The Flaming Motel

by Fingers Murphy

  “Well shit,” he said, pointing with his foot. “You got a picture of him right here.”

  I looked down from the newspaper article just as I read the lines about the couple who died in the fire. The words from the newspaper trickled through my brain: Ray and Sylvia Davis, of Indio California, died in a fire late Saturday night.

  Roger’s foot was pointing to the file Wilson had given me at the courthouse that morning. Roger’s gnarled toes, with their yellowing nails, aimed straight at the biographical summary and the picture above it. The picture of Officer James Davis.

  “There’s Jimmy right there,” he smiled.

  Jimmy.

  James.

  Jesus. The connection to the shooter had been right in front of us all along.

  The words of David Daniels’s girlfriend came back to me: Sometimes adopted kids keep their original names. It’s up to them, if they’re old enough.

  XXIX

  We drove fast. Sixty miles an hour back down Topanga to the freeway. A hundred on the 101, east across the Valley, back into the city.

  I dialed Wilson, left a frantic message, and told him to call us as soon as he could. I told him we had a positive ID on Tiffany’s older brother. Then I called back and left a second message and told him who it was. What if we died in a crash? No one would ever know what we discovered.

  Jendrek put his window down and took in several deep breaths, as though the smog-choked air could bring relief. Finally, he yelled over the noise of the road and the wind, “I can’t fucking believe it was a setup. The whole thing. From the beginning.”

  “Jimmy Davis,” I yelled. “Jimmy Fucking Davis. Right in front of us the whole damned time.”

  “Qualified immunity,” Jendrek yelled, “the fucker knew he’d get cleared if he could just make it look like an honest mistake. Un-fucking-believable.”

  The wind grabbed the empty pretzel bag and threw it around inside the car. Liz and Jendrek clamored after it, trying to keep it from flying out the window, but it was too quick. The bag hit the outer air and was sucked into the oblivion of wind and night. The idea of the papers somehow getting loose from my bag and blowing away made me jump and I rolled up the windows from the controls on my door.

  “Hey, man,” Jendrek said as he jerked his arm off the door to avoid the glass closing on it.

  “Too many papers in here,” I said. “Can’t risk them blowing out.”

  Liz leaned forward and said, “So the cop is shaking down Vargas through Pete Stick? Is that it?”

  “It must be,” I said. “They’re working a scam, using Pete to threaten Don, and then Jimmy finds out from his sister that Don’s going to transfer the businesses to Ed and Jimmy hatches a plan to kill him before it can happen.”

  “Jesus,” Jendrek said. “Pete practically told us when we were in his office. He said he was the one who picked out Don’s costume for the Halloween party. He’s the one who suggested Don carry the gun.”

  I added, “And Daniels fakes a breakdown so he can use the phone at the gatehouse and call in the noise disturbance.” My voice was rising as the pieces came together.

  Jendrek’s was too. He practically turned sideways in his seat so he could look at Liz and me. “And within minutes, guess who responds to the fucking call? All Davis has to do is hang out up the street to make sure he’s the first responder to the noise call. And all Pete has to do is get Don in that room—”

  “And get him turned around,” I added, “so there’s a nice clear shot.”

  “And wait for Jimmy to show up and shoot the guy. It’s fucking perfect.” Jendrek clapped his hands together and laughed. “Good God. Jimmy gets to kill the guy he thinks killed his folks, and Jimmy’s sister inherits the estate. Oh man, talk about revenge.”

  “Fucking cops,” Liz practically yelled from the backseat. “This is exactly why they shouldn’t get qualified immunity.”

  At almost the exact moment she spoke, red and blue lights exploded in the air behind us. Jendrek turned to look behind us. I could see Liz spin around in the rear view mirror. Panic raced through me as I debated what to do.

  “What should I do?” I said.

  “Fuck,” was the only thing Jendrek could say.

  “Should we pull over?” Liz asked. More a scream than a question.

  I imagined the cops behind us watching all of the movement inside the car—Jendrek turning and looking back, Liz turning around, everyone shouting and acting crazy—none of that would help us if things turned ugly. All cops needed was an excuse. Anything could be a justification.

  “What if it’s him?” Liz asked.

  But neither of us answered. We knew who she meant, but neither of us said a word. After a few more hesitant seconds, I let off the gas and the car began to coast.

  Liz turned back to the front and said, “What are you doing?”

  “What else can we do? We can’t get in a goddamned car chase. We’ve got to stop.”

  “But what if it’s him?” she repeated. “We’ve got all of the evidence in the car. Even the pictures.”

  “Or what if another anonymous tip has been called in?” Jendrek added, then flipped the glove box open and rifled through it, finding nothing.

  I suddenly regretted not leaving half the photos at Ed’s house. Divide things up. Never keep your eggs in one basket. You’d think I’d learn some basic lessons in my life, but apparently I didn’t.

  “There’s no way to know,” I said. “We can’t outrun them. They’ll have a dozen helicopters after us in minutes if we try that. All we can do is stop.”

  Jendrek said, “He’s right. There’s nothing else we can do.”

  I applied the brake, slowing slowly. Letting the car come to a stop gradually. I crept over to the side of the freeway. I took my time, trying to make it seem like I was looking for a good place to stop. But who was I kidding? The side of the freeway is the same everywhere. It didn’t matter where I stopped.

  When we finally stopped moving, I said, “Now everyone just relax. I was speeding. I’m sure that’s all this is.”

  The cars on the freeway rocketed past us, the wind from them shook the BMW. We sat inside like we were weathering a storm. The wood box was in the console between the seats and I thought about trying to stuff it somewhere. But the cops had their spotlight trained on the car and everything was bright and glowing. Any movements would look suspicious.

  I could see the cop getting out of the car. I could see him studying us as he approached. We all sat facing forward, looking straight ahead like we weren’t even interested in the cop. Like we were hardly aware we’d been pulled over. I heard a soft click from the backseat as Liz fastened her seatbelt. I wondered if the cop had seen her doing it.

  I hadn’t seen the second cop until a flashlight beam cut across the inside of the car from Jendrek’s side. Then the one on my side leaned down and peered in my window, tapping his flashlight on the glass. I was relieved to see it was no one I recognized. I rolled down the window and just looked at him, without saying anything.

  He seemed surprised at my silence. After a moment of staring at me he said, “Driving a little fast tonight?”

  “I didn’t see,” I said. “We were talking, I might have let it slip over the limit. I really don’t know.”

  “How about a license and registration?”

  I reached over to the glove box for the registration and the flashlight beam followed my movements. I handed the paperwork to him and he studied it for a few seconds. The other cop tapped on Jendrek’s window and wanted him to roll it down.

  Jendrek shrugged and spoke loudly. “Power windows. I can’t roll them down without the car on.”

  The cop on my side didn’t like that much. He looked at me and said, “Turn the power on so your friend can roll his window down.”

  I did. Then the cop said, after reading my license, “Santa Monica, eh? What are nice white folks like you doing this deep in the Valley on a Thursday night?”

  It almost made
me laugh. I looked at Jendrek and then back at the cop and said, “White people aren’t allowed in the Valley? I’ll bet there’s a million white people living here.”

  “But you don’t live here,” he said. “So what I want to know is what you’re doing out here.”

  I restrained myself from telling him that wasn’t relevant to my speed. But now wasn’t the time for a confrontation. I had no idea whether they were just looking for an excuse to arrest us, or worse. “We’re out here on business,” I said.

  “What kind of business is that?”

  “We’re lawyers.”

  The cop laughed and said, “Oh, you’re a lawyer are you?”

  “We’re all lawyers,” I said.

  “Which brings me back to my original question. What are you doing out here? Shouldn’t you be at a country club or something?”

  I didn’t say anything in response. I just looked at the guy. The cop on Jendrek’s side was running his flashlight beam over the entire contents of the car. After few long seconds, the one with my license leaned in and said, “How about some ID from everyone in the car.”

  I could practically hear Liz biting her lip in the back seat. I knew she wanted to give the cop a lecture about reasonable suspicion and I was hoping like hell she wouldn’t. I imagined her giving the cop a good, hard stare, but I didn’t turn to see. After a long pause, I heard her rummaging through her purse. She handed over her license and Jendrek did the same. The two cops returned to their car.

  When they were far enough away, Liz leaned forward and said, “This is fucking bullshit. I can’t fucking believe these people.”

  I said, “They look real.”

  Jendrek said, “I don’t recognize them. They’re not the same ones who arrested me.”

  “I don’t recognize them either,” I said, and turned to Liz. “Do you?”

  “No.”

  “So it’s just a traffic stop?” I hadn’t meant it to sound like a question, but it came out that way, belying my own worry that it wasn’t.

  They were back there a long time. We sat quietly. From the elevated freeway, the lights of the Valley spread out to the north. They stretched away to what looked like the end of the world, where the light abruptly ended and fell away into the blackness of space. There were mountains along the other side of the wide valley bottom, but they were invisible in the night. I tried to imagine for a minute that the world was flat. It was easy to do because it would make no difference to me. The world would still be the world, and I would still be stuck on the side of the freeway, waiting to see what happened next.

  Finally, Jendrek turned back to look and said, “What the fuck are they doing back there? Jerking each other off?”

  “Trying to decide between the rubber hose and the aluminum bat.”

  Almost as soon as I said it I could see the two cops coming toward us in my mirror. Jendrek turned back forward and said, “Here they come.”

  They stood slightly to the rear and seemed to study the contents of the car again with their flashlights. Then the one on Jendrek’s side leaned in and said, “What’s in the box there?”

  I wasn’t sure what he was talking about for a second, until I saw his eyes trained on Tiffany’s recipe box. When I looked over at him, I realized he wasn’t talking to me, he was looking directly at Jendrek.

  Jendrek said, “You asking me?”

  “I’m looking at you, ain’t I?”

  “Sorry,” Jendrek said. “What was the question?”

  “The box,” the cop said, his voice rising with frustration. “In the console.”

  “Oh this box,” Jendrek picked it up and opened it so it was out of reach of the cop. “Just some old photographs that belong to a friend of ours.” He took the pictures out and fanned them across his lap so they were plainly visible. Then he scooped them up again and went to stuff them back into the envelope, but he dropped them as he did. “Shit,” he muttered, and bent over to scoop them all up from the floor.

  The cops exchanged glances and the one on my side said, “You got any drugs in the car?”

  The question almost made me jump. So there it is, I thought, the precursor to the shakedown or the arrest. At the last possible moment, just when the case had come together, just when we were on the verge of handing things over to Detective Wilson, they would have us.

  I answered, “No.”

  He grinned at me and asked what I imagined was a cop’s favorite question. “Then you won’t mind if we search the car, will you?”

  It was the old fear-of-looking-guilty-trick. Only someone with something to hide refuses to consent to a search, which itself becomes reason to suspect that something is in the car. It was the cop’s favorite because the number of people who consented to searches knowing they had drugs or other illegal things in their car was truly astounding. Why consent? Because you don’t want to look guilty or uncooperative.

  And then I smiled at the cop. It hit me instantaneously. These were real cops and this was a real traffic stop. That would be the only reason they would bother asking the question. They wouldn’t go through the charade if they were just going to plant something and arrest us.

  “Are you going to write me a ticket?” I said, “Because if not, I’ve got more important things to do than chat with you on the side of the freeway.”

  The cop looked incensed. “I don’t know who you think you’re talking to—” he started to say, but I cut him off.

  “I think I’m talking to a civil servant who is overstepping his bounds.” I could feel Jendrek and Liz staring at me like I’d lost it.

  But I continued. “You pulled me over for speeding. I stopped. You’ve run all of our identification and presumably discovered the drug charges pending against one of my passengers, who also happens to be my client. As I’m sure you know, charges are not convictions and a passenger can’t consent to the search of a car he doesn’t own when the owner is sitting right in front of you. Your partner asked to see inside the box in the console. We showed him there was nothing in there. I’m happy to open the glove box for you as well, because I’m a cooperative guy. But I’m not getting out of this car and you’re not getting into it. Now, if you’re going to write me a ticket, get to writing it. Otherwise, my passengers and I still have business to attend to this evening.”

  Both of the cops stood up and looked at each other over the top of the car. “What the fuck are you doing?” Jendrek whispered.

  I said, “Don’t worry. They’re real cops. This isn’t a shakedown.”

  I could hear the two cops whispering to each other over the top of us, but I couldn’t make out their words. Then they bent down and the one on my side sneered, “You were going ninety miles per hour. In addition, we saw some litter fly out of your car.” He was looking me straight in the eye. “That’s a five hundred dollar fine.” Then he grinned, like he was getting the last laugh. “Normally, I wouldn’t write that up. This is the Valley, after all. But since you’re such a law abiding citizen, I’ll make sure to include it on your citation.”

  “You’re a credit to humanity,” I said, and smiled right back.

  He handed me the ticket book. I signed it. He gave us back our licenses and they left us sitting on the side of the road. Jendrek laughed, bent over, and rummaged around on the floor in front of him. He came up smiling with a handful of pictures. “I put some of them under the floor mat, just in case.”

  I started the car and merged with traffic. This time I drove eighty.

  XXX

  We took a slow pass by the Vargas house and saw that Wilson wasn’t there. The driveway was empty. The moving van was gone. Brianna Jones was gone. All seemed quiet. But the lights were on inside. Whether there was someone there or not we couldn’t tell. But we weren’t going near the place without Wilson. Fortunately, I knew a place to park and wait.

  I brought the car into the driveway beside the gatehouse. Then I realized, as I pulled in and saw the black man fold his newspaper and smile at me, that I didn’t
know his name. He leaned out of his little window and said, “Hey, hey, you’re getting to be a regular around here.”

  “Seems like I’m always looking for a temporary parking place in this neighborhood.”

  He looked at Jendrek and Liz and said, “Brought your family, I see.”

  I laughed and said, “They’re just hostages.” Then I asked him if we could wait there for a few minutes. He said we could and I turned the car around to face the street and parked it where I had parked before. Almost as soon as I’d shut the car off, my phone rang.

  I answered it and Wilson said, “Where are you?”

  “Just down the road from the Vargas place.”

  “We’re just turning onto Mulholland at Laurel Canyon. Wait ten minutes and then meet us at the Vargas place.”

  I said we would and hung up. I rubbed the top of the wood box and couldn’t wait to hand it over to Wilson and be done with the whole thing. Between the photographs and Roger Barton’s identifying James Davis, Wilson would have himself a nice case. And it was only then that it occurred to me that Ed Vargas might even get his inheritance back.

  “How do you know the gate guard?” Liz asked from the backseat.

  I was still avoiding talk of the party, any subject that could lead to a discussion of Brianna. So I said, “This is where the noise disturbance call came from. This is the guy who told us it was David Daniels who made the call. Apparently he faked a breakdown right here where we’re sitting and asked to use the phone. But he didn’t call for help, he called in the noise disturbance instead.”

  That seemed to satisfy her well enough. I heard her lean back against the seat. She didn’t seem interested anymore, which was fine with me. Preferable, in fact. But the less she asked about the evening at the house, the more my thoughts returned to it. I could smell Brianna Jones on her balcony overlooking the city. I could feel her leaning against me. I could have had her. I knew I could have had her, but I hadn’t. I had turned around. Gone home. I’d done nothing wrong. There was no way I could have known where she was taking me when she led me upstairs until we got there. Was there?