Inherit the Shoes

by E. J. Copperman

  I looked around. ‘Where’s Rex?’

  Patrick gestured toward the door. ‘He went out to the car to get that bag again. The one from when we …’

  ‘Don’t mention it. What’s in that bag, anyway?’

  ‘Gifts for the cast and crew. I had gold harmonicas made for each of them.’

  I couldn’t believe it. ‘Harmonicas?’

  ‘It’s the one thing you can be sure they don’t already have.’

  My client is completely out of his mind.

  I faced Patrick. ‘During the evening, when you see someone here who could have known about the bow and arrow, please point them out to me. Discreetly.’

  Patrick clicked his heels and did a small bow. ‘Yes, mein capitan,’ he said in a flawless German accent. ‘It shall be done.’

  I ignored his act. ‘Anyone here now?’

  Patrick scanned the room dutifully. ‘Well, obviously Patsy’s people won’t be here tonight. So aside from the ones you already know, there’s only a couple of cast members and Lizz and Manny.’

  ‘Show me Lizz and Manny.’

  He looked at me a moment, then started darting his eyes to the right every few seconds. Look, dart. Look, dart. I seriously considered calling EMT for assistance.

  ‘Patrick,’ I asked, ‘are you having a seizure?’

  ‘Well, you wanted me to be discreet, didn’t you?’ He gestured with his head. ‘Lizz and Manny are right over there.’

  I sucked my lips into my mouth and bit on them, praying for patience, then managed, ‘Which ones?’

  ‘The tall blonde woman in black and the short dark man with the eyebrows – also in black.’

  It was lucky for me that Emmanuel B. Richler had remarkable eyebrows, because ‘the tall blonde woman in black’ described forty percent of the people in the room. But the man who appeared to have two black caterpillars crawling across his forehead could not be missed.

  ‘Introduce me,’ I said.

  Patrick took me by the arm and navigated me toward the two, who appeared to be ‘making the rounds’ of the room, shaking hands, air kissing and hugging various cast and crew members. They stopped when they saw Patrick approaching.

  ‘Patrick!’ Elizibith (no, that’s not a misspelling) Warnell nearly launched herself at him as they neared. ‘I haven’t seen you all evening!’ She kissed him heartily, which Patrick seemed to enjoy. Apparently, his boss was just a little bit more tipsy than during the average day on the set.

  ‘You saw me fifteen minutes ago, Lizz darling,’ Patrick reminded her, pointing. ‘Just over there. By the bar.’

  Lizz ignored him, eyeing me in my sensible Attorney Suit. ‘And who is your lovely companion?’ she said, her voice dropping.

  ‘My attorney. Sandy Moss, this is Lizz Warnell, and that is Manny Richler.’ Manny approached, extending a hand, and when I took it, he pulled me toward him and kissed me severely – and sloppily – on the mouth. Patrick was right – the roast beef was all soy.

  ‘Why should Lizz have all the fun?’ Manny said when he finally broke lip lock with me. They all laughed, some more sincerely than others. I thought I could clear out the room if I just said. ‘Hashtag Me Too’ loudly enough.

  ‘I didn’t realize television production companies were so social,’ I said.

  ‘We’re a family,’ Lizz shouted. ‘A family! I love each and every one of these people like they were related to me. What we’ve been through together …’ She stopped to pat a tear from her eye, or to make one appear – it was hard to determine.

  ‘Really?’ I said. ‘What have you been through together?’

  Lizz and Manny looked at each other in disbelief. Could I possibly not know? ‘Oh!’ Manny belted. ‘We had such a hard time getting this show on the air to begin with! The network fought us all the way.’

  ‘Why?’ I didn’t really care, but I wanted to see what Manny considered adversity.

  ‘We pushed the envelope with this show,’ he said to me in a confidential tone. ‘We went farther with legal issues and nudity than anyone ever had. The network was afraid the FCC would be on our backs, and theirs, every week.’

  ‘Really! So how did you manage?’ This town is a giant, hungry ego. Feed it, Sandra, and you shall prevail.

  ‘We refused to back down,’ Lizz told me. ‘We told them we wouldn’t compromise, and, judging by their reaction, we knew they wanted to be in bed with us. Us. So they had to let us do what we wanted.’ She smiled sweetly at Manny, who grinned back with equal affection.

  ‘They know who they’re dealing with,’ he added.

  ‘Amazing,’ I let slip.

  ‘Yes, isn’t it? But we got the show we wanted on the air, and eventually that made our friend Patrick a star. Didn’t it?’ Lizz put her arm around Patrick’s broad shoulders.

  ‘I couldn’t have done it without you,’ the star agreed.

  ‘So then you socialize quite a bit when you’re not working?’ I asked, so innocent I thought I might spontaneously sprout pigtails.

  ‘Oh, not really,’ Lizz said. ‘When we have a shooting schedule, everyone has to be up so early, and the hours are so long, that we barely have time to see our own families.’

  ‘You have children?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, yes. I adopted two a few years ago. They’re amazing, and they’re around here somewhere.’ Lizz gestured vaguely with the hand holding her martini glass.

  ‘And you, Mr Richler?’ I turned the full power of my maximum-kilowatt smile on him.

  ‘Please. Manny. And no, no kids. At least, not that I know about.’ He waited for a laugh that didn’t come. ‘But we did see Patrick at that party at his house, what? A couple of months ago?’

  Patrick nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I believe it was in February.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Manny went on. ‘You’d just gotten that … oops. Sorry, Patrick.’

  ‘Not to worry. I was showing the bow around that night, wasn’t I?’ Patrick managed to look tortured and elegant at the same time. If there were an award for acting at parties, we would have won in our respective categories. But I couldn’t decide if I was in a leading or supporting role.

  ‘Do you know much about that kind of bow, Mr … Manny? I need to find an expert witness to explain it on the stand.’ I thought I might appeal to Manny’s need to be the best at something, particularly something Lizz didn’t do.

  But it was Lizz who answered. ‘Oh, no,’ she said. ‘Manny never so much as picks up a bow. I’m the one who introduced Patrick to the bow club here in town. But I’m no expert. He shoots much better than I do.’ By her delivery, she clearly didn’t believe the truth of that last sentence.

  I regarded Lizz, then Patrick. ‘Really? How did he pass you so quickly?’

  ‘Well,’ said Lizz through clenched teeth, ‘he practices much more than I do.’

  Angie rushed over to break up the foursome. ‘Sandy!’ she shouted. ‘I just met Barbara Eden!’

  THIRTY-TWO

  The Beverly Hills Bow Club sat on a hill overlooking much of Los Angeles, at an elevation high enough for me to wonder if I should’ve brought an oxygen tank. But for the time being, my breathing appeared to be normal. It was the setting that was surreal.

  Under the sweltering California sun and the humidity, hanging like a ceiling about ten feet over our heads, men and (a few) women lined up on the only flat surface the club could manage: an asphalt plane that, but for its proportions, could have been a basketball court. It was much larger in both directions, and I was glad for the extra yardage. I was equally relieved that there was a wire mesh fence all the way around the roof, keeping stray arrows from falling down on unsuspecting tourists hoping to find a good photo op with the HOLLYWOOD sign.

  Divided into compartments not unlike a gun shooting range, but without a roof, the club members were aiming arrows at targets from distances of five to ninety meters, according to the club’s manager, Miles Carney, a surprisingly rumpled man (for Beverly Hills) of about forty.

  Th
e club was not actually in Beverly Hills, Carney explained, but ‘The Encino Bow Club’ didn’t have the same ring to it, and the owners (who were anonymous) felt they were close enough. So far, no one had argued the point.

  ‘Some of the more competitive archers will actually try to simulate an individual competition, meaning they’ll shoot a hundred and forty-four arrows at a variety of distances and pay very close attention to their scores,’ Carney was explaining. ‘Others just come for the fun of it, and they’ll get themselves a quiver and feel happy if they manage to hit the target at all.’

  ‘Which kind of archer is Patrick McNabb?’ I asked. Patrick had told me that a number of the Legality crew were members here – including his boss, Lizz.

  ‘He definitely fell more into the competitive category, but he didn’t care if his scores weren’t as good as anyone else’s. Pat competes with himself.’ Carney wasn’t looking at me – he was watching the archers, some of whom seemed to be more interested in speed than accuracy.

  ‘Who was more competitive with the others?’ I asked.

  Carney smiled but didn’t make eye contact. ‘Oh, Lizz, for sure. I saw her stomp off and drive away more than once when Pat’s score was better than hers.’

  ‘Interesting.’

  Carney nodded. ‘You know, Pat brought his wife here once – showed her how to use the bow, and she was a natural. Could have been an Olympian, with some training. She was tearing up the targets, at all distances. Never saw anything like it.’

  I raised an eyebrow. ‘Really. How long before she died?’

  ‘A week or two. No more than that.’

  This was sounding better and better. ‘Who else was here that day?’

  Carney looked as if he knew where I was going, but didn’t want to acknowledge it. ‘Pat; his wife; Juliet – you know, the one who plays Ozzie on the show – one of the writers, Bill Orcada; and Lizz.’ He saved that name for last, clearly wanting to gauge my reaction.

  I didn’t disappoint. ‘Even more interesting. Did Patsy’s score beat Lizz?’

  Carney nodded. ‘I believe that was one of her stomping and driving off days.’

  I gave him the smile he wanted. ‘Interesting,’ I said again.

  The next ten days were filled with interviews and research, all done from my apartment. A mere four residents of the Hollywood ‘community’ proved willing to stand up for Patrick, a man accused of murdering his wife: 1. his agent; 2. his manager; 3. his publicist and 4. his personal assistant. Co-stars, newly on hiatus from the series Legality, were mysteriously tied up on other projects, none of which could be named for fear of queering the deal. Patrick himself said none of his fellow actors had mentioned prior commitments while working on the series, but allowed that ‘something might have come up at the last minute.’ I considered his evaluation to be generous to a fault, not out of character for a man who gave away Ferraris to people he knew less than a week.

  Because the producers and Meadows, the butler, were to be witnesses in other areas of the case (and in Meadows’ case, for the prosecution), they weren’t the best candidates for character references. I had to concentrate more on punching holes in the district attorney’s case, which, from what I could tell, would focus on the divorce proceedings and the forensic evidence involving the bow and arrow.

  Evan came by my apartment every day, though he worried, he told me, that Bach might fire him for not coming into the office. According to Evan, Bach ordered him off Patrick’s case, making a comment about ‘letting that little bitch twist in the wind.’ But I decided to consider that hearsay.

  Angie was somewhat more colorful in her description of Bach, suggesting not only that his parents hadn’t married, but also that he had a particularly severe Oedipus complex.

  She rarely left my side, which was starting to become irritating. But the series of death threats and attempts on me and Patrick had convinced Angie there was no safe place or time for her best friend, and she would not be moved. (In my heart of hearts, I suppose, having her around made me a little less afraid. But hey, nobody had tried to kill me in over a week, and that was something of a record since my move to L.A.)

  Angie was also adapting to the Southern California lifestyle and climate, mostly by wearing as little as possible, even in air conditioned places. It was lucky, I thought, that she rarely left the apartment, because her skimpy attire would more than likely cause an unfortunate number of minor car crashes in the streets of Los Angeles. That is, if anyone could maneuver through the traffic at a high enough speed to actually incur damage.

  The one thing Angie refused to do in order to go L.A. was bleach her hair, which was a blessing. A Greek-Italian blonde from Jersey who stood nearly six feet tall and wore remarkably little clothing probably would have been a little much even for the Angelinos to handle. Besides, Angie didn’t have any tattoos or body piercings, and likely wouldn’t have fit in on that front, either.

  We spent much of the first week interviewing experts on movie memorabilia, knowing that Cates was clearly going to at least mention Cagney’s shoes as part of his case. Each expert valued the shoes at roughly the same price I’d seen online, and therefore would not make a difference in the life of a man making hundreds of thousands of dollars a week, pretending to be a lawyer on television. I found it interesting that the fake lawyers were making more than the real ones I knew, but that was a topic for another day.

  Two days before the trial was to begin, I was preparing my opening statement and feeling the caffeine rush of abject terror I always had before going to court. I’m not ready! They’re going to massacre me! My client’s going to die! The usual, only from the other side of the courtroom, this time. So that last part was a novelty.

  Prosecuting a case is a more emotionally secure position, almost to the point of smugness. There is such a high probability that the defendant is guilty in most cases, you can sleep quite comfortably at night. The defense, I was finding out, could have a more nerve-racking effect, particularly in the rare example of a case in which I found myself: one in which the lawyer actually believes the defendant is not guilty.

  Angie was making the third pot of coffee for the day, and it was only ten in the morning. Sleep deprivation was wearing on me, but Angie could have attended an uninterrupted showing of all nine Star Wars films and stayed awake. Well, maybe not through The Phantom Menace, but a nap there wouldn’t be due to fatigue. Since moving to Hollywood, I was realizing that maybe I wasn’t as highbrow a moviegoer as I’d previously thought.

  Evan, however, was asleep in the armchair, having missed out on his usual ten hours of sleep the night before because he’d been tracking down a rare shoe collector in Yorba Linda – until the ‘ungodly hour’ of nine p.m.

  ‘I don’t have enough,’ I said out loud to no one in particular.

  ‘Yes, you do,’ Angie recited. ‘You do this every time.’

  ‘I really don’t,’ I told her. ‘This time, the case is thin. I wish I were as thin as this case.’

  ‘You look fine. Shut up.’

  ‘You know what I mean. All I’ve got is that Patrick didn’t kill Patsy for the shoes. What about the divorce settlement? Weren’t there millions at stake there? Wouldn’t a lot of men have killed for that?’

  ‘A lot of men, yes. Patrick McNabb, no.’ Angie turned the coffeemaker on and walked over to me. ‘The man gave you a two-hundred-thousand-dollar Ferrari after he knew you for three days. Does that sound like a man worried about his income?’

  ‘I guess not,’ I conceded. ‘But I can’t prove anything.’

  Evan didn’t even move when the phone rang. Down for the count until noon, he seemed more mannequin than man. Angie picked up the phone and handed it to me.

  ‘Garrigan.’

  ‘Hi, Nate,’ I said, trying to sound cheerful. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘I’ve got something for you,’ Garrigan sounded positively giddy. ‘You’re gonna like it.’

  I sat up straight. ‘I could use something like tha
t,’ I said. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I’m at the police lab. It’s been enough weeks now that they got the DNA back from Patsy’s body.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So remember the baby that wasn’t Patrick McNabb’s? It wasn’t Silvio Cadenza’s, either.’

  I shook my head vigorously to rouse myself. ‘What?’

  ‘You heard me. But here’s the best part. Want to know whose baby it is?’

  ‘Tell me, Nate. Don’t keep me in suspense.’

  ‘Henderson T. Meadows. The butler did it.’

  THIRTY-THREE

  ‘Ow!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I stubbed my toe.’

  ‘It’s three o’clock in the morning. You want me to turn on the light?’

  ‘NO!’

  ‘Ooooookaaaay …’

  ‘Ang?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You awake?’

  ‘No. This has been a recording of me. You know I don’t sleep much. What is it, Sand?’

  ‘I’m not ready.’

  ‘You got yourself out of bed and came in here to tell me this? Yes, you’re ready. You’re always ready.’

  ‘Not this time. This time, he’s going to die if I’m not ready, and I’m not. I didn’t have enough time. If only I could have gotten that continuance.’

  ‘But you didn’t, and you’ve been working your butt off for weeks, and you’re ready, Sandra. You are. I’ve seen this before.’

  ‘This is different.’

  ‘No, it’s not.’

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘OK. How is it different?’

  ‘Angie, I’ve never done a criminal defense before. I’ve always been on the other side.’

  ‘So you know what the other side is going to do, don’t you?’

  ‘Well … yeah. I guess I do. I know what I’d do if I were prosecuting.’

  ‘So you know how to counter what he’s going to do, don’t you, Sand?’

  ‘Not really. I think he’s got a pretty good case.’

  ‘No, you don’t. You wouldn’t be this worried about Patrick if you thought he’d really killed his wife.’