The Bad Shepherd Page 13

  Mitchell didn’t think much of his Rockstar days anymore. Despite his accolade, it still felt like a stain to him, and much of the department felt the same way. The operation and subsequent political fallout were viewed internally as a disaster and a near-total failure. Ellison, to his credit, had seen this coming, and he offered Mitch a position on the CRASH squad shortly after the Fremont shooting.

  Mitch sat in the prowl car’s shotgun seat, and Ellison drove. A typical night for them was to simply drive around and talk to gangbangers to see what they could learn. While notorious liars, bangers were more than happy to shell out dirt on gangs they were beefing with, and often it turned out to be very valuable intelligence. CRASHers learned who the girlfriends were and who still talked to their moms so they knew where someone would hide if they were on the run. They’d also be on the lookout for graffiti tags as they were akin to a gangster newspaper.

  Ellison made a right turn onto Crenshaw.

  “You end up calling your dad this weekend?” This was their first night back on patrol after a few days off following the last deployment period.

  Mitch shook a negative.

  Ellison looked over at his partner then back to the road.

  Finally, Mitch broke the brief silence. “Dave, we haven’t spoken since Thanksgiving. I looked at that phone for a solid hour but never got up the courage to call.”

  “What stopped you?”

  “He stopped me,” Mitch said with a long breath. “I just couldn’t listen to the speech again, about how I blew my chance to get into bureau.” There was a flash of acceptance after the Fremont affair and the commendation for valor but that quickly soured when Mitchell refused to follow his father’s advise to parlay that success into an application to the FBI.

  The elder Gaffney had settled on posting to the elite Robbery-Homicide Division, a prestigious position at police headquarters that was sure to get Mitchell noticed by the brass. When Mitch explained he was a narcotics cop not a murder cop, his father simply dismissed Mitch as not trying hard enough. That was the way with him. Martin Gaffney possessed the sovereign ignorance that sometimes accompanied superior intellect. He assessed a subject that he knew nothing about, assumed that he could intuit it by virtue of that subject’s very existence, and assumed he knew everything there was to know about it because he was an expert in more difficult matters. Martin Gaffney brooked no disagreement. He possessed no understanding of the inner workings of the department, but Martin Gaffney assumed that he could simply divine the answers. When Mitch attempted to correct his father, the elder Gaffney simply and harshly dismissed him.

  Mitch tried to explain he took the posting in CRASH because it was actually a high-profile assignment. The department recognized the link between gangs and narcotics, so they had come up with a program of integrating narcotics detectives into the CRASH units. They hoped this would help them more readily identify gang-operated narcotics production and distribution networks. Mitch had chosen Southwest specifically because of the Olympics. That would put him in the limelight, and any successes they’d have would be amplified simply because of the proximity to the games.

  Mitch pressed the point out of frustration, and it quickly became a heated argument about everything but his decision. They uncorked two decades of slow-boiling anger and disappointment. When it was done, Mitch walked out and hadn’t seen or spoken to his father since.

  “You going to try again?”

  “I don’t really want to talk about it.”

  “Just looking out for you, man.”

  “I know, and I appreciate it, but not now.” Though they were only separated by eighteen inches in the car, the distance between them could hardly be wider. They were partners and on one level friends, but Mitch maintained a careful, cautious distance, and he rarely saw the other squad members socially. That isolated Mitch from the team, but he had learned a hard lesson about keeping a professional distance with his colleagues because of Bo Fochs. Mitch regretted telling Ellison about the fight with his father because it bred the kind of familiarity Mitchell had been careful to avoid.

  They kept heading north on Crenshaw, intending to drive a spiral through the patrol area, traversing the outside streets and gradually making their way through the neighborhoods. He still felt that scratching sensation when the radio call came in.

  “All units, all units, shots fired, possible 187 in the vicinity of 4011 Santa Rosalita Drive. All available units shall respond Code Three. Additional request, Code Six George.” That was the radio code for a CRASH unit.

  “Three-CRASH-Twelve responding Code Three, over.”

  Without a word, Ellison hit the lights and sirens, pulled a hard bootleg turn back south, and headed for a Crenshaw district neighborhood better known as the Jungles.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Three-CRASH-Twelve was the second car on the scene. Mitch could see the relief on the faces of the two responding officers as he and Ellison stepped out onto the street. The Jungles was a place you went in force, or you didn’t go at all. In the distance, Mitch heard the rhythmic chop of an approaching helicopter. He prayed that was an Astro Division bird and not a news copter. What the hell had happened here?

  When he saw, Detective Gaffney wished he hadn’t asked.

  A crowd had already massed by the time they’d arrived. The two patrolmen immediately went into crowd control, leaving the actual crime scene for the detectives, though it was clear Ellison and Gaffney were the wrong type. Mitch counted ten bodies sprawled across the grass in the courtyard of a U-shaped two-story tenement. The grass around them was dark and glistening. The bodies themselves were chewed up, most having multiple impact wounds from automatic weapons fire, but that wasn’t the worst of it.

  All of them were kids.

  Mitch guessed the oldest was sixteen or seventeen. Most were much younger. Whatever had happened, one thing was clear: it was absolute slaughter. He looked over to his partner, who indicated the bodies with a head nod, then turned and began interviewing the crowd for witnesses. Mitch pulled a fresh pair of latex gloves out of his Sam Browne belt, put them on, and began his investigation. He started with the oldest. The kid wore a black and red leather jacket with zippers damn near everywhere and a red t-shirt underneath. There was a shattered pair of Locs next to the body. One of the shots had hit him on the left side of the face. Mitch found a small bag containing four small crystal rocks, a Colt .357 Magnum, and a roll of $200. He set the items on the kid’s chest.

  Rock cocaine had existed since the ‘70s but hadn’t become popular until the last year or so. It was easy to produce in bulk, and a relatively inexpensive high compared to its powder cousin. Rock sold to a wider, poorer audience. Because of how it was made, rock could be cut more than powder cocaine, which meant that the same amount went farther. Once the drug took hold, rock use went up like a wildfire. The gangs quickly moved in and took control of production and distribution. Longstanding rivalries transformed into beefs over territory. The violence had escalated rapidly and dangerously. It all meant 1984 was one of the bloodiest years Los Angeles had ever seen, and they were only halfway through it. In the eighteen months that Mitch had been with CRASH, South LA had exploded into a literal battleground.

  Mitch often wondered whether South Central counted as his war in his father’s eyes.

  As the narcotics detective in the CRASH unit Mitch’s job was to investigate what drugs specific gangs were dealing, where they were dealing, and where they were stashing their product. He also tried to learn the distribution organization inside each gang. Because Mitch had shot and killed a prominent Crip dealer, he had earned a certain level of respect, or at least cautious acknowledgment, from the surrounding Blood gangs. Most of the relationships that Mitch had built were inside the P-Stone Bloods here in the Jungles, and he spent a lot of time with them. That didn’t mean they would hesitate to kill him if it came to that, Mitch knew, but it did mean they took him seriously. Sometimes, they talked. He stood up from the body after
what seemed to him to be a long time. Mitch knew the boy and had talked to him on several occasions. Rodney Broadus.

  Gaffney moved to the next one in line, a boy of approximately fourteen. He recognized the body but couldn’t immediately place the name. The boy was also strapped and had a roll of a few hundred dollars but no drugs. The other bodies were much younger, between the ages of eight and twelve. When Mitch finished his first pass over the bodies, he looked up to see most of the Southwest Station brass standing on the curb with Ellison: a sergeant from patrol and two plainclothes detectives that Mitch knew to be Homicide dicks. Ellison caught his glance and motioned for him to come over. Four squad cars were now on the scene with the responding officers forming a wide cordon around the crime scene. Tape went up.

  “Mitch,” Division Commander Meeker said in a somber voice as he approached. “Why don’t you tell us what you’ve found?”

  “Evening, Skipper. Gentlemen,” he said to the CRASH and Patrol lieutenants. “We’ve got ten bodies between the ages of eight and sixteen. The oldest is a P-Stone by the name of Rodney Broadus, known to deal rock cocaine out of this building.” Mitch indicated the tenement behind him. “I found a bag of rocks on his person, as well as a cash roll, and a weapon. One other boy was armed. The rest were likely just by-standers. Given the number of GSWs on each body, I’d say this was a drive-by with automatic and semi-automatic weapons.”

  “Ten kids, Jesus Christ,” the captain said.

  “Sir, that tracks with my wit interviews.” Ellison pointed down to the end of the street. “People saw a metallic brown van coming down the street. One eye wit thinks it was a Dodge or a Ford. The side door opened, and someone shouted ‘Hey, muthafuckas!’ and the shooting started. Wits said it sounded like automatic weapons.”

  “This is pretty deep into P-Stone territory for a drive-by,” Lieutenant Tom Zarcone, the CRASH unit commander, said.

  Ellison nodded. “Yes, sir. It is. I suspect they came down Santa Barbara, turned onto Hillcrest, and finally Santa Rosalita. Likely, they knew Broadus would be out here dealing.”

  “Who are the P-Stones beefing with right now?” one of the Homicide detectives asked.

  “Christ, these guys? Pick one,” Mitch said. “Primarily the Rollin’ 30s and Rollin’ 60s Crips but there aren’t any major feuds right now.”

  “Just before we got the Code Three, Mitch and I rolled in on a Rollin’ 60s meet up on Crenshaw about two miles from here. There’s no way those guys could’ve gotten from there to here in the time between, and there weren’t any vans, but it could be they were waiting as backup for their homies if things went south.”

  “You think this was planned?”

  Ellison nodded. “Looks that way, Captain. It’s an awful big risk to just roll through here on a whim.”

  The captain stared at the blood-splattered grass and was silent for a time. “Goddamn it,” he said, finally, heavily. “Gentlemen, we have ten murders here, almost certainly gang related and all of them kids. I’m going to call the bureau commander and request additional support.”

  He turned to the two Homicide detectives. “Marty, Frank, I want you to take charge of the investigation here. Dave, Mitch, find someone with traction in the P-Stones. See if there is something going on that we don’t know about. There is going to be a response to this, and it is going to be brutal. We need to make sure that doesn’t happen. I don’t want this division to turn into a war zone.” The captain paused. “At least, no more than it already is.”

  FROM THE LOS ANGELES TIMES

  “COURTYARD MASSACRE” LEAVES TEN DEAD, MORE QUESTIONS

  June 3, 1984

  by Harold Thomasson

  Ten residents of the Crenshaw housing project better known as the “Jungles” were killed yesterday in a shooting rampage just after 7 p.m. The victims, with ages ranging between eight and sixteen, were standing in the courtyard of one of the housing units when a van approached. Witnesses reported the vehicle slowed and opened fire before speeding away.

  At least two of the victims are believed to have been members of the Black P-Stone Jungle Blood gang, leading to speculation that the shooting was gang related. A Los Angeles Police Department spokesman could not immediately be reached for comment, but in a statement released later that night, the department stated it would hold a press conference in the coming days.

  The shooting, which occurred just miles from the site of next month’s Olympic Opening Ceremony, is raising new questions about the safety of attendees as well as the sufficiency of the police department’s preparations.

  FROM THE LOS ANGELES HERALD-EXAMINER

  TEN KILLED IN BRUTAL GANG DRIVE-BY

  June 3, 1984

  by Alisha Knox

  Ten residents of the Crenshaw housing project known as the “Jungles” are dead following a drive-by shooting yesterday evening. Witnesses reported a van approaching a group of youths standing in front of a housing unit on the 4000 block of Santa Rosalita Avenue. The van slowed, and its occupants shouted at the group before opening fire with semiautomatic weapons. The van sped off when all ten were lying dead.

  Police have yet to release an official statement, but a source close to the investigation confirmed that two of the victims were members of the Black P-Stone Jungle Blood gang, which claims the housing project as part of its territory.

  Police have confirmed they found both weapons and narcotics on the bodies, furthering the suspicion that the shooting was gang related.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Fochs called McLaren’s receptionist as soon as the office opened and had her relay a message to the boss that he’d be in later that morning. He wanted to check out the niece’s place before he came in. Fochs hung up and dialed James Maclaughlin’s office. A female voice with the qualities of well worn, supple leather answered the phone. Fochs identified himself and informed her he was returning a call. She put him through immediately.

  “Jimmy Mack, here.” Mack’s voice was deep, sonorous. “Mr. Bo Fochs, it’s good to finally talk to you.” He spoke with a fast cadence but punctuated each syllable as if it were its own word.

  “How can I help you, Mr. Maclaughlin?”

  “Mr. Bo Fochs, I’d like to get a meeting with you. Can I come up and see you today?”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Mack—”

  “It’s ‘Jimmy Mack,’ Mr. Bo Fochs. My friends call me Jimmy Mack.”

  “As in, ‘Jimmy Mack has got your back?’”

  “Heh heh, yes.”

  “Yeah, I remember from your commercials. OK, Jimmy. Well, I’ve got a pretty long day ahead of me, but I might be able to make time later this week.”

  “Aw, I know you’re busy Mr. Bo Fochs, so I’ll be brief. Won’t take up too much of your time. Not at all.” Jimmy Mack paused and Fochs could hear him take a drink of water on the other end of the phone. “Mr. Fochs, I represent the family of Lorenzo Fremont.”

  Bo moved to hang up the phone, but something stayed his hand.

  “Mr. Fochs, you still there?”

  “Yeah, sorry. What is it that you think I can do for you, Mr. McLaughlin?”

  “As I was saying, Lorenzo Fremont’s family has hired me to prove he was murdered.”

  “That was a long time ago, Mr. Mclau—ahh, Jimmy.”

  “Yes, it was,” he said almost as one word, but with a groove. “It took them a long time to come forward. You ever spend much time in this part of town, Mr. Fochs?”

  “Not anymore,” was all Fochs said.

  “Well, a lot of people will tell you that a Black man’s life isn’t worth very much down here. Lot of people will tell you that the police can just roll on up here and shoot a Black man for no reason.” There was fire behind that voice now.

  “Lorenzo Fremont was a coke dealer. We found something like ten kilograms; that’s a little over twenty pounds.”

  “And that’s a reason to shoot a man dead? A Los Angeles police officer killed Lorenzo Fremont in cold blood. His family doesn’t want to
let that rest. I know a little bit about you too, Mr. Fochs. I know you tried to make the case, I know you went to the press when the department wouldn’t listen to you, and I know they forced you out of the department because it.”

  Bo winced at the memory. Old wounds. “What is it that you think I can do for you, Jimmy?”

  “I want you to help me prove that Detective Mitchell Gaffney shot and killed Lorenzo Fremont on the night of Thursday, June 25th, 1981, and that Fremont was unarmed when he was shot. Just like you said.”

  “How do you know about that? That was never reported.”

  “I’ve got my sources, but that doesn’t matter, Mr. Bo Fochs.”

  “Look, Jimmy,” Fochs said at length. His voice suddenly sounding very tired to his own ears. “That was a long time ago. I’ve closed the book on that part of my life.” Fochs paused again. “I’m sure you can appreciate that I don’t want to revisit it. And why now? Maybe some things are better left alone.”

  “Let me just say this, and I’ll leave you alone. Lorenzo’s family knows he was a lot of things and none of ‘em perfect. He dealt drugs, and he was in a gang. Maybe a man in his position didn’t have a lot of better options, and maybe he was the victim of the choices he made, but none of that changes the fact that your partner killed him in cold blood. Something that you, yourself, believed and said on the record I might add.