Good Morning, Killer - April Smith [3]
The tech vans pulled up to the residence at the same time Andrew and I arrived in our separate cars. A blue sky was shining through a maw in the clouds while fine spray sifted across the rooftops like million-dollar rainbow dust. I grew up in this neighborhood, but these new mini mansions could have eaten our little cottage for breakfast. Like the Meyer-Murphys’, they each had at least one sport utility vehicle in the driveway and a sign for an alarm system on the lawn. A private security patrol car sat side by side in the middle of the street with a unit from the Santa Monica police.
Yet there was also a hum, a sense of ordinary family life, not so different from the days of the blow-up pool in our threadbare backyard. Kids left their trikes out. There was a handmade tree house, an American flag. The lofty pines on adjoining streets were old, with large heavy cones. How peaceful it would be to push a baby in their fragrant shade. A child could walk to the public school, a teenage girl chill on the curb with her friends, even after dark. The cars that passed would carry TV celebrities or dot-com money or entrepreneurs; well-meaning professional folks, if somewhat disengaged.
Maybe. Let’s hope. Nine times out of ten.
The FBI team assembled on the sidewalk. The full-bore response was part of the “new politics” Rick was talking about, an effort to position the LA field office as responsive to the diverse communities it served—especially the wealthier communities, whose constituents hired lawyers to make their hurts known—as well as to reinvent our image as “good neighbor” to local law enforcement.
We were convincing—a clean-cut group, sporting an assortment of windbreakers and trench coats, cropped hair, ties, khakis, neat as flight attendants, the female installers wearing ponytails and lipstick. We looked like cops—what else could we be? Poised, scanning the quiet street in every direction.
Ramon Diaz, the twenty-eight-year-old tech wiz, said it first: “Surveillance is going to be a bitch.”
Every other house seemed to be under construction. Today we had a break because of the rain, but tomorrow there would be laborers’ vehicles and Dumpsters obscuring the sight lines, making it impossible to know who belonged where, what was different, if the bad guys were watching the Meyer-Murphy home.
“The street can be secured, people,” commented Andrew with a patronizing smile.
Heads turned toward the big guy in the leather jacket.
“Do I know you?” answered Ramon, giving it a little strut.
Ramon, like me, was new LA. My dad emigrated from El Salvador, my mom grew up here and was Caucasian. With long wavy black hair and pale almond skin, you would take me for white. Ramon, on the other hand, was pure second-generation Salvadoran, no doubt about it—dark complexion, step haircut and aviator sunglasses, drove a huge black mother truck, married to a Mexican dental assistant with lined lips and attitude.
Andrew made his business card appear between his fingers with a flick.
“Santa Monica … I’m down for that,” Ramon acceded, shaking hands.
Ramon had only been playing, working out the tension, but as we marshaled toward the house he leaned in close so I could smell wintergreen gum.
“Why you siding with that white boy?”
Mrs. Meyer-Murphy opened the purple door with feverish anticipation.
“Officer Berringer!”
When she saw the rest of us her eyes narrowed and she began to blink rapidly.
“What’s all this?”
I stepped forward and offered my hand. “Ana Grey with the FBI.”
Mrs. Meyer-Murphy continued to squint as if she’d suddenly gone blind.
Andrew touched her shoulder.
“Remember, Lynn, I told you? We were bringing in the FBI?”
She’d been pumping my hand with both of hers. Autopilot. Cold, long fingers. She was tall and strikingly underweight, short