigation. Not some quickie in-and-out LAPD whitewash. Anyway, I never thought it was a suicide.”
“Why’s that?”
“Just not the type.”
“When was the last time you talked to him?”
“A few months ago. Sounded like the same old Avery. We talked a couple of times a year. Whenever he had to come to L.A., we’d get dinner. I was up to Idaho a few years ago. Stayed with Avery for a week. Went fishing.” He pulled the cart over, behind a department store. “Suicide? Naw. Just can’t see it. After I heard the news, I called the sheriff in that one-stoplight town in Idaho. Told him I didn’t think Avery was the suicide type. He said he’d look into it.”
“Where did you meet Mitchell?”
“At Hollenbeck. We were working patrol. We ended up as partners for a few years. Best partner I ever had.”
“Why was that?”
“He was funny as hell. Made those eight hours fly. And you could count on him. He always had your back.”
“Before Mitchell died, was he worried about anything?”
“Avery was kind of a closed-mouth guy, so I don’t know if he’d tell me.”
“Was he concerned about anyone coming after him?”
“Avery could take care of himself.”
“You have any ideas of who might have wanted to kill him?”
“No idea at all.”
“You remember when he transferred to Hollywood Division?”
“He didn’t transfer. He got transferred. Pissed off our captain for arguing with him about some stupid-ass thing. So the captain decided to give him some freeway therapy. Hollenbeck was only about twenty minutes from where Avery was living at the time with his family. Sending him to Hollywood added a lot of miles to his commute.”
“When was this?”
He tapped his finger on the steering wheel. “Thirteen, fourteen years ago.”
“Did you hear about Pete Relovich?”
“What about him?”
“He was killed at his house in Pedro?”
“Jesus.”
“There was an article in the Times.”
“I don’t read the Times. They’re always ripping the department. You think there’s a connection?”
“Do you?”
“I know Pete and Avery were partners for a few years. I had lunch with them once when I had some business up in Hollywood.” He started up the cart and began cruising the mall lot again. “Two partners getting waxed in the same year. That’s too much of a coincidence for me.”
“When they worked together in Hollywood, anything going on with Avery that sticks out in your mind?”
Fringa drove in silence for a minute of two. He stopped and turned toward me. “The homicide is what you’re after, right? You’re not interested in stirring up a lot of shit are you?”
“All I care about is who killed them. Anything else they might have been involved in doesn’t interest me.”
“Okay. When Avery was working Hollywood he came into some money.”
“How much money?”
“I don’t know. I just know that it must have been a nice piece of change. Because that was about the time he bought his place up in Idaho.”
“Where’d he get the money?”
“That’s the question, isn’t it. I have no fucking idea. I’ll tell you this, though. He didn’t have any money before he hit Hollywood. He came into the money there.”
“Can you give me a better idea when he came into the money? Maybe an exact year?”
“Can’t remember exactly. Just sometime when he was working Hollywood.”
We cruised around for another thirty minutes, but I wasn’t able to find out much more about Mitchell. I had to listen to Fringa continue to complain about how he got royally screwed by the LAPD; how he wanted to sue the department but none of the shysters he talked to would take his case; how if he could do it all over again, he would have steered clear of the LAPD and, instead, gone into real estate, like his brother-in-law in San Diego, who’s now a millionaire.
I was at my desk at five o’clock the next morning, eager to get started. I finally had a direction to follow, some leads that had coalesced. The money that dropped in Mitchell’s and Relovich’s laps was a good starting point.
Relovich’s ex-wife told me that Pete purchased the house eleven years ago and the sale closed in February. I figured it was likely that Mitchell had scored his bundle of cash around that time. Previously, I had obtained from Records and Identification all the arrest reports from that year and the previous year as well. I began sifting through the arrest reports, starting when Relovich purchased the house and working backward. I didn’t know exactly what I was looking for, but decided to search for cases in which it seemed possible for Relovich and Mitchell to recover large amounts of cash or the carved Japanese figures.
By noon, I had studied all eighty-seven arrest reports. A half dozen of them, I decided, merited a more thorough investigation. I wanted to see the entire case files, which included witness statements, interviews, crime scene diagrams, photographs, and everything else that chronicled the investigation. So after stopping at a hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant on Sunset for chicken mole, I drove to the city archives, just east of downtown. Parking on the roof, I walked over to the musty office, where documents from city departments were stored, including building permits, personnel records, planning documents, and LAPD case files. The long, narrow room was filled with researchers and historians hunched over wooden tables, surrounded by white boxes filled with files. On the walls were faded pictures of former city officials, maps of Los Angeles, and old neighborhood photographs.
I had jotted down the storage location numbers for the half dozen cases I wanted to study further. After handing the numbers to a clerk, I wandered over to a glass case in the corner that displayed the original yellowed map-almost 100 years old-for the “Venice of America” subdivision. I hunched over, studied the layout, and located the plot for Nicole Haddad’s house.
When the clerk returned with the boxes, I lugged them to my car, returned to PAB, and quickly riffled through the files. One case immediately intrigued me. Relovich and Mitchell had responded to a 911 call from a neighbor who spotted a man climbing into the back window of a house in Hollywood, a few blocks north of Franklin Avenue. The officers responded, but just missed the burglar.
I put the case at the top of my priority list when I read the property report. An officer had written that in addition to some electronic equipment, a dozen pieces of “Oriental art” also were stolen. Those pieces might have included netsukes and ojimes, I figured. The man’s name was Richard Quan, which sounded Chinese, but that did not preclude him from collecting Japanese art.
I headed out to Hollywood to interview Quan. He lived in a 1930’s Spanish-style house with a red tile roof and a courtyard with a bubbling fountain shaded by bottlebrush trees, the bristly red blooms dappling the water and carpeting the lawn. Quan, fortunately, was home. He invited me inside and we sat around a dining room table. A half dozen antique ginger jars, with delicate rose patterns and gold edging, were lined atop a gleaming Chinese rosewood cabinet set against a dining room wall.
I explained that I was following up on a robbery. Quan’s wife briefly interrupted us and asked if I preferred tea or coffee. I told her tea would be fine; she returned a few minutes later with a pot of oolong tea and two cups on a serving tray. She set it on the coffee table and quietly returned to the kitchen.
Quan filled the cups, handed me one, and asked, “Why are you interested in a case this old?”
“It might be connected to another case I’m tracking. I was interested in the Asian art that was stolen. Any of it Japanese?”
“No,” Quan said stiffly. “You know, there is a difference between the many cultures in Asia.”
Trying to placate Quan, I said, “The only reason I ask is because the property report was not specific. It just stated that ‘Oriental art’ was stolen.”
“I find the term Oriental offensive,” he said, frowning at me.
“I’m sorry to offend you, but I was just quoting the report. I would have written it up differently.”
“I accept your apology.”
I took a sip of tea. “I would appreciate it if you’d tell me what, specifically, was stolen?”
“Some things of little value; some of great value, including pieces that have been in my family for a long time-hanging scrolls on rice paper, woven silk tapestries, enamel incense burners, and some painted porcelain and carved jade pieces.”
“Did you ever recover them?”
“Yes,” he said, looking uncomfortable.
“I noticed from the arrest report that the two policemen on the scene-Officers Relovich and Mitchell-made an arrest later that week. They pulled over a bunch of kids who had some Asian art in their trunk-”
“Junk,” Quan said contemptuously. “They showed me the items. They weren’t mine. It turned out these kids had broken into a Chinese restaurant and stole some decorative items that were on the shelves.”
“How’d you recover your items?”
Quan pursed his lips and stared at his tea. “Can we talk confidentially?”
“Certainly. I’m only interested to see if there are any links with my other case. If what you tell me doesn’t connect, it’ll go no further than you and me.”
Quan finished his tea and said, “The person who broke into my house and stole these things-it turned out I knew him.”
I waited for him to continue. After a minute of silence, I asked, “Who was he?”
“He was my daughter’s boyfriend at the time. A very bad boy. Associated with a Chinese gang in Monterey Park. My wife and I forbid her to see him. A friend of our daughter confided to us that this boy had sold our things. My wife and I made a deal with my daughter: If she never saw him again, we would not go to the police. She agreed. Detectives later recovered the items from a pawnshop. And that was the end of it. Until now.”
I believed Quan. “Did your daughter keep her word?”
Quan beamed. He opened his wallet and showed me a picture of a young couple with a baby boy. “She married a fine young man a few years ago. This is my first grandchild.”
When I returned to the squad room, I picked up the ringing phone.
“Ash Levine here.”
“I read something in the Hadassah News that was very disturbing.”
I sighed. “Hello, Mom.”
“The article said that mixed marriages fail at twice the rate as the national average. Just imagine what the statistics would be if they studied Jewish- Arab marriages.”
“Mom, I have no intention of marrying any one now.”
“Things can change.”
“Not with me.”
“Are you still dating that Iraqi girl?”
“Lebanese.”
“I can’t keep those countries straight. Are you still dating that Muslim?”
“She’s not a Muslim. She’s Christian.”
“Are you still dating her?”
“It’s too complicated to explain. Let’s talk another time.”
“Will you be coming by for Shabes dinner on Friday night?”
“Sorry. I can’t make it.”
“I think you should. Uncle Benny met a nice girl in his building. Single. Very attractive. From a nice family. He wants to bring her along.”
“Forget it. Tell Uncle Benny I appreciate his efforts, but to hold off.”
She did not respond.
“Did you hear what I said?”
“Yes, yes,” she said impatiently.
“Look. I’m just too busy this week. Please pass that along to Uncle Benny. Tell him not to bring the girl.”
“Oh, your job is so important. God forbid, another shvartzeh gets murdered in South Central and you don’t show up. That would be such a tragedy-”
“I don’t work South Central anymore, Mom.”
“Wherever you work, I think it’s important that you have dinner with us on Friday because-”
“Got to go Mom,” I interrupted.
I hung up, and returned to the files I had recovered from the archives. A homicide in the Hollywood Hills looked faintly promising. The victim was a small-time burglar named Jack Freitas who had clipped the wires to the alarm system at the home he was robbing. The owner, Lloyd Silver, was vacationing in Italy with his family when Freitas broke in. The case was a curious one because someone shot Freitas in the temple, but the killer was never caught.
Relovich and Mitchell had been on patrol in the area, heard the gunshot, and sped to the scene. They found the body and arrested a homeless man wandering down a nearby street, who, they later discovered, had no connection to the case. Homicide detectives theorized at the time, according to the files, that Freitas’ partner double-crossed and killed him because he didn’t want to share the loot.
What interested me was the name of the firm Silver owned-Kyoto Import-Export. Since Kyoto was a city in Japan, it followed that Silver might have collected some netsukes and ojimes. The property report, however, did not list any stolen objects d’art. The thieves had blasted open a bedroom safe and stole Silver’s wife’s diamond and emerald jewelry, valued at more than $300,000.
I decided to stop by the Lloyd Silver’s house in the Hollywood Hills.