The Boardwalk Trust (Beach Lawyer Series Book 2)

by Avery Duff

  Then Robert got a call.

  “Is this attorney Robert Worth?”

  “Yes.” His heart sank.

  “This is Officer Tedrow, Santa Monica police. Do you know a Teo Famosa?”

  “He’s a client, yes.”

  God, no. What’s he done this time . . .

  Nothing. There had been a hit and run. Police had found one of Robert’s business cards in Teo’s wallet and called him to see if he knew how to locate family members.

  Driving over to Saint John’s, the nearest hospital to the crash, Robert kept telling himself to calm down. As far as Delfina knew, he was headed to the drugstore to pick up a prescription for Gia. Then Evelyn came to mind: she was still trustee, and the trust’s sole beneficiary had been hospitalized.

  He voice-texted her: Evelyn, it’s Robert. Teo is in Saint John’s. Very serious. A hit and run, police are saying, and I wanted you to know.

  He left his car with the valet and entered the ER entrance. The ICU was on the eighth floor.

  It was another half hour before he met Dr. Vivian Wan, a brain surgeon, head of the neurological team working on Teo. About fifty, still in scrubs, her purple side combs gave off a curious blend of hipness and intelligence.

  Robert identified himself as both a friend and a lawyer for her patient, someone who’d been notified by the Santa Monica police.

  “Mr. Famosa was struck by an automobile and is in intensive care. His right arm is broken, and his left hip, crushed. His brain, though, there was swelling, and after an MRI, we decided it essential to induce coma via propofol.”

  “Propofol, that’s what . . . ?”

  “What Michael Jackson was using when he died, but properly supervised, we hope to give him time for the swelling to subside.”

  The idea of inducing a coma, she told him, was to keep the swelling brain from damaging itself by pressing against the skull.

  “Any way to gauge the odds?”

  “Impossible to say at this point. We’ll know more in a few days.”

  Robert asked, “Would it be possible for his daughter to see him?”

  Right then, operating staff rolled Teo down the hall into his glass-walled room. Robert looked through the window as they slid him off the gurney onto a bed. His head was wrapped in bandages, only his eyes and nose visible.

  “How old is his daughter?” Dr. Wan asked.

  “Nine.”

  “Oh. Under twelve, we really don’t allow visitation. It’s not a good idea, for them or for our staff.”

  Not a good idea. But he didn’t hear a firm no, so he called Gia. Rather than let Delfina’s vague worries escalate, they decided to bring her to Saint John’s. If there were ever visitation exceptions for children, he believed Delfina would somehow make the cut.

  A half hour later, Robert met them outside. He knew Gia was upset, but he stayed focused on Delfina as they walked down the ground-floor hallway and stepped into the elevator. Going up, he knelt in front of her.

  “What I want you to do, Delfina, is look the doctor in the eye and tell her why you want to see your daddy, all right? She’s very nice. Her name is Dr. Vivian Wan. I met her before, and she knows you’re coming, so there’s no reason at all for you to be nervous.”

  “Okay,” Delfina said.

  He stood. “And once we’re there, if you decide you don’t want to . . .”

  Gia caught his eye, held up nine fingers and mouthed, Too much information.

  Right, she’s nine. Too much info.

  The elevator door opened. Delfina surprised him when she took his hand and walked with him over to the doctor’s station, where Dr. Wan was entering case notes into her computer.

  Delfina said hello and looked Dr. Wan in the eye.

  “And your name is . . . ?” Dr. Wan asked.

  “Delfina Famosa. I’ll be good, Dr. Vivian,” she said. “I promise.”

  That was pretty much it. Dr. Wan explained that her father would be asleep for a few days, maybe much longer, and that he couldn’t speak to her.

  “But it’s okay if you want to say something to him, maybe give him a little hug or a kiss. I bet he’d like that,” Dr. Wan said.

  Dr. Wan was accustomed to this kind of thing; Robert and Gia were not. Robert led Delfina into the room, and she approached her father.

  Taking his hand, Delfina said, “Hi, Daddy. Are you okay?” Nothing registered. “I’ll see you tomorrow. I’ll bring you a present. I’m with Gia and Robert, and I’ll be good. I promise.”

  After she kissed him on the cheek, she spotted Teo’s backpack in the closet and put it on.

  They left the room. Robert pointed to the backpack and asked Dr. Wan, “Okay if she takes it?”

  “Of course,” she said. “Was there a plastic bag in the closet?”

  Robert checked the room. Back at the desk, he told Dr. Wan, “No.”

  “Then his belongings will be inside the bag, too.”

  On the way out of the hospital, Robert knew he and Gia had guessed right: Delfina had calmed down after seeing Teo.

  “He’ll get better here,” Delfina said in the elevator. That was all she said.

  Outside, the valet pulled up with the Bronco. Gia opened the back door for Delfina, who climbed inside with Teo’s backpack. Delfina rolled down her window and gazed back up at the hospital as Robert paid the valet.

  A Volvo sedan pulled up beside them. Evelyn eased out of the driver’s seat.

  “Didn’t expect to see you here,” Robert said.

  “Didn’t expect to be here,” Evelyn said. “Hello, Gia.”

  “Evelyn,” Gia said.

  “Daddy’s sleeping, Evelyn,” Delfina said, yawning.

  “That’s good,” Evelyn said. “That’s the best thing for him right now, sweetheart.”

  She took Robert and Gia aside. “Sleeping?” Evelyn asked.

  He told her about Dr. Wan and the induced coma.

  “Did you notify children’s services?” Evelyn asked.

  Robert and Gia weren’t her parents or legal guardians. Robert knew that legally, notification was the next step.

  “No, not yet.”

  “She belongs with her father, don’t you think?” Gia said.

  Robert nodded. “Definitely. If the city steps in, with Teo’s living situation . . .”

  Gia said, “He’ll have a real hard time getting her back.”

  “If ever,” Evelyn added.

  “What I plan to do, then,” Gia said, “I’ll skip school till they figure out his status.”

  “Skip . . . ?”

  “For a week or so. I can keep up from home.”

  Evelyn said, “If need be, I can help, too. Gia, mind if I borrow your sweetheart for a minute?”

  “Plenty to go around,” Gia said, and headed for the Bronco.

  Evelyn looked stricken as she spoke to him.

  “Listen, I’ve been awfully hard on Teo. Somehow, in my mind anyway, I blamed him for starting the trust’s troubles. And he did. Guess it’s because the trust worked so well before that. I shouldn’t have taken it personally, but I always do—and I’ll feel better if I have a few words with him.”

  “Doubt anything’s registering with him.”

  “He’ll hear me, or he won’t. Too little, too late. One of life’s hard lessons.”

  “Need a hand getting up there?”

  “Not yet, but give this chemo another week or two.”

  With Delfina buckled into the back seat, Robert drove down Santa Monica Boulevard. Gia turned around in her seat. “Should we stay at the beach or at my house? Which would you like better?”

  “Either one,” Delfina said.

  She was tapping out. What a long, miserable day for this child. He took Gia’s hand.

  “You sure about ditching school?”

  “She’s on her own, both her parents are . . . away. When my parents didn’t come back from Mexico . . . even at sixteen . . . it was so hard. So lonely. And she likes us,” Gia added.

  �
��Both of us?”

  She poked him. “‘What do you think Robert’s doing? Do you think Robert’s eating lunch now? Do you think Robert could be an astronaut?’”

  He parked in front of her house, left the engine running.

  “Was Teo in an accident, or what?” Gia whispered.

  “I don’t know. Mind if I drop by Erik’s?”

  CHAPTER 20

  In the body-shop office in San Bernardino, Kiril watched the Lexus SUV rising on the rack, repairs to its damaged grille under way. Stacked around him: cases of booze, beer, and vodka for the christening. Earlier that week over on Foothill Boulevard, Kiril had helped dig the backyard pit where coals would soon be set for slow-cooking sides of beef and lamb, salted and stuffed with garlic. Enough to feed more than twice the expected fifty people.

  Out in the body shop’s garage, Penko was clowning around, drinking, firing the pneumatic hose at the shop dog. Alexandra and Aunt Pinky were out there, too, dancing, listening to music through shared earbuds.

  Sitting with Gospodar and four other men playing cards, Kiril went back over the aftermath of the hit and run, how he’d stood at the Santa Monica Pier’s wooden rail, keeping an eye on their SUV in the beach parking area. Farther down the pier, Penko and Alexandra had ridden the roller coaster, and the girl had already swallowed pills to take the edge off. For once, it was hard to blame her. Driving sixty miles an hour, she’d killed that man in the alley less than an hour earlier.

  A female driver. Always the plan because of traffic cameras all over Santa Monica. Just as bad: cameras in the rears of many shops and restaurants. Smarter, it was decided, that Alexandra drive.

  Once Alexandra had cleared the alley, Kiril and Penko rose from their seats. One block later, keeping to side streets, away from cameras, Kiril took over behind the wheel. Now they became two males and a female, a male driving, in a common Westside car. Not foolproof. Not bad, either. Little things made all the difference.

  The damaged grille couldn’t be helped, but the left headlight still worked. Once they’d sprayed down the grille in the beach parking lot with shaken-up quarts of soda water, they’d changed tags back to the owner’s legal originals and headed up to the pier to wait.

  On the pier, Kiril could hear the pair behind him. Penko buying tickets for the carousel, Alexandra wasted but upright. The pair’s venom for each other had run its course, until the next wrong glance or word passed between them or until her drugs wore off.

  An hour later, it had been a breeze driving to San Bernardino; they’d picked up the I-10 at the pier and headed east.

  Now, out in the garage, Penko had found a martenitsa—red-and-white yarns twined together—and tied it to the dog’s collar. Another one he tied to his own wrist and placed a shop rag on his head. Penko was dancing with the dog now, pretending to be Baba Marta, the mythical grandmother who ushered springtime into Bulgaria. Penko opened the office door, Pinky and Alexandra behind him.

  Penko said, “Baba Marta has come early this year and is looking for young girls.”

  As Pinky’s foul perfume blossomed in his nostrils, Gospodar and the others laughed, and Kiril joined in.

  Similar in spirit to the American groundhog, Baba Marta was unpredictable like spring, depending on whether she saw young girls, and so on the first day of March, young girls went outdoors to meet her with gifts to keep baba happy.

  Sure, Kiril laughed along at Penko screwing around, but Kiril liked March because spring was coming. When Penko spoke of young girls, Kiril wasn’t sure what he was driving at.

  Very nice.

  That’s what Penko had said earlier today, looking at that young girl from the cube truck that had parked on Amherst.

  Very nice? Kiril asked himself, about a girl no more than ten years old.

  With any luck, he and Penko were done working together. If so, he needed to find a way to get permission to kill him, even with his Aunt Pinky being Gospodar’s woman.

  “Look,” he heard a card player say. The mood hardened. The same card player pointed at the TV and said again: “Look.”

  On the area-wide news, a reporter was in the middle of saying that a hit-and-run victim in Santa Monica had been hospitalized. The victim’s name was being withheld, pending notification of his family.

  Kiril felt certain that was bad news for him, even before Gospodar turned to him and said, “Alive? Alive is not what I asked for, Kiril.”

  CHAPTER 21

  Just before midnight, Robert rolled over to Mar Vista, a neighborhood of large lots, a few hills, and Erik Jacobson’s home. Lights shone from Erik’s backyard, so he followed the driveway back to the locked garage door and got out. On a brick patio close by the house, fat dripped from a grilling, twenty-two-ounce T-bone. The late-night steak made sense—Erik had eaten mostly Thai food since marrying Priya. Nonsteak food, Erik called it.

  Farther away from the house, beneath a mammoth avocado tree, Erik skill-sawed a two-by-six-foot support for a tree house. At loose ends, Robert knew, with his family overseas. In madras shorts, a hunting vest, and goggles, he vibed a supersize Bill Murray. He motioned Robert over, turned off his saw.

  “Avocado, meet abogado,” Erik said. “Been waiting a long time to say that.” Then he caught Robert’s expression. “What’s up, man?” he asked, raising his sawdust-crusted goggles.

  Robert laid out Teo’s situation.

  “Jesus, no,” Erik said. “And Delfina?”

  “With us for now. They’re not giving out details yet on where it happened.”

  Erik pulled out his cell phone.

  “Matteo Famosa, right?”

  Robert nodded. Erik made a call to the Santa Monica Police Department and reached his contact. Santa Monica gave Erik a street number for the hit and run. He wrote it down, handed it to Robert. Not far, an address off Wilshire.

  “Runner was eastbound,” Erik said. “I can pick up a full report in the morning. What’s the deal on your end?”

  “Every year, how many hit and runs they get in Santa Monica?”

  “Venice and Santa Monica combined, three or four. How come?”

  “I need an investigator. You busy?”

  When they drove over to the alley off Wilshire, it was easy to see where the Lexus had struck Teo. Chinese food cartons still littered the pavement near the end of the alley farthest from them.

  “Damn,” Robert said.

  “Cops must’ve just now finished up,” Erik said.

  The Bronco rolled up on the cartons behind a place called Sonny’s Gyros. Robert started to get out.

  Erik said, “Wait, back up first.”

  A hundred yards back, Robert stopped, idling, and looked ahead. Forty yards back from the cartons, a row of dumpsters jutted four feet into the alley. Ten yards past that, a concrete utility pole intruded into the alley, and sixty yards past Teo’s cartons, the alley ended.

  “See?” Erik said.

  Robert thought he did. Unless Teo had been walking down the middle of the alley—and from the cartons’ location, he hadn’t been—someone had angled left past the bins and power pole to clip him.

  Erik said, “See any skid marks?”

  “Nope.”

  “Like somebody went out of their way to run him down.”

  Erik said, “Fifty miles an hour, roughly eighty feet per second. Twenty-five, thirty yards a second . . .”

  “Three, four seconds to stop after they hit him,” Robert said. “Three seconds to stop and make a hard turn.”

  “Hauling ass and had to stop fast.”

  Anyone following Teo was running out of alley. Another thirty seconds on foot would’ve put Teo up on the busy Wilshire Boulevard sidewalks, heading to Gia’s house. Whoever hit him decided to take their best shot behind Sonny’s Gyros.

  Intentional. Robert had no idea why this might have happened.

  “You free tomorrow?”

  “What time?” Erik asked.

  “All day, maybe longer . . .”

  Gia’s h
ouse was dark when Robert eased through the front door. Trying to stay quiet, he made it into bed. On his pillow, dim lamplight shone on a child’s drawing. He picked it up and saw a castle with two turrets, a big gate splitting the middle. A man and woman stood above the gate, each holding the hand of the little girl between them. All three had big red smiles. In the sky overhead, a gray figure flew around, a yellow cape fluttering from his back.

  At the bottom, he read Delfina’s printed words: Magna Carta Man.

  Checking out the flying figure’s chest, he could make out the letters MCM and guessed the gray color was armor. Gray like the granite courthouse statue, too. No one was going to see this drawing and sign Delfina up for art school—her talents lay elsewhere—but Delfina’s good and brave heart was on full display.

  Gia was looking at him now, half-asleep.

  “Sweet, huh?”

  “Too sweet,” he said.

  Across the hall, he crept into Delfina’s room. Reaching for Teo’s daypack, he saw her stir. She saw him, too.

  “Thanks for my picture,” he said. “I like it so much, but you need to go to sleep, okay?”

  “Why do they want to hurt my daddy?” she asked.

  What a question for a kid to ask, he thought.

  He sat down beside her. “I don’t know.” He noticed an object in her right hand. “What you got there?”

  “My rock,” she said. “Daddy bought it for me.” She showed it to him. In the dark, it looked like a river rock. Oval, smooth, dark gray. “He’s so sweet. Why’d they hurt him?”

  With no idea what else to say, he said, “I’ll find out, okay?”

  “Thank you, Robert,” she said. “Good night.”

  “Your drawing? It’s my favorite drawing I ever had.”

  Out in the living room, he went through Teo’s backpack. He found Teo’s phone and wallet, his jeans, and jacket, too. All their pockets were empty.

  Teo’s phone battery icon pulsed, the phone dying, but he couldn’t find a charger in the backpack, so he hurried through Teo’s sparse number of calls over the last few days. Three days ago, based on the time, a call had come in from that AA sponsor who’d turned Teo down.