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Then he said, “I’m assigning additional people to this case.”
I had been focusing on the work ahead, so Brady’s comment totally snapped my head around.
I said, “Another team?”
“Inspectors Swanson and Vasquez are now on loan to me from Robbery, along with fo
ur guys who are working for them.”
Ted Swanson and Oswaldo Vasquez were reputed to be great cops. But assigning them and their teams to this case, rather than other detectives from Homicide, only tangled the chain of command. I wasn’t pleased. Brady read my expression.
He said, “Here’s what we’ve got: three big-money heists, two DBs in six days, no evidence, media attention of the worst kind, and pressure from upstairs.
“So don’t get territorial, Boxer. Swanson knows robbery homicide cold. Vasquez grew up on the streets. Whether the doers are cops or pretend cops, it doesn’t matter. If we don’t get those mopes into lockup, all of our jobs will be compromised. Understand?”
I admire Brady. Sometimes I even like him. But he was ticking me off. Swanson and Vasquez had nothing on Conklin and me.
“Get in touch with Swanson and Vasquez,” he went on. “I want all of you canvassing around that shop until you get somewhere or someone. This spree has got to stop and I don’t care who stops it.”
“We’re on it, boss,” Conklin said.
“Read you loud and clear, Lieutenant,” I said through clenched teeth. I felt a sleepless night coming on.
CHAPTER 24
THE SQUARE BRICK apartment house was at the dead end of a street lined with other plain three-story buildings on Taylor Street at Eddy: the worst part of the Tenderloin.
Yuki pushed in the outer door and pressed the intercom button marked KORDELL.
The buzzer blared and Yuki climbed three stinking flights of graffiti-tagged stairs and knocked on the door at the end of the hallway. A woman cracked the door open.
“I’m Yuki Castellano. Mr. Jordan from the Defense League sent me. Did you get a call?”
“Yes, yes, please come inside.”
Mrs. Kordell was African-American, very thin, about forty; she wore a red bandana over her hair and had yellow rubber gloves peeking out of the pockets of her cargo pants.
Yuki walked behind her down a long, narrow hallway and entered a living room crowded with what looked to be generations of furniture. An elderly gentleman sat in a lounge chair, his hand on a carriage that he was rocking gently.
Mrs. Kordell introduced Aaron-Rey’s grandfather as Neil Kordell and said her husband was at work.
“My husband is a total wreck,” she said. “He doesn’t sleep. He barely speaks. Aaron-Rey’s death has destroyed him.”
Yuki took a seat on a worn brown sofa, and Mrs. Kordell sat in a matching armchair. On the table between them were pictures of a smiling Aaron-Rey Kordell.
“Why don’t you tell me about your son?” Yuki said.
The boy’s mother picked up one of the photos and held it as she talked. “Aaron-Rey was fifteen. He was so big, he looked older than that—but he had the mind of a child.”
Yuki nodded. Zac had told her that Aaron-Rey was mentally handicapped but had never been in any kind of trouble before his single, fatal incarceration.
“He went to school every day, or so we thought,” said Aaron’s mother. “I only found out later that he hung around bad places.”
“After the shooting at the crack house,” Yuki said.
Mrs. Kordell nodded, and then her father-in-law told the story.
“What happened is that Aaron-Rey saw that these three dealers got shot and he ran out onto the street. The cops came after him and arrested him for killing those men. It was a joke. Aaron-Rey had the mind of a five-year-old. He didn’t even know how to shoot a gun.”
