“How about a pool while we’re at it?” I said.
Hector was staring at me, so I turned to him. “Don’t you like to swim?”
He seemed to shake himself. “You brought up something this morning with Mr. D.A. Marovich. I was thinking maybe this wasn’t the best time to talk about it.”
“We’re all family,” I said.
“I made a few calls.” Hector shrugged, as if to say he hadn’t made much effort. “Found a guy—you know Phillips, works out of Newton?”
It took a few minutes for everyone to remember Phillips and tell some sort of story about him before Hector could go on.
“So, Phillips says he knows this George Schwartz pretty well. Says he’s been a tweeny for Marovich for years, never does shit for the D.A.‘s office, only works for the boss himself. Does the dirty work, handles damage control. Phillips hates the guy. He says whenever Schwartz shows up, the case will get nasty, because that’s the way Schwartz likes it. Phillips also had a few things to say about Schwartz working for the Marovich campaign and some of the stuff he’s been up to for the boss.”
I got up and stretched. “Doesn’t matter. I don’t frankly give a damn about Mr. Baron Marovich and his campaign now that Conklin isn’t a usable issue.”
“Say what?” Mike frowned at me.
“The judge has to throw out his case.”
The moans and guffaws were like a Greek chorus—the one just before the hero leaps off the precipice or cuts his heart out. I appealed to the assembled. “What did I say?”
“Sometimes you democrats don’t get the big picture.” Mike knuckled my shoulder again, harder this time, and without a smile. “Do you know the judge?”
I felt a clutch inside; I had never thought to look into the judge who had agreed to hear the petition, and that was a big lapse.
“Find out what law firm he came out of,” Mike said.
I said, “Oh,” because that seemed to cover the territory. I mentioned Jennifer’s firm and got a new round of the chorus.
“Judge throws this out now, he’ll look like a fool.” Mike was the tough guy again. “You need a little refresher course in big city politics? Section One, Subsection A of the city charter says, ‘The facts, although interesting, are irrelevant.’ Remember that and you’ll do okay.”
I said, “I thought Subsection A was, ‘Anything worth fighting for is worth fighting dirty for.’”
“No.” He laughed. “That’s Sub B.”
“Now that you’ve explained things to me, I have something to concede,” I said. “You ready for it?”
Mike looked up at me, skeptical. “Three in one day is over quota.”
“Yeah? Well, I think you were right. From the beginning, it was a simple heist. And I don’t mean the shooting of Wyatt Johnson.”
Chapter 30
Casey’s plane was early. I had only been waiting for half an hour when she came down the ramp. I took her carry-on bag from her and put my arm around her narrow waist.
“How was your weekend?” I asked.
“Boring,” she said. “What happened here?”
“Not much.” Give her time to decompress. “Your new room is ready. Lyle is bringing down your furniture.”
“Bringing?” She lit up like Vegas. “He’s coming?”
“And…” I drew it out, corrupted by Mike. “Stacy and Lisa are riding down with him. They’re setting out right after school Thursday and spending the entire weekend.”
Casey was happy beyond words. I was delighted to have brought her such good news about her best friends, but I was also thinking that three fourteen-year-old ballerinas would be a houseful, even for a weekend.
Just as I stepped onto the escalator, Casey gripped my arm. “Can they come to school with me Friday?”
“If it’s okay with Mischa.”
“Wouldn’t it be fantastic if they applied? They could live with us all the time.”
Fantastic just would not come out of my mouth.
“Except,” she said, struggling to pull something out of her backpack, a new sort of light in her eyes, “Dad got me this.”
She handed me a slick brochure from a very fine professional ballet company. There was an application attached. Young Dancers Program. In residence. In Houston.
I wanted another shot at enthusiasm for running a dancer’s dorm in my home. In South Pasadena.
All I could think to say was, “It’s expensive, Casey.”
“Dad wants to pay. He says he’s been doing a lot of business in Houston. He could see me more often.”
Fighting back tears, I put the brochure into my bag. “We’ll look into it.”
The condo was quiet. Mike and Michael had gone to the movies. Casey took her shower and went straight to bed. I dumped the contents of Casey’s suitcase into the washer before I turned on the kitchen television to watch the replay of Ralph’s Sunday afternoon interview. It was a rerun; Baron Marovich had stood up Ralph, too. I was deciding between opening a bottle of wine and going to bed when the call came.
“Maggie?” Jennifer Miller sounding fragile. “I’m at Parker Center. Will you come and get me?”
The request hit a wrong chord. Usually people call on friends or family after a police experience. I was neither. “Surely someone in your firm would come if you called.”
“Please. I don’t trust anyone else. And I really need to talk to you. I’ll meet you in the lobby.”
I didn’t trust her, didn’t fall for the tremor in her voice. I simply wanted to know what the next act would be.
Right after I told her I would come, I paged Mike. I didn’t know where he was, but his pager went off in the bedroom. I followed the sound, found the pager still attached to the jeans in the pile of dirty clothes he had left next to the hamper. At that moment I decided to buy him a pocket telephone and an answering machine for his car phone.
I needed to go, but I wasn’t about to leave Casey in the house alone; I’ve seen too many movies to fall for that one. I called Guido.
“Do you still have company?” I asked.
“Who wants to know?” He was oddly suspicious.
“I need a babysitter. Do you know a nice couple I might engage?”
“No. I’m a singleton. Will that do?”
I said, “Admirably. It won’t be for long—Mike should be home soon.”
When he came, Guido gave me only token argument about going out alone. I was headed for police headquarters, I reminded him, what could be safer? He did try to stall me, though. I knew he was hoping Mike would come home so he could tag along with me. Guido needs regular adventure.
Company would have been nice, but I was afraid that Jennifer would skitter away if I didn’t come alone. I prepared myself for several contingencies. The belt of my pants didn’t fit right when I was ready to go, but I felt up to the challenge.
Downtown Los Angeles becomes a ghost town at night, especially on weekends. Still, there was a sparse crowd on the tight-budget lawn in front of Parker Center. The demonstrators were long gone, their turf taken over by families waiting for their loved ones to make bail after weekend peccadillos.
I parked in a well-lighted passenger-loading zone right on Los Angeles Street, tempting fate and the traffic officers by opting for security over legal details. Jennifer had been watching for me. I had no more than locked the car when she burst out the front doors of the station and came down the wide walkway at a run.
I was back in the car with the motor running when she slipped into the passenger seat. As she reached for her seat belt, I watched a shudder pass over her.
“I hate that place,” she said. “Thanks for coming.”
“Did they book you?”
Taken aback, she asked, “For what?”
“Arson comes to mind.”
“They only asked questions. Can we go?”
“Sure,” I said. “Tell me where.”
“Hancock Park. Las Palmas and Third.” She directed me to head out Wilshire.
&
nbsp; “Glad to see you intact,” I said. “And with both shoes.”
She glanced at her hiking boots and seemed puzzled. The boots fit with her jeans and plaid flannel shirt, the cap pulled low over her short hair. The night was warm for hats and flannel, the day certainly had been.
“Where have you been?” I asked, weaving through light traffic. I saw no one behind me.
“I needed time to think.” She sat up and looked around, got her bearings before she slouched back down and closed her eyes. “My parents have a place at the beach. I took a lot of long walks, did a lot of thinking.”
“And?”
“I came to some conclusions about what’s essential. The bottom line—every line—is this: I have a son to raise. I’ll do whatever is best for him in the long haul.”
“Which is?”
“You’re a mother. What would you do?”
“In your place? Leave town, start over.” I thought of Tyrone’s words. “Get clean again.”
“That sounds easier than it is.” She pulled her purse up onto her lap. It was big and soft-sided, full. When she opened it, I put my left hand on my belt, watched her root out a pack of gum, put a stick into her mouth. She wadded the wrapper and dropped it into the open purse. “I have worked so hard to get where I am. Think of yourself, Maggie. Can you imagine abandoning everything you’ve accomplished and starting over?”
“I’ve done it before,” I said. “I could do it again if I had to. The world is full of possibility. You might surprise yourself, Jennifer.”
She took a deep breath, tested a small laugh. “I’ve had all the surprises I need for a while.”
“Am I taking you home?” I asked.
She said, “Yes,” while looking out the window and not at me.
I knew her address, on Avenida Mariposa in San Pedro. San Pedro is a long way from Hancock Park, where she was directing me. She told me when to turn off Wilshire. I put on my turn signal, but before I left the lights of Wilshire for some dark side street, I reached over and lifted her purse off her lap, weighed it. It was light, but I threw it into the backseat anyway.
“Why’d you do that?” She seemed nonplussed.
“Too crowded up here. Need a little room to move around.” I slowed, watched the street.
“When you came to my office Friday,” I said, “I wondered how you managed to find me. I’ve only been in town a few days. I’m not in the directory. Hell, I’m not even on the building directory yet. So, I went through the short list of people who might have told you: Baron Marovich and Roddy O’Leary knew. So did Ralph Faust.
“When you came in, you mentioned traffic slowing you down. But you didn’t say anything about calling around for my address.” I smiled at her. “But then, you’d already been to my office. The police lifted your prints on Wednesday.”
“Oh damn.” She buried her face in her hands.
“You’re not very good at skullduggery, counselor. What were you looking for, anyway?”
“Whatever I could find. I had to know what you had and try to figure out why you got so involved.”
I was incredulous. “No one told you?”
When she said, “No,” she sounded betrayed and angry.
“Someone used you, big time.” I was still watching the street, slowing to let cars pass me. “Who?”
“Tell me first. Why do you care if this degenerate gets out of prison or not?”
“I don’t care, as long as he stays away from me and mine.”
“Then what is it with you?” Finally, some heat from her. “It was all going really well. You fucked it up.”
“I could say I’m a newsman. It’s my job to expose idiots who will foment a riot to get a few more votes or a big money judgment. But that would be a lie.” I slowed when she pointed to the Third Street sign, signaled my turn. “The truth is this: Every morning when I wake up, the face I see on the other side of my pillow belongs to Mike Flint.”
She spat, “Shit,” as she hunkered down in her seat, turning away from me.
“I gave you all the clues, counselor. You should have figured it out. Someone should have told you; Marovich knows.”
I turned right on Third. The open, dark expanse of the Wilshire Country Club golf course was ahead on the left. “Is anyone home at your house?”
“No. My son is with his dad. Turn there, on Hudson.”
As I made the left onto Hudson, I leaned forward enough to slide Mike’s little .38 with the filed-off hammer all the way out of my waistband without her seeing it. I held it down in the space between the seat and the door, with the hammer cocked. Jennifer I could deal with—a good elbow shot would take out a creampuff like her. I was more concerned about outsiders.
“There,” she said, pointing to a gated estate that backed on the fairway. The houses around it were enormous; not the sort of neighborhood where people walked around or hung out behind screen doors. Mature trees interfered with the streetlights. Overall, dark and deserted.
I pulled to the curb but crept along ten or so yards beyond the gate she had pointed out, moving so slowly my speedometer didn’t register.
“Back there,” she said. “You went too far.”
I was watching both the windshield and the rearview mirror, checking out the sides. “You can walk from here.”
You know about curiosity and the fate of the cat? When I told my mother, years ago, that I was abandoning my degree in philosophy to go into the news, she thought it was a natural move.
“Go poke around someone else’s closets,” she had said. “Get paid for it.”
That’s why I didn’t push open Jennifer’s door on the move, roll her out onto the pavement, and drive on. I had to know who was there waiting for us, whose patsy Jennifer was.
He came from behind, out of the landscaping like a dark current in the shadows, stayed low as he moved around to my side of the barely rolling car. I heard the snick of the latch on my car door, felt the first sliver of night air as he opened the door.
My right foot hit the brake as my left hit the door, ripping it from his grip. I saw the shiny muzzle of the gun he held in firing position, used the instant of his confusion to bring up my .38 and aim it, using that shine as my target. My aim was low—the bullet ripped through his Adam’s apple and threw him backward. Made him bounce on the black asphalt.
All around, porch lights snapped on. With my little gun held ready for a back-up shot, I screamed, “Call the police.”
Jennifer was fast. She was out her door and running before the man stopped twitching and gurgling.
“Freeze, Jennifer,” I said, but not too loud. Just in case she wanted to do the rabbit-in-the-rifle-sights routine, I was ready to oblige. She stopped, collapsed into a heap, and began to weep. That’s when I really wanted to take her out.
It was a good neighborhood. I heard sirens within twenty seconds. When the first black and white rumbled up the street, Mike’s little revolver was on the car seat and I was six feet away from it, standing over Jennifer.
Roddy O’Leary still held his Luger in a death grip.
Chapter 31
“I picked the lock.” The only good part about what had happened was where it happened: within the jurisdiction of Hollywood Division. When the police took me in for questioning, I told them I needed Detective Hector Melendez, now. He sat on the near end of the table in the interrogation room during my grilling.
“The .38 was in a locked case in the closet,” I said. “Because there had already been two deaths related to this mess, I was afraid to go out, alone, unarmed. I picked the lock on Mike’s gun case and took his gun. He wasn’t home and he knew nothing about it.”
The hardnose, Detective Valenti, had one leg up on a chair, rested his arm across his knee showing a lot of starched shirt cuff. I thought he was posturing for my benefit. So did Hector. When no one could see him, Hec would roll his eyes or wink at me, as if we were co-conspirators. I could have kissed him.
“Do you realize,” Valenti said, �
�that the weapon was not to code?”
I had answered the same question three times. I looked Valenti in the eye and said, “All I know is, it fit in my belt and it kept me from getting my face blown off.”
Hector stood up then, took a step to put himself between me and Valenti. “It’s a straight case of self-defense. Let the lady go home, get some rest. If you think of any more stupid questions, you can call her tomorrow.”
Valenti started to get his back up, but when Hector faced him down, he shrugged it off. “Go on home,” he said. “We’ll be in touch.”
Mike was waiting for us in the detective room. He had his feet on Hector’s desk, snoring into his chest. I knocked his leg, caught it in mid-air as he startled awake.
“Take me home, sailor,” I said, letting his leg drop.
“Why didn’t you wait for me?” was all he said.
“And get you into more trouble? Put your pension at risk? No, big guy. I thought it better to sacrifice myself.”
He got rid of a lot of saved-up air.
“Take me home,” I said, feeling so weary I was weepy.
I walked down the hall of movie posters between Mike and Hector, fighting the urge to give in to the shakes that had threatened to seize me ever since the shooting. Maybe I would have let go if Baron Marovich hadn’t come in the back door just then, walking between his own pair of police escorts. He blanched when he saw me and his reaction brought me up straight, made me angry.
“Look, Baron,” I said, doing one of Casey’s pirouettes for his benefit. “Two arms, two legs, all her faculties intact—you big dumb fuck.”
The D.A.‘s escorts both took an arm, held him back when he seemed ready to charge at me. He said, “Never know when to stop, do you, MacGowen?”
“It’s all over now.” I gripped Mike’s arm. Holding him was the only way I felt strong enough to face Marovich. Later, I knew there would have to be tears, when realization replaced adrenaline. When it happened, I didn’t want Marovich to see it. I made myself smile at him. “Be interesting to see your polls after this news gets out.”
The district attorney’s handlers began moving him forward again. I didn’t want to get within striking range—either his or mine—so I broke from my handlers and ducked out of the hallway, headed up a flight of stairs that opened on the left. At the top of the stairs I saw the door to the female officers’ locker room. I went in.
Bad Intent Page 28