Judgment at Santa Monica

by E. J. Copperman

  Angie disconnected the phone call. ‘They’ll be here in twenty minutes,’ she told Patrick. Not me. Patrick. We were discussing someone who would be trying to keep me from being murdered and she was reporting to Patrick. My world was becoming very odd. And it hadn’t exactly been normal before.

  ‘Excellent. You are already paying great dividends, Angie.’ Patrick turned his attention from her to me. ‘You should go back to your apartment as soon as the security personnel arrive.’

  ‘I can’t. I have a murder trial to prepare and a prostitution case that doesn’t make any sense as well as a bunch of divorces. I’ve got to prepare, and I have to keep up with how Jon is doing in the hospital.’

  ‘You can do all those things from home,’ Patrick said. ‘Surely we’ve learned that if nothing else.’

  I looked at him. ‘Are you going to be running my life now?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ Angie told me. ‘I am.’

  FOURTEEN

  ‘I was trying to get Jon’s opinion on this appeal and he was telling me things I didn’t want to hear,’ I told Angie.

  We were sitting in the common area of our apartment. Angie was still dressed for work because Patrick was here, having ridden back to the apartment with me and letting Angie drive his car, which she must have absolutely loved. I, on the other hand, had immediately changed out of my work clothes so I could feel comfortable sitting on the sofa with my files and my laptop in front of me. And so I could wear clothes that didn’t have blood all over them; that was also a consideration.

  I’d called Holly and let her know I’d be working from home. She had heard from other employees of the firm about Jon’s shooting and must have known I’d somehow been involved because she’d asked no questions. I had asked her what she’d found out about Jon’s condition and she said he was currently in surgery.

  It was possible for me to feel more awful, I supposed, but I was reserving that for when things got worse.

  Right now, the focus was on Maddie Forsythe. I was hoping that perhaps while I was doing my best to win her appeal, I could figure out why bigwigs in some area of the city were concerned enough about this petty crime (which hadn’t really been a crime at all) to order me shot. Twice. So far.

  ‘So what did he tell you that you didn’t want to hear?’ Angie said. ‘That’s usually a good place to start.’

  ‘He said I shouldn’t make my case around the idea that the arresting officer was trumping up charges to advance herself in the department,’ I told her. ‘That seems the only motive she’d have for entrapping Maddie into what Sergeant LeRoy could call soliciting.’

  ‘He’s right,’ Patrick said. ‘It’s a mistake to go after a police officer, especially a female one, in a bench case. Judges know the cops and they don’t like you casting aspersions on officers.’

  I searched my mind for the time when I had asked Patrick’s opinion on the case and came up with none. But it wouldn’t have helped to mention that to the man who was footing the bill for Judy, the six-foot security guard standing at my window and trying not to make it obvious she was watching for any assailants who might be approaching the building. I knew Angie had asked for a woman to guard me just because she was Angie. Patrick would not have thought of that.

  ‘But it goes directly to the bogus nature of the charges.’

  ‘You don’t have to prove the sergeant wanted to trap Maddie,’ Angie said after a moment. ‘You just have to prove that Maddie’s not a hooker. What’s the proof they’re using besides the cop’s testimony?’

  Patrick, who’d spent years playing a lawyer on television – to the point that he sometimes thinks he used to be a lawyer – clapped his hands like a small boy delighted with a cupcake. ‘Precisely!’ he crowed. ‘It’s not about intent; it’s about innocent until proven guilty. Yes, Angie, you’re brilliant.’ He looked at me. ‘It’s OK if I say that about Angie, isn’t it?’

  ‘Sure.’ Who had the time to argue that one? ‘To answer your question, Ang, the prosecutor’s discovery has consisted of the transcript of the online chat between Maddie and Sergeant LeRoy, who was pretending to be a man calling himself Randy. That and the signed copy of Maddie’s divorce settlement, which doesn’t show anything besides her allegation that her husband was fooling around and some financial records.’

  That was when it hit me. Financial records! The exact sort of thing that could hide the kind of corruption a highly placed official in the city – like in the police department – would not want to be disclosed. Why didn’t I take any accounting courses in college?

  ‘I’ve got to get our financial people to take another look at the divorce settlement,’ I said out loud to myself. ‘There’s probably something there.’

  Patrick and Angie exchanged puzzled glances. ‘You don’t think the problem is in the transcript of the chat?’ Angie asked. ‘I mean, isn’t that where they think Maddie agreed to being a hooker?’

  ‘She isn’t accused of being a hooker,’ Patrick mansplained. ‘A hooker works a street corner. They think Madelyn was either a call girl or an upscale escort.’

  Angie and I stared at him for a moment. Then independently each of us shook her head slightly and decided to ignore the comment.

  ‘It’s about why there’s so much interest in this tiny little case,’ I said. ‘I’m starting to see it now. There was no reason to prosecute this. It looked like a loser and they knew it. They should have listened to Maddie’s explanation at the beginning, read over the chat and realized this was a load of crap masquerading as a criminal charge. But the DA went ahead with it. And amazingly they got a conviction. Somebody in high places wants to see that woman destroyed, and I think the financial records will help us find out why.’

  Angie walked over to the woman who was intimidating everyone simply by standing next to my front window. ‘Judy,’ she said. ‘You’re an ex-police officer, aren’t you?’

  Judy looked down at Angie, which is not easy to do (Angie’s quite tall) and said, ‘That’s an affirmative.’ Because she was incapable of not acting like a clichéd idea of a security guard. I can’t help it; that’s how she behaved.

  ‘So have you ever seen anyone brought up on charges of soliciting based just on an internet chat?’ Angie could have asked me, of course, since I’d had years of experience as an assistant county prosecutor, but no, she felt it was more credible to ask the question of a woman she had met ninety minutes earlier.

  ‘That’s an affirmative, ma’am.’ Judy added in the ‘ma’am’ for variety, I guess.

  ‘You have?’ Angie had committed the lawyer’s sin of asking a question to which she did not know the answer. Worse, she had anticipated one answer and gotten the opposite. Luckily Angie was now an ‘executive assistant’ and had never gone to law school. Largely because she had never wanted to go to law school.

  ‘Affirmative. Many a sting operation will involve officers going undercover online to find sexual predators and human traffickers. They might pose as young people or people of the opposite sex to lure pedophiles or predators into making an inappropriate illegal suggestion and that leads to the possibility that past records would indicate a pattern. It has worked at times.’

  That had gotten me interested. I stood up and walked toward Judy, trying to seem more like a friend than an attorney. But as I approached Judy tensed up her body, held out a hand toward me and said, ‘Stay away from the window, ma’am.’ You heard Judy’s tone and you would pretty much do whatever Judy said to do.

  I stopped frozen in my tracks and put up my hands, palms out. ‘OK,’ I said. ‘But those operations usually culminate with the officer arranging an in-person meet with the suspect and making the arrest there.’

  ‘That has been my experience, yes, ma’am.’

  ‘Judy, I have a question,’ I said. I must have made another step forward because her face tensed up more, if such a thing was possible.

  ‘I can hear you perfectly from here, ma’am.’

  ‘I have no doubt that you
can. But what you just described was an operation intended to flush out sexual predators and pedophiles. Are you aware of any that were aimed at finding suburban moms who were prostitutes on the side?’

  There was no hesitation. ‘No, ma’am.’

  I nodded and retreated quickly to my post on the sofa, which seemed to make Judy feel much more relaxed. She stood straight as a board but she at least let her arm drop to her side. ‘What branch?’ Patrick asked.

  Judy barely glanced at him; her concentration was first on me, then on the view from my window. ‘Sir?’

  ‘What branch of the service were you a member of?’

  Judy’s mouth twitched just a tad. ‘Marines, sir.’

  ‘Thank you for your service. Where were you?’

  ‘Afghanistan, sir.’ Not so much as a blink. If an army of termites was planning an invasion of my building, Judy would have seen it forty feet up from the sidewalk. Her expression did not change in reaction to Patrick’s question.

  I was impressed by Judy’s service but that wasn’t the time of her life I found most relevant right now. ‘How long were you a cop, Judy?’

  ‘Thirteen years, ma’am.’ There was absolutely no way of knowing whether Judy considered the questions too personal or annoying. She had not moved a single facial muscle since I’d met her and I doubted she would if I were to need her – please, no – for a year.

  ‘Do you still have ties within the department?’ I asked. ‘Are there people you know who are still on the job, maybe higher up in the LAPD?’

  Not a glance in my direction. Judy was focused. ‘I have a few friends still on the job,’ she said. Maybe the lack of a ‘ma’am’ was some indication that she was wearying of the questioning, or that we were now best friends forever.

  ‘It would be a boon to my security if you could find out whether there are people in the department or the city government who are holding some grudge against me,’ I told her.

  This time Judy did take a quick look at me. Perhaps that registered alarm. But then she was back at the window. This followed her incredibly detailed examination of our apartment, which I sincerely wished we had cleaned before Judy arrived. She had found nothing suspicious, or at least didn’t say she had found anything suspicious. I figured if she was being paid to protect me she’d let me know if something dangerous was in my home.

  ‘A grudge?’ she asked. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘I’ve been told by a very reputable source that there are people in high places who are upset with me, possibly for taking on the case we’ve been discussing here this afternoon,’ I explained. ‘It’s possible some or all of those people work for the LAPD. I can’t ask anyone I know there but it might be helpful if you could without compromising yourself.’

  ‘Who told you that?’ Patrick asked.

  ‘It’s confidential,’ I said.

  ‘Was it—’

  I cut him off. ‘No. It wasn’t.’ The last thing I needed was Judy asking around about Trench (because surely that was who Patrick was going to name), especially when I couldn’t be sure where her alliances fell either. I’d known Judy for an hour and a half.

  ‘Would it be too uncomfortable for you to ask around?’ I said to her. I wanted to offer her a bonus for doing so, but I figured that was bad in two ways: first, it might offend Judy to the point that she would break me in half and, second, I didn’t have the extra money (and Patrick was paying for Judy anyway), although I was drawing a very nice salary from Taylor, Seaton. Paying for two halves of the rent had been a little bit too much. Now that Angie was Patrick’s executive assistant, and I assumed making a decent amount on her own, perhaps that would change.

  I’m sorry; what was I talking about?

  ‘I could do that, ma’am,’ Judy answered. Right. The LAPD and who wanted me dead. That was it.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I’m not able to do it right now, though, because my shift isn’t over for another three hours and I have to maintain my post.’ Judy pointed out the window as if I did not understand what she meant by her post.

  ‘Of course. Whenever you get the chance.’

  Judy nodded, did one of her periodic sweeps of the apartment and then took up her post at another window. In case the termites were regrouping.

  All I had to do now was figure out how to keep Maddie Forsythe’s conviction from being upheld. And what I knew for sure was how not to do that. So now I had to tear up my planned strategy and devise something else entirely.

  But luckily stress would keep me up all night so there’d be more time to work on it. Then I could try and figure out how to stop Cynthia Sutton from going to prison for the rest of her life.

  And it was only Thursday.

  FIFTEEN

  ‘Wendy Bryan saved my life,’ said Pierre Chirac.

  Nate Garrigan had asked me to come along for his talk with Pierre, who was an artist associated with Wendy Bryan’s gallery Rafael, which was exactly as swanky as you’d assume from that name. According to the Google articles I’d scanned as Nate drove to Pierre’s home in (where else?) Santa Monica, he was an up-and-coming artist and sculptor whose anticipated (note: it was not highly anticipated, and apparently that makes a difference) show at Rafael had been expected to boost him up to the next level in art. If art has levels.

  It should probably also be noted that Pierre Chirac’s real name was (according to Google, since he didn’t merit a Wikipedia page) Pete Conway and that he was from Muncie, Indiana. He was a muscular man with blond hair that hadn’t started out that way, wearing (in the 93-degree heat) an ascot complementing the $140 T-shirt and $200 tan slacks he had on to look casual.

  ‘She saved your life?’ Nate asked. It wasn’t really a question so much as a prompt for Pete to go on. I’m going to call him Pete. You can read Pierre if you want to.

  ‘His professional life.’ Pete’s agent, Penelope Hannigan (whose real name was Penelope Hannigan, if you were wondering) had insisted on being present for the meeting and that was OK with Nate, who had wanted to talk to her anyway.

  There had been some scuttlebutt around Rafael’s patrons and fans regarding Pete’s upcoming show. Some, Nate told me, had said Wendy had been going out on a limb showcasing an artist of Pete’s relative obscurity. Others whispered that Rafael was actually in some financial trouble because Wendy had been overlooking more established artists with whom she has some history in favor of Pete. One had to consider what kind of relationship Wendy and Pete might have shared. She had a good thirty years on him, but I’m not one to judge.

  ‘That woman did everything she could to save my works.’ Pete was doing his best to appear to be choking back tears. ‘Her loss is a body blow to the Los Angeles art community.’

  ‘OK, that’s the quote for the obituary,’ Nate told him. I was letting Nate do all the talking because, frankly, this was his part of the job. He had asked me along because he thought there might be some difficulty getting Pete to testify for the defense and I was here to scope him out and decide whether I wanted him on my witness list. If he testified, it would be to discuss the gallery and Wendy’s state of mind. Nobody thought Pete was anywhere near Wendy’s house the night she had died. Certainly Detective Edward Brisbane did not, according to his report, which was among the least informative documents I have ever been called upon to read.

  ‘Pierre is going to be a force in the art scene in Southern California,’ Penelope said. ‘Wendy recognized that and devoted herself to showing the world his talent.’ Which must be what the young people are calling it today.

  ‘Yes, but what about Wendy’s state of mind?’ Patrick asked. You’re surprised that Patrick was at the meeting with Pierre and Penelope. You shouldn’t be. ‘What kind of mood was she in right before she died?’

  Nate shot a look at Patrick that indicated he should not have spoken at all, since we’d told Patrick that very thing right before ringing Penelope’s expensive doorbell. Patrick was very careful not to look in Nate’s direction becaus
e he’d heard us tell him that but didn’t want to abide by it. Patrick really wants to help. He just mostly doesn’t. Help.

  ‘What mood?’ Pete seemed puzzled by the question. ‘She was Wendy.’ Well, that was helpful.

  ‘And what does that mean?’ Nate asked before Patrick could insert himself into the situation again.

  It seemed to be Penelope’s turn to look confused. Maybe they were switching off so neither of them would especially tax the tiny lines around their eyes, which only Penelope had not yet treated with Botox. ‘Wendy was an upbeat, kind person whose mission in life was to foster the careers of powerful artistic talents,’ she said, not telling us anything at all or even answering Patrick’s question, which we had – I can’t say this enough – not encouraged him to ask.

  ‘Yes, I’m certain of that,’ Nate said. ‘But what kind of mood was she in before this all happened? How did she strike you as she prepared for your show, Pierre?’ Nate was calling Pete Pierre because he wanted to ingratiate himself with the witness. On the way home he’d refer to the guy as Pete or something considerably less friendly.

  ‘She was excited. We all were.’

  ‘Not worried? Not more concerned than usual?’ Nate asked.

  ‘Worried!’ The very suggestion was enough to make Pete scan the ceiling for some sign that he should cooperate with this boor. Apparently the ceiling told him to go ahead. ‘Wendy was never worried.’

  ‘She knew Pierre’s work was extraordinary and so she was completely confident in everything we were doing,’ said Penelope, who probably hadn’t been doing much about the show at all.

  Patrick, never to be denied, leaned forward to achieve a sense of urgency and intimacy at the same time. I didn’t think it worked, but then I’m immune to many of his tactics. You could ask Angie about that, but Patrick had dispatched her to Cynthia’s house to make sure my client was holding up well under the strain in her absurdly expensive house.

  ‘Did she ever mention Cynthia Sutton?’ Patrick asked.