You’re not associated, that’s good. But your father was, right?”
“He quit that shit a long time ago. He was totally legit.”
“Okay, that’s good to know. But I heard there were guys from Las Palmas in the shop yard for the party. Is that true?”
“I don’t know, maybe. My father grew up with these people. He didn’t just throw them in the trash. But he was legit, his business was legit, he even had a white man as his partner. So don’t go starting no shit about ‘gang related.’ That’s bullshit.”
Ballard nodded.
“Good to know, Gabriel. Can you tell me, was his partner there?”
“I didn’t see him. Are we done here?”
“Not yet, Gabriel. What is the partner’s name?”
“I don’t know. He’s a doctor up in Malibu or some shit. I only seen him once when he came in with a bent frame.”
“A bent frame?”
“His Mercedes. He backed into something and bent the frame.”
“Got it. Okay, I need two more things from you, Gabriel.”
“What?”
“I need your girlfriend’s phone number and I need you to step outside to my car for a minute.”
“Why should I go with you? I want to see my father.”
“They’re not going to let you see your father, Gabriel. Not till later. I want to help you. I want this to be the last time you have to talk to the police about this. But to do that, I need to wipe your hands to make sure you’re telling the truth.”
“What?”
“You said you didn’t fire a gun tonight. I wipe your hands with something I have in my car and we’ll know for sure. After that, you’ll only hear from me when I come by to tell you we caught the person who did this to your father.”
Ballard waited while Gabriel considered the options.
“If you won’t do it, I have to assume you lied to me. You don’t want that, do you?”
“All right, whatever, let’s do it.”
Ballard walked over to the group first to ask Moore for the car keys. Moore said they were in the car. She then led Gabriel out to the ambulance bays. Here she pulled a notebook out of her back pocket. After writing down the cell number for Gabriel’s girl, she jotted down his description of the man in the hoodie. She then opened her car’s trunk. She took out a packet of wipe pads for gunshot-residue testing, used separate pads to wipe both Gabriel’s hands, then sealed them in plastic bags to be submitted to the lab.
“See, no gunpowder, right?” Gabriel said.
“The lab will confirm that,” Ballard said. “But I already believe you, Gabriel.”
“So, what do I do now?”
“You go in and be with your mother and your sisters. They’re going to need you to be strong for them.”
Gabriel nodded and his face contorted. It was as though telling him to be strong had kicked his strength out from beneath him.
“You okay?” Ballard asked.
She touched his shoulder.
“You’re going to catch this guy, right?” he said.
“Yeah,” Ballard said. “We’re going to catch him.”
6
Ballard didn’t get back to the station until almost 3 a.m. She went up the stairs off the back hallway and into the room shared by the Gang and Vice units. It was long and rectangular and usually empty because both units worked the streets. But now the room was crowded. Officers from both squads, in uniform like Ballard, sat behind desks and at worktables going down the length of the room. Most of them were not wearing masks. The large crowd could be explained in a number of ways. First, it was difficult to work vice and gangs in full uniform, as dictated by the department’s tactical alert. This meant the alert, which was supposed to put as many officers on the street as possible during the New Year’s celebration, was having the opposite effect. It could also mean that, because it was beyond the witching hours of midnight to 2 a.m., everyone had returned to the house on break. But Ballard knew that it could also be that this was the new LAPD — officers stripped of the mandate of proactive enforcement and waiting to be reactive, to hit the streets only when it was requested and required, and only then doing the minimum so as not to engender a complaint or controversy.
To Ballard, much of the department had fallen into the pose of a citizen caught in the middle of a bank robbery. Head down, eyes averted, adhering to the warning: nobody move, and nobody gets hurt.
She spotted Sergeant Rick Davenport at the end of one of the worktables and headed toward him. He looked up from a cell phone to see her coming, and a maskless smile of recognition creased his face. He was mid-forties and had been working gangs in the division for over a decade.
“Ballard,” he said. “I hear El Chopo got it tonight.”
Ballard stopped at the table.
“El Chopo?” she asked.
“That’s what we called Javier back in the day,” Davenport said. “When he was a gangster and using his padre’s place as a chop shop.”
“But not anymore?”
“He supposedly went straight after his wife started dropping kids.”
“I was surprised I didn’t see you out at the scene tonight. That why?”
“That and other things. Just doin’ what the people want.”
“Which is staying off the street?”
“It’s pretty clear if they can’t defund us, they want to de-see us, right, Cordo?”
Davenport looked for affirmation to a gang cop named Cordero.
“Right, Sergeant,” Cordero said.
Ballard pulled out the empty chair on Davenport’s right side and sat down. She decided to get to the point.
“So, what can you tell me about Javier?” she asked. “Do you believe he went straight? Would Las Palmas even allow that?”
“The word is that twelve or fifteen years ago, he bought his way out,” Davenport said. “And as far as we know, he’s been clean and legit ever since.”
“Or too smart for you?”
Davenport laughed.
“There’s always that possibility.”
“Well, do you still have a file on the guy? Shake cards, anything?”
“Oh, we’ve got a file. It’s probably a little dusty. Cordo, pull the file on Javier Raffa and bring it to Detective Ballard.”
Cordero got up and walked to the line of four-drawer file cabinets that ran the length of one side of the room.
“That’s how far this guy goes back,” Davenport said. “He’s in the paper files.”
“So definitely not active?” Ballard pressed.
“Nope. And we would have known if he was. We follow some of the OGs. If they were meeting, we would have seen it.”
“How far up was Raffa before he dropped out?”
“Not far. He was a soldier. We never made a case on the guy but we knew he was chopping stolen cars for the team.”
“How did you hear he bought his way out?”
Davenport shook his head like he couldn’t remember.
“Just the grapevine,” he said. “I can’t name you the snitch offhand — it was a long time ago. But that was what was said, and as far as we could tell, it was accurate.”