Suicide Hill Read online

  “Say it,” Bobby said.

  Joe screamed the words, his voice breaking: “You’re a rape-o! You’re a mind fuck! You’re on a wacko guilt trip, and I’m not kicking out any more of my money for your penance!” He swung the car out into the stream of traffic, punching the gas, doing a deft brody that set off a chain of honks from cut-off motorists. Bobby cracked the passenger window for air, then said softly, “I just want you to know how things are. How they’re always gonna be. I owe you for getting us out of burglary. Too many women out there; too many chances to pull weird shit. But you owe me your guts, ’cause without me you ain’t got any. We gotta remember that stuff.”

  Knowing Bobby was trying to get at something, Joe pressed the edge that his tears always gave him. “You sent that woman five K, right? The money orders were cashed, so you know she got them. You sent her a note, so even though the signatures on the checks were false, she knew it was you. You haven’t done it again, so why are you rehashing all this old stuff? We’ve got a good deal with Hendy, but you keep talking it down like it’s nothing.”

  Bobby popped short left-right combos until his arms ached and his tunic was soaked with sweat. “I’m just getting itchy, little brother,” he said at last. “Like something has gotta happen real soon. Take surface streets, I gotta cool out before the close.”

  They cruised east on Valley Boulevard, Joe driving slowly in the middle lane, so he could scope out the scene on both sides of the street. The rain died to a drizzle, and Bobby took a hand squeeze from the glove compartment and started a long set of grip builders, dangling his right arm out the window to get a good extension. When Joe saw that the streets were nothing but used-car lots, liquor stores, burrito stands and boredom, he tried to think up some more lyrics to “Suicide Hill.” When words wouldn’t come, he slumped down in his seat and let the story take over.

  Suicide Hill was a long cement embankment that led down to a deep sewage sluice in back of the Sepulveda V.A. Hospital. The hill and the scrubland that surrounded it were encircled by high barbed-wire fencing that was cut through in dozens of places by the gang members who used it as a meeting place and fuck turf.

  The hill itself was used to test courage. Steep, and slick from spilled oil, it served as the ultimate motorcycle gauntlet. Riders would start at the top and try to coast down, slowly picking up speed, then popping the bike into first and hurdling the sewage sluice, which was thirteen feet across and rife with garbage, industrial chemicals and a thirty-year accumulation of sharp objects thrown in to inflict pain. Gang rivalries were settled by two riders starting off on top of the hill at the same time, each armed with a bicycle chain, the object to knock the opponent into the muck while hurdling it himself. Scores of bodies were rumored to be decomposing in the sluice. Suicide Hill was considered a bad motherfucker and a destroyer of good men.

  So was the man it was named after.

  Fritz “Suicide” Hill and the V.A. Hospital dated back to the days immediately following World War II, when scores of returning G.I.s necessitated the creation of veterans’ domiciles. Rumor had it that Fritz was housed at the brand-new institution for shell shock, and after his recovery was assigned to a domicile ward to ease his emotional readjustment. Fritz had other ideas. He pitched a tent in the scrubland by the embankment and started an L.A. chapter of the Hell’s Angels, then embarked on a career as a motorcycle highwayman, shaking down motorists all over Southern California, always returning to his encampment by the Sepulveda Wash. That part of the legend Joe accepted as fact.

  The rest was a mixture of bullshit and tall tales, and the part that Joe wanted to put into his song. Suicide Hill sliced the guy who sliced the Black Dahlia; he masterminded a plot to break Caryl Chessman out of death row; he tommy-gunned niggers from a freeway overpass during the Watts Riot. He turned Leary on to acid and kicked Charlie Manson’s ass. The cops wouldn’t fuck with him because he knew where the bodies were buried. Even legendary hot dogs like John St. John, Colin Forbes and Crazy Lloyd Hopkins shit shotgun shells when Suicide Hill made the scene.

  The most popular ending of the legend had Fritz Hill dying of cancer from all the chemicals he’d sucked in during his many dunks in the Sepulveda Wash. When he saw the end coming, he hauled his 1800 C.C. Vincent Black Shadow up to the roof of the hospital and popped a wheelie over the edge in second gear, flying some five hundred yards before he crashed into the scrubland, igniting a funeral pyre that could be seen all over L.A. Joe knew that the whole story, rebop, truth and all, was the story of everything he and Bobby had ever done, but all he had so far was “and death was a thrill on Suicide Hill”—and those ten bars were enough for a plagiarism beef.

  Bobby nudged him out of his reverie. “Hang a right. The pad should be on the next block.”

  Joe complied, pulling onto a street of identical tract houses, all of them painted pink, peach or electric blue. Bobby scanned addresses, then pointed to the curb and shook his head. “Jesus Christ, Father Hernandez. Another stone wacko.”

  “Qué, Father Gonzalez?”

  Joe set the brake and got out of the car, then looked over at the front lawn of the closee’s pad and answered his own question. “Wacko’s not the word, Padre.”

  The walkway of the peach-colored house was lined with Day-Glo plaster statues of Jesus and his disciples. On one side of the lawn a plastic Saint Francis stood guard over a flock of Walt Disney squeeze toys. On the other side, stuffed teddy bears and pandas were arranged around a papier-mache nativity scene. Joe walked over and checked out the manger. A Donald Duck doll was wrapped in swaddling clothes. Minnie Mouse and Snoopy leaned against the crib, sheepherder staffs pinned to their sides. The whole collage was sopping wet from the rain. “Holy fuck,” he whispered.

  Bobby cuffed him on the back of the head. “This is too fucking sad. Anybody this fucking crazy has gotta be a rollover. Let’s just get a signature and split.” He shoved a turquoise Bible and matching siding sample at Joe, then stared at the opposite side of the lawn. His eyes caught a toppled Jesus statue and a Kermit the Frog puppet going sixty-nine. He grabbed Joe’s arm and pushed him up the walkway. “Five minutes in and out. No rosaries, no bullshit.”

  Before Joe could respond, a fat white woman in a rumpled housedress opened the door and stood on the porch in front of them. Grateful that she wasn’t Mexican, Bobby said, “I’m Father Gonzalez, and this is Father Hernandez. We’re the field priests from the Henderson Company. We brought you your siding sample and Bible. The workmen will be out to put up your patio next week.” He reached into his breast pocket for a blank contract. “All we need is your signature. If you sign today, you get our November bonus, the Henderson Prayer Service: millions of Catholics worldwide will pray for you everyday for the rest of your life.”

  The woman reached into the pockets of her dress and pulled out rosary beads and a wad of one-dollar bills. She bit at her lip and said, “The phone man said I got to give to earthquake relief to get prayed for. He said to give you the money to give to him, and you’d pray for my husband, too. He’s got the cancer powerful bad.” Joe was reaching for the money when he saw Bobby smile; the slow smile he used to flash just before a fight he knew he was going to lose. He dropped his hand and stood off to one side as the veins in his brother’s forehead started to twitch and spit bubbles popped from his mouth. The woman stammered, “He-he’s sick powerful bad,” and Bobby ran back to the car and began hurling Bibles and siding samples out into the street, covering the pavement with pastel Naugahyde and aluminum. When there were no more phone scam products left to throw, he tore off his priest jacket and his cassock and dropped them into the gutter, followed by the money in his pants pockets. Joe stood on the porch beside the shock-stilled woman, watching the last five years of his life go up in smoke, knowing that what made it so bad was that Bobby believed in God worse than any of the people he hurt.

  3

  Three weeks into his suspension from duty, Lloyd Hopkins flew to San Francisco and kept his family under a
rolling stakeout. He rented a room at a Holiday Inn on the edge of Chinatown and a late-model Ford, and watched from a distance as his wife made her rounds of the city as an antique broker and met her lover for drinks, dinner and overnight visits at her Pacific Heights apartment; from a further distance he followed his daughters to school, on errands and out on dates. After a week of loose surveillance, he knew that he had gleaned no information and gained no special insights that would make his job easier. All he could do was let them find him, and see where it went from there.

  He decided to let the girls make the discovery, and drove to their school and parked across the street. At 12:30, classes adjourned for an hour, and Anne and Caroline always ate with friends under the big oak tree in the school’s backyard, while Penny skipped lunch and brooded by herself on the steps. If he stood by the car, big and familiar in his favorite herringbone jacket, then sooner or later they would notice him, and he would be able to read their faces and know what to do.

  At precisely 12:30, the school’s back door opened, and the first wave of students exited and jockeyed for positions under the oak tree. Lloyd got out and leaned against the hood of his car. Anne and Caroline appeared moments later, chattering and making faces as they examined the contents of their lunch sacks. They found spaces on the grass and began eating, Caroline making her usual liverwurst face as she unwrapped her first sandwich. Penny walked out then, peering around before disappearing into a swarm of children. Lloyd felt tears in his eyes, but kept them on his daughters anyway, waiting for the moment of recognition.

  “Loitering in the vicinity of school yards, huh? Let’s see your I.D., pervert!”

  Lloyd did a slow turn, savoring the sound of Penny’s voice and the anticipation of their identicalt gray eyes meeting. Penny foiled his plan by jumping into his arms and burying her head in his chest. Lloyd held his youngest daughter and dried his eyes on her Dodgers cap. When she started growling and nudging his shoulders like a cat, he growled back and said, “Who’s the pervert? And what’s with this feline stuff? The last I heard you were a penguin.”

  Penny stepped back. Lloyd saw that the color in her eyes had deepened, gaining a hint of Janice’s hazel. “Penguins are passé. You’ve lost weight, Daddy. What are you doing in Frisco? This skulking-around scene wasn’t too subtle, you know.”

  Lloyd laughed. “Do the others know I’m here?”

  Penny shook her head. “No, they’re not too subtle either. I figured it out two days ago. This friend of mine said there was this big man in a tweed jacket checking out the school yard. He said the guy looked like a nark or a perv. I said, ‘That sounds like my dad.’ I kept peeking outside during classes until I saw you.” She stood on her tiptoes and poked Lloyd’s necktie. “Speaking of which, my dummy sisters just figured it out.”

  Looking over his shoulder, Lloyd saw Caroline and Anne staring at him. Even from a distance he could see shock and anger on their faces. He waved, and Anne dropped her lunch sack and grabbed her sister’s arm. Together they ran toward the school’s back door.

  Lloyd looked at Penny. “They’re pissed. Why? The last time I came up we got along great.”

  Penny leaned against the car. “It’s cumulative, Daddy. We’re the geniuses, they’re the plodders. They resent me because I’m the youngest, the smartest, and have the biggest breasts. They—”

  “No, goddammit! What really?”

  “Don’t yell. I’m serious, Annie and Liney have gone très Frisco. They want Mom to divorce you and marry Roger. Mom and Roger are on the rocks, so they’re scared. Daddy, are you in trouble in the Department?”

  Realizing that his two older daughters weren’t going to join him, Lloyd put an arm around his youngest and drew her close. “Yeah. I blew an extradition bust and fucked up at the guy’s arraignment. I’ve been suspended from duty until the first of the year. I’m not sure what’s going to happen, but I’m sure I’m finished in Robbery/Homicide. I might get transferred to a uniformed division until my twenty years come up, I might get my choice of flake assignments. I just don’t fucking know.”

  Penny burrowed deeper into her father. “And you’re scared?”

  “Yeah, I’m scared.”

  “And you still want all of us back?”

  “More than ever.”

  “Want some advice?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Exploit this rocky period Mom and Roger are going through. Work fast, because they’re going away this weekend, and they have this tendency to patch things up during long motel idylls.”

  Lloyd laughed. “I’ve been observing you lately. Don’t you ever eat lunch?”

  Penny laughed back. “The school serves nothing but health food, and Mom’s sandwiches suck. I hit a burger joint on the way home.”

  “Come on, we’ll get a pizza and conspire against your mother.”

  After a long lunch, Lloyd dropped Penny back at school and drove to Janice’s apartment. There was a note on the door: “Roger—running late, make yourself at home. Should ret. around 3:30.” He checked his watch—3:10—and picked the lock with a credit card and let himself in. When he saw the state of the living room, he realized Janice’s success, not her lover, was his chief competition.

  Every piece of furniture was a frail-looking antique, the type he had told her never to buy for the house because he was afraid it wouldn’t support his 225 pounds; every framed painting was the German Expressionist stuff he despised. The rugs were light blue Persian, the kind Janice had always wanted, but was certain he’d ruin with coffee stains. Everything was tasteful, expensive, and a testament to her freedom as a single woman.

  Lloyd sat down carefully in a cherrywood armchair and stretched his legs so that his feet rested on polished hardwood, not pale carpeting. He tried to kill time imagining what Janice would be wearing, but kept picturing her nude. When that led to thoughts of Roger, he let his eyes scan the room for something of or by himself. Seeing nothing, he fought an impulse to check out Janice’s bedroom. Then he heard a key in the lock and felt himself start to shiver.

  Janice saw him immediately and didn’t register an ounce of surprise. “Hello, Lloyd,” she said. “Liney called me at the office and told me you were in town. I expected you to come by, but I didn’t expect you to break in.”

  Lloyd stood up. A red wool suit and a new shorter hairdo. He hadn’t been close. “Cops have criminal tendencies. You look wonderful, Jan.”

  Janice sighed and let her purse drop to the floor. “No, I don’t. I’m forty-two, and I’m putting on weight.”

  “I’m forty-two and losing weight.”

  “So I can see. So much for the amen—”

  Lloyd took two steps forward; Janice one. They embraced hands to shoulders, keeping a space between them. Lloyd broke it off first, so the contact wouldn’t make him want more. He took a step backward and said, “You know why I’m here.”

  Janice pointed to a Louis XIV sofa. “Yes, of course.” When sat down, she took a chair across from him and said, “I what you want, and I’m glad that you want it, but I don’t what I want. And I may never know. That’s as honest an answer as I can give you.”

  Lloyd felt threads of their past unraveling. Not knowing whether to press or retreat, he said, “You’ve made a good life for yourself here. This pad, your business, the life you’ve set up for the girls.”

  “I also have a lover, Lloyd.”

  “Yeah, Roger the on-and-off lodger. How’s that going?”

  Janice laughed. “You’re such a riot when you try to act civilized. I read about you in the L.A. papers a couple of weeks ago. Some man you captured in New Orleans.”

  “Some man whose capture I fucked up in New Orleans, some man whose arraignment I almost blew in L.A.”

  Janice smoothed the hem of her skirt and leaned forward. “I’ve never heard you admit to making mistakes before. As a cop, I mean.”

  Lloyd leaned back. The sofa creaked against his weight and combined with Janice’s words to form an accusation. “
I never made them before!”

  “Don’t shout, I wasn’t accusing you of anything. What did the man do?”

  The creaking grew; for a split second Lloyd thought he could feel the floor start to tremble. “The man? He beat a woman to death during a snuff film. Roger ever take out any scumbags like that?”

  Janice started to flush at the cheeks; Lloyd grabbed the arms of the sofa to keep from going to her. “Roger doesn’t take out scumbags,” she said. “He doesn’t break into my apartment or carry a gun or beat up on people. Lloyd, I’m a middle-aged woman. I was in love with your intensity for a long, long time, but I can’t handle it anymore. Maybe it isn’t a nice thing to say, but Roger is a comfortable, no-fireworks lover for a middle-aged antique broker who put in nineteen years as wife to a hot-dog cop. Lloyd, do you know what I’m saying?”

  The perfect softness of the indictment rang in Lloyd’s ears. “I’ve made amends as best I could,” he said, consciously holding his voice at a whisper. “I’ve tried to admit the things I did wrong with you and the girls.”

  Janice’s whisper was softer: “And your admissions were excessive and hurt me. You told me things that you shouldn’t ever, ever tell any woman that you claim to love.”

  “I do love you, goddammit!”

  “I know. And I love you, and even if I stay with Roger and divorce you and marry him, I’ll always love you, and Roger will never own me the way you have. But I’m too tired for the kind of love you have to give.”

  Lloyd stood up and walked to the door, averting his eyes from Janice and groping for threads of hope. “The girls? Would you consider how they feel about me?”

  “If they were younger, yes. But now they’re practically grown up, and I can’t let them influence me.”

  Lloyd turned around and looked at his wife. “You’re not yielding on this an inch, are you?”

  “I yielded too long and too much.”