Single Jeopardy

by Gene Grossman

  Using the semi-circular teak staircase you can step down ‘below,’ where there are immaculate engine rooms on both sides of the companionway - and in back at the rear of the boat, or ‘aft,’ there’s a guest stateroom and a master stateroom that rivals any sleeping quarters I’ve ever seen, complete with rear windows that look out onto the water. I don’t know how to start the engines on this yacht, and could probably never learn how to drive it, but I’ll sure try to use the right words describing it to my friends. At least I can ‘sound’ nautical.

  Having such a great place to stay also means not having to leave as often because L. Martin has a small law library lining the walls of the saloon and both staterooms. Now I can do my legal research here and use the ship’s complete computer set-up to print reports, case pleadings, or whatever else might be required. Having a large full-sized side-by-side refrigerator will also require fewer trips to the market. I’m even considering learning how to cook, to utilize the gourmet facility aboard. The idea is quickly forgotten after my first meatloaf comes out looking like something an elephant dropped.

  The boat also has a satellite dish, so I can watch all those great classic black-and-white movies. I love seeing those grand old cars, dial telephones, guys who wear fedoras, and hard-boiled cops that all acted like NYPD Blue’s Andy Sipowitz. Most remarkable are those elaborate murder plots motivated by as little as the husband/victim’s five thousand dollar insurance policy, which was big money in those days.

  But, just as the T-shirts say, ‘stuff happens.’ I receive an e-mail from Melvin’s office requesting my help. Melvin went to Thailand to visit with L. Martin and he hasn’t sent any messages back to the kid for a couple of weeks. If he doesn’t get in touch with the office soon, I may be required to go to Thailand to find him. The mere fact that Mel’s law practice is running quite smoothly in his absence supports my suspicions about the little girl, court clerk, and outside attorneys really doing all of the work.

  Never having been to Thailand, it sounds like a different world. All I know about it is that it used to be called Siam. One of the guys who work on boats here in the Marina goes there every year, as does my barber, and neither one of them can stop talking about the place. Aside from allegedly being the sex capitol of the world, it’s also supposed to be a beautiful place to visit. Just in case, I think I’ll stop by the Culver City Auto Club office on Sepulveda tomorrow and have some passport pictures taken.

  In 1974 a James Bond movie The Man With The Golden Gun, was shot there, the Thai beaches and its jungles ‘doubled’ for Viet Nam in The Deer Hunter, Good Morning Viet Nam, Air America and many other films. I’m going over to the Odyssey video store on Lincoln to rent that James Bond DVD, just to see what Thailand looks like. Maybe If I go there I’ll meet a descendant of Anna.

  --------------

  Unable to avoid it any longer, I make my regular monthly appointment to see Burt Cohen, my divorce lawyer. After the burned-out boat caper there’s a good possibility my ex-wife will be out for evens, and it would be nice to have some strategy to fight her off. Burt’s office is on the twelfth floor of the Cal Fed Building on Ventura Boulevard, just East of Sepulveda in Sherman Oaks, and as I drop off my car with the lot’s parking valet, I spot someone I have no difficulty in recognizing. It’s my old law clerk and wannabe associate, Ricky Hansel. He’s wearing a bright yellow ski jacket, so it’s easy to spot him at a distance, and I want see where he’s going. If it’s to an attorney’s office, a courtesy warning to that unsuspecting brother member of the bar would be in order, so that another sucker lawyer may not have to suffer what I went through with those disciplinary hearings.

  I stay as far back as possible so as to not be noticed, but not being a trained gumshoe I lose him when he enters the building. This is the same one that my lawyer and about a hundred others have their offices. Luckily, I see which elevator he gets into, and it looks like it was empty when he got in, so I watch the floor display to see where it stops. He gets off on the ninth floor. I have no way of knowing which office he went to on that floor, so I’ll just have to go up there and check it out.

  Getting off on the ninth floor I step into the lobby of a Fegian suite, one of those huge whole-floor office set-ups named after an attorney named Paul Fegian who created the idea of a bunch of lawyers all sharing a large suite. Each one rents a private office, but there are a bunch of amenities included in the rent that they’re all allowed to use like a receptionist, copy machine, law library, coffee room, conference room, and a little display of class.

  This is good and bad. Ricky is nowhere in sight but at least I know he’s visiting one of the attorneys in this suite, so my search is narrowed to the twenty or thirty names on the business cards in the three-tier rack on the receptionist’s desk. The Fegian suites never bother to have the attorneys’ names put on the door because of the cost and the frequent tenant turnover.

  I’m going to have to play private eye now, so using my best Rockford Files personality, I give it a shot. She’s filing her nails and I hate to interrupt her. “Excuse me, Miss, but I wonder if you could help me out.” That seems to get her attention. She waves me off for a second while speaking into her headset microphone, checking the calendar book on her desk and telling a caller that the attorney is expecting him. I hesitatingly continue, being new to this detective routine. I think I’ve got her attention again. “I have a new case that I’m supposed to be bringing in to an attorney I was referred to, but I forgot his name.” She looks confused. Why am I not surprised?

  “Well, sir, I’m sorry but if you don’t have the lawyer’s name, there’s no way I can help you.” Here’s where watching television sleuths for years comes in handy.

  “Well, I don’t know the attorney’s name, but the fellow who referred me to him was supposed to meet me here. He usually wears a bright yellow ski jacket and told me that after he met with the attorney he’d see me out there in the hall and fill me in.”

  It worked! A dim light bulb goes off over her head as she happily gives me the information. “Oh yes, that would be Ricky, the paralegal. He’s been working several years now for one of the attorneys here, Mr. Gary Koontz.”

  *****

  Chapter 5

  I don’t know how to mentally process this this new information, because if Ricky Hansel’s been working for my ex-wife’s lawyer Koontz for several years, that means he must have been with him before and during my entire suspension proceedings. Several possible scenarios come to mind.

  One of them is that Attorney Koontz could just be some innocent jerk that Hansel will destroy sooner or later. It’s true he’s a real putz, but he’s not the innocent type. If that’s the case, my instincts tell me to keep my mouth shut and let nature take its course. Another possibility is too dark to imagine, but more likely: Koontz used Hansel to set me up for the suspension – maybe to get me out of the way so he could go after my wife. Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The third scenario is the worst of all - my ex-wife may have been involved in it too.

  Looking at all three situations side-by-side I think that the second is the most probable. Koontz is a schmuck, but he isn’t stupid. There’s no way Hansel could have been with him for a couple of years without Koontz knowing he was a crook. They must have both been in on my frame-up together. My ex-wife should be ruled out of the conspiracy, because up until the suspension, we were having some communication problems in our marriage, but nothing bad enough to force her over to the dark side. Besides, getting me suspended would endanger her share of my future earnings. No, it’s just Koontz and Hansel, but I have no way to prove it. I’ll turn over this new development to Melvin’s office so he can let L. Martin figure out what to do with it. He’s the attorney handling my State Bar appeal, if he ever comes back from Thailand, so it should be his call.

  Having finished up meeting with my attorney a few stories above Koontz’s office, I feel better. He looked at the fax that Koontz sent me and is pretty confident that Myra’s acceptanc
e of the boat on an “as-is, where-is” basis regardless of any repairs that might be necessary will hold up in any court – even the divorce court, should she want to drag me back in there for a modification. I was out of town when the boat burned and any experienced boat mechanic should be able to testify to the fact that the wiring was bad and could have gone at any time, without warning. True, I may have been negligent in not having the necessary repairs done in a timely matter, but negligence isn’t the issue here, so I’m home free on her waiver of half my law income for two years of practicing. And because the boat was insured, I should be getting a check that will cover me for most of my loss. I also think that because the loss took place before she took the boat as-is, she won’t even have a claim for any part of the insurance money. Life is good.

  Back at the boat, I e-mail my report on the Koontz-Hansel matter to Melvin’s office for forwarding to L. Martin in Thailand and decide to catch up on my reading. Several years having passed, it’s once again time to re-read The Complete Sherlock Holmes, sixty of the best crime stories ever written. I try to read this tome at least once every five years, and when I do, it’s like making the same new discoveries over again each time. The only thing that comes close to these gems of crime detection are the seventy-two short mysteries written by Rex Stout that feature Nero Wolfe, the original armchair detective.

  A good crime story is a lot tougher to solve than a television mystery because most TV shows give away the bad guy in the casting. If the only face you recognize in the television mystery show is the featured guest star, you can make book on the fact that he’s probably the one whodunit. Most of the television one-hour crime shows follow the same pattern: you meet the bad guy in the first act; someone will die before the first commercial break, and someone (usually the hero) will be in a situation of peril before the next-to-last commercial. The only TV crime story to break this pattern was Peter Falk’s Columbo, which wasn’t really a whodunit… right from the get-go you knew who ‘done it’ - instead, it’s a ‘how’s-he-gonna-catch-him.’

  In a way, Columbo resembles the police lieutenant in Fyodor Dostoyefsky’s all-time classic, Crime and Punishment. The reader knows that starving student Raskolnikov killed the usurious pawnbroker Alyona Ivanovna, and so does detective Petrovitch of the Saint Petersburg Police. Just like Columbo, he keeps dogging Raskolnikov until he wears him down and gets the confession.

  When I first started night law school, two classmates of mine and I became close friends and formed a study group. Both were L.A.P.D. sergeants, and knowing about my fascination with crime stories, they talked me into applying for the police force.

  My written test, physical exam, agility, and oral tests went fine, but the colorblind test stopped me cold. My U.S. army induction exam determined that I had a slight red-green deficiency not severe enough to keep me out of the service, but their test wasn’t as tough as L.A.P.D.’s. Maybe it’s because people were trying to get in the L.A.P.D., while people were trying to get out of the army.

  --------------

  As usual, it’s a gorgeous day outside. My assignments for the day are completed and my deck chair is all set for some reading. A voice down on the dock calls out “ahoy, Grand Banks!” It’s the retired doctor. He comes over and welcomes me to the dock, apologizing for the fact that it took him so long to get around to it. We shake hands and have a cordial conversation. Most of the boat owners in the Marina can tell you the same story about having long conversations with boat neighbors on the dock without ever knowing their names, what they do for a living, or their opinions on anything in the world except boating. Maybe that’s the way it should be all over, instead of deciding to like or dislike a person because of what political party they belong to, or what they think about the half-dozen issues that continuously polarize us.

  Of course the topic of his girlfriend doesn’t come up in our conversation, but he does mention that one of these days he’d like me to join him and “Rita” for dinner on his boat. At least once a week he prepares a gourmet meal. I’m sure he’s referring to the times when his gorgeous stewardess girlfriend is between flights and staying with him. Feeling pretty sure that she’ll be there for any dinner he invites me to, I graciously tell him I’ll be looking forward to an invite, and hope it’s soon. He tells me that it won’t be until next week, because since his weekly ‘guest’ is out of the country, he’s decided to take his boat over to Catalina Island for a few days of relaxation and will be back by Noon next Wednesday, when Rita is expected to be coming by.

  I never could quite understand why people have to go somewhere to relax. People who hear that I live on a boat usually tell me about their dreams of ‘sailing away into the sunset.’ They really don’t want to do that, spend weeks on end without hot water or a shower, constant motion, always heeled over ten to fifteen degrees with constant pitching and rolling, no comfort, no television, no restaurants, no nothing. What they really want to do is sail away from their in-laws, boss, job, bratty kids, mortgage payments, alimony, ex-wives, etc., etc… and no matter how far you go, you never really get away from things like that because they stay with you in your mind. But if the Doc wants to go to Catalina, that’s OK with me. I’ve taken a plane over there several times, and if you don’t suffer from seasickness, it seems like it might be a nice boat trip when you’re with people you enjoy.

  The Island’s a really quiet place that’s only accessible by boat or plane and if you own a boat, you’re bound to be bumping into other boaters walking around there that you know. I enjoy going to Avalon, the island’s only city.

  Up the mountain a little way there’s a restaurant called “The Landing,” where you can have a serving of cerviche while you drink Patrón Margaritas and look down at the harbor until the sun goes down and the drinks get to you. There’s a water taxi service that ferries people from their boats to and from the landing dock, and the last one out in the late evening is the most fun to be on, because it’s usually full of half-loaded boaters trying to tell the driver how to find one of the mooring cans that their boat is tied up to.

  I tell the doc that I’ll watch his slip for him while he’s gone, and give him my cell phone number in case he runs into trouble on the way there or back. Watching an empty slip seems like an empty promise, but if you know someone’s boat will be returning at an approximate time of the day, you can make sure that people who bring their boats over to visit friends on the dock are not in the slip when the rightful slip tenant returns from a trip.

  Sunday morning, he leaves and I start watching.

  It’s doubtful that the doc is having a good trip over to the island. I’ve been told that Californian trawler of his only does about nine miles an hour, and it’s almost forty-five miles from our dock to Avalon, making it at least a five-hour trip if the wind and current are with you. It’s now about three hours after he left, and the skies are getting dark, the wind is coming up, and pretty soon I’m sure the rain will start. The wind is coming out of the North, so it’s not likely the doc turned around to return, because then he would have been slowly going against the wind and current. He’ll probably ride it out and reach the island late in the afternoon.

  Just before dinner I turn on the early evening news broadcast. L. Martin recently installed a new forty-two-inch high-definition flat-panel plasma television set, so watching TV has just become a new experience for me. As I’m potchkying around in the galley, a familiar-sounding voice on the news catches my ear. I turn to the television, and there she is, my ex-wife. She looks like she’s lost almost two- hundred non-essential pounds: Me! Super-imposed on the bottom of the screen under her face is “Deputy District Attorney Myra Scot.” I guess they just didn’t have room on the screen to include the last name we shared. The purpose of her appearance is to confidently state that the authorities expect to make an arrest soon in the murder of that Marina del Rey Chinese restaurant owner.

  She explains how their investigation is focusing on members of an Asian gambling syndicate inv
olved in the casinos that are so prevalent in neighboring cities of Inglewood and Gardena. They don’t have roulette or Vegas-style blackjack, but they do have lots of card games and other gaming methods that closely resemble what you can do in Las Vegas, which is lose your money quickly. A very high percentage of their customers are Asian. Most of the others come in once a month, cigarette in mouth, both hands on their walkers, and social security money in hand. These local card casinos rarely attract out of town tourists. Instead, they just cannibalize the local economy, all in the cause of paying taxes to support schools, so that the future graduates can wind up spending their social security money in the casinos.

  One apparently strange thing about her announcement that doesn’t quite compute is that it sounds wrong. I’ve done some investigating into the competing restaurants’ owner Robert Palmer, and he looks more like a suspect than some Asian gang. If Myra’s office is investigating the gang, it’s a good bet they’re wasting their time, because they don’t have a very good track record for crime solving. It would be a lot better if they left it to the Culver City Police, who are the primaries on this case, as indicated by that police report faxed to me. I guess this is just another case of the D.A.’s office trying to showboat for headlines. I turned all of my reports over to Mel’s office and I’m sure they finally reached the Culver City detective assigned to the case.

  For some time now I’ve owned a DVD entitled Celestial Navigation for the Complete Idiot. It was a gift from a friend of mine and notwithstanding the title, it really does a good job of reviewing the techniques of Coastal Piloting and then explaining in plain English the principles of celestial navigation, what a sextant measures, and how to navigate around the world.

  Any guy like George Clooney, who is interested in things nautical, and who also owns a boat, should appreciate a DVD like this, so I wrap it up and stick on a post-it note to let him know that it’s a gift from a dock neighbor. After rubbing my knuckles almost bare knocking on the battleship-like hull of his mega-yacht, I hand it up to the full-time skipper and ask him to give to his boss next time he’s aboard. I’m sure George will like the gift and we can start that friendship I’m so sure was meant to be.