Blood and Oranges by James Goldsborough (top 50 books to read .TXT) 📕

Lots of people owed Pitts. The question was, who owed him enough to kill Pat Murphy?

While at Folsom to see Callender, she’d checked the records on Pitts’s prison visitors. Nothing stood out. Records of phone calls were not kept. Her assumption was that he’d not had time to set up the hit before arriving at Folsom. She came back from Folsom with the possibility that a man named Chili might be the link, but who was he—the mob, a hired gun, a cop, an ex-cop? Why was Pitts talking to ex-cop Jones about him?

Days, even weeks, of combing through back editions of the Times and directories of L.A. police officers would be fruitless if Chili was a nickname, as she supposed it was. The faster way was to check with the Times police reporters, though that came with risk of leaks if the person assigned to the Murphy case, namely herself, did it. After hashing it over with Joe, who hated everything about the assignment, she came up with the idea of having Teddy Lubrano, her replacement on the metro desk, have discreet inquiries made at the Hall of Justice about someone called Chili.

It didn’t take long. One of Teddy’s metro reporters knew of a downtown beat cop named Carlos Chaidez, aka Chili. Locating the name in the police directory, Lizzie started through old Times files to see if Officer Chaidez had ever made the newspapers, discovering his name in more stories than a good police officer would want. He’d killed three people in fifteen years and been cleared each time by police boards of using unnecessary force. The first was during a holdup in the jewelry district. The issue was that the robber’s rod was rubber, but how was Office Chaidez to know that? The second time came during a confrontation in New Chinatown. The board faulted Officer Chaidez again for being too quick on the trigger, but surprisingly recommended no penalty for a second citizen killed.

The third death was the most intriguing. A building maintenance contractor named Jerry Korngold fell from his eighth-floor apartment on South Grand when Chili and his partner arrived to question him about a complaint Korngold had filed at the police department. The officers testified that Korngold had not answered their knock, and that they broke the door down after hearing him scream, the scream he made as he jumped, they said.

The Times treated the story as routine filler, the miscellaneous stuff reporters copy from the daily police docket that ends up at the bottom of an inside local page. The story said nothing about the nature of Korngold’s complaint or why the police considered it important enough to call at his residence. Did building maintenance contracting have something to do with it, have something to do with Pitts, who had his fingers in many pockets around the city? No reporter had gone beyond the perfunctory docket report. But what if the scream had come after the police broke down his door? Why had no neighbors been interviewed? When Lizzie attempted to find out more, she found that the police had no record of Korngold’s complaint. She showed them the Times clipping. They shook their heads. The only thing of value in the brief Times account was that Officer Chaidez’s partner was Officer Bob Jones.

Pitts to Jones to Chili to Murphy—is that how it was done? She needed more before going to McManus. The evidence was circumstantial, but because there’d been a witness to the murder it was a start. Pat Murphy was blown up leaving his South Pasadena residence to drive to work. The witness, an elderly neighbor, had pored over dozens of police mug shots in hopes of making an identity, but the photos were of known criminals, not members of the LAPD. She wasn’t sleeping well that night and got up to rock in the chair by the window, finding that a few minutes of gentle rocking helped her get back to sleep. Staring out the window she’d noticed a shaft of light moving under the car parked across the street. It didn’t make sense so she put her glasses on and saw a man crawl out from under the car, Murphy’s car. For a moment the flashlight illuminated his face. The car blew up when Murphy started it up that morning, sending parts of the reporter and his car flying into her yard.

“Hard on herself for not understanding what the guy was doing,” Lizzie told McManus.

“And you say the guy is Chili.”

“Pitts was apparently Chili’s good fairy. Saw they kept him on the force despite his horrible record. Chili owed Pitts. Honor among thieves sort of thing.”

“What about Jones? How did he end up at Folsom if Chili didn’t?”

“Don’t know. Maybe he got sent up after Pitts was gone.”

“We can’t ask for a lineup with Chili in it. They’d laugh in our faces.”

“How about we get his photo and show it to her?”

“Would she recognize him from a photo? Would she testify? She’d be testifying against the LAPD. So would we.”

She knew what he meant. The Times and the LAPD were not exactly friends, but it is one thing to be uncooperative and another to be public enemies. Mutual enmity had gotten Pat Murphy killed, and Lizzie knew how much time McManus had spent downstairs with the publisher after the murder. He didn’t want her to be next. Readers and advertisers like to think that newspapers and law enforcement are on the same side.

“She would testify. She’s that sort of woman. Reminds me of my sister. Doesn’t flinch.”

He leaned back, shaking his head, exhaling a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling. “What you’re telling me is that the former L.A. district attorney, a man elected twice—no three times—to enforce the laws of the county, a man whose election this newspaper supported, is responsible for two murders, Murphy and Korngold.”

“At least two.”

“There are more?”

“With a guy like Pitts, who knows?”

He