Self-Defense

by Jonathan Kellerman

  MacIlhenny looked down at his chest rolls. His breasts were as big as a stripper’s. “I have no personal information, Stan. All my conversations with Mr. App have remained on a strictly theoretical basis.”

  “Is this body theoretical, too?” said Leah.

  MacIlhenny winked but ignored her. “I’m offering you a gift, Stan. Wrapped and ribboned. This could be your biggest case: internationally acclaimed author, major fraud, plagiarism, bloodshed. We’re talking Time magazine cover and you write the true crime book.”

  Leah said, “As opposed to your client the piker, with multiple homicides and enough dope to stuff half the noses in Hollywood.”

  “My client never won the Pulitzer.”

  “Your client murdered more than one person.”

  “Tsk, tsk.” MacIlhenny laughed softly. “Slander and libel. Where’s your proof?”

  “I’ve got eyewitness testimony.”

  “Tainted witness. Long history of drug abuse, and your own case against him for attempted murder gives him an obvious motive to lie. His word against my client’s?”

  “Biggest case of the year,” said Leah. “Does Mr. App get to buy the film option?”

  MacIlhenny gave her a pitying look. “Mr. App will no longer be engaged in the motion picture business. When the dust clears, Mr. App will be retiring.”

  “When the dust clears?” she said. “I see dust storms on the horizon. Tornadoes.”

  MacIlhenny turned away from her and back to Bleichert. App remained silent and motionless.

  “You’re offering squat, Land,” said Bleichert.

  “On the contrary, I’m offering you fame and fortune and the chance to put an icon on trial in return for dropping all charges on a couple of diddly cases you don’t stand a chance of proving.”

  “If you think we’re so weak, why bargain?”

  MacIlhenny pulled shirt fabric out of a fold of flesh. “In the interests of justice and efficiency. Mr. App is no youngster. Every day spent away from hearth and home wears on him severely. He recognizes he has certain . . . personal problems due to chemical dependency. He is willing to undergo medical and psychiatric treatment for these problems as well as to offer his considerable talents to the community in exchange for no jail time, beyond what’s been served, and no full-court attempt to employ the confiscatory powers of the RICO statutes.”

  “Betty Ford and community service for multiple murder and dope laundering?” said Leah. “When do you take this act to Vegas?”

  Bleichert said nothing. She tried not to look at him, but failed.

  MacIlhenny was looking at him, too.

  “There has to be some time served,” said Bleichert. “But I can conceive of its being at Lompoc or somewhere like that. As far as RICO, you know that’s not our bailiwick.”

  “I’ve already talked to the DEA, Stan, and they’re willing to go along with partial confiscation in return for some valuable information about foreign narcotics commerce currently in my client’s possession. The hang-up’s these alleged homicides. They don’t want to be put in an awkward position.”

  “Like going easy on a multiple murderer?” said Leah.

  Bleichert raised an eyebrow at her. She crossed her legs and looked away. MacIlhenny allowed himself a tiny smile.

  Bleichert said, “Some jail time. I mean it, Land.”

  MacIlhenny glanced at App. “I suppose we can live with that. At a federal facility, protective custody.”

  “So what happens on Mellors and Barnard?” said Leah, looking at MacIlhenny but adressing Bleichert. “Talk about being in an awkward position. Especially when Lowell’s case hits the fan. We’ll never be able to keep it quiet. The minute his attorney finds out about the deal and squawks, we’ll come across softer on crime than the ACLU.”

  “Tsk, tsk—”

  “She’s got a point,” said Bleichert.

  “Come on, Stan,” said MacIlhenny. “What kind of crime are we talking about? A scumbag private eye blackmailer and the scumbag motel manager who killed him? Weigh that against the chance to try Lowell.”

  “Afro-American scumbag motel manager,” said Leah. “Trading black life for white life? Can’t you just see the NAACP having fun with that? And let’s not forget, Lowell’s victim was no choirboy, either. Is anyone going to care what an old man did twenty years ago?”

  “There’s a substantial difference, young lady.”

  “Sure, someone else’s client’ll be facing the heat.”

  Bleichert chewed his lip. App looked at him. First interest he’d shown in the proceedings.

  Bleichert said, “I hear everything you’re saying, Land, but she raises a valid consideration.”

  Talking about Leah as if she wasn’t there.

  MacIlhenny thought for a while. “There could be other evidence, Stan. Theoretically.”

  “Like what?”

  “Audiotapes. Terrence Trafficant telling his story.”

  Leah said, “Theoretical.” She looked disgusted.

  MacIlhenny shrugged. Pounds of flesh shivered. “It’s been a long time. Memories fade. Clean out an attic, no telling what you’ll find.”

  “Malibu attic?” said Leah. “Or the one in Holmby Hills?”

  “Here’s my offer,” said Bleichert, “take it or leave it. Mr. App confesses to his involvement in Karen Best, Felix Barnard, and Denton Mellors. Involuntary manslaughter on Best, conspiracy-second on Barnard because Mellors was the shooter, and straight second degree on Mellors, all sentences to run concurrently. If we avoid a trial—”

  “Stan, Stan.”

  “Hold on, Land. If we avoid a trial and if Lowell is convicted of first degree because of information provided by Mr. App, Mr. App’s sentences are suspended.”

  Leah’s huge eyes were hot skillets.

  MacIlhenny pretended to deliberate.

  “Just one thing, Stan,” said Leah. “By all accounts, Barnard was premeditated. We could go for Conspiracy One and by the same token, straight One on—”

  Bleichert shushed her with a short, angry hand movement.

  MacIlhenny said, “What do you mean by confession?”

  “Written, sworn, all the details, no evasion of questions, full acknowledgment of complicity.”

  “Like in church,” said App softly.

  MacIlhenny’s eyebrows sank. “What about the dope?”

  “If you can work it out with the feds, total walk,” said Bleichert. “But only if he admits guilt in writing and only if his information leads directly to Lowell’s conviction. And no own-recognizance, he stays put. What I said before about Lompoc stands, and I’ll grant you the protective custody—hell, I’ll put him on a cellblock with ex-senators.”

  Leah cracked her knuckles.

  Bleichert said, “Why don’t you go get all the files, Lee? So we know what to ask Mr. App.”

  She stomped out of the room and walked right past me.

  Just as the door to the hall slammed, MacIlhenny said, “Pretty girl.”

  App and MacIlhenny conferred with the sound off and App started dictating to the lawyer.

  During the break, Bleichert returned to his office and Leah Schwartz to hers.

  Before she left she said, “Going to wait here?”

  “Till Milo gets here.”

  “Well, be careful. Hang around here too long, you’ll need to be disinfected.”

  She slammed the door and App heard it through the glass and jumped. His fear had always been there, hiding just beneath the cashmere.

  MacIlhenny patted his shoulder and App resumed dictating.

  Twenty minutes later, Milo still hadn’t come back from accompanying Lucy and I wondered why.

  A half hour after that, MacIlhenny stopped writing.

  Bleichert ran his finger down the center of the page. Speed-reading. Then a slower perusal.

  He put it down.

  “It says nothing in here about who shot Mr. Mellors.”

  “A guy named Jeffries,” said App, as if it didn
’t matter. “Leopold Jeffries. He got killed himself, five years ago—check the police files.”

  “What did you have to do with Mr. Jeffries’s death?”

  App smiled. “Nothing at all. The police shot him, in the middle of a robbery. Leopold Earl Jeffries—check it out.”

  Calm again.

  Bleichert read the confession again. “This is okay, for a start.” Putting it in his pocket. “Now fill me in on Trafficant.”

  App looked at MacIlhenny. The fat lawyer sucked his cheeks.

  “There are tapes,” said App. “At my house in Lake Arrowhead. Feel free to get them without a warrant. They’re in the basement, behind one of the refrigerators.”

  “One of them?” said Bleichert, writing.

  “I have two basement refrigerators at Arrowhead. For parties. Two Sub-Zeros. Behind the one on the right is a wall safe. The tapes are in there, I’ll get you the combination. They’ve got Terry Trafficant telling me everything. I taped him because I thought one day it might be historically significant. Terry got fed up with Lowell’s manipulation and looked to me as someone he could trust. I paid him every penny of his option money. I also paid him for a screenplay he did. Every penny.”

  “In return for all his future royalties?” said Leah.

  “That, too,” said App. “He got the better end of the deal. I haven’t earned a thing in years.”

  “What kind of screenplay?” said Bleichert.

  “Not really a full script, just a summary of some horror flick—Friday the Thirteenth type of thing, women getting chopped up by a maniac.”

  “Title?”

  “The Bride.”

  The treatment I’d read, Trafficant’s. Title stolen from a dead man’s novel. For the petty thrill? The allure of crime had never left him.

  “I thought,” App was saying, “with a few changes—more character arc—it had potential. If Terry hadn’t disappeared, I probably would have produced it.”

  “Hooray for Hollywood,” said Bleichert. “So far I don’t know much more than when I came in.”

  App wore a meditative look.

  MacIlhenny handed his client water, and App sipped delicately.

  Putting the glass down, he said, “The key to all of it is Lowell’s creative block. He went into a massive block years ago—thirty years ago. Just couldn’t break out of it, maybe because of his drinking or maybe he’d just said all he had to say. But Trafficant didn’t know that. He spent most of his youth in prison, found Lowell’s old stuff, and read it, had no idea what was going on in the outside world. Then he ended up in some sort of creative writing program the prison was experimenting with and got the idea he could write. So he wrote to Lowell, stroked Lowell’s ego, the two of them started a correspondence. Trafficant started writing poems and keeping a diary. He sent it to Lowell. Lowell was impressed and started working for Trafficant’s parole.”

  Pausing.

  “That’s the part the public knows. The truth is, Lowell and Trafficant cut a deal, back when Trafficant was still in prison. Lowell hatched the whole thing, telling Trafficant poetry was a financial loser in the book business, it was almost impossible to get published. Except for a few famous poets like him. Lowell promised to agitate until Trafficant got early parole; meanwhile he’d also be editing Trafficant’s poems, then submit them for publication under his own name. Trafficant would get the money and Lowell would also get the diary published under Trafficant’s name.”

  “And Trafficant went along with this?”

  “What did he have to bargain with, a loser behind bars? Lowell was offering him freedom, lots of money, possible fame if the diary hit big. So he wouldn’t get credit for the poems; he could live with that. He was a con, used to deals.”

  “How much money did Lowell get for the poems?”

  “A hundred and fifty thousand advance against royalties. Lowell took fifty for himself, Lowell’s agent got fifteen. The retreat—Sanctum—was started as a way to transfer the rest of the eighty-five thou to Trafficant.”

  “Sounds like you were in on it from the beginning,” said Bleichert.

  “I helped finance the retreat because I believed in Lowell.”

  “Idealism.”

  “That’s right.”

  Bleichert said to MacIlhenny, “So far the tone of this is very self-serving.”

  MacIlhenny said, “Be frank, Curt. This old nose tells me they’re operating in good faith.”

  App hesitated.

  MacIlhenny patted him.

  “All right,” the producer said. “I used the retreat too. To launder money. Nothing big. Some friends of mine—kids, people in the industry—were bringing marijuana up from Mexico. We didn’t consider it really a drug, back then. Everyone smoked.”

  He picked something out of his sweater.

  Bleichert moved his head impatiently. “I hope there’s more.”

  “Plenty,” said App. “Lowell was hoping the poems he stole from Trafficant would put him back in the spotlight. They did, but in the wrong way. All the critics hated them and the book bombed. Meanwhile, Trafficant’s book became a fu—a best-seller.” He chuckled, wanting everyone else to join in. No one did.

  I remembered the enraged letter Trafficant had written to the Village Voice in support of Lowell. Mustering the only real passion a psychopath can ever develop: self-defense.

  “What made Lowell think Trafficant would keep quiet about the deal?”

  “Lowell was desperate. And naive—most arty types are. I’ve dealt with them for thirty years; take my word for it. And the fact that the book failed protected Lowell. Why would Trafficant want to claim authorship of a turkey, especially with his other book doing so well? But Lowell wasn’t even thinking in those terms at the beginning. He was obsessed with his place in history, freaking out that his reputation was rotting. He used to sit in that cabin on his property all day, trying to produce, but nothing came. He kept drinking and doping to forget, and it only made matters worse.”

  “How’d the failure of the poetry book affect him?”

  “He drank himself unconscious, then came out of it saying it was Terry’s work anyway, Terry had no talent, was just a slick criminal who’d taken advantage of him. Meanwhile, Terry’s doing interviews with The New York Times and selling a thousand books a week. Lowell stopped talking to him, and Terry knew it was only a matter of time before he’d be leaving Sanctum. That’s when he transferred his royalties to me for safekeeping. For all his tough talk, he was still a con, had no idea how to cope with the world, so he came to me.”

  “And you taped him.”

  “For his protection.”

  Bleichert grunted.

  “Irony,” said App. “It’s the key to a good story line. Lowell’s name on that book of poems was supposed to buy success but it didn’t. Trafficant became the darling of the literary set. You could package it as a comedy and sell it to cable.”

  Bleichert said, “So Trafficant spilled his guts to you because he was worried about making it in the outside world.”

  “That, and he wanted to talk. Cons always do. No self-control. Never met one yet who could keep a secret.”

  “Know lots of cons, do you?”

  App folded his hands across his sweater. “I meet all sorts of people.”

  “I still haven’t heard any details about murder,” said Bleichert.

  App smiled. “Lowell killed Terry. Two days after the Best girl’s accident. Things finally came to a head, because Lowell was shaken up by what had happened, ready to close down the retreat. And still pissed at Terry. He ordered Terry off the premises. Terry cursed him out and threatened to go public with the whole book scam. When Terry turned his back, Lowell hit him on the head with a whisky bottle, kept hitting him. Then he panicked, called me, blubbering. I went over and we buried Trafficant.”

  Clapping his hands once.

  “And with that,” said Bleichert, “you were able to buy Lowell’s secrecy on Karen Best forever.”

  �
��Keeping quiet about that was in Lowell’s interest, too. His reputation was lousy enough without someone dying at his party.”

  “Where’s Trafficant buried?”

  “Right underneath Lowell’s writing cabin—Inspiration he called it. That’s where he killed him. The floor was dirt; they just dug down.”

  “Who’s they?”

  “Lowell, Denny Mellors, Chris Graydon-Jones.”

  “Why Mellors?”

  “He was a weeny—and I’d say that if he was white. He hated being black, as a matter of fact. Denied it. He thought if he just kept writing and kissing ass, he’d be rich and famous. Anyway, that’s where Terry is. I don’t know if the cabin’s still standing, but I can find the spot—right near the pond.”

  “Not far from Karen Best,” said Bleichert.

  App didn’t answer.

  “Any other bodies we should know about?”

  “Not to my knowledge. You’d have to ask Lowell. He’s the creative one. Did you know that he published his first book while in college? Everyone told him he was a genius. Fatal error.”

  “What was?”

  “Believing his own reviews. Now can we get the ball rolling on transferring me to a decent place?”

  “So you’ve been collecting Mr. Trafficant’s royalties all these years.”

  “After the first few years it was chicken feed. Nothing’s come in for the last five.”

  “How much chicken feed?”

  “I’d have to check. Probably not more than a hundred and fifty thousand, all told.”

  “And Mr. Trafficant’s advance payment for his book?”

  “Seven thousand dollars. He blew it all in a crap game the same day he cashed the check. That’s why he was so uptight when Lowell threatened to kick him out. Here he was a best-seller, eighty-five g’s dropped in his bank account, and he had no idea how to handle it. Now can you get me to a decent place?”

  “We’ll work on it, Mr. App.”

  “Meantime, can I have my own food brought in? The crap here is loaded with fat and grease. I have my own chef, he could—”

  Bleichert reread the confession and his notes of App’s recitation.

  The door from the hallway opened, and a stocky black jail deputy came into the observation room.