by Tim Green
"Then we've got a problem."
"A conflict of interest," Chris agreed. "But then again, maybe not. Remember, the police haven't been spending a lot of rime and effort looking for another suspect. There may be something more in these files, or I may have to find it on my own. If there's anything to find .. . Let me take some time and look into it."
"You mean under the presumption that neither Trane nor Clark is the killer?" Madison said, seeing the logic.
"feah," Chris replied, picking out a slice from the pizza and taking a mouthful. "Even though the chances of that are slim to none."
Chapter 34
Trane lay sleeping on his side in a tangle of burgundy satin sheets. The weather had been unusually warm, and an angry morning sun glared through the windows. The ceiling fan rested idly above the bed. Beside him lay a naked young girl, spread- eagled and facedown. Bleached blond hair fanned out like a peacock's tail across her back and gleamed like brass in the sunlight. A bead of sweat grew on Trane's temple until it was large enough to spill down the side of his face and drop against his nose.
"The fuck?" he muttered sleepily.
Eyes closed, he remembered the night before. A young agent, desperate to represent his movie career, had hustled him for two hours while the pretty little thing sat beside him in their booth sipping away at one margarita after another. Trane remembered the look on the agent's face when he asked for the wife. Even now it made him smile. Then he remembered what he'd done to her and the smile faded. A girl like that with a husband who would give her up was fair game for anything. He was tempted to do it again.
He opened his eyes and, fully conscious, he realized just how hot it really was, hot and stuffy. He rose from the bed and pissed long and hard into the white bowl, avoiding the bloodshot eyes lurking in the mirror. Back in the bedroom, the girl's still un- moving body sent a little jolt of panic through him. Last thing he needed was another dead bitch. He raised his big hand above his head and gave her bare ass a hearty slap. She stirred and whimpered, then dropped back into her drug-induced sleep. She, too, was warm and damp. Trane looked at the clock to see if he had enough time to mess with her, but it had stopped. Irritated, he slipped on a pair of canary yellow Jockeys and ambled out into the hallway. He looked at the digital thermostat. Nothing. He flipped a light switch inside his room. Nothing again.
"The fuck?" he said, more forcefully now.
"Cubby!" he shouted, shooting out of the master bedroom and through the house where he could scream up the stairway. "Cubby! Get the fuck down here! Cubbyyyyyy!"
Trane banged on the wall leading up the stairs and the noise reverberated through the mansion. Someone he didn't recognize rolled over on the living room couch and put a pillow over his head. Trane mounted the stairs three at a time and burst into Cubby's room, catching him in the act with the Jamaican girlfriend who'd moved in with him.
"Cubby, get the fuck off that bitch and get the fuckin' AC on, man!"
Leshay spilled out of his own room down the hall in a pair of boxers, his big afro looking like a poorly trimmed shrub.
"Wha's up, Trane?" he said, scratching himself with a yawn.
"Wha's up is you two no-good motherfuckin' brothers better get the goddamn AC on, bitch! I'm sweatin my motherfuckin' ass off an' we got no motherfuckin power!"
"Chill, Trane," Cubby said, rolling out into the hallway wearing his own pair of striped Jockeys and a surly look on his face. "I was hittin' it with my lady an you just come in like a fuckin'--"
Trane cut him off with a backhand that knocked him to the floor. The girlfriend came shrieking out into the hallway and bent over Cubby. Trane kicked her in the ribs.
"Bitch! Get the fuck outta my house!" he roared.
She was howling now in a high-pitched wail. Cubby was on his feet and he started to beg.
"Trane, man, be cool, man. I'll get the AC on, man. Be cool. I'm sorry, man. I'm sorry. I don know what happened. Maybe I didn't pay the fuckin thing. I'll get it on, man. Chill."
"Chill? How the fuck am I suppose to chill when I got no fuckin AC an I got no motherfuckin' lights an I got to go to the motherfuckin' courthouse today? How in fuck am I suppose to chill? Got a ten-million-dollar house an' I got no motherfuckin power! Shut up, bitch!"
Cubby's girl howled even louder.
"What's goin on?" came a voice from a head that had popped out of a doorway farther up the hall.
"Who the fuck are you?" Trane demanded, and the head disappeared.
Trane ducked into Cubby's room and pulled a Glock off the top of the dresser. He charged down the hall and burst into the room where the head had disappeared. Sitting around in a circle on the floor of the bedroom were four brothers heating heroin over a fat candle that was leaving a pool of red wax on the hardwood floor.
"Get the fuck outta my house!" Trane bellowed at them, leveling the Glock at the one whose head he recognized. The brothers were on their feet in an instant and scrambling for the door. Trane backhanded them randomly as they passed and pistol- whipped one. Then he marched through the upstairs checking the other rooms.
"I want every motherfucker outta this house!" he bellowed.
He opened the last door on the left and found his older half- brother, Dwayne, asleep with a fat, pasty redhead.
"Hey!" Trane shouted.
"Wha's up, Trane?" Dwayne mumbled sleepily, apparently unconcerned with the tirade.
"No fuckin' AC, man. My homeboys is gettin' slack as shit."
"I wondered why it's so hot," Dwayne said lazily and rolled over, pulling a pillow over his face.
Trane scowled at the redhead and shut the door. The rest of the occupants weren't so lucky. Except for his homeboys and their girlfriends who were stashed underneath their beds, Trane rousted them to a man with the Glock, giving them five minutes before he opened fire. He then walked out the front door and down by the gates. The big blue Town Car standing sentry lowered its driver's-side window with a low whine. The two security guards hired by Dobbins since Trane's arrest were having coffee in the front seat.
"The fuck are you brothers suppose to be doin?" Trane said, glaring hard at them.
The first one, a tall, thin, tar-colored man with a pencil mustache, shrugged and looked at his partner, a slick, handsome mulatto with a short red afro.
"Trane, we asked you last night if you were sure you wanted these people to have entrance," the mulatto said.
"Well, fuck them," Trane said. "Get 'em out."
"An fuck you!" he bellowed, giving the finger to the smattering of cameramen and photographers who skulked beyond the gates like jackals around a lion's kill.
By the time Trane was dressed out in a yellow three-piece suit with an electric blue tie the hastily closed car doors and squealing tires had faded to nothing. Cubby and Leshay were dressed, too, but that didn't keep them from capering about him like whipped puppies, pouring his Cocoa Puffs and splashing them with milk, buttering his toast, and cleaning up the ring his Coke can left on the mahogany dining room table.
Soon a black Suburban pulled up in the brick circle in front of the house and Trane piled into the backseat with Conrad.
Cubby and Leshay sat in the very rear. Zee was sitting shotgun next to their driver. Trane related the morning's events and Dobbins nodded sympathetically, filming his client's complaints with his 8mm as they drove to the L. A. County Courthouse.
"My brother," Conrad said when they were almost there. "I want you to wear these." He held up a flashy pair of gold-and- black Zeus shoes.
Trane looked from his own blood-colored alligator shoes to the sneakers. "An look like a fuckin' fool?" he barked.
"You ain't gonna look like no fool," Dobbins said passionately. "You gonna make a statement. You gonna show those white motherfuckin reporters that just 'cause they tryin to pin a rap on you that don't mean you gonna stop bein you. You ain't gonna stop makin money fo' yourself no matter what they gonna say."
Trane nodded at this logic and switched his footwear.
He straightened himself and, pointing at Dobbins's camera, said, "What you gonna do with all that?"
"Gonna make a documentary for Spike Lee," Dobbins said with a grin. "Then the legend gonna live on forever . . ."
Trane sat back and said nothing. He liked the idea of being a legend, but he sure as hell didn't want to have to go to jail to become one. For the most part, Conrad's optimism was contagious, but it wasn't too hard to imagine the whole thing turning to shit and him actually ending up in jail.
"You gettin' me outta this, Conrad," he said finally, then turned to look for confirmation.
"I told you an I told you, you ain't gotta worry!" Conrad said with a toothy grin as he patted Trane on his muscular back. "You ain't gonna do no time. An' we gonna make some serious cash, some righteous money. I promise that, ain't that right, Zee?"
Zee grunted that it was but kept his eyes on the road ahead where the courthouse had just come into view.
"You help Zee make a path," Dobbins told the two homeboys. "I'll be with Trane right behind you."
Reporters teemed like maggots on the courthouse steps. Trane had been indicted by the grand jury only two days before. Now he was being formally arraigned and would enter his plea to the charges in a public forum. It was a spectacle. The media pressed in on Trane and his entourage, only to be split down the middle by the forceful figure of Zee flanked by the homeboys. Cameras and microphones waved above them on sticks like Mardi Gras props. Men and women in suits and dresses shouted like barbarians. Trane hid behind his sunglasses with his head tucked into Zee's massive back. Conrad Dobbins was right behind him, wagging an accusing finger back at the media and reflecting their chaos with his camera whose screen was facing out at them.
The cameras, including Conrad's 8mm, were filtered out by the metal detector at the courthouse's security check. Anyone besides Trane and his entourage with hopes for a seat was already inside. Madison and Chris were there, too, waiting at the defendant's table on the opposite side of the court from the jury box. Beside them was a short, stout, balding lawyer named Paul Castle whom they'd enlisted as their local counsel to help them negotiate the intricacies of California procedure.
Trane marched down the middle of the courtroom with his head high and a pimp's swagger in his step. All eyes were on him, and the look on his face suggested that he was enjoying himself. Despite Madison's earlier plea his clothes were as gaudy as a circus clown's, and he kept his sunglasses planted on his face. A bench in the front row had been set aside for Trane's entourage. Dobbins sat directly behind his client and patted him protectively on the back until Trane shirked him off like a bluebottle fly.
No sooner were they seated than the court clerk called them to rise for the honorable judge Sandra Douty-Bergenstien. She was a short, fiery-looking woman with olive skin and straight black hair that surrounded her head like a bell. Her face was fixed with what appeared to be a permanent scowl. She sat and banged her gavel with authority. The judge ripped right through
the whole routine without so much as a pause to account for the high drama. Trane and Madison stood to enter the plea of not guilty, then Madison made her motions of suppression. Douty- Bergenstien whipped off dates to hear those motions in a way that let everyone know she'd been expecting them.
"Before I adjourn this court," she said, glaring out at the entire room, "I want it known that this will not be handled like a high-profile media circus. I will make my rulings quickly and I will expect the lawyers in this case, be they for the prosecution or the defense, to keep their comments within the confines of these rulings. This case will not become a mockery.
"I will not," she said, directing her gaze at Madison, "be steamrolled by any high-priced legal tactics and shenanigans. I know that as of now there is no DNA evidence in the prosecution's case. But should that arise, let it be known right up front that it will be processed by the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office, and the results of those tests will not be the subject of issue to the jury. That evidence will be binding, and before you even think about threatening me, Ms. McCall--and I know I've said this to you privately but I want to say it publicly--I will not be intimidated by the prospect of having my decisions overturned on appeal. And, I have no intention of letting you, Ms. McCall, or anyone, undermine the integrity of the Los Angeles Police Department or the Coroner's Office . . . Trial is hereby set for February thirteenth. This court is adjourned."
The judge banged her gavel again and then she was gone. The tumult began. Madison turned to Trane, but he was already on his way out, led by Zee and pushed by Conrad.
"Let's go," she said to Chris without hiding her disgust.
She felt more and more as if control of the entire case was slipping from her grasp. It wasn't anything obvious. Trane had given them the time that they'd wanted during the week. It was that he didn't seem to be as concerned as he should have been. Something didn't feel right. It was as if the whole thing had the quality of a play being staged by a troupe of community playhouse actors.
Outside on the steps Madison learned the reason for the group's hasty departure. Halfway down the wide gray steps Conrad Dobbins had set up an impromptu press conference to give his views on the proceedings. Trane stood beside him, grinning and looking like an irreverent fool in his three-piece canary suit and sneakers.
"I told him not to do that!" Madison said emphatically to Chris.
"We can't stop him now," Chris observed. "He's on a roll."
"Like a preacher," she said, spitting her words.
She shook her head. They stood on the top step, separated from their client now by a sea of reporters.
"Something's not right," she said. "We're going to trial, but it doesn't feel like trial..."
"You've never been involved in anything quite like this before," Chris pointed out.
"I've never been involved with these kinds of people before, you mean."
Just then, a group of cameras that weren't getting a good shot of Trane and Dobbins split off from the mob and went after Madison.
"No comment," she said, hustling now with Chris down the side set of stairs and out near the street, where a Town Car was waiting for them.
"What do we do now?" Chris asked, looking over at his partner's crumpled face as they slipped onto the freeway.
"We go home," she said sternly. "We go home for the weekend, and come back Monday ready to work."
Chapter 35
An unusual low front from Alaska dipped far enough down the coast to shed some rain on the Juggernauts' afternoon practice. In fact the clouds were so heavy they pelted rain in sheets. Chris watched from beneath a red-and-white golf umbrella that the PR director had lent him. There were no other spectators at practice. The media and everyone else had been banned since the murder of Trane's girlfriend. Armand Ulrich made an exception when Madison requested that Chris be given access.
"It's part of the case," she assured him.
And it was.
Chris watched the team run through plays over and over in the rain, as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening in the thick gray sky above. The players' practice uniforms clung to them like sopping newspaper, and their cleats kicked up cut wet grass with every step. Each man was decorated from knee to toe with thin green blades. Even though the field was well kept and sported none of the mud one would find on a high school or college practice field, the seats of the players' white pants were stained gray and brown.
Chris watched a double reverse. He knew the play and knew it was a staple of Gridley's new L. A. offense. Still, it was a thrill to watch the defense flow in waves, first this way, then that, and finally this way again, with Clark leading up the outside and leveling the safety with a bone-jarring thud. Trane Jones ran up the sideline, pointing at the defense and high-stepping into the end zone. With that last successful offensive play, Gridley called in his troops, addressed them, and then had them line up for sprints. Players helped each other strip to the waist, tugging violently at one another's soaking jerseys
and shoulder pads and removing them in fits and starts.
Even though the rain made Chris feel cold, he could see that the running overruled any cooling effect the weather might have had on the players. Soon they began to glisten with a sweat that was slicker than the pure rain from the north. As they chugged up and down the field through shallow puddles and injured grass, Chris saw that every third or fourth man was bleeding from somewhere on his head or torso. Diluted by the rain, the blood ran in broad pink streaks. It was particularly noticeable on the white players, whose torsos and upper arms were as pale as shelled turdes from their constant encasement in shoulder pads and jerseys. No one besides Chris seemed to notice the blood any more than they did one another's sweat or the driving rain. It was just part of the landscape, something they were accustomed to.
Chris noticed that Clark and Trane ran with only a few players in between them and that there seemed to be some silent competition afoot. During the first several sprints Trane clearly took the lead. But as the drill wore on, Clark began to close ground and then actually take the lead. Neither of them did anything to indicate that they, had recently murdered anyone. In fact, the entire practice, aside from the conspicuous absence of television and newspaper reporters, was unsettlingly normal. Chris had seen hundreds of practice sessions in his days as an agent, and this was just like all the rest.
Finally they were done, and at the sound of the head coach's whisde they came streaming past Chris toward the locker room.
As the players passed him, Chris's nose was filled with the damp pungency of rancid sweat cut with musty rain. Some of the players stared at him curiously, wondering what a short little Mexican could be doing there in the first place with all the security they'd witnessed over the past few weeks. Others glared with malevolence, more than anything because he hadn't had to share in the lung-burning sprints. Still others ignored him entirely, huffing and puffing with their long faces and dripping like sad gargoyles migrating back to their perches of stone.