Inherit the Shoes

by E. J. Copperman

  ‘So, you want me to come with you? Is that it?’

  Evan stepped forward, practically wringing his hands with pent-up frustration. ‘Mr McNabb, I believe you’re deliberately trying to misunderstand us, so when you do what you intend to do anyway, you can pretend we didn’t ask you specifically not to. Well, I’m going to tell you to your face – you don’t get to do any investigating. This is not a TV show. Your life is on the line. So stop trying to twist our words – we don’t want you anywhere near witnesses who might help or hurt our case. Is that clear?’

  I’m going to have to talk to him about that ‘our case’ stuff, I thought.

  ‘Look, sonny, I’m only keeping you on this case because Sandy asked for you. Otherwise, I’d have told Junius Bach I want you to go back to … whatever it is you do and leave me alone. So don’t ever talk to me like that again, you understand?’ Patrick turned his body away from Evan’s direct onslaught and faced me. ‘I’ll do whatever Sandy tells me to do. Sandy?’

  And, naturally, my cell phone rang. Startled, I checked the number, which was local. Nobody in town had this number.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Ms Moss, this is Detective Lieutenant K.C. Trench of the Los Angeles Police Department.’

  ‘Lieutenant Trench,’ I said, trying to get Patrick’s attention as the other two men snapped their heads in my direction. ‘How did you get this number?’

  ‘We’re the police department, Ms Moss. We’re allowed to do things like that. Do you have any idea where your client, Mr McNabb, might be?’

  Questions like this are never good.

  ‘Yes, I’m here with him in his home, Lieutenant. How can we help you?’

  ‘Well, Ms Moss, it seems that a piece of evidence from the crime scene is missing, and one of our uniforms said he saw Mr McNabb at the house not more than an hour or two ago.’

  I looked at Patrick and gave him a very hard stare, to indicate he should pay attention. ‘Something is missing from the scene, Lieutenant?’

  Patrick looked away.

  ‘That’s right.’ Trench clearly knew I was signaling Patrick and stalling for time. ‘And we know he was there not long ago.’

  ‘You say they saw Mr McNabb at the house an hour ago?’

  Patrick stared at his feet.

  ‘Yes, Ms Moss,’ Trench exhaled, not pleased. ‘Is there anything else you want to tell your client, or should I talk to him directly?’

  ‘My client has no information on this matter, Lieutenant. May I ask what’s missing?’

  ‘A pair of tap shoes that once belonged to James Cagney. I understand your client was fighting over them with his wife at their divorce settlement conference, and the shoes were the point of contention. In fact, I’m told that’s when he threatened to kill her.’

  TWELVE

  ‘Someone is leaking information to the police,’ I told Evan in the car on the way home. My eyes were closed, partially because I hadn’t slept in more than forty hours, and partly because Evan was the slowest, most meticulous driver I’d ever seen, and it was impossible to watch him go about his business so deliberately without actually crying out in anguish.

  ‘Because they knew about the shoes?’ he answered. ‘Anyone could have told them that.’

  ‘Yeah, but Lieutenant Trench knew about the argument at the divorce conference, right down to the part about Patrick threatening Patsy, or at least using those words. I don’t think he meant them literally.’ I sat back as far as I could in the seat, but in a four-year-old Toyota, that wasn’t very far. Not that my late, lamented Hyundai would have been any better. How was I going to afford a new car? Once Bach fired me I wouldn’t even be able to afford my apartment.

  ‘You just don’t want to think that. She ended up dead the night after he threatened to kill her. That’s some coincidence,’ Evan said, staring at the road with the concentration of a diamond cutter. (I had opened my eyes for a moment, then closed them again.)

  ‘Don’t color this because you don’t like him,’ I scolded, though I had to admit I couldn’t actually counter his argument. ‘Besides, you’re going off on a tangent. The point was, somebody is talking to the cops.’

  ‘Anybody could have told Trench about that comment.’

  ‘No, anybody couldn’t. It had to be someone at the conference, because we were the only ones who heard it.’ I didn’t open my eyes, and now the motion of the car was making me even sleepier. ‘I know it wasn’t me, I doubt it was Patrick, and we can eliminate Patsy.’

  ‘It was probably McNabb.’

  I ignored that. ‘That leaves Patsy’s lawyers, the two assistants, and Junius Bach.’

  Evan sniffed. ‘Why would Bach do that?’

  ‘He probably wouldn’t. I’m just saying he was there, and he could have done it if he wanted to.’ My own voice was starting to sound very far away.

  ‘Who were Patsy’s lawyers? I wasn’t at the conference, you’ll remember.’

  ‘I don’t think anyone said their names.’ There was a long pause. ‘I’ll have to look in the file.’

  And then I fell asleep.

  When I regained some semblance of consciousness, Evan had pulled the car up to the curb in front of my building, and appeared to be trying to determine if the space was a legal one. I blinked an indeterminate number of times, and reached into my purse for the access card to the underground garage. ‘Here,’ I said. ‘You can park in the garage. Or you can just drop me off.’

  ‘I think I’ll park and come up,’ Evan said with the hint of a grin. ‘Just to make sure you don’t fall asleep in the elevator.’

  He parked the car in the lamentably empty space normally reserved for my car, and we took the elevator to my floor. I noticed that Evan was back in his ‘good boyfriend’ mode, keeping his distance but waiting for me to be ready. So what’s not to be ready? my Inner Angie was asking. Look at him! You should be ready!

  I am ready, I answered her. But right now, I’m mostly tired. I’ll be ready tomorrow. I swear.

  Yeah, sure.

  Leave it to me to have a sarcastic best friend in my head.

  As we walked silently to the apartment door, I got my keys out. When we stopped at the door and I unlocked it, I looked up at Evan.

  ‘Um, I’m not asking you in, but it’s only because I’m so tired, OK?’ I said. ‘I don’t want you to think …’

  ‘I’m not thinking,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to take advantage of a woman who hasn’t slept since the Obama Administration. Besides, you haven’t had a shower, and you smell bad.’ He was kidding, but I could have lived without the reminder.

  ‘I’m glad you understand,’ I said, opening the door.

  Then I gasped.

  ‘Someone’s been inside here,’ I managed to say, just a decibel or two above a whisper.

  Evan looked in, and then stared at me, bewildered. ‘How can you tell?’

  ‘You don’t understand.’

  The apartment was immaculate. Everything was in its place. The books were on their shelves, the paintings were hung, the clothes were nowhere to be seen. There was a fresh bouquet of roses on the coffee table, and in the kitchen, where every speck of food was put away, the smell of a slow-roasted turkey filled the air.

  ‘No,’ Evan said. ‘Clearly, I don’t. But if you were expecting someone else to be here, you should’ve just told me.’

  ‘I’m not expecting someone else. I don’t know anyone else on this coast. Evan, when I left for work, all my moving stuff was still in cartons. I’d barely made a dent in the pile, and this place looked like the Salvation Army had thrown up all over it. Somebody broke in and neatened things up for me.’

  Evan walked a little farther into the apartment, and examined the vase of flowers. ‘Someone sure did.’ He picked up a card lying next to the flowers, and handed it to me. ‘Here. It’s for you.’

  From the envelope, which said simply, ‘Sandy,’ I removed a printed note:

  Perhaps this will make up for all the trouble I’v
e caused you. Please enjoy the dinner. – Patrick.

  ‘Well, that was sweet,’ I said aloud.

  ‘Yeah, wasn’t it?’ said Evan, a definite edge to his voice.

  My mouth twisted in one direction. ‘Now, what’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘It means he’s trying to buy your trust, and it means he knew the place was a mess, which in turn means he got to see your apartment before … anyone else did.’

  ‘He had special circumstances. He was in the car when we were being shot at.’ I couldn’t believe Evan would choose this moment to become jealous. Figures. You should’ve slept with him when you had the chance. I told my Inner Angie to shut up.

  ‘Right. Well, everything’s right where it should be, so I’ll be going,’ Evan said. ‘Enjoy your dinner … with whomever happens to come by.’ Even in a huff, I noted, he used proper grammar.

  ‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous. I’m going straight to bed.’ But Evan was already walking to the door.

  ‘I’ll bet you are,’ he said, and walked out. Probably wondering what that meant.

  Just to show Evan, I ate a healthy portion of the turkey and the accompanying mashed potatoes before I went to bed. I skipped the Brussels sprouts. Let that be a lesson to him, and to Brussels.

  I didn’t wake up the next morning until eleven, and immediately began worrying that I’d lost my job for being late, and my best boyfriend prospect for being tired. Then I realized the office would have called if they were concerned about me, and with such a high-profile case on my hands, it was unlikely they’d be asking me to leave anytime soon. No doubt Bach would fire me the second Patrick was convicted.

  As for the boyfriend … well, one out of two isn’t all that bad.

  The first thing to do (after a turkey sandwich for breakfast and a long, hot shower) was to call my client. There had been a lot of unanswered questions when I’d left Patrick’s house the night before, and besides, I hadn’t thanked him for getting all my stuff put away. Besides, I didn’t know where anything was in my apartment now, and I wanted the name of the service he’d used.

  Meadows answered the phone with a voice you could spread on a cracker without creating so much as a crumb. ‘McNabb residence,’ he intoned.

  ‘Hi, Meadows old boy. It’s Sandy Moss. Is Patrick there?’ Fueled by sleep and food, I was feeling extremely chipper – until he answered me.

  ‘No, Ms Moss, I’m afraid he’s out. He’ll be addressing the graduating class at UCLA Law School this noon.’

  Of course he will. The rest of the world is normal, and I’m losing my mind. It all makes sense now.

  ‘He’s doing what?’

  ‘Do you wish me to repeat it?’

  I did not.

  I found Patrick McNabb standing in front of two hundred smiling, black-gowned graduates, himself in a mortarboard and gown, at a podium overlooking the class. My Uber let me off near the grounds, where I could hear him before I could see him.

  ‘… so the intent of the law and the actual rule of the law are not always going to be the same thing,’ Patrick was saying in his Arthur Kirkland voice. ‘Justice is not always exactly what is written in the books, and legality – if you’ll pardon the plug’ – the crowd chuckled – ‘is not always what we feel is right in our hearts. A good attorney must balance that knowledge of the law, the respect for the word on the page, with compassion, with interpretation, and above all, with humanity. Without that, the law serves no one, and every attorney is merely a slave to it. Go out today – well, maybe not today – and temper your judgment with emotion, but always, always, do what you think is right, even if it requires a leap of faith. Then, and only then, will you have lived up to the promise that you have made today. Thank you.’

  Patrick walked back to his seat among distinguished-looking men and women, all of whom were standing and applauding, as the crowd of young law graduates leapt to its feet and began roaring approval. I walked to the side of the podium, and caught Patrick’s eye. He smiled broadly, and as the next speaker began with, ‘Well, I don’t know how I can top that,’ Patrick walked to where I was standing.

  ‘Did you hear?’ he asked. ‘Did you catch my speech?’

  ‘I heard the end of it,’ I answered. ‘Patrick …’

  ‘Wasn’t it great? All those lawyers listening to me explain my philosophy of the law. It was the most gratifying experience of my career.’ From behind the podium, Patrick led me out of the sun, where there was a cooler holding cans of soda. He took one, and handed another to me.

  ‘First of all, those weren’t lawyers. They were law school graduates,’ I pointed out. ‘They still have to pass the bar to practice law. And someone probably wrote that speech for you. You don’t have a philosophy of the law – you’re an actor, not a lawyer, Patrick! Are you out of your mind?’

  ‘You didn’t like it?’

  ‘That’s not the point! Stop missing the point! Patrick, you’ve been accused of murder, you’re a defendant in a homicide, and you’re an actor. How could you address the graduating class of a law school?’

  He stuck out his lower lip like a six-year-old. ‘They asked me,’ he said.

  ‘From now on, you don’t appear in public without talking to me first. Understand? You don’t talk to a reporter without clearing it through me first. Jesus Christ, I’m amazed they’re not swarming all over you right now.’ I’d noticed the diminished press presence as I approached, and wondered how the law school had managed that.

  ‘I think they’re satisfied. I spoke to them before the graduation ceremonies began.’

  I felt the blood drain from my face. ‘You did what?’

  ‘Gave a little press conference. They asked their questions and I gave my answers. My publicist said she thought it would be best to face the issues head-on, so I decided I’d do that, and maybe public opinion would …’

  ‘I don’t care about public opinion! I care about the jury pool and the impression that you’re living the high life after killing your wife! Patrick, you absolutely have to do what I tell you to do, and ask about anything else before you do it. Do you understand?’

  ‘But I didn’t kill my wife.’

  I thought first about finding a dentist in Los Angeles, because, at this pace, I was certain I’d grind my teeth to a fine powder within two days. ‘Maybe you didn’t, Patrick,’ I managed to squeeze out, ‘but if you don’t start following my instructions, I’m going to kill you!’

  The sound came from high above, from one of the buildings on one side of the quad. It didn’t sound like a gunshot, but like a balloon popping. I barely gave it a thought until I saw the expression on Patrick’s face, and the blood on his robe.

  ‘Sandy,’ he said. ‘I think I’ve been shot.’ And with that, he fell to his knees.

  THIRTEEN

  It took the ambulance sixteen hours to arrive. At least, that’s how it felt. My screaming stopped the graduation cold, brought a huge crowd to my side, and produced in excess of sixty cell phones, all dialing 911 at the same moment. Newspaper reports would later claim the line was overloaded at that moment, and that three burglaries, a sexual assault, and a convenience store robbery were put on hold, but that wasn’t true. It was only one burglary.

  In fact, the ambulance (the first one) arrived in seven minutes, and a second arrived shortly thereafter, only to be told it wasn’t necessary. The TV star was big, but not so big as to require two separate transports to the hospital.

  Regulations required that only an immediate family member could ride with the patient, but my insistence that I was Mr McNabb’s cousin, his attorney, and his oldest and dearest friend, coupled with my tearful yelps, as well as the star’s fading but still powerful smile, managed to get me on the ride with Patrick, and as he was examined, I sat nearby and wept piteously. It was something of an embarrassment.

  ‘I’m fine,’ Patrick managed, but he wasn’t a good enough actor to hide his panic and pain. ‘Please, Sandy, don’t make a fuss.’

  I couldn’t
manage coherent words. What came out of my mouth was more in the category of squeaks and mumbles, punctuated by long, deep breaths.

  ‘Check his BP,’ one MTS technician told the other, but a cuff was already being fixed to Patrick’s arm and his robe was being cut away to assess the damage done by the bullet.

  I couldn’t quite wrap my mind around the event. One minute, I’d been livid with rage at my client, and the next, he was struck down from far away, bleeding and moaning on the ground at my feet. It was too fast, too illogical, too improbable, for me to grasp all at once. I’d need a day or two. Or maybe a year.

  All I could think was, Please don’t die, Patrick. Just don’t die and I’ll forgive you for being crazy. Don’t die, don’t die, don’t die, don’t …

  ‘Patrick,’ I managed as the MTS technician blocked my view of my client, ‘I never thanked you for having my apartment unpacked. I mean, it was such a sweet gesture, and all I wanted to do was yell at you. I’m such a jerk.’

  ‘Stop it,’ Patrick countered with surprising strength. ‘You’re a friend and you needed help. That’s what a friend does. Especially one with money that came too fast and too easily.’

  ‘I’m sorry for everything I ever said to you,’ I blubbered on. ‘I’m sorry I kept yelling at you, but you wouldn’t act like a real client, and …’

  ‘Ma’am, if you could please move back a little,’ said the second MTS worker. ‘We’re going to need a little room here.’

  I slid down the seat to the farthest point in the ambulance, essentially leaning against the door, which I hoped was locked. The second MTS worker, an African-American woman in her twenties, watched with interest for a moment, then turned in my direction.

  ‘You two been dating long?’ she said, cocking her head in Patrick’s direction.

  ‘Dating?’ I wondered how this woman might have known about Evan, and why she was choosing now to ask me about him. ‘Not really. Just …’

  ‘Don’t worry, I think he’ll live,’ she answered, a confusing glint of humor in her eye. ‘I understand your concern, but …’