Last Looks

by Howard Michael Gould

“No. I don’t. Thank you for being so kind.” The tears coming again, Waldo threw his arms around him in an appreciative hug and sobbed some more into his suit, clinging until the lawyer managed to extricate himself and got back in the Cadillac as quickly as he could. The lawyer backed out of his space extra carefully and drove off with Waldo watching.

  When the Cadillac cleared the driveway and pulled safely into the street, Waldo dropped the sobbing act and wiped his face again. “Fucking ambulance chaser,” he muttered, looking down at the lawyer’s iPhone, which he’d lifted during his weepy embrace.

  Waldo went into settings, changed the autolock to “never,” and stuffed it into his own pocket.

  * * *

  —

  It wasn’t until Waldo settled into a chair in the nearby public library to examine the phone that he started to fret over how it fit into the constellation of Things. In the confusion of the moment, he’d forgotten to discard something to offset it. He agonized over the infraction, finally granting himself absolution by establishing a new codicil: evidence, material gathered specifically for the case, was never really his and thus needn’t count.

  The crisis resolved, he got to work. A couple of taps identified the phone’s owner—well, former owner—as Warren Gomes, Esq., and a couple of more taps confirmed that he indeed specialized in personal injury work as a sole practitioner with an office in West L.A. Waldo checked the phone history and learned that the guy’s last call—the one placed right after strong-arming Waldo by the bike rack and right before tapping Waldo with his car—was to someone named Darius Jamshidi.

  Waldo switched over to his own phone to research Jamshidi and quickly learned he was the founder and principal owner of something called the Darius Group, a global private equity firm specializing in acquiring and partnering with mature and growing businesses, with concentrations in technology and telecommunications. Waldo had no idea what any of that meant.

  But he did know what it meant that Jamshidi resided in Beverly Park. First, it meant that Jamshidi lived in a walled community above the city among the richest of the rich, the very biggest movie stars and moguls and athletes in Southern California; second, it meant that if Waldo wanted to confront Jamshidi at his home—more aggressive and likely more fruitful than doing it at his office, where he was sure to be insulated by layers of assistants and a small army of security men—he had a wicked canyon pedal ahead of him.

  Waldo read a little more about the acquisitions Jamshidi’s company had made over the past few years: a chain of shopping centers, a group of seventeen radio stations, a French manufacturer of terrestrial broadcast equipment, the library of a once-powerful independent television studio, and a biotech firm known for its revolutionary artificial knees. But the Darius Group’s most legendary killing came from its purchase of a Belgian company called LGA Avianimmo, which had previously made a fortune in some advanced medical field called pharmacogenomics before losing a patent lawsuit and falling on hard times; after the acquisition the Darius Group secured a bankruptcy judgment in Bruges, shut down two-thirds of the company’s operations, then resold the restructured firm to a Bulgarian holding company that Darius managed to buy in its entirety two years later. Somehow the result of these maneuvers—nothing but contracts and closures—was a four-billion-dollar profit for Jamshidi and his investors.

  And Waldo found one more news item online that made the web of relationships all the more curious: the Darius Group was currently awaiting the Federal Communications Commission’s blessing of its biggest acquisition yet, SignaCom Global, whose best-known asset was the television network that happened to be employing Waldo right now, whose production arm was on the verge of making hundreds of millions syndicating Johnny’s Bench.

  In other words, it looked like Darius Jamshidi was trying to become the biggest financial beneficiary of Alastair Pinch’s popularity, while also trying to stop Waldo from keeping Alastair Pinch out of prison. Waldo squinted, as if behind the pixels on his phone he’d be able to find the logic. He might as well have been trying to teach himself pharmacogenomics.

  EIGHTEEN

  The pedal up Coldwater wasn’t as steep or as long as 243 but excruciating enough. The light midday traffic at first seemed a blessing but ended up making the trip even more hazardous, Valley drivers living out the luxury car commercials in their heads, taking the wide-open hairpins fast and loose on their way to lunches in Beverly Hills. Waldo stayed right, hard against the cliffs, fear distracting him from the pain, holding his breath every time he heard a car approaching from behind.

  The first thirty or forty passed him with nothing worse than an occasional peevish honk. But when a silver Dodge Charger practically brushed Waldo’s left arm, then hurtled to the right and screeched to a halt in front of him, Waldo had no choice but to cut his front wheel and run himself straight into the hillside. He went over the handlebars, hit a rock and landed facedown, his bad elbow under his rib cage.

  The next thing he felt was hands on his back and collar, lifting him and slamming his face into the hood of the Charger. “You’re under arrest, asshole.”

  The voice was familiar, but he couldn’t place it through the agony and adrenaline. “For what?” He felt more hands working his body, frisking him.

  Someone leaned on the car in front of him. Pete Conady, that’s who it was, and he was saying, “For shooting Warren Gomes in the head.” It took another moment to recognize that as the name of the lawyer who’d just tried to squeeze him. “You argued with him outside the station house, and then you followed him, got in the back seat with a .38 and blew his brains through the passenger window.”

  “Yeah?” Waldo said, sentience returning. “Ever see me try to shoot with my left hand?”

  “Fuck the lefty-righty, Waldo. Can’t pull that shit twice in one day.”

  “Lieutenant?” one of the other cops said. It looked like there were three of them, two in uniform—one of them Annis—and one other plainclothes. The one speaking now held open Waldo’s backpack for the lieutenant to look inside. Waldo knew he was showing him the Beretta 8045F.

  Waldo said, “That’s not a .38.”

  Conady said, “You got a permit?” Waldo didn’t answer. “Didn’t think so.” Conady asked the patrolman, “Find the vic’s wallet and watch in there?”

  Waldo smirked. “What, you think I’m a robber, too?”

  “I think you wanted to look like a robber. Probably took Gomes’s valuables and dumped them somewhere in the canyon.”

  The cop checked the backpack pouches. “There’s a phone in here. Plus the one in his pocket.” Waldo had been too discombobulated to think about Gomes’s phone, but now he knew he had a problem.

  “Two phones,” Conady said. “I hope to Christ one of them belongs to who I think it does.”

  They handcuffed him and pushed him into the back of the Charger, headed, no doubt, for the same Van Nuys jail and courthouse where Alastair had been taken that morning.

  * * *

  —

  Conady took Waldo’s booking information himself, both men using as few words as possible. Other officers photographed and fingerprinted him, and then there was the issue of whom to call. Whom did he even know anymore? Who would care? Jayne? Too weird. Alastair? Wrong any way you looked at it. Sikorsky? He might not return the call for days, or at best he’d bounce it to Fontella Davis. Waldo decided he’d be better off calling Davis directly, fucked up as that was.

  He had to call information for her office number and then had to go through a receptionist and an assistant, and when he finally got her the conversation was short. “I’ve been arrested.”

  “For what?”

  “They’re trying to pin a murder on me. Or just playing at it.”

  “Shit follows you, doesn’t it.”

  “I need you to get me out of here.”

  “Better idea—I tell Sikorsky to cut you loose; then y
ou’re not my concern.”

  “I think the victim knew something about Alastair. I’ll explain when you get me out.”

  There was a silence. She said, “We’ll see,” and hung up.

  He didn’t know if she meant, We’ll see if your explanation is worth hearing, or We’ll see if I get you out.

  He was turned over to a young cop named Ochoa, who silently led him by elevator to the top floor. It wasn’t what Waldo was expecting—he figured they’d put him in one of the larger holding cells downstairs for detainees awaiting arraignment—but it probably made sense not to throw a semifamous ex-LAPD in with the general population, no matter how much these guys hated him.

  Upstairs they were joined by a guard who walked them into a block where the prisoners wore standard blue prison uniforms and found the arrival of a long-haired prisoner in civvies worth attention and extra catcalls. The guard opened a tiny one-bunk cell. Ochoa removed the handcuffs, then Waldo sat on the bunk and the guard slammed the bars shut.

  He’d never been locked up before. He was used to long stretches of undirected time, but now he had no Kindle, nothing to distract himself, nothing to do but think about the implacable facts of the bars and of his helplessness and Lorena’s violent death and then Waldo couldn’t sit anymore, couldn’t stay on the bunk, had to pace, but there was barely room to pace, and then there were the bars again and now it was impossible to be in here, in this cage, impossible for another minute, and who knew how long, really, whether Fontella Davis was even going to try to get him out, or whether he’d have to wait until an arraignment and ask for a public defender, and either way an arraignment could be as much as forty-eight hours if they really wanted to fuck with him. Which, of course, they did.

  Maybe he could sleep, kill some minutes, if not hours. His body needed it anyway, if his mind would go along. He lay down on the bunk and tried to remember the last chess game he’d played, but it had been several days and nothing came. He’d never tried a game from scratch entirely in his head, playing both sides, but it was all he had, and why not. He closed his eyes and thought about where to start. If he played something prosaic, he might slip into lethargy rather than exhaustion, so he needed something a little more Byzantine and challenging. He rarely played the English Opening, so he chose that, countered himself with an Adorjan Defence, and rode them both into a heavy afternoon slumber.

  * * *

  —

  He awoke to wetness on his leg and the sound of a stream and he realized he was getting peed on. He swung his legs out of the flow and scrambled off the bunk. Cuppy stood outside the cell, pressed up against the bars, a stupid grin on his face as he kept pissing on the mattress. “Fuck!” Waldo said. “Really?”

  “You have no idea how much I love seeing you here.”

  “You know it’s bullshit. Get me out and I’ll help you with Don Q.”

  “Oh, now you give a shit.”

  “Now he killed Lorena.”

  “Okay—tell me where I can find the item she gave you, and I’ll work on Conady to shake you loose.”

  “Get me out first.”

  “You do think I’m stupid.”

  “I told you, she didn’t give me anything.”

  Cuppy zipped himself up. “Then I’m good with you right where you are.”

  “Come on, I’ll work with you. We’ll get him on the murder.”

  “What do I need with a broke-down, out-of-practice cop with no badge? Have fun, Waldo. You’re lonely, maybe I can get you some company. Ex-PD in here, you got plenty of neighbors would love a meet and greet.” He walked away chuckling.

  * * *

  —

  The first thing Fontella Davis said was “Whatever this is, we didn’t need it.” They’d been left alone in a holding room near the arraignment court and he had chains on his ankles and wrists and around his stomach. It was only an hour or two after Cuppy came to see him but the uncertainty and the wait made it feel like a day and a half. He never thought he’d be so glad to see someone he liked so little.

  “Yeah, well, sorry to spoil your day.”

  “You smell terrible. Did you piss yourself?”

  “Nah. Someone did it for me.”

  She started to ask but shook it off and moved on. “You said the victim knew something about Alastair.”

  “Yeah, I just don’t know what yet. He followed me all morning, finally came up and threatened to slap me with all sorts of nuisance suits if I—”

  She interrupted. “What, he was a lawyer?”

  “Yeah, but personal injury. Not classy, like what you do.” She glowered. Waldo said, “You know him? Warren Gomes.”

  “No.”

  He was about to ask if she knew Darius Jamshidi, but he decided to hold that name close for now. “He told me to get off the case, go back to Idyllwild. An hour later he got dead. Probably not a coincidence.”

  “What do you think it is?”

  “Could be he had something to do with the Pinch murder, or with somebody who did. Or could be some cop killed him to frame me.”

  “Some cop—” she started to repeat, then rolled her eyes. “Look, I’m only here because Sikorsky asked me to handle your arraignment and your bail. Soon as that’s done, you need to find your own lawyer, unless you’ve got seventeen hundred an hour for my time.” Waldo knew it wasn’t a serious proposal, she just wanted to wave the number at him.

  The door opened. “Okay,” said a guard, planting himself in the room, “that’s five minutes.”

  Davis told Waldo that she’d see him inside and headed for the door, turning back with an afterthought. “I assume you’re going with ‘not guilty.’”

  “Uh, yeah.”

  She left. The guard led Waldo to the main holding area, where they left him with four other prisoners. A few minutes later all their shackles were removed and the group of five was brought into the arraignment court, where Davis already sat at a table with the other defense attorneys. She didn’t cast her eyes in Waldo’s direction, not when he was brought in, not while they listened to the first two defendants’ cases. The judge, though, a woman in her fifties with kind eyes and no makeup, named Lisa Futterman Stein, kept stealing looks at both of them.

  When it was Waldo’s turn, a prosecutor named Walters stood and so did Davis. Judge Stein said that Waldo was being charged with first-degree murder and robbery, reading the charges slowly in a voice tinged with mystification at the unexpected turn this represented in the story of the law and their city. She told Waldo his rights, he said, “Not guilty,” when asked, the prosecutor requested bail of two million dollars and the defense suggested half a million and the judge called it a million and that quickly it was over. Fontella Davis thanked the judge and walked out of the courtroom without ever glancing at Waldo.

  * * *

  —

  Next came a series of maddening waits—for the van that had to drive them the couple of hundred yards from the courthouse back to the jail, for another guard to tell him it was time for his release, for the clerk behind the cage in outprocessing to retrieve his bicycle and other belongings.

  The first happy surprise of this wretched day was that the bike was in good shape, still aligned, even; apparently they hadn’t been nearly as rough with it as they’d been with him. But there was an even bigger surprise in his backpack, where under his jacket and his sunglasses and helmet, along with his knife and keys and bike lock, along with his credit card and cash, he found his Beretta. He was dead certain they’d keep it, even though they already knew it wasn’t the murder weapon, if only just to fuck with him.

  Throwing his leg over the bike and starting south on Tyrone, he noticed a uniform on the far side of the street, staring until he caught Waldo’s eye. Annis. That explained the gun. The patrolman put a finger to his cap, a subtle salute, then turned away and ducked into his squad car.

 
The sun was starting to set and Waldo still had to face the Coldwater climb all over again, this time with rush-hour traffic on his rear and one nine-thousandth of the LAPD at his back.

  NINETEEN

  He couldn’t let go of that good-bye, that last look at Lorena getting into her Porsche. What if he had kissed her, or let her kiss him? Would it have gone further? There weren’t even two chairs inside for them both to sit, let alone room in the loft to luxuriate, the way they used to, in each other’s bodies, in each other’s caresses, in each other’s breathing. He could have let her lead him into Idyllwild, could have followed on his bike and found a restaurant, one that served something he could eat or at least drink, then maybe one of those little inns. He could have lost himself again in the obscene thickness of her hair, could have let her undress him, the way she loved to, not looking up, always surprising him anew with her shyness at that moment, until he’d put a finger under her chin to raise her face to his, that beautiful face, that face that was char now, nothing but crumbling, flaking bone.

  He knew pining wouldn’t spur him through the pain as he climbed Coldwater for the second time that day, so he forced himself to focus on that image from the photo, remembering every detail, and the fury came, fury he could hold on to—fury at Don Q, at Cuppy, at these people who’d been sent to fuck with him, including the dead lawyer. Waldo could live on all that fury until he reached the top of the hill, and if he could channel it by the time he found this asshole billionaire who’d sicced the lawyer on him, it could even be an asset.

  North Beverly Park was a private haven of sixty or so castles set on a couple hundred prime hilltop acres. If Beverly Hills was its own municipality, as lofty and imperious toward the Los Angeles that surrounded it as Vatican City was to Rome, Beverly Park, though not politically autonomous, sniffed at Beverly Hills itself in the same way. This would, in fact, be Waldo’s first time within its borders; that is, if he could even get in. The gatehouse alone looked like a mansion, with three guards fixing him as he glided past on the bike. At least one of them would be armed.