When I returned to the squad room, Graupmann was gone. A few detectives offered words of support; others ignored me. When Ortiz finished a phone call, he walked over, sat on the edge of my desk, and said softly, “How you doing?”
“I just got back from the bank.” Because the shrinks were based in the Chinatown bank building we all referred to it as “the bank.”
Ortiz rapped on my head with his knuckles. “Did the good doctor find any sign of intelligent life in there?”
Duffy shouted from his office, “Ortiz, quit bullshitting and sit your ass down at a computer. Your sixty-dayer is three weeks overdue. And Ash, the City Council approved a twenty-five thousand dollar reward because Relovich was an ex-cop.”
When Ortiz walked off, Duffy sauntered over and rapped his knuckles on my desk. “Grazzo’s adjutant just called me. The squint says Grazzo wants to see you ASAP.”
“About what.”
“He’s pissed about something, but I don’t know what it is. Just be careful in there.”
Before I could even enter his office, Assistant Chief Grazzo pointed a pencil at a chair across from his desk and shouted, “Sit!” as if he was training a poodle.
Just to be contrary, I leaned against the door jamb, crossed my arms, and said, “How can I help you?”
“You’re pulling the same old shit that resulted in your departure a year ago.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You’re back a few days and you act like a whack job, throwing down on Graupmann and scrapping on the squad room floor.”
“How does that compare with what happened last year?”
“In both incidents you comported yourself unprofessionally, displayed unbalanced behavior, and violated LAPD guidelines. Launching an unprovoked attack on a fellow officer is grounds for-”
“The provocation was what he spread all over my desk.”
“You have no proof it was Graupmann. I expect LAPD detectives, especially the best and the brightest from Felony Special, to have the discipline to withstand a little provocation. If you can’t deal with the heat in the squad room, how can I trust you to conduct yourself professionally on the street?”
“You’re not going to suspend me and yank me off this case. And I’ll tell you why. Because if you do, I’ll file an official complaint against you for neglect of duty.”
“You’re out of your mind,” Grazzo said, his face flushing with anger.
“I don’t think so. You know LAPD regulations. If a supervisor hears about any racist or sexist acts in a squad room, he is supposed to conduct a preliminary investigation, interview the victim and witnesses, complete a complaint form, send it up the chain of command and over to Internal Affairs, and get a form number. You knew all about all that shit on my desk. Yet you didn’t conduct an investigation. You didn’t complete a complaint form. You didn’t do anything. So I’m well within my rights to file a complaint against you for neglect of duty. At the very least, you’d be suspended for that.”
Grazzo tugged on the collar of his uniform, which looked as if it was strangling him. “That was Duffy’s responsibility.”
“You’re the senior officer.”
“I will not sit here and listen to a detective threaten me.” Grazzo was so angry he sprayed spittle across his desk, and the corners of his mouth were flecked with foam.
I sat down and crossed my arms. “If you interfere with my investigation, this is what I’m going to do. After I file the complaint against you, I’m going to the L.A. Times. Then I’m going to talk to one influential member of the Police Commission, and I think you know who I’m referring to-Rabbi David Cohen. You can guess who he’ll side with.”
I walked to the door and said, “If I file that complaint, then there’s no way you can suspend me and pull me off the case.”
“That’s bullshit,” Grazzo barked.
I pulled out of my back pocket a folded up sheet of paper. “I brought this with me in case I needed it. I’m sure you’re familiar with Special Order Number Eight.” I smoothed out the paper on the door and read the first sentence: “Every employee of the Los Angeles Police Department has the right to work in a professional atmosphere and without fear of retaliation that may result from bringing a formal or informal complaint alleging any type of misconduct.”
I folded the paper back up and stuffed it into my pocket and said, “I think pulling me off my case and suspending me could be construed as retaliation for the informal complaint I just filed with you. So let me work my investigation without interference and I’ll forget we ever had this conversation. But if you don’t, I’ll go after you for both neglect of duty and violation of Special Order Number Eight.”
I slammed the door, jogged down the stairwell, and paced on the grass outside PAB, muttering to myself and cursing under my breath. When I calmed down, I returned to the squad room.
Duffy intercepted me. “You must have been pretty persuasive in there.”
“What do you mean?”
“I just got off the phone with Grazzo. He wants you to know that after considering all the variables of the situation, and taking into account the stress you were under after being exposed to that little Teutonic display, he decided that you can carry on. No suspension will be forthcoming.” Duffy grinned. “You must have pictures of Grazzo screwing farm animals.”
When I returned to my desk, I spotted my red message light blinking. It was Relovich’s ex-wife.
“You find out who threatened Pete with the gun?” she asked.
“I’ve got a lead I’m tracking down.”
“Will you let me know when you put the SOB away?”
“Sure.” I heard what sounded like her opening the pop-top of a beer. “How you holding up?”
“Since Pete’s death I’ve been so wasted every day, I haven’t been able to string together two coherent thoughts. I guess I haven’t wanted to. But I’ve got to be there for Lindsey.”
She paused for several seconds. I waited for her to continue.
“Remember you told me if I thought of something to call you? When you asked me that, I was in kind of a fog. But after Lindsey told you about the guy who came to Pete’s door with a gun and threatened him, well that gave me a jolt. I’d never heard that before. To think that Lindsey was there when that happened-that scares the hell out of me. Anyway, this morning I remembered something. It might be something you can use. It might not. But I thought I’d pass it along anyway. A few weeks ago, I was talking on the phone with Pete. We were making weekend plans for the upcoming month about how our daughter would get from Lancaster to Pete’s place in Pedro. He mentioned in a kind of casual way that he wouldn’t be able to pick her up on one of those Fridays because he’d made an appointment with Internal Affairs. Said he couldn’t come and get her until Saturday. I don’t know if it means anything, but I thought I’d tell you.”
“Which Friday was it that he had the appointment?” I asked.
“Can’t remember. I should have written it down. But it was within a few weeks of the call.”
I thanked her and hung up. I was reluctant to stop by Internal Affairs because of my brush with the investigators after the Latisha Patton murder. Still, I knew I had to suck it up and check out Relovich’s appointment.
Because Parker Center was such an outdated, overcrowded structure, a number of LAPD units were scattered in office buildings throughout downtown L.A. After PAB opened, a few of them remained in their buildings, including Internal Affairs.
The unit is now officially known as The Professional Standards Bureau, but most cops still call it by the old name. When I first got my shield, Internal Affairs moved to the Bradbury Building-a landmark structure built in the 1890s-an anomalous place for an LAPD squad room.
I walked down Broadway, spotted the unremarkable, boxy, brown brick building in the distance, and entered through the archway squeezed between a Subway shop and a telephone company. But once inside I was dazzled, as I am every time I linger in the elegant interior courtyard, a breathtaking five-story vault of open space flooded with sunlight from the massive glass roof. I admired the glazed brick walls, the marble stairs, the filigreed wrought-iron railings that look like hanging vines, the ornate birdcage elevators. I’d seen a magazine article recently and learned that a young draftsman had designed the building after he read a science fiction story describing the typical office building in a city of the future as a “vast hall of light received not alone by the windows, but from a dome overhead.” A perfect building for this city of dreams, I thought, a city in the thrall of the movie business, where fantasy often dictates reality.
After wandering around the courtyard for a few minutes, I walked up to the third floor and, trying to appear casual and unconcerned, walked through the Internal Affairs squad room. It seemed like all the investigators in the room froze and cast suspicious looks my way; it was probably my imagination, but I definitely felt a hostile vibe. Maybe they heard about my return to Major Crimes and weren’t happy about it. I recognized several detectives who had questioned me about the Patton case. I avoided them and approached a young Asian detective who had probably been hired by I.A. after I’d quit. When I asked him if he knew anything about Relovich’s appointment, he jerked his thumb toward a desk in the corner and said, “Saucedo took the guy’s call.”
I stopped by Detective Virginia Saucedo’s desk, and she stood up and shook my hand. I had met her years ago on a case when she was working the robbery table at Hollywood Division. Saucedo was slender with a long, graceful neck and shimmering black hair that she wore in a French braid pinned under the nape of her neck. Her top was cut a little lower than LAPD regulations allowed. Drawing attention to the cleavage was a moonstone cross on a silver chain. She rolled a chair over for me from another desk. Unlike the others in the office, Saucedo was amiable and cooperative.
I sat down, briefly told her about the case, and asked about Relovich’s appointment.
“Not much to tell, really,” she said. “He just called, wanted to set up an appointment, and they put me on the phone.”
“Did he say what it was about?”
She shook her head. “I asked him, but he said he’d prefer to talk about it in person.”
“Did he sound upset? Stressed? Depressed?”
“Couldn’t really tell. We just had a very brief conversation.”
“When was his appointment?”
She sifted through her desk calendar and pointed to the entry: Det. Pete Relovich. Retired. Wants to talk. About-??? The date was for this Friday-a week after his death.
“You think there’s any connection between the appointment and what happened to him?”
“Not sure,” I said.
Staring at the calendar, she said softly, “I hope I’m not out of line, but I want to tell you that I really felt bad for you last year. I know that was a very painful thing to go through.”
I nodded, feeling uncomfortable, unsure of what to say.
She gazed into my eyes for a moment with a look of pity and concern, an almost maternal expression. “Coming back, I know, can’t be easy. If you ever want someone to talk to, call me.” She scrawled her home number on the back of her business card and deftly slipped it to me, so the other detectives wouldn’t see.
She was a pretty girl, with lustrous black eyes and a nice body. I took the card and slipped it into my pocket. But when I thought about the way she had looked at me, I didn’t know whether I would call her.
I walked back to PAB, climbed into my car, drove down to San Pedro, and parked in front of Relovich’s house. I lingered on the sidewalk for a moment, enjoying the sunshine and looking out at the sea, the white-caps iridescent in the bright light. For the next few hours I walked up and down the street interviewing neighbors, but it was a fruitless afternoon. No one had heard anything; no one had seen anything; no one provided any useful information about Relovich.
When I returned to the house, I noticed that the living room walls were streaked purple-the color of the jacaranda blossoms that I could see outside the front window. The fingerprint technicians had dabbed the walls with ninhydrin, which reacts to the amino acids in the fingers’ sweat patterns, leaving a purple residue.
Sitting in my car outside Relovich’s house, staring at the sea, I reached for my cell. I called a clerk at the Harbor Division jail and discovered that Theresa Martinez, the young Hispanic woman who dressed like a preppy, had made bail a few hours after she’d been busted and I had questioned her. The clerk gave me her address and I drove down the hill to where she lived, a generic 1960s-style, two-story complex with the small apartments encircling a kidney-shaped pool.
I walked up the stairs to her apartment and rang the bell. She looked through the keyhole and opened the door a few inches.
“Yes,” she said suspiciously.
“I’m detective-”
“I remember you.”
“Can I come in?”
“No.”
“When we last talked, I thought you might have seen something that night that might help me.”
“I didn’t.”
“Look, I’m a homicide detective. I’m investigating the murder of a retired cop. I’m hoping you might be able to tell me something that could help my investigation, something that-”
“Well, I can’t,” she said, slamming the door.
“If you do think of something, call me.”
I pulled a card out of my wallet and slid it under the door.
I had a few hours to kill until I figured Abazeda would be home. So rather than risk the freeway during the crush of the evening commute, I stopped by Ante’s, a landmark Croatian restaurant two blocks from the harbor. A few years ago I had investigated the murder of a harbor commissioner who was carjacked and shot a block away. It took me six days to clear the case, and I had lunched at Ante’s each day.
“Welcome back, Detective Levine,” the hostess said when she saw me. “I’ve got a nice quiet booth in the corner for you.”
The dining room was homey, with high-backed red leather booths, a wood beam ceiling, Croatian handicrafts on one wall, and a colorful mural of the Adriatic coastline on another. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast and I was ravenous. I started with a salad of iceberg lettuce, cabbage, cucumber, and octopus and a side dish of fried smelt, and then polished off a plate of Sarma — seasoned meat and rice rolled in cabbage leaves-served with mostaccioli.
I was about to ask for the check, when the hostess, carrying a tray, stopped by and said, “A little something for you-on the house.” She brought me a piece of sweet, flaky strudel and a glass of Croatian plum brandy, the same kind of brandy, I realized, Goran Relovich had been drinking on his fishing boat.
After I finished the strudel, I sipped the brandy and I recalled the photographs that Lindsey Relovich had taken during her birthday at her father’s house.
From a flap in the back of the murder book, I removed the photographs. I sifted through the packet, spread the pictures out on the table, and divided them into piles-each pile representing a different room of the house. Apparently, Lindsey had followed her father through the house that day and snapped pictures while he mugged for the camera. There were a few pictures of Relovich posing behind his daughter, towering over her. I knew Relovich’s life during the past few years had been troubled, but he looked truly happy in the pictures with his daughter.
After studying the photographs, I finished the brandy in a swallow. Then I tried to recall how each room looked when Duffy and I had inspected the house. I would visit the place again for a more thorough inspection, but I wanted to see if any of the photographs provided me with some insight.
One did.
The little girl had photographed her father in the spare bedroom, pulling her birthday present out of a closet. I remembered the desk and figured that Relovich used the room as an office. In the photo, a laptop computer sat on a corner of the desk.
I closed my eyes and recalled the desk with the coffee cup filled with pens and pencils. Riffling through the murder book, I located the property report compiled by the Harbor Division detectives. Now I was certain. Whoever killed Relovich had pinched his laptop. Because when I had searched the house, it wasn’t there.
If Abazeda had killed Relovich, that would make sense. He was worried that Relovich was stealing his girls and his clients. The laptop might contain that information.