The Attorney

by Steve Martini

  “They’ll be a month getting around to that,” says Harry.

  “So in the interim, if they stop her on a speeding ticket, assuming she’s using her own license, they wouldn’t even haul her in.”

  “Not yet, anyway,” says Harry.

  “Wonderful system,” I tell him.

  “Our clients don’t usually complain,” says Harry.

  On this I can’t argue with him. “What about friends? Anybody she was close to, who she might have kept in contact with?”

  “I’m checking to see what I can find. Only thing I’ve come up with so far is a name in the court files.” Harry looks at his notes. “A guy named Jason Crow. Apparently he’s got a long record. He and Jessica were an item for a while. Crow went down on state charges for burglary about the same time that Jessica got nailed on the drug thing.”

  “So he wasn’t a character witness?”

  “Not hardly,” says Harry. “He has a history. Reaches back to the juvenile side. I don’t know what that was for. It’s sealed. But as an adult he has convictions for assault, petty theft, and burglary. The biggest beef was a child-endangerment rap. He put the kid in a zipped-up sleeping bag and sat on the open end until the child passed out from lack of oxygen. Apparently it stemmed from a dispute with an ex whom he routinely used as a punching bag.”

  “Crow was married?”

  “Was is the operative word,” says Harry.

  “Maybe we can find him through his ex-wife?”

  “I doubt she’d keep in touch.”

  “What do we know about this Crow’s relationship with Jessica?”

  “They lived together for a while. Crow worked at the airport. He was a luggage handler. Jessica was waitressing at a bar on one of the concourses.”

  “This was all in the court file?”

  “The judge was picking up story lines for The Young and the Restless. What do I know? He left notes at sentencing, half a legal pad with chicken scratches all over it. Apparently from what I could read, Jessica’s lawyer tried to make the argument that Crow was a bad influence on her.”

  “Is there any indication he was involved in the drug thing?”

  “What I was thinking,” says Harry. “Given his job at the airport. Stuff a few bags with heroin and have your friendly baggage handler remove ’em before customs gets a sniff. But there’s nothing in the notes to indicate,” says Harry.

  “Where is he now—this Crow?”

  “He’s on parole, but I don’t have an address. I can probably get it.”

  “See if you can get a lead on him. What else have we got?”

  “That’s about it. She didn’t have a lot of friends. No women she ran with. I’m still looking. But I could use some help.” Harry’s thinking a private investigator.

  “I’m working on that, but for the time being, we’re it. See if you can find an address on this guy, Crow. Maybe he knows where she is.”

  “We could go get an order to show cause,” says Harry. “Go to the family law judge on the custody thing and try to get an order for contempt. See if we can draw Suade in.”

  “It’s a good thought,” I tell him, “but not likely to produce results. I mean, there’s no problem getting an order of contempt on Jessica. The problem is how to find her for service.”

  “If we could do that we wouldn’t need the order. Just steal the kid back,” says Harry.

  “Jessica’d be in no position to complain. But as for Suade, we’ve got a bigger problem.”

  “What’s that?”

  “How do we make Suade a party? How do we get the judge to issue a contempt citation against Suade and her organization?”

  Harry thinks for a moment. “She did make threats to the old man. Didn’t she tell Jonah that unless he gave the child back to the mother, he was going to lose the kid?”

  “Yes. But you see the problem,” I tell Harry. “Is that a threat?”

  “I’d say so.”

  “Yes, but you’re not the one wearing the black robes. Even if she admits that she was there, Suade is going to say her words were merely a prediction. That what she meant was that hostile actions toward Jessica by Jonah, taking custody away, was ultimately going to alienate the child. That that’s what she meant by lose the child.”

  “And you believe that?”

  “No. But a judge might. Particularly where there’s no hard evidence, no witnesses to put her at the scene, and the alternative is a harsh jail sentence for contempt.” Harry knows I am right.

  “Most judges I know, while seeing through Suade’s lie, would look for some artful way to avoid a contempt citation. In this case there are plenty of them, including the issue of whether the court even had jurisdiction over Suade, as she was not a party in the original custody proceeding. We would have to prove that she acted as Jessica’s agent in abducting the child. Without witnesses to put her there, it would be a tough sell. Unless I’m wrong, Suade would simply tell the court that she was trying to bring harmony to the family.”

  “Like Hitler in Czechoslovakia,” says Harry.

  “Maybe so, but right now I’m not even sure we could get Suade into a courtroom. No. Before we apply salt, we’d be advised to try a little sugar.”

  Harry looks at me with raised eyebrows.

  “I think it’s time to meet with Zo Suade. Try to reason with her.”

  FOUR

  * * *

  A month after moving south I purchased an old CJ-5, an early eighties vintage Jeep that Harry calls Leaping Lena. I got it from a kid, good at mechanics, who had babied the machine so that it ran like a clock. Its short wheelbase in two-wheel drive made it turn on a dime. I bought it, not for off-roading, but because it was easy to park in tight spaces, a valuable commodity in a crowded, car-happy state.

  In the warmer months I keep the top up, but zip out the side and back-window panels, allowing the wind to run through my hair. This helps me to forget that there are now some wisps of gray also running with the wind. Maybe it’s a second childhood. Who knows? But the wheels turn and the motor runs.

  It has been four days since my conference with Harry, and this morning I bounce along the Silver Strand headed south toward Imperial Beach.

  My mission this morning is one of those futile exercises that seem to defy better judgment, but is required in the grand scheme of crossing the t’s and dotting the i’s.

  I pull into a strip mall on Palm Avenue and make a sharp turn into one of the parking spaces facing the street. The object of my attention is a small building across the street, a rundown, stucco-sided commercial rental that fronts on Palm and backs up onto an alley.

  From behind the wheel of Leaping Lena I can see the small parking lot behind the Copy Shop. Near the building’s rear iron-shuttered door are three spaces for employee parking. An alley runs the length of the block and comes out on the next side street. There is a large Dumpster positioned haphazardly in the alley, one corner jutting out, an obstacle on a course, with a lot of trash around it like the owners of this business have bad aim. The shop is the universe of Zolanda Suade.

  It is one of those places with machines that can kick out copies like ticker tape over a parade, where, for a fee, you can also rent a private mailbox. It’s an interesting sideline for a woman with her own version of the witness-protection program.

  I am sipping coffee from a paper cup, reclining in the driver’s seat, feeling foolish even to be making this attempt. From everything I have heard, “rational” and “objective” are not terms that come to mind when considering Zo Suade.

  Still, it is one of the things you learn in the law: that if you don’t ask, some judge will surely look you in the eye and ask why not. Suade may be the most virulent, male-hating feminist on the continent, but if I draw her into a courtroom before making an effort to reason with her, I will s
urely face the question from her lawyer, find myself on the defensive: Why didn’t you give her the courtesy of inquiring before filing and serving papers, wasting the court’s time?

  There are a few people on the street, cars whizzing by on Palm. Some rummy, wearing rags, pushes a shopping cart filled with his possessions heading up the street along the side of the Copy Shop. He proceeds at no particular speed, with no apparent purpose other than to vacate one space and occupy another, living in that realm where moving is not so much a journey as an occupation.

  He is midway across the entrance to the parking lot behind Suade’s, at the point of no return, moving like a snail, when out of nowhere this boat, a large dark town car gleaming blackness, makes the turn off of Palm, rubber protesting on the road as it swings over the curb and into the driveway.

  The driver makes not even a pretense of braking; there’s not the slightest glimmer of red from the tail-lights. The car nearly spears the man, who moves only at the last instant.

  Instead, the vehicle separates him from his belongings. A glancing blow sends the cart careening in one direction onto its side, the man sprawling in the other.

  Plastic bags filled with private treasures spill over the sidewalk. The guy disappears and for an instant I wonder if he’s under the car. Then I hear the rum-soothed voice from the other side: “Whydunya just run me over?”

  “Okay.” The voice is sharp, clear as crystal from the half-open driver’s window as she rolls into the parking lot and swerves into the slip directly behind the shop.

  For a fleeting moment there is the stillness of a framed picture, the car motionless in its stall, the man prostrate on the sidewalk, his belongings strewn, the image like some painting in a postmodern gallery—Chaos Frozen.

  It lasts for only an instant, and is broken by the motion of the driver’s door as it opens. She steps out and slams the door, then moves to the rear of the vehicle. There is not an ounce of hesitation, no remorse or compassion, no concern that the man might be injured or dying. He is, after all, still capable of crawling.

  She is an image off the pages of Vogue, sporting a broad-brimmed hat: lady of the hacienda. Her black pants are as tight as a toreador’s. A fitted jacket is zipped up over her ample bosom; as she peers across the trunk of the car she is the picture of the matador, sans sword.

  She surveys her handiwork on the sidewalk. Her figure is shapely; curves in all the right places. Her gold jewelry, earrings and a bracelet, glimmer in the sunlight. I cannot tell her age from this distance, but she certainly appears fit.

  The man is now on his hands and knees, working up some venom, mumbling expletives, mostly to himself. He’s having difficulty getting to his feet. What I have witnessed is as close to a hit-and-no-run as I am ever likely to get.

  He crawls on hands and knees. There are a lot of slurred words here, feeble attempts at foul language, but nothing that could be called threatening, except perhaps to the demented, alcohol-sodden mind of another drunk.

  He stops crawling long enough to raise one hand, a finger in the air for emphasis, his motions failing to synchronize with his words. Jack Daniel’s sense of timing.

  Her right hand is now lost in the main pocket of a large purse that hangs from a strap on her shoulder. It stays there, making me wonder what’s inside.

  He’s talking trash. “Bitch” is every other word. Those that I can understand.

  “Come on. Get up. You can do it,” she says.

  Her body language almost wills him onto his feet. She beckons him with the curved fingers of her other hand, the one not buried in her purse.

  He struggles to get up.

  “Sure. That’s it. Get up. Come on over here and kick my ass. You’re the man. You can do it.”

  He is up, stooped, wobbling and unsure, a stumbling lexicon of slurred epithets. Moment of truth, her elbow begins to flex.

  It happens in the flash of an eye, a marked instant of sobriety. The trash talk ceases, a reckoning which reveals that even to a booze-burned brain there can be a near-death experience. The pins go out from under him. He is again sitting on his ass on the ground, thirty feet from her, looking up in wonderment as if asking the silent question—“How’d I get down here?”

  She shakes her head, more in disappointment than contempt, then fishes in her purse and comes up with keys. She strides to the back door of the building, not even taking notice of him now, and works the locks like a jailer, first the steel bars and then the wooden door behind them. An instant later, señorita of your darkest dreams disappears into the shadows of her shop.

  If there was any doubt as to my quarry, it is resolved by the plates on her car: blue letters on a white background—the word ZOLAND—not so much a place as a state of mind, an empire of attitude as dark as her attire.

  I figure there’s no sense waiting. Hit her while she’s on a psychic high. I put my coffee on the floor in the passenger-side well and step out, slamming the door of the Jeep. I walk as I wonder. Did she have a piece in her purse? Would she have used it? I’ll never know. Maybe if she’d gotten the chance to shoot the drunk, she might have been sufficiently giddy with euphoria to give up the whereabouts of Amanda Hale. Maybe. It certainly would have made me a witness with leverage—make my day.

  I head down the side street, around the corner, toward the front of the building, taking my time, so as to give her a chance to open up. When I get there the door is still locked, lights off in the front of the shop though I can see her moving in the shadows behind the counter inside.

  She appears to be reading mail, slitting open envelopes. I tap on the glass and she looks up.

  “I’m closed.” She dismisses me. Her gaze returns to the mail.

  “Sign says you’re open.” I shout through the door, where the hours are posted: “8:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M.” It is now nearly nine o’clock. I point to my watch and to the sign on the door.

  “I told you I’m closed.”

  I knock again.

  She looks at me, this time with real irritation, studying me, then takes her purse from the counter, slings it over her shoulder, one hand buried inside.

  With a look of exasperation she comes around the counter, turns the lock on the inside, and opens the door just a crack, the security chain still on.

  “What part of closed don’t you understand?” she says. Her hand is still buried deep in the dark recesses of her purse. At the moment, I suspect I am living more dangerously than I want to know.

  I slip a business card through the crack. “I could tell you I represent the man you just ran down on the street, but that would be a lie.” I give her my best smile.

  She reads my card. “What’s that to me?”

  “I’d like to talk to you.”

  “What about?”

  “I’d rather not do it while standing in the street.”

  “I’m afraid that’s as good as it’s going to get,” she says. “Which one of the molesting deviants do you represent?”

  “None. I just want some information.”

  “Come back some other time. Or better yet, don’t bother.”

  She starts to close the door.

  “It’s possible we have something in common.”

  “And what could that be?”

  “Bailey,” I tell her. The single word seems to freeze her in place. The door is still open, just a sliver. She studies me, searching for some point of recognition, but fails to find it, then hesitates for a moment. Indecision. What to do? One hand is still buried in the purse, the other on the lock.

  “What do you know about Bailey?”

  “I know he was your son.”

  “Anybody could have told you my son’s name.”

  “I know he died under suspicious circumstances, probably as a result of abuse by your former husband.” This has never been repo
rted in the press, even though she screamed and ranted at the time. Susan had told me the rest of the story.

  “There’s no probably about it,” says Suade.

  There was never a conviction, though I sense that now is not the time to debate the point.

  “I want to stop it from happening again,” I tell her. The magic words, like open sesame. She assesses me for a long moment, an expression that says, “What the hell. Talk is cheap.” She slides her hand up the door, catches the chain, and slides it off.

  “Come in.”

  I know that if I tell her why I’m here, mention Jonah’s name, I would never get through the door. Besides, it’s only a little white lie, a matter of degrees. There is little question in my mind that one or more of Jessica’s live-in lovers possess the same proclivities as Suade’s former husband, and present the same dangers to Amanda Hale.

  She steps outside and checks the street, first in one direction, then the other. Then she bolts the door behind us.

  “So what do you know about Gerald?” she says. Her hand is still in the purse, resting languidly in the bottom I suspect, like a coiled snake.

  “Rumor has it he’s responsible for the death of your little boy.”

  “Is that what you’ve come to tell me? Rumors?”

  “Your son died twelve years ago.”

  “There’s no statute of limitations on murder,” she says. And apparently none for revenge.

  Gerald Langly is Suade’s ex. He is currently in prison.

  “I know that he beat you. That he brutalized your son. That the boy died under highly suspicious circumstances.”

  “And how do you know all this?”

  “Let’s just say we have a mutual acquaintance.”

  She looks me up and down, then finally motions me deeper into the shop. Finally she lifts her hand from the purse.

  The overhead lights are still out. The large copying machine behind the counter is as cold as a frozen brick. There are envelopes on the counter, some of them opened, others waiting for the edge of a needle-sharp stiletto opener that lies on the counter next to them. She lays the purse on the counter and picks up the letter opener, trading one weapon for another.