Burt Levin’s Tavern was just up the block. I walked in, ambled around the bar, and nodded to Burt. He grunted around the cigar stuffed into his cheek and continued washing dishes. I fed the phone a nickel and called a house dick I knew. The shops were going to close pretty soon, and since Mrs. Stiles wasn’t in the bus station the only places left for her to lie low in were the apartment hotels north of Hollywood Boulevard.
“Gramercy Place Apartments,” a voice said.
“Is Costacurta there?”
“Hold a moment.” I held.
“Costacurta,” he rasped.
“Stan, it’s Max Barlow.”
“Yeah, Barlow, long time.”
“I need a favor.”
“What is it?”
“I’m looking for a woman. She’s dragging a couple of suitcases and a kid. Teal skirt, cream blouse. A good-looking blonde. You want to keep your eyes open and call some of your buddies in the other buildings. If you turn her up, call me at Burt Levin’s, okay?”
“Sure thing, Barlow.”
“Thanks.”
I swiveled around on the stool and stared into Burt Levin’s face. Burt had a bulbous drinker’s nose that got so bright when he was angry it looked like a tomato wedge between his eyes.
“What’ll it be, Barlow?” he growled. A shiv in the throat had left him with a one-tone voicebox.
“Whiskey.”
Burt poured with a friend’s heavy hand, and I sipped a bit before I took it back to the far corner booth and waited for the phone to ring.
I sipped and waited for almost an hour. When the call came in, it was Costacurta.
“Your girl’s been made, Barlow.”
“Where?”
“Over on Kenmore, near Hollywood.”
“The kid with her?”
“No. Just the doll. She was walking toward the Morewood Arms Hotel.”
“Thanks, Stan.”
“Nothing to it.”
I finished off my drink and went back into the rapidly spreading dusk. The Morewood was two blocks away and on the far side of Kenmore. I took up a position opposite the entrance of the hotel but didn’t see Monica Stiles there.
She was walking up the sidewalk arm in arm with an older man who looked and dressed like her husband. Maybe she was learning to make friends. She was dressed as the maid had described, but she was wearing the sunglasses I had seen in the picture.
As they approached the front door, she turned her head toward me and ran her hand through her fine blonde hair. I saw a diamond on her left hand, gold buttons in her ears, a gold necklace that encircled her long, delicious throat and a large red pin to keep her blouse closed. I shook my head. She was wearing Little Rock and back for her, the kid, and the teddy bear, and she was doing the horizontal bop anyway. But that was Stiles’s problem, not mine.
When they went through the Morewood’s revolving front door, I walked across the street and used the lobby phone to call my client. I told him that I had located his wife and that his son was probably close by. He thanked me and said that he’d be there right away. I told him not to hurry and hung up. I wasn’t here to take pictures or set them up for anyone else.
Back at my roost, I lit a cigarette and waited for her to come back out. About twenty minutes later she came flying out of the hotel, clattering down the steps on her high heels. Her arms were out for balance as if the stone was bunching and flexing itself under her feet.
I tossed the butt away and fell in behind her. She had a raging case of foot fever and I was afraid she’d spot me if I tried to close on her. So I slowed down and settled for just keeping her in sight.
She turned right on Franklin and ducked into a doorway. It was the side entrance to the Golden West Apartments. My place, the Hobart Arms, was only a block away.
Just as I got to the entrance and reached for the knob, the door retreated and I came face to face with Monica Stiles. She had a large suitcase in her left hand and a smaller one under her arm. In her other hand were her son’s small fingers. He looked up at me, but he wasn’t wearing that assured smile. He had that wide-eyed stare you get when your world is collapsing around you and you wonder if you’ll ever be able to see over the rubble. He clutched his teddy bear to his chest.
“Excuse me,” she said, “I’ve got to get somewhere.”
I reached out and gripped her elbow. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Stiles. I can’t let you leave.”
Her head snapped towards me. “Let me go. You have no right to stop me like this.”
“It’s not you, Mrs. Stiles. It’s the boy. His father doesn’t want him to leave town.”
“No,” she shouted. “He can’t have him. No. No. No.” She swung her right hand at my face. I dodged the blow. She dropped the suitcases on my foot and pummeled me with both hands. I reached out and snatched her wrists and shook her hard. She whipped her head back and forth and tried to bite me. Her sunglasses flew off and I pulled her close.
Stiles had told the truth. She was a blonde all the way down and her eyes were black. But there was also purple and yellow and red there too.
“Rough trade at the Morewood?” I asked.
“No, you bastard. These came today with breakfast. Courtesy of your boss.” The discoloration of her face was about right for a punch-out over bacon and eggs.
“Why’d he hit you?”
“How should I know? Maybe the sun came up too early. I gave up asking that question a while ago. I don’t care what the answer is. I just want out. I can’t take it anymore.”
The boy, who had stepped into the darkness when his mother swung at me, came forward and wrapped his arms around her and lay his head on her hip.
She stroked his head and murmured, “It’s okay, Brandon. Mommy’s okay.” Her stare dared me to make a liar out of her. I passed on it.
“Where were you going?”
“To the bus station. Catch the seven-thirty back east. My people are in Arkansas. I have no one out here. Delano kept me a prisoner in the house. He wouldn’t let me out for anything. He was so jealous of anyone who paid attention to me.”
“Why didn’t you hock the jewelry? You’d have been out of here hours ago.”
“That’s a laugh, mister. Don’t you think I tried? They’re paste. I couldn’t get to Pomona on these. Delano never trusted me. He never let me have any money. I didn’t realize that everything he’s given me was a fake. The only thing I have that’s real is Brandon.”
“How did you know that the Morewood was a hot-sheet joint? You’re supposed to be right off the bus.”
“When I found out that the jewelry was paste, I was frantic. I had nothing else to sell. The pawnbroker saw how desperate I was. He told me about the Morewood.”
“And what was his cut for doing you this kindness?”
“He said he’d get a piece from the front desk for each guy I came in with.”
When this was over I was going to have a talk with the pawnbroker. Probably a short, painful talk.
“How much money do you have?”
“Just enough to get me and Brandon out of the state. It was easy enough to pick up the guys, but I couldn’t do the rest. I only got into the room with the last one. I made him get undressed first. Then I took his wallet and ran out.”
I thought about everything I’d been told today and was ready to dismiss it all as self-serving half-truths. All except her black eye. That I believed in. I didn’t care how she might have failed Stiles as a wife, there was no excuse for that. So I reached into my wallet and slipped out sixty dollars.
“Here, take this. It’ll get you home and you can eat, too.”
She reached out slowly and took the bills from my hand.
“Thank you. I don’t know how I can repay you, Mister …”
“Barlow, Max Barlow. And you don’t have to. The money isn’t mine. I never earned it. I never found you.”
I reached down for one of the bags, and when I turned I saw Delano Stiles striding across the street toward us. He had
two Hard Harrys flanking him.
I pulled my car keys out of my pocket, turned, and pressed them into her palm.
“Go. It’s the convertible on the corner. You can still catch the bus. Don’t go to Little Rock. He’ll be waiting for you there. Get lost.”
She reached for the suitcase and I said, “Leave them or you’ll never make it.”
She tore a slit in her skirt, kicked off her heels, picked Brandon up and ran for her life.
I watched Brandon’s face over her shoulder as she fled up the street and wondered why he didn’t cry out for his dad.
Stiles pointed up the street and one of his goons sheared off in pursuit. I dashed out into the street and tackled him knee-high. He toppled over and slammed his head on the road. He was stunned for a second. I grabbed his collar, set him up, and closed his shop.
I heard footsteps behind me and rolled away. Stiles kicked at my head, but I grabbed his ankle, twisted it hard, and he fell over. I scrambled to my feet and saw the second guy standing in the intersection. My car was pulling away from the curb. He reached into his jacket and pulled out a pistol. He moved casually into his shooter’s crouch and sighted down his rigid arm.
I ran up the street yelling, “No!” But I was too late and his aim too true. I saw my car close on him. He fired once, twice, and then slid sideways like a toreador as the car careened past him on its three good tires, veered sharply to the right, jumped the curb, and slammed into Monroe’s Pharmacy.
The shooter holstered up and sauntered over to the wreck. I caught up to him, spun him around, and broke my hand breaking his jaw. Stiles ran past me and flung open the car’s passenger door. The whoop of police sirens grew in the distance.
Stiles groaned, “Oh my god,” and sank to his knees. I looked in the driver’s window. Monica Stiles was crouched over her son. She held his head in her hands and was kissing him everywhere. Over and over she murmured, “Baby, Baby.” But he couldn’t hear her. Children’s bones are soft they say, but no neck turns that far.
I walked over to the bus stop bench, sat down, and lit a cigarette. I took it out of my mouth, stared at its glowing red tip and wanted to put it out in my heart. Instead I waited for the sirens to drown out two sets of sobs.
They never did though, and these days I’m not the same man I was that day. The name’s the same, and that confuses some people. That’s why I have to remind them that I don’t do divorce work.
FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGISTS
RANSOM TRIPLETT
MATTHIAS WALDMAN
Not Enough Monkeys
“Dr. Triplett, Dr. Ransom Triplett?”
I looked up from my exam-covered desk. A young woman hugging a fat file stood in the doorway. I guess just looking up was enough for her, because she entered arm outstretched, hand aimed at the middle of my chest, and said, “I’m Monica Chao, I have a project I’d like to interest you in.”
I rose from my chair, intercepted her hand mid-desk, and nodded to the empty chair on her right.
“I’ve just come from the state penitentiary. I’ve been talking with some of the staff there and we believe that a terrible miscarriage of justice is going to happen.” She hoisted the file onto the desk, where it landed with a thud and lay still as a corpse.
“Actually, the miscarriage is ongoing. Dr. Triplett, they have an innocent man on death row there. He is going to be executed the first of next month.”
“And?” I asked.
“And I want you, no, I hope you’ll be willing to help me prove this. They’re going to execute an innocent man.”
“Excuse me, Miss Chao, how old are you?”
“I beg your pardon.” She stiffened in her seat.
“What are you, twenty-four, twenty-five—twenty-six at the most? Am I correct?”
“I fail to see the relevance of my age.”
“Humor me. Am I correct?”
She thought about it for a minute. “Close enough. Let’s just leave it at that.”
“First time to the penitentiary, yes?”
She nodded.
“And lo and behold, you found an innocent man there. Ms. Chao, the prisons are full of innocent men; in fact, they are filled with nothing but innocent men. I have been practicing forensic psychology for almost twenty years; I have yet to meet a man in prison who did the crime. One million innocent men behind bars. Amazing. No wonder crime is on the rise. All the villains are still on the streets. Please, Ms. Chao, no innocent-men stories. I don’t know what brought you to the prison, but the innocent-man story gets the inmate an hour, maybe two, alone with a lawyer. An attractive woman like yourself, they probably had a raffle to see who’d get to look up your skirt.”
She slid one hand down from her lap to smooth her hem across her thigh. Satisfied that I was merely rude, she was about to fire a response.
I put up my hands in surrender. “Please, Ms. Chao. I get calls or visits like this all the time. If you want to interest me in a project, bring me something truly rare, a culpable convict, a man who says he did it, or better yet, the rarest of all—a remorseful man, a man tortured by guilt over the horrors he inflicted on other people. For that you have my undivided time and attention.”
I looked down at the exam I had been grading. Her chair didn’t move. “I don’t know what else you have going on in your life, Dr. Triplett, that could be more important than saving an innocent man’s life, but I’m not going to let you run me off with your cynicism.” She pushed the file toward me. “Don’t read it. It’s on your head. If they execute an innocent man how will you explain that you didn’t have time even to look at the file?” Her jaw was determined but her eyes glistened with oncoming defeat.
“I’m going to do everything I can for my client. He is not going to die because I didn’t turn over every rock or look into every corner.”
“And what rock am I under, Ms. Chao? Who sent you to me?”
“Mr. Talaverde did.”
“Paul Talaverde? My old friend?” I smiled at the memory.
“Yes. I work in the pro bono section of the firm.”
“What did he say?”
“I’d really rather Mr. Talaverde talk to you. It was his idea.”
“No, no, no. You’re going to do whatever it takes for your client, remember? This is what it takes; if you want me to read this file you tell me what Paul Talaverde said.”
She smiled at me. “And if I do, you’ll agree to read the file?”
I shook my head sadly. “No, you have no leverage here. I’m mildly curious, you’re desperate.” I pushed the file back at her.
“Okay, you asked for it. He said you used to be the best forensic psychologist around, but that you were burned out now. Actually, he said you pretended to be burned out, but that you could still be seduced if the case was interesting enough. He said that if that didn’t work, I should try to shame you into it. You had always been vulnerable to that, and probably still were.”
“Anything else?”
She looked away and pursed her mouth in distaste. “He said I should start with you because your contract at the university forbids you from doing private-practice work for a fee. So, if you took the case …”
“The price was right. Paul say anything else?”
“No, that was it.”
“Then we’re still friends. Tell him he was right on two counts. Now, I have a couple of questions for you, Ms. Chao.”
She brushed an eave of lustrous black hair out of her face and clasped her hands around her knee, a perfect impression of the earnest student eager to please.
“Who did you talk to at the prison? You said ‘we’ believe there is a terrible miscarriage? Truth or seduction, Ms. Chao?”
“Truth, Dr. Triplett. Our firm got a call from Otis Weems, he was original counsel on this case, saying that one of the doctors at the prison had called him very concerned about Earl, that’s Earl Munsey, the defendant.” She pointed to the case file.
“Mr. Weems didn’t want to get into it, you know
the ineffective-counsel issues, so it was assigned to me. I went up to the prison to talk to the doctor. Then I talked to Earl Munsey. Obviously you think I’m a naive fool, but I’m convinced that Earl Munsey didn’t do it and they are going to execute an innocent man.”
“What did the doctor say?”
“He said Earl was deteriorating as the execution date approached.”
“Deteriorating how?”
“You name it. He paced his cell at all hours. He wouldn’t leave for exercise. He was convinced that they would move up the date and take him right off the yard. He stopped eating. Then last week he started crying all the time, calling for his mother. He started banging his head against the walls of his cell, he tore off his fingernails digging at the brick.”
“You’ve never been on death row, have you?”
“No. Don’t ever want to, either.”
“It’s ugly, very ugly. It’s cases like this that make people question what we’re doing. We destroy another human being’s sense of dignity, reduce them to a gibbering gobbet of fear. Why? Then you remember what they did to some other human being and it gets real complicated. At least it does for me.”
“Are you in favor of the death penalty?”
“I think in some cases it’s just. There are some people who do things for which they should forfeit their lives. But then I don’t believe in the sanctity of life. Suicide makes sense to me, so does abortion. What I think is neither here nor there. What you are describing happens all the time. The law prohibits the execution of a mentally ill person. But then, who wouldn’t be mentally ill at the prospect of death by electrocution? The prison hospitals routinely medicate prisoners to near-comas as their dates approach so they won’t act in such a way as to appear mentally ill and avoid execution. It’s a hell of a choice for the doctors. Do nothing and watch your patients shit themselves like crazed rats and then get executed anyway, or trank them to the eyeballs so they’re easier to kill. So far you haven’t told me anything unusual to warrant looking into this case. It’s interesting that the doctor called his attorney, most of the time they wouldn’t bother. What’s got you so convinced this guy is innocent, not just terrified?”
Mary, Mary, Shut the Door Page 17
