by Hart Hanson
“It wasn’t until we saw a plume of smoke that we came up with the weakest excuse in law enforcement history to drive onto Keet’s property to offer assistance.”
“The burning Harley?”
“Was that you?”
“I decline to answer on the grounds that it would most definitely incriminate me.”
“I’m not asking officially. I’m asking because Keet thanked us for our interest, then informed us that it was a case of spontaneous combustion brought on by the heat of the sun.”
“More like spontaneous combustion brought on by the discharge of a sawed-off double-barreled shotgun into the gas tank.”
“We did not see a shotgun.”
“I dropped it on the driveway. I’ve been worried about my fingerprints being all over it.”
“You did not come up in the conversation. There was an obese man lying semiconscious on the ground with a head injury and a baseball bat on the ground beside him.”
“Semiconscious?”
“He couldn’t tell us the date or his name but he was able to recite the Pledge of Allegiance.”
“That was Slim. He must have a head like an anvil.”
“Did you strike him with the baseball bat?”
“No, but I admit to ardently suggesting that one of Keet’s juvenile delinquent thugs smack him in the head.”
“Ardently? Does that mean you were pointing a gun at him at the time?”
“Not at the kid, no. It’s complicated. What did Keet say happened?”
“Keet said that two of his spirited young employees had an argument that became violent. The obese man stepped in when one of the young men in question produced a baseball bat. The boy accidentally struck him in the head. The boy admitted to doing that and the obese man declined to press charges and refused transport to the hospital.”
“You see a skinny black guy?”
“Yes. He was on the porch drinking ice water from a mason jar. Apparently, he had coincidentally suffered heatstroke and passed out at the same time the two boys and the obese man were fighting.”
“You remember what he was wearing on his feet?”
Delilah looked at me for a moment, then said, “Shit.”
“The Slavic-looking kid, the one who hit the obese man? He goes by the name X-Ray. He’s the one who shot and killed Avila’s bodyguard in the bar. The other kid, Nick, was the one who dropped his gun. You probably have fingerprints to match. It was him along with the fat biker who attacked one of your pal Cody’s men here yesterday.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“What?”
“Don’t call Cody my pal using that tone.”
“I’m sorry. I thought I picked up a vibe.”
“Fuck you. I didn’t sleep with Cody.”
We both knew this was weird. Why should I care who Delilah slept with? Why should she care what I thought?
“I apologize.”
“I need you to make an official statement that you recognized those boys. We can go back and pick them up.”
“I will make that statement but you won’t get them. Keet has a pretty effective early-warning system set up. His ranch is nothing but twisty canyons, bolt-holes, and abandoned mines.”
“We’ll get them eventually, and when we do we’ll have the fingerprints, plus you can identify them in a lineup.”
“What about Keet?”
“Keet didn’t do anything wrong.”
“He’s on parole, isn’t he? I’ll give you a statement saying that I witnessed him brandishing a weapon. And I’ll bet you my left ass cheek that fat biker is a former felon he shouldn’t be associating with.”
I knew as I said it that Keet was too smart for that. Not to mention, no fault of her own, it was getting harder for Delilah to concentrate on my excellent legal suggestions because Nina and Avila had crawled into the deep hammock tied between the two palm trees on the island. Avila’s skimpy underpants came flying out of the hammock, followed by Nina’s bikini. The hammock itself was bulging and rocking and swinging. The two palms the hammock was tied to swayed like there was an earthquake.
“Wow.”
“Nina called Avila a pussy bitch in front of your people, so he’s proving her wrong.”
“I’ll say he is.”
Almost every single member of the warrant execution team, standing in windows or on the porch or in the driveway, was watching the famous Bismarck Avila perform exuberant, porn-worthy hammock sex.
“The barrels aren’t here.”
“Do you know that for sure?”
Please forgive me for lying to Delilah, a woman I really didn’t want to lie to (because I wanted to lie with her), but what I said was “Avila told me Willeniec found the barrels and Keet killed him for it.”
“Why’d Avila go see Keet today?”
“To ask if they were even.”
“Are they even?”
“Not according to Keet.”
“Why?”
“Keet wants more.”
“More? More what?”
“Some kind of payoff. They argued, Keet threatened to kill me to show Avila he’s serious, and all the rest of what happened happened.”
“Exploded Harley, burning palm trees, everybody groaning and all beaten up. I’d love to hear the details of how you fucked them up so bad and not a mark on you.”
I savored the note of grudging admiration in her voice.
“Keet will kill people until Avila gives him what he wants. Keet killed Avila’s cousin and he sent those boys to kill Avila’s bodyguards.”
“He admitted that?”
(Not per se . . .)
“Too bad it’s all hearsay you can’t use.”
“Why would he incriminate himself that way in front of a fucking witness?”
“You mean me? Because Keet had me booked for dead.”
“Do I understand that Avila was not the target of the bar hit?”
“That’s what Keet said.”
“Do you believe him?”
“When Avila stood between me and our sweet Lord Jesus, Keet ordered Slim not to blow him to pieces, so yeah, I believe him.”
Delilah ran that through her big brain.
“I know I said sweet Lord Jesus just now,” I said, “but that was a euphemism for sawed-off shotgun.”
“If Keet intends to kill the people around Avila, then you better be careful, Skellig.”
“I’m not going to be around him anymore. I’m fired. But Cody and his guys better pay special attention. And her.”
I pointed over toward the island, where, in the hammock, Nina was making a sound that was something between a moan and a siren. Avila was either doing a great job or Nina was flattering him in front of the police.
“We’ll arrest him. That should get everyone off the hook.”
“You’re going to arrest Avila?”
“Could you please keep your fucking voice down?”
“Arrest him for what? Pleasuring a woman until she banshees?”
“We found drugs.”
“Avila doesn’t do drugs.”
“His fucking house. His fucking drugs. That’s the fucking law.”
“Delilah, you put Avila in jail, Keet will have him killed before morning.”
“You just told me that Keet wants him alive.”
I told you. Delilah is smart. And she remembers things. And I’m no more or less pervy than the next guy, but the performance happening over in that hammock had charged the air between me and Delilah. Our animal selves wanted to prove that, given the chance, we could match or surpass Avila and Nina in the hammock.
“Let me rephrase. If you put Avila in jail, Keet will make him wish he were dead.”
“Maybe that’s why Avila wanted you to kill Keet.”
(WHAT?)
“I beg your pardon?”
She waited while I did the math.
“You bugged my Chrysler?”
“You shouldn’t have switched cars, Skellig. That’s why we couldn’t protect you properly. We had no cause to believe you required assistance.”
“If you bugged the Chrysler and not the Mercedes, that means you did it here, while I was talking to Avila on his skateboard ramp.”
Delilah remained conspicuously silent. Silence indicates consent and she knew it.
Blossoms of anger bloomed in my chest as I realized what had occurred behind my back.
“It was your pal, Cody.”
“Don’t you dare insinuate—”
“Insinuate? You talked Cody into bugging the Chrysler. Seems pretty pally to me. Did you even bother with a warrant?”
I had the moral high ground here and Delilah knew it.
“I got a warrant. And I have a recording of Bismarck Avila asking you to kill Keet.”
The hammock had gone quiet, so perhaps Delilah and I could back down from the weird energy that was suffusing this strange conversation.
“Avila shows a proclivity for suborning murder,” she said. “There are rumors that he used gang connections to have his previous driver killed. Most likely scenario, Avila got Keet to kill Willeniec. Avila maybe lives in a mansion in Calabasas but at heart he’s a street rat.”
I laughed.
“What’s funny?”
“Keet called him the same thing. A street rat.”
“You think because Avila stepped between you and a shotgun, he’s better than that?”
“Yes.”
“That’s how a soldier thinks. Avila is no soldier.”
“It was brave, Delilah.”
“If you had been killed by that shotgun blast, what would have happened to Avila?”
I was getting caught up in my own lies here.
The truth was that if the sight of me being blown to bits didn’t change Avila’s mind, then Keet would have tortured him until he gave up the location of those barrels. But in the scenario I’d just sold Delilah, Keet had already gotten the barrels from Willeniec, then killed him.
“How would I know?”
“If Bismarck Avila saved your life, he did it for his own reasons. To save his own ass.”
Either way, my conscience was served. I’d done my best. I was free and clear of the whole mess I’d brought down on me and my people by killing Willeniec. More important, Lucky, Tinkertoy, and Ripple were out of it, three innocent little ladybugs released from a child’s fist. The task force was working Keet for Willeniec’s murder, exactly as I’d hoped in my wildest hopes and dreamed in my wildest dreams. We had everything we wanted.
Me and my band of brothers (and sister), Lucky and Ripple and Tinkertoy, were in the clear.
EXPECTATIONS OF PRIVACY
There is something disconcerting about sitting between two women, best friends in their personal lives, because they are able to transcend the traditional cop/lawyer dynamic, who are tussling over your soul. Not to mention one of them I’m in love with and the other is a woman I’d definitely be exploring romantically in a serious way if the other woman weren’t her best friend and the woman I’m in love with.
In an interview room in the LAPD Pacific Division station, Delilah sat across from me and Connie and played a recording, for the second time, of drunken Avila asking me to kill Asher Keet, followed, moments later, by a surprisingly adamant, loud, and irritated refusal, which did not, outside of the words, match my memory of the exchange.
“Well?” Delilah said, hitting a key to pause the recording.
“That’s not a question,” said my lawyer, Connie, in her most adversarial lawyer-to-cop voice.
“Oh, for Chrissakes,” Delilah responded. “Interview is suspended for a short break.” She stood and shut the laptop. “Could we please step into the corridor?”
Once outside the range of microphones, Delilah said to Connie, “Skellig is not suspected of anything. He’s not being charged with anything. What we’d like to do is charge Bismarck Avila with suborning murder, which he did, and slap him in jail for a few days. For leverage. What’s the fucking problem?”
“You are manipulating my client,” Connie said.
Delilah made a long farting sound. Connie demanded that we go back into the interview room and continue the conversation in a professional manner.
Back at the scratched-up aluminum table, sitting on wooden chairs, Delilah reintroduced us to her laptop, providing time, date, and participants. In front of me on the table was a yellow legal pad and a stub of a pencil, placed there by Connie (so that I could write her secret notes), a tepid cup of Styrofoam coffee and a home-made chocolate chip cookie, both provided by Delilah before she knew Connie was going to stonewall. Since Delilah doesn’t bake, I couldn’t think how it got there unless some grateful citizen dropped off cookies for cops, in which case I hoped Delilah wasn’t using me as a poison early-warning system.
“Mr. Skellig, will you stipulate that it is your voice on the recording?”
“Yes, but let the record show it’s more nasal and higher pitched than what I hear in my head.”
Connie cleared her throat. She’d warned me to answer yes or no with no other frills, addendums, modifiers, clarifications, or, most important, “things you think are funny but aren’t.”
“Will you stipulate that you are conversing with Bismarck Avila?”
“Yes.”
“And that Avila clearly asked you to kill Asher Keet?”
“Leading question,” Connie said, “and also not a question.”
“You mind explaining to me how something can be both a leading question and not a question?”
Connie crossed her arms. Delilah made squinty eyes at her, then turned to me again and asked, “Did Bismarck Avila ask you to kill Asher Keet?”
“No,” I said.
Even Connie raised her eyebrows.
“My lawyer instructed me to answer yes or no,” I said. “If those are my only choices, then it’s no.”
“Maybe I should play the recording again,” Delilah offered; then when Connie started to say that wasn’t a question either, Delilah simply pressed a key on her laptop.
Where to?
Temecula.
What’s in Temecula?
Keet.
Wouldn’t it make more sense to go where Keet isn’t?
Maybe I want you to kill Keet for me. Maybe that’s why I hired you in the first place. War hero who’s killed plenty of people.
I’m not killing anyone for you—
Delilah turned off the recording.
“Having refreshed your memory by playing the recording, I’ll ask you again, Mr. Skellig. Did Bismarck Avila ask you to kill Asher Keet?”
“Avila wasn’t suborning murder.”
“Yes or no,” Connie said.
“Avila had been drinking all night. He was drunk and goofing around because I’m always asking him why he insisted upon hiring me to drive him.”
“None of those words were yes or no.”
Delilah was annoyed but not angry because she knew I was telling the truth. She essayed a bunch of scattergun questions in an effort to find out what had happened out at Keet’s place in Temecula, but Connie kept stopping her dead with phrases like outside the purview and fishing expedition and the like.
I doodled an owl on my legal pad. (Tip I learned from Ripple: you start with a figure eight.)
Delilah ended the interview and said that they didn’t really need me to corroborate what was already plainly on tape so we were free to go. She didn’t look up at either me or Connie as we left.
In Connie’s Prius, Connie told me that it was obvious to her that Delilah’s task force was determined to
put Avila in jail with or without my help. They would use the drugs they found in his refrigerator or find some other pretext, but in the end the task force would throw their elbows in every direction until they found out what had happened to Sheriff’s Detective Willeniec, A.
“The reason task forces love to include the FBI,” Connie said, “is that it’s a federal offense to lie to a federal agent. They catch you in a lie and use that as leverage to get you to do what they want. So don’t tell a single lie, Skellig. ¿Lo entiendes?”
“Keet will get to Avila in jail,” I told Connie. “Have him gang-raped. Maybe bust his back so he’s paralyzed. Maybe blind him with drain cleaner. Avila won’t last the weekend.”
“I’m your lawyer, not Bismarck Avila’s. He has his own army of Beverly Hills lawyers.”
“Connie. It’s not right.”
“Did you even hear what I said about task forces?” Connie asked. “I don’t want you or any client anywhere near them. You even get the edge of your sleeve caught in those gears, the next thing you know, you are so deep into the system that I can’t promise I can help you before you get turned into cenizas y polvo.”
“What about Avila?”
“I don’t understand why you care,” Connie said, echoing Delilah.
“Is this a privileged conversation?”
“Skellig—”
“I’m serious.”
“Yes. This is a privileged client-to-lawyer conversation.”
“Avila put himself between me and a psychopath with a shotgun is why. He didn’t have to do it.”
“But you have a theory as to why.”
“Because he realized it was his fault I was about to get killed.”
“It’s not your fault that his cojones are in the wringer now.”
(Yes, it was. Largely. Almost totally.)
“That’s true.”
“Yet you feel you owe Avila for saving your life.”
I was not getting very far with Connie. She was holding me at arm’s distance by making statements. If I wanted to keep Avila alive, or at least in one piece, I had to get her to cave in and ask a few questions.
“A very bad man was going to shoot me with a sawed-off shotgun. It would have cut me in half. Avila stepped in the way. He definitely saved my life.”