The Flaming Motel

by Fingers Murphy

  Jendrek had a glimmer in his eye. “You think it could be because they’re the same age?”

  I smiled back and strolled over to the edge of the deck, peering around the side of the house. There was a narrow set of stairs leading down to the walkway and I started down them before looking back at Jendrek. “You want to check out the side of the house?”

  We ducked under a line of yellow police tape as we neared the window. There was a small circle of chalk on the sidewalk that Jendrek pointed to with his toe.

  “This must be where they found the empty shell from the shot.”

  I grunted at the spot and turned my attention toward the window. Although the glass was nearly floor to ceiling on the inside of the room, from the outside it started at about chin height on me. Looking upward into the room, someone standing outside the window would have to be reasonably tall and very close to the glass before they could see where the floor met the opposite wall of the room.

  “Pretty low angle,” Jendrek said from behind me. I turned to see him standing back about four feet from the side of the house, right in the center of the walkway. He couched and held his arms up like he was pointing a gun. It was an unnatural pose for his squat body.

  “You figure they had to be coming down the path when they looked in and saw whatever they thought they saw. Given where the bullet hole in the glass is and where the chalk outline is on the floor in there, the cop must have been shooting at a backward angle. Like they’d damned near walked past the window before they saw what was inside.”

  I went and stood next to Jendrek to see what he was looking at. I was imagining the position of the chalk outline when I realized, “The shooter would have had a clear view of Vargas from at least the knees up. He would have been looking straight at him.”

  Jendrek went up to the glass and peered in at the outline. “I think you’re right, judging by that outline. It looks like he fell backward from a position facing where you’re standing right now.”

  I’d assumed the position of the shooter. I studied the surroundings, trying to imagine how it had been at eleven the previous evening. There were no lights along the walkway, so it would have been dark along the path. There would have been music or noise coming from inside; it had been a noise disturbance call, after all.

  “It was dark out here, but the light would have been on inside,” I said, thinking out loud. “They would have had a perfect view from out here. A clear line of sight view, right at Vargas.”

  “And,” Jendrek interrupted, excitement building in his voice, “because the light was on inside, Vargas wouldn’t have been able to see the cops out here. It would have been too dark. Even if they’d tried to signal him to put the gun down, there’s no way he could have seen them.”

  I stood there, mulling it over.

  I pictured the events again. Two cops arrived at the house, responding to a noise call on Halloween. They found a house where a party appeared to be going on. They decided to go around the side of the house for some reason. As they came along the dark path, they passed a window of a lit up room. Just before they pass it, they look inside and see a man facing toward them with a gun in his hand. There was another man in the room too. Something about what they saw caused them to react. A gun was drawn, a shot fired, and within seconds, Don Vargas was dead from a clean shot through the chest.

  Jendrek and I had always agreed between ourselves that nothing was ever too stupid to say, as long as it was just us. It was a rule he laid down when I started working for him. As I ran through it, I said, “I wonder what order they were walking in.”

  Jendrek gave me a curious look.

  “The cops, I mean. I wonder if the shooter was in the front or the back.” Jendrek still looked confused. I went on, “Because if the shooter was in the front, then it just doesn’t make any sense at all. But if the shooter was the one in back, then it’s almost like he was waiting for the perfect spot. You know, stopping where he had perfect aim, waiting for his partner to get out of the way. Almost like he meant to kill him.”

  A cold expression came over Jendrek. Like the possibility wasn’t something he even wanted to think about. I walked back down toward the front of the house, then turned and started walking back.

  “Look,” I said. “They’re coming along here. It’s dark. There’s a bright light spilling out of the window. You don’t think they look inside the second they come to it? Of course they do, it’s the only thing there is to look at, it’s nighttime, it’s pitch black out here. They look inside. They see Vargas and this Pete guy. But they get all the way to here,” I took five long steps and stopped where we figured the shooter had been, “before they shoot? Why? What happens in the two seconds it takes to cover this space that causes the cop to shoot? What happens inside the room to go from a situation that doesn’t require shooting to one that does?”

  I could see Jendrek running it through in his head, tracing my story along the path with his eyes.

  “At least one explanation,” I went on, “is that nothing changed at all. Vargas and Pete were standing there when the cops first saw them and they were still standing there a couple seconds later. Same positions, Vargas holding the gun the whole time, nothing’s changed except the angle from which to shoot. One explanation is that the cop took his time, lining up his shot, like he knew he was going to shoot the whole time.”

  Jendrek cracked a wide smile and said, “I think you’ve snapped, Ollie. Unless you can prove Vargas welched on a huge debt to this cop, I don’t think that theory is going to fly. Isn’t it much more likely that the cop’s just an idiot?”

  I said, “Probably.”

  Ed Vargas appeared on the path at the foot of the stairs leading down from the deck. “Mr. Jendrek,” he called out, waving something in his hand.

  Jendrek turned and walked back toward him. “Please, call me Mark,” he said as he reached Vargas. I followed behind. We went back up the stairs and I noticed the girl in the T-shirt sitting in a lounge chair on the far end of the deck. She turned to watch us as we walked into the house through the French doors.

  Vargas handed Jendrek an envelope and collapsed into a chair near a bar at the back of the room, away from the windows and the pool table. It was the second bar I’d seen on the main floor. It was as though the house was used for parties and little else.

  Vargas rubbed his temples and leaned back in his chair, almost crowding himself into the furthest corner of the house. He looked tormented, like a man who wasn’t sure about anything anymore and was just looking to sit still in a quiet, dim place until the world returned to normal.

  “That’s a retainer,” he said, pointing to the envelope. “Should be enough to get things started.”

  Jendrek didn’t look inside, he merely tucked it in the pocket of his tweed sport coat. Given the size and location of the house, I doubted money was anything we’d have to worry about. Putting together a winnable case, well, that was something different.

  Jendrek cleared his throat. “I know this is a stressful time,” he began. “But we’re going to need to talk to people at the party, anyone who might have seen or overheard anything.”

  Vargas waved his hand like he was batting a fly from the side of his face. He was irritated by something that didn’t seem connected with his father’s death. I studied the stubble on his chin. It appeared to spring from his flesh like worms escaping from something horrible inside him. He was suffocating on his own anger and exhaustion. Revenge and spite percolated through him.

  He said, “Brianna’s outside on the deck. She was here. She lives here. She helped organize the party, she can give you a good list of who was here. I’m not sure what good I’m going to be. I need to get some sleep.”

  Jendrek motioned for me to go talk to the girl on the deck. I crossed the room, running my fingers along the pink felt of the pool table as I passed it. “Now, I need you to understand a few things about the difficulty of a lawsuit against the police … ,” I could hear Jendrek say as I stepp
ed back out into the bright, crisp daylight.

  I stood by the French doors for a moment, watching her. She sat facing out at the city. It was one of those spectacular autumn days in Los Angeles where the air is completely clear and the temperature mild. It was the kind of day that made Angelinos remember why they lived there, and why so many others had lived there before them.

  Women like Brianna were another reason people loved LA. She was aesthetically perfect, mesmerizing to look at. The kind of woman a man found difficult to take seriously as anything but an object. I traced the curves of her firm, tan body with my eyes, not wanting to disturb her, feeling intimidated and overwhelmingly attracted at the same time. Finally, she must have felt my stare because she turned to see me lingering near the doors.

  “Hi.” She smiled. “Something I can help you with?”

  I cleared my throat and walk toward her, trying to make it look like I hadn’t been standing there watching her. “Yes. I’m Oliver Olson,” I said, crossing toward her with my hand outstretched. She’d taken off the T-shirt and wore a black bikini top barely big enough to cover her nipples.

  She shook my hand and smiled up at me from the deck chair. “Nice to meet you.” Her blue eyes glowed in the daylight. She smelled of tanning oil. I tried to keep my tone serious, which only made me feel ridiculous.

  I tried not to stare at her tight stomach muscles as they rippled with her movements. “I’m an attorney. We’ve been called to look into the possibility of a lawsuit against the police department stemming from last night’s events.” I realized I didn’t have a note pad or anything to write with and I felt a sudden urge to do something with my hands to keep them from fidgeting like a schoolboy. “I understand from Mr. Vargas that you live here and that you helped arrange last night’s party. I would like to get a list of who was here and how I can get in touch with them, to the extent you know.”

  She was quiet for a minute. She sat with her hands in her lap and her shoulders slumped, staring out into the light blue sky. Even somber, she exuded a pure, objectified sexuality. Just the sight of her made me want to climb on top of her right then.

  Finally, she shook her head and said, “I’ve tried not to think about it all morning. You know, just get up and go about my business like nothing happened.” She looked up at me with sad, crystalline eyes. “But it’s stupid, y’know. I mean, Don was everywhere. Everything reminds me of him. I can’t stop wondering what the hell’s going to happen now.”

  “Are you a relative? Miss … ?” I realized I didn’t know her last name.

  She looked up at me with a quick, genuine grin. She almost looked amused. “Jones.” She shielded her eyes from the sun with her hand to get a better look at me. “I’m Brianna Jones.”

  She spoke in a way that said she was used to people knowing who she was. I didn’t. So I just nodded and said, “It’s nice to meet you, Ms. Jones.”

  She giggled at being addressed formally. “No. I’m not family. Well, you know, Don was the kind of guy who had a loose definition of ‘family’—a lot of people were either in or out of it over the years, from what I understand. Tiffany was his wife. Ed’s his son. I heard he was married once before. But beyond that, Don didn’t have much real family. But he was Uncle Don to a lot of people. Like me, I guess. People he took under his wing. He really wasn’t a bad guy, despite what some people said about him. He was like a father to me.”

  There was a strange mixture of innocence and weariness in her voice, and it made me wonder how old she was. She could have been seventeen, but her body said twenty-five. I asked the only thing I could think of. “So how long have you lived here?”

  She thought about it for a second. “About three and a half years. I moved in on my eighteenth birthday. Don said I couldn’t move in until I was eighteen.”

  I did the math quickly and tried to process her comments. The whole thing made me want to ask a million questions that had nothing to do with why I was there. I took my hands out of my pockets and really wished I had something to write with. A list of names wouldn’t do me a damned bit of good if I couldn’t write it down. Rather than stand there like an idiot, I asked, “What about your family?”

  She smirked and rolled her eyes. “If you saw the shithole I grew up in out in Northridge, you’d move into a place like this the first chance you got. Believe me.”

  I had to stop myself with that. I ran my eyes over the smooth curves of her calves as she crossed her legs and turned toward me. “So, back to the party,” I said. “Who was here. We’d like to chat with as many people as possible who might have seen the cops arrive. Who might have seen anything at all?”

  She took a deep breath and started rattling off names. “Well, Pete was in the room when Don got shot. I was just outside the room. I’d been talking to Pete right before it happened. Then there was Duffy, and Rick and Tony. Most of the girls were here.” She proceeded to rattle off a dozen more names that I knew I would never remember. I’d obviously have to go over the list with her again sometime. It was a thought I enjoyed more than I knew I should.

  When she was done, I asked, “What were you and Pete talking about right before it happened?”

  “Nothing, really. I was pretty drunk. I think I was just pestering him. He got kind of annoyed and said he needed to talk to Don alone and they went into the office.”

  “Do you know what they were talking about?”

  She shook her head and shrugged. “You’ll have to ask Pete. Pete and Don were always having private conversations, ever since Pete started coming around a few years ago. They were weird together. Don always gave Pete a lot of attention. So, anyway, they went into the office to talk and a minute later Don got shot.”

  “Where were you when it happened?”

  “I was back in the living room. No one even noticed the gunshot. Just all the sudden Pete came running into the room with blood all over his hands. He was hysterical. Then the two cops came running in from the deck. Then all hell broke loose. When people saw the cops they thought it was a bust.”

  Brianna’s eyes shifted to look at something behind me and I turned to see Jendrek lumbering across the deck. He was wearing a cynic’s grin, and he ran his fingers through his gray hair, swooping it back over his head. I could see his eyes darting back and forth between Brianna and me. He was obviously more interested in her.

  I made the introductions. “Mark, this is Brianna Jones. Ms. Jones, this is Mark Jendrek.”

  She held out her hand. “Pleased to meet you, Mark.”

  Jendrek grinned down at her and then gave me a sideways glance, beaming and bright-eyed. “The pleasure is ours,” he said. He gave me a look that said we had to go, so I took out a business card and handed it to Brianna.

  “I’m sure I’ll be back in touch to ask you some more questions about the party. But in the meantime, if you remember anything at all that you think we should know, call anytime. My cell number is on here as well.”

  She took the card, smiled at me, and brushed a lock of glowing blonde hair from her forehead. Her arm brushed the side of her chest as she moved and she watched my eyes focus on her jostling flesh. She smiled and said, “I’ll be sure to call.”

  We went back out front without saying a word to each other. At the car, I studied the front of the house again, wondering what it was worth. I noticed the wife was gone and realized we hadn’t talked to her. “What about the wife?” I asked.

  Jendrek leaned on the Jag and spoke over the roof of the car. “We’ll get to her. First, we need to figure some things out about who we’re working for.” He took the envelope out of his inside pocket and slid it to me. “Take a peek in there.”

  I opened the envelope and took out a check. It was made out to the law firm of Jendrek & Olson. It was for $50,000. I raised my eyebrows. “It’s a nice check.” I smiled.

  “Yeah, but look at the account it’s drawn on.”

  It was made out from an entity called Good Times, Limited. I shrugged and smiled.


  Jendrek said, “We need to make sure we know who our client is. I called Max Stanton from the house. He’s waiting for us in his office.” Jendrek checked his watch and chuckled. “Maybe if we have time, you can give me a tour of your old stomping grounds, Hoss.”

  “Fuck you.” I laughed, and got in the car. Visiting Stanton would be my first trip back to Kohlberg & Crowley since I’d almost gotten killed and quit the place.

  II

  A few years ago, American Lawyer magazine named Max Stanton to its forty under forty list. Meaning he was seen as one of the top forty lawyers in the country under the age of forty. Needless to say, it’s a hard list to get on.

  Stanton had long been the rising star of the Kohlberg & Crowley litigation department. And K&C was one of the most prestigious and powerful law firms not just in Los Angeles, but in the entire world. Still in his early forties, his career appeared to have limitless potential. And at K&C, he would have every means at his disposal to make good on that promise. K&C was a law firm that rendered advice on the largest and most complicated business deals and lawsuits in existence. It was a place where the partners, like Stanton, made millions of dollars a year, a law firm where only the brightest legal minds in the world could even hope to get an interview, let alone a job. Once upon a time, I had gotten both.

  We got in the elevator and Jendrek winked at me. “I’ll bet it feels good to be home again.”

  “Reception’s on seventy-two,” I said.

  “Ooh, the top floor,” he said, as he pushed the button, then added, “swanky.”

  “You don’t let up, do you?”

  Jendrek leaned against the back of the elevator as we rode up. His eyes grew distant. He was running through our meeting at the Vargas house in his head. Finally, he asked, “What do you think the deal is between the son and the wife?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What was it she said? ‘My husband wasn’t perfect, but he didn’t deserve this.’ Don’t you think that’s a strange comment?”