The District Attorney’s office couldn’t find anyone else willing to testify against Marcus, so their entire case rested on Amstel’s testimony. The newspapers and local television stations had given big play to the story, and several reporters eating at a nearby table stole glances in his direction. Marcus played with his limp chef’s salad and tried to ignore them. They liked their stories presented on a silver platter, and right now he felt like a canapée. The fork was trembling in his hand, but he’d already lost ten pounds since being arrested, so he forced himself to take a bite of the food.
Atlas looked at the jury, tilted his head, and grinned. He missed gambling, but this was almost as good, and he bathed in the rush of his own performance. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, members of the community, taxpayers,” he began, nearly bouncing on the balls of his feet. “One of your own is on trial here today, and his only accuser is a confessed prostitute who is in America with an expired tourist visa. Let me frame this for you in the simplest terms. An illegal alien from the former Soviet Union is accusing my client of pandering and the illegal disposal of a corpse. Let’s address the second charge first. It was not the pubic hair of Marcus Ripps that was found in the mouth of Mahmoud Ghorbanifar, it was the pubic hair of the accuser. There is nothing to put Mr. Ripps at the crime scene, no witnesses, no circumstantial evidence, nothing but the word of a woman who lied about her criminal past to get into America illegally and makes her living in the sex industry. And let me say, while we’re on the subject, that I make no value judgment with regard to Ms. Robich’s line of work. I am not here to condemn her, to cast aspersions on her, to malign her for being a sex worker. That is her choice. What I will malign her for is being a liar. I don’t even think Lenka Robich is a bad person. She’s scared. She’s scared the individual who sent her to that hotel—her pimp—is going to harm her if she tells the truth, and that is why she’s lying in court. Lenka Robich, who is from Latvia, whose first language is Russian, thinks she can stay in our country while Marcus Ripps, a devoted husband, father, and son-in-law, a respected member of the Los Angeles business community, and a benefactor of multiple charities, goes to prison? I think she is mistaken. I think her logic is flawed and I hope you see through her lie. My client was the production manager for Wazoo Toys, a job he held for nearly fifteen years. The factory he supervised moved to China two years ago and my client chose not to go with it but to stay here, in America, where a man has a right to make a living. Marcus Ripps always paid his bills, always looked after his family, so when his mother-in-law, who had been recently widowed, moved in with him, ladies and gentlemen, he didn’t blink. No, he welcomed her to his modest home in Van Nuys. Not long after that, his brother, his only sibling, a man he loved, died suddenly, leaving him a struggling business. My client took over that business and made it run like clockwork, providing jobs and putting food on his family’s table. Some of the businessmen who employed International Friendship Guides may have had sex with women who worked for the service. I don’t need to remind you that sex between consenting adults is still not a crime. The accuser put her signature on a document stating in English that if sex occurs, it is not prearranged. The accuser speaks English very well. She knew what she was signing. But she is also an actress in her native country and so is a skilled performer. Don’t be fooled by her act. I submit to you that Marcus Ripps is not a criminal, but a model American, someone who cares for others, and not just himself. I ask you, ladies and gentlemen of the jury … no, I beseech you, to acquit. There is no other choice.”
It was an impressive show and Marcus allowed himself a spark of optimism. He smiled at the jurors, but they were all looking at Atlas, who basked in the warm glow of their attention. The judge gave her instructions to the jury, and the courtroom emptied.
Marcus was standing at the urinal in the men’s room when he sensed that he was not alone. A moment ago he had been the only one in there, and he hadn’t heard the door open. He turned to see Tommy the Samoan standing near the sinks, dressed in a Hawaiian shirt and white drawstring pants two men could have stood in. How did someone this size move around so stealthily?
“You got a raw deal, brah.” Marcus zipped his fly and looked toward the door. There was no point dashing for it. He doubted Tommy had come to kill him. Given their current location in the Van Nuys Criminal Courts Building, that would have been exceedingly bad planning. He knew Tommy thought ahead. Still, he had hoped never to see this guy again.
“What do you want?”
“I got rid of the gun.”
Marcus was taken aback. This was excellent news, maybe even a harbinger of better days. But he couldn’t imagine what had led Tommy to do this—or if he was even telling the truth.
“Why?”
“Got married, Marcus. Check this ring.”
Marcus wasn’t sure what getting married had to do with destroying evidence, but he didn’t need to hear any more. He glanced nervously at the gold band inlaid with onyx and tried to recall if the guy had ever used his proper name before.
“I like it.”
“Me and my wife, we moving to the islands, make some babies.L.A. too crazy.” Marcus nodded. He didn’t disagree. Relocating to the islands sounded like an excellent idea. “You oughtta spank Malvina,” Tommy concluded.
Marcus would have loved to pay her back for the agony she had caused, but he understood that revenge without a larger purpose was pointless. He had learned the value of prescience. Crushing Malvina Biggs did not fit with his new, more sophisticated paradigm.
“Tell her she did me a favor.”
“I don’t talk to that bitch no more.” A maintenance worker entered, pushing a bucket and mop. He began to swab the floor. Tommy gently chucked Marcus on the shoulder and vanished as quickly as he had appeared.
Although it was only May, summer heat had already descended on the Valley. A gaggle of media sprouted like mushrooms on the front lawn of 112 Magdalene Lane; but when it became clear that no one was going to make a public statement, they departed. Marcus remained inside with the shades drawn and the air conditioning on. He avoided television and gave his well-thumbed paperback copies of Stoic philosophers Seneca and Aurelius a workout.
As the jury finished their second day, Marcus sat in his kitchen, eating a bowl of strawberry ice cream. Jan was working her way through a bottle of Chardonnay. They had discussed the psychology of the jury ad nauseam and convinced themselves that Marcus would be acquitted. They talked about ideas for new businesses. They chattered to fill the silence. But now the conversation had collapsed under the weight of nerves and emotional exhaustion. Marcus lifted the spoon to his mouth and ate another bite of ice cream, the taste of the cool, silken dairy soothing him.
“I want to scatter my brother’s ashes.” Marcus had told her about the ashes the day they arrived, but hadn’t mentioned them since.
“Now?”
“I feel like going to the beach.”
After determining that Nathan knew enough about the Great Depression to pass the test he was studying for, and that Lenore was watching a nature documentary that she had already seen, the Ripps family piled into the minivan. Everyone was quiet as they rode down the 405. Marcus thought about going to Leo Carrillo, still his favorite Los Angeles beach, but that was a strand of sweet memory, the place he and Jan had recently shared an elegiac hour, and he didn’t want to forever associate it with the scattering of Julian’s ashes. When he did not take the exit that would have brought them to Santa Monica or Malibu, Jan asked him where they were going.
“Cabrillo Beach.”
“In San Pedro? I thought Julian hated it there.”
“Julian isn’t the one making the decision.”
Jan nodded. He appreciated the fact that she didn’t argue. Cabrillo Beach was where the brothers’ parents had taken them as children, where they had fished off the pier, where, when they were older, each of them had gone, separately, to drink with friends, to be with girls, to begin their push against the bound
aries that separated them from what lay ahead. Marcus had always been drawn to the dazzling San Pedro coastline, the ocean, the vast sky. He would send Julian off on his own terms.
The sun touched the ocean and the sky radiated salmon, pink, and bloody vermilion. Catalina Island shimmered like an apparition on the misty horizon, its lights flickering like a fading hope. Just to the south, massive cargo ships cruised from Los Angeles Harbor toward the open sea. The lighthouse in Point Fermin Park loomed to the north. A few surfers bobbed in the blue distance, patiently awaiting a wave.
Placing the urn on the sand, Marcus rolled his pants above his knees. Then he reached over, picked it up, and waded into the chilly water. Jan, Nathan, and Lenore watched from the shore.
“I have no idea how to do this,” he called over his shoulder. The wind gusted and blew through his hair.
“Should you say something about your brother?” Jan said.
As the remnants of a small wave broke against his legs, Marcus said “Can you tell a dead person to go fuck himself?” Then: “Sorry, Nate. You didn’t hear that.”
“I know the word, Dad.”
“Do you want to say something to God?” This from Lenore.
“I don’t think so.”
“I think someone should say something,” Jan said.
Like an eruption, Nathan shouted toward the darkening sky: “Thanks for the red minibike, Uncle Julian!”
As Marcus turned toward the horizon, the fading shafts of sun, lambent on the dark water, fragmented with the rhythm of the swells and joined together again, pieces of a puzzle, causing Marcus to squint so he could see. Julian hadn’t come for Nathan that day, he’d come for Marcus. It was an attempt, however inept and ill-calculated, to reattach the severed cord, to forge something between them, to attempt a scene neither knew how to play. And Marcus, who could not abide this wild card of a sibling, this lifelong and reliable dispenser of emotional pain, had sent him away. Julian’s last will and testament, so perverse and unexpected, was the response. But, finally, what had his brother meant with his strange legacy? Marcus had periodically returned to this question over the past two years but never satisfactorily answered it. Now, at twilight, knee-deep in the Pacific Ocean and holding all that was left of Julian in an urn, he thought he understood. Julian had challenged him, thrown down a gauntlet. Their grandfather had embraced the world as he found it, capered to its mad music. Their father couldn’t keep up, but Julian had inherited Mickey’s unbound spirit and resumed the beat. As for Marcus, his brother had placed a shiny object in his hands—a taunt, a joke. Julian never could have imagined that his younger brother would actually assume the mantle. It was preposterous, really. Marcus had always skulked in the shadows, beholden to the whims of others. But now he had proven, finally, that when the dance floor shook and bucked, he knew how to move. Yes, Marcus had been busted, and might be doing time, but he’d survive that, too, and somehow go forth and flourish. So while Julian’s bequest was a droll tweak, a slap and a tickle, it was also a seminar where knowledge unspoken passed from the dead to the living.
And now Marcus was schooled.
“Dad, what are you waiting for?” Nathan yelled. “It’s getting cold!”
Marcus unscrewed the lid. A wave rolled in and he turned to the side as it broke over his thighs, holding the urn at shoulder height to keep its contents dry. He briefly thought of his father and mother, happy they had not lived to witness this. He faced out to sea and turned the urn upside down.
As the last of Julian slid from the container, a gust of wind arrived like an uninvited guest and blew the ashes over Marcus, covering his shoulders and face with soft gray powder. It was in his nose, his mouth, and his eyes and he couldn’t see anything, so he only heard the laughter on the shore rising above the sound of the surf. There had been no laughter in his house of late, and the sound, despite the bizarre circumstance that engendered it, was welcome, a familiar comfort in which he blindly luxuriated, if only for a thrilling moment.
Marcus dropped beneath the surface of the water, a farewell, and when he rose from the waves he was cleansed. His eyes were still closed, so at first he could only hear his family applauding, but when he opened them and blinked the briny water out, there they were, waiting for him, smiling as the sun’s last rays glimmered in the dying day.
The next afternoon, a phone call from Atlas informed Marcus that a verdict was imminent. They drove to the courthouse and waited in the marbled hallway, not talking. Lenore rubbed Jan’s back with her palm, and Jan held Marcus’s hand. After only a few minutes, the bailiff, a large black woman with colorfully beaded braids, told them to come into the courtroom.
Marcus watched the jury enter. He could discern nothing on their faces. He’d heard that if the jurors look at the defendant, there will be no conviction. Two of them, an older white man and a Hispanic woman roughly his own age, looked right at him. He felt the perspiration in his palms and wished he’d had the foresight to grab a piece of paper towel from the men’s room so he could wipe them dry.
Judge Ruth Wu told Marcus to rise for the verdict. He got to his feet and spread them shoulder distance. Hands clasped behind his back, he smiled at the judge.
The foreman of the jury, a short blonde woman in her thirties wearing a print dress, stood and prepared to read the verdict.
“How do you find the defendant?” asked Judge Wu.
“On the count of transportation of a dead body, we find the defendant …” She cleared her throat at this juncture. “Not guilty.”
Marcus allowed himself to turn and look at Jan and Lenore. Jan gave an uneasy smile and made a fist which she held in front of her as a gesture of solidarity. Lenore’s eyes were shut. She was praying.
“And on the second count?” Judge Wu asked.
“On the second count of pandering, we find the defendant guilty.”
Marcus visibly sagged and his knees began to buckle, but he steadied himself and averted an undignified response. He felt a hand on his shoulder. It was Atlas. He did not want to turn around to look at Jan and Lenore. The judge ordered him to report back for sentencing and wished him good luck.
They drove home in silence. Jan stared out the window of the passenger side and Lenore, although she wanted to say comforting things, sensed that it was best to remain quiet.
Marcus had an urge to hit golf balls. He believed the mindless repetition of a golf swing would be relaxing, so after dropping Jan and Lenore at home, he drove to the driving range at Woodley Lakes and purchased a bucket of balls. If anyone recognized him, they didn’t say anything. Marcus turned off his cell phone. He was happy to be alone as he teed the balls up, one after another, and, alternating between a wood and an iron, whacked them into the silent distance. After finishing one bucket at what he believed was a leisurely pace, he saw that only forty-five minutes had passed, so he got another. Random thoughts, fears, projections cycled through his mind at such speed that they cancelled each other out. One would arrive like an electrical impulse, flash, and collapse like a black hole, only to be replaced a nanosecond later by the next arrival. But nothing gained purchase. By the time he emptied the third bucket, he noticed he had blisters on both his hands.
Jan was in the kitchen sautéing chicken cutlets in a pan when Marcus got home. He greeted her when he walked in and, instead of saying anything, she embraced him. Marcus could hear clarinet music wafting from somewhere in the house. Nathan’s playing was getting better.
“We’ll be all right,” Jan said.
“Yeah, yeah,” Marcus said. “I know.”
Nathan was in the den where he had set up his music stand, working his way through a classical piece Marcus did not recognize. He watched through the door for a moment, and when Nathan noticed his father, he stopped and put the clarinet down.
“The Dodgers are playing the Mets this weekend,” Marcus said. “I was thinking about getting tickets.”
“Okay,” Nathan said. Then: “Dad, don’t watch me practice.”
Six weeks later, Marcus was sentenced to three years to be served at Chuckawalla Valley State prison, a facility dedicated to the long-term incarceration of medium-risk inmates. He was given one month to get his affairs in order. Atlas, who was devastated by the decision, informed him that the best he could hope for was time off for good behavior.
Marcus spent the days prior to his incarceration reading or watching television and wondering how he could possibly turn his misfortune into something positive. While home one afternoon watching a daytime talk show exploring the topic “Be Mine or Die: Spouses Who Kill,” he found himself listening to one of the guests, a portly woman who had just been released from prison where she had served time for running over her unfaithful husband with their RV. To pass the long days, she had projected the stories of her favorite movies on an inner screen. Marcus had never been a big movie fan as an adult, so, while the talk show guest prattled on, he found himself thinking about films he remembered from when he was younger. He recalled comedies, and war movies, and crime stories. He thought about the Italian-American actors who played mobsters on screen. Some of these men came from rough places, and, had fate tipped one way or the other, many of them could have gone into the hard knock life. Instead, each found himself, whether by luck or design, reciting lines in front of a camera, not gangsters at all but a well-remunerated simulacrum of the actual thing. Counterfeit, cartoonish danger would always be a valuable commodity in a world where actual threats were overwhelming. Marcus understood. He had criminal credibility now. Although this struck him as ludicrous, it was undeniable.
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