Bad Intent

by Wendy Hornsby

  I put Eric Clapton in the tape deck and headed west on Century. Guido paid no attention to where I was going. He dozed, now and then rousing himself enough to sing toneless harmony to the choruses. He didn’t notice when I bypassed the Harbor Freeway and continued west when I would have turned north to take him straight home.

  I found the Lennox branch of the county library in a small county administration compound on Lennox Boulevard, next to a sheriff substation.

  It wasn’t until I pulled into the parking lot behind the library that Guido sat up and looked around. “You lost?”

  “No,” I said. “I thought we might drop in on someone.”

  He was fully alert as soon as he opened his eyes. “Like who?”

  “LaShonda DeBevis’s former co-workers. Won’t take long.” I opened my door.

  “I’ll wait,” he said. He got out of the car and found a tree to sit under.

  Inside the library a couple of classes of what looked like first- or second-graders were getting their first library cards, handing in signed permission slips, printing their own names in the space the librarian showed them. The big rug in the children’s section was covered with little ones who had finished the process. They seemed more intent on the stiff new cards they clutched than on the story being read to them. Happy, proud faces.

  I went to the information desk and handed the librarian there my business card, the Maggie MacGowen one. She was a tall, slender black woman, with lace on her collar and flecks of silver coiling out of the bun at the back of her neck.

  “I’m researching a film,” I told her. “I want very much to speak with LaShonda DeBevis. I know she isn’t here anymore, but I hoped someone would be able to put me in touch with her.”

  “I can’t give you an employee’s home number.” The librarian frowned over my card, apparently trying to make some connection in her mind, or reach some difficult decision. “I believe LaShonda is out of town for a few days, but I will call her for you and leave your message.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “I can’t ask for anything more.”

  She was still holding my card up as I turned to leave. “Maggie MacGowen,” she said, and glanced at the kids on the rug. “You said you’re making a film?”

  “Yes.”

  “Latchkey,” she said. “Are you that Maggie MacGowen?”

  “I made Latchkey three years ago.” I moved closer to her, because she seemed very troubled. Close the physical space sometimes, you close off certain doubts.

  “It’s so strange, you asking about LaShonda just now,” she said. “Is she in some sort of trouble?”

  “LaShonda is a witness to trouble. In the beginning I only wanted to talk with her about the neighborhood she grew up in, but so much has happened that I’m concerned about her. I want to find out whether she’s all right.”

  The librarian gave me a second visual interview, made her decision about me. “I suppose I’m being overly dramatic.” She tucked my card under the edge of a stack of books. “I’ve worked with the library system for many years. Sudden transfers just don’t happen. Odd. Very odd.”

  “How does LaShonda explain it?” I asked.

  “I haven’t spoken to her, and that’s odd, too. One of the other librarians said she heard from someone in personnel that the move was for LaShonda’s protection. Protection from what, I don’t know. If she was in trouble, she would talk it over with us; we’re very close here. I know that transfer instructions came down from someone in the county with more authority than a head librarian.”

  Story time was over and two-dozen little kids in the six- to seven-year range surged up to the check-out counter with their arms full of precious books, clutching the bright covers against their damp tee shirts. They tried to use library voices, but their excitement bubbled through, charged the atmosphere. Truly, the library trip was a grand new adventure. As a group, they were clean, but just adequately dressed, thrift-shop patina on the sneakers. I wondered how many of them had books of their own at home.

  The librarian had been watching the kids with the same sort of awe that must have been on my face. “Excuse me,” she said, rising from her desk. “More hands are needed.”

  “Thanks for your time,” I said, and followed her as far as the counter.

  As she opened book covers and fed them into the laser scanner, she said, “I’ll deliver your message.”

  “That’s all I can ask,” I said.

  “Miss MacGowen,” she called as I walked away. “If you hear from LaShonda first, ask her to call me.”

  I left her surrounded. Librarians have a reputation for being meticulous with details. And with people. She was worried about LaShonda, and not because the transfer had not been according to standard procedure.

  “Have a nice visit?” Guido asked, wiping sweat from his face as we got back into the car.

  “A good visit. But damn, I’m still in a going-calling mood, little buddy. Guess we’ll have to drop in on someone else.”

  “Like who? Like maybe a bar I know in Santa Monica Canyon? Watch the end of the ball game?”

  “Better than that,” I said. “Old Jerry Kelsey’s retired. Bet he has the game on the tube.”

  ” ‘Splain this to me, Lucy.”

  “Don’t you want another version of the girls’ story?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “When Mike tried to call Jerry Kelsey, the D.A. or his campaign put a tail on him. I want to see what happens if we actually show up chez Jerry.”

  “How well do you know this Kelsey guy?”

  “I met him once,” I said. “Mike had to deliver some papers to him and I rode along. You’ll like him a lot—a real space cadet. He pensioned out on a psycho disability four or five years ago.”

  “Psycho?”

  “Stress-related.”

  “Boy, am I relieved,” Guido groused as a matter of form. “Most mass murderers have stress-related problems.”

  “Mike said he was a boozer.”

  “Uh huh.” Guido slouched down in his seat and watched out his window, trying to seem annoyed, but I knew he was faking it. Guido is the nosiest person I have ever known. That’s part of what makes him so much fun to work with.

  Jerry Kelsey lived in Palms, on the Westside, almost under the San Diego freeway. He had an arrangement with a construction company that gave him space to park his trailer in their equipment yard rent-free in exchange for keeping an eye on things. I’m sure it was a good arrangement all around. Rents on the Westside are high and ex-L.A. cops don’t come cheap as security guards.

  I saw the construction lot below us, got off at the next off-ramp, and circled back down Sepulveda.

  After he rear-ended us, George Schwartz had said that he followed Mike because he tried to get in touch with Jerry Kelsey. I drove past the trailer slowly, stopped briefly beside the gate, showing myself. When I didn’t attract any apparent notice, I pulled away from the drive, circled around the block through a neighborhood of small postwar apartment buildings.

  During work hours, the neighborhood was very quiet, a few cars parked along the street, now and then someone walking along the sidewalk. Smog dulled the sky to a yellowed silver, made the air heavy, like a bowling alley after a tournament, curled the big leaves of the desiccated sycamore trees. Guido wasn’t complaining, but I knew he was as hot and uncomfortable as I was.

  We didn’t pick up our tail until we made a second pass in front of Kelsey’s trailer.

  I wondered when George Schwartz had made bail. And who had paid it.

  I pulled into the equipment yard through the open gates. Schwartz, still driving the Toyota, front left fender still showing traces of Mike’s blue paint, drove past the gate, U-turned, and parked at the curb across the street. He made a point of being seen. He scared me, and I knew that was the point. I half-expected him to get out of his car, wouldn’t have been surprised by a confrontation. But he stayed put while Guido and I made our way across the hot gravel toward Kelsey’s double-wi
de.

  “Look dangerous,” I said to Guido. “At least stand up straight.”

  “We should have a camera.”

  “That would put Kelsey off.” I patted my bag. “I have a recorder running.”

  Jerry Kelsey opened the door before I could knock. He was tall, a thin-shouldered man with a paunch like a basketball under his polo shirt—a heavy drinker’s belly. He also had a serious case of what Casey called hair denial: a long swath of hair combed up from one side and plastered over his shiny bald pate. The thick lenses in his wire-rim bifocals gave him a vacant, owlish stare. My impression was, he wasn’t happy to have company.

  “Jerry,” I said, offering my hand. “Maggie MacGowen. Remember me? Mike Flint’s friend. Nice to see you again. This is my associate, Guido Patrini.”

  He said, “Mike?”

  “Mike Flint?”

  “Come in,” he said. When he turned around, I could see the lump made by the handgun tucked into his belt at the back. Guido saw it, too.

  I turned just as I stepped into the cool gloom of the trailer, saw Schwartz drive away.

  Kelsey was leaning out to hold the door open for me. “George Schwartz a friend of yours?” I asked.

  “Who’d you say?”

  “George Schwartz.”

  “I thought you said Mike Flint.”

  “I did. I just wondered whether you knew old George Schwartz. Works for the D.A.?”

  Kelsey combed his skinny fingers through that long hank of stiffened hair, tugged on the far end of it, but apparently didn’t achieve enlightenment from the effort. He seemed merely impatient for me to get inside, out of the glare and reflected heat coming off the gravel. He touched the back of my shoulder to hurry me.

  The trailer was bigger inside than it appeared from outside. A lot of room and very little furniture. Besides a big-screen television and a recliner chair, there were a card table, a few folding chairs, and an old upright piano. On the floor beside the chair was an untidy stack of dog-eared masturbation lit.

  “I was in the neighborhood,” I said. “Thought I would drop by and see how you are. All this fuss about Charles Conklin has a lot of people upset.”

  “You want a drink?” he asked.

  “Okay,” I said. I didn’t want a drink, but it seemed to me that if I accepted I was entitled to a reasonable amount of time to down it, time to talk. When Jerry was out of sight in his small kitchen, Guido made a show of dusting one of the folding chairs before he would sit on it.

  Jerry came back with three nearly full tumblers of what I found to be straight scotch, a single ice cube clanking in each glass.

  “Cheers,” Jerry said, tipping his glass to us. “Have a seat. I won’t say make yourself comfortable, ‘cause these chairs aren’t much to sit on. Never bought any real furniture. I don’t get much company unless it’s poker night. Besides, I don’t plan to be here long.”

  “Where are you going?” I asked.

  “Oregon. Bought a lot up there. Soon as I get things squared away, get my financing together, I’m going up to build. Won’t be long now. L.A. used to be one hell of a city, but it’s a cesspool now. And getting worse.” He raised his glass. “Getting worse.”

  Guido sipped his scotch. After the first taste, I only held mine. Jerry drank heavily from his, but seemed to pace himself, put himself on a timer. He was mentally spacey, but steady-handed. A lot of long-time drunks keep themselves just on the edge all the time without slipping over into sloppy inebriation. I thought that was what I was seeing.

  “So,” I said, “how do you feel about Charles Conklin getting out?”

  “Who did you say you are?”

  “Mike Flint introduced us, remember? I’m a friend of Mike’s.”

  “Oh, yeah. The new squeeze.” He took another long drink. “Mike and I go way back.”

  “Mike talks about you all the time,” I lied. Mike had had a lot of partners over the years. When he referred to his partner he usually meant the person he was currently working with or someone close from the old days, like Hector or Manny Tenwolde, a partner who was shot by a suicidal neighbor a dozen or so years ago. To Mike, Jerry was nothing more than a man he had worked an early case with. There was no bond there.

  I milked that tenuous tie. “Mike tells me stories about the old days in Southeast, about moving from patrol to detectives.”

  “Yeah?” He smiled into his glass. “We were a good team. Solved all of our cases, mostly. I mean, some you never get. Transient comes in, commits a crime, moves on. Or the mob. Can’t get a handle on those guys. Some people you just never get.”

  “If I remember,” I said, “Wyatt Johnson was the first murder assigned to Mike after he made detective. Nice to begin with a collar.”

  “Uh huh. Not much of a case. Matter of knowing which heads to thump, but we brought it in. Mike ever tell you about the time we found a mummy in the trunk of some old guy’s car? We worked on him for a good week before we got him to tell us it was his wife. Been dead six or seven years, just riding around town in the trunk all that time.”

  “What do you mean, you worked on him?” I asked.

  “Persistence, that’s all.” Jerry grinned. “Shit, he was older than dirt. I was afraid if we touched him or moved too fast the old guy’d croak on us.” He’d raced his ice to the bottom of his glass, and won. He reached for Guido’s half-full glass. “Can’t wait for her to catch up. Let me freshen that for you.”

  On his way to the kitchen, he winked at Guido. “She as slow on the uptake as she is with that drink?”

  Guido gave me a sidelong, horrified glance. When Jerry had trotted out of sight and was rattling ice cubes in the next room, Guido leaned into me, reeking of booze. “This is a bundle of laughs. You’re not going to get anything out of him. Let’s go.”

  “Don’t be in a hurry,” Jerry said, coming back into the room. The scotch had put a funny bounce in his step, but obviously hadn’t impaired his hearing. I couldn’t figure him out. I decided he was lonely and needed some company. Any company.

  Jerry and Guido talked about the ball game without much energy. I excused myself to use the bathroom, took a quick look at the untidy single bedroom while I was gone. Overall, it was a sad place for a man to end up, barren of evidence of attachments or accomplishments. Transient.

  When I got back to the living room, I was ready to leave. Guido was intent on a double-play in progress on the big-screen, so I sat down again to wait it out.

  A knock on the fakey-wood front door was a welcome interruption. Jerry got up from his recliner and went to answer, but he left his eyes on me, as if I might evaporate or something if I got out of his sight. Even when he opened the door, he kept watching me. He pushed open the door and came back to his chair without so much as greeting the person standing on the stoop.

  I stood up when I saw who it was. Jennifer Miller, Conklin’s pro bono attorney, looking cool and professional in a navy-blue suit. On television she had looked taller. I pegged her live as five-two in heels, max.

  “This is cozy,” I said.

  She gave me a stern appraisal. “Who are you?”

  “An old pal,” I said. “The real question is, what the hell are you doing here?”

  “She screens my company,” Jerry said. “She’s my adviser.”

  “She can’t be. She’s Charles Conklin’s lawyer.” I set my glass on the floor and stood up to tower over her. “When the Bar Association hears about this, Miss Miller, you’ll be disbarred for egregious breech of ethics.”

  Miller seemed struck dumb.

  Jerry Kelsey chuckled as he reached for my drink. “You sound like a lawyer your own damn self. I thought you was some kind of decorator or something.”

  “Close enough,” I said. “I suggest, Jerry, that if you’re expecting some sort of gratuity from Miss Miller so you can move out of town, you should take your payment up front, before she’s indicted. I have to leave now. I have a complaint to file.”

  Guido thought this was p
retty funny and giggled inanely, but I felt heartsick. When we walked out, the lovely Jennifer Miller was right behind us. I hung back, waiting for Miller to catch up while Guido, his step none too steady, went straight to the car.

  As she picked her way across the gravel, Miller tottered on her heels like a kid playing dress-up. She did seem young. Certainly undercooked to have been handed such a high-profile, media-rich case by a major law firm. Someone had to be keeping close tabs on her. Real close, like a puppet with a fist up its bottom.

  “I am not his legal adviser,” she called out to me.

  I wheeled on her, startled her. “You should have said that in front of Jerry. He thinks you’re his adviser.”

  She tried to take the offensive. “What are you doing here, anyway?”

  “None of your business. How did you know we were here? Did George Schwartz call you?”

  She leveled a poker player’s stare at me, an I’m holding at least a full house but I won’t let on to you blank gaze. “George Schwartz?”

  “Right.” I folded my hand because I was fed up with her bluff. I turned and started to walk away again. “Whatever you’re up to, kiddo, it looks bad.”

  “Let me explain.” Miller started after me, but had to stop to dump a pebble from her shoe. I liked the visual when I glanced back to check on her, took a camera out of my bag, and got a quick shot of Miller with Jerry Kelsey’s trailer in the background, and Jerry Kelsey’s face in the window watching her.

  I went on to my car. She limped after me, calling, “Miss MacGowen, just a moment, please.”

  I gave her time, leaning against my open car door. Guido was trying to get his seatbelt buckled, but he couldn’t seem to get tab to meet slot.

  Miller pleaded. “I’m afraid that you have the wrong impression.”

  “Do I?” I made sure Jerry was still watching from his window.

  “Detective Kelsey is…” She paused to think. “Emotionally challenged.”