Los Angeles Noir - Denise Hamilton [23]
Cravitz gathered himself and turned to face the bed where his old friend lay.
He walked over and stared down at the body.
His hard gray eyes began to work, running along Yippie’s corpse.
Displays four shotgun wounds, three penetrating and one grazing. Hard to figure the sequence in this light.
He lightly touched his old friend’s forehead.
The lacerations and abrasions from the wounds formed linear patterns. The skull was shattered. His buddy must have been rising up when the killer struck. Cravitz got down on the floor and retrieved some black threads he noticed among the splinters.
He wrapped the threads in a handkerchief and left the lion’s share for the cops. On the edge of the shattered window sill, Cravitz noticed a bullet hole.
He got a shot off. So where’s Esmeralda?
Cravitz turned sharply and stared at the bloody nightstand. The briefcase with the dope was gone too. There was a pool of blood gathering just below Yippie’s outstretched hand.
“Esmeralda fell there,” Cravitz said out loud. As he looked closer, he realized the killer had stepped in the splatter. “I know who did this.”
Thirty minutes later L.A.P.D. Homicide detective Manuel Maximillian “Manny” Vargas and his partner Will Dockery arrived. Cravitz, who’d met the detectives through Yippie, walked them through the murder scene.
As Cravitz turned to leave, Vargas said, “You have anything to do with this, Cravitz?”
“I’m a suspect, Vargas? I called you, remember?”
“Just humor me—you do this?”
“Naw, but there are fibers on the window from someone who did. Enough for Dockery here to make himself a skirt.”
“This Yippie’s place?” Vargas asked.
“My brother’s,” Cravitz said simply. “Yip was thinking about buying it. Cash let him try it out for the month—”
“Bullshit,” Dockery said.
“Stay where we can find you, Quick,” Vargas said.
“Yeah,” Cravitz replied.
Cravitz blazed past the afternoon traffic like a bolt of light. Cash was standing at his safe, smoking a long Cuban stogie, when Cravitz barged in. The safe was open. A 9mm pistol lay on the conference table.
“Where’s the smack?”
“Robbed,” Cravitz said.
“You messin’ with my money, lil’ brother. I could kill you, if you wasn’t kin. Might kill you anyway,” Cash said quietly, expelling a jet of smoke. His hard brown eyes turned black.
“You kill Yippie?” Cravitz said.
“What th’ fuck?”
“He’s murdered. You do it?”
“Why pick me, boy. I’m straight as a stick.”
“Bennita,” Cravitz said. “She put you up to this?”
Cash extracted a fresh cigar from his humidor, clipped it, and handed it to his brother. Cravitz hesitated, then took the smoke and bent over the table as his big brother lit it.
“Her brats wrecked the damn room. They was mad when they heard you took the yella dope,” Cash said. “Hi-C an’ nem had to bust ’em up a bit. You think Bennita and them punks whacked Yippie?”
“One of the killers stepped in the blood. That print is from the new Lebron James sneaker. Monster P had on a pair this morning when Yip and me had to spank them. Whoever did this got Esmeralda and the dope too.”
Cash buzzed in Hi-C and picked up his pistol. “Let’s go find these mutts,” he said to Cravitz.
* * *
Cash banged on Bennita and Bingbong’s fifth-floor suite with the barrel of his 9mm Glock. Then he used the pass key to go inside.
Brain splatter covered the walls of the suite. Bingbong Jackson lay dead in a pool of blood. A hole resembling a teardrop perforated his brow.
“Esmeralda,” Cash said.
“Bennita Bangs,” Cravitz said.
Cash got on the horn to his lowlife friends. He’d pay $5,000 to the snitch who led him to the killers.
Cravitz cellphoned Vargas. “I suggest your boys shoot to kill.”
Vargas said, “If you kill anyone we’ll arrest you, Cravitz—like any other thug. We’re bringing ’em in alive.”
“Umhum,” Cravitz said, and hung up.
He called his office manager, Betty Penny.
Within an hour, the Central Detection operatives had leaped into the hunt.
They hit the liquor stores and barbershops,