Above the Law
Page 53
He wanted a fight. “If it wasn’t for you, there wouldn’t have been any case in the first place. You should have checked your facts better.”
I wasn’t going to oblige him. “I’m not getting in a debate with you. But let me ask you one question.”
“What?” he gibed.
“How many of your men died on that raid?”
The muscles of his jaw were working. His neck swelled, the veins pulsing. “Fuck you.”
I pushed him aside and left the Muir County courthouse for the last time.
Tom Miller was drunk. I don’t think he’d ever been drunk before in his life, but he was drunk now.
“It’s not your fault,” I said. “You couldn’t have known.”
It was small consolation.
He kept shaking his head. “I should have known,” he insisted stubbornly.
We were in the study of his house. He poured himself another shot.
“The money Louisa was giving me to invest for the tribe. I should have been suspicious of where it was coming from.”
“Where did you think?”
“From other tribes. That’s what she told me.”
“That’s what she told everyone. It’s plausible.”
“I should have known.” He drank from his tumbler.
“She didn’t want you to know. She was protecting you.”
“I know. That makes it worse.”
He looked up. “Wayne was the son I lost. I loved him.” The despair on his face was heartbreaking. “I loved them both.”
“I know,” I said. “That makes it harder.”
“What a web of lies.” His hand was unsteady, reaching for his glass. “Even me.”
“How you?”
“I lied to you about how I got the money to pay for this.” His arm took in the room, and beyond. “I said I made it from investments. I didn’t.”
“I know.”
“You know everything.”
“More than I want to,” I said with real regret.
“It was my wife’s money. She left it to me when she died.”
The bottle of Jim Beam was over half-empty, but he was still drinking. I should have stopped him, but I didn’t. Everyone deserves one good drunk in his life, when the reasons are as good as these.
“I didn’t want to admit to that. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. Pride goeth before a fall.”
He drained his glass, corked the bottle. “I’m done here. I was retiring anyway, but I’m going to quit now. I’m not going to wait.”
“You might want to give it a few days to make sure.”
“No. I’m finished. There’s no gas left in the tank.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Go somewhere else. Finish up my life. Whatever there’s left to finish.”
I got up. So did he. He was shaky on his feet. We shook hands.
“I’m glad I met you,” I said to him. “You’re a good man. A good cop.”
“I wasn’t good enough to stop this,” he lamented, flagellating himself.
“Nobody was.”
That was the truth.
“The best we could do was pick up the pieces.”
Riva and Bucky and I flew home courtesy of the state, one last time. A trucking service would drive down the stuff we’d left behind.
Everyone who wasn’t from Blue River was gone now. I didn’t think any of us would return. I knew I wouldn’t.
By the time we got home and unpacked, we were wiped out. I made a Taco Bell run. We ate out on our balcony. Riva put Buck to bed. He went without a fuss, for a change.
I’d forgotten how blissful Santa Barbara is in the evenings. Cool, clear. La Fiesta, our homegrown bacchanalia, was coming up soon. The city, spread out below our house high on the Riviera, seemed to be swaying to a cosmic rhythm in anticipation. Or maybe that was merely my imagination, a projection of my desire.
Riva poured two flutes of champagne. Veuve Clicquot, the good stuff. We always drink champagne at the end of a case. We clinked glasses.
“It wasn’t the win you wanted,” she said sagaciously. “But justice did prevail.” She drank, her dark eyes checking me out. “Didn’t it?”
“There was punishment for the crime, so you could say yes, by the book. But real justice? I don’t think so. There was too much corruption for true justice. All around.”
“I know you don’t want to hear this—but I feel sorry for Nora.”
I had told her about Nora’s final ravings, her sexual love fantasies. Riva had dismissed them as the product of a sick, sad woman. “She was so lonely and miserable it melted her mind.”
Riva was right—I didn’t want to hear it. She didn’t have to know the reasons why.
“She could have solved her problems another way, short of killing,” I said. “Not Juarez—we’re all better off he’s dead. And if Jerome’s career is finished, that’s fine with me, too. He’s shit, another rotten cop who believed he was above the law. Three of his men died to satisfy his ego.”
I sipped some champagne. It tasted great—a well-earned benefaction to myself. “But not Dennis. There’s no justification in the world for that.” I twirled the delicate glass in my fingers. The pale liquid fire sparkled.
“I remember him and Nora together, back in the old days,” I reminisced. “She worshiped the ground he walked on, and he felt the same about her. They really loved each other, once.”
“That’s why she thought she had to kill him,” my big-hearted wife said. “When it’s like that, it’s all or nothing. And if it’s nothing, it can’t exist anymore. You have to try to leave it behind, and move on. She was moving on, the best she could.”
I thought about that, sitting on my own balcony again, looking out over my city. Maybe if I tried hard enough, that’s how I’d remember Nora: as a keeper of the flame, until the fire burned out and only the ashes were left.
I spent a couple of days in Gentle Ben’s shop, tuning up my motorcycle—it isn’t easy getting parts for an old bike, they had to be shipped in from halfway across the country. When I was satisfied with my work, I drove out of town and rode over the pass into the Santa Ynez valley. Past Rancho San Marcos golf course, past Lake Cachuma, through Los Olivos and Los Alamas, all the way to Foxen Canyon Road.
It was a beautiful early autumn day. It was on a day like this that I had bought this motorcycle. My pride and joy, of the non human species. I hadn’t had a chance to ride it very much. This was a delayed christening.
It was the middle of harvesttime for grapes. I could see the pickers in the fields. In a couple of years I’d be drinking wine made from these grapes.
I stopped at the Foxen Winery tasting room and bought a bottle of pinot noir. I stashed it in my saddlebag, along with some cheese and bread I’d brought from home.
I doubled back partway, then headed up Figueroa Mountain Road, cruising high into the Los Padres National Forest, catching the Happy Canyon cutoff to where it ended. I got off the bike, grabbed the wine, cheese, bread, a corkscrew, and a crystal Riedel wineglass wrapped in a dishtowel. It’s a special glass, for special occasions. I hiked a couple of hundred yards up the foot trail, until I came to a good viewpoint.
The entire valley was laid out below me. I could see forever, all the way to the ocean. I unfolded the towel, laid the bread and cheese on it, uncorked the bottle, and poured myself a glass.
Sometimes simple pleasures are the best. I cut off a hunk of cheese, ripped a handful of bread from the loaf, and ate them with the wine—a lunch fit for a king.
High above, a red-tailed hawk was circling in the wind. Birds catch the hot thermals in these low mountains and ride them for hours without ever once having to flap their wings. I tracked it as it drifted southward, growing smaller in the distance. It looked, from down below where I was watching, to be completely free.
That’s how I felt. I work in a profession where people do bad things, get into trouble, hurt each other, sometimes even kill each other, and men and wo
men like me have to clean up afterward. I don’t mind being the guy with the broom trailing the circus. It’s the job I’ve chosen, and I get plenty of rewards from it.
But sometimes I like to lead the parade. Standing here in the warm sun, my wineglass in hand, I knew that right now, this moment, I was. I could eat and drink and lie down for a nap to sleep it off, and then I could go home. My son would jump into my arms, my wife would kiss me on the lips, we’d make love. And if I was lucky, when I fell asleep in her arms, all my dreams would be sweet.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ONE CAN’T WRITE A book this multifaceted and complex without the help of many knowledgeable people, all of whom generously gave me their time and expert advice.
Special Agent Sharon Carter of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration was particularly generous assisting me as regards DEA procedures and methodology. In those instances where she was unable to convey specific information, because of departmental policy (or any other reason), I used the best data available. Any mistakes or misrepresentations are the author’s, not hers.
Terry Cannon, J. D., of the San Diego District Attorney’s office, formerly with the Santa Barbara County District Attorney’s office, read the manuscript several times and advised me in all the phases of the workings of a D.A.’s office, including the protocols regarding a state special prosecutor. Terrence L. Lammers, J.D., and Robert L. Monk, J.D., helped in answering questions I had about other legal matters. Rick Dodge of Dodge City Gunshop, Santa Barbara, assisted me in weapons research.
Louise Burke, my publisher at NAL, did a wonderful job of shepherding this book through publication; her efforts on my behalf were invaluable. Bob Lescher, my agent, was very supportive and helpful, as he has been on all of my books. Al Silverman, my former editor (now retired, but still a part of my creative life), also read the manuscript and weighed in with his usual astute observations.
About the Author
J. F. Freedman is the New York Times bestselling author of Against the Wind, The Disappearance, House of Smoke, and In My Dark Dreams, among other titles. He is also an award-winning film and television director, writer, and producer. He lives in California.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2000 by J. F. Freedman
Cover design by Angela Goddard
978-1-4804-2397-8
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