by Wick Downing
Chapter Ten
I CHANGED INTO HIGH HEELS before walking over to the DA’s office, hoping I looked more like a well-dressed professional woman than a fourteen-year-old girl going to a funeral. The heels lifted me two inches closer to outer space, which was nice—now I looked at people’s chests instead of their stomachs. And I liked the drumroll sound the heels made on the sidewalk. They announced me as I walked.
The secretary at the front desk smiled when she saw me. “Hi, Kate hon,” she said. “Cute outfit. How are you doing?”
I wondered if she really wanted to know. “I don’t have a clue,” I told her. “It feels like I’m making my life up as I go along.”
Her smile grew bigger. “Just remember, kiddo,” she said, “we’re all on your side.” But when I told her I needed to see the lawyer prosecuting Manuel Alvarez, she frowned. “Reginald Applewhite? He’s the only lawyer here who won’t let us call him by his first name.” She dialed him up on the intercom system. “We call him Miss Priss.” Two seconds later, she spoke into the microphone attached to her headset. “Mr. Applewhite?” she asked. “A lawyer to see you.” She winked at me. “Manuel Alvarez?” Then to me, “Are you filing another motion?”
“No. I’m here for discovery.”
She told him, then hung up. “He’ll be right out. Good luck,” she warned. “He’ll test your sense of humor, so keep your cool.”
He was a small, thin man with short blond hair who wore a silk shirt, a blue and silver tie, and shoes that gleamed like mirrors. I blushed when he came into the lobby and stood up, but he didn’t see me. It was as though I wasn’t there. He stared around the room with a frown on his face. “Didn’t you tell me an attorney was here on Alvarez?” he asked the nice secretary.
“Yes, sir. Miss Hope.”
He looked at me with surprise, and I smiled my hardest at him. His expression pinched into a serious frown. “Well. Follow me.”
He didn’t walk. He marched. I trailed along behind him, down a carpeted hall and into his air-conditioned office with a carpet, a polished wooden desk, and fluorescent lighting. His desk had one file on it: Alvarez. He waved at the chair in front of his desk and waited for me to sit, then sat down himself behind his desk. “You work for your grandfather and you’re that, ah, legal aberration so to speak, aren’t you?”
I’d never been called a “legal aberration” before, and didn’t know what to say. Not that it mattered.
“That law has been amended, of course,” he continued. “Just like our legislature to close the gate after the horse has escaped.”
“My grandfather wanted me to say hello,” I said, smiling still.
“Really? Nice of him. We’ve never met.” His lips curled into a stupid little sneer because he knew he’d caught me in a lie. Triumphantly he picked up the file. “Why are you taking this case to trial?” he asked, as though accusing me of something terrible. “The man is a thief. We do not need his kind in Denver. If you come to your senses and plead him guilty, I’ll recommend no jail and he’ll simply be deported.”
“Sir, he has a family to support and they’d starve in Mexico. Besides, he didn’t do it.”
“Of course not,” he said sarcastically. “Let me guess how he will prove his innocence. Every member of his family, all twenty of them, will be at the trial, weeping copiously as he denies all knowledge of the tools in his truck.” That tight little sneer reappeared on his face. “Incidentally, who is responsible for that ludicrous motion?” He pulled it out of his file and waved it at me in total disbelief. “An indefinite continuance would put a case on hold forever. There is no such animal in the law.”
“It’s kind of a long shot, isn’t it? But it could make perfect sense, to the judge.”
“Thank you for that,” he said, writing on his copy of the motion. “I intend to quote you. This motion is frivolous, and I’m going to ask the judge to hold you and your grandfather in contempt of court.”
I quit trying to be nice and stared at him with the loathing I felt. If looks could kill, he would soon be writhing around on the floor in his death throes.
“Judge Hope will be trying the case, I trust, and not you?”
“Yes.”
He leaned back in his chair. “I’ve heard he often wanders into the wrong courtroom because he’s senile and can’t see.”
“Thank you for that,” I said. “I intend to quote you.”
At least it canceled the smirk on his face. “Please do. I have nothing against the elderly, but for a man his age, in his condition, to engage in trial work is a mockery of justice. You may quote me still. Your client will have a built-in motion for a new trial, based on incompetence of counsel.”
Tears of anger started pushing out of my face—until I remembered that the receptionist had called him Miss Priss and told me they were all on my side. “Can we talk about what I came here for?” I asked him.
“Of course. Discovery.” He pushed the file at me. “You have the right to mine, even though I don’t have the right to yours. Take all the time you need.”
He didn’t make it easy for me. He glared at me as I leafed through the file, then began tapping his fingers impatiently on the desktop. I deliberately took my time, reading through the police report again, even though I had a copy of it in my file. It said photographs had been taken of the tools, but we didn’t have copies of them, and there weren’t any in his file either. “Weren’t pictures taken of the tools?” I asked.
“Yes, but they’re missing. No one knows where they are.”
“The police report says photographs were taken of those tools in Mr. Alvarez’s truck, Mr. Applewhite. I’d like to see the photographs. We need copies of them. They could be exculpatory.”
“What a nice big word. Do you know what it means?”
“Yes. Do you need help with it?” I smiled at him. “It means they could prove his innocence.”
“I’d like very much to understand how photographs of the stolen items, showing them to be in his truck, could prove his innocence.” He made a note. “But I’ll ask my officers to look again. Is there anything else I can do for you?” he asked, looking at his wristwatch.
“You might lighten up.”
He stared at me with disgust, like the White Witch in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe glaring at one of her subjects. “I’m not surprised by that remark,” he said, standing up. “Although I must tell you, if you were my daughter, I’d spank you. Good day.”
“Thank you for that,” I said. “I intend to quote you.”
My eyes were smarting and my heart was pounding when I left his office, but I thought—strangely—that Zozo would have been proud of me. “How did it go, hon?” the receptionist asked me, and I knew it wasn’t just one of those courtesy questions. She really wanted to know.
I smiled at her, and it wasn’t Mom’s smile. It was mine. “He certainly tested my sense of humor,” I told her. And we laughed.
My next stop was the jail, which could be interesting. I’d heard that inmates whistle at the women they see in the corridors, and wondered if a fourteen-year-old female in high heels with pimples for breasts would draw any glances. The jail, on Curtis Street, was a nice walk from the courthouse: past Currigan Hall and the brand-new Denver Center for the Performing Arts. As long as Two-Fingers Brock was locked up in jail, he couldn’t investigate anything for me, but he might be able to tell me what to do.
There were no cells to be seen when I walked into the building and stood in front of the booking desk. A uniformed man with a no-nonsense frown and a crewcut glared down at me. I told him I was a lawyer and needed to see Avery W. Brock, also known as Two-Fingers.
“You’re a lawyer?” he asked in obvious disbelief. “I need to see your bar card.” I showed it to him. “This doesn’t have a picture of you. Let me see your driver’s license.”
“I don’t have one. I’m not old enough.”
“If you aren’t old enough to drive, how can you be old enough to be a lawyer?�
�� he asked, then tried to ignore me.
But I wouldn’t let him. Finally, after a conference with a lieutenant, they stuck me in a small room with gray walls, two chairs, and a table. I had to leave my briefcase at the booking desk. All I could take with me was a legal pad and a ballpoint pen. A few minutes later, the door opened and Two-Fingers, wearing an orange jumpsuit, walked in.
I liked Two-Fingers because he didn’t talk down to teenagers and wasn’t a creep. He was dark-complexioned, wore thick glasses, wasn’t much taller than me, and looked harmless. But he was far from it, according to Grandfather. Twenty years ago he had been the flyweight boxing champion for Colorado. His fists would come at opponents like a buzz saw, Grandfather told me.
“Hey, Kate,” Two-Fingers said, smiling at me. “They said my lawyer was here and I expected to see the Judge, so you are a nice surprise.” He sat down. “He always brings me something to smoke. You wouldn’t have a cigarette on you? I am about to die.”
“Sorry. In fact I’m trying to get my mom to stop.”
“You be easy on her. I can tell you right now, she’s tryin’ to stop, and can’t. I’ve quit once a week for the last ten years, but it don’t take and it’s why I’m back in the coop.” I didn’t understand him, and he read my expression. “They caught me stealing two lousy packs of cigarettes. I wouldn’t have gotten caught if it hadn’t been for my hand.” He held it up for me to inspect. “I used to be like magic, Kate, the way I could make things disappear. But I fumbled them packs onto the floor.” His eyes lit up. “Maybe you and the Judge can reopen my case.”
“What case?”
“My workmen’s compensation case against the railroad. See, they did this to me.” He looked at what was left of his hand. “I get a check every month from the railroad, but a monk in a monastery couldn’t live off it. So I supplement my income by relieving grocery stores of excess inventory.”
“You take things off the shelves, you mean?”
“But I ain’t greedy, Kate. Only what I need. The trouble, lots of times when I take something, it falls out of my hand, and then I get caught. Would that be grounds to reopen?”
“You mean, go back to the Railroad Commission and ask for more money because you can’t steal enough to get by?”
He nodded eagerly. “It goes directly to the question of production of income.”
“You aren’t serious, are you?”
“Not really.” He shrugged. “Just tryin’ to entertain myself for the next thirty days.”
“We need your help, Two-Fingers. I mean, you can’t investigate for us just now, but—well, you know, can you consult with me? At your regular rate?”
“On the house,” he said expansively. “I owe the Judge. What’s your problem?”
We talked about Alvarez first. He propped his feet up on the desk while I took notes on what to do to prove bits and pieces of our case. But when I told him about Herman, he put his feet on the floor and made me go over it again. “Why would a dog do that?” he asked, perplexed. “You say the old lady was knocked down by kids on Sting-Rays? What’s a Sting-Ray?”
“A kind of bike, you know, with little wheels and a long saddle.”
“Black dudes?”
“I don’t know. She didn’t say.”
“This was City Park, so probably black dudes,” he said. I could practically see the wheels turning in his mind. “They knocked her down when?” he asked.
“A little after noon? I don’t know exactly. It had to be before the police were called about Herman.”
“Get the paramedics’ report. It’ll tell you when. Lay a subpoena on them, too. You never know.” His mind kept clicking. “How far away from the dog-bite scene?”
“Not far. She’d left Herman tethered at her favorite spot near the duck pond and was on her way to the concession stand for popcorn.”
“Don’t that seem strange, Kate?” he asked. “Something there doesn’t figure. She gets knocked down close to where Herman goes berserk, and I’ll bet close to the same time, too. That’s got a funny smell to it.”
“Like, there’s a connection?” I asked, not getting it.
“Why not?” he asked. “If those kids knocked the old lady down and kept right on truckin’, did they do something else? Something that got Herman in trouble?”
“Like what?” I asked. “Feed him the baby?”
“Don’t go shuttin’ off your mind.” He thought of something else. “You know Willis Suggs at that school you go to, don’t you? One of the black dudes they bus in?”
“Yes.”
“Thought so. Willis my nephew. You call him for me, okay? Tell him bring his uncle some smokes.” He took my pen and wrote down the telephone number. “Willis keeps his ear on the ground and knows things. Boy’s a leader. He was a shoo-in for student body prez at Smiley Junior High, but they bused him to your school instead.”
Willis Suggs a leader? He was the biggest troublemaker at Hill. “What if he won’t talk to me, Two-Fingers? We’re not exactly friends.”
“He will. I’ll tell him you’re cool.” He put his hands behind his neck and leaned back in his chair. “That police report said a man charged in and made the dog drop the baby, right? Who was the man? Didn’t it name him?”
“That’s not in there,” I said. “Does it matter?”
“We don’t know if it matters, but we need to find out. You got an unidentified man who’s a hero, and you got a babysitter. Lots of times things go together. Maybe the babysitter knows who he is.”
Coming to see Two-Fingers had definitely not been a waste of time. “A boyfriend or something?”
“Go ask her,” he said.
“Am I allowed to do that?”
“Kate. You’re the dog’s lawyer. You call the shots. You have the right to interview witnesses, so do it.” For the next few minutes, with me taking notes as fast as I could, he told me what he would ask and how he’d go about it. “One more thing,” he added. “Very important. Whenever you interview a witness, have someone there with you. Take a buddy.”
“Why?”
“People change their minds when they get up on the witness stand. They forget what they told you. Or they lie. You need a witness who can prove what they said to you.”
Mike. If he’d keep still and let me ask the questions. “This is so great, Two-Fingers.” I got up to go. “I wish you’d hurry up and get out of jail. You should be doing the investigating. I’ll forget something.”
“Probably,” he said. “Don’t worry about it, girl. You’ll do fine.”
“Anything I can do for you?” I asked. “Or tell my grandfather?”
“Just be a good lawyer for me and my friends. And tell the old man hello.”
Chapter Eleven
I WAS BACK IN MY OFFICE BEFORE ELEVEN. I shut the door, then kicked off the high heels, which were killing me. Could Two-Fingers be right? Did the boys who knocked Miss Willow down do something else? And did the babysitter and the unidentified man connect? I read the reports of the incident again, slowly and carefully this time, for names and details.
Officer Lester Smith got a call about a disturbance at City Park on the south side of the duck pond at 12:14 pm Sunday, June 3, 1973. He arrived on the scene four minutes later, and his initial investigation revealed a dog-bite case. He radioed for Animal Control and ten minutes later, Officer Dan Milliken of that department arrived on the scene. Smith advised Milliken that he (Milliken) was in charge, and gave Milliken his (Smith’s) report. Not much. What he’d seen, and witness interviews. Smith departed the scene at 12:44.
Milliken’s report had more details. It said that Ursula Jespersen, age 18, was a live-in babysitter for Monica Pearsan. Monica was the four-month-old daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Farris W. Pearsan, who lived in Cherry Hills. Ursula had taken Monica to City Park, and when they got there, Ursula put the infant in a baby carriage and wheeled her to a spot near the duck pond. As she watched the ducks, suddenly “a large dog knocked over the carriage, rolling the ti
ny person onto the ground,” Milliken’s report said. “The animal picked the little girl up with his teeth and started to run off with her.”
I visualized a werewolf or something, gripping a small baby by the leg and running away with the infant dripping out of his jaws.
“According to witnesses on the scene, an unidentified man charged the dog and made him drop the baby,” the report continued. “The dog was dragging a leash and a chain, and the man held the vicious animal with the dog chain until the police arrived. Had it not been for his brave and spontaneous action, a terrible tragedy would have occurred.”
Who was this man? I wondered, thinking about what Two-Fingers had said. Why hadn’t he been identified? And why would a dog do what the report said he did? Did Herman need to snack on a baby while waiting for Miss Willow to come back with popcorn for the ducks?
Ursula should definitely be interviewed. Mike didn’t know it yet, but he was about to start a whole new life as a private eye.
If Mike didn’t have anything to do that morning, he’d probably still be in bed. I padded into the reception area in stocking feet and called him from the telephone on Mrs. Roulette’s desk. “Hi,” I said. “Did I wake you up?”
“No,” he said, then yawned. “Close.”
I told him what we’d be doing that afternoon. We’d meet at one o’clock by the clubhouse in Cherry Hills, on our bikes, and ride from there to the Pearsans’ house and interview Ursula Jespersen.
I’d ridden my bike out to Cherry Hills lots of times and always drooled with envy over all the lovely homes. Today was no exception. It was an exclusive village of mansions with tennis courts, stables, and swimming pools, about five miles from where Mom and I lived. The clubhouse, with brown stucco walls, sat on an emerald-green lawn away from the street. Mike was waiting for me on the flagstone sidewalk in front. “What took you?” he asked when he saw me. I was fifteen minutes late.
Mike had never been anywhere on time in his life, and I’d thought today would be no different. “I didn’t think you’d be here yet,” I told him, “and I hate waiting for you.”