Employee of the Year

Chapter 17 - A Bigger Dream

I made it into the office a little late the next morning. After three cups of coffee, I still couldn’t figure out my next move. This was a crucial moment. I knew we were six months into the Employee of the Year cycle. We were half-way home and it could break for me or Roland. Roland came into January with the momentum after a hugely successful December, drumming up huge sums of money even when Lenny gave him the worst list of deadbeats.

After the Stark suicide in the first week of January, that dynamic was shifting. Roland’s handling of Beth Stark looked like a blunder, regardless of whether it was really his fault. I knew Teresa was happy that I took care of the PR problem. I still needed to find a way to collect enough cash to make it count toward the Employee of the Year Award. The outstanding balance for the Stark account was massive. If I could figure out a way to rummage through the dead man’s assets and get even a fraction of what he owed, I would easily beat out Roland for the month of January. The problem was I had no idea where to start. I sat slouched at my desk, staring at Olivia’s empty seat, waiting for some kind of inspiration.

Larry Vincent sat in a large cubicle right by Charlie in the Risk Management Department. A corkboard wall in the cubicle was covered with photographs of Larry with his friends and family at a backyard barbeque at his house on Martin Luther King Boulevard near Crenshaw. Another picture showed him as a young officer with the LAPD. A faded snapshot showed Charlie, who stuck out as the only Asian in any of the photos, standing alongside a heavyset black man in front of a convenience store. Charlie looked much younger. Both men pictured beamed with big smiles.

“That was my cousin Willy,” Larry said. “He worked as a security guard for Charlie’s strip mall over on Florence and Avalon. I met Charlie when I was investigating Harvey’s death in the riots.”

“Did you ever find the killer?”

“Oh, we knew exactly who the killer was, just another young fool with a gun. But we couldn’t get a conviction. Nobody in the neighborhood would testify. Nobody trusted us to do the right thing. Same old story.”

“Is the killer still walking the streets?”

“Not really sure, to be honest. It was a long time ago, so who knows. I’ll tell you one thing though. I ain’t carrying a badge no more, so I play by my own rules now. I ever see that motherfucker again, he’s a dead man.”

I realized that Larry knew the streets better than anyone else who worked at Passion. Anyone except me. This made me queasy. I didn’t want to work with people who knew too much about the world I came from.

“Any word from your guy in Riverside?” I asked. “They still suspect the wife?”

“Probably. She had a motive and she knew enough to rig the car. Then again, so did that guy next door who runs the body shop.”

“Roy Kikuyama?”

“Yeah. Seems like that guy was crazy jealous of all the customers flocking to Rebel Without a Cause. That’s what my buddy at the sheriff’s department told me. On top of that, Stark owed him some money. Blows your mind doesn’t it? Guys like Stark. All that money and success and yet at the end of the day, they are completely broke.”

Vincent brought up a Web site on his computer and motioned for me to come closer to the screen, which showed an image of a map, with a satellite view.

“The funny thing is it ain’t just Stark. So many other people are living that lie. I was checking this site for bank-owned properties in Corona. Check out this last block of Songbird Lane, the end of the street where Stark lived. Bank records show that every single mansion around that cul-de-sac is foreclosed and vacant!”