by A. W. Gray
The judge called out, “Miss Hays? Got a minute?”
Sharon applied the brakes and marched toward the bench. Karen Warren stood before the judge with her face angled expectantly in Sharon’s direction. Sharon wondered to what extremes the 20/20 reporter would go in order to scoop the opposition. Checkbook journalism, certainly, but surely she wouldn’t sleep with the…
As Sharon approached, Karen Warren reached up and patted the judge’s hand. Sharon blinked in disbelief. She stopped beside the reporter and forced her self to smile at Judge Rudin. “Morning, Your Honor.”
Rudin extended a hand, palm up, in Karen Warren’s direction. “You’ve met Karen, right?”
Sharon acknowledged the reporter’s presence with a fleeting nod. “Yes, sir. Yesterday.”
Rudin touched his fingertips together. “She was wondering about an interview with you.”
Sharon’s throat tightened in hesitation. God, was she about to hear the opposite of a gag order? An ungag order or something? Not even in this freaking zoo, Sharon thought, no way. She said, “Miss Warren mentioned it yesterday, Your Honor.” Visible in the comer of her eye, Karen Warren continued to beam.
Rudin leaned closer and lowered his voice. “Far be it from me to intervene, Miss Hays. Officially at any rate. But have you given any more thought to the matter?”
Sharon couldn’t believe her ears. She made up her mind in a hurry. If this phony jurist ordered her to give a press interview, she was marching straight to an appellate judge faster than God could get a weather report. She said evenly and professionally, “I don’t make a practice of giving interviews while a case is in progress, Your Honor,” then added without thinking, “Courts frown on that sort of thing in my part of the world.”
Rudin recoiled as if punched in the solar plexus.
His demeanor changed in a flash. He glanced toward Karen Warren, then narrowed his eyes as he zeroed in on Sharon. His look was menacing. “Suit yourself, Counsel,” the judge snapped. “But in the future I’d be remembering I was no longer in Texas, if I were you.”
Now that she’d alienated the judge, she managed to spoil Darla’s courtroom entrance as well. The incident went down as Darla left her jailer escort near the doorway and paraded majestically toward the defense table. Sharon and Preston Trigg stood at arm’s length with one vacant chair in between them, and Milton Breyer and Kathleen Fratemo were in the position of attention on the prosecution side. Harold Cuellar was also at the D.A.’s table, in a chair with his head down, studying the morning edition of the L.A. Times. Judge Rudin sat at the bench, his swivel chair angled so that the Court TV camera would have a profile view. As the minicam whirred into action, Cuellar quickly folded the paper and stuffed it away. The operator stood in the jury box, hunched over the minicam like a man in the throes of orgasm. The spectator section was wall to wall, men and women jammed on the benches, so tightly packed in that Sharon wondered how they could freaking breathe.
Darla had taken Sharon’s holding-cell advice to heart. She walked erect, her expression confident, placing one spike-heeled shoe in front of the other in unbroken rhythm. Preston Trigg backed up to give the actress room to reach her seat. Just as Darla flowed majestically toward her chair. a loud ringing sounded in the courtroom.
Darla froze in mid-stride. The judges jaw dropped in surprise. Sharon looked quickly around for the source of the noise.
The teeth-jarring brrr! peeled forth again, loud and insistent in the pin-drop silence. Throughout the gallery men dug in their pockets and women in their purses, grabbing for cellular phones.
Jesus Christ, Sharon thought, the freaking cell phone. She remembered the message she’d left for Rob at the beach house, and mentally cursed her own stupidity. As the phone rang a third time, Sharon dug the receiver from her purse and fumbled to open the hinged mouthpiece. The phone slipped from her grasp, clattered to the table, and continued to emit its highpitched buzz. The judge scowled toward the defense table. Visible in the periphery of Sharon’s vision, Milton Breyer—the bastard!—showed a goofy smile.
Her face red, Sharon snatched up the phone and clicked the mouthpiece into talking position. The minicam was pointed at her. She turned her back, tucked her chin, and said in a near whisper, “Yes?”
Rob’s tone was belligerent. “It’s your nickel, Muffin.”
Sharon made unintentional eye contact with a woman in the gallery. She looked quickly at the floor, saying, “Look, can I call you back?”
“No, you cannot. You’ve used enough of my time.” I haven’t used one freaking second of your time, you jerk, Sharon thought. Your daughter has. She said, “I’m in court, Rob.” She glanced toward the bench. The judge stared daggers in her direction.
“In Darla’s trial?” Rob said.
“Hearing. Yes, and we’re in the middle of it. I want to talk to you about the check you gave me.”
“That’s going to have to be enough money to get you by for now. It’s all I owe.”
“That’s not—Never mind. I can’t talk now. Be at home tonight, I have to see you.”
“Oh, no. You’ve had your chance.”
“I don’t mean that way. You be there. You have to be.” She disconnected and looked to the bench, turning the power switch on the phone to the off position as she did. “I apologize to the court,” she said. “It won’t happen again.”
Rudin frowned as if deep in thought, then lifted his forefinger. “That’s one, Miss Hays. If you don’t get the message, ask your California co-counsel. You understand, don’t you, Mr. Trigg?”
Preston Trigg half stood, said, “Yes, Your Honor,” and sat back down. All through the spectators section, men scratched their heads and women exchanged curious glances.
Rudin folded his hands and addressed the prosecution. “If the contingent from Texas is ready, you may proceed.”
Milt Breyer popped up to his feet. “Dallas County calls Vernon Tupelow, Your Honor.”
Sharon leaned forward and whispered around Darla, “What’s he talking about?”
Preston Trigg bent forward as well and, as Darla looked back and forth between her lawyers, said, “He’s calling a witness.” As he spoke, the Dallas County M.E. came in the back and walked down the aisle.
“Jesus Christ,” Sharon hissed. “I know that much. I’m talking about, with the finger. The ‘that’s one’ business.”
“Oh.” Trigg glanced at Darla, then looked back at Sharon. “Rudin’s notorious for that. Three strikes in his courtroom, then you can look to spend the night in the county for contempt.” He closed his mouth, thought, then added, “He generally reserves, one finger, two finger, for lawyers he doesn’t like.”
“Ridiculous.” Sharon was indignant. “I didn’t set off the freaking phone on purpose.”
Trigg glanced toward the bench as Tupelow came through the gate and approached the clerk for swearing in. He looked at Sharon and said, “Shh!”
“‘Shh!’ hell,” Sharon said. “I’m not backing down from this guy.”
Trigg leaned closer. “You don’t understand. Lawyers conversing other than bench conferences and Courtroom breaks, that’s another pet peeve of his.”
Sharon expelled air through her nose. Of all the…She looked to the bench. Judge Rudin was watching her.
Rudin smiled and raised two fingers in Sharon’s direction, his gaze half on her and half on the television camera. “That’s two, Counsel,” Rudin said.
Sharon was as furious as she’d ever been in her life. She opened her satchel and sifted viciously through her notes, thumbing aside her copies of the photos she’d given to Yadaka and Gray. She wondered briefly if the security men were having any luck in locating the stranger among the crowd on the street. The way things were going inside the courtroom at the moment, Yadaka and Gray might hold the key to the best chance Darla had. She glanced at her friend and client. Darla’s li
ps were parted in confusion.
Sharon leaned close to Darla and whispered, “You’re doing fine, babe. It’s me that’s screwing up, and that’s coming to a screeching halt. You just keep on giving them hell.”
Darla lowered her lashes. A tear ran down her face, streaking her makeup, and her knuckles whitened as she wrung her hands.
Working crowds had been Lyndon Gray’s specialty in the British Secret Service; he’d once chaperoned Prince Charles and Lady Di on a European tour and, with assistance from Paris gendarmes, had apprehended a deranged man as he’d approached the royal couple with sticks of dynamite strapped to his chest. As Gray paced back and forth among the mob in front of the L.A. Criminal Courts Building, he called Benny Yadaka on the cell phone. The Oriental answered on the second ring. “Position?” Gray said.
Crackling static accompanied Yadaka’s reply. “Proceeding north on Broadway, chief. Couple of blocks from you. Spotted anything?”
Gray lifted his eyes, looking at the top of the steps, surveying the areas between the granite pillars. The photos Sharon had provided lay in the Englishman’s briefcase; he’d memorized the subject’s features and would recognize the man anywhere. He said into the phone, “Negative. You?”
“Nothing here,” Yadaka said. “Nothing but street bums I can see.”
“I feel I’ve seen this man, Benny.” Gray sidestepped a reporter, who shot him a curious glance, and moved nearer the curb.
“Not me. This is L.A., Lyndon, I bump into guys every day who look familiar, but then realize they just resemble somebody else I know.”
“This isn’t that sort of feeling. I know this man. If I think on it, it will come to me.”
“Lemme know if it does,” Yadaka said. “I’m signing off now, ring me back in ten.”
“Affirmative.” Gray disconnected and looked out across the street, past cruising autos and buses chugging exhaust fumes. Men and women in business dress strolled the sidewalks, going about their business. He turned and watched the courthouse steps once more, wondering if his powers of concentration were slipping with age. Dammit, where had he known the man? If he thought really hard, the answer would have to come.
Benny Yadaka disconnected, stowed his cell phone in his inside breast pocket, and continued down the western sidewalk alongside Broadway. Gray’s orders had been to take Broadway north to Arcadia Avenue, cut back to the east, and then head south on Main, finally approaching the criminal courts once again on Temple Street, keeping a lookout for the man in the photos. Yadaka wore a dark brown suit and pale yellow shirt with a pastel tie, and moved with brisk athletic strides while keeping his manner casual, his demeanor almost bored. His lids were at sleepy halfmast. He moved aside as a young Japanese woman passed in the opposite direction. The woman showed a flirtatious smile. Yadaka bid her good day in Japanese. He watched the woman’s undulating rear end over his shoulder for a moment, then looked back to the front just as he reached the Arcadia intersection. He quickened his pace and rounded the comer, his gaze darting across the street at a deli, a Chinese takeout place, a barroom with a sign in the shape of a stemmed martini glass. He’d gone three-quarters of a block when, directly in front of him, the man from the photos hustled across Arcadia, going south on Main.
Yadaka fought to maintain his bland expression and mask his surprise. The guy from the pictures wore pale blue coveralls, as if he were a member of a construction crew. His blondish hair gleamed dully, and his tight-stretched facial skin exhibited a tan. He seemed in a hurry, and looked neither right nor left as he jogged across Arcadia, hop-skipped up on the curb, and continued on his way.
Yadaka was careful not to attract attention; the increase in his pace was almost imperceptible as he crossed over Main and fell in step behind the man, ten or fifteen feet to the rear. He kept a constant distance between him and the subject for a quarter of a block, checking right and left, fore and aft, for passersby. This section of Main was practically deserted, freeway traffic rumbling overhead, no one in sight save for a round Hispanic lady ten yards to the rear, looking in a deli window. Yadaka broke into a trot, pulled abreast of the subject, and walked alongside just as the man emerged from beneath the freeway. Yadaka said softly, “Alley up ahead. Turn in there and stop. We need to talk.”
The man turned his head to look at the Oriental. His mouth hung open. He didn’t answer, continuing along among old one- and two-story brick buildings, low-slung shops with storefront windows.
Yadaka grasped his lapel and lifted his coat to show his shoulder rig. “You think I’m playing with you? Turn in up there like we’re buddies, you understand?” The man’s features sagged. He looked fearfully ahead, glanced behind him, then ducked into the alleyway with Yadaka on his heels. The alley was open at both ends, sparse midday traffic flowing by, rows of garbage cans lining brick walls, metal fire escapes overhead at intervals, the air carrying the odor of rot ting vegetables and spoiled meat. The man walked ten steps, turned, and looked Yadaka eye to eye. “We don’t supposed to be seen together,” the man said.
Yadaka lifted his coattail and jammed a hand into his pocket. “You aren’t supposed to be seen, any place, any time.” He groped in his inside breast pocket with his free hand and produced the photos. “What, you like having your picture taken?”
The man looked at the top picture, winced, examined the second photo and closed his eyes. “I can help it there’s people with cameras around?”
Yadaka snatched the photos away, thumbed to the shot taken yesterday on the courthouse steps, and shoved that picture in the stranger’s face. “What about this? What the tuck are you doing hanging out in front of the courts? Have you gone crazy?”
The man spread his hands, palms up. “I’m protecting my interest here.”
Yadaka snorted “You’re buying yourself a collar is what you’re doing.”
“I got money coming, in case you forgot.”
“So? You think this woman Sharon Hays is going to pay you?”
The man straightened in a pugnacious attitude.
“Until I see some green, man, I’m staying around.”
Yadaka tilted his head and scratched his chin. “You knew it would take awhile. We all did.”
“Not this fucking long. Two days, he said. I’m beginning to hurt.”
Yadaka reached for his hip pocket. “Maybe I can help you out.”
The man extended a hand, palm up. “Be nice if you could.”
“Yeah, okay, I…” Yadaka glanced up and down the alley, smiled at the guy, then brought up his hand holding a buck knife. He took one step forward and drove the knife up to its hilt in the stranger’s chest, below the point of the breastbone, twisting, plunging the blade to the left, toward the heart. The man didn’t cry out. His eyes bulged wide: He gasped as if in discomfort, then expelled his final air. Yadaka quickly withdrew the blade and moved aside as the man collapsed to the asphalt; twitched once, and then was still. His head lay in a pool of slickish liquid, motor oil mixed with animal urine.
The entire incident had taken less than a minute. Yadaka stepped over to a garbage can, found a wadded paper towel to wipe the blade, and replaced the knife in his hip pocket. He walked around the body, left the alley, and continued south on Main Street. He’d traveled less than fifty yards when his cell phone buzzed.
Yadaka withdrew the phone from his side pocket and clicked the mouthpiece into place. “Yeah, Lyndon,” he said.
Lyndon Gray’s clipped British voice was calm. “Position?”
Yadaka continued to walk, his eyelids at sleepy halfmast. “South on Main, chief. Spotted anything?”
There was a second’s hesitation before Gray said, “Negative. You?”
“Me, neither,” Yadaka replied. “Nothing but street bums is all I can see.”
21
Preston Trigg tried to stretch his fifteen minutes of fame into a lifetime. After listening
to her California co-counsel batter Vernon Tupelow for two solid hours, Sharon decided that this was to be the longest extradition hearing in history. The Dallas County medical examiner’s direct testimony had established that David Spencer was dead, stabbed umpty-jillion times in the chest and abdomen and then shot through the head with a .38 caliber bullet, all of which was undisputable fact, but Preston Trigg acted as if the M.E. himself was a possible suspect. Milton Breyer’s questioning had been tediously long, Sharon thought, complete with maps of the area around the Mansion Hotel and a blown-up layout of the presidential suite, but Preston Tripp had already used up twice as much time as the prosecutor and then some. Sharon’s gaze wandered idly to the television camera. She wondered if Court TV employed a film editor. If they did, Preston Trigg’s big scene would likely wind up on the cutting-room floor.
Trigg’s chief cross-examination tool was what Sharon had come to think of as the Poignant Pregnant Pause, PPP for short, which he now employed in earnest, looking at the murder scene layout which Milton Breyer had set up on a tripod during direct. This particular PPP took up a full thirty seconds as Trigg stood with one hand supporting his elbow while he. scratched his chin with the other. Finally he picked up a pointer and indicated the bed where the hotel’s desk manager had found David Spencer. “The body was here, is that correct?” Trigg said.