LA Modern Noir: Chapter 6a Wilson

I wrote this post about a story where I had a first chapter written. I'm trying to push on and finish a first draft in 2024.

If you'd like to be tagged in for future chapters, let me know.

This chapter has a few areas I'm light on relevant knowledge so anything in brackets I'm happy to take suggestions. And corrections are alway appreciated.

Thanks

Stuart

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Chapter 6a - 4,245 words

There were reports of more partially consumed body parts on the news, and pressure to catch the ‘(location)’ cannibal was building throughout the LAPD. A city-wide task force had been created and the detectives drafted briefed by a couple of agents from section five of the FBI’s Behavioural Analysis Unit.

One of the ones incapable of keeping quiet about some of the grizzly details they’d heard had been a rookie with Wilson and they still played poker once a month.

‘Ginelle, stop,’ Wilson said after a gruesome description of scenes from the briefing. ‘Dammit, the pizza isn’t even here yet and no one wants those images when they arrive.’

‘If you ordered from the same place as last time,’ Carl said, ‘it might help.’

‘Tru dat,’ said (name) the fourth member of the group, and the only one of the four who had been in a different, later, training intake.

‘Firstly, (name) no one cares what you think, newbie. And secondly, Carl, the place we got them from last time was your recommendation so shut up and, if you want to see the river, put up.’

Carl dropped a couple of chips towards the small pile in the middle of the table and muttered, ‘Ooh, pappie’s angry.’

The table erupted in laughter. There was a training officer who’d been at the academy for nearly twenty years and the rumor was he’d been a curmudgeon the whole time. ‘Pappie’s angry’ was code that somehow passed through every training group to let it be known he was more than regular grumpy.

In classes like that being wrong would bring down opprobrium that could make you think about quitting there and then, while being a hundred percent correct led to scorn of such withering vitriol thought process went the same way.

‘I hear he’s retiring next year,’ Ginelle said, and laid down two kings, giving her a full house of kings over threes. She gathered the chips towards her and said, ‘Hey, Carl, what happened to your trainee? One minute you’re suggesting he ask me for tips on heading for detective, then he’s gone.’

Carl said, ‘I came in for my shift, and he’s gone. Chief says he emailed and there were valid reasons, but I didn’t need to know. He did his exit interview. No one’s told me anything else.’

‘When was that?’ Wilson asked.

‘Coupla weeks ago,’ Carl said. ‘One day I’m a T.O. and the next I’m back on regular patrol until the next lot come through.’

‘Ride round ignoring calls and not having to justify it sounds okay,’ (name) said. ‘My current trainee has a Louisiana accent so thick I have to make her repeat things three times. Though last week she brought in a tub of gumbo and wow that is the tastiest thing. I might recommend she do an extra couple of months training just so I get her to make more of it.’

Carl looked at Ginelle and Carl and said, ‘Do you reckon standards started to slip directly we finished our training, and they had the next intake?’ He dealt cards round the table. ‘You’re big blind, newbster.’ He looked up at Carl and asked, ‘So truly no idea where your trainee went? You must have a guess. Girl trouble; lottery win and sudden wealth; victim of Ginelle’s cannibal.’

‘He didn’t gamble at all, some religious thing,’ Carl said. Can’t have been the cannibal, he had an exit interview. If it was girl trouble, I wouldn’t know where to start there was a new one every few weeks.’

‘What kinda religion is strict on gambling and fine with sleeping around?’ Ginelle asked.

‘Ain’t really my department,’ Carl said. ‘The only goddess I know is luck.’ He flipped his cards onto the table. ‘And she’s avoiding me tonight.’

The buzzer rang to herald the arrival of pizza.

While eating the game was put on hold and they sprawled round the lounge, the pizza laid out on the coffee table. Conversation returned to the hunt for the cannibal.

‘The reality is,’ Ginelle said, ‘a beat cop is every bit as likely to catch this guy as detective work. We’re busy with the profile BAU have built, but that’s as much built on historical cases than this one. The remains have been found in a variety of locations, wrapped in bags from a variety of supermarkets. There’s an assumption of higher intelligence due to the steps taken to vary the disposal sites, but also narcissism because it’s the same body part being disposed of. Still, it’s likely to be someone who’s developed a mental reason for doing it unlike, say, a DeAngelo type who started with pretty larceny and built up to home invasion, rape, and then murder.’

‘DeAngelo was the Golden State Killer, right,’ (newbie) asked.

‘Yeh. Eventually caught by DNA matching through some genealogy tracking. The partner of the comedian Patton Oswalt helped somehow. Interesting case to look at, and there’s a good podcast about it. But whoever this guy is, the reckoning is he’s not been doing other things he could be caught for. But he’s probably a hunter, likes game hunting, probably wealthy and has been to Africa to do the show hunting so he can brag about eating exotic animals he’s killed himself.’

‘So, you’re checking dentists?’ Carl said. ‘Because every time I read about some creep going game hunting in Africa, it seems to be a dentist. Must be something about staring at teeth all day makes them go a bit strange.’

‘Could it be more than one person?’ Wilson asked. ‘Some kind of weird dinner club that went totally off the rails and now there’s a couple of them chowing down on fillet of ass or however you’d butcher up a person.’

Carl asked, ‘Y’all fine with how this pizza is? Because with the talk of cannibalism I’m thinking it’s, well-’ he looked at the slice in his hand and laid it back on the plate.

Ginelle carried on eating undeterred. She swallowed a mouthful and said, ‘Whether it’s one person or two, right now, there’s as much chance of a cop in their cruiser seeing someone dropping a suspicious package into a trash can and it being the cannibal than a detective feeling their collar.’ She looked around the room and said, ‘Though if you tell anyone I said that I’ll deny it and tell everyone IA had me playing poker with dirty cops.’ She laughed and swigged from her bottle of root beer.

--

Later, after the game was finished and Ginelle had her winnings Venmoed and left with (name) to drop him home Wilson and Carl were clearing away.

Wilson said, ‘You know, I saw a picture of your former trainee recently. Probably not long before he suddenly quit.’

‘Really, where?’ Carl asked.

‘I’ll tell you, but if you tell anyone else I’ll end up with a write-up in my jacket.’

Carl folded the pizza box flat and laid it atop the other one. ‘So, what’d he do where?’

‘Don’t know,’ Wilson said. ‘But Internal Affairs had a picture of him and identified him as a Harry Albarn plant being fed into the LAPD.’

‘I.A., huh. And how did they work that out?’

‘Don’t know that either. But they showed me a whole bunch of photos and one of few I recognised was your trainee.’ Wilson dropped beer bottles into his recycling tub. ‘As much of a shock as that was, seeing mine was bigger.’

‘Your trainee? I.A. think your trainee works for Albarn, and they let you know? How are you coping?’

Wilson carried on clearing things away and said, ‘Same as I cope with any of it, you know.’

Carl stopped and looked at his friend. ‘You know what, Wilson. I don’t. All these years and I don’t know. Anytime I asked before you changed the subject. Sometimes I wondered if I aughta make sure you spoke to someone about it, or tell your C.O. or-’ he paused, then said, ‘I worried you’d try and go after him, that whatever it was he did to you were set on revenge and the rage you barely kept a lid on would explode before you got to see something lawful done. Now I think it’s still eating you, but you found a way to balance things, that you’re happy to let the law find a way.’

‘Put the box on the side and get a couple of glasses out the cupboard,’ Wilson said. He went over to the dresser his television sat on and opened up the cupboard beneath. ‘Bourbon or scotch?’ he called.

‘You choose. I’ll get ice as well, then.’

‘Scotch it is.’ Wilson took out a bottle and went to his chair, sitting on the edge while he took the wrapper off the bottle top, and threw it on the coffee table in front of him. He worked the cork stopper out and took a sniff. He said, ‘I got this last time I went through duty free, it’s been sitting a while.’ He looked over at Carl. ‘It’s a blend of fifteen-year-old single malts. I think they call it a premium blend. I thought about getting into single malts as an investment, but figured any investment I was tempted to break open was a bad idea. Here.’ He reached over and poured into the glasses Carl held, filling each of them halfway, a good measure about two-and-a-half fingers up the glass. ‘Especially when I pour measures like this. You’re not doing overtime, or anything tomorrow are you? Not going in to do paperwork?’

Carl said, ‘If I was, I’d be rethinking it with this.’ He sniffed the glass and took a sip. ‘Oh, that’s sharp.’

‘Give it a moment, let the ice open it up a bit.’ He took a mouthful, swallowing it without blinking. ‘Let me tell you about Harry Albarn.’ He took another drink and now his glass was nearly empty. ‘When Harry started moving in to take over the business, he had a few guys running things for him. He didn’t start big, it was a couple of blocks (choose a likely area) that the latino gangs weren’t that fussed about, and Eastern Europeans were happy to leave as a buffer. Kind of a little no man’s land that Harry spotted as a place to make his own. Well, initially that’s what it was thought to be, some guy trying to carve a fiefdom out of the Badlands between two big blocks. I say that like I knew anything about organised crime at the time. I was still in high school, so a bunch of this background has been filled in later.’ He added more whisky to his glass and placed the bottle near Carl. ‘Top up as you want. You can use the spare room if you don’t want to Uber late at night. Anyway, suddenly there’s this new guy with his thugs on the block and the bodega on the corner where I got stuff after school got turned over a couple of times before they figured the new reality. Then the corner opposite got a couple of new adornments late evenings and weekends.’

‘Working girls.’

Wilson nodded and said, ‘I’d see them on the way home from basketball practice. Then, near the end of Senior Year, one of them was someone I knew. Camila was a few years down from me but her cousins were in my year. Looking back it’s even possible she fancied me for a bit, but I had this thing about dating girls in years below me. Didn’t feel right – only ever dated someone who was the same year as me. Anyway, she was a nice girl, whose cousins I knew, and suddenly she’s on the corner opposite my local bodega in platform heels and one of those skin-tight dresses that just clings. She wasn’t flat-chested either. I was halfway across the intersection when I realised it was her. Nearly choked on the Gatorade I was chugging down. I actually stopped walking and stared. She didn’t notice me until a truck honked at me because the light had changed. First of all I didn’t trip to what she was doing there and thought she was getting picked up for a date, and had chosen somewhere out of her patch because of how she was dressed, you know how some kids would leave the house looking all demure then change into their other clothes a few streets away from home?’ Wilson looked at Carl, who nodded. He carried on, ‘Normally when Camila saw me I’d get this real big smile even a ‘Hey, Wilson’ but this time she looked kind of nervous and so I thought it must be a date with someone she really doesn’t want anyone in her family to know about. I called out, something like ‘Hi Camila, who’s picking you up?’ But she just waved me away. And now I’m realising I haven’t seen her in school for a few weeks and she’s looking a bit peaky, a bit strained.’

‘Using?’ Carl asked.

‘Yeh. Not that I’d have known it then. But her cousins told me her mom turned her out for doing drugs and refusing to stop. They asked where I’d seen her and when I said the corner opposite the bodega, they knew what it meant. Anyway, I didn’t, not that first time I saw her there. I knew there were hookers on the corner now, but who expects to see a kid they know working it, right? So I go up to her and say it’s good to see her, haven’t seen her in school, is she off on a date, normal stuff and I’m re-thinking not dating the year below me when suddenly there’s a horn blaring again, and Camila looks over my shoulder and says, ‘You should go’ and she pulls my arm, as if trying to hurry me past her. Then there’s this guy who I recognise from the coffee table outside the bodega at my side. I figure he’d sprinted across the street, and he says something like, ‘She costs more than you can afford, move along.’

I still don’t get what’s happening, because I say ‘Hey, I’m just talking to a friend’, and he responds, ‘and your friend is my employee, and she don’t make money talking to school-kids.’
And while I’m thinking his accent sounds more east-coast, or maybe mid-west, it clicks what he means, and I look at Camila and she’s looking down and the guy says, ‘Fuck off, or I’ll make sure you never play whatever sport your school thinks your okay at again’ and I look at him and he slides a gun up from inside his jacket so I see the butt.’ Wilson took another drink, draining half his glass again. He sat back and said, ‘I haven’t really thought about any of this in detail for years. But it’s still fresh.’ He put his left hand on his right forearm and rubbed it a little and said, ‘I can still feel how small and dry her hand was on my arm. She smelled of some perfume I never knew the name of, but if I smelled it now I’d recognise it. And the guy, he’d been drinking more than just coffee, and the gun he showed me, I’m pretty sure it was a (popular early-mid ‘00s pistol).

There was silence, and Carl looked at Wilson stare into a distant past for a few moments before asking, ‘And that’s why you hate Harry Albarn so much?’ He couldn’t keep confusion out of the question.

‘What?’ Wilson was dragged back from his memories. ‘Not just that. If it was just that, I don’t know, I’d still hate him for being a low life, but no more than any number of scum we meet, right?’

‘Right. So, what happened?’

‘Her cousins said she’d been kicked out, disowned. You know, for all the gang stuff round there, there’s plenty families who want nothing to do with it.’

‘It’s the same everywhere,’ Carl said. ‘It only takes a few to get a stranglehold, but most folks want nothing to do with it.’

Wilson nodded agreement. He reached forward to top up his glass. He reached over and put another two fingers into Carl’s not yet empty glass.

Carl said, ‘I’ll stop after this. I’m too old for hangovers.’

‘I’ll give you a pint of water and some Tylenol before you bed down, you’ll be fine.’ He took a drink. ‘Anyway, I was telling you about Camila. I’d see her pretty regular but it wasn’t long before she was beginning to look that junkie pale and thin and while I was smart enough to avoid pimps and their guns, I was still a teenager with ideas of white knight heroism. Initially I called the cops, but they weren’t interested. They busted a couple of the girls a few times, though Camila wasn’t on when it happened, but they never did anything about Harry or his men and it wasn’t until I saw one of the thugs handing a cop an envelope that I figured it out.’

‘So, he’s been paying of cops right from the start.’

‘If the rumor about him being sent out west to form a bridgehead is true, then he’s always had the money to do it. And it’s how he got big so quick. Pay of the cops to shut down the opposition, create a space to move into. But all of this is later. I’m still trying to save Camila see, and one night she’s on the corner and clearly not well and now I’ve got a car, it’s a beat up Accura, but it’s enough to get me about and school is finishing up and I’m going to (small university in a neighbouring state on a bball scholarship) but that’s-’ he stopped speaking for a moment and his brows furrowed. He took a sip of whisky then said, ‘That becomes relevant in a minute or two, but right now I’m at the lights and see Camila, see she isn’t looking to great and as the lights go green and I head across the intersection, she collapses back on the wall and just kind of slumps. There’s a gap in traffic so I swing across and pull into an alley, put the emergency lights on, and sprint round the corner. She’s still slumped against the wall and the girl who she’s on with is by her side. There’s no sign of the pimp across the street, though there’s a coffee cup on the table so he’s about, probably inside taking a leak. I slide an arm round Camila to help her up and ask the other girl, ‘What’s she on?’

‘Heroine, and crack to get her going.’

‘Shit, right, I’m taking her to get help. Tell the pimp whatever will get you hit the least, or you can come with me.’

She stepped back, and looked over her shoulder, like she was judging the risk, but decided to stay. We were just at the corner when I hear a shout and reckoned it was the thug. I didn’t stop and put her in the backseat, she just fell over and lay sideways. I had to shove her feet in to get the door shut. As I’m pulling away, swinging the wheel to miss garbage cans in the alley, the guy appears in my rear-view mirror and he’s shouting but I can’t hear anything because I’m revving hard and then, then he yanks a gun from his waistband and points it at the car. At the end of the alley I swing right and hope there’s no one speeding up the lane. To this day I don’t know if he fired the gun or not. But I was two blocks away before slowing down. The adrenaline was pumping so hard I couldn’t figure where I was and it took another couple of blocks to orient myself, and I took Camila to Harbor-UCLA (local name needed) and left her in a wheelchair in the emergency room.’

‘I bet they loved that,’ Carl said.

‘It was the best I could do. From there I went and told her cousin where she was and thought that I’d avoid the bodega for a while, go to school the long way round.’

‘I guess Harry wasn’t forgiving.’

‘For the first week it seemed everything was okay. Then I come out from practice and the car is trashed. I think they used baseballs, a sledgehammer, and knives on the tires and seats. A friend gave me a lift home and my mom was working but dad was in and was pretty frustrated with the situation. Told me I should have left well alone. I’d put some fancy rims on and still had the old wheels in the garage, so we went and put them on and dad towed me to a friend’s shop to get repairs done.

I was back to walking and without thinking not only took the route past that corner back from school one day but went into the bodega for a soda and some churros. It was mid-morning, so the girls weren’t on the street and little table hadn’t even been put out. Still, it was dumb to forget because as I hand cash over someone grabs my collar and says, ‘Harry wants a word with you.’ It’s the thug who flashed a gun at me the first time I spoke to Camila. He shows it me again when I try to struggle out of his grip. Shit.’ Wilson finished the glass and stared straight ahead; lost in the story he was telling.

‘Hey,’ Carl said, ‘You don’t need to tell me anything.’

Wilson snapped back into the room and looked at his buddy. ‘I think I do. I think I should have talked about this years ago. But if you don’t want me to, well, I can stop.’ He looked at his empty glass, and the now half empty bottle on the table. ‘Let me get some chips from the kitchen, and do you want some water or soda. We’re getting too old to have a session without re-hydrating.’

‘Both sound good. And keep on with your story. I take it he kept hold of you until Harry arrived.’

Wilson stood up and went to the kitchen. The apartment was small enough he only had to raise his voice a little for Carl to hear him. ‘So Harry arrived in this, (big car, like a Chrysler 300c, but in 2000) and we all go through to the back of the bodega. The guy who runs it looks scared and when Harry tells him to turn the music up loud, he looks real queasy. I’m already scared, but remember, I’m eighteen and know nothing. Hey, I got a coupla bags of Lays, but nothing else, that okay?’

‘Sure,’ Carl replied.

Wilson came back through with the bags of chips held in his teeth while his hands were clasped round three glasses, two filled with water and his rocks glass full of ice. He dropped the chips on the table, put the glasses down and slid one of the waters towards Carl. He tipped half the ice into Carl’s rocks glass, then poured whisky. When he put the bottle back down there was only about a quarter left. They took a bag of chips each and opened them, eating without talking. Out on the street someone revved their engine loudly and they both looked towards the window.

Carl took a drink of water and then said, ‘Tell me what Harry said to you.’

‘I forget the exact words. It was something about me stealing his property and there being a penalty for that, and he hoped I hadn’t really expected to make the NBA. I don’t remember his words real well because that’s when his thug broke my arm. Just snatched my arm out and slammed it over a pallet which was stood up on its side. I passed out. I came to in the ER, and apart from a broken arm I have a broken nose, cheek, and several ribs. Seems they kicked me about while I was down. Dad’s insurance was good, so that wasn’t a real worry. But the college withdrew my scholarship because I wasn’t going to be able to play.’ He held up his arm.

‘I’ve seen you rub it, I guess that’s where the break was.’

‘Yeh. So I ended up going to a community college and figured I’d fix the LAPD from the inside.’

‘And how’s that going?’

Wilson rested back in his chair. The urge to talk, to reveal himself, was finished, and the whisky was working its drowsy magic. ‘Turns out I’m not into running solo crusades, but I really enjoy day-to-day policing. But I keep an eye on Albarn, or I thought I did until I.A. dragged me in to look at their suspects.’ A yawn worked its way up his chest and out, he covered his mouth with the inside of his elbow. ‘I gotta go get some sleep. Thanks for listening. You know where the spare room is, the bed’s all there and there’s extra blankets in the cupboard same as last time.’ He stood, and staggered, unsteady. He drained the whisky in his glass and said, ‘I gotta use the john. I’ll clear up in the morning.’

Chapter Break

Link to collated chapters HERE

Link to the short story which is the seed for this is HERE

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words by stuartcturnbull pic by igorelick on Pixabay