#An LA Crime Story/Best crime and romantic mystery fiction

Jun 04

Tart Man

By An LA Crime Story | Serial | No Comments

Tart man walked another four and a half blocks, up a narrow, winding street to a four-unit stucco building built in the thirties. He entered the garden apartment. Inside, a battered old sky-blue surfboard propped up against the living room wall was the only bit of personality in the cracked plaster interior of the small one bedroom unit.

The man went to his kitchenette, got a cold coffee out of his fridge and laced it with milk. He looked at the tart; not really into it. As he put it in the fridge, he heard a key turn in his front door. He opened a drawer and took out a twenty year old hand gun.

“Mr. Jones?” came a familiar voice. “You here? I’m gonna kill you.” Mr. Jones went into his living room.

Leland Hays was standing there, mad as hell. Jones put down the gun, “Stop threatening me everytime some shit happens.”

“Some shit?!” Hays hissed, turning red. “That’s seventy five grand up in smoke! Why the hell were they even there?!”

“Ozrin wanted the pick-up there.”

“He never told me.”

“You never deal with him on that–”

“Any changes, you’re to let me know. When the hell were you gonna tell me?! Now this! This dead shit and I had to hear it from the cops? The COPS!”

“I just found out.”

“You just found out? Fire was two days ago.”

“Well Myrna just told me.”

Hays stared at him. He took out his wallet, “Get me three more now, Before Ozrin takes his business somewhere else.” He tossed five twenties on the worn counter. “There’s a hundred for gas.” Then he started to leave.

“Those girls dying is on you.” Then he was gone.

Panama Jones checked the time. It was nine-forty-five. He put the gun away, drank half the coffee, grabbed his board and left.

Apr 05

Pacific Dreams

By An LA Crime Story | Serial | No Comments

At seventeen, Panama Jones was achingly, heartbreakingly beautiful. from his Mexican green eyes to the arch of his feet to the warmth of his smooth, sweet skin.`He didn’t think about it much, all he thought about while working part time as a janitor at the Vasquez senior center on Whittier Boulevard was making enough money to hang on to the studio apartment he shared with his mom.

After work on an August Friday, he cashed a paycheck for $237.12. He gave his mom 200 dollars toward rent. She put it on the TV stand. An hour later, her boyfriend showed up with a stash. He saw the cash and asked Panama to go get them some papers.

“Be right back.” Panama told his mom as he left, hoping the weird feeling he had would go away.

He was three yards outside the apartment when he heard the deadbolt latch shut. He went back and tried the door. Locked. He knocked. No one came to the door. And he knew. He wasn’t welcome. He said a silent goodbye to his mom, hit the boulevard and started walking. It was a little after nine.

Panama dropped down Alameda to Venice then headed west. He didn’t stop until he hit the beach a little before seven am. He’d never been there before, never seen the ocean, never been more than a dozen blocks from home. The cool mist surprised him. It cocooned him. He had thirty-seven dollars and nowhere to go but he knew he wasn’t going back.

Before the sun got high that day, he ventured into the Pacific. The force of the waves surprised him; one knocked him down, hard. A thirty-four-year-old surfer named Chelsea was just ending a long ride on a short board. She grabbed him up. Then she took him in. For three months and four days, she called him “Baby.”

“Hey, Baby, bring that lotion over here. Lie down, now… roll over on your back.” Or “Baby, you hungry?” And sometimes, “Baby, you’re gonna break my heart.”.

Chelsea shared her bed with him, her food and soon enough, her heart. She knew she couldn’t keep him but she tried.

“Just get in there, Baby, get in there. Hold your breath and dive under until you feel the rush pass over.” Chelsea taught Panama how to get past the first set of waves until they got to the breaks that were big enough to ride. He took to surfing like religion. Indeed, it was his savior. Every time he went under a wave, he forgot everything, every single wound, every single fear. The first time he rode one, good things almost seemed possible. He used Chelsea’s board every morning while she was at work. But afternoons and weekends, she wanted it for herself.

“A good used one’s under two hundred bucks.” She’d tell him, “You can save that in no time bussing tables or even working at McDonalds or Taco Bell.”

She could’ve bought him one but she knew he’d probably take it and run – he was starting to talk about the breaks at other beaches he’d heard about: Point Dume, San Onofre, Imperial, San Felipe.

She also knew he could find another woman to buy him one. And he did.

Women gave Panama everything: shelter, food, sex, pot, love. They turned him on to the chili verde at Felix’s in Redondo; the surf breaks at Solana, San Elijo, Rosarita; the strips at Huntington; Lady M weed; Astro Burgers’ onion rings; Kama Sutra positions four through sixty-nine and the Yellowtail marinated in tequila and lime at Joe’s café in Ensenada.

Panama had just finished a plate full of the fat, sizzled fish and was buying some twinkies – they called them “Bimbos” down there – at Boom Boom Carneceria just down the street from Joe’s when he first met Leland Hays. He’d been between women for a few months, sleeping on the beach, making a few bucks selling joints to surfers from the two ounces of Salinas Gold a woman in San Diego had given him.

“Could get you killed.” Leland mentioned as he slipped Panama a twenty for a joint of the smooth weed.

“Hey man, be cool.” Panama backed away, “Just a couple sticks’s all I got–“.

“I am cool.” Leland leaned in, “Just sayin’, sellin’ can get dangerous. Cartel doesn’t like competition–”

“Three sticks. That’s all I got– just need a few bucks for food.” Panama walked away.

Leland’s words slowed him, “I can get you five, six hundred for a few nights work. Easy money.”

“Easy money.” Words that should’ve made Panama run. But he was so young then… stoned and way less worldly than he thought. Five or six hundred was enough for a month’s stay at the San Ysidro Motel – he was a little scared of sleeping on the beach ever since a friend of a friend had got his head cut off one night sleeping at Imperial. Plus he could get a board of his own. He’d sold the second hand one a woman in Pismo had bought him – he’d had nowhere to keep it.

He followed Leland across the street. As Hays got into a sweet, sweet ride – a new blue VW van, Panama was right behind him.

“How easy?” he asked.

Jun 15

Jim Beam

By An LA Crime Story | Serial | No Comments

Rhea ran out of words. After writing five hundred and twenty, she hit a wall. She was done. She couldn’t think of another thing to write about cookies and twenty-year-old men or tarts and forty-year-old men. She’d tried her best to imagine it but she couldn’t. What she had wasn’t going to cut it – word-wise and, thus, money-wise. It was time to concentrate on the Domingos case.

She entered her LAPD passwords into a department database and waited, fingers crossed. She got in. Soon she was scrolling through the histories of people and buildings – the pages that told the stories that made up LA. She searched for any info she could find on Domingos, Leland Hays and a bartender named Myrna.

Forty seven web pages into looking at Domingos’ business tax records and employee records she found little of importance except a three-year-old misdemeanor building code violation regarding the steps leading down to Domingos’s liquor storage cellar. Thinking about liquor delivery to the place, she assumed a bartender signed for the deliveries. She called seven local liquor distributors and found two who had delivered to Domingos in the last year.

Young’s Liquor Distributors had an office and warehouse five and a half blocks west of Hays’s Furniture warehouse. The manager – a neat man named Mavery – was on the floor, counting cases of Jim Beam. Rhea flashed her badge – man this was getting easy – and Mavery told her Domingos was one of their smaller accounts but he remembered them well and was “Sorry to see them shut down.”

“Do you remember who signed for the deliveries?” Rhea asked him.

“Yeah…” he thought, “The bartender. A woman. ’bout fifty. Mexican, I think.”

“Do you remember her name?” Rhea asked, trying to push back that little thrill she felt when something just might go her way.

Mavery shook his head, “No. But–” Rhea held onto the thrill and he delivered, “I should have a copy of the receipt.”

Rhea followed Mavery into his office. In the middle of a tidy book full of receipts was a messy, scrawled signature: “Myrna Saldano.” Rhea took a photo of it, thanked Mavery and left.

She got in her car and smiled. She had a name! Her first impulse was to call Strickland. It was habit. But she didn’t. Why piss him off even more. Besides, he’d get there soon enough.

Rhea went back to her apartment, determined to find Myrna Saldano. But Myrna Saldano was nowhere. On paper, she did not exist. After again scrubbing through her best databases, Rhea found no record, no past or no whereabouts of Myrna Saldano. The only hint that the woman existed was that signed liquor delivery receipt and Mavery’s description.

Still… if she did exist and lived in LA, she’d need money. Her trade was bartending. It was time to hit the streets.

Jun 04

Landscape Architect

By An LA Crime Story | Serial | No Comments

Late afternoon sun streaked across the flattened mound behind Daisy’s back patio where the coyote had laid. Daisy watched as Bernardo, the landscaper, with a survey map in hand, staked out the boundaries of her property. The mound was, indeed, just outside the markers, like Daisy and Travis had thought.

“Do you want all succulents?” Bernardo asked her as they discussed the landscaping of the wild, sloping part of her back yard. “Or also some native brush, some rock rose, some agave.”

“The agave sounds good.” Daisy told him as she studied the placement of his markers, “And some flowering natives would be nice – maybe a tree for shade? A Palo Verde tree, right down there.” she pointed to a spot a few yards down the slope.

“Do you want hardscaping?” he asked her.

“… maybe just some flagstones in the dirt. And a path to the tree and a small bench. Can you carve out a little path alongside the edge?” she pointed to the side of her property, next to the mound.

Bernardo looked around, “It needs some grading. And it’s a big area…”

Daisy nodded. “How much?”

He made a few calculations, did some thinking. “Seven grand.” he estimated. “Ballpark.”

Daisy agreed. “When can you start?” she asked.

“I can start in five weeks.” he told her, adding, “I’ll need a two grand deposit at least a week before.”

“I’ll give it to you now.” she offered, “Then we’ll be all set.”

She easily scrambled up the few yards to her back wall. She stepped over it and strode across her patio to the iron gate over her back door. It was heavily arched with thick fuschia bouganvillea, studded with thorns – part of which had fallen across the gate. As Daisy grabbed the vine to pull it aside, Bernardo hurried to her.

“Careful, Miss–! It has thorns–” he warned. She smiled, unscathed and went inside.

A minute later she came back out with two thousand dollars, in cash. “Five weeks from today, I’ll expect your workers here.” she told him. “Don’t change the date, I don’t like to wait. If you do, I’ll take the deposit back and get someone else.”

Bernardo realized she wasn’t one to be messed with. He thought for a minute, going over his schedule in his mind. Satisfied he could deliver, he nodded then took the money. The date was set.

After Bernardo left, Daisy went back out onto her patio. Her very old cat and the coyote were there, waiting. Inquisitory looks were on their faces. “Right now, it’s just landscaping.” she told them, “I don’t know yet if I want it dug up. I have five weeks to decide.”