Try Fear

by James Scott Bell

“Mr. Buchanan!” He pumped my hand. “Been too long.”

  “Hello, Luigi. I’d like you to meet a friend of mine, actually my investigator, Sister Mary Veritas.”

  Luigi smiled broadly. “Sister, I am so glad to have you. We need a little class around this place. All I get is the lawyers and the riffraff, and sometimes—what’s the difference, eh?”

  “Glad to meet you,” Sister Mary said.

  To me, Luigi said, “Where you been? Can’t remember the last time you was here. You still with that big fancy place on the west side?”

  “No, going solo.”

  Luigi whispered, “That because of the little trouble you were in?”

  “If you call being accused of murder a little trouble, then yeah. I just thought it was time to take a look at what I was doing, and that reminds me. There’s one thing I haven’t done in a long time.”

  “And what is that, my friend?”

  “Eat your veal Parmesan.”

  “Good to have you both. I got a booth just for you.”

  He took us to a booth of the color of red wine, near the back, semiprivate. It was a little before five o’clock, and the place was just starting to get the after-work crowd. The bar was stuffed with coatless professionals with loosened ties and elevated voices. I recognized a couple of lawyers from Sheppard, Mullin, one of the city’s powerhouse firms, sitting at the bar. They were hoisting and laughing about something.

  Next to them was a bottom-feeding criminal defense lawyer named Stambler who was about seventy-five and never met a deal he didn’t like. He was a grinder, doing volume pleas and never fighting it out in court. But it kept him in fine suits and single-malt Scotch. He was drinking alone.

  It was like bookends of the legal profession. And somewhere in the middle was Tyler Buchanan, attorney-at-law.

  “I feel like I’ve come to some sort of forbidden land,” Sister Mary said.

  “You have. This is the realm of the overinflated ego. There are no egos larger than those of lawyers and none larger among lawyers than those of trial lawyers.”

  “Is this a confession?”

  “An admission, let’s say.”

  “I haven’t seen that in you.”

  “But you’ve only known me since I’ve been severely humbled by circumstances beyond my control. Slowly, I’m coming back to full-fledged self-centeredness.”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t think you’re going to be the same. You like to help people. I can see that at the Ultimate Sip.”

  “I’ve been trained to practice law. There’s not much else I can do. I could go back to playing drums, and go on the road with Father Bob. Would you like to be our singer?”

  “Only if you do ‘Ave Maria’ as a closer each night.”

  “Done. What shall we call ourselves?”

  “How about Sacred and Profane?”

  “I like it, but which one am I?”

  “Let’s think about it,” she said. “We may be able to figure it out.”

  Luigi came back to the table with a basketed bottle of Chianti. “Compliments of the lady,” he said.

  “Lady?” I followed Luigi’s motion across the restaurant and saw Kimberly Pincus at a table by the far wall. She was sitting with two other women. She smiled at me.

  In the soft light she looked like a movie star from the 1950s. Technicolor and CinemaScope were made for Kimberly. The restaurant seemed too small.

  I nodded my thanks.

  “She’s beautiful,” Sister Mary said.

  I snapped back to the present. “I don’t think she has a jump shot, though.”

  Luigi was uncorking the bottle.

  “She doesn’t need a jump shot,” Sister Mary said.

  Luigi poured some wine in my glass and I went through the ritual of the cultured wine connoisseur. I almost swirled some out of my glass, like the untrained wine doofus. I tasted, and tried to come up with some clever adjectives. My mind shut down like a Teamster at four-thirty.

  I gave Luigi the wine dork’s thumbs-up. He poured and left us.

  “Is she a lawyer?” Sister Mary said.

  “A prosecutor. City attorney’s office.”

  “Ah.”

  I raised my glass. “To the best investigator in the business.”

  “At least the room,” Sister Mary said. We clinked and drank. And some indefinable sadness filled me. It seemed like it would only get worse if I didn’t do something.

  “I’ll introduce you,” I said.

  All the eyes in the place seemed to follow my investigator and me. I was used to it by now. I didn’t guess Sister Mary was.

  When we got to the table Kimberly was on her feet.

  “Thanks for the wine,” I said.

  “My pleasure, Ty.”

  “This is Sister Mary Veritas, my investigator.”

  They shook hands. Kimberly introduced us to her companions. I forget the names.

  “How do you like the work?” Kimberly said to Sister Mary.

  “I like it.”

  “Do you keep him in line?”

  “I try. It takes much prayer.”

  They shared a laugh.

  “I’m glad you two are enjoying yourselves,” I said.

  “We are, aren’t we?” Kimberly said.

  “Definitely,” Sister Mary said.

  Kimberly turned to me. “How’s the trial going?”

  “Every day in every way,” I said.

  “Maybe I’ll try to catch your closing argument. Give me a call the night before.”

  I said nothing. My face got a tad warm.

  “Nice meeting you, Sister,” Kimberly said.

  “The same,” Sister Mary said.

  When we got back to our table, Sister Mary said, “She likes you. I can see it in her eyes.”

  “What’s not to like?” I said. “I’ve got the whole package, don’t I? Charm, wit, sophistication.”

  “Humility, too. Maybe you and she ought to get together.”

  When she said that, it was almost like a request. As if she wanted it to happen for some unnamed reason. I thought about probing a little, but decided not to. We had enough to think about without getting involved in all that.

  Truth was, I didn’t want to think about it. If I did, it’d be like defusing a bomb. A chance to survive, but a chance to get blown up, too.

  105

  BUT THE VEAL Parmesan was a Luigi’s masterwork, and the Chianti a perfect match.

  Nothing blew up or even blew around. Until we got outside.

  There was a somebody next to my car at the end of the small parking lot. Whoever it was, he was bending over, looking at it.

  I touched Sister Mary’s arm and pulled her back to Luigi’s front door, out of sight. “Wait here,” I said.

  “What are you going to do?” she said.

  “If I’m not back in five minutes, tell Luigi to bring every Sicilian he can out to the lot.”

  “Wait—”

  I didn’t wait. I went around the other way, circling Luigi’s. There’s a small passage between the restaurant and an antique store. Then you come to the retaining wall of Luigi’s parking lot, which is elevated in the back.

  That gave me a vantage point to watch the guy, who was still eyeing my car. The lighting was dim here and I couldn’t make out much about him. Whoever he was, he was taking his time.

  And he was alone.

  I thought about spooking him with the alarm. But I wanted to know who it was. I was tired of not knowing.

  I took off my coat and laid it on the wall. I was able to get myself up to a position where I was still unseen. A nice fat bush helped. About fifteen yards separated us.

  Now what? I could charge like a Bruin linebacker. But I wasn’t feeling like tackling tonight. So I waited.

  The guy walked to the front of my car, the farthest point from me, and sat on the hood.

  He lit a cigarette.

  Maybe he was just waiting for somebody while admiring my Benz, before parking
his heinie on my car. Bad manners, but nothing else.

  Or maybe he was waiting for me. Or Sister Mary.

  I took my keys and quietly put three of them between the fingers of my right hand, holding the rest in my fist. If I got attacked I was going to make some holes in the guy’s face. Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu would have to wait.

  Three people, two men and a woman, came out of Luigi’s, laughing, toward a car. The guy smoking on my hood turned his head left.

  That’s when I made my move from the right.

  I got my Wolverine fist ready.

  “Evening.”

  He yelped. His cigarette tumbled out of his mouth. He jumped up like the hood of my car was a cattle prod.

  He screamed the name of Sister Mary’s savior.

  It was Nick Molina. He cursed again.

  “Easy,” I said.

  “Easy! You give me a heart attack.”

  “What’re you doing sniffing around my Benz?”

  “Waiting for you, man. Now the whole neighborhood knows.”

  There was no neighborhood to speak of here. The nearest houses were in the hills on the other side of the freeway.

  “Everything all right?” It was Sister Mary. Behind Nick. Who yelped again.

  And cursed again. Then added, “Sorry, Sister.”

  “How’d you know we’d be here?” I said.

  “I followed you from court.” He drew out another cigarette from his shirt pocket and tried to light it with a Bic. But his hands were shaking and it took a few seconds longer than it should.

  “Why’d you do that?” I said.

  He took a deep drag and looked up. “I’m a little nervous, okay? I don’t want to be seen, okay? I don’t want anybody knowing I talked to you, got it? I told you I’d come to you when I was ready, so I’m ready now, and that’s it.”

  “All right,” I said.

  “Carl, maybe he’s dead because of Ezzo,” Nick said. “And Jamie MacArthur.”

  106

  “TAKE IT SLOW,” I said, wanting Sister Mary and I to hear exactly the same thing.

  He rubbed his face. “You got any idea what kind of money is changing hands down there?”

  “Where?”

  “At the project.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Carl was part of it. They were all part of it. Here’s the way it works. The city hires a primary contractor. When they go out and contract with the subs, there are supposed to be set limits. The city wants to control costs, so they have restrictions on what can be paid out. It’s a way to keep lower-tiered subcontractors from nickel-and-diming them with markups.”

  “Sounds like good business practice,” I said.

  “Well, somebody in the know went to selected subcontractors and told them how to put in usage charges. It’s a bookkeeping category, and with the right billing it’s accepted by the controller’s office.”

  I said, “A nice little bonus.”

  “Then the money takes another trip, to the Laundromat.”

  “But why, if it’s a legit payout, at least on paper?”

  “That’s part of the deal. In return for getting the contract itself, and for some protection in the accounting, the sub agrees to give back a percentage of the usage charges. Guess who those funds eventually filter back to?”

  “The campaign coffers of a certain councilmember.”

  Nick spread his hands with a gesture of And that’s how it’s done. “It’s so clean, the only way to get ’em is for someone to talk. And Carl was gonna blow the whistle.”

  Now I felt like both Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman. This was more than dynamite. This was C4, and it lined up around City Hall. “How much did Carl know?” I said.

  “Just a week before he got it, we were having a beer after work. Carl had a couple of shots of tequila with his. He was drinking a lot. He was nervous. And then he said he was going to talk. Because there was somebody trying to do him dirt. That’s what he said. ‘Do him dirt.’ ”

  “Did he say who this person was?”

  “No, and I didn’t ask. ’Cause I didn’t want to get involved, which I am now because of you.”

  “Did Carl say anything else?”

  “Said he had an accountant friend who would help him put numbers on it, and then he was going to go to the Times.”

  “Was this accountant a guy named Morgan Barstler?”

  “No idea. But I told him, I told Carl, I said he shouldn’t say nothing. Because there’s enforcers on this thing. Every sub got a visit, sometimes more. So what happens? Next thing I know he’s dead.” He let out a disgusted breath. “And they think his brother did it. What a nice setup. They got this thing wired.”

  “You ever heard the name Turk Bacon?”

  Nick shook his head. “Sounds like a name to stay away from.”

  “Is that it, Nick?”

  “That’s it. That’s what I got.”

  And what he had was at least the start of the proof I needed to offer an alternative theory of the crime. What Judge Hughes required for me to argue it. It might not be enough to point to the actual perpetrators, but in my hands it would be enough to create a reasonable doubt.

  I said, “Will you testify?”

  “No way,” Nick said.

  “I need you to.”

  Sister Mary added, “Please.”

  Nick looked at her. She looked right back at him. Then he looked at the ground and shuffled his feet. “Sorry,” he said.

  He walked.

  I started after him. Sister Mary caught my arm. She pointed to herself. Then went after Nick.

  107

  I GOT UP early the next morning and made myself coffee. Showered in the trailer shower—which was built for the guy who played Mini Me—and fired up my laptop for a look at the news.

  The night before, in Luigi’s parking lot, Sister Mary had managed to get Nick to at least think about testifying. She’d call him later. He made that clear. He didn’t want me calling him. I couldn’t blame the guy. I got him fired, now had him paranoid. All in a day’s work.

  I scanned the headlines in the Times, then popped over to LALawyerWatch.blogspot.com. It’s an insider gossip mill that just about every city reporter and lawyer reads. It has some good stuff in it every now and then. I once got some useful info on an opposing lawyer that I used in negotiating a settlement. I can’t prove it, but I think the info got my client another hundred grand.

  Right out of the box, on the first entry, was this:

  Who Was That Nun I Saw You

  With Last Night? That Was No Nun.

  That Was My Investigator.

  You may remember Tyler Buchanan. He’s the lawyer who was accused of murdering L.A. news star Channing Westerbrook (turns out he didn’t do it, but he did get to see the inside of the Men’s Central Jail, and lost his job at the boutique firm of Gunther, McDonough & Longyear).

  I almost snorted coffee out through my nose, because curses were streaming from my mouth. No privacy anymore. None. Zip. And they couldn’t even get it right. McDonough wanted me back.

  Well, last night at Little Luigi’s, we caught a glimpse of Buchanan with his investigator (so called), an actual nun. She’s sitting right there with him in the courtroom in the Foltz Building, while Buchanan defends one Eric Richess on the charge of murdering his brother.

  So who is this nun? LALawyerWatch has learned her name is Sister Mary Veritas, and she is part of St. Monica’s, which is some sort of Catholic enclave in the far west corner of the San Fernando Valley.

  The two looked chummy as they sipped wine and, no doubt, talked about the day in court. Ty Buchanan has done the classic “become a monk” routine after his come down. Word is he’s taking cases for the “little guys.” And why not? A little penance might not be a bad thing for a lawyer these days.

  If I thought this was going to be ignored, overlooked, or otherwise missed by the mainstream press, I was sorely mistaken.

  108

  “I’M BECOMING A distraction,”
Sister Mary said as we drove downtown later.

  “It’s not a big deal,” I said.

  “I mean, not just to the case. At the community, too. We do not need this kind of attention.”

  “What does that even mean?” I said. “You can’t just leave the world anymore. You have to expect you’re going to catch flak. This isn’t the Middle Ages.”

  “I didn’t say it was. But there is still a need for a place of prayer and piety.

  Now more than ever.”

  “You saying you want to pull out of the case?”

  “No. I made a commitment. All I’m saying is I’ve become a distraction, and I’m distracted myself.”

  She looked out the window. We were stuck in the morning commute, crawling past Vermont at about five miles an hour. A morning news chopper hovered just above us. It wasn’t moving either. For some reason I thought the pilot was looking right at us.

  Sister Mary, still looking out, said, “The first words of the Order of St. Benedict are, ‘Listen, O child, and incline the ear of thy heart.’ To hear the still, small whisper of God, in both heart and mind, is what is needed for the vocation.”

  “And the heart has its reasons,” I said, “which reason knows nothing of.”

  She turned to me. “Pascal.”

  “I’ve read a little bit.”

  “You should read more.”

  “So what’s your heart telling you?” I said. It suddenly seemed like the most important question in the world.

  She seemed to sense the same thing. “God had a reason for me to be a nun.”

  “Had?”

  “I mean has.”

  “Is that really what you mean?”

  “I don’t care to be cross-examined on the way to court,” she said.

  “Agreed,” I said. “When are you going to call Nick?”

  “Later this afternoon.”

  “Be sure to push that whisper-of-God thing on him. We need all the help we can get.”

  109

  THE NEWS CREWS were camped out on Temple, waiting for us.

  Sister Mary grabbed my arm as we approached. She had her head down. Reporters started shouting questions.