How Town

by Michael Nava

  “I know. I was talking about Morrow.”

  He frowned. “I told you, Morrow’s my compadre,” he said, using the Spanish expression that described a friend whom one thought of almost as kin.

  I persisted. “Morrow was the investigator the last time Paul was arrested. You’re the one who told me he was pissed when Paul got off. Maybe he’s trying to make up for that.”

  “I don’t know nothing about that, Henry.”

  “I just want you to think about it,” I replied, shivering in the chilly subterranean air.

  Ben opened the door of his car, reached in and pulled out a sweatshirt. “Here,” he said, handing it to me.

  “Thanks,” I said, putting it on. It was too big by half.

  He stood irresolutely for a moment. “Can I ask you something, Henry?”

  “Yeah.”

  “When I came up to your room the other day, and that guy answered the door. What was going on?”

  “We were sleeping.”

  He looked at me. “Together?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  He nodded, slowly. “I thought maybe he was joking when, you know, he said that thing about me joining you guys.”

  I studied his expression. He seemed neither particularly upset nor even especially embarrassed. “He was joking, Ben.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Well, like you said, different strokes for different folks.”

  He opened the door to his car again. “I got to go.”

  “Here,” I said, taking off the sweatshirt.

  “You can give it back to me next time,” he said, getting into the car. He rolled down the window. “Thanks for the run.”

  “See you, Ben.”

  “Yeah, see you.”

  I stood aside and let him back out. He waved and drove off. I waved back and headed up to my room, thinking I owed Josh an apology. Standing next to the car, talking about Josh and me, Vega’d had an erection.

  “Hiya, pal.”

  I glanced over in the direction of the bar and saw Mark standing half in, half out of the doorway with a tall glass in his hand. From the way he was holding himself, it didn’t look like his first drink of the evening. I went over to him.

  “Mark. What are you doing here?”

  He held out his glass. “Happy hour. You want to join me?”

  “I’m not really dressed for it.”

  A sloppy smile slid across his mouth. “I guess not. You been out running, huh?”

  “Yeah, a lot farther than I wanted to. I need to go upstairs and clean up.”

  “How ’bout some company?”

  “You alone?”

  “I was kind of waiting for you, Hank. Henry.”

  His eyes were streaked with red, and I could’ve got drunk just by breathing the same air. It wasn’t the way I wanted to remember him. “I’ll have to take a rain check, Mark. I’m really beat.”

  He opened his mouth to say something, but then just nodded.

  “I’ll call you.”

  “Yeah, do that. Do that.”

  The rest of the week passed quickly. Peter and I worked around the clock to put together the motion to change venue. It was in good shape by Friday, and I left Peter to finish it up, then went to see Paul before catching a flight to LA for the weekend.

  Though I’d talked to him on the phone a couple of times, I hadn’t seen Paul since the prelim. Over the phone he’d been listless, barely interested in what I’d had to say. The longer he was jailed, the more the jauntiness and defiance he’d displayed the first time I’d spoken to him had slipped away. Even so, I was still shocked by his appearance. He seemed to have aged ten years—ten bad years. He had a fatigued jailhouse pallor, bluish-white, and the lines around his eyes and mouth puckered sourly.

  “Have you been sick, Paul?” I asked.

  He shook his head.

  “You look like it,” I continued. “I think maybe we should have a doctor take a look at you.”

  In a low, tired voice, he said, “I don’t need a doctor, I know what’s wrong. This place is killing me.” He shut his eyes briefly. “Fucking guards. All day long it’s ‘Hey, pervert,’ ‘Hey, asshole.’ The cons are even worse.”

  I frowned. “I thought you were in high power.”

  He shook his head. “They moved me out after the prelim. I got my own cell but it’s on a regular cellblock. This big Mexican said to me last night, ‘I hear you like to fuck with little girls. Wait till lights out and I’ll fuck with you.’ I told the guard, the decent one, and he put me in another cell-block.”

  “I can get you moved back into isolation.”

  He shook his head. “And go crazy by myself?” Rubbing his eyes, he said, “I’ll take my chances. Last time I was here it wasn’t this bad. Of course, I bailed out after a couple of weeks. Now it’s been what, six, eight weeks. I lost track of time. So what’s going on, Henry?”

  “I’m going to file a motion to transfer venue on Monday. If we win, they’ll move you down to San Francisco. If we lose, I’ll go up on appeal.”

  Grimly smiling, he said, “And I get to remain a guest of the state no matter what, right?”

  “I’ll make another bail application.”

  “In front of Phelan?” he asked. “He’s the one who wouldn’t drop charges last time. I’ve got a feeling that I’m just where everyone wants me.” He yawned. “Sorry, didn’t sleep much last night.”

  “I bet.”

  He half-smiled. “I wasn’t worried about getting raped. What happened is that they brought in this kid a couple of days ago, maybe eighteen, nineteen, kind of pretty if you go for that. Someone did, last night.” He bit a nail, spat it out. “You know what’s happened to me in here, Henry? I heard that kid and did I call for the guards?” He shook his head. “No, I beat off.” He looked away from me. “Can you believe that? I don’t even like boys. When I get out of here, I’m going to take what’s left of me and kill it.”

  “This won’t last forever.”

  “Yeah?” he said caustically. “You think I won’t be remembering this the rest of my life?” A moment later he said, “I haven’t seen Sara since the prelim.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He shrugged. “Who the fuck can blame her, married to a fuckup like me.”

  “You just make it worse for yourself, talking that way.”

  “Positive thinking doesn’t work in here, Henry,” he said. “It’s the real world in here. Eat or be eaten. Have you talked to Ruth again?”

  I nodded. I’d been calling her almost every day but she was still being evasive about whether she’d testify. Apparently Elena hadn’t come down on the side of truth and justice.

  “Is she going to testify for me?”

  “She’s still thinking about it,” I said, adding, “You know I can still subpoena her whether she wants to testify or not.”

  “We both know how much good that’s going to do,” he replied. “If I could just talk to her.”

  “I think that would be a mistake right now.” I got up. “I have a plane to catch to LA. I’ll be back on Monday. Will you be all right?”

  “Yeah, I’ll be fine.”

  “I’ll see you then,” I said. He didn’t reply.

  17

  I GOT INTO LA SHORTLY after noon. I’d arranged for Emma to pick me up in my car, so that I could drop her off back at the office and go directly to the Criminal Courts Building downtown, where I had an appearance at one-thirty. Stepping to the curb outside the United terminal, I saw her lounging against my triple-parked Prelude, deep in conversation with an airport cop, who had his citation book on the top of the car, pen poised in the air. She laid a languid hand on his shoulder, bent close and whispered something. He straightened up, looking at her skeptically and slowly put the book away.

  “Hello,” I said, approaching, “is there a problem?”

  Emma looked at me, and I saw myself doubled in her sunglasses. “No problem, Henry. Is there, Officer?”

  He sm
iled. “No Ma’am,” and moved down to the next car.

  Getting into the car, I asked, “What was that all about?”

  She started the car up. “He wanted to give me a ticket but I just told him what a bother it would be if my father had to call his supervisor and straighten things out.”

  We bumped forward in the heavy traffic. “Your father?”

  “The mayor,” she replied. “Thank God all us black people look alike to white folk. He didn’t know if I was shittin’ him or not, then you showed up just in time.”

  “Your father the mayor,” I said. “You’re going to get into trouble someday.”

  “So what? I know a great lawyer.” She glanced at me. “You look tired, Henry.”

  “It’s been a long week.” I rubbed my eyes. “Any emergencies?”

  She leaned on the horn at the Mercedes that had just cut us off. “Freeman wants you to call him when you’re finished in court.”

  The sky was steel gray, not from clouds but from smog, and the air was almost as hot here as it had been in Los Robles that morning. My stomach complained about not having been fed and I felt a headache coming up. I wanted to blame someone for the lousy way I felt but the only available candidate was my secretary and I knew better than to tangle with her, so I lapsed into churlish, silent self-pity.

  “You’re going to be late,” she said, as we bounded down Century Boulevard. “You better call.”

  I picked up the car phone and dialed the court. The phone was a concession to the distances I had to travel getting around to the various courthouses in the city. My day would sometimes begin in Pasadena and end in Santa Monica. I reached the clerk and explained the problem.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “The judge went out for a birthday lunch. He won’t be back before two.”

  We turned sharply, and I bumped my head against the window. I looked at Emma. “Do you mind?”

  “Sorry, I’m just trying to get you to court on time.”

  The hearing downtown was for sentencing in a felony driving-under-the-influence case. My client was a Westside doctor who had dipped once too often into his own pharmaceuticals and then driven home. He’d struck an old man, seriously injuring him. In fact, the old man would probably have died if my MD hadn’t had enough of his wits left about him to render emergency first aid. This, a stack of testimonials, and self-commitment into a drug-treatment center kept him out of jail, for the time being. The judge told us to come back in three months for a progress report and final sentencing.

  My client thanked me effusively. If I’d been thinking straight I would have presented him with my bill then and there while he was in the white heat of gratitude. But I didn’t. I accepted his thanks, told him to stay sober until at least the next hearing and called my investigator, Freeman Vidor.

  Once we’d got past the preliminaries, he said, “Why don’t you come over to my office.”

  I glanced at my watch. It was three-thirty. “Let’s make it lunch,” I replied. “I haven’t eaten today.”

  “How about the Code Seven.”

  “If you insist.”

  “It’s convenient.”

  “It’s lethal,” I replied. “Oh, all right. Ten minutes.”

  “See you there.”

  Code Seven is police argot for a meal break and was also the name of a dark, smoky bar-and-grill on First Street that served as a watering hole for LA’s finest. Freeman’s lingering affection for the place dated to the time when he’d been a cop. Never having been a cop I didn’t share his enthusiasm. Coming into the Code Seven out of the afternoon glare was like crawling into the earth. The brightest thing in the room was a glass-enclosed display of badges and shoulder patches from various police agencies mounted on the wall near the entrance. After that the going got pretty murky. I found a booth, ordered a hamburger and a cup of coffee and waited for Freeman to show up.

  Patsy Cline crooned from the jukebox while a couple of guys, off-duty cops by their postures, sat at the bar getting drunk. One of them had reached that contemplative state in which song lyrics begin to sound really deep. The other was putting the sauce away pretty grimly, a man in the process of self-medication. Watching them brought back entirely too much of my own history and I was relieved when Freeman slid into the booth, removed his Porsche sunglasses and ordered a boilermaker from the used blonde who slammed my burger and coffee on the table like a woman who had something to say.

  “Enjoy,” she sneered. I inspected the food—this was not a likely possibility.

  “So how’s your weenie wagger up in Los Robles?” Freeman asked.

  I swallowed the bite of burger in my mouth. “We got screwed seven ways from Sunday at the prelim.” Briefly, I filled him in.

  Our blonde brought him his booze and he knocked back the whiskey. “Signal Hill justice.”

  The allusion was to the murder of a black prisoner by members of the police department of a nearby town and the subsequent cover-up.

  “Something like that.” I sipped my coffee. “Paul thinks his brother set up the prosecution, but this is a little too deep for a civilian to pull off.”

  “What do the cops have against him?”

  “He got out of that child molest case,” I said. “The same cop who investigated that case is investigator on this one. Same DA. It’s supposed to be tried by the same judge. None of them were happy when charges were dismissed last time. Maybe they want to be sure he doesn’t get away.”

  Freeman looked skeptical. “When I was a cop,” he said, “I saw a lot of my arrests go to shit when they got into court. You just figure on that happening to a certain percentage of them and you don’t take it personal.”

  “Los Robles isn’t Los Angeles. The DA probably wins every case he takes to trial. Cops are a bigger deal up there, too.”

  He sipped his beer. “You know what I don’t understand about this case?”

  “No, what?”

  “McKay’s part. Was it just a coincidence that he was in Los Robles? Was it just a coincidence that he was killed?”

  “You think he was murdered as part of a frame-up?”

  “Unless Paul Windsor did it.”

  I abandoned my food. “I’m prepared to believe that the cops fabricated evidence,” I said, “but killing the guy?”

  “It sure would help if we knew more about him.”

  “That’s your job,” I said.

  “I’ve been drawing blanks,” Freeman said. “LAPD never heard of him. Neither have the feds. That alone seems real suspicious. Fifty-year-old man who we know is a pedophile, deals porn, procures kids for his friends, with no record at all.” He shook his head. “Now maybe he was very, very careful and discreet, but I doubt it. These guys are on a crusade to make the world safe for baby fucking, plus, it’s risky to date eleven-year-olds. Someone gets suspicious.”

  “Do you have a theory about Mr. McKay?”

  “Yeah,” Freeman said, lighting a Winston. “Maybe his name wasn’t John McKay.”

  “If he has any kind of rap sheet it would be cross-indexed by his aliases,” I pointed out.

  “Only if the cops knew about them.”

  Our waitress came by, glanced at my empty coffee cup and splashed more coffee into it. She slammed down a check.

  “Yes, that’s true.”

  “The only thing we got is those AA chips.”

  “I told you, Freeman, if he said anything at those meetings, it was confidential. That’s the whole point of anonymity.”

  “Hey,” he said, holding up his empty shot glass to the waitress. “The point’s to protect the identity of the guy talking, not the guys listening, right?”

  “So?”

  “Well this guy’s dead, so who are you protecting except maybe the man who killed him?”

  The waitress slopped another shot on the table. Freeman lifted it to his lips, tasting it. Mechanically, I raised my coffee cup and drank.

  “Am I right, Henry?”

  I nodded. “There’s still a lit
tle problem of logistics,” I said. “There are almost two thousand meetings a week in the LA area.”

  “He lived in Glendale,” Freeman said, “and I bet he went to gay meetings.”

  “He was a pedophile, not gay,” I said, by rote. “But you’re probably right. I can’t imagine him speaking up in a straight meeting full of moms and dads. AA unity has its limits.” I ran my mental map of LA through my head. “The nearest gay meetings from Glendale would be in Silver Lake.”

  Freeman smiled. “There’s one at six o’clock.”

  “Your research has been thorough,” I remarked.

  “And then there’s one at eight, and one at eleven.”

  “Well, I needed a meeting, anyway.”

  “My name is Todd and I’m an alcoholic.”

  This announcement was greeted by a chorus of “Hi, Todd,” from the dozen or so men, including myself, sitting around a table behind candles set into orange pear-shaped jars covered with plastic netting. They were the kind of candles found only at economy-minded Italian restaurants and meetings of AA. The speaker, a tall, dark-haired man in his mid-twenties with a guileless face, opened a notebook and began to read.

  “Alcoholics Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength and hope with each other that they may solve their common problem and help others to recover from alcoholism. The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking. There are no dues or fees for AA membership …”

  My mind wandered as Todd continued reading the preamble. This was the tenth meeting I’d been to in two and a half days. I’d stopped at home only to eat, sleep and catch up on pending cases. I’d called Peter and instructed him to file our motion. I was due back in Los Robles on Friday for the hearing.

  I hadn’t gotten anywhere with McKay until I’d run into Todd just before this meeting started. Todd was someone I’d seen around before, one of those AA types who make it their mission to talk to backbenchers like me. I didn’t mind him the way I did other self-appointed guardians of sobriety; he had a lighter touch than most. I’d run into him coming in tonight and we’d talked for a few minutes catching up. I’d mentioned John McKay’s name without much expectation of response and been surprised when he said, “John M. I know him.”