The Flaming Motel

by Fingers Murphy

  “You can buy my autobiography when it comes out, Wilson. Right now, I want to talk about whether Pete Stick was murdered.”

  Wilson sneered and shook his head. “This ain’t a murder, Olson. That’s what I’m telling you. Before you go running all over town jumping to conclusions about shit, you need to listen to me. This is a suicide.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  “Same reason you are. It looks suspicious.” Wilson flipped through his notes and angled the pad so it caught enough light for him to read. “Peter Thomas Stick, born August 7, 1947. Six juvie offenses up through the summer of ‘65. Then the army took him off society’s hands for a three year stint. Next arrest is in ‘69. Stolen property. Does four months at the end of that year. Then he doesn’t show up on the radar again until ‘74. That’s when he goes big time. Insurance fraud. He gets caught helping a downtown jeweler steal his own stuff and make claims on his store policy. He does two years for that one. Next arrest is in ‘81. Insurance fraud. He burns down a HUD house he manages to buy out in Palmdale. Insurance company doesn’t fall for it. This time, he does six years. Next arrest is ‘95.” Wilson looked up at me. “Wanna take a guess?”

  “Insurance fraud?”

  “You’re a smart guy, Olson. That fancy law firm really lost a talent when it shed you.” Wilson turned back to his notes. “In ‘95, Stick had hooked up with another dirt bag who has a broker’s license and they ran an insurance agency, but forgot to actually buy any policies on behalf of their clients. When they get caught, the State finally throws the book at the fucker and Stick does a ten-year stretch at Quentin. Gets out in ‘05. Six months later, he’s running this place.”

  Wilson waved his hand at the building across the street and closed the notebook. I watched the EMTs close the doors on the ambulance and pull away. The flashing lights went off when it was halfway up the block. No siren, no reason to hurry. The guy in the back was long dead.

  Finally, Wilson said, “It seems suspicious until you know all of that. And then it makes perfect sense. So quit barking up this tree, Olson.”

  I wasn’t convinced. “Just because Stick was a scam artist, doesn’t mean he killed himself.”

  “Doesn’t mean he was murdered, either,” Wilson gritted his teeth and said. “This guy spent almost half his adult life in the joint. The rest of it was spent putting frauds together. How the hell does a guy like that get out of jail and start running a successful, legitimate business like this?” He pointed to the building.

  “People change.” I smiled.

  “Fuck you, Olson. You know what I’m saying.”

  “Look,” I said. “Why would Stick kill himself? He’s got a business, he’s turned his life around.”

  “Don’t give me that,” Wilson sneered. “Stick was a no good piece of shit fraudster who probably owed money to half the scumbags in town. With Vargas gone and no one to prop him up, he probably realized his life was shit and figured he’d end it before someone ended it for him.”

  “But you don’t know that.”

  “Look,” Wilson said, “he was trying to borrow money from Vargas the night he was killed.”

  “To pay the rent and keep his business afloat.”

  “Is that what he told you?” Wilson grinned. “It’s bullshit. County records show Vargas owns this fucking building. Why would he borrow money from Vargas just to pay it back to him? He needed money for something else, and I don’t really give a shit what it was. For whatever reason, Vargas was taking care of this guy. With Vargas gone, Stick knew he was out in the cold. The medical examiner found no evidence of foul play, and neither have I. This is getting closed as a suicide, and I’m going the fuck home.”

  Wilson stepped off the curb and walked to the car where Chuck was still waiting. He waved at me over his shoulder without looking back. Wilson and Chuck slid into the unmarked and drove off.

  Two uniformed cops came out of the building toward the one police car that was left and got in it. They shut the flashing lights off and the whole block went dark. I watched the cops sit inside the car with the dome light on. They were comparing notes and laughing with each other. Just another stiff and another night on the job. Funny stuff, apparently. Then, after another minute, they drove off and the street was empty and quiet.

  I could see the lights of Sunset Boulevard crossing Gower three blocks up. The cops drove up to it, turned right, and disappeared into the neon glow. It was a little after two in the morning and the drunks and crazies would be out in force. I needed to either become one of them, or get home quick. I started walking back to my car, when I heard a voice call out to me.

  “Hey, man.”

  It was coming from across the street. I turned back to look, suddenly afraid of getting robbed, and saw the guy with the patchy red beard who worked for Stick. He stood in the doorway watching me. I hesitated before crossing the street toward him. I walked up to him without saying anything and he stepped back to let me into the ratty reception area. It was only when I was inside that I realized how cool it was outside.

  “So you’re Vargas’s lawyer?” the kid asked from behind me.

  I leaned my back against the counter and faced him. He was leaning against the wall near the door. “Yeah,” I said. “You the one that found Stick? Called the cops?”

  “Yeah.” The kid puffed out his cheeks and shook his head in disbelief. “That was some crazy shit.” I watched the way he slouched, studied the wispiness of his beard, and concluded he was only in his early twenties at the latest.

  “What were you doing here?” I asked.

  “Just came back to drop some gear off. Found him in the warehouse.” His eyes bulged with the memory and he shook his head again. “Man, I never seen nothing like that.”

  “You think he hung himself?”

  “Shit, I don’t know what I think.”

  “How long have you known Stick?”

  “Worked for him since he opened this place. I used to work at another prop place before. Heard about this one opening. Money was better.” The kid shrugged and looked concerned that he might have to look for another job.

  I said, “And after all that time, did you get the impression Stick was the kind of guy who would kill himself?”

  The kid looked at me and stroked the thin hairs on his chin. He seemed to be studying me, deciding what he should say next. Then he said, “No way, man. Pete was a tough motherfucker. He wouldn’t hang himself. At least, I don’t think he would.” Then he added, “Normally.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Well,” the kid shrugged his shoulders, hesitating, watching me. He was giving me the creeps. Finally, he said, “I don’t know, man. I think he was in trouble. He was usually a really cool guy. You know, really easy going. But lately, he was tense. He seemed stressed.”

  “You tell the cops this?”

  “Sure.”

  Then I pressed my luck, pushing the kid a little. “So what didn’t you tell the cops?”

  He suppressed a startled look and I knew there was something he wanted to tell me but was afraid to. It was why he’d called me over in the first place. He must have assumed that because I was Vargas’s lawyer I was okay. Now he didn’t seem so sure. But I waited him out, letting the silence get to him. After a long thirty seconds, the kid cracked.

  “Look man,” he started in a rush. “I don’t know anything. Alright? I mean, I don’t have any idea what was going on.”

  “How do you know anything was going on at all?”

  He realized his protest had showed more of his hand than he’d intended and he let out a sigh. I watched his shoulders sag and his head drop, like he was deflating right before my eyes. “Look man, you tell the cops this and I’ll deny it.”

  “I’m not a friend of the cops.”

  “I saw you talking to them.”

  “I take my information where I can get it.”

  “All I know is that on Thursday afternoon, Pete told me to do something. Something
important that I didn’t understand at the time, and I don’t really understand now. What I do know though, is that something fucking weird is going on.”

  “What did he tell you to do?”

  The kid stuck his hands in his pockets and cleared his throat. Then he said, “Look, man. This shit is freaking me out. I need to get the hell out of town.”

  I didn’t get it at first. I said, “Freeways are everywhere around here.”

  The kid shook his head and said, “No, I mean get the hell out permanently. I ain’t sticking around here so someone can find my ass dangling in a warehouse somewhere.”

  I shrugged my shoulders. Another long silence fell between us. The kid seemed to be struggling for something, like a novice gambler trying to calculate a bet. Finally, he said, “What I got to tell you is going to blow your mind. Meet me at the Farmer’s Market tomorrow afternoon at two. I’ll be sitting by the Cajun place. Come alone and bring ten grand in cash.”

  The kid turned and walked outside. I followed him out and he locked the door behind us. “What if I don’t show?” I asked.

  He grinned and said, “Well, then at least I won’t have to worry about someone killing me because I told you. And if you do show, at least I’ll have ten grand to disappear with.”

  The kid turned and walked up the block toward Sunset. I watched him go until he disappeared in the darkness. Then I turned and headed for my car. All the way home I kept thinking, that kid would make one hell of a poker player.

  VI

  “We can’t pay for information.” Jendrek punctured the yolks on his over-easy eggs and let them run all over his hash browns. He laughed and stirred the mess on his plate until it was a gooey, glistening glob of egg and potato. “I mean, come on Ollie. Ten grand? Are you kidding? What if this kid just shows up and tells you something we already know? What if he shows up with some thug and they mug you and just take it? And what’s worse, what if he does actually know something? The fact that we paid him to tell us would kill us in court. No one will believe him.”

  I shrugged and yawned, leaning back into the cracked, Naugahyde booth. I was exhausted. When I’d gotten home at three thirty, Liz was there, mumbling at me in the shadows, asking how things went. She’d been home and sleeping for hours. Nothing suspicious about that. I forgot about Ben Cross and crawled in next to her, but it still took forever to fall asleep. Now that it was almost noon, I felt like I could pass out on command.

  I said, “Who said anything about court? It was more curiosity than anything. Something strange about the way it all happened is bugging me and I can’t figure out why.” I thought about it for a minute and added, “The kid was scared last night. He sure as hell thinks he knows something. It might be interesting to know what it is.”

  I ate a piece of ham and sipped my coffee. Jendrek thought it over while I watched the old men at the counter. Iggy’s Diner had been in West LA for forty years if it had been there a day. It wasn’t one of those new diners trying to look vintage. It was the real thing. The waitress came and refilled our coffee. She looked vintage too, like she’d been serving coffee her entire life.

  Jendrek poured cream and sugar into his cup and said, “Given that criminal history the detective read you, it’s as likely some loan shark got to him as anything else. Either way, what does it have to do with us? We were hired to sue the cops, not investigate Pete Stick’s suicide and try to prove it was something else. With Pete gone, our case is as good as over.” He tried his coffee and shook his head. “It’s a damned shame though. It would have been nice to have the case, even if it was a loser. I hate to give that retainer back.”

  “Tell me about it.” I ate a couple more bites and ran it all through again, for the thousandth time. No matter how I looked at it, I always came up with the same thing: Pete Stick was not a guy who would kill himself. But Jendrek was right, it wasn’t our case, it wasn’t our problem. As lawyers, we were only supposed to care about what we were paid to care about. But I couldn’t let it go.

  “What if he does have something to say? I mean, he said it would blow our minds. What if he’s right?”

  Jendrek smirked and said, “Do I look like I need my mind blown? Come on, Ollie, this is nuts.”

  “But what do we care? We’ve already got Vargas’s retainer. Vargas might be willing to spend some of it to find out what the kid has to say.” Jendrek rolled his eyes and thought about it. I added, “All it’ll take is one phone call to ask him.”

  He could see I wasn’t going to drop it. After another minute, he snatched his cell phone off the table and slid out of the booth. I watched him standing outside dialing the phone, listening to it ring, and then talking.

  I remembered the first time I’d seen him, the first week of law school. Thirty twitching students waiting in a classroom at UCLA for their legal writing course to begin. In walked Jendrek with that odd combination of scowl and smile that he wore most of the time. Five minutes into that first class a woman raised her hand and started by saying, nervously, “This might be a stupid questions, but”—Jendrek cut her off and said, “There are no stupid questions, only stupid people, who ask questions.” I knew I’d like him then and there.

  But that, years later, I’d end up in practice with him, sitting in a greasy spoon in West LA on a Saturday morning, talking about paying a bribe for information, was baffling. If someone would have leaned over and whispered that in my ear during that first class, I’d have said they were crazy. But if I was learning anything as I got older, it was that life turns out crazy sometimes. Or maybe the line between crazy and normal was so razor thin you could hardly see it half the time.

  Jendrek’s number one rule of thumb was ‘suspect everyone’ because reality is often even weirder than anything you can imagine. That was why he was on the phone. That was why I knew he’d make the call in the first place. Mark Jendrek had more curiosity and suspicion than he could use, and sometimes I played it against him.

  When the call was over, he snapped his flip-phone shut and came back in. He was smiling as he slid into the booth. He picked up his fork and pointed at my plate. “Eat up, Hoss. That Cajun place at the Farmer’s Market has crappy food.”

  An hour later, we were at the bank, stuffing ten grand in hundreds into a standard white envelope. It was a tight fit. Jendrek joked as he tried to close the flap over the cash. “I should have brought an envelope from home. I always make sure the ones I buy can hold at least ten grand.”

  I snatched it from him and stuffed it in the inside pocket of my jacket. “Alright then,” I said. “I’ll call you from Vegas if I hit it big.”

  “For a second, I thought you said Vargas.” He winked and added, “I’ll be at the office, waiting.”

  We parted ways in the parking lot. It was one thirty. I’d make it to the Farmer’s Market with a few minutes to spare. The traffic on Santa Monica was light and I cruised through West Hollywood without any trouble. The weather was just as clear as the day before and the outdoor cafes and coffee shops were crowded with people still dressing for summer. I turned right on Fairfax, headed south to the Farmer’s Market, and parked in the old lot near the street.

  The Farmer’s Market had been there for decades. It used to be an odd combination of fruit and vegetable vendors and permanent shops that were open year round. Most of the shops sold kitschy souvenirs, incense and candles, or junky T-shirts. The whole thing had the feel of a carnival that had stayed in town way too long. But in true LA fashion, they’d gone and built an upscale shopping mall around it. The open-air food court with its vendor stalls and a central courtyard full of tables was still there though, but now hemmed in by a Banana Republic and its surrounding citizenry of Nordstrom, an Apple Store, chain restaurants, and a ridiculous trolley running the length of the mall.

  I took a seat by the Cajun place and felt the envelope in my coat pocket as I sat. It was only then that I felt a little nervous about sitting around with that kind of cash. But the Market was pretty crowded. There were twe
nty or more people sitting around at the tables and a lot more milling around through the shops and stands. It would be a bad place to try a robbery.

  At exactly two o’clock, I got up and bought a lemonade from the Cajun guy. I felt bad just sitting there in front of his place. As I sat again, I realized how tired I was and started to wonder how much sleep I’d really gotten. Liz and I were up and walking to the coffee shop on Montana Avenue by nine, so it couldn’t have been much. As we walked, she asked me all about what had happened at the warehouse, what I’d learned from the cops, but she seemed distracted.

  Then she reminded me of the conference she was attending in San Diego on Monday. She’d be home Tuesday night. She told me she’d decided to drive down today to spend the weekend with her mother. Liz had grown up in San Diego. Her mother still lived there. Driving down early was a perfectly logical and reasonable thing to do. But all I could think of was Ben Cross. I asked her who all was going as casually as I could. She said everyone. But she might as well have just said Ben and her. That’s all I heard. That was all I cared about.

  At 2:10, I started to wonder where the kid was. I started to fidget and get restless, despite my exhaustion, or perhaps because of it. I felt the envelope again. Still there. Where else would it be? I thought about Liz driving down to San Diego. How much of what she told me was the truth? I finished the lemonade as I thought about it. Then I started questioning myself. When had I become so irrational? When had I become a jealous guy, suspicious of everything she did? And was it really about her behavior, or my own?

  It had only just happened. Ben Cross had only been at Legal Aid a couple of months and it took awhile for me to start feeling insecure. I was pretty sure I hid it well. I doubted Liz had any idea how her interaction with Ben made me feel. Why would she think I was jealous? And, as I thought about it, I realized I didn’t know why I was reacting this way. Liz had never done anything wrong. She’d never done anything to hurt me.