by A. W. Gray
“You are right, Aaron,” Verdon said. “Slap a TRO on their ass before they can get a camera crew together.”
“But movie or no,” Levy said, “that’s the question we won’t have an answer to until the police get off their asses and do something. Meantime, as of right now, today, we have a couple of tabloid offers, period. One TV tabloid and one print. Don’t amount to a lot. This newspaper interview Darla’s doing today could turn up something, but that remains to be seen.” Levy produced a steno pad and ballpoint, turned over a page, and prepared to write. “So with all that as a reference point, Sharon, what did you have in mind?”
Sharon eye-measured the distance between her chair and the exit. “Have in mind in relation to what, Mr. Levy?”
Levy winked broadly. “So you won’t have to dazzle us with footwork, hey. We know you people down in Texas are hip to what’s what. The pie is about what we told you. You don’t want to commit without talking to your people, I understand. So how’s about I give you a ballpark, so’s you and whoever will have something to toss around.”
Sharon gestured toward the door. “That’s what those media people are all about, to try to interest someone in a movie deal?”
“The more in the papers the better,” Verdon said. “Plus, Darla Cowan’s not just anybody. Reporters eat from her hand.”
“Well, they might,” Sharon said. “I just don’t think it’s in Darla’s best interests to be feeding them at this point.”
“I forgot another guy,” Levy said. “This other lawyer.”
“The one we’re supposed to choose this afternoon,” Sharon said, “who’s going to represent her on criminal charges?”
“Right.” Levy looked at Verdon. “Don’t expect this person to agree to a flat rate, Chet, not when we’ve got the other potentials here. The other lawyer’s share has to go into the pot. If we don’t have to spend it, hey.”
“It’s certainly a consideration,” Verdon said. “Darla will be here soon. We should talk some pretty quick turkey.”
Sharon brushed her skirt. “I’ll tell you, Chet,” she said, “I don’t want anything.”
Verdon and Levy exchanged a look. Levy sat forward. “If you’ve got something going on your own, we can live with that. With Darla in your comer, you hold quite a few cards. Not all by a long shot, but quite a few. So, what, your idea is to make us an offer?”
Sharon let her gaze drift out the window, resting on tree-covered peaks in the distance under a bluish, smoggy haze. “Gentlemen, I’m not trying to hold any cards. I agreed to help my friend, and that’s what I intend to do. And helping her—”
“Perhaps we could concentrate on some kind of ‘if, if, and’ proposal,” Levy said.
“—seems at cross purposes with what I see here.”
“For example,” Levy said, “something I like to play around with, if things remain status quo we’re talking a figure, if the tabloids up the ante something more, if we have the tabs and a TV production you can do even better. You’ll have to roll the dice with us, but, hey, this is Hollywood, right?”
“Darla’s going to ask me what to do,” Sharon said. “She seems adamant about that, Aaron.” Verdon fiddled with one of his cuff links. Light glinted from a diamond, reflecting in Sharon’s eye.
Sharon let her hand dangle from the end of the sofa armrest. “I know nothing about this deal or that deal. I’m not looking for profit here. If Dallas County, Texas, gives Darla a clean bill of health, meaning total immunity in connection with the murder, you can do whatever you want to. Until then, though, she shouldn’t be holding any press conferences.”
Verdon coughed into his cupped hand. “She needs to speak out.”
“No, she doesn’t,” Sharon said. “What she needs is to keep a low profile. Anything she says to the media can be used against her.”
“What’s this?” Levy spoke to Verdon while extending a hand in Sharon’s direction. “She talkin’ legal here?”
Verdon gave a hands-up shrug. “Seems that way.”
“Don’t double-talk us, Miss Hays,” Levy said. “You want more points, be upfront about it.”
Sharon rolled her eyes. “Oh, for Christ’s sake.”
Levy put pen to paper. “Let me do some figuring.”
He paused, then looked slowly in the direction of the exit. “Just putting some figures together, sweetheart.”
Sharon turned. Darla stood just inside the door. Her brows were raised in curiosity. She gave Sharon a thumbs-up sign. “I set it up,” she said.
Sharon’s eyebrows moved closer together. “With Rob?”
Darla nodded. “What about in here? Everything copasetic?”
Sharon, Levy, and Verdon all looked at each other. Sharon stood. “Afraid not.”
“Wait,” Levy picked up his ballpoint. “You’re not satisfied? We happen to be in the satisfaction business.”
“I’ve seen enough,” Sharon said. She turned to Darla.
“I’m not interfering, Darla. Do what you want.”
Darla showed her petulant face. “That’s not our arrangement, and you know it.”
Sharon sadly shook her head. “Our arrangement is, I’m to tell you what I think. What I think is, you should leave here and start over.”
“Now, hold on.” Levy stood up. “I took her when she was nothing. Beat the bushes for that girl.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Sharon said. “I don’t mean, change agents, Darla. You’re a better judge of that than I am. I just think you need to get with a lawyer who’s only interested in protecting you in this criminal matter. Not feathering everybody’s nest with deals that don’t have anything to do with it.”
“That could be you, couldn’t it?” Darla looked hopeful.
Verdon stood up, angrily pointing a finger. “She’s not licensed here. Don’t think I’d stand still for it.”
Sharon gave Verdon a look that could melt cobalt.
She took Darla by the arm. “Come on. I can’t practice in California without local co-counsel, so I suppose we’ll take the bull by the horns.”
Verdon followed them into the reception area, Darla keeping a step ahead so as not to have to face the guy. Sharon steered Darla toward the exit. A hallway full of reporters waited beyond the glass. Verdon said, “You haven’t heard the last of this, Cheryl.”
Sharon paused near the door as Gray and Yadaka came to their feet, dropping their magazines. Gray had been reading Time while Yadaka looked over this month’s issue of GQ. “Mr. Yadaka,” Sharon said, “could you clear us a path through those people, please?” The Oriental nodded, and pushed through the entry into the corridor.
Gray started to follow Yadaka out. Sharon stopped the Englishman with a hand on his arm. She pointed toward Verdon, who glowered alongside the switchboard operator’s station. “Please stay between me and that guy, Mr. Gray,” Sharon said. “And if he takes a step in my direction, feel free to lower the boom.”
They drove toward the Hollywood Freeway, and stopped for a light near the Criminal Courts. Sharon peered ahead, toward a row of street-level windows and bail-bond signs. She said, “Turn left at the next comer.” Gray looked inquisitively in the rearview.
Darla had stayed mute since leaving the attorney’s office but now said, “You’ve never been here before.” “Trust me,” Sharon said. She leaned forward. “I haven’t gone crazy, Mr. Gray. Left, please, next intersection.”
Yadaka gave a curious look over his shoulder. Gray complied, waiting for the light to change, moving into the center lane with his blinker flashing, steering the limo onto a narrow street lined with storefront offices. On the sidewalks were slouchy men with tattoos, a couple of women in loud, tight pants, and a homeless guy seated on the curb with his toes poking out of his shoes. A billboard in front of one building read, JIMMY YAT’s BAIL BONDS over a cartoon logo of a man parachuting out of a ba
rred window. Next door to the bond office was a sign reading, PRESTON TRIGG, LAWYER, with the Spanish word Abogado spelled out underneath. Sharon directed Gray to pull to the curb. As the limo idled in front of the seedy-looking storefront, Sharon said to Darla, “Come on. I don’t think anybody’s going to recognize you. But keep your head down, okay?” She reached over Darla to open the door, and followed the actress onto the sidewalk.
Sharon’s watch read one-thirty, Dallas time, which made it half past eleven in Los Angeles, so either Preston Trigg’s secretary had taken an early lunch or Trigg didn’t have a secretary at all. As she stood alongside Darla in Trigg’s reception area, the phone buzzed constantly. The desk where the secretary-receptionist should have been sitting was made of worm-eaten pine. Scratches crisscrossed the top and front, and on its otherwise bare surface were a catalog-sized L.A telephone directory and one plain black phone. The phone had three lines. One button was lit, and the others flashed repeatedly as the calls came in. The phone was hooked up to an answering machine. Sharon smiled through the storefront window and waggled her fingers at Yadaka and Gray sitting in the limo.
Darla was obviously bewildered. “What are we doing here?”
“Taking the bull by the horns,” Sharon said. “Finding a lawyer who can represent your best interests in the state of California.”
Darla’s gaze fell dubiously on a bookcase containing a gavel marked MOOT COURT, CAL-IRVINE, 1992, a junked auto battery atop a pile of shop cloths, a book entitled, Rapid Settlements in Personal Injury, and a couple of paperback western novels. One was entitled Cherokee Squaw, and its cover pictured a big-hipped, buckskin-clad woman whose breasts were about to fall out in the open, her mouth curved sensuously as a muscular cowpoke pinned her against the wall of a saloon.
“Do you know this attorney, Sharon?” Darla said.
“Know the type. Trust me.” Sharon gave a smile of confidence.
“What type is he?”
“Shh!” Sharon put a finger to her lips as the answering machine spouted its recorded message and clicked in anticipation.
The voice on the speaker was hoarse. “Yeah, Pres, this is Jimmy Yat next door. Guess you know your asshole of a client skipped. You guaranteed this guy, which means I’m expecting you to pony up fifteen hundred bucks over here, pronto. Call me by four, or it’s your ass.” There was a series of electronic beeps as the machine reset itself.
Sharon murmured, “Perfect.” Darla blinked helplessly.
“Come on.” Sharon skirted the desk and led the way to a partially open door at the rear. She peeked inside.
The guy had his back turned, his feet propped on his credenza as he talked on the phone. He wore cowboy boots along with a green western-cut suit. His reddish-brown hair was long in back, below his collar, and as he spoke into the mouthpiece he waved a cheroot around, thumping ashes on the floor. Sharon closed her nasal passages as smoke wafted up her nostrils. From her side-angle view she could see a smooth young-roan’s cheek and one edge of a mustache.
The man was saying, “The deal is solid as a rock. No back-outs, no doubt. You just stand up there and take the two years, hey, you’ll be on the street before you know it. But we need to talk. You owe me five hundred dollars, Jethro. What’s the chance of…?”
As the man listened over the line, Sharon gave Darla a come-on wave. The two women crept in and sat across from the attorney, wrinkling their noses as he continued to wave the cigar.
“Well, that’s real unfortunate,” he said finally. “But I’ve had a few setbacks myself. You see, the thing is, Jethro … no, wait a minute, let me talk. The thing is, the five hundred dollars stands between you getting the two years and you getting something like, oh, fifteen or more. You get my drift?” He listened some more, turning partway around and exposing his profile. He had a brown birthmark on his left cheek, and his mustache needed trimming. “You don’t think? This judge and me are pretty tight. You want to try me, feel free, but I’d recommend you get my money down here. Oh, yeah? You do that, Jethro.” He hung up, drummed his fingers, and spun around.
Sharon said, “Hi. Can you use a client?”
His gaze fell first on Sharon, then on Darla Cowan. He gaped at Darla as if seeing a ghost.
“Are you Preston Trigg?” Sharon said.
He continued to stare at Darla. She shifted nervously.
“Yoo-hoo,” Sharon said. “Over here.”
“No way. You can’t be,” the man said. “I’ve got it, there’s a look-alike contest. Yeah, I’m Pres. What can I do you for?” He chuckled at his own joke,
“I’m Sharon Hays, from Texas. And she’s the real thing,” Sharon said. Darla sat confidently erect, a pleased smile on her face.
Trigg balanced his cheroot on an ashtray. “You pulling my leg?”
“Not really, Mr. Trigg. Miss Cowan needs a lawyer to represent her in California, in connection with possible Texas criminal charges. If you’re interested, we’d like to talk.”
Trigg tilted his chair and intertwined his fingers behind his head. “Sure, and tomorrow Clinton’s going to call wanting me for this Whitewater deal. Listen, I don’t know what you girls are part of. Her makeup’s damned good. But I got things to do.”
“You do have a California law license, don’t you?” Sharon said.
A look near panic spread over his face. “What, you’ve been talking to the Bar Association?”
“No. Should we have been?”
Trigg waved a hand as if brushing a fly away, and pointed at a plaque on the wall. “My license is right there, current. Complaints, yeah, I got ‘em. Mostly from stiffs, like the guy I was just talking to.”
“Good,” Sharon said. “At present all we’re looking at is a meeting with the Dallas D.A.’s reps. There are no charges against Darla, though that could change very quickly. Here’s what you’ll have to do. Arrange for a court reporter and get us a meeting room in the Criminal Courts Building tomorrow after lunch. Also, you’d have a motion prepared so that if they give Miss Cowan a lot of hassle, we can walk into a courtroom and have her answer their questions in front of a judge.” She tilted her chin. “You are familiar with the court procedure I’m talking about, aren’t you?”
Trigg had an uncertain look.
“I was afraid of that,” Sharon said. “When I found the provision in the California statutes, I suspected that it wasn’t done very often. No sweat. I have chapter and verse, and I’ll show you how to prepare the motion if you’d like.”
“Okay, super,” Trigg said. “I’m just supposed to start running around doing all this. Yeah, right.”
Darla looked back and forth between Sharon and Lawyer Trigg like a woman watching a tennis match. “‘Yeah, right,’ is right,” Sharon said. “What’s going to be your fee, Mr. Trigg?”
He looked at the ceiling and laughed out loud. “If we’re going to play Let’s Pretend, why not? Hundred grand.” He spread his hands.
Sharon shook her head. “That’s too much. How about ten?”
Trigg’s jaw dropped. “Grand?”
“I wouldn’t expect you to do it for ten dollars, Mr. Trigg.”
His eyes narrowed. “You serious about this?”
“As cancer.” Sharon pointed at Darla. “She’s Darla Cowan, sir, your eyes aren’t playing tricks. I’m Sharon Hays, a Dallas attorney who can’t officially represent Miss Cowan in California. For reasons I won’t get into, her regular L.A. lawyer won’t be helping us. So, would you like to pick up some easy money?”
Trigg now rubbed his mustache. “How would I get paid?”
Sharon looked to her right. “Darla?”
Darla reached inside her handbag and produced a checkbook.
“I’ll need some ID,” Trigg said. “Driver’s license or…”
“Done,” Sharon said. “You’re familiar with the case we’re talking? The David Spencer murder.”
“Who isn’t? Listen, this is for real?”
“Total reality,” Sharon said.
Trigg leaned over and studied Darla’s face. “You look like her, all right.” He tilted back. “Okay, why me?”
Sharon smiled sweetly. “I liked your sign. Thanks to the innuendoes all over the newspapers, Darla’s the main suspect, but at this point there’s nothing official. But the Dallas D.A.’s have popped off so much to the media that I’m not about to let her answer any questions without a grant of immunity. Which they won’t agree to, which will terminate the meeting. Darla’s not guilty, Mr. Trigg. The real killer is running around somewhere between here and Texas.”
Trigg pursed his lips. He picked up his cheroot and puffed, but the cigar had gone out. He used a butane lighter to apply flame to the butt. “How mucha my time is this going to take?”
Sharon’s chin tilted. “Ten thousand dollars’ worth. I suspect we’ll be here a few hours. Why, do you have an appointment?”
“Well, no. But you’re talking about doing these motions, I got no assistant or nothing. No typist. No law books, either.”
“I’d think that was a drawback in the practice of law, Mr. Trigg. Does L.A. County maintain a library?”
Trigg seemed thoughtful. “Yeah, they got one someplace.”
Sharon couldn’t believe the guy. “Don’t you know where it is?”
“I can call somebody. I can find out.”
“Good.” Sharon said. “That’ll the first order of business, to find the library. They’ll have word processors you can rent by the hour, and I can hunt and peck.” She stood “You might want to take some notes, Mr. Trigg. In the future, knowing the way to the law library could prove useful to you.”
13
“Riskin’ one’s law license is no laughin’ matter, Sharon,” Russell Black said. “I already heard from the Bar Association.”