Lies With Man

by Michael Nava

  “I’m not that kind of lawyer, Mrs. Herron. Your fight with the church is a civil matter.” I switched topics to cut off another rant. “Why were you having your husband followed?”

  “I thought he was having an affair.”

  “Was he?”

  She grimaced. “No. He had a son by another woman, long before we met and were married. In San Francisco. He’d go there to see them.”

  The final pieces of Herron’s secret life fell into place for me. His son was the child of a woman he’d met in San Francisco in his youth.

  “Your husband,” I said. “When did he live in San Francisco?”

  “What does that have to do with anything?” she snapped, then, abruptly, as drunks do, fell into a reverie. “Dan was a hippie. That’s what he told me once. Before he converted, he had long hair and lived in abandoned houses and took drugs and met— Gwen. She’s a nice woman. She’s Black! That was a shock. Daddy wouldn’t have approved. I suppose that’s why he kept her a secret while Daddy was alive and then after he died, Dan didn’t want me to know. I wanted to hate her, but— he should have married her. She would have given him the family he wanted.” She took a soiled handkerchief from her purse and dabbed her eyes. “You see I can’t have children, and Dan— well, I understand now— he needed that family. That boy. He’s sick, you know. AIDS. Dan asked Schultz to help get Wyatt some kind of medication and told him it was for his nephew. Daniel doesn’t have a nephew. Marie Schultz called me and told me she was sorry her husband couldn’t help. That bitch! That’s when I hired the investigator.”

  “What did you do when you found out about the boy and his mother?”

  “I didn’t know what to do, so I went to Bob. Uncle Bob,” she said sardonically. “That’s what I called him when I was a little girl. He was my father’s best friend. He said he would take care of it.”

  “You think the way he took care of it was to have your husband killed? Is that how Christians handle their disputes these days?”

  “You’re mocking me.”

  “I’m trying to understand why you believe this man— Metzger?— would have taken such a drastic action to eliminate your husband.”

  “They thought he was too soft.”

  “Soft? Your husband.”

  “Not enough of a hater,” she said. “Not enough of a man. You see, it’s not just a church. It’s a kingdom. They wanted a different king, and there was only one way to replace him. Like Shakespeare, you see. One of those plays where powerful nobles plot to get rid of a weak king.”

  We were again descending into alcoholic gibberish, so I redirected the conversation to more solid ground.

  “Why come to me? Why not go to the police?”

  “I can’t go to the police. They. . . .” she trailed off. “I was arrested.”

  “For what?”

  “Drunk driving,” she said in a flat voice.

  “Recently?”

  She nodded. “The police wouldn’t believe me. Do you?” she asked, despairingly.

  This was one sad woman. “Mrs. Herron, I’m sorry for your loss. I’m sure you loved your husband very much.”

  “No, Mr. Rios. I did not love my husband. I hardly knew my husband. I was my father’s only child. He had me marry Daniel so Daniel could inherit the church when he died. Now that Daniel is gone, they’re throwing me away. You take the report and the photographs. Use them against Bob. I thought he was my friend until he told me I would have to leave my house. The scandal will destroy the church.”

  “This is all about revenge for you.”

  She stood up slowly, smoothed her skirt, and adjusted her blazer. “‘The Lord is a God who avenges,’” she quoted. “‘O God who avenges, shine forth. Rise up, Lord of the earth. Pay back to the proud what they deserve.’”

  ••••

  She left in a gust of booze and indignation. I could have dismissed what she’d said as a drunken rant by a vindictive woman— and most of it was— but she had given me two valuable pieces of information. The photograph of Freddy taken by her investigator and what she’d told me about Daniel Herron’s pre-come-to-Jesus life as a hippie in late ’60s San Francisco. A place and time of revolutionary ferment.

  Maybe I was right that a terrorist group was behind Herron’s death but wrong about its identity. Not a secret gay network, but an older one that had nothing to do with gay rights. Maybe Herron had been mixed up with a violent, radical group like the Weathermen who’d claimed credit for twenty-five bombings of government facilities back in the day. Some members of that group had never been caught, were still on the FBI’s Most Wanted list. Could he have been one of them and have known the whereabouts of others? Was he going to rat them out now that he’d gone straight? Or had the feds tracked him down and squeezed him to rat out the rest? Was that why he was killed? Was Freddy Saavedra the avenging angel of whatever was left of a revolution that Dan Herron had been about to betray?

  I shuffled through the stack of photos Mrs. Herron had left behind, looking for the second one of Freddy Saavedra she said was among them. There it was: Saavedra standing near the gate where Herron was boarding a plane. So Freddy had been following Herron, but when I read the investigator’s report, there was no mention of Freddy by any name or a description of the photographs where he was pictured. I picked up the phone.

  “Vidor Investigations.”

  “Freeman, it’s Rios. Do you know a PI named Bruce Lindell?”

  “Sure. Most of his work is for insurance companies. He takes pictures of guys who said they were injured on the job, cutting down trees or running marathons. Why the interest?”

  I gave him a summary of my meeting with Mrs. Herron and the photos of Saavedra she’d passed along to me.

  “The thing is,” I concluded, “Lindell’s report doesn’t say anything about why he took those pictures. Could you arrange a meeting with him?”

  “I’ll call him as soon as we hang up.”

  “You may be right that the answer to Herron’s death is in his past, not Freddy’s.”

  “Told you so,” he replied.

  ••••

  The following morning, I picked Freeman up at his office and we drove to our meeting with Bruce Lindell while Freeman sketched out what he’d learned so far about Daniel Herron’s early life. It was pretty white bread until he went off to college at San Francisco state in 1965 and dropped out the following year. After that, nothing. The Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out generation hadn’t left much of a paper trail, not even a driver’s license in Dan Herron’s case. His had expired in 1966 and wasn’t renewed until 1972 when presumably he was doing God’s work and God required a car. Six missing years. The only thing I knew for certain about them was that at some point he got his girlfriend pregnant. Otherwise, he could have been anywhere, doing anything. Selling dope, traveling the world in sandals and a headband, or building bombs in the attic of a San Francisco Victorian to blow up the local selective service depot.

  Freeman played devil’s advocate.

  “If he was a white boy revolutionary,” he said, “and did some damage back then, the government would be looking for him, not his comrades.”

  “Unless,” I said, “they were underground, and he knew where they were and was about to snitch.”

  “After all these years? Why?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe the feds caught up with him and he cut a deal. Maybe he heard old comrades were about to start blowing up things again and he wanted to stop them now that he’s reformed.”

  Freeman lit a cigarette. We both rolled down our windows.

  “I ain’t heard of any federal building going up in smoke lately. You?”

  “Maybe it was still in the planning stages.”

  “A lot of maybes,” he muttered. “Anyway, this Saavedra, he’s a young dude. This sixties stuff would be ancient history to him.”

  “He could be second-generation,” I said.

  He laughed. “I think you call those people yuppies.”

&
nbsp; Miffed, I growled, “Let’s see what Lindell has to say, okay?”

  ••••

  Bruce Lindell was a sharp-featured man in a nicely cut suit who had the partner’s office in the mid-Wilshire high-rise that housed his agency. He examined the photos of Saavedra I’d given him, looked up, and asked, “Where did you get these?”

  “Your client gave them to me,” I replied. “Daniel Herron’s wife.”

  “Jessica,” he said. “Why?”

  “I’m afraid that’s privileged.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “Is she suing me?”

  “No, nothing like that. She gave me the photos and your report because she thought they might have some bearing on one of my cases.”

  He glanced at Freeman, sitting beside me, smirked and said, “You know how you’re talking to a lawyer? He opens his mouth and a snake crawls out.”

  “He’s on the level,” Freeman said. “I’m working on the case.”

  “The church bombing,” Lindell said flatly.

  “How did you—” I began, then shot a look at my investigator. “Freeman?”

  “Don’t get your panties in a knot, Mr. Rios. Freeman’s not my source. I read the papers. I know who you are.” He tapped the photos. “So, Jessica Herron gives the file about her husband’s secret life to the lawyer defending the guy who’s accused of killing him.” He pushed an ashtray across his desk to Freeman who’d just lit up a cigarette. “And you want to know about the guy in the picture. You think he’s involved in the bombing? I know, I know, you can’t say but when this is all over, Freeman, you’re going to buy me a steak and tell me the whole story.”

  “You still like the New York cut at Dan Tana’s?” Freeman asked.

  “Twenty ounces of grass-fed heaven,” Lindell replied.

  “The photo,” I reminded him.

  “I don’t know his name, Rios, but I can tell you this. He’s a cop.”

  THIRTEEN

  “What! How do you know he’s a cop?”

  Lindell tapped the photograph of Saavedra with the meter maid. “Because of what happened after I took this. The guy parks in a red zone. She pulls up behind him and gets out her pad. He gets out of the car and goes over to her. They argue for a minute. I take the picture but keep watching. She’s starting to write him up when he grabs his wallet, opens it, and shows it to her. They talk for another minute. She closes her pad and takes off. Now, I didn’t see what he was carrying, but the only way anyone’s going to win an argument with a meter maid is to show her a badge.”

  “LAPD?” I asked.

  “Hell if I know, but it had to be an agency she recognized.”

  “Why did you notice him in the first place?”

  “He was following Herron, too. Saw him parked down the street from Herron’s house and when Herron left, so did he. Followed him to the airport and into the terminal. That’s where I took the second picture.”

  “Why didn’t you mention any of this to Jessica Herron?”

  He shrugged. “I was hired to see if her husband had a side piece. It was no business of mine if the cops were tailing him for something else. I included the photos in case she knew what was going on and wanted me to follow up, but once I delivered my report, that was the end of it.” He lay back in his black leather desk chair. “You obviously think the cop was up to something else.”

  “I appreciate your help, Bruce,” I said.

  He smiled. “Okay, okay, I understand. Lawyer-client privilege, but here’s a tip. You want to know the cop’s name?”

  “That would be very helpful.”

  “See here,” he said, pointing back at the photo. “The meter maid’s cart has a number on it. Find out who’s assigned to that cart and show her the picture. I bet she remembers his name.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “You know I would have figured that out,” Freeman said.

  Lindell laughed. “Sure, but I saved you the brain cells. Don’t forget to call me about that steak.”

  ••••

  Freeman and I regrouped in front of Lindell’s blocky high-rise. Mid-Wilshire was filled with similar cookie-cutter concrete-and-glass buildings but hidden among them were marvels of Art Deco architecture from the 1920s when the neighborhood had been home to the silent film movie elite. Not far away swan boats had once paddled across the lake in MacArthur Park, which was now a battlefield for warring gangs. Signage in Korean plastered the storefronts on the surrounding streets as a new wave of immigrants claimed the neighborhood. It was a vibrant, if sketchy, section of the city from which the ghosts of the old movie colony had long since departed.

  He lit a cigarette, flicked the match to the sidewalk, and said gleefully, “There goes your theory that Saavedra was some kind of radical hit man sent to assassinate Herron.”

  “Unless Saavedra’s working for the feds tracking down old lefties.”

  “And then he kills him?”

  “Who knows!” I said, flummoxed. “Maybe Theo’s been lying to me the whole time and Saavedra had nothing to do with the bombing.”

  “You really think the kid could pull it off without any help? Didn’t you say he was a speed freak? You need steady hands and a clear head to build a bomb.”

  “Hey, I’m open to suggestions if you have one.”

  “In fact,” he said, “now that we know Freddy’s a cop, I do have an idea. You remember I was telling you about the Biltmore Six, those Brown Beret dudes?”

  “The ones you said tried to burn down the Biltmore when Reagan was speaking.”

  “After we talked, I went down to the library and looked up the trial because there was something I wasn’t remembering, and it bugged me. Turns out, the Berets were infiltrated by PDID.”

  “PDID? What’s that?”

  “Public Disorder Intelligence Division,” Freeman replied. “A unit in LAPD that was supposed to keep track of people conspiring to use violence to overthrow the government. Came out of the red scare in the ’50s when people thought there was a Communist under every bed. But instead of investigating actual criminals, the old chief, Davis, started planting agents in all kinds of left-wing groups, whether or not they were violent. Peaceniks, civil rights groups, anyone he thought was a threat to white-bread America.” He exhaled a plume of smoke. “And I do mean white.”

  “Just like the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover.”

  “They were butt buddies, no offense. Anyway, some of these cops got tired of waiting around for the revolution to start so they tried to talk the groups they had infiltrated into lighting a fuse. Those fires at the Biltmore? They were started by the undercover cop. He talked the Berets into it and threw the first match. Or so the Berets claimed. He testified at the trial it was all them.”

  “What happened?”

  “What do you think happened? The jury believed the cop and convicted the Berets.”

  “You think Freddy is PDID?”

  “PDID was disbanded back in ’81 after a lawsuit showed that the cops were spying on city council members, but then it was reorganized in ’84 and given a new name. Now it’s called the anti-terrorism unit.”

  “Why was it revived?”

  “The department claimed outside terrorist groups were threatening to turn the games into another Munich. Remember that?”

  “Yeah, the 1972 Olympics. Palestinian terrorists killed some Israeli athletes. Does the unit still exist?”

  “Yeah, and maybe it’s up to its old tricks.”

  “Investigating and discrediting any group that threatens Daryl Gates’s vision of LA as a straight, whites-only paradise.”

  “That’s not just the chief,” Freeman replied. “Plenty of cops in the rank and file have the same vision. Why do you think I quit?”

  “I’d actually like to hear that story sometime, Freeman.”

  “You’ll have to get me drunk,” he said. ‘And get drunk with me.”

  “You know I don’t drink. Okay, back to Freddy. Let’s say LAPD planted an agent provocateur in QU
EER. We still have to prove it was Freddy.”

  “I’ll find the meter maid from the airport. What are you going to do?”

  “Educate myself,” I said, “to see what we’re dealing with here.”

  ••••

  LAPD’s hostility to Blacks, Latinos, and the gay community was common knowledge, but to learn about its intelligence activities, I called a couple of veteran civil rights lawyers who had spent their careers tangling with the department. They confirmed Freeman’s account that its spying on citizens went back decades, all the way to the 1920s, but really gathered steam in the ’50s under Chief William Parker. A rabid anti-Communist and right-wing demagogue, Parker initiated the PDID. From the beginning its workings were shrouded in secrecy; Parker even claimed its files were his personal property and therefore not subject to subpoena.

  One of the lawyers I talked to told me those files included dirt on local politicians and even members of the police commission, which Parker used to protect his position and avoid scrutiny. A subsequent lawsuit brought under the Freedom of Information Act revealed that Parker had kept files on the local Democratic clubs, the First Unitarian Church, and the ACLU, among others.

  Parker was also allied with several radical, right-wing groups of his era, including the John Birch Society and the gun-toting Minutemen. These organizations were not only militantly anti-Communist, but also explicitly racist, anti-immigrant, and often cloaked in fundamentalist Christian ideology. In the 1960s, some of them bombed the homes and offices of liberal activists. PDID not only declined to investigate the attacks, but Parker claimed the victims had engineered the bombings themselves to garner publicity and discredit conservatives.

  Parker’s successor, Ed Davis, was just as rabidly right-wing. He once called LA, the city he served and protected, “a cesspool of pornography, fruit bars, and bottomless bars, thanks to the United States and California Supreme Courts.” Under him, the PDID continued to harass people and organizations the chief deemed subversive rather than investigate actual criminal activity. He began to authorize the use of PDID officers as agent provocateurs in liberal and leftist groups where they tried to foment violent actions.