OFFICER INVOLVED

by Lynch, Sean

  “This is Deputy District Attorney Myron Derlinger,” Conley said, with what Kearns perceived was a hint of derision. “He’s the D.D.A. assigned to this case.”

  “I know who you are, Deputy,” Derlinger said in a nasal voice.

  “That supposed to mean something?” Kearns said.

  “Today’s shooting isn’t your first, is it?” Derlinger said.

  Kearns didn’t answer.

  “I’ve taken the liberty of looking into your pre-hiring background investigation,” the deputy D.A. went on. “You’ve shot people before, Deputy. In fact, you’ve killed before, haven’t you?”

  Kearns looked over at Conley, who didn’t appear to be enthralled by Derlinger’s presence, his line of inquiry, or his condescending tone.

  “That makes you a homicide suspect,” Derlinger said.

  “All sworn peace officers who use lethal force are homicide suspects,” Conley said. He gave Derlinger a disapproving look. “It’s only a question of whether the investigation will determine if the homicide was justified or not.”

  “I know,” Kearns said. “Like the deputy D.A. pointed out; this ain’t my first rodeo.”

  “Mine either,” said Derlinger, unable or unwilling to contain the disdain in his voice. “And I’m the one who gets to determine whether your shooting today was justified or constitutes murder.”

  “Lucky me. Can I make my phone call now?”

  “Yeah,” Conley said, setting the phone on the table and plugging the cord into a phone jack in the wall. Kearns picked up the receiver.

  “Who are you going to call?” Derlinger asked.

  “My attorney.”

  “Do you need the number for Legal Defense?” Conley asked.

  “I don’t,” Kearns said, dialing the phone. “I’m not calling Legal Defense. My attorney’s name is Eugene Callen.”

  When the young deputy mentioned the name both men’s eyes showed recognition.

  “How do you know Judge Callen?” The deputy D.A. demanded.

  “He’s my friend,” Kearns said. “He isn’t going to be happy that I’ve been denied access to legal counsel.”

  Kearns hung up the phone. “There’s no answer,” he said, glancing at his wristwatch. “He must be out for his afternoon walk.”

  “Anybody else you want to call?” Conley asked. “Any family?”

  “Don’t have any,” he said. He picked up the receiver again and began to dial.

  “If you don’t have any family, “Derlinger said, “Who are you calling?”

  “A friend.”

  “Who?”

  “His name is Bob Farrell.”

  Chapter 3

  “You...come...here...often?” Farrell asked with a wink. He struggled to catch his breath.

  “Five days a week for over a year,” the blond woman said dismissively. “I work here. What’s your excuse?”

  Robert Farrell plopped exhaustedly onto a vacant stool at the juice bar next to her, and set his heavy leather gym bag on the counter. He was drenched in sweat, his straggly hair plastered over his mostly-bald head.

  “Trying to get back in shape,” he said. He patted his belly. “It’s been awhile.”

  “It looks like it’s been more than a while,” the woman said, turning up her nose at him. “I suppose I should admire the effort.”

  The woman was in her late twenties, and knew she had a face and body that turned heads. She wore her thick, peroxide-blond hair in a ponytail over a micro-thin, braided headband which was too insubstantial to absorb any sweat. She sported a brightly-colored leotard with a plunging neckline to better display her generous, surgically-enhanced breasts, and a thong which rode so high up over her hips it was almost a shoestring. She completed the ensemble with a pair of leg warmers over black Avia aerobics shoes. She was ordering a bottle of Evian and a yogurt when Farrell approached.

  They were in the lounge of the swanky Western Athletic Club, on California Street, in the heart of San Francisco’s Financial District. As metropolitan athletic clubs go, the W.A.C. was as upscale as they get. Air fresheners masked the odor of sweating bodies, and fit-looking attendants in white uniforms with spray bottles containing liquid antiseptic kept the establishment’s acres of glass, chrome and marble free of human contaminants.

  The club’s refreshment stand was better stocked with fruits and vegetables than most health-food restaurants, and the bar itself was highly-polished stone surrounded by a chrome-steel rod which completely encircled it, and which matched the chrome-accented stools and neon-lit mirror in back. Sally Jesse Raphael was gabbing away on the television behind the bar.

  “You’ve been coming to my class for almost two weeks now,” she said, stirring the fruit-at-the-bottom up to the surface.

  “I didn’t think you noticed.”

  “You kind of stand out,” she said. “Especially during the Milli Vanilli numbers.”

  “I’m more of a Procol Harum guy,” Farrell admitted.

  “Whatever kind of guy you are, I’ve got to hand it to you; I didn’t think you’d come back after your first class. I thought I’d killed you.”

  “I’m tougher than I look,” he said.

  “You’d have to be,” she said. “How old are you?”

  “Let’s say I’m over fifty and leave it at that,” he answered, getting most of his wind back.

  “Well, Mister Tougher-Than-You-Look,” she said, without looking up from her yogurt, “It was swell chatting with you, but I’m on a break. I have another class to teach in twenty minutes. So if you’ll excuse me-”

  “Bob Farrell,” he cut her off, extending his hand. “Your name’s Dee-Dee, isn’t it?”

  Dee-Dee rolled her eyes. “I’m really not interested in talking right now,” she said, ignoring his proffered hand. “Like I told you, I’m on a break. Do you mind?”

  “I only wanted to thank you for the super great workout,” Farrell continued. “You really put us through the paces in your aerobics class today. I thought I was going to puke.”

  “I know how you feel,” she said. “Watching you twitch your way through the Paula Abdul routine made me feel the same way. I thought you were epileptic. Would you please leave me alone?”

  “Gosh,” Farrell said. “I figured you’d be a little more appreciative to a paying customer?”

  “You figured wrong. Besides, you don’t pay me; the club does. And they certainly don’t pay me enough to spend my personal time getting hit on by creeps who smell like cigarettes and are old enough to be my dad.”

  “Wow,” Farrell said. “I didn’t see that attitude coming. You always seem so perky when you’re teaching your aerobics classes. Encouraging, too.”

  Dee-Dee turned in her seat to face him.

  “When I’m teaching my classes,” she said, “I am perky. In fact, I’m the perkiest fucking bitch on the planet. I’m also encouraging as hell. Right now, like I’ve told you repeatedly, I want to be left alone. You need to find some other perky bitch to harass, or I’ll have to encourage security to throw your ass out.”

  “Why stop with calling security, Danielle?” Farrell said. “Why not call the cops instead?”

  At the sound of the name ‘Danielle,’ her eyes widened.

  “Who are you?” she said.

  “Like I told you; my name’s Bob Farrell.” He grinned. “Private Investigator Bob Farrell.”

  “I don’t know who you’re talking about,” she said, turning back to her yogurt.

  “Sure you do, Danielle,” he said. “It is Danielle, isn’t it? Danielle Sutherland?”

  “Take a walk, Mister,” she said. “My name’s Dee-Dee, not Danielle. I don’t know anybody named Danielle.”

  “We’ll part ways soon enough,” Farrell said. “But first I want to show you something.”

  Farrell opened his gym bag to reveal a VHS video camera.

  “Pretty nifty huh?” he said. “See how I modified the bag so the lens and microphone can fit through this specially-cut hole? You were
probably too busy preening in front of the mirror each day before class to notice where I strategically set my bag down when I came into the studio. I videotaped you teaching every one of your classes.”

  “You some kind of a pervert?” she said. “Don’t get enough of staring at my butt in class? You have to videotape me so you can jerk off at home? Is that how you get your kicks?”

  “Actually, my motivation for videotaping you is somewhat more mercenary,” Farrell answered.

  “I should have known,” she said. “Old, outta-shape bastard like you taking my aerobics classes.” She pointed her plastic spoon at him. “You show anybody else those tapes?”

  “Yes,” Farrell said. “As a matter of fact I did.”

  “Other perverts like you?”

  “No,” he said. “If you must know, I’ve shown them to detectives from the Irvine Police Department, the Orange County Sheriff’s Office, and agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Not today’s class of course, but they’ve seen all the others.”

  She dropped her spoon.

  “That workplace lawsuit you filed down in Irvine, under the name Danielle Sutherland?” Farrell said. “In your suit you claimed you slipped and fell on the floor of my client’s business and became permanently disabled due to a catastrophic back injury. If I’m not mistaken, you were awarded almost two-hundred thousand dollars, due to the fact that you insisted you’d never be able to walk normally again, and couldn’t continue to work as a ballroom dance instructor.”

  “I don’t have the faintest idea what you’re talking about,” she said, looking away.

  “I’ve got to tell you,” Farrell said, “the cops who’ve viewed my tapes have been impressed. The general consensus is that you look a lot better than Jamie Lee Curtis did in that movie Perfect, especially when you do the full splits, or put one of your legs completely over your head. And you have tremendous stamina. You can hop, skip, jump, and dance around for an entire hour-long class, and you do it four times a day, five days a week.”

  She ignored the compliment.

  “You’re in terrific shape for a woman who’s permanently disabled,” Farrell said. “Felony fraud shape, to be exact.”

  “You’re insane,” she said, standing up. “You’ve obviously confused me with some other aerobics instructor inhabiting your depraved fantasies. For the last time, my name isn’t Danielle Sutherland.”

  “I’m sorry,” Farrell said. “Did I say Danielle Sutherland? My apologies. I meant to say Danica Cooney.”

  Her eyes widened again, and her left eyelid began to twitch.

  “Isn’t that the name you used in Tulsa, in nineteen eighty-eight, when you won that one-hundred, seventy thousand dollar award? A dance instructor named Danica Cooney claimed a disabling back injury from allegedly falling off the escalator at the Woodland Hills Shopping Mall. I’ve seen her picture. She could pass for your twin sister.”

  “You’re crazy,” she said, unable to hide the tremor in her voice.

  “Or should I call you Deanne Carlton?” Farrell said. “That was the name you used in the department store in El Con Center in Tucson when you said a wet floor made you slip and fall. Netted one-hundred and forty thousand out of that lawsuit.”

  “You’ve got quite an imagination,” she said. Her gaze darted toward the exit.

  “That’s why I had to get the F.B.I. involved,” Farrell said. “Once you start committing felonies across state lines the federal boys take an interest. Did you know there are felony warrants issued for your arrest, under your various aliases, in four states? Hefty rewards, too.”

  “Fuck you,” she said, the beginnings of panic spreading across her features. “I’m leaving. You’d better not try to follow me. I have a green belt in karate.”

  “I thought you were going to call security?” Farrell said. “What changed your mind?”

  “I’m out of here,” she said, showing him her back. Farrell snaked a hand into his gym bag as she began to walk away.

  He reached out, grabbed her ponytail, and jerked her backwards. She stumbled, lost her footing, and extended a salon-tanned arm to avert her fall, awkwardly clutching at the chrome railing surrounding the juice bar. Once she grasped it, Farrell expertly snapped one end of a set of Peerless handcuffs over her wrist, and anchored the other end to the metal rail.

  “You motherfucker!” Dee-Dee/Danielle/Danica/Deanne hissed, tugging frantically at her trapped arm.

  “Told you I was tougher than I look,” he said.

  She suddenly shot out a high side-kick, aiming straight at Farrell’s head. He deftly sidestepped the attack, and then took another step backwards to keep out of range.

  “Faster, too,” he said with a grin.

  “Fuck you!”

  The attendant behind the juice bar, a young Hispanic woman, looked on in fear. A number of club patrons had stopped to gawk, and soon a couple of husky male club attendants came running from the facility’s interior.

  Farrell withdrew his five-shot Smith & Wesson .38 from the gym bag and held it loosely at his side. With his other hand he wagged a finger at the newcomers. The two attendants stopped their approach and began to back away. The aerobics instructor chained to the juice bar knelt down, hung her head, and started to cry.

  Farrell extracted a package of unfiltered Camel cigarettes and a worn Zippo lighter from his gym bag. Keeping his eyes up, he shook a smoke from the deck and put it to his lips.

  “It figures,” Dee-Dee/Danielle/Danica/Deanne said, stifling a sob. “Enjoy your cigarette, asshole.”

  “After two weeks of jumping around like Richard Simmons on a crack-cocaine binge,” he said, “I think I’ve earned it. Would you care for one?” He extended the pack to her. She extended her middle finger back at him.

  Farrell’s pager beeped from inside his gym bag. Everyone looked at the bag but him. He sparked the lighter.

  “You can’t smoke in here,” the juice bar lady said.

  “Or what?” Farrell asked.

  “I’ll have to call the police,” she answered.

  “By all means,” Farrell said, lighting his cigarette.

  Chapter 4

  “Now I’ve seen everything,” Kearns said. “I can die fulfilled.”

  “Shut up,” Farrell said. “It ain’t what it looks like.”

  “I hope not,” Kearns said. “Because it looks like you’ve joined a Chippendales spinoff act called the ‘Drunkendales’.”

  When Farrell entered the interrogation room he was wearing neon-red athletic shorts which displayed his pale, bony legs, a sleeveless, neon-blue shirt which displayed his even bonier arms, and a pair of Nike tennis shoes. He was also wearing matching neon-yellow leg-warmers, wristbands, and a headband over his balding pate.

  “I was working undercover,” Farrell explained.

  “Where?” Kearns said. “A Castro Street bathhouse?”

  “I was at an aerobics fitness center, if you must know,” Farrell said defensively. “I’m currently on a worker’s compensation fraud case. Obviously,” he said, pointing to his attire, “I’m conducting a covert investigation.”

  “As what?” Kearns said. “One of Olivia Newton-John’s back-up dancers?”

  “Very funny.”

  Farrell was led into the interrogation room by Sergeant Conley. It looked to Kearns as if Farrell and Conley knew each other already. They shook hands and Conley ribbed him about his costume. Judge Callen was right behind him. Bringing up the rear was D.D.A. Derlinger. Kearns stood and shook Farrell and the Judge’s hands.

  “Thanks for coming,” he said. “I didn’t know who else to call.”

  “My pleasure,” the Judge said. “You did the right thing calling, Kevin. I apologize for not being in when you phoned. I was out enjoying the beautiful July afternoon with a stroll along the beach.”

  Judge Eugene Callen was over seventy, and was an Alameda County law enforcement legend. He’d spent over four decades doling out maximum sentences, and presided over some of Nort
hern California’s most infamous cases, including those involving Hell’s Angels, Black Panthers, the Symbionese Liberation Army, and every other type of violent criminal imaginable. ‘Iron Gene’ Callen sported a full head of white hair, and despite walking with a cane, the result of shrapnel wounds from his naval service during WWII, carried himself with ramrod-straight military bearing.

  A widower, Judge Callen resided in a Gold Coast mansion on the island of Alameda, sandwiched between San Francisco and Oakland. Since retiring from the bench and going into private practice, he kept himself fit with daily walks along the shore of the San Francisco Bay.

  “Denny,” Callen said, referring to Sergeant Conley, “informs me you’ve been involved in a shooting fracas? Are you all right?”

  “I’m okay,” Kearns said. “I’m not ashamed to admit it’s been a rough day.” He ran his hands through his military-length hair. “It was damned near my last.”

  Derlinger took in the cordial exchange between the Judge and Kearns, and his easygoing familiarity with Sergeant Conley, with a furrowed brow.

  “So you’re Deputy Kearns’ attorney-of-record?” Derlinger asked.

  “I am,” Judge Callen said.

  “Who might his man be?” Derlinger asked, pointing at Farrell with no attempt to conceal his disapproval.

  “His appearance notwithstanding,” Callen said with a smile, “this is Mr. Robert Farrell. He is in my employ as a private investigator.”

  “Farrell,” Derlinger mumbled. He began to thumb through the thick file in his hands. “I thought I recognized that name. I’m afraid I can’t allow him to participate in this investigation.”

  “Why not?” Callen asked.

  “Farrell was directly involved in Kearns’ previous shootings. I’m not comfortable with him being here.”

  “I care not a whit for your level of comfort,” Judge Callen said. “I am Deputy Kearns’ attorney and Mr. Farrell is my employee. Deputy Kearns has every right to the legal representation of his choosing, regardless of your prejudice. Mr. Farrell, as my investigator, is critically vital to my work in Deputy Kearns’ defense.”