“Maybe it was one of our clients.”
“Don’t be silly, boss, we don’t have any clients. But the killer had to have been here both times. He had to be here when you weren’t sitting behind your desk. He had to know your routine. And he had to know you were defending Robbie. Maybe he was following… or maybe, there were two guys. One guy who stole the gun…”
“Aw, Rita, nobody followed me. Anyone could’ve come in here and taken the gun, and brought it back during the day, even.”
“Like who?”
“We’ll ask Mabel if any delivery guys happened to drop by when neither of us were here,” I said.
“Oh, Jimmy, I hope it’s not the pizza guy. He’s kinda cute.”
“Rita, he’s a pimply-faced kid. You can do better, for crying out loud,” I said with a disingenuous smile. “Anyway, Hazel Farris was killed with a bullet, not a bad anchovy.”
“That’s not funny.”
“I know…” We fell quiet again. Finally I broke the silence. “And now, young lady, you are going to march into the other room and call Hammer. You’ve got to call him before he gets the warrant and comes barging in the door.”
“This is all they’ll need. They’ll come looking for you. They’ll arrest you. I’m not going to bury you.”
“Then I’ll call him myself.”
“You do,” Rita turned and pointed, “and I’ll walk right out that door. You’ll never see me again.” Her voice was filled with strong determination and she waited for me to make my move. I knew Rita, and I knew she meant what she said. She wasn’t bluffing.
“Rita, listen to me. I’m your boss.”
“And, I’m your lawyer, and I’m-”
“Listen to me, please! It might not even be the murder weapon.”
Her face taut, she looked at me. “Wanna bet?”
“Rita, I couldn’t live with myself if I let you violate your personal code of ethics, not to mention break the law. When you first became a lawyer you told me that when the time comes, the time when you have to make the hard choice, you’d do the right thing.”
She stood there and stared silently at her shoes.
“Do you remember saying that?”
“Yes.”
“Are you going to make the call?”
Her head snapped up. “No! And I’m not kidding, I’ll walk!”
CHAPTER 16
After my discussion with Rita, I left the office and drove back to Dolan’s to grab a dozen glazed. As the counterman quickly tossed the donuts in a bag, he looked at me with his eyes wide as if I were about to drop dead, or maybe he figured he saw a ghost. I thought about making a scary face, but that wouldn’t be a dignified way for a lawyer to act, so I just said boo. Then I headed directly to the ten-story office building that housed Sol’s corporate security and investigations firm, Silverman Investigations, Inc.
Joyce escorted me along a marble-lined hallway leading to Sol’s private office at the end of it. I amused myself with his lava lamp until he appeared promptly at nine a.m.
I apologized about the disconnected phone call. He frowned and commented about how someone who didn’t know me might feel as if I had hung up on him. I chuckled. “Imagine that,” I said. We shared the donuts, washing them down with a gallon of Sol’s special grind of Kopi Luwak coffee. He wouldn’t tell me the secret method that the growers in Sumatra employed in the bean’s preparation. But I didn’t care how it was made, the coffee tasted great.
While we ate the donuts and drank the coffee, we discussed the murder investigation. Without bringing up the discovery of the gun-the less said about that the better-I told him my reasons for the Barstow trip. I explained how I’d tried to find the teen drug center. I mentioned the old man in the Bright Spot Cafe, and told him about my meeting behind the Harvey House with Jane. And, of course, I added how the girl had been afraid of being punished, how the old man, Ben Moran, allegedly ordered beatings. We both agreed that the center was the key to solving the mystery of Robbie’s escape, and that Robbie’s escape was the key to Hazel Farris’ murder.
“Now all we have to do is find the center.” Sol started to rise out of his chair. “And we can’t do that sitting here on our fat asses.”
I gingerly placed the donut in my hand back in the box.
He summoned the Deacon, his number one operative, and Cubby, his principal driver, and soon the four of us were in Sol’s big black limousine. We cruised northeast, rolling at a hundred miles per hour on Interstate 15 heading for Barstow and the Bright Spot Cafe.
The mobile radiophone buzzed. The Deacon, sitting on the jumpseat in the back of the big limousine, reached out with his massive arm and lifted the receiver from its cradle. After he listened for a moment, he handed it to Sol. A few moments later, Sol replaced the radiophone receiver in its cradle and turned to me. “That was Joyce. Mabel phoned her. She had a message to give you.”
“Yeah, what was it?”
“Said the cops came to your office with a search warrant looking for a gun.”
My stomach did a little samba. I cleared my throat. “What did they find?” I asked with all the calmness I could muster.
Sol’s eyes bored into me. “Nothing. But why would they expect to find a gun there?”
My heart sank. “You mean they didn’t find it?”
Of course, I was relieved that I wasn’t going to be arrested the minute I showed up back in Downey, but at the same time, I was disappointed. After a serious discussion, Rita and I had come to an understanding. We agreed that we’d put the gun back where it was found. I’d explained that it wasn’t her responsibility to do the cops’ job, searching for evidence, and as long as the evidence wasn’t tampered with, she had no obligation to tell them what she knew. When the cops finally got their search warrant, and found the gun … well then, so be it. We’d fight the section 187 charge, and we’d win. She reluctantly agreed and gave me her word she wouldn’t dig the gun out again and hide it. Now it troubled me to realize that Rita hadn’t kept her promise.
“Hey, buddy boy, you said nothing about a gun. What gives?” Sol asked.
I blurted out the whole story: the cops looking for my gun, Rita finding it, and our agreement.
“Gott in himmel!” Sol shouted. “You mean to tell me you had the gun in your hand? The murder weapon, the piece of evidence that could put you in jail for life, and you wanted to leave it there for the cops to waltz in and pick up? You shmuck! Thank God for Rita, at least someone in that feckockteh firm has a brain.”
With a wave of his hand, he indicated his immediate need for a drink. I was glad Sol wasn’t holding the gun at that moment; he probably would’ve shot me with it. He was that angry. And I couldn’t blame him. After all, he had my best interests at heart, and he was doing his utmost to help me find Robbie so I’d stay out of jail. But I was still disappointed that Rita broke her word.
The Deacon opened the sliding door of the small bar built into the seatback and started to fix Sol a drink.
“Sol, listen,” I said. “I couldn’t let her do it. But she did it anyway.”
The Deacon handed Sol the drink, his signature martini, one-hundred-proof vodka in a glass.
Sol took a sip, then put his arm around my shoulder and tousled my hair. “Ah, Jimmy, my boy, you big oaf,” he said. “That’s why you couldn’t make it as a cop. Too damned softhearted.”
“Yeah, should have run you in when I had the chance,” I mumbled with a weak grin, but the expression on my face must’ve mirrored my feelings. While Rita had violated my trust, she’d done it for me, and the thought of that tugged at my heart.
“Hey, O’Brien, quit with the long face. We’ll get to the bottom of this. We’ll find the drug center. The Deacon will explain to those jokers at the Bright Spot that we’d really like to know where that dad-blamed center is,” Sol said, oblivious to the real reason for my sudden shift of mood. “Isn’t that right, Deacon?”
“Right on, boss,” the Deacon answered.
The Deacon, a nickname he acquired when he was an All-American defensive end for USC-named after the great Deacon Jones of the L.A. Rams, whom he emulated-was a powerful black guy about six-two and two-hundred-twenty pounds. He had arms of steel and his shoulders looked like the crossbeams that held up the Vincent Thomas Bridge. After a tour in Vietnam, Special Forces, decorated for valor twice, and a stint in the Secret Service, he joined Sol’s team of talented and formidable agents. It wasn’t long before the Deacon became Sol’s prime operative, often accompanying him on special missions where muscle and diplomacy were needed in equal proportions.
The Deacon wore an expensive Italian-cut business suit with all the accessories, monogrammed dress shirt, Magnum 45, and an Hermes tie, the Magnum being tucked into a designer crocodile holster.
While Sol took another call, I stared out the window at the vast desert wasteland rushing by. I wasn’t focused on the sun-bleached rocks or scorched mountains. I tried to comprehend where and how I’d gone wrong. I thought about the terrible mess I was in: Robbie’s escape, Judge Tobias and his disappointment in me, and now Rita sacrificing her ethics on my behalf. It was too much. Thoughts of quitting the law crossed my mind. Yeah, maybe it would be better if I gave up the law business, got a real job. But quitting the law, canceling my bar card, would probably be a moot point before long anyway.
“By the way, Jimmy,” Sol said, after he hung up the phone. “Mabel had something else to tell you.”
“Yeah, what’d she say this time?”
“Seems she found a goddamn mouse in your office.”
“A mouse in my office?”
“Yeah, imagine that. When she came to work this morning, Rita and you were in your office talking. Mabel left and came back when you two were gone. Later, when she went into your office to get a file, she noticed that someone had moved the filing cabinet. She went to straighten it. And guess what? She found a goddamn mouse. That’s what she said, a goddamn mouse behind the cabinet. She said it’s now in her purse.”
I hadn’t been paying much attention to Sol, but suddenly it dawned on me what he was talking about. “Mabel did what? Rita wasn’t there?”
A mischievous grin appeared on Sol’s face. “Why would Mabel put a goddamn mouse in her purse?” He glanced at the Deacon. “Why would she do that, Deacon?”
“Don’t know, boss.”
“Maybe she didn’t want the cops to notice how untidy a law office can get. Things like that laying around. Disgusting.”
Sol dusted his hands in an exaggerated fashion, mocking my gloom, which now departed at a fast gallop. Rita hadn’t removed the gun after all. She had kept her word.
“Yeah,” the Deacon said. “A goddamn mouse, imagine that.”
“With a goddamn.38 caliber asshole,” Sol said, “that shits bullets.”
Sol and the Deacon broke out laughing. I laughed too, hard. And it felt good.
We roared up to the Bright Spot Cafe, jumped out of the limo, and dashed into the white clapboard building.
“All right, everyone up against the wall!” Sol strutted around the room, walking tall, flashing his P.I. badge. He waved it around at arm’s length. The Deacon stood next to the wall, in front of the window, holding his gun at his side, pointed at the floor. Cubby stayed with the car. I stood by the door.
Sol wanted to make a dramatic entrance, get the people’s attention, he’d explained earlier.
The same group of men slouched in the cafe, but the girl, Jane, was nowhere in sight. Everyone looked up and started moving slowly to the edge of the room. Everyone, that is, except Ben Moran and his buddy, a new guy I hadn’t seen before.
The new guy was a bear of man, a redneck brute of about forty. He wore no shirt and his hairy, ursine back and chest were exposed beneath his bib overalls. Even while he sat, I could see that Moran’s buddy had to be about six-foot-five, and in a weight contest he’d top a black grizzly. He was no Winnie the Pooh.
The redneck and Moran sat calmly at the table drinking coffee, oblivious to the action surrounding them. Finally, the bear looked up. “Hey, gumshoe. Tell your boy to put his peashooter away before I have to get out of my chair and shove it up his ass.” He spoke with a thick cracker accent.
Ben Moran’s eyes flashed and he said, “Shut up, Buddy.” He said it fast, before Sol could react to the redneck’s comment. “We’re going to have a friendly little chat with these gentlemen. Then we’ll ask them to leave, nice and polite like.” He turned to Sol. “C’mon over and sit down. Have some coffee.” He looked at me; there was a hardness in his eyes I hadn’t seen before. “You too, O’Brien. You can tell me about your plan to buy the Harvey House.”
“The Deacon,” Sol swaggered toward the men at the table, “doesn’t like to be called boy. Makes him real upset, no telling what he’ll do.” Sol then charged the table, got up close to Moran’s pal, and said, “I’m a Jew. Wanna make something out of that?”
Buddy the Bear sprang to his feet and roared back, ready to let fly an amazingly huge fist in the direction of Sol’s face.
Moran grabbed Buddy by the straps of his bib overalls. “Calm down, friend,” he said. Then he turned to Sol. “You too, mister gumshoe. Christ said — ”
“I don’t give a damn what Christ said. I wanna know where the girl is.”
“What girl?”
I walked to the table and answered for Sol. “Dark-haired teenager named Jane.”
“Never heard of her.” Moran turned to the customers lining the wall, the men guarded by the Deacon. “Any of you boys know some girl calls herself Jane?”
I watched their dead eyes as they lied, shaking their heads in unison.
Then I marched to the counter, hopped over it, and peered through the food slot into the filthy, drab kitchen behind the wall. No one was back there. I turned to the waitress who stood motionless, taut, next to the cash register. “You know who we’re talking about. She works here, was wiping tables.”
The waitress shook her head vehemently, but her eyes shifted downward. I followed her glance. Her hand was held out open below the counter; hidden from the group in the cafe. In it she held a small scrap of paper. Quickly, I snatched the paper and jammed it into my pocket.
“Where’s the owner of this place? I want to see the employment records,” Sol said.
“I own it,” Moran said. “Ain’t got no records. Don’t believe in them.”
“Government says you gotta keep records.”
“Government’s got no right poking their nose in my businesses.”
“Didn’t Christ say something about rendering unto Caesar?” Sol said.
“Caesar’s dead-and soon all the Hebrews will be dead too, along with the Roman heathens and descendants of Cain. Dead and gone once the day of reckoning is upon us.” Moran raised his head. “Amen, I say, amen!” I thought I noticed a smirk hiding in his dark eyes under those bushy brows.
The men at the wall joined in, chanting amen and waving their arms as they moved closer to the Deacon.
I came out from around the counter. “In the meantime, you can tell us where the drug center is located.”
Moran lowered his arms; the chanting stopped. His eyes shifted from the men lined up at the wall to the Deacon, then to Sol.
Buddy the Bear slowly hoisted his three hundred pounds of flab and attitude out of the chair. He pinned me with a defiant scowl and then focused on the Deacon. His face had the hue of a hot brick. Any minute he’d explode. Tension filled the room; you could squeeze it with your fingers and it would bleed.
“Hey, boy!” Buddy the Bear yelled at the Deacon.
The Deacon spun around, exposing his back to the men lined up behind him.
Then it happened.
“Get ’em, men!” Moran shouted.
At once all five of the men attacked the Deacon.
Buddy the Bear sprang on the balls of his feet-lightning fast-and pounced on Sol.
One of the guys at the wall pulled a toadsticker from his coveralls pocket, flic
ked open the six-inch blade, and eyed me cautiously for a split second before he charged, the blade glittering in the light.
The Deacon’s gun clattered to the floor. Ben Moran grunted, pushed his massive bulk out of the chair, and scrambled after the revolver as it slid across the room. He looked up. Cubby, who had silently slipped into the cafe, had his foot on the gun. He wagged his finger. “Sit this one out, old man, before you get hurt.” Moran moseyed back to his table and settled in, an innocent bystander at the Bright Spot rumble.
I stepped back. The guy with the blade flew past me and sprawled on the floor, after he tripped on my outstretched foot. He banged his head on the wall, stuck himself in the leg with his knife, and didn’t get up. He sat there and stared at the blood that started to pool under his thigh. I toyed with the idea of tossing him the washrag that sat on the counter.
The ruckus continued. The Deacon had made short work of the first three guys and now was pounding the last hooligan into hamburger.
And Sol, his jaws clenched, was busy with the redneck. He had the big bear in a hammerlock, thumping the guy’s head on the table.
“Hold it,” Moran shouted. “I think these city folks have had enough.”
Sol looked up. Surprise was written on his face. “Yeah, guess we’re not as tough as we thought.” He dropped the redneck and the guy rolled slowly to the floor. Then with his hand, he made a slashing motion across his neck indicating to the Deacon and me-like a director making a movie-Cut, the fight scene is over.
I strolled to the counter and tossed the rag to Mack the Knife, still on the floor by the wall. The bloody mess was becoming unsightly.
The room became quiet and Moran said in a loud voice, “That girl, the one you called Jane, she just wandered in here, hungry, wanted food.” He nodded. “Gave her some, and she cleaned tables for an hour or two. That’s all I know about her.”
Sol dabbed at a cut on his lip with a napkin he grabbed from a table. “Why didn’t you tell us that before?” he asked.
“You folks come in here throwin’ your weight around, itchin’ for a bruisin’. I figure why spoil the fun?”
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