Thomas Wolfe was correct, one couldn’t go home again, and she toyed, only slightly half-heartedly, with the notion of a compilation of memoirs entitled Fools Who’ve Tried. Then she drifted into sleep.
A rocky, bump-and-grind landing at LAX jolted her awake and out of ennui, and by the time she retrieved her luggage and met her driver at the gate, she was almost in the proper frame of mind to meet Addie Allen and allow herself to be surrendered as a fugitive. She was grateful that her driver, after he inquired pleasantly about her trip, lapsed into a respectful silence and concentrated on getting off Sepulveda Boulevard, out of the airport, and onto La Cienega Boulevard, which, he told Carole Ann, he preferred to playing bumper cars on the 405 Freeway, if Carole Ann didn’t object. When she assured him that she was in no real hurry to reach her destination, he nodded his complicity and switched on the radio. Back-to-back tunes by Cassandra Wilson, Eryka Badu, and Me’Shell Ndegaocello served to lull Carol Ann into a false comfort zone, so that she actually felt betrayed when, at the top of the hour, the announcer’s voice promised the up-to-the-minute details on “a murder and an arrest at the troubled Jacaranda Estates community in West Los Angeles.”
“This is Jennifer Johnson reporting live from Jacaranda Estates, where eighty-year-old Hamas Asmara was arrested early this morning and charged with the murder of an unidentified undercover police officer. Mr. Asmara’s wife, seventy-six-year- old Fatima Asmara, was attacked and beaten in front of the couple’s home two months ago, and remains in a coma at the Charles Drew Medical Center in east L.A. Mr. Asmara himself was attacked three weeks ago. Last night, returning home from his daily vigil at his wife’s bedside, Mr. Asmara was attacked again. This time he was prepared. The veteran of the Ethiopian Army’s campaign against the invading Italians in the 1930s so far has refused to make any statement to the authorities. He told a neighbor, Mrs. Grayce Gibson, that he would cooperate with police when they cooperate with Jacaranda Estates residents by opening an investigation into the rash of felonious assaults that has left two women dead and his own wife comatose. Mrs. Gibson told me that there is no police investigation into the murders, assaults, and vandalism that have plagued this community for more than six months. The LAPD would not comment on the nature or extent of any investigation of any crimes at Jacaranda Estates.”
Carole Ann opened the door to Addie Allen’s office and looked into the grim, unsmiling face of Warren Forchette and felt dread rise up in her like floodwaters after a storm. “What,” she said to him, and it was not a question.
It was Addie who responded and Carole Ann turned to face her, unable to read anything from or into her expression. “Warren has something to say that you need to know that may or may not affect our work together.”
Carole Ann turned back toward Warren, dimly aware that she liked Addie Allen’s use of the word “our.” Then she became fully aware that she didn’t like how Warren was looking at her.
“What,” she said to him again, and again no question was contained in the word.
“Griffin called me yesterday to tell me that Roberta told him that she killed one of the ‘hoodlums,’ as she calls them, and that she planned to confess and turn herself in. I hopped the next flight, knowing you were due back today.”
Carole Ann knew they were watching her, assessing her reaction and response, only there was nothing to assess. She was numb. Her brain had shut down, had ceased to process information. She looked at Addie Allen and knew, without having to think about it, that she’d been wondering whether Carole Ann had known about Roberta’s action and concealed that knowledge, and now was satisfied that she had an honest client. Carole Ann looked at Warren and saw a reflection of herself: He was motionless and expressionless.
“How?” she asked, only marginally certain of what, exactly, she was asking.
“She shot him,” Warren replied, deciding the nature of the question for both of them. “The gun is in that box over there,” and he pointed to a shoe box on the bookcase across the room. “It’s an old S&W revolver that belonged to her husband.”
“When?” Carole Ann asked, and realized that she knew exactly when even as she uttered the word. The memory returned and she welcomed it because it signaled the return of her properly functioning brain. Even as Warren was pinpointing the date, Carole Ann was remembering her return from San Francisco. She’d arrived to find a cluster of people discussing the shooting of “the hoodlum.” She tuned in to Warren’s words and again experienced another jolt. Damn, but she was sick and tired of shocks and surprises!
“Who was walking her home, Warren? Who was with her when she killed the guy?”
Warren stood up and walked to the bookcase and stood beside the shoe box that contained the gun Roberta Lawson had used to kill a man. Walked away from her. He folded his arms across his chest and looked at Carole Ann for a long moment, something in his eyes unreadable. “They were all together, C.A. The four of them.”
Carole Ann jumped to her feet. There wasn’t room to pace, but since cussing didn’t take much space Carole Ann stalked the room in a tight circle and cussed long enough and well enough that her two colleagues were suitably impressed. Even Jake Graham would have been impressed. But Carole Ann was beyond noticing. She was too focused on the fact that her mother had witnessed a murder and had kept silent. Her mother and Angie and Luisa. And Roberta had committed a murder and had kept silent. Had they tampered with that crime scene, too? Carole Ann didn’t ask. She didn’t want to know.
“Why is she ready to confess now?” And she realized as soon as she asked the question that she already knew that answer, too. Hamas Asmara had been arrested. Carole Ann soon would be arrested. It would be uncomfortable for Roberta to continue to conceal her own culpability and to continue to enjoy her freedom. Suddenly, Carole Ann no longer was angry or frightened or even exhausted. She reached into her purse and retrieved her checkbook.
“I’d like to retain your services, Miss Allen, on behalf of Roberta Lawson.”
“Not necessary,” the lawyer said with a slight lifting of the right corner of her mouth that Carole Ann took to be the beginnings of a grin. “It’s taken care of.”
“Jake didn’t—” Carole Ann began, then saw Warren shaking his head and a wide, mirthful grin creasing his up to this point solemn visage.
“Addie and I work alike,” he said. “We bill the rich early and often so that we can represent the poor for free.”
“Graham Investigative Services will pay me more than enough for your fee to cover Miz Lawson’s representation,” Addie said, the South in her voice more pronounced than before; and then she changed the subject, from Roberta’s status as a fugitive to Carole Ann’s own, and she learned that she was about to become a pawn in a well-crafted though noxious scheme to lay the blame for three deaths at the front door of the Los Angeles Police Department, and to use the notoriously suggestive local news media to facilitate that objective.
“Your Jennifer Johnson has already gotten us off to a good start. They’re not ignoring her stories anymore,” Addie Allen said smugly.
“She’s not ‘my’ Jennifer Johnson,” Carole Ann snapped.
“Glad to hear it,” Addie replied, “‘cause starting now, no more exclusives for ‘our’ young Jennifer. We need to have the heavy hitters swinging their bats at the LAPD.”
“So now that ‘our’ young Jennifer has served her purpose, we toss her aside like last week’s newspaper?”
Addie was shaking her head. “That’s not what I’m saying. My point is that we selectively control media access to you and the others, and that you can’t talk just to Jennifer. You’ll be on every television news program, every radio news program, in every newspaper.” Carole Ann wanted desperately to fight Addie and Warren, to argue with them, to plead against the tactic. But they were right and she knew it. In her case, it was not mere hyperbole that a good offense was the best defense, it was fact. Every action she’d taken since she’d killed t
he man who attacked her mother was indefensible. And while Addie was confident of her ability to secure exoneration for Carole Ann, the protective net needed to be wide enough to provide protection for Roberta and Hamas Asmara. While both could claim self-defense, the fact that they each were in possession of a concealed weapon, the purpose of which could only be to inflict harm, minimized their claims. And the fact that Mr. Asmara’s victim was a cop...
“What do we know about this undercover cop?” Carole Ann asked.
“Not nearly enough,” Addie replied with a frown and a growl. “They’re stonewalling us. Tommy Griffin has been nosing around and has picked up enough bits and pieces to confirm the presence of undercovers, which makes our case all the stronger as far as I’m concerned. If there was a police presence over there and they ignored multiple attacks on senior citizens, then it is the cops who are to blame. For everything. Including the death of their own man.” The lawyer in Carole Ann now was wide awake and fully functioning.
“Who’s representing the old man?” she asked, and Warren pounced before she’d closed her lips on the words.
“Oh, no, you don’t!” he hissed at her through almost clenched teeth.
“What?” This time she made it a question, full of innocence.
Warren stepped over several piles of folders and boxes to reach her, and when he did, he leaned over and brought his face in close to hers, close enough that she got a whiff of his aftershave. “Who’s not representing the old man is you. You got that, C.A.? Dammit, your ass is in a sling and you got the nerve to be thinking about—”
“You don’t know what I’m thinking about!” She pushed him away and began circling again. To her surprise, he followed.
“The hell I don’t! But you can’t forget, even for a second, that you’re in trouble, girl. So is your mother. So is Roberta. And Angie. And Luisa. And for that matter, so am I because, as an officer of the court, I’m guilty of concealing knowledge of a crime. I’m also probably guilty of improper representation of a client. I shouldn’t even be here! I’ve got a major trial starting in less than forty-eight hours. I should be home holding my client’s hand, instead of here holding yours.”
So many currents of feeling and emotion coursed through Carole Ann that she didn’t know which to respond to first, didn’t know what to think or feel or say or do. She’d actually forgotten about her mother’s injuries; or, perhaps more correctly, she’d ceased to think about Grayce for a while. Until Warren mentioned their names, she’d forgotten what she just learned about Angie and Luisa, and that knowledge returned with the force of a storm gale and slammed into the walls of her consciousness. Her anger at Warren ebbed. He was right in exactly the same way Jake was right: Always.
She turned to Addie, seated behind her massive desk, behind her too-large eyeglasses, seeing and hearing and knowing everything, certain of herself and the power of her ability. The way Carole Ann once had been.
“What do you want me to do?” Carole Ann asked her attorney.
“Put on your happy face and your kick-ass attitude. We’re going to turn you in.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Based on her experience in Washington, in New York, in Philadelphia, cities in which she’d tried cases that had garnered healthy media attention, Carole Ann believed that she knew what to expect from the Los Angeles media when Addie released the details of her involvement in the death of the still-unidentified man. She could not have been more mistaken. Nothing in her experience had prepared her for L.A.’s media monster. Not even the media feeding frenzy that surrounded her discovery of Al’s murderer.
It had happened a year ago and it felt like last week. For days on end the major television networks and the major national newspapers devoured and regurgitated the details of the fall of the Louisiana congressman and his lawyer brother—the lawyer brother who just happened to be half Black and had been passing for white all of his adult life. Graft, corruption, greed, natural gas and oil deposits beneath the bayous, environmental racism, and, oh, yes: race. How unusual was it to find half-breeds in Louisiana these days? One of the networks had rushed into production a movie of the week that was more disgusting than the true story. But the media had done the job that needed doing.
No member of Congress wanted to impeach a congressman, even if he was a murderer. Even if he had killed A1 Crandall, a prominent D.C. attorney and husband of another prominent D.C. attorney. No member of the bar wanted to disbar a lawyer, even if he was corrupt. Even if he had set up his own law partner, A1 Crandall, for his brother the congressman. No DA wanted the case. It was too hot. So the reporters stepped in and got the job done. And they had indeed, in the process, made a shining star of the grieving widow, who’d used her skills as a criminal defense attorney to bring the criminals to justice. But she hadn’t really cared about all that; she’d cared only that Al had been avenged.
This time was different. First there were the stories about Carole Ann herself: Her crime in defense of her mother; her bringing to justice her husband’s murderer; her professional success; her personal wealth; her expertise in the martial arts. These stories then spawned untold numbers of side-bar articles: Other instances in which children had defended parents and parents had defended children and one spouse had avenged another; profiles of other successful Black female criminal defense attorneys, including Addie; profiles of unsuccessful Black female criminal defense attorneys; stories on the martial arts, including interviews with Jean Claude Van Damme and Jackie Chan—L.A., after all, was home to Hollywood—and other famous and infamous practitioners of the martial arts, and detailing their historically deadly potential.
Grayce reluctantly shared the spotlight. Unwilling, initially, to be the subject or focus of any news item, Grayce allowed Addie to convince her to cooperate with just one television interviewer. Who made the mistake of asking, “Why does your daughter, if she’s so rich, allow you to live in such a dangerous neighborhood?”
Out of the still swollen mouth of sixty-seven-year-old Grayce Gibson flew the words, “Nobody allows me to do anything!” followed by a recitation of the highlights of her life: Widowed by a man who gave his life in service to his country, mother of two young children whom she raised alone on a teacher’s salary, “in a neighborhood nicer and better than any neighborhood in this city and I dare you or anyone to call me a liar!” No one did. But every reporter in the city called her for an interview, and in the process, the media produced an embarrassing number of stories on Jacaranda Estates, several of them concluding that Grayce was not too far off the mark in her estimation of her neighborhood, current difficulties notwithstanding.
Carole Ann alternated between relief, because she no longer was the focus of all the media attention, and the fear that some enterprising reporter would probe deeply enough beneath the surface to uncover the ugly history that she believed was the root of the current evil. She shared her concerns with Addie, who magnanimously made available to reporters Roberta Lawson and Hamas Asmara, both newly represented by a friend of Addie’s. When it became known that Roberta’s crime occurred the same night that Mr. Asmara was attacked returning home from visiting his comatose wife—an attack witnessed by all the members of Grayce and Roberta’s bridge club—the feeding frenzy intensified.
Mr. and Mrs. Asmara, refugees from the historic ethnic struggles between the Somalians and the Ethiopians, generated half a dozen stories on that topic, which, in turn, gave birth to stories on Ethiopian and other African restaurants in the city. But the real focus of the final wave of stories was the Los Angeles Police Department.
Mrs. Asmara, Sadie Osterheim, Peggy Hendricks—all of them victims before Carole Ann or Roberta or Mr. Asmara had retaliated. And where was the LAPD? Why was there no response to months of complaining from Jacaranda Estates residents? The media turned the screws and the police department responded—by arresting Angie and Grayce and charging them as accessories after the fact in the murder of yet ano
ther unidentified man.
And then all hell really broke loose.
Elderly people from all corners of Los Angeles County—from the desert to the ocean to the mountains—showed up at Parker Center and confessed to having been present when Hamas Asmara pulled the trigger. At least three claimed to have done the deed, thereby exonerating Mr. Asmara; and one gentleman, three years older than Mr. Asmara’s eighty years, claimed not only to have shot that victim, but Roberta’s victim as well. Half a dozen seniors arrived with their attorney, an eighty-year-old former prosecutor, and submitted signed statements confessing to having been present, along with Grayce, Angie, and Luisa, the night Roberta’s crime was committed, and demanding to be arrested and charged as were the others. When the police refused, they filed a charge of reverse discrimination against the department.
The newspaper and radio and television stories divided and multiplied, until a Los Angeles Times reporter zeroed in on the fact that two of the victims, the ones killed by Carole Ann and Roberta, remained unidentified, and that a third, reported to be an undercover police officer, had yet to be identified by name, and his presence yet to be explained. And while the reporter never said it directly, he implied that the unidentified undercover might actually have been up to no good. Which gave Addie Allen something to do that really interested her.
When the same reporter revealed, a week later, the identity of that undercover cop—Pedro Gutierrez—along with the information that at the time he was killed he had been assigned to patrol duty in Echo Park and therefore had no business in Jacaranda Estates, Carole Ann breathed a heavy and grateful sigh of relief. Addie’s plan had worked. Carole Ann and Jacaranda Estates and the people who lived there no longer were the meal of choice of the insatiable media feeding monster, which meant that Carole Ann was free to conduct her own investigation without being observed by press or police. Those two monstrous entities were too busy butting heads to care very much about what she did, as long as she didn’t leave town to do it. And as Addie had expected and predicted, the bar association did suspend her license pending a review of her case, which she had sixty days to prepare. And by that time, she believed, she would have unraveled enough of the threads of some near-forty- year-old secrets that her life and livelihood no longer would be in jeopardy.
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