Amor en Retrogrado

239 Pages·2012·1.25 MB·English

by  Riley A M

AMOR EN RETROGRADO

A. M. Riley

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Amor en Retrogrado
A. M. Riley

This e-book is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or
existing locations, the names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the
author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or
dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Published by
Loose Id LLC
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Carson City NV 89701-1215
www.loose-id.com

Copyright © January 2008 by A. M. Riley
All rights reserved. This copy is intended for the purchaser of this e-book ONLY. No part of
this e-book may be reproduced or shared in any form, including, but not limited to printing,
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ISBN 978-1-59632-610-1
Available in Adobe PDF, HTML, MobiPocket, and MS Reader

Printed in the United States of America

Editor: Georgia A. Woods
Cover Artist: Croco Designs
www.loose-id.com
Chapter One

Mid-January rains sluiced smog from the air over downtown Los Angeles, brought oil
up from the well-baked asphalt, and contributed to several nasty accidents on the principal
freeways. As familiar as the song of birds, residents rose to the wail of sirens.
At 4:00 a.m., the parking lot at the corner of Wilshire and Santa Monica Boulevards
would have been completely empty if it weren’t for the considerable number of police cars
and wagons scattered across it.
One of the men standing within the area marked out with crime scene tape took a wet
cigarette from his mouth, frowned at it, and threw it to the ground. “Thought I’d left this
weather in Seattle.”
The tall black woman standing near him clutched a long wool coat around herself and
frowned at the asphalt which her partner had just littered. There were hundreds of cigarettes
on the ground. A few spent condoms. Gum. Chewed highball straws. “Bet we get lots of DNA
from this scene.”
“Half of West Hollywood, probably,” said the man, grimacing and searching his pockets
for another cigarette.
Kate Crandall cast a glance at her partner. Bill Turner had made his views on
contemporary crime scene investigation technology abundantly clear to her privately, but he
seemed able to keep his opinions to himself publicly.
Now he managed to shield the flame long enough to light his cigarette, shook out the
match, and said merely, “We got ID?”
“Vic’s name is Pablo Neruda,” said a uniformed cop, reading from a clipboard. “Of
Compton. Twenty-three years old. His companion is at Queen of Angels with a gunshot
wound and battery.”
2 A. M. Riley
“Ah,” said Kate, squatting down next to the corpse. “Eighteenth Street Bloods had their
birthday last week.”
The LA gangs celebrated on the month and day indicated by the name of the street
they took. Most of them were summer months, as the streets were far enough south to be in
the high double digits. But the Eighteenth Street Bloods were an old group, spread out across
several districts, and they celebrated in January.
A Latino man from Compton dead of gunshot wounds in a parking lot was almost a no-
brainer.
“Payback,” said the cop.
“Almost a no-brainer,” said Bill, drily.
Kate quelled a smile. Only she could hear the sarcasm in that statement. Now Bill dug
in the pockets of his coat and brought out a pad and pen. The pad was blue. All of Bill’s pads
were blue, Kate had learned. And he always wrote in them with a blue Bic finepoint.
He walked around the corpse, studying the ground. Brains and blood and bits of
Neruda’s skull were collecting in little puddles around his head. A foot away, the pavement
seemed relatively clear. “He was already on the ground when he was shot,” said Bill.
Kate used a capped pen to lift the edge of the vic’s jacket. The face and neck were
bloodied and bruised. The marks looked fresh. They had probably risen to the surface of the
man’s skin after he’d died. They’d get a report on everything later, but nothing beat actually
seeing things. “Somebody beat the shit out of him first. Look at his face, Bill.”
Cigarette hanging from between his lips, Bill gazed meditatively down at their victim.
“Crime of passion,” he said.
Kate dropped the vic’s jacket from the end of her pen. “Maybe.”
A cop with some kind of plastic wrapped around his visor hat came strolling up.
“Who’s the team on this?” he asked. “Me and Pete were first on the scene.”
“Smith hasn’t assigned it yet,” said Kate. “Who called it in?”
“Valet,” said the officer, jerking his thumb toward a young man outlined by cruiser
headlights, rain pouring down around him, as he waved his arms excitedly.
“He a witness?” asked Bill.
“Said he didn’t see anything,” replied the cop.
Rain poured off the brim of Bill’s hat as he looked down at the corpse. “Anybody find
the gun?”
“Nope.” The officer jabbed two fingers toward a pair of officers looking through a trash
bin. “We’re combing the area now.”
“Was he robbed?”
The cop shook his head, frowning. “Still has his billfold. That’s how we ID’d him.”
Amor en Retrogrado 3

Bill squatted down and looked the body over with a practiced eye. Long, lean, tanned
arms. Good, strong hands. Rain molded a gray T-shirt over a nice six-pack. “Drugs?” he asked
dubiously.
“Didn’t find any on him,” said the officer. “Maybe in him. ’Course, they all take stuff.”
“They?” asked Bill.
The cop made a face like he smelled something sour and jerked his chin toward the
club the parking lot belonged to. Bill squinted up at the sign. ARENA -- the rainbow-colored
letters seemed to drip under the pouring rain. A fairly notorious upscale gay dance club, as it
happened.
“Valet said a car crashed the security gate earlier. Just before closing. They’re pulling
the surveillance tapes now. Maybe some guy tried to stop them from stealing his car.”
Kate frowned at the body. “Seems excessive for a carjack.”
Another one of the detectives on the scene sauntered up and gave Kate a smile. “Smith
says this is yours, Crandall.”
“Oh,” said Kate. “Thanks, Jason.” She and Bill waited until he’d walked away and then
exchanged looks that were the equivalent of pumped fists in the air.
“So, how we’d luck out?” asked Bill. “A real live dead body. You been flirting with the
captain, Crandall?”
“Shit,” said Kate. They hadn’t had a decent assignment in weeks. Twice now, they’d
been skipped over when their turn had come up in the rotation. “That man hates me,
Turner.”
“I thought he hated me,” said Bill, stooping and tipping his head close to the ground so
he could look under a car. “It’s dry under here.”
“Yeah?”
“We know where the owner is?” He rose and looked around the parking lot.
Kate waved the officer over and had them run the car’s plate. While they stood about,
waiting, Bill pulled out another cigarette and attempted to light it without the rain dousing
his match.
“Those things’ll kill you,” said Kate automatically.
“One bad habit at a time,” said Bill around the cigarette in his mouth. He shook out his
match.
The officer waved them over. “Car belongs to Neruda,” he said. “Merry Christmas,
Loo.”
“Hey,” said Bill. “And I expected nothing but coal.”
“When did it start raining?” asked Kate. Nobody seemed to remember.
Bill, however, thumbed back a few pages in the ubiquitous notebook. “Five p.m.,” he
said, snapping it closed.
4 A. M. Riley
Kate nodded. So her partner noted fluctuations in weather. No big deal, right? Probably
all the police in Seattle did that.
They got somebody to pop the lock and the CSI techs swarmed over the van like
hungry ants. Kate and Bill were standing there watching when one of the uniformed officers
came trotting up.
“Just got news from the hospital. Your other vic’s gonna make it, they say.”
“Thank Christ,” said Kate. At least they’d have a witness.
“Check out the name.” The officer held out his clipboard so that she could see it. Kate
read the name, then grabbed the clipboard, read it again, then groaned.
Bill’s frowned suspiciously “What?”
“Joseph Ryan,” said the cop, grinning. “The” -- he made quotation marks in the air with
his fingers -- “life partner of Robert Lemos.”
“The Robert Lemos?” asked Bill.
* * * * *
“What was that?” Robert Lemos came running from his office into the front room.
Barefoot and in boxers, the sleeves of the oversized T-shirt stretched over his biceps and the
tail hung to almost the edge of his shorts. His knees hit the floor as he came to a sliding stop
next to the man who squatted at the open window, pistol pointed toward the brilliantly lit
front lawn.
“Somebody trying to break in, I think, Mr. Lemos,” said the man calmly. He turned
molasses-colored eyes toward his employer, smiling.
“You shot at them? Jorge, this is not Nicaragua. You can’t shoot at people.”
“I didn’t hit them,” said Jorge. “I think the alarm went off.”
Sure enough, the phone rang in the hallway and Robert trotted over to talk to the
security company.
“Lemos here,” he said, finding his glasses still perched on top of his head and laying
them carefully on the hallway table. “We think we had an attempted…what?”
“This is Mrs. Pritchard, of Queen of Angels hospital,” said a voice. “You are listed as the
emergency contact for a Mr. Joseph Ryan?”
A hospital instead of the security company? “Yes?”
“Mr. Ryan has been shot.”
Robert actually felt his heart stop, the thud of it hitting his rib cage and bouncing back,
stunned and heavy, into his chest. He stared up at Jorge, who gazed back with those warm
eyes.
“Is he…?” he asked.
Amor en Retrogrado 5

He managed to pick the words, “surgery” and “critical” from the flow of information
coming over the line, then the voice seemed to drown in the sudden buzzing in his ears.
Robert’s knees were suddenly cold and he realized he was kneeling on the marble
floor. Jorge kept saying his name. The phone hung from Robert’s hand. He stared down at it
and saw Jorge’s manicured hand take the thing. Jorge began speaking into the receiver.
Then Jorge was draping Robert’s coat over his shoulders, handing him his pants, and
guiding him gently toward the garage.
“Mr. Ryan is in surgery at Queen of Angels hospital, Mr. Lemos. Put on your clothes,
and I will drive you there.”

The freeway separating Robert’s home from the Hollywood hospital seemed an endless
seamless expanse of trucks and cars and sirens.
Robert had his body pressed into the corner of the backseat and his cell phone pressed
to his ear. As if the combined pressure of fine leather interior and cutting edge technology
could hold him together while his brain went white with the effort of not thinking about
what might happen to JD.
He was on hold with the hospital, catching Jorge’s eye in the rear view mirror as he
scowled at life in general. He saw the whites of those expressive eyes roll and then dip away.
Jorge’s shoulders sank just a little lower in his seat.

“Lighten up, Robert. The universe isn’t plotting against you.”
“Not the universe, JD, just the human race. Every fucker you see has an agenda.”
“Not always.” That smile, blue eyes bright with humor.
“Always, JD. They’re all just waiting for you to turn your back.”
“Only because they want to check out my ass.”
And, of course, that had made him laugh, dispelled the scowl JD had been objecting to
in the first place. “Fucker.” And his hand had reached out to cup and squeeze that ass. JD
pushing into his hand, eyes heating. “Nalga de angel,” Robert breathed.

Robert forced his mind to shut off the memory and pressed the “two” button on his
cell. “Detective Lara,” snapped a voice.
Robert took a breath. “Yo. Chato.” There was a marked silence on the other end of the
line. Robert actually moved his phone away from his ear to check to see that the cell
connection hadn’t dropped as they passed through the canyons. No, Gabe was there still. He
was just deciding whether or not he wanted to speak to Robert. Things had been a little tense
lately.
Robert rubbed his eyes with shaking fingers. “Please, Gabe,” he whispered.