By Hook or By Crook

by Gorman, Ed

  “Don’t go dumb-ass on me, Detective. Nobody was supposed to get inside, past your eagle-eyed Priority Protection Squad, but last night somebody did. It happened, and I don’t propose allowing it to happen again. Can you take care of it or must I go over your head?”

  “I don’t respond well to threats, Judge Armstrong.”

  “A threat? I’d call it a statement of fact, Detective. Can you or must I?”

  He held his temper. “Matt Rubio’s my second in command, too many sharp-shooting medals to fit on his chest the same time. I’ll put him outside your bedroom door nights, with my personal guarantee no one will get to you through him. Good enough, Your Honor?”

  The judge didn’t even think about it, her head at once dancing left and right. “No. Not good enough. This Matt Rubio can join your friends standing guard outside if he’s as good as you say, day or night, I don’t care which. It’s you I want protecting me in here, under my roof, your trigger finger on the gun nearest me, should Farnum again come after me in the middle of the night.”

  Reno wondered if he was imagining the judge’s expression said she wanted more than his trigger finger near her. Or was it thoughts of playing humpety-hump with her ratcheting up again, although she wasn’t his type? He’d been pretty much off women since the divorce and the period immediately afterward, when he was mixing his booze and his broads in equal proportion. That was a long time ago. There hadn’t been many women since, except for the occasional hook picked off the boulevard to help him confirm he could still get it up and a fling that got too serious too soon with Liza Marie, who looked and sounded a lot like his ex, what attracted him to her originally, until he realized that was all they had in common, helped her pack and went back to sharing his blues with a bottle.

  “Your Honor, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Reno said.

  “I don’t recall asking for your opinion,” Judge Armstrong said. “You can bunk in my home office for the duration. The sofa opens into a bed.” She pointed a direction. “Through there. The office connects to my bedroom through the bathroom, keeping you seconds away from me in any emergency.” Making it sound like she wouldn’t mind having him closer than that. Or was it only his mind stoking his imagination again?

  “Anything else I should know?”

  A sly smile inched up one side of her face. “The closer you are the safer I feel, but you know that by now if you’re any detective at all.” She reached across the table and touched the spot on his lower lip where she had bitten him last night. “Nasty, that,” she said. “Cut yourself shaving?”

  • • •

  Reno called in Matt Rubio to look after her while he headed home to throw together a couple changes of clothes and a Dopp kit, but that’s not all he had in mind for the two or three hours he’d be gone. First on the travel agenda was a quick trip downtown to County Jail and a visit with Walter Farnum, whose cuffs, leg irons and striped orange jump suit marked him as an inmate unlikely to become a trustee while waiting out the weeks before his murder trial in Judge Armstrong’s courtroom.

  To look at Farnum was to see a supermarket clerk or an accountant, an impression fortified by a shy demeanor and a speaking voice that rarely climbed above a smoker’s hoarse whisper. He was small of stature, maybe five-two or five-three, with a ferret-shaped face half-hidden inside a neatly trimmed salt and pepper beard, but carried a giant reputation. Reading his jacket revealed a killer-forhire who’d murdered his way to the top of the crime syndicate running the drug, sex, and protection rackets in L.A. twenty-something years ago, before his fortieth birthday.

  Nothing ever proven, however.

  Dozens of court appearances and a few trials that ended in a hung jury.

  The difference this time was evidence tying Farnum directly to three mob murders dating back to the early nineties. The evidence turned up out of nowhere after he reportedly tried to partner himself in for a chunk of Indian reservation gambling revenues.

  He laughed when Reno raised the rumor with him in one of the jail’s private meeting rooms meant for lawyers consulting with their clients, instantly comfortable with someone he remembered from their encounters in the days Reno was working vice detail.

  “Heard the same thing myself, Jack, that cockamamie Injuns on the warpath story,” Farnum said. “For it to be true, you’d first have to believe I had any interest in their damn casinos. Not so, any more than it’s true I was behind those old hits I’m now accused of, on Big Sid, Polish Joe, or Artie G.”

  “Not how the DA is reading the evidence he’ll be presenting to a jury, Walter.”

  “When and if it ever gets that far, Jack. I have a streak going, or don’t you remember?”

  “This third time might be the charm for the DA.”

  “Don’t bet on it, my friend. A lot can happen between now and whenever.”

  “As long as it doesn’t happen to Judge Armstrong, Walter.”

  Farnum’s easy smile dropped off his face. “Judge Armstrong, huh? I was wondering why this sudden interest, what brought you over here.”

  “Seems someone got by my Priority Protection Squad guys last night, broke into her home bent on killing her. Made a real mess of the place, but she managed to turn hiding into an art form.”

  “And I’m the designated big bad wolf.”

  “You’re the one who threatened her with bodily harm after she denied your lawyer’s bail motion.”

  “Like I ever thought it would be granted? Give me a friggin’ break, Jack. When have you ever known me not to shoot off threats in the courtroom? You’ve seen it happen before. It’s me blowing off steam, plain and simple.”

  “I’m thinking about some other judges you’ve crossed swords with in the past. Broken kneecaps for two or three of them. One lucky to escape a car bomb. A sniper’s bullet that put another judge in the hospital in critical condition and hanging on by a heartbeat ... How do you explain any of that?”

  “Coincidence? Life’s funny that way.”

  “I don’t want it to be funny for Judge Armstrong, Walter.”

  Farnum thought about it. His smile eased back. “I liked seeing how I made her shake and bake in her courtroom, given the holier-than-thou act she’s always put on, even when she was just starting out in the DA’s office, making her reputation on more than her good looks. A saint she ain’t, my friend. A saint she ain’t.”

  “A saint she ain’t. What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Farnum shrugged. “Just making small talk.”

  “Why do I sense it’s more than that?”

  “You’re a cop, why else? The last cop who ever believed me, I was five years old and swiping apples and oranges off old man Bernstein’s pushcarts in the Heights. No, Mr. Officer, sir, they fell off Mr. Bernstein’s cart and I was picking them up from the street for him. You nosey enough, put it to the judge. Six’ll get you sixty if she doesn’t tell you the same. Small talk, Jack. Just making small talk.”

  • • •

  Reno caught up with Judge Armstrong at the courthouse and watched her mete out her usual brand of hard-nosed jurisprudence as if last night’s supposed attack on her life had never happened, except for the several times here eyes sought him out and seemed to offer appreciation for his protective presence. She turned his estimate into action later, after they were back at her place, and by morning she had him calling her “Gilly-girl,” and he was the judge’s “Jackie-boy.”

  It was a seduction that began with calculated subtlety, the judge cooing over the bottle of Château Latour she served with a meal she’d pulled together like a French chef overseeing a three-star Michelin restaurant — a perfectly cooked steak, sculpted fries, baby asparagus in a rich cream sauce, a mixed green salad, a vanilla custard topped with a caramel sauce to die for — expounding on the history of the wines like she was reciting legal precedents.

  He was a beer can kind of guy, but every swallow tasted like he was robbing the U.S. Mint, and Reno didn’t resist when she proffered a second bo
ttle, then another.

  Judge Armstrong matched him glass for glass, often pushing up from her chair to toast him for making her feel safe from harm, increasingly with an outsized gesture that dramatized her voluptuousness, always held in suspended animation until she was certain he had noticed.

  Halfway through the third bottle, her words lost their sheen, tumbling beyond comprehension one into the next, her mush-mouth English as undecipherable as the French expressions she’d been dropping all over the dining room table during the meal.

  When the judge rose this time, it was to take a long swallow from the bottle and sing to the beamed ceiling, “Adieu, mon cher. Beddy-bye time.” Hugging the bottle to her bosom, she twirled around and marched an unsteady line out of the room.

  In that moment Reno found her curiously endearing.

  She was human after all, he decided, or —

  — was it his own one too many?

  Reno cleared the table, helped himself to a brew from a half-gone six-pack in the fridge and headed for the home office she had designated as his bedroom, a mirror to the judge’s professional life. Along with her desk and filing cabinets, there were shelves heavy with law books and orderly stacks of legal-size manila folders encased in blue plastic.

  The walls were loaded with meticulously arranged framed diplomas, certificates of appreciation, commendation and awards citations; photographs that cataloged her years in law school, the district attorney’s office and superior court, often paired with recognizable faces from the worlds of politics, show business and big business, tracking her as she aged with an angel’s grace, growing increasingly attractive with the passage of time.

  One color photo gave Reno pause, a young Gillian Armstrong on a boat deck, wearing a string bikini that left little to the imagination and a smile as broad as the sky. With her were a similarly clad young woman of exceptional dimensions and an older guy sporting a mop-top hairpiece that made him look more like Moe of the Three Stooges than one of the Beatles. He stood between them, wearing swim trunks disguised as a jock strap, arms around their waists and pulling them nearer to him while they toasted the camera lens with their martini glasses.

  Although the photo was a bit blurred, maybe caused by shifting waters as the shutter snapped, something familiar about the guy made Reno move in for closer study. After a few minutes, he had mentally subtracted the mop-top, added a beard to the ferret-shaped face, and had convinced himself he was looking an early edition of Walter Farnum.

  What was it Farnum had said about a holier-than-thou act when she was starting out in the DA’s office and making her rep on more than her good looks?

  A saint she ain’t, Farnum had said.

  Was the photo evidence to his declaration?

  If so —

  — would the judge give it this kind of display if there were something, anything about it that could ever come back to bite her on her well-toned ass, or —

  — did the photo hold some other significance?

  Reno tossed the beer can in the round file for two points and headed for the bathroom and the shower, where he always did some of his best thinking. He was working the questions when the stall door clicked open behind him. He turned and confirmed he’d been joined by the judge. She let him study her nakedness long enough for him to appreciate — it was as appetizing as the gourmet meal she’d made for them tonight — then took the bar of soap from him, ran her arms behind him and began a gentle scrubbing across his shoulder blades and up and down his spine.

  “Tell me, Detective, you have anything against older women?” she said, not sounding as drunk as she had made herself out to be earlier.

  “Not until now, Your Honor.”

  “Yes, your Gilly-girl can tell,” she said.

  • • •

  A week passed before Reno put the question to her.

  By now, he was sharing her bed on a nightly basis, the sex fantastic, ranging from the missionary sweetness he preferred to the roughhouse madness where she shouted commands and demands that by morning left him a jungle of aches, bruises, bites, and claw marks.

  He freed himself from her wrestler’s grip, rolled into a sitting position on the edge of the bed and, rubbing his arm where she’d last imprinted her teeth, said, “Do you plan to ever tell me the whole story about you and Walter Farnum?”

  “Come back to bed,” she said, tugging at his shoulder. “I’m not through yet with my Jackie-boy.” He shrugged her off, answered her growl and hiss with silence. “You know all there is to know,” she said. “Walter Farnum is why you’re here protecting me, damn it. Come on back. I need more of your protecting.”

  “I don’t know about the photo in your office.”

  “There are many photographs in my office.”

  “The one on the boat. You and some other gal and Farnum. I don’t know about that photograph. It is Farnum under that stupid hairpiece, right?”

  She sighed, pushed herself into a sitting position, reached for a teddy bear, and hugged it to her chest. “Do you know what I would give to have that marvelous bikini body again?” Reno didn’t answer. She feigned a pout. “You’re supposed to tell me I’m doing just fine with the body I have now.”

  She was.

  Oh, was she ever.

  But that’s not why Reno had fallen for this damned overbearing boss of a woman he was certain was playing him for reasons he was yet to figure. He didn’t know why, only that he had. Maybe because love is blind? Also deaf? And dumb? And so what?

  What he did know: He was desperate to hear the truth about Gilly and Walter Farnum. The whole truth and nothing but.

  Why?

  Jealousy, maybe?

  Jealousy, definitely.

  And something else.

  He turned and answered her impatient eyes, saying, “I hear tell you’re no saint, Your Honor.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Walter Farnum. When I visited him in County Jail.”

  “You visited him in County Jail?”

  “Put him on notice about you. A saint she ain’t, that’s what he said. His exact words.”

  She thought about it. “Between sins, I am. Everybody is. Even you, Jackie-boy.”

  “Even Walter Farnum?”

  She flashed him a melancholy smile. “What else did he have to say about me?” Reno shook his head. “All right then, it’s time for you to know the rest anyway. The photograph. I could have taken it down, hidden it in a drawer, but I left it on the wall because I wanted you to discover it. I was certain you’d recognize him, Walter. I needed you to challenge me about him, knowing I could never volunteer the story behind the picture because of where it might lead.”

  “That being?”

  She eluded his stare, focusing her attention on the teddy bear, finger-combing its plush brown synthetic fur for several moments before attacking his eyes again and asking, “Are you sure you want to know?” Reno motioned for her to continue. “First come on back into Mama’s arms, Jackie-boy. Then we’ll talk.” Her smile fired the room.

  Reno said, “First we talk, then we fuck.”

  “Ooh, I love it when you talk dirty,” she said, licking her lips.

  • • •

  Gilly made the bedroom a courtroom, the bed her witness stand, calmly giving quiet, well-articulated testimony to a jury of one, him, her memory pitch perfect on a train of events going back to when she was a freshman jockeying for position and prominence in the district attorney’s office.

  “The other girl in the picture, Kim, was my best friend from high school, and we were sharing an apartment in the mid-Wilshire district,” she said. “Kim was your typical struggling actress, who had me believing she earned her share of the rent working as a waitress, when in fact it was with the tip money from her job pole dancing at a strip joint in the Marina. That’s where Walter Farnum scored her, passing himself off as somebody who could help further her career. A few weeks into the relationship, she mentioned her gorgeous roomie worked for the DA, and
Walter suggested we both join him for a day’s outing on his yacht.”

  “The day the photograph was taken.”

  “Taken while it was still all sunshine and smiles, before the three of us got drunk, got high on quality grass and Colombian and Lord knows what else, got down and dirty, and — I passed out. Kim screaming startled me awake. She slapped Walter across the face, once, then again, before she turned and stumbled up the stairs and out of the bedroom suite. He chased after her, calling her a two-bit whore, worse, saying Kim had to be punished — he would show her — for daring to lay a hand on him. I was frightened out of my wits for her. I managed onto my feet and struggled upstairs after them, and — ”

  Gilly’s voice failed her.

  Her eyes moistened, then froze on empty space.

  “It’s okay, take your time,” Reno said. He reached over and stroked her check, allowed her to capture his hand long enough to plant kisses on his knuckles.

  Finally, she began again, “When I reached the deck, only Walter was there. No sign of Kim. Not then, not ever again. Walter propped my chin between his thumb and forefinger and told me in a voice as murderous as the act itself, ‘not one word about today to anybody, like it never happened. You don’t know me. I don’t know you. Tell me you understand. Do you? Do you understand?’” Her labored breathing evolved into a whine as she grabbed after Reno and showered his back with her tears, confessing, “I understood, yes. Nothing was going to bring Kim back, but I could stay alive by keeping my mouth shut about what had happened on the yacht. I suppose it’s what made me so tough as a judge, the need to make up for the biggest crime of all, my own sin in not going to the police.”

  “You never thought about blowing the whistle on Farnum?”

  “Of course. For days and weeks. Often. Even after I’d learned who and what Walter Farnum really was, a killer without a conscience. Even after one of his minions delivered the photograph to me in that expensive sterling silver frame, telling me it was a gift from Walter, a reminder that silence was golden and to keep on doing the smart thing. The smart thing...” Her voice had sunk to a sad whisper.