The Attorney

by Steve Martini

  The old man merely knits his eyebrows in question, furrowed gray crescents.

  “We have reason to believe that the gun that killed Suade may have belonged to her,” I tell him.

  Jonah cocks his head.

  “I don’t understand. How did the killer get her gun?” he asks.

  Harry and I look at each other, eyes meeting in the middle distance. It’s not likely Jonah would be asking this if he was there that night, unless he’s a more practiced liar than we think.

  “Our guess is she brought it, probably in her purse. She may have carried the gun as a matter of course.”

  “They found this gun? The police?”

  “No. But we have a record of it. A serial number in her name, the same caliber as the murder weapon.”

  “So,” says Harry. He’s sitting on the edge of the table starting to speak with his hands, like maybe he has some Italian in him. “If Suade brought the gun into the car, and she pulls this thing out of her purse, maybe in the middle of an argument, whoever killed her might have grabbed the gun in self-defense. If it went off in the struggle, the whole thing could be viewed as an accident. Even justifiable homicide. We could make out a case. Maybe walk that person out of here.” He looks at Jonah with hopeful eyes, seeing if he’ll bite.

  “That’s a good argument,” says Jonah. “For whoever did it. But I can’t help you. Because I don’t know what happened that night. You keep forgetting, I wasn’t there.” He says it with emphasis, and finally sits down. Jonah’s last word on the subject.

  Harry sighs deeply, then turns his attention to me. “We could still argue it as a theory,” he says. “Some unknown perpetrator shot her in self-defense with her own gun. Not nearly as effective, I grant you, but at least it takes the sympathetic edge off the victim. What do we care we end up acquitting somebody else,” says Harry. “It could drive a stake through the state’s case.”

  “If we can even get it in,” I tell him. “There’s no witness putting her gun at the scene. From what we know, it’s just missing.”

  “Yeah, I know. One of those matters of evidence,” says Harry, “sound discretion of the trial court judge. And so far we don’t know who that is.”

  “Frank Peltro,” I say.

  “When did you hear that?”

  “Yesterday. Outside Ryan’s office. Checked it with the court this morning. Peltro’s the man. He drew the assignment from the presiding judge.”

  “Davidson?”

  I nod.

  Harry rolls his eyes. “Not doing us any favors, is he? You’d think given his history with Suade, the suit against the county and all, Davidson woulda stayed out of it, let the Judicial Council appoint the judge or something.”

  “You’d think.”

  “What do you know about him?” says Jonah. “This judge?”

  “Peltro?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Former cop,” says Harry. “Fourteen years on the force. Went to law school at night. Ten years with the DA’s office. Won his place on the bench by election.”

  “He is well-thought-of,” I tell Harry.

  “So was Judge Parker, by everybody except the people he hung. I grant you, he’s the only man in this county wearing a robe who doesn’t owe the governor squat,” says Harry. “So we have an independent judge pulled himself up by the bootstraps is gonna make the arrangements on behalf of our client with the state’s version of Dr. Kevorkian. You’ll have to excuse me, but I don’t see the benefit.”

  “He runs a tight ship in court. Not exactly what I would have hoped for,” I tell him. “But there could be some benefits.”

  “Name one,” says Harry.

  “He knows where he came from. He also knows everybody else knows. A man that independent doesn’t like to be predictable. Likely he’s going to be leaning backwards just a little to make the playing field tilt away from his old friends. He also knows the games they play. How stuff leaks when it shouldn’t.”

  “You’re thinking Ryan’s gonna try and run us into a ditch with publicity,” says Harry.

  “Wouldn’t you? The prosecutors aren’t likely to be able to pull the wool on Peltro. He knitted the stuff when he was there. Or, for that matter, bully him. It’s not like he’s gonna run scared in the next election. There’s something to be said for rugged individualism,” I tell Harry. “Especially in a case like this.”

  “I’d just as soon take my chances with a judge who worked for the ACLU, thank you,” says Harry. “Maybe we should affidavit him. Just to be safe.”

  “And draw what?”

  Harry gives me a shrug. The unknown.

  “What’s this affidavit?” says Jonah.

  “We could bump the judge,” says Harry. “We get one free shot. We don’t have to state any cause. We can remove him from the case.”

  “The downside,” I tell him, “you may draw the wrath from the rest of the team. Whoever replaces him may take it out on us.”

  “The proverbial us,” says Harry. “Meaning you.” He’s looking at Jonah.

  I look at him, too. Once again, he’s slumped at the table, his color not looking good, the pallor of a piece of faded parchment, his head on propped elbows. The doctor at the county medical center, the one who does jail rounds, has doubled the dosage of Jonah’s blood pressure meds.

  “Is there any way we can find out if Suade had run-ins with the law?” says Harry. “Maybe pulled the gun on somebody else? An arrest for brandishing—that would be nice,” he says. Harry’s thinking this could help wedge the door open to get Suade’s gun into evidence.

  “I already checked,” I tell him. “There’s nothing.”

  “I was going there,” says Jonah.

  He catches Harry and me musing about the law and the tactics of evidence as he says it, Harry stopping in mid-sentence.

  “Going where?” I ask.

  “To Suade’s office,” says Jonah. This is the first he has ever said about it.

  “But I never got there. I stopped on the Strand to think. To clear my head. Ended up sitting there for three hours, staring at the ocean. Wondering where Amanda was. If she was alive.” His eyes come back to me. “You haven’t heard anything?” he says.

  “No.”

  “You gotta find her.”

  “We’re looking,” says Harry.

  We haven’t told Jonah that Ontaveroz may be looking as well.

  “Mary can take care of her. Be good for the two of ’em,” he says. “Specially if I’m not there.”

  By the time we get outside, it’s dark except for a few yellow streetlamps and some traffic, shooting beams of light. Harry is parked around the corner in another lot. His apartment is up on the hill, above Old Town, overlooking the freeway and Mission Bay.

  “Heard my share of lying clients,” he says, “but this doesn’t sound like one of ’em. He never even took a whiff at the deal they offered. And the theory she was killed with her own gun. That’s a get-outta-jail-free card. You notice he didn’t blink.”

  “I noticed.”

  “So you believe him?”

  I don’t answer.

  “Thing that makes me believe him is the lame story,” says Harry. “Sitting on the beach looking at the ocean for three hours. Who in the hell’s gonna shoot somebody, drive two miles, then sit in the sand and wait for the cops?”

  “Somebody in shock,” I tell him.

  Harry chews on this for a second, dead silence.

  “I think we play on her packin’ a pistol for all it’s worth,” he says. “Let the jury dwell on the notion she got what she deserved.” Harry’s sold on the theory of self-defense, whether Jonah did it or not. “What do you think?”

  “I think I’ll have to call Ryan. Tell him it looks like we’re gonna have to do the trial. I may wait
a day or two.”

  “What? Make it look like Jonah considered it a little longer?”

  “That, and try to slow the government steamroller from running up to speed.”

  “The minute they find out, they’re gonna go for the jugular.”

  “At least we’ll get the rest of their evidence.”

  “Yeah, probably dropped on us like bricks off a building,” he says. “Unless I miss my bet, we may have to read about it in the newspapers first.”

  Harry’s fishing in his pocket for his keys. “Wanna stop for a quick one? There’s a little bar down in the gas lamp. A few blocks away,” he says.

  “I can’t. Got an early-morning arraignment, and the sitter’s home with Sarah.”

  “We’ll have to talk in the morning. Till then,” he says, “keep a good thought.” Harry strikes out for his car while I head toward the corner, walking past the county law library toward the trolley tracks on C Street.

  I wouldn’t have noticed, except there is little or no traffic on Front Street at this time of night, and the car’s engine starts almost on the precise beat of Harry’s farewell. I hear the engine, a low rumble, panther growl in the night a half block behind me. The wheels rolling slowly at a walking pace, grinding gravel under tires a hundred feet before the driver turns on his lights.

  For a second, I think maybe it’s the Bob and Jack Show, Murphy’s federal sources come to follow me to see where I might lead them. But as I pass a car parked at the left-hand curb, one-way in this direction, I can see the reflection in its driver-side mirror. One of the headlights of the moving vehicle is either burned out or broken. The car’s exterior has the look of a rolling wreck: It’s not one of the dark sedans—Crown Victorias and big Buicks—favored by the federal motor pool. Still, its engine sounds souped, not like some junker.

  I continue walking as if I’m oblivious. The feeling is that any glance, no matter how furtive, may force a hand. I cross the trolley tracks at a clip and saunter on along Front Street, up by the Greyhound bus depot.

  Now at least there’s more light, some activity at the corner. Broadway has four lanes, two in each direction, and stoplights. Here the traffic is heavier. I stop at the light with a few characters milling around on the corner, and consider my options: go right toward the lot where my car is parked, which will put me in front of their vehicle as I cross toward the old courthouse, or go left. Left has more possibilities, the added advantage of forcing them to cross traffic to make a left turn up Broadway. This would put two lanes of opposing traffic on a busy street between us.

  I hear the engine idling somewhere well back of the limit line. Whoever is there is still behind me. Awkward to turn and look so I don’t, but peripheral senses and the hair on the back of my neck tell me that the driver is boring holes through me with his eyes.

  I stand at the light. A guy with a grizzled beard in a moth-eaten coat comes up. “Spare change?” he says. His palm, open and extended, looks as if it hasn’t been washed in a month.

  By now there are a half dozen people standing at the light. Even at this hour Broadway is busy. I use the opportunity, maneuver so that I am facing the man as I poke around in my pocket and come up with several quarters, sneaking one quick glance at the car. The driver I don’t recognize: dark-complected pockmarked face, maybe Mexican or Middle Eastern. Next to him in the passenger seat is another man, a hulking shadow I cannot make out. The rear windows are tinted, so I can’t see in. The car is a Mercedes, maybe ten years old with a good deal of wear. There’s no license plate on the front.

  The light changes. The guy hustling change lumbers toward the bus depot. Two young kids, hand in hand, start across Broadway like they’re shot from a cannon, the girl skipping to keep up. An old man with a cane starts the sojourn. Another guy, just drifting in the crosswalk, gets around him and fills in the middle.

  At the last second I don’t go. Instead, I turn left on the sidewalk and head up Broadway away from the corner. I can almost feel the agitation inside the car. It is palpable, like boom-box music and lifters, as if the car were bouncing around in place. Suddenly they have to make a left, through pedestrians crossing in front of them.

  I move as fast as I can without breaking into a run. I cover a third of the block and end up in front of windows to the Greyhound bus depot, with doors set back off the street. I step into one of these, place my back against the edge of the building, and peek around the corner, just a sliver of my head, enough for one eye.

  The driver is in the middle of the intersection, gesturing with his hands. The car is in fact bouncing up and down, but not from any lifters. Whoever is in the backseat is shouting at the driver, who keeps looking over his shoulder into the back, then this way. He’s lost me. His passenger is turned sideways, trying to act as spotter, but the driver’s got him blocked.

  I look at the shops down the way, the next block. At this hour everything is closed. Only the depot with a few people milling inside is well lit, its interior visible from the street, like a glass box.

  I step inside, away from the door. The traffic outside heading west on Broadway starts to pile up at the light.

  I make for a bench a few feet away, just inside the depot. Its back is to the windows on Broadway. In about as much time as it takes to fall, I sprawl facedown on the seat so that from the outside it looks like an empty bench. I lie there.

  A woman sitting across the way, facing me, is giving me strange looks, the kind you see being flashed at people who talk to themselves on the street.

  I smile at her. She looks the other way. With one eye I study my watch, feeling my heart pounding as the seconds tick away—thirty, forty-five—wondering if they’ve pulled up at the curb across the street to sit and wait or—worse—if they’re coming inside.

  Finally, I lift my head, take a peek over the back of the bench. I don’t see the car. I scan the street: traffic moving at a clip, nothing parked across the street.

  I turn my head to look at the woman. It’s then I see them. Not out on Broadway, but on First Avenue. The car with the single headlight has made the turn, taking a left up First, trolling slowly, the driver’s head halfway out the window looking at the bus depot from the other side, scanning the windows. I drop back down on the bench, hoping he doesn’t see me. When I look up again the car is gone.

  First Avenue is one-way. He’ll have to go two blocks, cross the trolley tracks at C Street, come back on B to get onto Front Street in order to make the slow loop back around onto Broadway for another pass. Unless he’s setting land speed records I’ve got maybe a minute, ninety seconds at the outside.

  Jack Flash, I’m out the front door. I don’t go to the light at the corner, but instead cut across the street, dodging traffic to the other side of Broadway, then west at a full run to the corner of Front, across from the bus depot.

  I move down Front Street maybe thirty yards into the shadows of an alcove that forms the entrance of a small photo shop; its lights are out. There are cars parked on the street, providing cover. A good place to sit and watch.

  I wait a few seconds, looking north on Front across Broadway, up toward the jail two blocks away. By now Harry should have had plenty of time to get to his car. I wait, watching in the distance, looking at the luminous sweep hand on my watch, timing their lap.

  Fifty seconds and I start to borrow problems. Maybe Harry stopped for that drink along the way. Their route would take them directly in front of the lot where his car was parked. If they saw us together on the street, talking in front of the jail . . . My brain starts to fill in the blanks.

  I step out of the alcove onto the sidewalk, start walking, then a slow jog toward the corner, not sure exactly what to do. Maybe the jail. There are cops there on duty.

  I’m ten feet from the corner when the sweep of the cyclops nails me dead in my tracks. The ominous single headlight swings around the co
rner two blocks away. It barrels toward me down Front Street at full bore, bouncing across the tracks on C.

  I find myself backpedaling toward the shadows, out of the light, wondering if the driver’s seen me. Within seconds I’m crouched in the alcove again, nowhere to run. The car makes the stop at the corner across Broadway. I can’t see anybody inside, glare on the windshield. The vehicle has only a single headlamp, but this is on high beam.

  The traffic light changes. The car doesn’t move right away but sits at the intersection, nothing behind them, the driver considering his options, probably getting instructions, like a rudder being jerked with wires from the backseat.

  Finally, the Mercedes slides forward across the intersection, the beam of its light rising then falling with the crown at the center of the road until the shaft of light slides down the sidewalk like a snake stopping a foot from where I am huddled. They start the turn onto Broadway, taking it wide so that by the time they finish, they end up at the curb on the corner, the Mercedes stopped.

  It sits there motionless for several seconds, its engine a low grumble, tail end sticking out just a little into the right traffic lane on Broadway.

  Finally the passenger door opens and a guy gets out. He’s short, stocky, dark-skinned, with hair cut long on the sides, short on top. What is left of it is orange, something from a bottle that didn’t work right.

  “You wan me check ova there? Ova here?” The guy’s shrugging, leaning into the car as he talks.

  “La estación.” The command voice comes from the backseat.

  The car doesn’t move. The hulk does. He slams the door, skips the crosswalk, and heads instead toward the front of the vehicle where I lose him, line of sight behind the buildings on the block.

  I am now trapped in the alcove. All I can see is the tinted rear window of the Mercedes, wondering if its occupant is looking my way. It seems to take forever, probably three or four minutes. The car parked at the corner, its motor running. The orange-haired hulk finally comes back, opens the passenger door, and gets in. But he leaves the door open.