“I look that bad?”
He nods.
“Alex Ives, twenty-six, arrested for DUI. A few bruises. No broken bones,” I tell him.
“That still doesn’t answer my question. Why are we taking the case? Is there a fee involved?”
“He’s a friend of Sarah’s,” I tell him.
“Ahh . . .” He nods slowly as if to say, “We are now reduced to this.”
Sarah is my daughter. She is mid-twenties going on forty and has a mother complex for troubled souls. She seems to have been born with a divining rod for knowing the naturally correct thing to do in any situation. Not just social etiquette, but what is right. Sarah lacks the gene that afflicts so many of the young with poor judgment. You might call her old-fashioned. I choose to call her wise. For this, I am blessed. For the same reason, when she asks a favor, I would very likely come to question my own judgment if I said no.
“The kid didn’t call me,” I tell Harry. “He called Sarah. Apparently they’ve known each other since high school.”
“So what did he have to say?” says Harry. “This client of ours?”
“Says he’s sorry, and he’s scared.”
“That’s it?”
“The sorry part. The rest hung over him like a vapor. You’d think he’d never seen concrete walls before.” Alex Ives seemed to be dying of sleep deprivation, and still the fear was dripping off him like an icicle. “Said he’d never been arrested before.”
“What else?”
“Apart from that, he can’t remember a thing.”
“Well, at least he remembered that part. Hope he told the cops the same story.” Harry looks at me over the top of his glasses, cheaters that he wears mostly for reading. “You believe him? Or do you think maybe he was just that juiced? If he’s telling the truth, with that kind of memory loss he probably blew a zero-point-three on the Breathalyzer.”
“He was unconscious at the scene. We won’t get the blood alcohol report until this afternoon. Cops said they smelled alcohol on him.”
“And, of course, while they were treating him and he was unconscious, they sank their fangs into his neck and drew blood,” says Harry.
“A passing motorist pulled him from his car and away from the flames. Otherwise we wouldn’t even have him. Everything inside both cars was toast.”
“Thank God for small favors.” Sarcasm is Harry’s middle name.
“It looks like Ives T-boned the other vehicle at an intersection, a dirt road and a two-lane highway east of town out in the desert. Way the hell out, according to the cops. McCain Valley Road.”
“He lives out there?”
“No. He lives in town. A condo in the Gas Lamp District.”
“What was he doing way out there? That’s fifty miles as the crow flies,” says Harry.
I shake my head. “Says he doesn’t know. The last thing he remembers is being at a party up north near Del Mar, about seven thirty last evening, and then nothing.”
“Was he drinking at this party?” says Harry.
“Says he had one drink.”
“How big was the glass? Anybody with him? I mean, to vouch for this one-drink theory.”
I shake my head. “He says he was alone.”
“Let’s see if I’ve got this . . . unconscious at the scene, smells of alcohol and the other driver is dead. And now he can’t remember anything, except for the fact that he had only one drink. I’d say we got the wrong client. Why couldn’t Sarah know the cinder in the other car? Her blood kin at least will have a good civil case.” What Harry means is damages against our guy. “Tell me he has insurance and a valid license.” Harry doesn’t want to be stuck fending off a wrongful death case with no coverage while jousting with a prosecutor over hard time for vehicular manslaughter.
I nod. “He has insurance and a license that hasn’t been revoked as far as I know. They ran a rap sheet and found no priors. So he doesn’t look to be a habitual drunk.”
“That could mean that he’s just been lucky up to now.” Harry is the essential cynic.
“He could be lying about what he remembers. Like I say, he’s scared.”
“He should be,” says Harry. “He could be facing anywhere from four to six years in the pen.”
In a death case, prosecutors will invariably push for the upper end. MADD, Mothers Against Drunk Drivers, has sensitized district attorneys and judges who have to stand for election to the realities of politics. By the same token, the other party is dead and you can bet the prosecutor who tries the case will be reminding the jury and the judge of this fact at every opportunity.
“Anything by way of an accident report?” says Harry.
“Not out yet,” I tell him.
“What does our client remember about this party he went to?”
“According to Ives, he was invited to the gig by some girl he met at work. The scene was a big house, swimming pool, lots of people, music, an open bar, but he can’t remember the address.”
“Of course not,” says Harry.
“He said he’d recognize the place if he saw it again. The street address was on a note that he had in his wallet. Along with the girl’s name and phone number.”
“So he’d never met this girl before?”
“No. And he can’t remember her name.”
“She must have made a deep impression,” says Harry. “Still, her name will be on the note in the wallet. The cops have it, I assume?” says Harry.
“No. As a matter of fact, they don’t. I checked. They got his watch, some cash he had in his pocket, and a graduation ring from college.”
“That’s it?”
“They figure the wallet must have been lost on the seat of the car, or else he dropped it somewhere. . . .”
“So, assuming this note existed, it probably got torched in the fire.” Harry finishes the thought for me. “You can bet the cops will be looking for it. If our boy was falling-down drunk when he left the party, there will be lots of people who saw him, witnesses,” says Harry, “but not for our side. Without the wallet, how did the cops ID him if, as you say, he was unconscious?”
“Fingerprints. Ives had a temp job with a defense contractor a few years ago, a software company under contract to the navy. His prints were on file.”
“And the girl who invited him, did he see her at the party?”
“He says she never showed, or at least he doesn’t remember,” I tell him.
“Convenient.” Harry is thinking that there was no party, that Ives got drunk somewhere else, maybe a bar, and doesn’t want to fess up because he knows there were witnesses who can testify as to his lack of sobriety. Harry goes silent for a moment as he thinks. Then the ultimate question: “How are we getting paid for this? Does our client have anything that passes for money?”
“No.” I watch his arched eyebrows collapse before I add: “But his parents do. They own a large aviation servicing company at the airport. Quite well off, from what I understand. And they love their son. I met them at the hospital. Lovely people. You’ll like them.”
“I already do.” Harry smiles, a broad affable grin. “Thank Sarah for the referral,” he says.
Chapter 2
HERE IS THE mystery. Alex Ives’s blood alcohol report showed up at our office this morning. And surprise, Ives was not over the legal limit. In fact, he wasn’t even close. In California, the threshold is set at a 0.08 percent blood alcohol level. Ives barely tilted the meter at 0.01. You would probably show a higher blood alcohol level hosing out your mouth with some mouthwash. There is no question concerning the accuracy of the test. They drew blood. It is beginning to look as if Ives’s story of having only one drink is true. He may not have even finished it.
In the world of simple citations for a DUI, driving under the influence, that would probably be the end of the case. The prosecutor would dump it or charge Ives with a lesser-included offense, speeding or weaving in the lane if they saw him driving. But the charge of vehicular manslaughter has them look
ing deeper. The cops are now back, burning Bunsens in their lab looking for drugs. The chemical tests for these take a lot longer. So we wait.
Harry and I have delivered the good news and the bad news to Ives in one of the small conference rooms at the county lockup.
“You sure you weren’t on any medications?” I ask him.
“Nothing,” says Ives.
We are trying to prep for a bail hearing tomorrow morning, looking for anything that might stand in the way of springing him from the county’s concrete abode.
Ives looks at us from across the table. Sandy haired, big bright blue eyes, well over six feet, a tall wiry rail of a kid, and scared. Jimmy Stewart in his youth unburdening his soul to two hapless angels.
“If there is anything in the blood they will find it,” says Harry.
“I don’t do drugs,” says Ives.
“Good boy,” says Harry.
“What do we have on the other driver?” I look at my partner. Harry hasn’t had time to read all the reports. They have been coming in in bits and pieces over a couple of days now. “Any alcohol in her body? Could be she was drinking.”
“If she was, it went up in the flames,” says Harry. He is master of documents this afternoon, a growing file spread out on the metal table in front of him. “According to the accident report, the victim’s name was Serna, first name Olinda. Forty-seven years old. Out-of-state license, driving a rental car. . . .”
“What did you say her name was?” says Ives.
Harry glances at him, then looks down at the page again. “Serna, Olinda Serna. I guess that’s how you’d pronounce it.”
“Can’t be,” says Ives.
“What are you talking about?” I ask.
“Can’t be her,” says Ives.
“Can’t be who?”
“Serna,” he says.
I glance at Harry who has the same stagestruck expression as I do.
“Are you telling us you knew her?” says Harry.
“No, no. It must be somebody else. Maybe the same name,” says Ives.
Harry gives me a look as if to say, “How many Olindas do you know?”
“Assuming it’s her, I didn’t really know her. Never met her. I just know the name. It’s a story we’ve been working on at the Gravesite. My job,” says Ives.
Harry is now sitting bolt upright in the chair. “Explain!”
“We’ve been working on this story close to a year now. Major investigation,” he says. “And I recognize the name. Assuming it’s the same person.”
“Where was this person from?” asks Harry. “This person in your story. Where did she live? What city?”
“It would be somewhere around Washington, D.C., if it’s her.”
Harry is looking at the report, flips one page, looks up and says: “Is Silver Spring, Maryland, close enough?”
“The cops never told you who the victim was?” I ask Ives.
“No, I didn’t know until just now. No idea,” he says.
“Do you know what this other woman, the one in your story, did for a living?” Harry looks at him.
“She was a lawyer,” says Alex.
“Mandella, Harbet, Cain, and Jenson?” says Harry.
Ives’s face is all big round eyes at this moment, his Adam’s apple bobbing.
“Well, I guess if you have to kill a lawyer, you may as well kill a big corporate one,” says Harry.
According to the police report, the cops found business cards in the victim’s purse, what was left of it. They ID’ed her from those and the VIN number on the burned-out car that was traced back to the rental agency.
Mandella is one of the largest law firms in the country. It has offices in a dozen cities in the Americas, Europe, and Asia. The minute the ashes cool from the Arab Spring, you can bet they will be back there as well. They practice law the same way the US military fights its battles, with overwhelming force, cutting-edge weapons, and surprise flanking power plays. If their clients can’t win on the law, they will go to Congress and change it.
The multinational businesses that are not on their client list are said not to be worth having. One of their long-dead managing partners, it is rumored, got the feuding Arab clans to put down their guns long enough to set up OPEC, the world oil cartel, at which point the Arabs stopped robbing camel caravans and started plundering the industrialized West. If you believe Mandella’s PR, lawyers from the firm secured the foreign flag rights for Noah’s ark. They would glaze the words “Super Lawyers” on the glass doors to their offices, but who needs it when the brass plaques next to it show a list of partners including four retired members of the US Senate and one over-the-hill Supreme Court Justice. The finger of God is said to be painted on the ceiling of their conference rooms, franchise rights for which they acquired when Jehovah evicted their client, Adam, from the Garden of Eden.
“Listen, you have to believe me,” says Ives. “I had no idea. I don’t remember anything about the accident or anything about that night. Nothing. I don’t remember the other car. I don’t remember hitting it. I don’t remember getting in my car to drive. The last thing I remember is going to the party, having a drink, and then nothing.” He looks at us for a moment, to Harry and then back to me. “I mean . . . I know it looks bad. The fact I even knew who she was. But I never met her.”
“It appears that you ran into her at one point,” says Harry. Bad joke. “You have to admit, it’s one hell of a coincidence. Let’s hope the cops don’t know.”
Harry and I are thinking the same thing. The police may change their theory of the case if they find out there was any connection between Ives and the victim before the accident.
“Tell us what this story is about,” says Harry. “The one involving Serna.”
“Oh, I can’t do that,” says Ives.
“What?” says Harry.
“Not without an OK from my editor.”
“An OK from your editor?” says Harry. “Do you understand what you’re facing here? If the cops get wind of any involvement between you and the victim, they are going to start turning over rocks looking for evidence of intentional homicide. Depending on what they find, you won’t be looking at manslaughter any longer but murder. Was there any bad blood between you and her?”
“Not on my part. It was just a story. Nothing personal,” says Ives.
“What is this story about?”
“You don’t really think I killed her on purpose?”
“For my part, I don’t. But I can’t vouch for the D.A.,” says Harry. “So why don’t you fill us in.”
“It’s big. It’s a very big story. At this point there are a lot of leads. What we need is confirmation.”
“Confirmation of what?” Harry is getting hot.
“That’s what I can’t tell you,” says Ives. “It’s not my story. I don’t have any personal stake in it. That’s what I’m saying. I didn’t have any reason to harm Serna. I never met her. She was a name. That’s all.”
“But she was involved?” I ask.
“Her name kept popping up during the investigation,” says Ives.
Alex is what passes for an investigative reporter in the age of digital news. The changing tech world has dislocated everything from journalism to jukeboxes. It has untethered us from the world we thought we knew and left us to swim in a sea of uncertainty. Like primitive natives, we are constantly dazzled by shiny new stuff, smartphones that respond to voice commands and mobile hot spots the size of a thimble that connect us to the universe. But like the native jungles of the New World, the industries in which we work may disappear tomorrow, victims of the shiny new stuff, the treasures that have seduced us. Where newspapers once existed, now there are blog sites. More nimble, faster, some of them blunt-edged partisan weapons for dismantling a republic. Alex works for one of these, a blog site headquartered in Washington. He is their West Coast correspondent.
“I’m not sure how much I can tell you. We’ve been working on it for about a year now. Mostly in D.C.
, but also out here on the coast. It’s the reason I know her name.”
“If you want us to represent you,” says Harry, “you’re going to have to trust us.”
“I do. But you have to understand the story is not mine, it belongs to the Gravesite.” Ives is talking about the Washington Gravesite, the digitized scandal sheet owned by Tory Graves, Ives’s boss and the purveyor of the hottest political dirt since the days of Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson. What TMZ is to celebrity news and entertainment gossip, the Washington Gravesite is to those who work in politics. It parcels out breaking news to the various cable stations, which feed upon it depending on their particular partisan political bias. It is unclear how Graves makes his money, whether he gets paid for exclusive stories or is funded by various interest groups with an ax to grind. Either way he seems to be surviving in what is by any measure a political snake pit of Olympian proportions.
“Did you ever talk to Serna, interview her, have any direct contact with her at all?” asks Harry.
Ives is shaking his head.
“Did you communicate with her in any way?” I ask.
“No. And I can’t tell you anything beyond that, not until I talk to my editor.”
Harry and I look at each other. I give Ives a big sigh, shrug my shoulders, and slowly shake my head. “We’re just trying to help you.”
“I know you are and I appreciate it,” says Ives. “But I can’t talk about my work. That’s confidential. It’s off-limits.”
“Let’s hope the court agrees,” says Harry. “But I can tell you it won’t.”
“Let’s leave it for the moment,” I tell him. “I assume your parents are good for the bail bond?”
“I think so. How much do you think it’ll be?”
“No way to be certain until we get in front of the judge. It’s a bailable offense, at least at the moment. But the D.A. will probably try to up the ante. Make it expensive. Have you done any recent international travel?”
“For work,” he says.
“How long ago and how often?”
“Europe, twice in the last year.”
“Where?” says Harry.
“I went to Switzerland with my boss, Tory Graves.”
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