Contempt: A Legal Thriller

by Michael Cordell

  Thane turned away and leaned on the side of his desk. His stomach churned, and for a moment he hesitated to speak. “Say, Joseph, you used to keep a security company on retainer, didn’t you?”

  “There was an outfit that used to do investigative work for me from time to time, although it’s been a while. Don’t remember their name off the top of my head. Why do you ask?”

  Thane paused, then pushed forward. “Russell McCoy confronted me last night outside Hannah’s apartment.”

  “Are you serious? Did he come at you?”

  “No, but he pretty much said he was going to. Look, I can take care of myself, but I wouldn’t want him doing something here after hours. I hate bringing this stuff to the workplace, especially on my first day. If there was any other way—”

  Joseph raised his hand to silence him. “Listen, we knew there would be speed bumps. No need to apologize. I’ll look through some old invoices and get you the name of the security outfit.”

  “I can do that. It’s not like I have a lot on my plate right now.”

  “No, I got it. You just get up to speed on all the projects we’ve got in queue. So what did McCoy say?”

  “He thinks I killed his daughter. What can I say besides ‘I didn’t do it’? That’s not exactly a persuasive argument.”

  “And you can bet the police sure as hell aren’t out there looking. They figure you just got loose on a technicality. Did you think of anything while you were away that might help figure it out? I’d be willing to help pay for a P.I. to chase down any leads you might have.”

  “No,” Thane said. He looked out the window at the palm trees below. “You remember what Lauren McCoy told me when I talked with her? About her suspicions?”

  “You mean about it being an internal issue? Do you think it was somebody from her department? That seems like a stretch.”

  “I know. I’m just grasping.”

  “You better hope it was some low-life. A loser like that would be a hell of a lot more likely to screw up than somebody in the DA’s office, unless maybe it was a clerk or something. But let’s start by getting you some protection from the father first.”

  “I appreciate it,” Thane said. “Hopefully this will all fade away soon.” But he knew in his heart that none of his problems would be going anywhere for a while.

  CHAPTER

  NINE

  A black and white security car prowled Ashcroft Drive at 9:30 p.m. Friday evening, looking like Andy Griffith patrolling Mayberry. The company responsible for protecting Park Heights claimed their cars added a hometown feeling to the neighborhood, where everyone should feel as safe as they did in the fifties.

  It was Tony’s night to drive, so the car stayed well within the posted speed limit. “You take the test again?” Tony asked the man in the passenger’s seat.

  “Yeah, but they don’t tell you nothin’ for over a month,” Wes replied. “Don’t know what takes so damn long to grade a stupid test. What’s a test gonna tell them about whether I’ve got the guts to be a good cop? I ain’t giving up, but this is my third try.”

  “Well, they give you six tries, so it’s not like they’re looking for just a few good men.” Tony grinned at the thought of Wes taking a test six times to write traffic tickets.

  Wes leaned forward, sucking on his lower lip as he studied a white two-story Victorian with a long front porch and shrubs running along both sides of the house. “Slow down a sec.”

  Tony peered in the same direction, but didn’t see anything unusual about the unlit house.

  “Shine the spot over there,” Wes said, pointing through the window.

  Tony turned on the car’s side spotlight and snaked the beam across the yard and up the sidewalk until it reached a half-open front door.

  “That ain’t good,” Wes muttered. “And the porch light is off. We oughta check it out.”

  Tony killed the light and was reaching for the radio when Wes grabbed his arm so tight Tony almost yelped.

  “Turn it on again!” Wes shouted.

  The spotlight kicked back on, illuminating a hunched man skulking out the front door, wearing a black ski mask and dark clothes and carrying a military green duffle bag. He turned and froze under the bright light, then hobbled down the front steps, running as best he could toward the back of the house. A pronounced limp kept him from making good time, but he was giving it all he had.

  “Hit it!” Wes hollered.

  Tony stomped the accelerator, his pulse racing. Wes exploded out of the car before it reached full stop, his gun sliding easily from its holster as Tony knew he’d practiced hundreds of times in front of a mirror. He barreled toward the back yard, hollering back at Tony.

  “Check inside. I’ll catch the bastard.”

  Tony grabbed his flashlight with one hand and pulled out a walkie-talkie with the other. “Unit four to base, we have an intruder at 1387 Ashcroft Drive. In pursuit. Seriously. Send help.”

  Tony had taken this job because he needed the money and he had been assured that encountering anything dangerous was unlikely. He crept toward the house, then stopped and checked the gun’s safety. He crept up the steps of the house, his pace more deliberate than his partner’s, who was probably off living out his Lethal Weapon fantasy.

  “Security?” he said uncertainly before stepping inside the house. “I’ve got a gun, but I’m not looking to hurt anybody, so just let me know if anyone’s here and we’ll work this out.”

  The house stayed silent. Tony clicked on the hall light and took a few steps inside. He peeked around the corner into the living room, then slowly inched his way toward a small room at the end of the hall where an overhead light was on. Reaching the end of the hall, he glanced inside the room just long enough to see the body of a man sprawled on the floor, blood flowing from a quarter-sized hole in the back of his head.

  Tony stumbled backwards a couple of steps and threw up against a wall, then turned and power-walked his way back outside. He leaned against one of the porch columns, then slid down to the top porch step, his flashlight shining toward the street at nothing in particular.

  Wes appeared from the back yard. “The son of a bitch got away,” he said. “There’s bushes all around the back yard, but there was a hole dug underneath one of them that took me a while to find.”

  Tony maintained his dazed stare at the light, which was illuminating a patch of weeds in the front yard.

  “You okay?” Wes asked.

  “We lost a customer.”

  Wes glanced toward the front door and redrew his gun. He rested his hand on Tony’s shoulder, then passed by him on his way inside the house.

  Tony didn’t join him.

  The law firm’s executive break room, with its dark oak walls and leather wingback chairs, looked like a back room in an exclusive country club. Thane walked in, finding it empty except for Joseph, who was making his daily ten o’clock cup of tea. He stood at the counter, meticulously slicing a cucumber with the concentration of a surgeon, placing the millimeter-thick pieces on a special type of cracker baked in Peru. This was one of the few mundane tasks he was willing to do himself: he claimed the whole process was refreshingly Zen. Thane wasn’t sure exactly what that meant, but it seemed to make his boss happy.

  “Morning,” Joseph said, as Thane entered the otherwise empty room. “Ready to defend all that is holy?”

  “Yeah—although I totally forgot to pack my shining armor this morning.”

  “Ah, don’t worry about that, my lad: all that matters is pureness of heart.”

  Thane stood at one end of the counter and glanced at the front page of the L.A. Times. He opened his mouth to reply, but quickly returned his attention back to the paper, lifting it closer.

  “What’s up?” Joseph asked.

  Thane continued reading the paper for a moment, then walked over next to Joseph. “I kn
ow this guy.”

  The headline read “Retired L.A. Cop Slain in Home.” The accompanying picture was of a man wearing a J.C. Penney-caliber sports coat, the kind of artificially posed photo real estate agents and life insurance salesmen take at shopping malls. A stocky man in his fifties sporting a bargain basement rust-colored hairpiece, his left eye hung just a bit lower than his right. The camera had captured a failed attempt to convey authority; instead, the man simply appeared constipated.

  “I heard about that on the radio,” Joseph said. “How did you know him?”

  “He’s the detective who arrested me.”

  “Are you serious?” Joseph took the paper for a closer look. “Damn. Not that you’d wish anything like that on anybody, but if it had to happen—I mean, look who’s still standing, you know?”

  Thane shook his head. “I never blamed him. Trust me, if you had seen what he saw, you’d have arrested me too. He seemed like an okay guy, just doing his job.”

  Joseph looked at the article. “What was his name again? Grover?”

  “Gruber. Ted Gruber.” Thane ran his hand through his hair.

  Joseph looked at the article again, scanning it for details. “You going to be all right?”Thane started toward the door. “I’m fine. It just caught me off guard. I better get back to work. I’ll catch up with you later.”

  Thane walked down the corridor toward his office. He noticed Brianna heading his way, glancing back over her shoulder toward the lobby. She seemed concerned that she was being followed.

  “Mr. Banning, there’s a . . . gentleman here to see you,” she said. “He didn’t tell me his name, but I get the feeling he might be somebody you know. He’s waiting in the lobby. Would you mind coming to get him? To be honest, he kind of makes me nervous. He keeps looking at me and making sounds.”

  “What kind of sounds?”

  Brianna blushed, then looked away from Thane. “Kind of like ‘mmmm, mmmm, mmmm’.”

  Thane followed Brianna and looked through the one-way glass out into the lobby. He had never seen Gideon wearing anything other than a dirty brown jumpsuit, but his scowl was indelibly etched in Thane’s memory.

  Thane loosened his tie and unfastened the top button of his dress shirt, wishing he could go so far as to untuck it. As he stepped into the lobby, Gideon shifted his gaze up from the floor to Thane. He rose slowly, apparently not wanting to scare Brianna, who was back at her desk, phone in hand, looking at Thane as if waiting for a sign to call security. She put the phone down once she saw Thane striding forward, his hand outstretched.

  “Man, oh man, look who they set loose on society,” Thane said as the two men clasped hands like arm wrestlers. “Come on, let’s go back to my office.”

  Thane escorted Gideon down the hallway as several of the staff working in cubicles suddenly stood and stretched at the same time. The firm’s clients almost always dressed better than the lawyers themselves, in dark suits and black pantsuits. Gideon’s clothes—torn jeans, stained white T-shirt, sneakers with different color shoelaces—drew eyes like he’d set himself on fire.

  Thane shut the door to his office and perched himself on the edge of his desk as Gideon wandered around the room checking out the ornately framed diplomas, whistling a long, impressed note.

  “Goddamn,” he said. “You didn’t tell me you were the kind of lawyer with degrees and shit.”

  “Most lawyers have those.”

  “You never met the public defenders who represented me.” Gideon grinned again, then strode over to shake Thane’s hand one more time. “Look at you. Ain’t you the hot shit.”

  “Don’t start. I heard you got paroled a month ago and was wondering if I was going to hear from you. I told you to call me soon as you hit the street.”

  “Ah, I figured that was just one of those things people said, like ‘how ya doin’.”

  Gideon walked over and lowered himself into an overstuffed chair, bouncing up and down on the cushion a couple of times before settling in. “Damn, this thing’s more comfortable than my bed. But then, so’s your desk, probably.” His look turned to one of curiosity, studying Thane like a science project. “So how you doing?” Gideon asked. “How’s all this been for somebody like you?”

  “What do you mean, somebody like me?”

  Gideon put up his hands in mock self-defense. “Now, don’t be taking a swing at me,” he said laughing. “Didn’t mean nothing by it. It’s just when we ex-cons get out, we usually screw around for a while, then end up back in the cage. That’s just how it goes. But I’ve been wondering how all this was for someone like you. What’s the adjustment like for someone innocent?”

  “Long,” Thane said.

  “I hear that,” Gideon nodded solemnly.

  “So how about you?” Thane said. “Guess you suckered the parole board.”

  “I think it was the not spitting that did it.” He laughed, then the smile slowly dissolved from his face. “Things are okay, I guess. Wouldn’t mind a job where I don’t have to wear a little fucking paper hat, but I’ll do the fast food gig for a while. Then lose my money at the track, then probably end up back at Forsman.”

  “It doesn’t have to go like that.”

  Gideon shrugged. “Always has before. I just don’t seem to understand the rules out here.”

  “I used to think I did,” Thane said. Neither man spoke for a long moment.

  Finally Thane glanced at his watch, shaking his head apologetically. “I’m really sorry, but I have to go to a meeting. Trust me, if it was something I could get out of, I would.”

  Gideon immediately rose, nodding. “Nah, I understand. The life of an important man. Besides, you’re not the only one who’s got to get back to work. Lots of people lookin’ for burgers, and if I’m not there to feed ‘em, well, I don’t even want to think about that.”

  “Give your number to Brianna, since otherwise who knows when I’ll hear from you again. Just don’t scare her.”

  Gideon shook his head and smiled at Thane. “That’s okay. Don’t feel like you got to go through the motions. Besides, all I got is a work number.”

  “Then leave that. I’m serious.”

  Thane extended his hand, taking his friend’s big paw in both of his and shaking it for several seconds. Thane knew Gideon well enough to know this was more affection than he was used to receiving––even a longer than usual handshake was viewed with suspicion in prison––but he didn’t care if it made the tough guy feel awkward.

  “Let me teach you how the game’s played on this side of the bars,” Thane said. “We’re on my turf now. There’s no reason to end up back at Forsman.”

  Gideon took back his hand and shoved it in his front pocket. “I appreciate it, but things are different for cons like me. I don’t get a job with a big paycheck and fancy chairs and shit. Don’t worry about me. To be honest, I was kinda surprised you wanted to see me at all.”

  “You taught me to survive inside,” Thane said. “I never would have made it there without you.”

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Gideon grinned. “You might have lasted couple of weeks. Look, I got to get going.”

  “I’ll keep my eye open for something. I owe you.”

  Gideon nodded skeptically, then held up his hand in a half-wave and turned to leave.

  “Even more important than owing you,” Thane added, “you’re my friend.”

  Gideon stopped and turned towards him, at first looking like he figured he was being scammed. At last he simply nodded. “I appreciate that. I really do. You’re a good man. But you probably oughta keep with respectable folk. I’ll just bring you trouble.”

  Gideon opened the door to Thane’s office and shoved his hands in his pockets as he walked back toward the lobby. Thane started after him, but his telephone buzzed. He leaned over and hit the intercom button; Brianna’s voice came across the s
peaker.

  “I’m sorry to bother you, Mr. Banning, but the caller said it’s urgent. It might be a crank call, though.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I’m pretty sure he said his name was Mr. Skunk.”

  Thane smiled slightly, albeit with a hint of melancholy. “It’s just Skunk. Go ahead and transfer it on back.”

  “Yes, sir,” Brianna said. “You sure do have interesting friends, Mr. Banning.”

  CHAPTER

  TEN

  Returning to Forsman hit Thane hard, even as a visitor. He remained in his car across the street from the prison for over an hour, taking deep breaths, his face drenched with sweat. There was still a piece of Forsman inside him, he realized. After finally escaping its cold grasp, he’d vowed never to return again.

  Yet here he was.

  He signed in, emptying his pockets and submitting to the usual pat-down: now he understood what a humiliating process it must have been for Hannah all those times. For some reason, he always envisioned her simply walking through the front entrance and into the visitation room.

  Walking down the hallway, he saw Yoder leaning against the wall, grinning maliciously as he tapped the end of his baton against his open palm. The fluorescent lights only highlighted the guard’s pallor. While it was possible he just happened to be stationed there that day, Thane guessed he’d come to meet him personally.

  “I’ve been thinking about you a lot, Banning,” the guard said with a smirk, “and damn, I don’t know which I hate the most: Banning the murderer or Banning the lawyer.”

  Thane didn’t break stride. “That’s interesting—I haven’t thought about you at all.”

  Yoder’s face snapped back to its more natural scowl as he slapped his baton harder. “Maybe I oughta remind you.”

  Thane wheeled around. “I wish you would, Yoder. Then you’d be giving me your paycheck for the rest of your life, assuming they’re actually stupid enough around here to pay you.”

  Yoder puffed up, but Thane knew it was too public of an area for him to do anything. Finally, the guard coughed up a chuckle.