Dying For LA by Ian Jones (top fiction books of all time .txt) 📕

They hurried up the stairs to the third floor.

The door to 311 was standing open, they could see two paramedics working and a couple of police casually leaning on the wall outside. They walked in. Pinsky was on a stretcher, in the same black leather jacket they had seen him wearing earlier walking into the yard. His t-shirt had been cut open and he had a bright red stain around a white dressing in the centre of his stomach. As they moved toward him he looked at both John and Reed then closed his eyes.

‘Can he talk?’ John asked the nearest paramedic, who shook his head.

‘He’s outta it. We gotta get him to the ER. Maybe later, see how it goes ok?’ he replied, and they carried Pinsky from the room.

There was a CSI officer working next to where Pinsky had been lying, carefully placing a pair of Glock and Makarov pistols into separate bags.

Brady joined them and they watched as the paramedics carried Pinsky carefully down the stairs.

‘I don’t know if this makes everything easier or not,’ he asked.

‘I don’t neither,’ Reed replied.

‘Well, I suppose at the least we aren’t looking for anyone now. We saw five men enter the yard this afternoon. The CSI guys can account for them, all the other DNA and forensics are real old. That’s everyone. Two guys dead at the scene, and another close by. That just leaves us with Pinsky and the two downstairs.’

‘I guess so,’ Brady sounded uncertain.

‘Let’s see what they tell us when they are interviewed. I’m not about to start telling you how to do your job but please get your best people on that,’ John advised.

‘Which one shot Pinsky?’ asked Reed.

‘They tell me Rodriguez admitted it, told them he done it as soon as the first responders got on scene. Says he had no choice,’ Brady told them.

They went downstairs, where the huge police presence was dissipating. The two men were still where they had been before but were now handcuffed.

John walked over and studied them.

‘At a guess, I’d say enough was enough, am I about right?’ he asked.

Both men nodded.

‘Why did you shoot him?’

Rodriguez looked upward earnestly.

‘We were just soldiers. That’s what we were told, all the time. Soldiers. Doing a job. But in the end, I don’t got any idea what we were supposed to be.’

He looked at Rico sorrowfully.

‘I didn’t have no choice. I never shot no one before.’

Rico gave him a half smile.

‘You did what you had to brother. You got more guts than me. I never shot nobody neither. But we’re here, and we’re alive.’

He looked at Brady.

‘Ask your questions. I got no problem talking, we know we’re going to jail. All this shit that happened? That weren’t us, but we were there. So I guess we’ll take what we got coming.’

Brady nodded, and then indicated to the surrounding officers to take them away. They were led out, and put in separate vans. The hotel manager, who had been a constant thorn in the police side hurried over and started remonstrating about getting his hotel back, he was losing money, he would sue, etc.

‘Right. Let’s get you guys home, we can all sit down tomorrow,’ Brady said, ignoring the man completely, and they filed out, nothing else to say.

As John was saying goodnight to Reed and being shown a car which would take him back to Santa Monica there was a sudden burst of activity on the other side of the police cordon and a voice calling out ‘John!’ several times. He looked up and smiled.

Sammy was waving frantically at him, also with a big grin on her face.

He turned to his escort who was waiting by the open car door.

‘Actually, I don’t think I’ll need that lift thank you.’

The officer was unsure.

‘Look, I got told …’

John interrupted him.

‘It’s fine, don’t worry. And at least it saves you a job.’

Chapter Forty-Three

Brady worked late to make sure everything was in place and watertight. Perez and Rodriguez were taken to different precincts, and spent the next day being interviewed.

Both men were immediately frank and open, and opted to talk freely without lawyers being present. Full statements were taken, but apart from the timeline and complete details of the assault at the Metro and the murder of Hayter they soon discovered that there wasn’t really a whole lot that they hadn’t already worked out.

Perez explained his recruitment into 1-Too, which even though he was keen to talk was still vague in terms of definite names. He had been living in Seattle, and had split from a girlfriend so ended up sleeping on a friend’s sofa, but had been there too long and knew it.

He had no proper job, no money and no prospects, and had been scraping by working for a local underground bookmaker as a debt collector earning a few bucks here and there. He had been offered cash to drive a stolen van back from Redmond but had been pulled over on the way when a keen-eyed policeman spotted the man who had offered him the money driving the car on the way to collect it. The man had various warrants out, so they were both taken in. There was nothing obvious to charge Perez with but because of his record they kept him in and grilled him anyway.

He was released eventually, and made his way across town back home, rueing his bad luck and the fact that now he was even more skint than normal. Keen to keep out of the way as long as he could he chose to drop by a bar close by and had just sat down with a beer when a cop that he had seen hanging around earlier appeared next to him. He’d been followed, and saying very little of any substance the cop slid over a piece of paper with a cellphone number written on it and advised him to call it if he wanted to earn some cash,