“Dirty tracks?”
“Looks that way.”
“Crooked cops.” She said the words with utter contempt, practically spat them out. “They’re all over the place.” She was referring to my episode in the desert.
“More than there ought to be, that’s for sure.” There ought to be none, zero.
“She wanted your expert advice.”
“Yes.”
“Which you freely gave.”
“Yes.”
We’d cracked a bottle of Taylor port, vintage 1985, a stellar year. It was warming me up nicely, after the coq au vin and the Santa Ynez Valley Syrah and the homemade oatmeal cookies. Nora was a nice cook, her venison stew had been excellent, but no chef on earth touches my wife’s cooking, as far as I’m concerned.
“I read a yard of documents the DEA sent her on their investigation, interviewed a few local law-enforcement people. She was honed in already; she wanted someone like me, who’d been in the job, to confirm what she’d been thinking. Someone she knew and could trust. Thought she knew,” I added. “Twenty years go by, you can’t know that person. You know who they were, not who they are.” Except for a decent resemblance physically to what she’d looked like at age twenty-three, Nora Ray was not the woman I’d known twenty odd years ago—who is?
“So that’s it? Do you get a certificate of commendation?”
“I’ll put in for one.” I stretched out on the sofa. Through the windows overlooking the harbor I watched the lights dancing.
“Her office can’t handle the job internally. It’s too small, and this case could be Godzilla. She’s going to bring in an independent prosecutor. The state’s backing her action—they’re going to pay for it.”
“This sounds like the big time.” Riva was cuddled up to me, her head on my shoulder, her body against mine. Now she sat up. “It could be a nationally publicized case.”
“It will be. Small county takes on big drug cartel and a major government agency. It’s going to run into millions. Geraldo and Larry King will get plenty of airtime out of this one.”
“Did she tell you who she’s bringing in?”
I turned to her; I tried to smile, to make light of it, but I couldn’t. “She asked me.”
Riva stared at me in disbelief. “You’ve been holding this small, insignificant tidbit from me for what, seven hours? When does she want you to start? Your calendar’s full for months. You could lay most of the work off, but…”
“I turned her down.”
Her jaw dropped. “You what?”
“Turned her down. What would you think I’d do, take it?”
“I guess…yes.”
“Why would I want that job? It’s going to be a nest of hornets.”
“I guess…because it’s going to be a high-profile job, and you’re a high-profile lawyer.”
“Was. I don’t want to be anymore.” I shifted around so I could face her directly. “This could take up to a year. I’d have to live up there, most of the time. My entire practice here would go down the drain.”
I’m a single practitioner; I don’t have partners to cover me in cases like this.
“Your practice is never going to go away, even if you’re gone,” Riva said. “You’re too good. And I know how those things work, you wouldn’t be there all the time, there’ll be slack periods. And you’d have a staff, wouldn’t you?”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “You’re talking like you want me to take this on.”
“I want you to do what you want to do.”
“What I want to do is not that.” My glass was empty; I got up and refilled it; just a little, I don’t drink that much port, it’s too heavy. A little goes a long way for me now. Like a lot of things I used to indulge in. I sat down next to her again.
“I don’t want to be away from you and Buck for a year. That’s ridiculous.”
“Who says we’d have to be away from each other?” She was knocking down every argument I threw at her. It was like she’d been offered the job and I was the one trying to dissuade her. “We’d come with you.”
I literally broke into laughter. “You wouldn’t last a week up there. Blue River would bore your tits off.”
“I was living up-country when we met.”
“That was different. That was sophisticated rural. This is nothing-to-do rural. And what about Bucky,” I pressed on. “He’s got playgroup, his ocean camp this summer…”
“Ocean camp?” She chortled. “He’s two years old. He isn’t going to ocean camp. He’s with me.” She reached over and softly touched my face with her hand; an intimate and provocative gesture. “And I’m with you.”
“Which is why I’m staying right here in Santa Barbara, California, garden spot of the world.”
She leaned back. “It’s your decision. I want to make sure you’re doing it because you want to, not because you’re worried about me and the crown prince. Because we’re like Paladin, except without the gun.”
“I don’t want to do it. I’ve had the spotlight. I don’t need it anymore. I don’t want it. I want to live a life of quiet bliss in the bosom of my family.”
“I got your bosom, big daddy. Both of ’em.”
On that note, we went to bed.
I woke up in the middle of the night. My mouth was dry, from the port. Quietly, so as not to wake Riva, I threw on my robe and went into the kitchen. The clock on, the kitchen wall read a quarter to four. I wasn’t going to get back to sleep. We’d made love, and she had conked out almost immediately. I had tossed and turned before falling into a nightmarish sleep, where the little girl in the Brigadoon, the desert restaurant, was being blown away while I tried to fire the shotgun, which didn’t go off, blowing up in my own face instead, women screaming, buildings like the compound in Blue River exploding, a woman who looked like Nora Ray floating down a river of blood, Nora turning to young Nora, Dennis was in there somewhere, too, a gun going off, his face flying away, literally flying away. Other fragments of gruesome shit like that.
Man, was I relieved when I woke up from that dream. I’d had similar ones, from about two weeks after the desert episode. At least Riva and Buck weren’t in this one.
The News-Press hit the front door at five-thirty. I was already on my second cup of coffee. I brought it in and read it, back to front. The L.A. Times arrived at six. I was reading about how the Angels were going to be contenders and the Dodgers were going to be dismal when Riva came in and joined me. Buck was still asleep. He’s been good to about seven-thirty for the past few months, a true blessing.
“You almost threw me out of bed, you were tossing so much.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. Another bad dream?”
I nodded. “That’s another reason I wouldn’t want that special-prosecutor job. I’d have to hire a live-in chiropractor.”
She put on water for herb tea. She doesn’t drink coffee anymore, not since she became pregnant. Buck’s almost two and she’s still nursing, at night. She’s that kind of mother.
“I don’t think taking that job would give you any more nightmares than you already have. You’re a nightmare person, that’s how you work out your anxieties.” She dunked a tea bag in her cup. “It’s not…” She stopped herself.
“Not what?”
“Not dealing with these anxieties, head-on.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Freud.” I didn’t want to hear this, not at six-thirty in the morning.
“I’m sorry. You had a rough night.”
“I don’t want the job, Nora, I mean Riva…”
“Was she in your dream?” my wife asked archly.
“The whole world was in my dream.” God, what a slip. “Al Gore was in my dream, for Christ’s sake.”
“Wow. That’s serious.”
“I don’t need you mocking me first thing in the morning.”
“Who said I’m mocking you?”
Bucky called from his bedroom. Riva headed that way, teacup in hand. She p
atted me on the back. “You’ll be fine—as soon as you’ve gotten this bad-cop shit out of your psyche.” Her parting shot as she slipped into our son’s bedroom.
I drove down to my office. I practice alone, but I share a building with five other lawyers, an old, sprawling adobe near the center of town that dates back almost to Padre Serra. In previous incarnations this building was, among other things, a bar, before that a speakeasy; also, in the early years of the century, it was the city’s leading whorehouse, and at various other times it’s been a women’s clothing store, office furniture store, etc. I’m told that my office, the largest in the building (I pay the most rent) was the star bedroom when the whores roosted here.
It’s a good arrangement—we each have our own office and we share a law library, conference room, there are a couple paralegals we all use, receptionist, etc. The convenience and camaraderie of a firm without the necessary compromises. I headed up an eighty-person office when I was the county D.A.; being a lone wolf suits me now. I answer to no one, I come and go as I please, I don’t have to take any cases I don’t want just to keep the firm greased.
I’m different from my office mates in a few ways. My professional profile is considerably higher, so my hourly rate is, also—only a few lawyers in Santa Barbara bill four hundred dollars an hour, my going rate; not king of the hill in New York or Los Angeles, but big money in our smallish city. Also, I was the district attorney, and I’ve won a few highly publicized cases, so I’ve got considerable clout and experience.
A bunch of messages were waiting for me. Grabbing the phone slips, I ducked into my office. It was still early; no one else had made an appearance yet. Like me, most of the lawyers here do a good amount of litigation. Often they’ll go straight to court before coming in.
Shortly after eight, people started drifting in. We exchanged greetings, filled each other in on what had transpired in my absence. Phil Sorkind, my closest friend in the bunch, stuck his head in around nine-thirty. He does mainly family cases—he’d been in court on a nasty custody one. He looked slightly agitated, but he often does—he attracts contentious clients, and he lets them get to him. You need to stay objective or you burn out. It’s happened to all of us.
“How was the wild, wild West?” He had a Pete’s latte in one hand, maple scone in the other. Phil’s a solid forty pounds overweight, and he doesn’t give a shit, he gave up that battle long ago. He can walk from the golf cart to his ball and back, that’s enough exercise for him.
“Tame. All the rustlers were dead by the time I arrived.”
He chuckled. “And your old classmate?” I’d given him a thumbnail sketch before I’d left.
“She’s okay, but she’s in a pickle.” I filled him in on the botched raid, her desire to bring in a special prosecutor, my declining her offer; I didn’t tell him about Dennis, his suicide, the personal stuff. He didn’t know them, it was none of his business.
“High-visibility case,” he said. “But you don’t need any more of them, do you?”
“You’ve got that right, palsy.”
We made lunch plans, and he split. The remainder of the morning purred along. A few clients came in, and we reviewed their situations. Nothing on my docket was going to court soon; I had a couple of big insurance cases I hoped I could settle, even though going to court would have paid me more. I hate going up against insurance company lawyers and their sleazebag hired-gun doctors—I always feel like I need a shower afterward.
My last morning appointment left. I sat for a short time with Louella, one of our paralegals, clearing up some paperwork, and was about to walk down to Phil’s office and corral him to go to lunch when Don Schwartz, another of my office mates, stuck his head in the door.
“Check this out.”
We followed him down the hallway to the conference room. Some of the others in the office who hadn’t gone to lunch yet were clustered around the television set, which was tuned to CNN. The correspondent, a chic-looking woman wearing a trench coat (it wasn’t raining but she looked good in it), was standing outside the gates of the California Men’s Colony in San Luis Obispo, a hundred miles north of us. Behind her you could see squadrons of police ringing the structure.
“Riot or jailbreak?” I asked.
“Riot,” one of the other lawyers answered without turning away from the screen.
“The California Men’s Colony East prison is in a state of turmoil,” the woman on the screen was saying. “Convicts have taken over one wing of the compound and have barricaded themselves against the authorities. It is rumored that they have taken some guards hostage, and that they have weapons, but those rumors have not yet been confirmed by prison authorities.”
A series of mug shots were flashed on the screen. Different convicts, different races. Some white skinheads, some blacks, their heads shaved also, some Latinos. One ordinary-looking white man. Seven in all.
Phil, looking over my shoulder, did a quick running commentary as each shot went by. “Skinhead, another skinhead, coke dealer, somebody’s chicken, L.A. Blood, Mexican Mafia.” Then: “White guys shouldn’t shave their heads. They look dorky, even if they have a million ugly tattoos and ninety-nine-inch necks. Black guys look good shaved. Like Michael Jordan.”
I hadn’t seen anyone in that lineup who even vaguely resembled His Airness. Then it hit me.
“Jesus Christ! That’s William Lowenstein!”
“Who?” The other paralegal, Susan, who’s only been in the office a few months.
“The plain-wrap white guy. The one with hair.” Frizzy Jewish hair, receding rapidly. Prison can do that to you, especially if you aren’t hardened before you go in.
“You sure?” Phil asked, alarmed.
“Yes, I’m sure. I saw him last month. We were working on his appeal, and I was trying to get him transferred out of there.”
“This is trouble,” Phil said. Others nodded in agreement.
“What’s happening?” I asked.
The others looked at me sideways, as if they didn’t want to stare at me directly. The kind of look people have when they’ve seen a really bad traffic accident, like a train hitting a school bus.
As if she’d heard me, the CNN lady began delivering more bad news: “A fight between two convicts in the yard last night escalated into a violent situation. Prison guards tried to dispel it with hoses and tear gas, but when that didn’t work, they opened fire on the combatants. The seven men whose pictures we’ve shown are now confirmed to have been killed in the melee.”
“What the fuck!” My knees started buckling.
“Most of the men who were killed were not involved in the actual fight that started the escalation,” the announcer was continuing. “They were bystanders who were in the wrong place at the wrong time, according to informed sources.”
The mug shots were shown again. The man who looked as if he didn’t belong was definitely William Lowenstein.
“That’s a bitch,” Phil said sympathetically.
“It’s murder,” Rollie Lewis, another of the lawyers, chimed in. “These damn prison guards, they think they have a license to kill.”
“No one’s ever stopped them, that’s the problem,” Phil replied. “The goddamn institution’s rotten at the core.”
The California prison system is a disaster, everyone connected with law enforcement knows that. We’re one of the few states that allows the use of live ammunition inside the walls, and the men who have died as a result of that corrupt policy are testimony to its failure.
“William Lowenstein,” Phil said, putting a supportive hand on my shoulder. “What crummy luck. He shouldn’t even have been in there.”
William Lowenstein was a UCSB Ph.D. candidate in chemistry who decided he wanted to live higher on the hog than you can do off a graduate assistant’s salary. So he started making LSD in the lab. Nothing big, enough to pay for a decent apartment in town instead of having to live in shitty student housing in Isla Vista, buy a car (a used Audi wagon), eat out, occasio
nally, outfit himself in some nice clothes. Trips with his girlfriend to Jamaica and Hawaii also got thrown into the mix. It was not a big drug deal, just one enterprising young man bettering his station in life. Only temporarily, until his dissertation was accepted and he could disappear in the diaspora of academia. A few years, maybe a hundred grand total in profits to him.
He thought he was a smart young man, and he was—a Ph.D. in science? You have to be smart. He was book-smart, all right, but he wasn’t street-smart. He sold five hundred tabs of acid to an undercover narc. That is a felony in the state of California, and despite his otherwise sterling record he was sentenced to four years.
I was his lawyer. Having been a prosecutor, I’d seen the futility of heavy sentences for these kind of drug crimes. The guy wasn’t a big dealer, part of a syndicate, like that one up in Blue River; he was selling to willing buyers, none of them children, he was a petty moke who got caught. I did the best I could for him; four years isn’t the end of the world. His academic aspirations would have been shot, but some company in industry would have taken a chance on him. He might have had to leave the country to work, but his life wasn’t ruined, just torn up temporarily.
He was sent to Chino, a minimum-security prison. That was appropriate—he had no prior record, and he wasn’t a threat to society. But he had a problem: he was too smart for his own good. He fancied himself a jailhouse lawyer, to the point where he pissed off the warden so much that he was transferred. To a real tough joint. A rounding out of his book-learning education, so to speak.
He’d been in San Luis for two months. It was a horrible experience for him. His first night there he was gang-raped, and it didn’t get better. I was working on having him assigned to another minimum-security facility—the transfer from Chino had been wrong, beyond the warden’s jurisdiction, and I knew I could reverse it, given a little time.
Too late now. Time had run out on William.
I felt sick. “Poor bastard,” I said to no one in particular.
“Yeah,” Phil agreed. “You all right?”
“I’m okay. I wonder if his parents know yet?” His father was a doctor, his mother a school administrator. William was an only child. This would kill them.
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