Beach Lawyer (Beach Lawyer Series)

by Avery Duff

  “Where is Leslie DeRider? She quit, get fired, what?”

  “She took a sick day yesterday. Today was her last day, but . . .”

  “She never showed,” he said, keeping his eyes closed. “Did she?”

  “Today was her last day and that’s all I plan to say.”

  Leslie’s repeated phone calls to Alison and him had been a nuisance, a running joke. But her calls stopped yesterday, and today his call went straight to her voice mail.

  “I’m sorry,” Jerome said. “There’s nothing further I can do.”

  “I need to know where she lives.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Dead,” Robert said, slamming the desk.

  “I cannot possibly give out that information. To you or to anyone else, and that’s that.”

  “Listen up, you’re gonna give me her address before I leave here. Or you’re going to drag her in here while I wait. Your call, take your pick.”

  “You expect me to believe you don’t know her address?”

  “I’m supposed to know her home address? What’s wrong with you? I’m her customer.”

  “Oh, well,” Jerome said.

  “Oh, well, what?”

  “I mean . . . that . . . I was under the impression you two were . . . you know.”

  “Me and . . .” He sprung to his feet, fists digging into the desk. “No, Jerome. I don’t know. What are you trying to say?”

  “Her boyfriend, her fiancé, whatever. She pointed you out to me—you and your sister.”

  “My sis—” Now he realized: Jerome was talking about Alison and him.

  Jerome said, “Leslie asked if I wanted to meet her fiancé and his sister. But I was tied up right then.”

  Robert pictured Leslie standing inside Jerome’s cubicle. Jerome waving at him. Leslie returning to her desk with their receipts: receipts initialed by her and supposedly initialed by Jerome.

  “Sorry that took so long,” Leslie told Alison and him. “Bank stuff.”

  Jerome told Robert, “We can clear all this up easily, if you’ll come back tomorrow with your receipt.”

  Robert was thinking, My receipt is gone. Stolen. His stomach knotted. His nailed shoulder throbbed. His cell vibrated in his pocket—it had to be Alison again.

  “You’re telling me . . . you’re saying when Leslie came into your office that day, that day I was sitting over there at her desk, that you did not initial two receipts for her?”

  “Did I initial receipts for four-plus million dollars? Absolutely not. And I would never be too busy to meet customers making that size deposit. Ever.”

  He was telling the truth. Robert could see that. And he knew it because Jerome’s words rang true.

  Jerome asked, “Are you implying that a former bank officer may have engaged in some kind of impropriety?”

  Impropriety? Robert took a seat, touched the floor with his fingertips, and exhaled. As he did, something dawned on him about Leslie and Jerome. Once he straightened up, he went with it.

  “She knew, didn’t she?”

  “Knew that . . . ?” Jerome asked.

  “She came in here to tell you about her fiancé and his sister. And she knew you wouldn’t cross the lobby to meet us. Excuse me—to meet her fiancé. Leslie was sure of that, wasn’t she?”

  “What?” Jerome asked.

  It’s difficult to lie uttering a one-word question, but Jerome just pulled it off. Robert turned around a family photograph for Jerome to look at: Jerome with his wife, two kids, all of them trying to look casual.

  “You two hooked up, didn’t you? You and Leslie? But it was more than that for you, wasn’t it?”

  “Colleagues, nothing more.” Jerome twisted his wedding band.

  Robert knew he was right: they had hooked up and she was way out of his league. Odds were excellent they’d gone to her place—not to his wife’s.

  “Leslie,” he said. “She live in a house or an apartment?”

  Jerome pretended not to hear him. At the same time, he was looking over Robert’s shoulder. In the glass facing him, Robert caught a security guard’s reflected image.

  “Let’s hear it, man. House or apartment?”

  Nodding to that guard now, Jerome asked Robert, “Will that be all, Mr. Worth?”

  “Excuse me, Mr. Hartung?” Behind Robert, the security guard hand-grazed his weapon. “Everything all right in here, sir?”

  “Mr. Worth.” Jerome stood. “Glad to be of assistance.”

  Robert stood, too. Jerome knew Leslie’s address but didn’t have clue one about his money. Neither did Robert, who decided if he didn’t move on right this second, he’d wind up Tased and hog-tied, back of a cop car.

  When he got outside, a handicapped-parking ticket for $385 fluttered on his windshield. A new game plan was coming to him: follow Jerome to his home after he left work and make noise—real loud noise—about Leslie until Jerome coughed up her address.

  He checked his vibrating phone. Six new texts showed up. None were from Alison.

  All were from Gia, and all of them gave a Venice address on Garfield Avenue and said: Get over here.

  Garfield. Over on the streets that real estate agents called President’s Row. Maybe Gia had cooled down after their heated words at the courthouse. Maybe she would tell him how to find her banker friend.

  CHAPTER 47

  I ♥ Banking! That’s how Leslie’s T-shirt at Santa Anita Park read.

  Didn’t heart it that much, did you? Robert was thinking, fighting traffic back to Venice, his mind twitching.

  Several things he was sure of now. Leslie played Jerome hard. She quit the bank and lied to Robert about it, never planning to show for tomorrow’s meeting. Even so, $50,000 in real US dollars showed up in his and Alison’s checking accounts. Another wrapped $20,000 had been in Stanley’s refrigerator. A total of $70,000, hard cash. Robert’s endorsed check was never deposited at Leslie’s bank. Even so, Stanley Tifton had stolen Robert’s receipt from the condo. That meant their receipts—the ones Leslie signed and forged Jerome’s initials onto? Those receipts had to be forged, too: photoshopped at someone’s house, office, wherever.

  And what Robert believed: all this was engineered by Jack Pierce using Stanley Tifton and Leslie DeRider. Whatever scheme Jack was working, it went beyond Erik, beyond LAPD. This was federal. This would involve the FBI.

  What exactly had happened and why, he still wondered as he pulled up to the Garfield address. Things he knew swirled around his mind, caroming off things he could only guess as he stepped through the open door of this run-down house into an empty living room. Nothing but trash bins and ready-for-kindling furniture.

  Down a shotgun hall, he saw Gia on the patio and made his way out a rusted sliding door, into the backyard. Two stackable plastic chairs and a matching table overlooked the parched yard. A bottle of whiskey rested on the table alongside two filmy glasses. A handful of dead rosebushes bristled in random, cracked clay pots.

  “Not too big on answering texts, are you?” she said.

  “Needed to see you anyway. I need to find Leslie.”

  “You did. This was her place. President Garfield. Assassinated, wasn’t he?”

  “Shot by a crazed gunman,” he said, taking the other plastic chair.

  She poured herself a couple fingers of whiskey.

  “You?” she asked. He was too messed up to answer. She poured him a jolt just in case. “Good light back here for roses, I told her,” she said, looking at the cracked pots.

  Still thinking, he didn’t answer. Leslie never deposited his endorsed check at her bank. Their stolen receipts were forgeries—but their endorsed checks must have been deposited into a bank account. Deposited into a bank account somewhere.

  “I need to find her, ASAP,” he said.

  “Tattoo Girl?” Gia asked.

  “No, she’s in the hospital,” he answered.

  “No, she isn’t,” Gia said.

  “I need to find Leslie,” he said. “
Not Alison.”

  “Alison has one, too?”

  “Hold up—Leslie has a tattoo?” he asked.

  “Tattoo Girl. Leslie. At the courthouse, that’s who you were talking about, right?”

  “I saw Leslie at the Bel-Air pool,” he said. “No way she had a tattoo.”

  Gia said, “She drove to the hotel from work. Bank policy: no visible tattoos. She used major cover-up whenever she wore a skirt. Like she did that day.”

  He pictured Leslie’s bank attire, her skirt folded neatly on a pool chair. He downed that whiskey.

  “Leslie’s tattoo?” he asked. “Top of her calf?”

  “Top of her right calf,” Gia added.

  He turned the whiskey bottle till its label faced him: O’Bannion Single Malt. Jack’s brand.

  “Found this bottle here?” he asked.

  “In her kitchen cabinet,” she said. “They split town together.”

  “Split town . . .”

  He started wandering around the backyard. Jack, O’Bannion, Saddle Peak, and Tattoo Girl; Jack and Leslie and O’Bannion; Jack and Leslie and all his money. The pieces clicked into place.

  “Which airline?” he asked Gia.

  “They’re not flying from LA.”

  “Burbank? Ontario? John Wayne?”

  “No, they’re driving. I followed him, watched him turn in his rental. Then she picked him up—even brought along a picnic basket—and they split in my Healey. I followed them till they took PCH north. That’s all I needed to see.”

  “You don’t understand. They hired someone to steal my receipt.”

  “So?”

  He explained what he knew about his and Alison’s endorsed checks. “I think Jack took the checks to the Caribbean, to South America or Asia. Somewhere offshore. After that, he deposited them into an account that he controls.”

  That made sense to Gia, too. Both of them knew Jack made his bones defending money launderers. To defend people accused of that crime, Jack understood how it worked and definitely came in contact with bankers who could make things happen.

  “I don’t get it. Why steal a fake receipt?”

  He said, “If I have a fake receipt signed by a bank officer . . .”

  “Like Leslie.” She nodded.

  “Even with a fake, her bank’s obligated to pay up for its officer’s fraud. A scam like that, for that kind of money, the Feds never stop looking for Leslie. For Leslie and Jack. Without my receipt as evidence and without Leslie, it’s almost all on my say-so. I’ll have real problems proving there was a crime. And the firm? Once its check clears, no way the firm pays twice.”

  “You and Alison, he hates. Me, he could take or leave.”

  He said, “You mean Maxine Ellison?”

  “Who?”

  “That’s Alison’s Tarzana alias. One of ’em, anyway. The little scammer’s in Brotman overnight, faking another anxiety attack.”

  Gia said she was sorry about it. Then she took it back.

  “A miracle I ever found out Alison’s alias,” he said. “Look, if I don’t find Leslie and Jack, I could wind up doing time, losing my license.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Taxes?”

  “Yeah, federal and state income tax.”

  Taxes coming due for the million eight legal fee he earned on Alison’s case.

  “I told you,” she said, “this was never about money for me.”

  “I know, but . . .”

  She stood up. “Let’s take mine to the IRS, fork it over, and see what they say?”

  He couldn’t believe what she was offering. “Ms. Marquez.” He stood, too, and took her shoulders, looked in her eyes.

  “Mr. Worth,” she said, tearing up, “what Jack told me, he wanted out of his marriage, out of your lawsuit. To stick it on the firm, too, so it wasn’t only him paying. That was the only way he could try for a few bucks from Dorothy on his prenup. I messed up everything, didn’t I?”

  “In love with the wrong guy,” he said. Then he pulled her in and held her. “You’re a sweetheart.”

  “So are you,” she said, holding him, too.

  He noticed blood on the tissue in her hand. Blood from her rose thorns.

  “What’s this?” he asked.

  “A scratch. I can barely feel it now. But you?” she asked. “I still wonder who you are.”

  He didn’t answer and he didn’t want to let her go. But he did. “You know him better than anybody, and I gotta find him. If I don’t . . .”

  “You like seahorses?” she asked.

  After that, she told him about the Seahorse Inn, that motel pictured in her framed postcard at home. Once she saw Jack and Leslie driving up PCH with a picnic basket, she knew exactly where they were headed.

  “Name’s cheesy, I know, but it was our place,” she said. “Jack and Leslie, they’ll stay north on PCH, have a picnic at Point Dume, same as we always did. My best guess, they finished eating an hour ago. After that, they’ll stick to Highway 1 to Oxnard, then jump on the 101 all the way into Capitola.”

  He was already figuring his route: he’d take the I-5, cut the corner, take a chance speeding, and gain an hour on them.

  She had more to tell him. “I’d always go in alone at the Seahorse. I’d pay cash, give fake license tags. Once we settled in, we’d act like we were normal. We weren’t, but it’s the closest to normal we ever were. Knotty-pine walls, no premium cable, busted remotes, no cell coverage or room phone. Ice machine working? That was sixty-forty. I mean, the best part of going was complaining how bad it was.”

  He knew places like it up and down the Central Coast. One day the ground lease runs out and developers tear it down. After that, everybody misses it.

  She walked him to his car, watched him get inside. “Please don’t go too radical up there. I know how you get sometimes.”

  “Like you told me before. ‘In LA, you never know anybody.’”

  She closed his door, leaned in, and asked, “Since when am I right about anything?”

  After Robert burned away down Garfield, Gia went inside and found a sharp knife in the kitchen drawer. Her thoughts meandered until she saw herself stabbing the mattress in the bedroom where Jack and Leslie must have got it on.

  Like radical therapy, she was thinking when the wall phone rang. She grabbed the receiver, held it to her ear, but she didn’t speak.

  “Babe?” Dougie said.

  “Mmm-hmm,” Gia said, pretending she was Leslie.

  After Babe, Dougie said four more words and hung up.

  “All aboard, Sunset Express,” Dougie said, after powering off his cell phone at Union Station in downtown LA.

  “It’s another hour, sir, before we depart Los Angeles,” the porter told him.

  “Hey, man, I know, I ain’t trippin’.”

  Dougie perched in the top level of the viewing car. He was early for the train’s departure to New Orleans because Leslie warned him: “Don’t screw anything up. If you do, I’ll never speak to you again. Ever,” she added.

  “I won’t. I swear,” he told her.

  Even so, she told him to wear a white T-shirt. Nothing memorable could appear on it. “No writing on it,” she said. “Keep a low profile. I don’t want anyone to remember you.”

  “Gimme a little credit, Les,” he said.

  “No, Dougie,” she said. “Not any credit. Not until I see you again.”

  The viewing car’s door opened. Two guys with cockney accents came in and sat across the aisle from him. Leaning over in his plain white T-shirt, he unzipped his travel bag on the floor. Bought on the boardwalk, his bag bore no words, only a logo he’d never seen before. Inside the bag, on top of his wetsuit, lay an iPhone and a roll of duct tape. He pulled both out and tore off two six-inch tape strips.

  He powered on this phone. It had 99 percent of its battery life left. A few calls showed from that guy Robert Worth. He remembered Worth, the dude from Santa Anita. A few old calls from Gia showed up, too, and that was it.

  “A babe,�
�� he said, meaning Gia.

  Five minutes later, the porter left the car. Dougie stuck his tape strips to the iPhone and casually taped the phone under his seat.

  “Red Devils, mate?”

  One of the Brits across from him said it, pointing at Dougie’s travel bag.

  Seconals? Dougie wondered. Red Devils were their street name. Guy had to be a narc, but man, a couple red devils would take the edge off that long drive ahead of him.

  “No, thanks, bro, I’m twelve years sober,” Dougie told him, lying.

  Between the two Brits, he heard: “Your logo, you bleedin’ tosser. Football, ya knob. Talkin’ about the Red Devils football team, ya daft cunt.”

  They were laughing and pointing at his bag like he had drugs inside instead of a wetsuit. So Dougie grabbed his knockoff Manchester Red Devils bag and booked on out of there like Leslie told him to do.

  CHAPTER 48

  Ninety miles north of LA, clouds scudded past a sullen moon as Robert hit the I-5 Grapevine downslope, rolling into the San Fernando Valley.

  Headed for the Seahorse Inn, located a handful of miles south of Santa Cruz in Capitola. A sleepy mix of surfers and retirees when he was a kid, all bundled together on the cheap along the bluffs dominating town.

  A bug splatted his windshield, jarred him back to I-5 reality. A gulp of Red Bull helped, and he wasn’t surprised his mind revisited Alison. Returned to that scar on her calf. Must’ve been from an actual exhaust-pipe burn from her brother’s bike, after all. So what if she told the truth about one thing? That she wasn’t the Tattoo Girl? She was poison from the get-go.

  Another slug of Bull. He could picture her, all alone in her small apartment. Brian’s handcuffs around both her wrists, tugging against them. Sobbing into her phone so he would drive over.

  She would have hung up, removed the cuffs, something like that. However she went about it, she knew her bruises were visible before she risked calling him. And there she was in his mind now: scattering her books, toppling her furniture, one finger closing a nostril, breathing deep, exhaling. Getting ready for her big show.

  Kundalini yoga time, Robert remembered, draining that Bull.