by Reason of Sanity

by Gene Grossman

  “And while I’ve got you on the phone, you should know that ever since the publicity we got last time for giving you that gang on a silver platter, my criminal practice has suffered. I’m afraid that if it gets out that I helped you discover another two members of that gang, I’ll completely lose any remaining integrity I have with the underworld and no crook will ever trust me. It’ll look like I’m too close with you feds. I’m going to need you to do me a favor. Keep my name out of it. Once it’s known that you found out about more gang members, you’ll be in the spotlight again - and that’s okay. You take all the credit. All I want is the reward money. Can you assure me that you’ll keep my name out of it?”

  “Okay Sharp, I think we can do that. Discretion has always been one of our strong suits. You can take my personal word for it that I won’t mention your name once – to anyone but the person making out the checks for the reward.”

  Vanity rears its ugly head. He goes for the chance to take all the credit and lets me draft the reward agreement. I word it so that there’s no mention of arrest or conviction. It relies entirely on my proof that they were both members of the gang and participated in at least one of the bank robberies. We exchange corrected copies back and forth by fax and the deal is sealed. I promise to deliver the location info on the other gang members to him by the end of the week.

  I have the goods on Drago, but also know that they won’t accept Harold’s written note to me. Come to think of it, I don’t think that the note can be given to them. It was written to me while Harold was still alive, so it probably falls under the client-privilege category of communications.

  I know that all the banks and lobbies were loaded with security cameras. If they were both part of that robbery gang, at one time or another they were inside one of the banks, lobbies, or both.

  Most of the local cops eat at the Chinese restaurant where the kid reigns, and one of her fans is the cop in charge of the police computers where that expert loaded that facial recognition program that nailed Harold. If they’ve still got that software, maybe she can use it to scan for the appearance of Drago and Harold somewhere in the bank and lobby security videos. I send her a memo and mention that the firm has a chance to get another twelve large in reward money if we can use that software. There’s a quick response by dog-mail: “give me the pictures.” I like doing business with her. Whenever there’s money involved, she’s extremely cooperative.

  Jack Bibberman helps me organize all the pictures we have in our digital file, going back to when I was first assigned the Drago case. There are quite a few more than just Drago’s and Harold’s but I don’t know how to work the Photoshop program well enough to separate out just the two we’re interested in, so I give Suzi the entire file. She tells me that it might take a couple of days.

  Vinnie’s wedding day is tomorrow and we’ll all be at the little church in North Hollywood, watching Vinnie and Olive get hitched. Myra and I make plans to get together. She wants to ride in my new yellow Hummer, because everyone looks at us. It must be because of the way that the dog rides with his head sticking up and out of the open sunroof. Suzi got some special aviator-type dog goggles for him to wear as eye-protection, and with his big ears flopping in the wind, he looks like a World War I air ace.

  The phone rings. It’s Victor from the autopsy place and he’s got a transportation problem. His car’s transmission is on the fritz and he wants to know if I can pick him up. I tell him that I’d like to, but I’ve got to go in the complete opposite direction to pick up Myra in quaint Brentwood Glen, at the house we used to live in, and with presents we’re schlepping for everyone, plus the kid and dog along, we’re really filled up.

  He understands and says that he has a back-up vehicle to use. We agree to see each other at the church.

  Today’s the day. I’ve got my best suit on, and I’m driving the Hummer to pick up Myra. Things couldn’t be going any better. Myra and Suzi are pleased to see each other, and all the way to the church I’m completely ignored. The dog gets petted during their conversation. I get ignored. It’s amazing how much the kid talks to everyone but me. They both yap all the way from Brentwood to North Hollywood, catching up on some of the most meaningless items. The only time my name is mentioned is when Suzi tells Myra about my new pasta recipe, which includes the usual eight ounces of large elbow macaroni, topped off with a small can of creamed corn and a small can of sweet peas. Myra winces at the thought of it, but Suzi tells her that it really doesn’t taste that bad. I finally get a chance to take part in the conversation, letting them know that the dog loved it. We hear an affirmative bark from the air ace, outside the sunroof.

  As we approac h the church, we see an amazing event taking place. Olive, fully dressed in her wedding gown complete with the long trailing train, is frantically running out of the church screaming. Vinnie, complete with coat, tails and top hat, is chasing after her. This track event is taking place in the parking lot and everyone from inside the church lines the lot, shouting out suggestions to each of them, as they run by.

  I don’t know why I’m surprised. Every time I get involved with Stuart or Vinnie, something outrageous usually takes place. This time I hope nobody lands in jail as a result of it all.

  Myra and Suzi sit calmly watching. They both know the personalities involved. Olive jumps into her car and starts to drive away. Vinnie runs to the armored truck, jumps in and races after her. This scene reminds me of an old silent movie I once saw on PBS, starring a cockeyed group of police officers known as the “Keystone Cops.”

  I guess that there won’t be a wedding today. That doesn’t disappoint me, but I’m sure the dog was looking forward to some cold cuts. When we park and get out to meet all the other people there, most of whom we know, I learn what caused the problem. Being in a business that caters to funerals, Stuart and Vinnie had become quite friendly with a number of funeral directors and invited them to the wedding. What most people don’t know is that quite often, undertakers live on the same premises as their business so they don’t own their own private cars. If they have to go somewhere they usually drive a hearse or flower-car from the mortuary. This means that the parking lot looked like a funeral procession. Olive stepped outside the rear door of the church to take a swig from her flask and have a cigarette. At first she didn’t realize what all those large dark Cadillacs were doing there, but when Victor pulled up in that mobile lab painted with his trademark logo of “1(800)AUTOPSY,” poor Olive put it all together and started to come apart at the seams. I guess she flashed back to that day at the fast-food place when Harold jumped onto her lap. She freaked out, started to scream and ran.

  Well, it wasn’t a total loss. All the food was paid for, so a large group of us went to Pollo Meshuga and pigged out. It was a beautiful day and the buffet was laid out on the restaurant’s patio. The dog ran around policing the floor. I don’t think they needed any janitors that evening.

  22

  While we’re all busy celebrating at the restaurant, Victor informs me that Harold died from a blood disease. He must have known about it for some time, because his body contained trace elements of the special medicine that’s usually

  prescribed for people with that ailment. When Victor tells me exactly what the medication was, I ask him if it’s common. He tells me that the disease is rare and so is the medicine, which requires a prescription. There can’t be too many pharmacies around that fill prescriptions for that stuff, so I get Jack B. to check it out. I want to know who his doctor was and if Harold knew how seriously ill he really was.

  I don’t have to wait too long for an answer because before Jack can start canvassing the local pharmacies, I get a phone call from the doctor who was treating Mister Blitzstien. He saw Harold’s name mentioned in the newspaper after the trial and noted that I had been representing him. He wants to let me know that he was out of the country on vacation during the whole trial and didn’t know anything about Harold’s arrest, other than the fact that nobody contacted his office f
or prescription refills.

  My only question for him is whether or not Harold knew how sick he was. The doctor realizes the patient-doctor privilege doesn’t apply here now that his patient is dead, and he’s obviously more worried about his own malpractice exposure for not having his office make some effort to get medicine to Harold. He tells me what I want to know. Harold knew that he only had six months to live.

  That might answer another question. Why he didn’t take more precautions to avoid getting caught for what he thought he did to Drago. He knew that he probably wouldn’t live long enough to be convicted. All he cared about was making sure that Drago didn’t survive, so that his family’s share of the bank loot would be bigger. How nice. He was a family man, just wanting to do the best for his wife and kids. No wonder he made that remark to me about doing it for the money. And I’m the one who caused his estate to be diminished in value when the gang was arrested and the loot recovered.

  He also had to suffer with the thought that he killed Drago for nothing. There would be no money for his family unless I got some reward money for him.

  One last item from the doctor gave me a small hope that I could tie Harold into the robbery gang with something other than his confession. His prescriptions were delivered to a house – the one that the gang used as a staging area and where the ‘dog lady’ lived.

  Okay, I’m part of the way there, but I still need more proof for Agent Snell. He’ll be mad as hell when he finds out that there aren’t any live gang members to arrest, so if I don’t give him some concrete proof, I still might get screwed out of the reward money.

  True to her word, the kid has some results on the face-recognition scans. We got lucky. Both Drago and Harold are seen inside all the banks before the robberies took place. I guess they all visited the scene of the crime in advance to block out their movements and time the escape and money retrieval.

  The lobby cameras show that Harold was the maintenance man who walked through the lobby and picked the money and glasses out of the trashcans while the dog-lady did her act of diversion.

  This raises an interesting question. If Drago was in the hospital, who took his place in the robbery of that bank where he fell? Sure enough, one of the lobby cameras picked up a different maintenance man, complete with phony beard and mustache. They got a substitute, but who was it? I check out all the newspapers for articles about the gang getting arrested and see names and pictures of the gang members caught that day. None of them were wearing a phony beard disguise… but the facial recognition software does make a match for the bearded maintenance man. When I gave Suzi the file, it contained everyone we had pictures of, including Drago’s lawyer, Richard Handelmann.

  Pictures of the people Snell arrested that day show one man in a business suit – obviously the inside man, who pulled the job without Drago’s help, and the dog-lady. Nobody else. The loot was recovered, but no maintenance man. Handelmann must have driven his own car there that day. After the robbery, the dog lady drove around the block and got the moneybags from Handelmann first. She then picked up the inside man. By the time the feds caught up with the van, Handelmann was probably out of his janitor’s jumpsuit and beard and was driving back to his office.

  This is really hard to believe. They got their own lawyer to fill in for one of the gang. As hard as it is to believe, it’s going to be even harder to prove. I checked the lobby security tapes of the job they pulled before the last one and sure enough, there was the bearded maintenance man again. He probably wanted to distance himself from the rest of the gang, so he didn’t join their vanpool to work and back each of those times.

  I call Agent Snell and let him know that there’s an additional gang member that I’d like to add to the reward list. He tells me that he won’t go more than ten thousand for the third identity. I tell him that it’s a criminal defense attorney and I hear a sound over the phone that resembles the one I hear when the dog drools. There’s nothing that cops like more than catching a dirty lawyer. This little tidbit allows me to get the reward up to a full twenty five thousand for the lawyer. Life is good.

  The beauty of this last revelation is that no effort on my part will be required to prove Handelmann’s involvement in the robberies. The Facial Recognition software program has the capability to see through phony disguises like Handelmann’s. His goose is cooked and so is Drago’s wrongful death claim.

  Lo cal news covering the progress of the gang’s court case shows their lawyer making an announcement on the steps of the federal courthouse. Everyone wants to be like me. To my surprise, the gang’s lawyer is none other than Handelmann. Why not? I should have figured it out before. How else could he have been retained to represent Drago’s estate? I press the ‘record’ button on my VCR and tape him claiming that there were so many procedural errors made in this case that he’s sure he can get it dismissed.

  I have to agree with him about the errors part of his statement. If we did our job a little better, he’d be making this statement from his small room at the federal ‘Grey-bar Hotel’ now.

  Stuart calls to let me know that Vinnie and Olive are back together again and says that Vinnie would like to ask my advice about whether or not he should bring Olive with him to his therapy session. This is definitely not my specialty. If I knew anything about how to keep a woman happy, I would still be married to Myra. Stuart asks if it would be okay for Vinnie to call.

  When Vinnie calls, I ask him about his therapy sessions and who referred him. I don’t know why but I’m not too surprised by his answer – the yellow pages. Maybe the telephone directory is okay for a plumber but I would think that a person might want to have a more personal type of referral to a therapist. But who am I to talk? My murder case was solved by a guy who I got from a fluke phone call made by Suzi when she dialed 1(800)AUTOPSY. The conversation continues. “Vinnie, do you know if your therapist is a psychologist or psychiatrist?”

  “Not exactly, Mister Sharp.” “What do you mean not exactly? He’s got to be one or the other.”

  “He’s not a he, he’s a she.”

  “Whatever. Okay, which one is she?” “I don’t think she’s either one of those.”

  “Well what about her office… is it in a professional office building?”

  “Actually, it’s right down the street on Washington, between the dog grooming parlor and the boat broker.”

  “Vinnie, I’m familiar with that street and the only thing between those two places…” I stop short. It suddenly hits me. The storefront where he goes for his therapy certainly isn’t the office of a psychiatrist or psychologist. In fact, if my memory serves me correctly, the sign on the window says ‘Palm Reader.’ Vinnie is going to a palm reader for therapy

  – and it’s helping him.

  “Mister Sharp, are you still there?”

  “Oh yeah Vinnie, I’m still here… my cell phone must have cut out for a second.”

  What’s the use? How can anyone expect to give advice to a guy who considers a palm reader his therapist? Ronald Reagan’s wife consulted with an astrologer, and she advised the President, so maybe they know something I don’t know. I politely end the conversation by telling Vinnie that if Olive wants to join him in a therapy session, then he should do whatever makes her happy. With Stuart’s talent for filling out paperwork, I’m sure he’ll get his insurance company to pay for Olive’s therapy too. I wonder who’ll pay for mine.

  Later in the afternoon I go through some papers, trying to clean off my desk. I happen to see some further results from the facial recognition scan. Included in the stack of videos given to the kid for scanning was the tape from the fast food place – and we got a hit off of it – the guy in the car planting a kiss on the boy. What a surprise. It’s none other than Seymour, the acting District Attorney running against Myra in the election.

  I like to work out, but my favorite exercise is definitely not jumping to conclusions. I figure that anyone running for an office these days must have a website, so I look for his
and find it. On his personal history page, he claims to have gotten married just last year for the first time. Word on the street says it was to some socialite broad about five years older than him and that the main attraction between them was his desire for her money, to finance his campaign, and her desire to be the wife of some guy who will take her to black tie affairs.

  Let’s see. I can do the math on this one. Two adults who’ve never been married before, now together for only a year – that means the kid in the car with him was not his son.

  This is tricky. I’m not into blackmail but this is definitely an item that can keep him from being elected. Being gay isn’t the kicker here, it’s the fact that his record of prosecution shows that he’s especially hard on homosexuals, and a two-faced attitude like that can really come back to bite you in the ass, especially in an area with a large concentration of gay voters. Anyone who’s been to West Hollywood can attest to the fact that after San Francisco, it’s probably the second most densely populated area for gays… and they all pay their taxes and vote.

  The problem now is how to use this information to Myra’s advantage without letting either one of them know about it. Going to the press is out of the question. That would create a scandal that would ruin his career, his marriage, and also hurt the image of the district attorney’s office. I’m not on a crusade and I certainly don’t want to ‘out’ anyone. Whatever they do in their private lives is their own business – I just want to get Myra elected, like I promised.

  I take another look at the video of the two of them in the car and call the lab to have them email me an enlargement of a particular frame that shows them facing forward as they pull up to the cashier’s window.

  When it comes in, I notice that both Seymour and his lunch date are wearing neckties. This elevates his companion out of the ‘kid’ category. He has a baby face, so I was misled into thinking he was much younger. It wouldn’t surprise me to discover that they work in the same building together because the IDs that each one has pinned to his shirt look similar. It’s not uncommon for people to get together for lunch, so they probably can easily keep their relationship secret. I e-mail just the young man’s portion of the close-up to Jack Bibberman and tell him to stake out the district attorney’s building employee parking lot. I want to know who this guy is.