I watched for a while. He had already removed much of his despoilment from the warehouse facade. He was agitated and uncomfortable, and in the heat of early afternoon, his forehead was dripping sweat. Despite the fact his head had been shaved upon his admittance into the system, he still managed to exude an aristocratic air. He was a good-looking young man, with intelligent eyes and a wide, full-lipped mouth.
“It looks better already,” I commented.
“That’s your opinion,” he said defiantly.
“Let’s you and I have a little chat, okay, Robaire?”
“What about?”
“About getting to know each other.”
I signaled to Officer Kurtzer, who helped the young man to his feet, then walked him to the shade of a large heritage oak and sat him down beneath it, his back resting against the tree’s massive trunk.
I sat next to him. “You want some water?”
He nodded.
Officer Kurtzer brought us each a bottle. I thanked him.
Robaire drank thirstily. “Why are you making me do this?”
“You mean eradicating your stains?”
“Desecrating my work,” he said spitefully.
“Why do you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Insult public property and sensibility.”
“I don’t have to listen to your crap,” he said, attempting to stand but falling sideways instead.
Embarrassed by his clumsiness, he hastily rearranged himself, his back resting once more against the base of the tree.
“Why do you spray paint on property that doesn’t belong to you? What do you think gives you that right?”
“Why do you want to know?”
There was an earnestness in his question. As if he was as curious about my rationale as I was about his. I chose to answer his question respectfully.
“Because this whole graffiti thing is a mystery to me. Maybe you can help me to better understand it.”
“You’re serious.”
“I am.”
“And you’re not going to hurl phrases like ‘scourge’ and ‘blight’ at me.”
“No.”
He thought about that for a while. Then he chose to answer my question equally as respectfully. “There have always been street artists. Since the days people painted on the walls of caves. The form is centuries old.”
He glanced sideways at me and when he realized I was actually listening to him, he continued. “Over time, all kinds of things were painted on public edifices. Slogans. Pictures. Political messages. Whatever. Street art has always been part of the cultural discourse. It’s only been lately that industry has usurped the form by sanctioning commercial signage.
“Look at L.A., for instance,” he went on. “You can’t drive down Sunset Boulevard without being accosted by every imaginable kind of billboard. Some even electrified, throwing off enough wattage to unnaturally illuminate the night sky in such a way as to disturb the surrounding neighborhoods.
“This usurpation of public and private space is far worse and way more destructive than any graffiti artist’s work. You do see that, right?”
“Frankly, I hadn’t thought of it like that.”
“So what you’re saying is you paid no mind to the street artist’s centuries-old right of self-expression. You opted instead to support only the interests of commerce. Of big business. It’s okay for giant corporations to erect monstrous billboards, many of them several stories high, and then rent them to any idiot who can afford to pay the freight, with little or no regard for the messages they might post.
“But great artists like Banksy, or Shepard Fairey, or me, even...if we display our art or our messages on public or private surfaces, we become criminals. We get arrested. Forced to remove our work from the spaces on which we created them. And why? Because someone or something owns those spaces. Would we have been forced to whitewash the cave paintings because some rich asshole owned the cave?
“It’s you who should be ashamed, not me. I submit that my rights to create and display my art are as valid as those of any commercial venture. More valid, even. Just because I don’t pay the exorbitant rates these bloated sign companies charge, doesn’t mean I’m not worthy.
“The people’s right to exhibit its art shouldn’t be the sole domain of big business. Just because we don’t buy or rent our canvases, so to speak, doesn’t mean they’re any less valid.”
I watched Robaire’s enthusiasm for his argument dissipate and fade. “I knew you wouldn’t understand.”
“I never said I didn’t understand.”
“But?”
“The law is the law.”
“I knew you’d say that. You’d have to. You’re a servant of the very interests I’m talking about. You’re their paid stooge. I don’t know why I wasted my time talking to you.”
Despite his shackles, he somehow managed to stand. He looked at me.
“If it’s all right with you, I’ll go back to obliterating my work now. Making everything ship-shape so that some big deal manufacturing company can display its commercial horse shit in the exact same place where I had created a work of art.”
Chapter Forty-nine
Nothing added up.
It was two o’clock in the morning of yet another sleepless night. I was sitting in my darkened living room, perplexed that I was having so much difficulty connecting the dots.
It was what my father had said that kept creeping into my consciousness. How could Carson have gotten away with it? How is it no one blew the whistle?
Although Carson was smart enough to engage the two football players, in actuality, they were a pair of thugs with an intelligence quotient equal to that of your average plant. They may have been a threat, but it wasn’t severe enough to silence everyone.
I had trouble believing Coach Maxwell was in any way involved. He had an exemplary reputation and was a longtime fixture at the school.
Yet someone else had to have known.
Who could it have been?
It was during my interview with Becky Nyman that I stumbled upon the answer.
I was still working my way through the sixteen-year-olds when Becky’s mother, Clarice, phoned for an appointment. Following the death of Henry Carson, Becky’s mother told me that her daughter had begun to show unusual signs of stress. She was normally an easygoing youngster, warm and friendly, successful in her academics, excited to have made the swim team in her sophomore year.
But after Carson’s death, something in her changed. She became less outgoing. Her schoolwork suffered. She stopped hanging out with her friends. She became moody and withdrawn.
At first Mrs. Nyman thought it was a knee-jerk reaction to the coach’s death. But when Becky didn’t get any better, she became worried. “It was going around that some of the swim team girls had been to see you. She mentioned it to me and when I asked her about it, that’s when she broke down and told me.”
“Told you what?”
“I think it’s best she tell you herself.”
We were seated in my office, Becky and her mother, Marsha Russo, and me.
“What’s troubling you, Becky?”
“I don’t know. It’s probably nothing. I just haven’t gotten over the murder yet. I can’t get it out of my head.”
She seemed a hardy girl, although on the occasion of our interview, she appeared sallow and joyless. She was tall for her age, well developed, with strong arms and powerful legs. She was en route to becoming an attractive woman, blond, blue-eyed, and pretty.
“What can’t you get out of your mind?” Marsha asked.
Becky shifted in her seat and said nothing.
“Tell them,” her mother instructed.
“Coach Carson,” Becky said.
“What about him?”
“We didn
’t get along too well.”
“Because?”
“I didn’t always go to his parties.”
“His play parties?”
“Yes.”
“Why not?”
“They made me uncomfortable.”
“You said you didn’t always go to them. How many did you attend?”
“Actually, only one.”
“And?”
She looked down and didn’t say anything.
“Let me guess,” Marsha said. “You didn’t approve of what was taking place.”
Becky looked up. “Yes.”
“How long did you stay at the party?”
“Let’s just say that I left only a few minutes after I got there.”
“And what did Coach Carson have to say about that?”
“He badgered me.”
“Meaning?”
“Every time there was a party, he insisted I show up.”
“And you continued to refuse.”
“I did.”
“Tell him,” her mother said.
She looked at her mother, then at me. “I went to see Miss Peterson.”
“The Principal?”
“Yes.”
“And what did she say?”
“When I told her what I had seen, she got angry with me. She said I was lying. That no such thing could ever happen at Freedom High. She told me that if I said one word about it to anyone else, there would be serious repercussions. She said there’d be a price to pay.”
“Miss Peterson told you that?”
“Yes.”
“When did this happen?”
“A few weeks before he was murdered.”
“What did you do?”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“And you stayed on the swim team.”
“Actually, I tried to quit.”
“And?”
“He wouldn’t let me.”
“Coach Carson?”
“Yes.”
“How were things between you?”
“Not good. He kept telling me to keep my mouth shut. That he was watching me. He told me to remember what Miss Peterson had said.”
“And that was it?”
“After he died, the football boys...they came around nearly every day. They’d hunt me down in the hall and start poking at me. They told me I was on their radar. They said I better keep my mouth shut. They scared me.”
“So you said nothing about it. Not even to your mother.”
“I was afraid to.”
“And you changed your mind because?”
“When one of the other girls said she had told you what was going on, and that the two football jerks were now in jail, I knew it was time.”
“To talk about it.”
“Yes.”
“To me?”
“And to my mom.”
“It’s very courageous of you, Becky.”
She looked at me. “I hated him. I really hated him. I wanted him dead. I only wish it was me who killed him.”
Chapter Fifty
My father was having a good day and had managed to bring himself to his office where, having heard of his presence in the building, staff members and various officials stopped by in droves. Although exhausting, the infusion of energy was infectious and it cheered him considerably.
He carved out time enough for Marsha, Johnny, and me to confer about the Henry Carson murder case.
He looked at me. “How do you plan to proceed?”
“As you would.”
“Tell me.”
I sat silently for several minutes. I wanted my thinking to be precise. I wanted him to approve of my plan. “I’ll seek confirmation from Julia Peterson of what I believe happened.”
“Which is?”
“As was the case with almost all of the women he came in contact with, I believe Ms. Julia fell under Henry Carson’s thrall.”
“Meaning?”
“He ratcheted up the charm and she succumbed to it.”
“You mean they were having an affair?”
“I mean she, like most all of the others, was mesmerized by him. Whatever it was he did, however he did it, it always seemed to work. His widow told me she had never been romanced in the manner she had been by him. So much so that she jumped into a marriage which, ironically, might have taken place at the exact same time he was on the make for Julia Peterson.”
“How could that be?”
“He was working in New Jersey and appeared to be settling into a career track that would keep him there. He met Kimber and they married. But no sooner had they done that, than he learned about and interviewed for the Freedom High School job.”
“Interviewed with Julia Peterson?” Marsha asked.
I nodded. “Turns out he really wanted the job. The idea of living in Southern California was a whole lot more appealing to him than living in Maplewood, New Jersey.”
“So you’re suggesting he put the bum’s rush on Julia,” my father asked.
“He made three trips to California. Alone. It’s anyone’s guess what happened. But Julia was a single woman and she was the Decider in Charge of hiring the Vice Principal. Who do you think got the job? And why do you think he got it?”
“You believe Julia was in collusion with him?”
“I’d guess she was an unwilling participant who, by the time she realized his con, was too far gone to do anything about it.”
“Meaning?”
“Were anyone to find out she had in any way condoned Carson’s conduct with the students, her career and her life would be ruined.”
“Did she condone what he was doing?”
“According to sixteen-year-old Becky Nyman, she did. And I’ll bet some of the other kids knew about her connection to Carson, too.”
“So what comes next?” the Sheriff queried.
“That’s what we want you to tell us.”
He was silent for several moments. Then he said, “First I’d verify.”
“And then?”
“If things are as you suspect, I’d hang her ass out to dry.”
Chapter Fifty-one
Once again the cell phone was the culprit. Hopeful as I might have been, there was no way it was going to stop its incessant ringing until I answered it. I sat up in bed and took the call.
“You might want to see what’s about to go on here,” Marsha Russo announced.
“What?”
“I’ve just been advised that a legal team representing Robaire Noel is at the Sergeant’s desk seeking to post bond for his immediate release.”
“I’m on my way.”
Noel’s silver BMW had been towed to the Freedom Police Station lot and I parked next to it.
Three well-dressed persons, two men and a woman, were engaged in a heated discussion with Desk Sergeant Mike Marcus when I entered the station.
The conversation came to an abrupt halt when Sergeant Marcus spotted me. He pointed the three persons in my direction. He stood, glared at them for a moment, then quickly stepped away from the desk and disappeared.
The trio focused its collective attention on me. It was one of the men who spoke first. “Are you in charge here?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
The man looked more closely at me and went on. “We’re from the law firm of Munro, Furst and Levin, located in Beverly Hills. My name is Harold Green. My associates are William Herz and Janet Robinson.”
I looked at each of them.
“And you are?” Green asked.
“I am,” I replied.
After several moments, he tried again. “Who exactly are you?”
“Deputy Sheriff Buddy Steel.”
“Is there somewhere we might talk, Mr. Steel?”
“Seems to me we’re already talking.”
Green stood silently for a moment, then looked at his two associates. All three had on black suits and white shirts. The two men wore red ties. Ms. Robinson was open necked. Green appeared to be the eldest, thirty-five perhaps. The other two were younger. They looked like applicants for greeter jobs at a mortuary, each displaying carefully cultivated looks of grave concern as they peered at me.
“I was hoping for a bit of privacy,” Green said.
I motioned them to a corner of the waiting area. “Is this private enough for you?”
The three of them made furtive eye contact with each other.
“How might I help you?” I asked.
Mr. Green continued. “You’re holding Robaire Noel.”
“Robaire Noel,” I said. “Robaire Noel. Hmm. I believe we may have someone by that name in custody. What about it?”
“We’re here to secure his release.”
“I’m so sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but you’ve come to the wrong place.”
“Excuse me?”
“Mr. Noel is being held without bail as per the precepts of local law.”
Green looked briefly at his associates.
“Surely there’s some provision for a security bond. Mr. Noel is an upstanding citizen. His family are valued members of Beverly Hills society. His crimes, if you can even call them crimes, are at best misdemeanors.”
“Mr. Noel is a seriously misguided young man. He’s a chronic vandal who has caused thousands of dollars’ worth of damage to both public and private property. He’s arrogantly unrepentant and a flight risk. If it’s his release you’re seeking, you’ll need to bring your argument to the District Attorney. Now, if there’s nothing else, I have other business that requires my attention.”
I looked at each of them and then stepped away.
“This is bullshit,” Janet Robinson said to my back.
I turned around. “Excuse me?”
“This is bullshit and you know it. Robaire Noel is a noted street artist whose work is on display in any number of American cities. Holding him prisoner is a violation of his First Amendment rights.”
I met Ms. Robinson’s outraged stare with one of my own. “You’re as misguided as your client. This noted street artist is a serial defacer. His so-called work is a blight on property he doesn’t own but sees fit nonetheless to vandalize.
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