“Sit down, lawyer man.”
“Please call me Jimmy. Is it okay to call you Hazel?”
“We don’t stand on formalities ’round here.”
I shrugged out of my jacket, loosened my tie, and found a spot on the ratty sofa. A cat jumped up from nowhere and hissed at me for an instant before screeching away out of sight.
“Tom don’t cotton to strangers. Maybe he knows you’re a lawyer.” She nodded knowingly and plopped down on an old wood rocking chair across from me. Then she reached for a half-empty bottle of Jim Beam resting on an end table next to her.
“Want a little drinky-poo?” She held the bottle out about an inch from her body. Without waiting for a response, she raised it to her lips and took a healthy swig.
“No, thanks,” I said.
Hazel wiped her mouth with the back of her right hand, holding the now almost empty bottle in her left. “No thanks, what?”
“I don’t drink. Used to, but I quit.”
“I quit too, yesterday. Didn’t take a drink all morning. Well, ’til almost ten a.m., but goddammit, I didn’t see no point to it. I’m not a drunk or nothin’ like that.”
“Of course not, Hazel. Just a little nip now and then for the chill.” It was 102 degrees outside, but what the hell.
“Yeah, that’s it, for the chill…” her voice trailed off. She glanced around with barren eyes and gazed off into the distance, her face a blank slate. Then she gulped down another belt, for the chill.
We sat quietly for a moment. Then she struggled out of her chair and walked unsteadily with one hand out in front of her body as if she were blind, feeling her way. She went to the kitchen area and stopped at a small dining table. The table was set for one. Resting on the Formica with the plate and a few tarnished eating utensils was a small glass vase with a single flower in it. The flower, a long-stemmed white lily, had died days before, and the petals, now dark and shriveled, were lying where they fell. Next to the vase, in a wooden frame, was a black and white photograph. She picked up the frame, holding it carefully by the edges, and looked at the photo for a long moment. Then she meticulously set it down in the same spot. When she turned back to me, her eyes were red-rimmed and misty.
I felt sorrow. Sorrow for her, sure, but more sorrow for a society that casts off women like Hazel who, without marketable skills, are left to rot like worm-eaten fruit in an isolated orchard. I didn’t ask, and she didn’t tell me about the man in the photograph. It wasn’t Robbie. The man in the photo was older, maybe her dead husband.
Finally she said, “Robbie’s a good boy.” She turned away and sat down in her chair again without waiting for my response. She retreated to her secret place, a place in her soul where the pain wasn’t so deep. “Did you see them?” she asked in an emotionless voice.
“Who?”
“They are going to get you, too, you know.”
“No, Hazel, I didn’t see anyone.”
“They watch me. They want to silence me.” She began to rock slowly in her chair, humming a tune I didn’t recognize.
I could sit there chatting with Mrs. Farris all afternoon, but if I wanted to beat the rush hour traffic back to my office in Downey, I’d have to get down to business, get her to sign the power of attorney granting me temporary custody of Robbie. I kept a blank form in my jacket pocket for occasions such as this.
“Tell me, Hazel…” I paused, wondering how I could phrase this delicate subject in a manner that wouldn’t offend, especially in view of her condition. “Don’t you think Robbie’s a little crazy? I mean, killing that guy and all.”
“Oh, damn you,” she said, still staring off in the distance. “Robbie’s a good boy.”
“Yes, I’m sure he is, and that’s why I’m here. See, if we can prove he’s a little nutty, then we can keep him out of prison. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
She gulped down the remaining Jim Beam and let the bottle slip from her fingers. It rolled off her lap and hit the floor, where it made a thumping sound. The thump startled Hazel. She came out of her trance and turned to me. “What did you say?”
“Robbie. I’m talking about Robbie.”
“What about him.” An angry scowl mushroomed on her face.
“Well, as I said, Mrs. Farris.” I kept my tone soft and pleasant. I had to tread lightly. “He needs a little help, mental help, and-”
“Hey, Mister, are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
“Calm down, Hazel.”
“God damn it, Robbie’s not crazy. Don’t be telling me that. You goddamn lawyers come in here and demand money. Get out!”
It was beginning to look like I would be there all afternoon. “Listen, Hazel. I don’t want any money. I just want to help Robbie.”
“I said, get out. If you don’t leave right now, I’ll sick Tom on you.”
I glanced around; there didn’t seem to be anyone else in the trailer. Unless he was hiding in her bedroom. But the door was open, and all I saw was a small, rumpled bed. “Tom?”
“My cat, you asshole!”
It took a bit of doing, but I finally convinced her to think about what I was trying to do for Robbie. Her mood improved after I made a run to the Liquor Bin on Topanga Canyon Boulevard and returned with a couple fresh bottles of Jim Beam. Before long, she began to see my point. She opened up and started talking when I poured a drinking glass full of the amber liquid and held it out for her. An hour later I had what I came for-the signed document-and I had a better understanding of Robbie and his troubled life. When she passed out in her chair, I put a couple of my business cards on her table and quietly left.
It was almost dark after the three hour drive when I pulled into my office back in Downey. I patted my jacket pocket where the power of attorney rested, folded and signed by Hazel Farris, mother of the defendant. I smiled.
The lights were on when I cracked open the door and peered in the office. Mabel, our firm’s business manager was gone for the day but Rita, my young associate, was there. She was leaning against the desk, talking.
“No, I told you, I don’t know where he’s been.”
When she noticed me coming through the door, she turned away from the two men in suits standing ramrod straight off to the side.
Her face was white. “Jimmy, these guys are homicide detectives. They want to talk to you,” she said in a hushed tone.
“Why?”
“A patrolman from the Valley called them. Said they found your business card in a dead woman’s trailer. Do you know someone named Hazel Farris?
CHAPTER 3
An hour later, I was in East L.A. being grilled at the sheriff’s headquarters by a couple of beefy homicide cops. No glaring lights, no rubber hoses, but I was in the hot seat and Rita was at my side. They knew I was at Hazel’s trailer just before the murder. The first cops on the scene had found my business card in her trailer and these guys said someone reported spotting a beat-up red Corvette leaving the area around the time of her death. Probably the guy who pointed out her trailer to me. I didn’t deny being there, but, of course, I denied any knowledge of her murder. Rita had insisted on accompanying me to the interview.
“Isn’t that what we always tell our clients, Jimmy?” Rita had said back at the office. “Don’t say anything unless your lawyer is present? Well, I’m going to be your lawyer tonight.”
I knew she was right, and it felt good having her with me.
Although Rita was single and beautiful, with dark flowing hair, sparkling eyes and a figure that would melt rocks, there was no office hanky-panky going on. She was twenty-six-much too young for me. And, even though she never put it into words, I was sure she looked up to me as her mentor. I was delighted to have her at my side. Maybe she’d gain some experience by being here, learn how to handle a homicide interview.
We followed the cops-at their strong suggestion-in Rita’s yellow Datsun to the Sheriff’s headquarters in East L.A. After being escorted to one of the homicide division’s interrogation
rooms, Rita and I were informed that Hazel Farris had been shot through the forehead while sprawled in the same rocking chair in which she’d sat when I visited her. We were seated at a scratched, wooden interrogation table in a stark air-conditioned cubbyhole down the hall from the homicide squad room. Sergeant Joe Hammer and his partner Butch something-I didn’t catch his last name-started questioning me about my meeting. But first, I demanded to know who’d called them. I wanted to know the name of the person who saw my car at Hazel’s trailer. Maybe I could ask him if he saw someone else.
When they refused to divulge that information, Rita stood and told them we were through cooperating and we were now leaving. At that point, they let on that the call was anonymous.
“There you go,” I said, starting to stand again. “Whoever made that call was obviously the killer.”
“Sit down, O’Brien. We need to ask you a few things. We don’t need the guy who called it in. You admitted you were there at the time of her death.”
“Hold it, Hammer…” I started to say.
Rita piped up. “Don’t say anything, Jimmy. And just sit down.” Turning to the big cop, she said, “What my client is alluding to… what he started to say was Mrs. Farris, the decedent, was alive when he left.”
“Yeah, that’s what I was going to say. Hazel was passed out in her chair…”
“Put a sock in it, Jimmy. Don’t say anything until I say it’s okay.” There was a slight edge in her voice.
Hammer paced the linoleum floor. He started tossing out questions, beginning with the obvious one, what was I doing there in the first place. Officer Butch stood silently in the corner taking notes, jotting in his police-issue interview pad.
Rita explained my reason for visiting Hazel at her trailer. She told Hammer how I needed her signature on the power of attorney.
Hammer’s face began to curl into an ugly grimace. “Let me get this straight, O’Brien,” he said to me, ignoring Rita. “You’re saying you just went there to get her to sign some kind of legal document regarding her son, a murderer, now in custody. Is that correct?” Hammer looked like a Rhodesian Ridgeback with a gas problem, but his tone was perfunctory.
I hunched up close to Rita and we had a small conference. Because I was going to use the insanity defense with Robbie, I felt, and Rita concurred, that I would not be violating attorney/client confidentiality by telling the police the details of my meeting with his mother. Rita advised me not to embellish, but go ahead and tell the cops exactly what happened in a straightforward manner.
I told them how Hazel Farris mentioned that Robbie was once a good boy. How she’d told me that when they moved to the Chatsworth area after her husband was killed, Robbie fell in with a bad crowd, teenage hoodlums who did drugs. “He turned bad and raised all kinds of hell,” Hazel had said.
After loosening up, she’d told me more. She had discussed Robbie’s problem with Elroy Snavley, the pastor of her church, The Divine Christ Ministry over on Winnetka Avenue. It was decided that Robbie should be sent away. At the pastor’s urging, she agreed to send him to a Christian intervention center somewhere in the desert, outside of Barstow.
According to the rules the center had imposed, she wasn’t allowed to visit her son or have any contact with him whatsoever.
But when Robbie returned home after a six-month stint, he was a different person. “He was cured of drugs, all right,” she’d said. “But his head was filled with that religious mumbo-jumbo those goons taught out there.”
She didn’t know what was worse, his lifeless state while on drugs, or the hyperactive ranting about his newfound salvation. “The Lord this and the Lord that, all day and all night. How much of that fire and brimstone crap could I take?” she’d said.
It wasn’t long after Robbie returned that he left again. That was about a year ago; she hadn’t heard a thing from him since, and until I broke the news, she knew nothing about Robbie stabbing the professor, or about his mental condition. She didn’t have any idea what may have caused him to snap.
“What’s all of this garbage have to do with the old woman’s murder, O’Brien?” Hammer asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe nothing,” I said. “I’m just telling you what happened while I was there. Hey, maybe the spooks got her?”
“Spooks? What in the hell are you talking about?”
“Yeah, spooks, you know, ghosts, little goblins running around.” I did a little finger wave. “Wooo… she saw them all the time.”
Hammer gave me a hard-cop look, eyebrows arched with his chin jutting out. “What kind of horseshit are you feeding me, O’Brien?”
“You’re embellishing, Jimmy,” Rita said.
“Hey, I’m just telling him what she said.”
Hammer leaned down and got into my face. “Yeah, some boozed-up old broad tells you she sees ghosts, and you believe it?”
“Hey, Hammer, she was alive when I left. If you call being passed out in a chair living.”
“You’re saying she was out, dead drunk, when you left? Is that it?”
“She was breathing,” I said.
“You don’t get a big fat hole in the center of your forehead from booze, at least not from the stuff I drink.” The cop turned and snapped a finger at his partner. “Butch, listen up. What time did O’Brien say he left?”
“About four in the afternoon,” I said in a firm tone.
“Hold on a sec,” Butch said, coming to attention and thumbing his interrogation pad.
“Four o’clock,” I said again, louder.
“Here it is!” Butch beamed and proudly announced. “Four p.m., said he was there until four, Joe. But, hey, are we gonna take his word for it?”
Hammer turned back to me. “The call came in at 5:17. Some guy walking his dog went by her trailer. The door was open and he could see the old lady dead in her chair. Called the local law enforcement. The officers at the scene found your card on the floor by the body. They called us and here we are. Now, you’re admitting you were there. That means you, O’Brien.” He made a symbolic gun out of his fist and forefinger, cocked his thumb, and shot me with it. “You were the last person to see her alive.”
“Objection!”
All eyes in the room turned to Rita, who sat calmly with her right arm partially raised.
“The killer or killers unknown, perhaps the supposed dog walker, was the last person or persons to see the decedent alive.” She stood. “Now, gentlemen, you have my client’s statement and nothing more can be gained by further discussion of this tragic affair. So, we will be leaving now.” Rita tapped me on the shoulder. “C’mon, Jimmy, let’s go.”
“Hold up a minute,” Sergeant Hammer shouted. “Little lady, he’s not going anywhere until I say he can go.”
Rita darted around the table, charged into Hammer’s space, and all five-foot four and one-hundred twelve pounds of her reached up and jabbed her finger into the stomach of the two-fifty pound pile of ugly muscle.
“You hold on, big guy,” she said. “You either charge my client and book him right now, or we’re outta here, understand?”
“Hey, back off, sweetheart.” Hammer looked down at Rita’s tiny finger poking his belly.
“You back off, sugar buns. And listen up. You can address me as counselor, Ms., or hey you, but not sweetheart,” Rita said. “Show some class.”
She cast a quick glance in my direction, winked, then turned back to Hammer. “We’re leaving now. Have a nice evening.”
As we strolled down the hall outside the interrogation room toward the exit, I heard Hammer’s voice booming somewhere behind us: “Hey, O’Brien, don’t leave town.”
Rita glanced over her shoulder and tossed out an insolent “Ha.”
We continued walking.
It was quiet on the Santa Ana Freeway as we drove back to Downey. I glanced at Rita in the driver’s seat of the cramped little Datsun. Her skirt had slipped up to mid-thigh, and I wondered why I hadn’t noticed before how lovely her legs were.
&
nbsp; She turned my way and gave me a nice smile.
“Sugar buns, Rita? You called that hairy ape sugar buns,” I said, and she laughed.
Then we both fell silent again, wondering why anyone would want to kill a washed-out alcoholic like Hazel Farris.
CHAPTER 4
At precisely 9:30 a.m., Judge Abraham J. Tobias marched in, ascended three steps, adjusted his robes, and plopped his ample backside into the seat of the black, high-back chair. He wiggled a little, getting comfortable on his throne, and with the unmistakable gleam of self-importance, he gazed out at the people gathered there. Harrumphing, he glared at us as if we were his subjects ready to do his bidding.
We were assembled in Judge Abe Tobias’s courtroom, Arraignments, Division 6 C, on the third floor of the Criminal Courts building in downtown Los Angeles. The Deputy D.A. Steve Webster and I were all set to act out our prearranged roles.
I sat at the defense table with Robbie. He wasn’t cuffed, but he still wore the jailhouse jumpsuit. There was no need for street clothes at this point. This proceeding would be held in front of Tobias without a jury present and the prisoner garb wouldn’t prejudice the judge regarding my client’s guilt or innocence. We all knew that.
Webster sat alone at the prosecutor’s table on the right side of the courtroom. His hand scribbled notes on a yellow tablet. He had to be working on one of his other cases; our deal was cut, chiseled in stone. The court reporter, a young and attractive woman in a loose white blouse, sat at her small table in front of the bench. Her fingers, forming claws were fixed above the keyboard of the gizmo in front of her, poised to transcribe our pearls of wisdom, fresh and pure, as they rolled glibly off our tongues.
The bailiff and a deputy sheriff stood close behind Robbie, guarding their prisoner.
Today would be routine. I would ask for a continuance of the arraignment until a psychiatrist had a chance to examine Robbie. Steve Webster would make a verbal motion not to set a trial date until the psychiatrist provided the court with his evaluation. Earlier, I had met Webster in the snack bar downstairs in the lobby, where he handed me a list of psychiatrists who would be acceptable to the people. I was to choose one and get back to him within a day or two.
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