by John Decure
“Thank you,” she told me. “You’re too much a gentleman to tell the unvarnished truth, but your discretion is much appreciated.”
I had lied and right off, she knew it. Damn. Doesn’t matter if the woman looks the way she does, she gets paid to observe people, to express her insights into the human mind. Of course she’d know I wasn’t straight with her.
I was flush with shame and had to look away, down the block at a snarl of cars out in the intersection. This case, man, everything about it felt like being out to sea without a compass. I decided to play it straight from here on out.
The minivan fired right up, and Ms. Aames and I stepped back a foot or two. Right then, giving a tiny wave good-bye as we watched Dr. Glick pull out into traffic on Fourth, I should’ve said my good-byes to Ms. Aames, too. Wasn’t safe, not with Bulldog out and about, because you never know where he might turn up. But truthfully, Bulldog wasn’t much on my mind. Ms. Aames was onto something and just wouldn’t let up. You could sense it ever since we left the courtroom. She wanted to talk.
We walked on down to Broadway and crossed on a green light without waiting. People were spilling out onto the streets, heading home from work at this hour, and every lane on Fourth was packed with cars and trucks and buses and scooters. A man with messy hair and a gut sticking out from a tee that was too small, looking like he crawled through a crack in the border fence about an hour ago, he came walking by pushing one of those white cooler carts with little pictures of ice cream plastered all over the sides. He smiled when Ms. Aames stopped him, and we saw that he had to be missing half his teeth.
I bought Ms. Aames a lime fruit bar and an ice cream sandwich for myself. We kept walking, going at our ice creams as the sunset start streaking the sky, turning the old brick and stone buildings down the block from gold and yellow to pink and ashy purple. Ms. Aames saw me looking south, a ways down Fourth.
“See that bank on the corner down there? One with the pillars as big as bridge supports?”
“Quite a beauty. Looks like an ancient temple.”
“Imagine seeing it chasing you down the street.”
“Say what?”
I had stopped walking altogether.
“That building. It chased me, but not really. You know, in my mind.”
“No, ma’am. I don’t follow.”
She told me she had problems sometimes, with having visions, seeing things that weren’t really there. Sometimes, but not all the time.
“How about in court.”
“No,” she said. “Well, rarely. Sad to say it, but most of the can’t-believe-I’m-seeing-this bullshit I’ve witnessed in that place has been real.”
“I’ll bet. Don’t they have medicine for that? Treatment?”
She said yeah, she’d tried a lot of different drugs, but most of them knocked her on her ass, to the point she couldn’t work. “Or even feel like a normal person, Deshaun.”
“Sounds pretty bad.”
“It’s worse than seeing things, not being able to outthink your opponent.”
Some of the stuff she took didn’t work at all, she said. Lately, she’d done better, found a way to keep sorting through what she sees, keep track of how her brain’s working that way. Didn’t sound like anything near a foolproof method of keeping your head on straight to me, but then, who am I to say? The young lady’s a tiger in court, so it must be working.
Standing there, talking on the corner of Fourth and Spring now, we see some guy is walking a pair of dogs that look expensive, got these long noses and perfect fur, strutting with their heads up, tails straight like some dog-show judge is about to hand them a blue ribbon. Guy walking the dogs has tight jeans and a hairdo that looks windblown but I’d bet he spent an hour getting it to fall just so. Ms. Aames sees how I’m looking the dog-walker over.
“A lot of artist types live in lofts around here.”
“This used to be wall-to-wall shitsville,” I said. “It’s something, how the times, and neighborhoods, keep on changing.”
Ms. Aames said, “Yeah, but don’t get too breathless about this place’s transformation. You can score coke, pills, H, crystal meth, anything you want within a block or two from here.”
I just stared at her again, same way I did when she told me the bank chased her down the street. She grinned, said that was just another way she coped with her brain being out of whack, but not so much anymore.
Finished my ice cream with one last, big bite. More poofy dogs passed on by. Ms. Aames said she was parked in an indoor garage another block away off Main. But first, something about the case was bothering her.
“It’s how Rue Loberg found her way back to Dr. Fallon’s office.”
“What about it?”
“I can’t bridge the gap from the time she left him as a patient, creeped out to the point that she’d have been happy if she never went back, to the following year when they’re doing it on his couch. When I questioned her about that, um, transition, she seemed to hold back. Overall, her testimony was solid. I mean, to me she sounded highly credible throughout.”
“I agree with you there, Ms. Aames.”
“Please, it’s Bradlee. But it was like she was skirting something, skipping over a step. I think the judge noticed it, too.”
Right then I knew I had a problem, but I didn’t realize it was written all over my face. Ms. Aames, she tilted up her dark shades and drilled those black licorice eyes right down on me.
“What’s missing? And if you can’t say, point me in the right direction. Tell me where to look.”
I looked around, but on the street there was nobody but strangers around. “Thing is, that civil case I was hired to investigate on? Well, it paid real well, ma’am, and one of the things I had to agree to was, uh, not to talk about what I found.”
She took a step back and hissed at the sky. “Please, not this shit again. What is up with these stupid civil settlements? It’s not a fucking suicide pact, Deshaun. You’re not cracking open the lost ark.”
“I know, I know.”
Ms. Aames pointed back up the street to where we come from, the big old, almond-color department store with the green trim on all the window frames and ledges.
“Then what was with the testimony I heard back there?”
“I probably said too much as it is, ma’am. My guess, Mister Heidegger’s already been on the phone, making trouble for me.”
She shrugged her shoulders, that big head of hair shakin’ around. A man walking along in a gray suit on the sidewalk, he sees her and, boy howdy, needs a closer look, starts to stare so hard he almost trips over a hydrant.
“That asshole Heidegger can’t find his way out of a paper bag, Deshaun. He tries to push your buttons, let me know. No—I’ll make him cease and desist myself.”
“You’d do that.”
She looked at me, her perfectly shaped face a blank. “Hell yeah, with pleasure. I know a State Bar prosecutor, J. Shepard. He’s a surfing buddy of mine. I make a professional misconduct complaint, J. will hand-carry that sucker through the system for me.”
“You think this hush-hush stuff’s against the rules for lawyers, huh?”
“I don’t think so, I know it. He’s suppressing evidence.”
“I guess you’re right.”
“Listen, Heidegger approaches you with any money, let me know. He pulls that shit, I’ll get his ass disbarred.”
Her comment about money had me feeling lower than a legless skunk. The whole episode with Mr. Holmes was bringing me a mighty spell of shame, as you can imagine.
“Thank you, ma’am. You put my mind at ease.”
“It’s Bradlee, Deshaun. For a guy whose mind is at ease, you look like you’ve seen a ghost. You all right?”
“Long day. Lot on my mind.”
I couldn’t stand it anymore. Maybe I’d get sued by those people from the lawsuit, or maybe Ms. Aames could protect me by threatening them. Maybe the strong move I put on Mr. Leyes was enough. But I couldn’t take it
anymore. Standing there in a sea of foot-traffic, cars roaring down the cooling black asphalt, smell of piss rolling up from the gutters, I guess I made a decision.
“Now, that gap you were wondering about, between Mrs. Loberg’s therapy, her quitting it, then coming back?”
She perked right up. “That’s the part I just don’t get, Deshaun.”
“Their daughter. Mindy. They don’t want to drag her into this mess. Girl was stuck in the middle, right in the part of the case you say you can’t piece together.”
“Why didn’t Rue or Andy Loberg talk about her when they testified?”
“Because Mindy, she was stuck. Real bad. See, she used to see Doctor Don alone, and now and then, he wanted her mother and father to sit in too, even the messed-up son, so they could talk about problems they all were having, you know, within the family.”
“Conjoint.”
“That’s right, ma’am. Mindy, she got this boyfriend, want to move in with him, and it causes this big fight with her parents, but Mindy has a mind of her own, she does it anyway. Meantime, both she and her mother had stopped seeing Doctor Don. But then, about a year later, things aren’t going so hot for Mindy and the boyfriend, so she comes back to Doctor Don, to talk about it. What happens then is he uses Mindy as an excuse to get her mother back into his office.”
Ms. Aames was stopped cold. “That’s despicable.”
“About how Mindy felt about it, too, ma’am. And when her mother and Dr. Don, um, got involved—”
“I’m sure she was blown away. Let me guess, by the time the lawsuit came along, she’d disowned her folks.”
“Pretty much. And out of respect for her, because of the mess their family had become, they let her go her own way. But she did help with the lawsuit. At least long enough to see to it there’d be a settlement.”
A tall guy lugging a rack of leather belts and purses slowed up like we might see something of interest and buy it. Ms. Aames gave him a look to rock him back on his heels.
“I’ll bet Mindy Loberg was the key to the whole civil case.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“They used her as the threat they needed to settle.”
“You get the picture.”
“Well, that’s it, then. She has to testify.”
“I thought your part of the case was over.”
“Rebuttal,” she said, a rack of bright white teeth shining confidently. Right then she stepped closer to me, near enough to put her hand around my wrist. “Thank you, Deshaun.”
I shut my eyes, too ashamed to say you’re welcome.
A steady flow of strange faces bent their way around us on the sidewalk. Homeless guy with a Lincoln beard, swearing and cussing at thin air. Hip young dude in a black suit and open collar, had a stare at Ms. Aames, of course, then me, probably wondering how a black man managed to break off such a fine piece.
“So, Mindy’s done with her family.”
“That’s my understanding, ma’am.”
“Can you find her for me?”
“I got a head start on all that already, Ms. Aames. When I investigated this thing, I left no stone unturned. Looked into the boyfriend’s family when Mr. Loberg said he wanted to make sure Mindy would be okay. He paid me extra for that. Anyway, they run some concessions at swap meets, selling antiques and other valuables. Most of it legit, but a contact I got in LAPD, he ran a CII arrest report for me and come up with two burglary convictions, a grand theft, and a couple petty larcenies between Mom and Dad. Old stuff, a long time ago.”
“What about the boyfriend?”
“He had an arrest for transporting stolen goods across state lines, but the AUSA who had the case didn’t like it, so the kid walked. Some of the stuff the family sells, it’s black market, for sure.”
“Stolen.”
“They’re small-timers, but I’m pretty sure LAPD’s still keepin’ tabs on them. I’ll make a call.”
Ms. Aames smiled like she hadn’t all day. “You are the man, Deshaun.”
“Happy to help,” I said.
“Help nothing, you’re saving my ass.”
I returned kind feelings, but inside, all I felt was torn up. I always thought I had my own business, a black man proud I didn’t work for the Man. But what I failed to notice—or maybe just wouldn’t admit to until now—was how easy it had become for me to let myself be bought. I held the key to the young lady’s whole damn case here, and if I hadn’t hung around to watch Ms. Glick testify, Ms. Aames would be in the soup.
That’s when things got so strange that I didn’t know if I was awake or in a dream.
We were just east of Spring, still on Fourth, heading down to the indoor parking structure, just past a sign that announced we were in the Old Bank District. Now, here, the block looks just like New York or Chicago, with brick and stone buildings hanging over you on both sides, these rows of carved lions’ heads watching you pass from high above on these fancy, hand-carved ledges. Coming down this block is like walking among old castles the color of peaches and cream at this hour, and even though there’s bums and winos and a rush of noisy cars going full-tilt down Fourth, it’s gotta be one of the prettiest blocks in all of LA. They even got little white lights strung from side to side above the street like Christmas decorations.
On the opposite corner from us a bunch of guys in jeans and tees, some with headphones, others with radios, were working with coils of black cable and light stands up on poles. In the street, along the gutter, a camera was on a big rolling contraption, like a fancy cart, and two more men were crammed behind it, looking into monitors. Someone farther down the block yelled quiet. I felt a tug on my sleeve from Ms. Aames.
“They shoot a lot on this street,” she said.
“Hollywood.”
She didn’t answer, but I saw her face had changed, like from curious to taking it really seriously. Seemed she was wrestling with ghosts, her back half to me and her lips tightened up, like she was gonna tell somebody on the edge of her wheelhouse to kindly step on back. I even looked behind me, just to check, but in all that street scrum, crew people around and regular dirty birds shuffling along, nobody was right there on us.
“What’s wrong, Ms. Aames?”
“I’m feeling tired.”
“You need to sit down?”
“—getting to a place where… my mind goes into a sort of… overload setting, Deshaun.”
She reached out and I took her hand to steady her.
“I start to see things.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“That’s… that is the problem for me. Meds, they tamp down the action in my head, but it turns my thought processes to mud. It’s like, I keep laying out a five-course meal and my brain keeps pouring oatmeal over it.”
“Looks like they’re shootin’ some kind of scene, soon as they’re done I’ll get you to your car.”
“Deus ex machina.”
“Pardon me, ma’am?”
“Dr. Don and his little posse, trying to play God in the Machine. Fuck a patient? No problem, we’ll just make all the witnesses disappear at trial!”
“About that, ma’am, I—”
Her eyes were blazing, like a fire inside her was starting to flare up out of control.
“—pricks break into my apartment, jump me on the beach at Malibu, pack my expert off to Europe. Hey, you! Little girl lost!”
“They did all that?”
“Like a bad fucking episode of Scooby Doo. And they would’ve gotten away with it if it wasn’t for… those pesky kids. Meaning us, of course. No, I’m not crazy, Deshaun, I see that look in your eyes.”
“No, ma’am, I wasn’t—”
“This may sound obvious, Deshaun, but you are my witness to the following revelation. I cannot be a lawyer if I’m stoned with shit for brains. So forgive me, but I’m making lists.”
“Lists?”
She gave my hand a little squeeze, which got harder, till it hurt. But I was too unsure of what was happening to pull
away.
“Let’s get you to your car,” I said with my best everything’s-gonna-be-all-right tone.”
“Into the abyss, Deshaun.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
A film guy not ten feet away from us with a black walkie-talkie looked up and said quiet, and all the people around him stopped moving. I noticed the people waiting behind him to go down the block. They looked normal enough, but almost too normal, like real life but too much of it in one place. Men in suits with briefcases; women in nice dresses carrying handbags; a lady walking a little white dog that looked like a perfectly shaped snowball; delivery guy on a twelve-speed bike; all of them standing by, looking ready to go.
“Two lists,” Ms. Aames said. “One for what’s real, the other for what’s not real. All I’ve gotta do is adjust my behavior accordingly. And I swear, it’s working better than any drug I’ve ever had the pleasure to ingest. Come on.”
We started down Fourth again, but a blond gal with a clipboard standing next to the walkie-talkie man stepped in front of us just as someone yelled, “Action!” and all those perfectly normal but not normal people started moving along, natural as could be.
“That bank,” Ms. Aames said to me quietly, pointing to the monument down on the end. “That bank chased me down the street.”
“Yes, ma’am, so you said.”
“And all this cops and robbers stuff coming at us? Fake, but real. Wrap your brain around that for a minute. That’s LA for you.”
A young man in black jeans and a tight black shirt—must be a bad guy, I thought—comes running down the block, porkpie hat flying off his head. Two guys are chasing him, the lead one young and good looking, a TV star I recognize, though I don’t know his name. The older guy behind him, he drops back hard all of a sudden, bent over, huffing and puffing like he can’t go on. I’ve seen the older one, too, but don’t know his name either, saw him on late-night TV with a ridiculous beard last summer acting like he’s Shakespeare with a dirty joke to tell in fancy old-time English.
“Not real,” I say quietly to Ms. Aames. “Why I don’t watch much TV.”
“But you are. Thank God for that.”
The lead guy chasing the bad guy reaches out and tackles him on the sidewalk, all the normal people in the scene jumping back like they’ve gone from having not a care in the world to dying of shock.