The Bad Shepherd Read online

  Rolles left the Crenshaw High School gymnasium, swathed in yellow orange light. He crossed the sidewalk to the parking lot next to one of the main school buildings, his head cast left looking back to the gym. Rolles strode purposefully, his thick legs speeding him to the idling car in the parking lot. Rolles opened the passenger door of the ‘63 Olds Super 88, metallic lavender paint sparkling a darker shade in the setting sun.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The McLaren Group sat atop a five-story building half a block up from Hollywood Boulevard on Cahuenga just south of the dogleg where it merged with Yucca Avenue. Bo Fochs enjoyed an office with a northward view of the Hills and the Hollywood sign that was now bathed in the yellow orange of early evening. He walked to his desk and dropped his linen sports coat on the back of his chair. Fochs leafed through the short stack of messages left for him by the receptionist, a cute, button-nosed redhead who was totally off-limits. Nothing urgent—a few client calls he’d return tomorrow.

  “Bo?” A gruff voice behind him asked, accompanied by a short burst of knocks.

  Fochs turned around. The man in the doorway was wearing two-thirds of a navy pinstriped three-piece suit. He was about five-ten with a once-powerful frame that had thinned with age. He preferred three-piece suits because the vest added a little bulk that time had stripped away and hid the paunch growing above his belt. But time couldn’t age away the intense gaze behind those eyes that had seen every dark corner of Hollywood. Bud McLaren had a face like Lee Marvin’s with steel hair, steel jawline, and watery paper cuts for eyes.

  “Hey, Boss,” Fochs said, dropping the message slips back on his desk.

  “Got a minute?”

  “Always.”

  Bud backed out of the doorway and beckoned Fochs to follow. He lead Bo to his corner office, taking a bottle of twenty-year-old Glen Morangie off a tray with one hand and two glasses with the other, pinched between two thick fingers. McLaren poured a healthy dram into each and handed one to Bo. “Slàinte.”

  Fochs smirked as they clinked glasses. Fochs took a sip of scotch, keeping eye contact with his boss as per tradition, before closing his eyes when the whiskey splashed his tongue to savor the smoky burn.

  McLaren sat and motioned for Bo to do the same. “How’d it go today?”

  Fochs had spent the day with Early Warning. The band he’d befriended during his time on the Rockstar Squad, a lifetime ago, had just exploded. Their debut album, Under the Radar, was one of the runaway hit records of 1982, peaking at fifteen on Billboard. The record’s lead single, “Little Black Book,” hit at number three, and as with any new hit act, musical prognosticators all over town were calling them the next somebody. Early Warning started touring regionally and hitting the festival circuit. The year before they’d landed a spot at the US Festival with Van Halen, Ozzy Osbourne, Mötley Crüe, and Quiet Riot. Now they were about to hit the road with Van Halen, opening for them on the final leg of the band’s North American tour supporting their 1984 album. Early Warning were rehearsing day and night for their June 2nd gig in Denver.

  Fochs met with them to talk security, specifically about keeping the boys out of trouble or, at least, keeping said trouble from becoming public knowledge. Stories of rock ‘n roll excess were genuine coin of the realm on the Sunset Strip. Rock music was a petri dish of debauchery and chaos with bands’ experimenting with just how much they could get away with. Fochs knew that it wasn’t bad music that was going to nose-dive a band into the gutter, but their own bad press, and that presented him with an opportunity.

  Trouble was inevitable.

  Consider Quiet Riot, Bo would say, when first meeting with a band or their management. The only metal band to ever debut at number one but their lead singer, Kevin DuBrow could not seem to stop pissing people off—the fans, the press, he’s turning every sympathetic ear in town with his acerbic tirades and his ego. The band’s second album, Critical Condition, was due out any day but would anybody buy it? Would the rock press be willing to give it a fair review or had Kevin pissed everyone off too much already? Bo worked with the bands, because many of them knew him already. He could tell them, in a language that they could understand, what the consequences of their actions would be if they fucked up too badly—publicly or privately. But if not, Bo offered damage control. He’d work with the press to soften the blow. He’d made many of those connections from his days as a Rockstar. Bo had earned a kind of notoriety from those days, street credit, and it opened doors. People loved being next to something they thought was safely dangerous.

  That was one of the reasons metal music was so popular.

  He used Quiet Riot as a cautionary tale and it worked, particularly with Early Warning because those guys had come up together on the club circuit and broke about the same time.

  Trouble was inevitable.

  How much and its impact to the band could be up to the McLaren Agency, if those bands were smart enough to sign. Fochs proposed that a savvy investigator, knowledgeable of the music industry, could preempt some of that trouble and control the damage when he could not prevent it outright. Bud McLaren was initially skeptical but considered the idea with a shrewd eye. Fochs reassured him that if the boys broke any laws, they’d leave it up to the lawyers to sort out. He wasn’t going to be enabling criminal behavior, and he made it clear that his presence didn’t mean they had a license to cause mayhem.

  The other side, the darker side that was celebrity, now had a price. Mark David Chapman had shown the world that. A good investigator might just be able to find out of a band was in danger.

  Though musicians themselves lived in a world without consequence, their managers and agents knew better. Their handlers enabled the behavior to their faces, but behind the curtain they worried if this would be the night some deranged fan got through. Metal also had a problem that other forms of music did not. They brought out the religious groups in droves who believed the music preached everything from godlessness to devil worship. It was becoming more and more common for bands to receive threatening letters, even death threats from individuals or groups expressing misguided outrage at their music. Everyone in the business figured it would just be a matter of time before someone acted on it.

  “Harry Templeton loves the idea.” Bo had actually pitched this concept to several bands he was close with and there was a good bit of interest but he wanted to start with Early Warning to prove his concept. He’d known those guys for a long time, believed in them and wanted to make sure they didn’t sabotage their chance.

  “That’s the manager, right?” McLaren asked with a raised eyebrow and glass in tandem.

  “That’s right. Guess he’s a little nervous about their tour with Van Halen next month.”

  “Van Halen is pretty popular band, I guess?” McLaren asked with a sly grin.

  “They’re the biggest band in the world,” Fochs said flatly, then sipped his whiskey. He swirled it and swallowed. “Early Warning is going from playing clubs and theaters to opening arenas. This is the biggest stage there is, and the opportunity for mischief will be incalculable. I can probably keep them out of the papers. And after John Lennon, security is something people are paying attention to.”

  “To the brave new world,” McLaren lifted up his glass.

  “Now, on this tour Van Halen’s people are handling everything, but these guys could very well headline their next tour if the follow-up record does well. If that’s the case, it’ll be on them. I told Marty that I’d try to meet them for a couple tour dates to check in on the boys and make sure they’re not getting into too much trouble.”

  McLaren nodded, taking it in.

  “Really, this is all groundwork for when the boys make it big and need us as security full-time.”

  “Think they’ll behave?”

  “Yeah, they’re good guys. I wouldn’t take this job with a Mötley Crüe or an Ozzy Osbourne, but I think I could save the boys from themselves. They trust me.”

  “You talk price?”

&
nbsp; “I said they could retain our services for 10,000 for the first year. That would include my flying anywhere they go for damage control, should it come to that, and I made it clear that if they committed any felonies, they’re on their own. We also talked scaling. If they end up huge, we’d obviously need a bigger staff.”

  “What’d the manager say?”

  “Thought it was a fair price. I took care of the guys during their club days. Got them out of a couple brushes with the police. Nothing major, but like I said, they trust me. Harry said, more importantly, they listen to me.”

  “Sounds like he’s got his hands full.”

  “Don’t let the exterior fool you, that guy draws water. The seas part when he walks in a club around here.”

  “That right?”

  “There’s a short list of people I wouldn’t fuck with, Boss. He’s on it.”

  McLaren smiled and drained his whiskey. Fochs did the same. McLaren indicated the tray next to Fochs. Bo reached over to the stand, grabbed the bottle, and refilled both of their glasses with a few fingers.

  “Great work, Bo. I mean it. I want to take this agency out of the ex-wife, bail bonds, and the cheating husband business for good. We’ve done well, but . . .” He turned his chair to expose the view of Hollywood behind him. “This town has two industries that take to trouble like a duck takes to water. They also have the happy coincidence of having more money than sense. We are in a position now where we can start moving in that direction.”

  “Here’s to trouble.”

  “If it’s not too cliché to quote my favorite detective, trouble is our business.”

  Fochs smiled and held his glass up to his boss before he drank. “So what was it you wanted to talk to me about?”

  McLaren set his glass down but kept his hand on it. “I had a meeting with a friend over at Warner Bros today. Kit Carson, he’s the head of security.”

  Bo nodded, knowing the guy’s real name was Jack. He’d been christened with the nickname “Kit” in his patrol days and never shook it. “He was assistant chief of detectives, wasn’t he?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I don’t think I ever met him, but he was in the job when I first posted to the bureau.”

  “He’s a good man. We go back to the patrol, believe it or not.”

  “I didn’t know you could ride horses,” Bo said wryly.

  “Watch it, kid,” he said, returning the smile. “Anyway, I had gotten the idea to pitch to him after you first told me about what you wanted to do with Early Warning. We talked about different ways of protecting the studio’s interests and the contract players. I hadn’t considered the damage control angle previously, but now that I think on it that might be something else to offer. They prize anonymity even more than the music industry does. He also talked about having us provide technical advisory work for some of their cop movies.”

  “No shit,” Bo said, nodding.

  “Yes, sir. But he’s got a favor to ask, first. He’s got this niece who is an actress, commercials mostly, some TV. Anyway, she’s just gotten picked up for a pretty good role in a film, can’t remember the name of it off the top.”

  Bo knew that was a lie, or at least an evasion. Bud McLaren was ever a street cop and could still recall nearly every substantive fact about a case at will. Neither age nor position had dulled his skill. Bo secretly wondered if his boss spent his free time memorizing the phone book just to keep it sharp.

  “Anyway, it’s not a major role but big enough that it’s the kind of thing that could get her noticed. She’d been dating this muscle head she met while doing bikini work for one of those pumping iron magazines. Way Kit tells it, this guy has the winning combination of a joyfully jealous disposition, a pretty violent temper, and not knowing his own strength. She broke it off and moved up here to Hollywood to be closer to work and get into a new scene. She’s afraid the boyfriend is going to come looking.”

  McLaren put his scotch down and set both hands flat on the desktop. “Kit would like us to look after her while we convince the ex-boyfriend that its time to move on. I told him I’d put a man on the boyfriend, which I’m going to give to Vince. He’s a good sap man, and his face and punching are well acquainted. I told Kit I’d have my top man looking after his niece.” Bud inclined his head toward Bo.

  “Aw, I don’t know, Boss. I mean, I’ve got this thing with Early Warning.”

  “This is just a couple of weeks. Kit is also talking to some cop buddies at Manhattan Beach where this creep lives. He thinks that as soon as the meathead sees she’s got heat around her, he’s going to back off.”

  Fochs studied the older detective’s face and couldn’t find the slightest inclination of bend. McLaren was a widower. Fochs didn’t know the full story, but he knew that McLaren carried the weight of tremendous guilt with him. Now there was nothing he took more seriously than family. He relented with a nod. “Whatever you need, Bud. You know that.”

  “I know.” He smiled, and his sad eyes lit for a moment.

  McLaren scribbled an address on a piece of paper and slid it across his desk. Fochs picked it up, glanced at it, folded it, and slid it into his pocket. They made some brief small talk, finished their scotches, and Fochs excused himself. Something about Bud’s demeanor said he wanted to be alone.

  Fochs walked back to his office, picked up his messages, and thumbed through them to organize the next day. One, which he hadn’t noticed before, was from a Jimmy Maclaughlin. The note read, “Jimmy” not “James” and the name was underlined twice, as if the speaker wanted to underscore the point. Fochs held the note and pondered a moment, then went for his Yellow Pages. Maclaughlin, if it were the same one, was an infamous criminal defense attorney in South LA. He was a notch above an ambulance chaser, but it wasn’t a big notch. Bo looked the name up, and the number matched. He had a half-page with “Jimmy Mack Has Got Your Back” in block letters across the bottom just above the phone number. Fochs reviewed a mental list of open cases, but nothing came to mind that involved that attorney or, for that matter, South Los Angeles.

  Whatever he wanted, Jimmy could continue wanting it for tonight.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Mitch walked out of an El Pollo Loco on Santa Barbara Boulevard and headed toward the cruiser. Dave Ellison followed a few steps behind, throwing an offhand wave at the manager as he left. The sun dipped below the mountains while they were eating dinner, leaving the city in the orange-to-blue afterglow of evening. It was still hotter than hell. Being in blues didn’t help. That was one thing that Mitch really missed about undercover work, plain clothes. Ellison had the squad in plain clothes every now and again if the operation called for it, but usually they were in blues, especially now with the show of force leading up to the Olympics, not that two White men in this neighborhood could be taken as anything but police.

  The chief’s message was clear to both the people of Los Angeles and to his men. Criminality of any sort would not be tolerated. Gates decreed zero tolerance, and he meant it. Leaves were cancelled, overtime allotted, deployment periods extended, and he concentrated the force in the divisions near Olympic events. The chief even put up billboards with smiling cops and bought airtime to provide suggestions to Angelinos on how and when to commute to keep the traffic under control. During the games, every badge would be out in force, in uniform, every day. Prior to that it was old school containment. Word passed quietly through the divisions that they were to warn the city’s criminal element first to knock it off and stay away from the Olympics. “We’re calling a truce” was really fair warning. Anyone who failed to obey this edict would be dealt with. Severely. The city had even revived old anti-syndicalist laws that were still on the books which would allow the department to incarcerate large groups of people with a slight suspension of due process until the end of the games.

  The Olympics would be a world-class event in one of the world’s greatest cities, made safe by the world’s greatest police force. The chief had staked his n
ame and his reputation on that, and he would brook no argument. But it would take more than Daryl Gates’ reputation and legendary will. The LA Coliseum was ground zero for the games, and a third of the Olympic Village would be hosted on the USC campus, situated squarely in South Central Los Angeles, the epicenter of violence in a city that averaged a thousand homicides a year.

  The chief had the nearly impossible task of coordinating Olympic security. It was difficult enough to unify the disparate law enforcement agencies within the region, each bristling under the chief’s direction. But he also had to contend with the numerous federal agencies and international organizations that believed they, not his police, should be responsible for the games’ security, not the least of which was the FBI. Chief Gates fought a daily struggle with the LA Field Office and Bureau Headquarters in DC who didn’t believe a metropolitan police force was capable of providing adequate security. So far, Gates had succeeded in fending them off, despite an utter lack of support from Mayor Bradley’s office. The subtext, however, was that there was no room for error. The slightest incident, or even the perception of one, during the lead-up to the games would be all the FBI needed to wrench control of security from the chief’s hands.

  They passed one of the ubiquitous billboards on their route. Beneath it was one of the innumerable “Commitment to Excellence” signs Al Davis had plastered all over South LA. Mitchell couldn’t help but laugh at the irony of the chief on the one hand and Al Davis on the other each papering the area with their message.

  While police citywide were enforcing the Chief’s new operations plan, it was the CRASH units who had the contacts with the gang leaders and were in the best position to spread the word. Mitch for his part had his doubts. He harbored them privately; this was not an issue one publicly questioned. If his last eighteen months in CRASH had taught him anything, it was that the street was its own ecosystem, its own world, and it would go on regardless of anything the police tried. As a Rockstar, Mitch could afford to be an idealist who believed they could make a difference. But all that effort really boiled down to was policing rich White people dealing in a rich White drug for more rich White people. Spend a year in CRASH, and you eventually come to face some hard truths. You can cut parts of the cancer out, but you can never cure it. His ex-partner’s drug dealer guru, the guy who named himself after a Steely Dan lyric, had gotten that much right at least.