Try Dying

by James Scott Bell

  There was a time when it seemed every week there’d be a new story about a priest with a string of altar boy molestations in his past. It was, of course, a field day for private practitioners of the psychological arts, who descended into the pool of victims like sharks after chum. Like lawyers chasing class-action lawsuits, these doctors put the word out about their new area of specialization. And the fish swam to them.

  Not that there wasn’t anything to these charges. But when the waters are stirred sometimes the innocent get consumed. How many lifers have been set free because of DNA typing in the last few years?

  By four o’clock or so I had a pad full of notes and an e-file of articles I’d loaded into the firm’s database so it was fully indexed and searchable. It was a good, solid day of work. I’d even skipped lunch and downed a Snickers at my desk instead.

  At five after, Kim told me I had a strange call, from a guy who wouldn’t give his name. He’d only say it was about a woman and that I needed to hear it.

  I punched it through.

  69

  “HEY, MAN, I know you.” His voice was heavy, accented, and whispery, like he was someplace where he didn’t want to be heard.

  “Who is this?”

  “You listen. I know you. I know about your woman.”

  I gripped the phone so hard I thought I might snap it. “So?”

  “I want to tell you,” he said.

  “Then tell.”

  “No, not on the phone. Meet me.”

  This was pretty blatant head playing, and I wasn’t going to go for it. But I still wanted to know who it was. “Forget it. I don’t think you know anything. And tell whoever you’re working for it’s not going to get me out.”

  There was a slight pause, but I didn’t hang up.

  “OK, but she’s not nice. You got to know.”

  What was he talking about? More to the point, who was he talking about? In the present tense it wasn’t Jacqueline.

  “The reporter, man,” he added. “She gonna sell you out.”

  I waited for him to continue, but he didn’t.

  “So what do you want?” I said. “You’re not calling me because you have some interest in my well-being.”

  “I got some pictures for you. Pictures of your woman. With Barocas, man.”

  The electricity in my body almost blew my heart up. “I want to see them.”

  “Five hundred.”

  “We’ve met before, haven’t we?”

  He said nothing.

  “You kicked my head.”

  Another silence. Then: “No, man, not me.”

  “Not interested,” I bluffed.

  “I throw in something else for nothing.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Sure. Picture of a guy.”

  “What guy?”

  “Guy who killed your other woman.”

  In the ten seconds it took for me to answer him, my mind tried to calculate every single risk in the known universe for making this crazy transaction. All I got was a buzzing sound in my ears.

  “I want to have a look at them first,” I said.

  “Okay, that’s okay. Tonight.”

  “All right, you listen. I’m not going to go anywhere where I might get my head kicked again or have some low-level slime try to take me out. We’re going to meet in a public place with lots of people around, and I’m going to be armed and if I decide I don’t like you I may shoot you in the leg.”

  “Eh?”

  “And if I decide I don’t like the pictures, I’m not going to give you anything. If I do decide I want some for whatever reason, I’ll give you two hundred dollars.”

  “No way—”

  “Take it or leave it, man.”

  Pause. “Where?”

  I thought it over and pulled out a business card I had in my desk. It was red with gold raised lettering. Mongoose. A club in the little enclave of Los Angeles known as Koreatown.

  I gave him the address and told him eight o’clock, and to come alone.

  “You come alone too, man,” he said.

  70

  FOR ABOUT TWENTY minutes I sat there trying to calm down. Pictures? If this guy had pictures of Channing with Barocas, I didn’t know what I was going to do. It would mean she lied to me, or at least concealed something she should have told me.

  Could it be she was spilling her reporter’s guts to Barocas? Feeding him information about me? Were they in on something together?

  And what about this picture of the guy who supposedly killed Jacqueline? Could that even be possible?

  Yes, this all could be another way to set me up, but I had to know, had to let this play out. So it was going to be on my terms. And that included a little insurance.

  I went to Al’s office. He had his feet propped on his desk and was flipping through California Lawyer.

  “Hey, dude, what’s up?” he said.

  I closed his door. “You own a gun, right?”

  “What’s that?”

  “You told me once you owned a gun.”

  “Yeah. I’m going to kill Adrienne with it.”

  “I’m not kidding around. I need to borrow it.”

  Al pulled his feet off the desk, got up, came around, and put his hand on my shoulder. “What have you got going on, man?”

  “I can’t tell you right now. Can you let me borrow it?”

  “No way.”

  “Please.”

  “You know what would happen if McDonough found out you were, as they used to say, packing heat?”

  “Why should he know?”

  “Because if you shoot someone I think he’s going to hear about it.”

  “It’s for my protection.”

  Al shook his head and puffed some air. “Do you even know how to use a pistol?”

  “Pull the trigger.”

  “And shoot your toe off. Do you realize you can’t carry without a permit?”

  “Of course. So when can I pick it up?”

  “Maybe over the weekend, you can come to the range with me and I’ll show you—”

  “No,” I said, “I need it tonight.”

  “Can I say something, pal?”

  “No.”

  “This is not exactly lawyerly behavior, I got to tell you.”

  “Will you trust me this one time?” I said. “Will you just trust me that I really, really need this favor?”

  Al’s usually fun-filled face got serious. “My friend, I am worried about you. Please—”

  “Don’t be. Just do me this favor.”

  “You sound like Don Corleone now.”

  “I don’t care who I sound like.”

  “Have you thought what would happen if you did actually fire my gun into some joker? That maybe I could get in trouble, too?”

  “So what’s your answer?”

  Al rolled his eyes. “I know I’m going to hate myself in the morning.”

  71

  KOREATOWN IS IN the middle of Los Angeles, a couple square miles of city near the mid-Wilshire District. I took Wilshire to Normandie and turned left, heading into the heart of K-Town. I was told once you can tell Korean script from Chinese because it’s mostly straight lines—sticks—and O’s. And that’s what you have here, up and down the corridor.

  For some reason they like clubs in this neighborhood, and at night the liquor flows and the people roam and you get a feel that’s a little like New York, only without the chip on its shoulder.

  Mongoose I knew because I’d been to it a few times before with an associate from O’Melveny named Ted Pak. We met when Ted was at Southwestern Law, which was just a legal brief’s throw from the club. Mongoose was half a block off Normandie. I found a spot on the street to park, an omen of good luck.

  Or so I thought at the time.

  I sat in the car for a moment, looking around to see if anyone was watching me. Didn’t look that way. So I slipped my hand under the towel on the passenger seat and took hold of Al’s gun.

  Al had loaded the thing fo
r me after another attempt to talk me out of it. He explained it was an eight and one, which added up to nine, which was how many rounds it held. Showed me how to cock it with the slide and decock it so I wouldn’t shoot my toe off.

  But if I had to shoot, just pull the trigger all the way back and fire. Just make sure the gun is pointed at the guy you want to shoot, and if you are ever fool enough to do that, Al said, don’t get caught because you’ll end up in the slam.

  Holding the weapon was not like I expected. I expected to be nervous. Maybe I was, a little, but it was more like the anticipation I used to feel before playing a big game in high school. The stands are packed as you run out on the court, the hot steamy feel of the gym, the opposing team shooting layups on the other side of the line and getting ready to do the most damage they can to your team.

  We all take a stand on one side of the line or the other, and sometimes the ones on the other side want to put some hurt on you. I wasn’t going to wait for that to be done to me anymore. If it came down to it, I would be the one laying on the hurt. It was a weird feeling, but as real as the hip-hop vibration from the club across the street. It was pounding deep inside me now and I could let it out, turn up the volume if I had to, and I wouldn’t think twice until the deed was done. Having a gun was a deadlier form of having an elbow ready on the basketball court. Animal instinct would unloose it. But unloose it I would if I had to.

  I knew I was a different Ty Buchanan from the one who started law school a decade earlier, when the law was all bound up in books and high-flying rhetoric and the noble pursuit of justice. That was all a naïve lifetime ago.

  I watched the Mongoose doorman in my rearview mirror for a while, observing his patdown technique. Open your coat, then down the sides, that was it. I leaned forward and stuck the gun in the back of my pants like I’d seen them do it in the movies.

  Then I took a deep breath and got out of the car.

  72

  THE BAR HAD a retro, Rat Pack vibe. It was a popular place for after-work suits to hang. It also wouldn’t be hard for me to spot a Latino messenger, even though the Latino population had grown in K-Town over the last decade. But they had their own clubs farther east.

  The crowd tonight was mostly Asian with a good mix of white clubbers. I took a table where I could keep watch on the front door. Mongoose had a couple of jukes, three plasma TVs on the wall, and a dartboard. Upstairs were several rooms with multiple screens for “serious karaoke,” but I have never been able to put serious and karaoke into a sentence without laughing out loud.

  A cocktail waitress in a red silk blouse with a gold mongoose stitched on the front threw a square napkin on my table and asked what I wanted. I ordered a Coke. I wanted a clear head. She smiled with practiced courtesy and went off to get it.

  As I waited I looked around and watched a couple of guys darting it out with all the seriousness of bomb defusers. Nobody looked like they were looking for me, but I had this vision of McDonough walking in. He’d see me and come over without a smile and say, What are you doing here, Ty? And I’d say I’m waiting for a guy and I have a gun in my pants. Can I buy you a drink?

  The waitress came back with the Coke. It was eight-thirty-five.

  At eight-fifty a cute A-girl stopped at my table and said with a lilt, “You come here often, baby?”

  She had short black hair and wore a tight black dress. Her eyes were dark and her lips red and playful. It had been a long time since I’d been picked up. The attempt was sort of nice, reminding me that I was still human.

  “Not exactly,” I said.

  “You don’t look it.”

  “Look what?”

  “Like you come here often.”

  “Good call.” I took a sip of Coke.

  She didn’t move. “Dancing?”

  “Not tonight, thanks.”

  “Drinking?”

  “Alone.”

  “Aw, poor baby.”

  “Poor baby,” I said. “That’s me.”

  “Don’t have to be.”

  I said nothing. She pulled a chair next to me and sat down.

  “Really,” I said. “Not tonight.”

  “Don’t like what you see?”

  Now I started to wonder if she was a pro. “I like it fine,” I said. “I’m just waiting for someone.”

  She winked. “Don’t believe you. You look like you could use good company.”

  “Persistent little minx, aren’t you?” Sounding like Bill Murray in Ghostbusters.

  She slid closer.

  “Is this where I buy you a drink?” I said.

  “Thank you.”

  “Please. Don’t take this personally, but I’m really meeting someone for business and—”

  “Good,” she said. “After business, pleasure.”

  She slipped her hand down my back and stopped when she felt the gun. Her face changed from playful to surprised; then a frown line split her forehead. “Where you at, honey?”

  “Told you,” I said. “Business.”

  She stood up quickly and I grabbed her wrist. “Just between us, right?”

  “Let go of me.”

  “Right?”

  She slapped me with her other hand. I didn’t let go. “What happened to pleasure?” I said.

  She tried to slap me again, but I caught it with my left hand. “I mean it,” I said. “Just leave now and be quiet about it and everything’ll be fine.”

  She struggled in my grip, and that’s when a hand with steel fingers grabbed my shoulder.

  I let go of the girl. She cursed and said to the hand, “Get him out.”

  “Come on,” the hand said. I looked up into a wide, cinder-block face with chiseled features. Even his lips seemed to have muscles.

  “I’m meeting somebody.”

  “Not here you’re not.”

  He grabbed a handful of my coat and pulled me up. I knocked his hand away. He showed remarkable restraint in not pushing my face into my brain. But he looked like he’d do it at the next sign of resistance.

  “I’m walking out,” I said. The girl watched me with the satisfaction of a pro scorned.

  Mr. Cinder Block escorted me to the door as a few of the clubbers applauded. I was the evening’s best entertainment so far, I guessed. Even better than karaoke.

  The bouncer watched to make sure I headed away from the club. I went about twenty yards at a slow clip, then leaned against the wall. Hip-hop was still pounding away, making me want to rip out somebody’s lungs and use them to muffle the speakers.

  I heard a retching sound and saw a kid on his knees in front of a store with a locked grill. That, I thought, was a perfect metaphor for the night I was having. When the kid was finished he stood up, rocked a little unsteadily in his grunge togs, then saw me looking at him.

  “What up?” he said. At least that’s what it sounded like, then he walked on down the street looking for more adventures in fine living.

  I stood there for another fifteen minutes or so, making sure people walking by could see me and I them. But nobody with any pictures showed up.

  Somebody’d just played me, making me dance like a puppet. Maybe he was watching me from a car right now, laughing.

  I got back to my car and made a U and got back on Normandie. I drove up to Hollywood Boulevard and hung a left and just drove, thinking, wondering what I could do with Al’s gun. Now I was in the mood to shoot something.

  Maybe the marquee at the Pantages, or the Kodak. Or maybe the Triunfo place. I turned left on Vine and drove past it. It was locked up for the night, dark. But I had the feeling somebody was inside all the time, looking out, maybe seeing my face right now.

  Instead of shooting out the windows I continued down to where Vine turns into Rossmore and intersects Wilshire. I drove west and just kept on going.

  A long night drive to clear my head. It didn’t work.

  73

  AL WAS ALL over me the next morning, wanting to know what happened at the “Gunfight at OK Corral.”<
br />
  “A big fat nothing,” I said. “But thanks for the loan anyway.”

  “I’m very disappointed,” Al said. We were in my office. A hint of rain outside. That would bring trouble, because people just don’t know how to drive in L.A. in the rain. It freaks them out and makes them crazier than they already are.

  But who was I to talk about crazy?

  “Where’d you stow it?” Al said.

  “At Jacqueline’s mother’s house. You can have it anytime you want.”

  “Good. Adrienne’s right on the edge.”

  “Quit joking about that, will you?” I put my head back on the chair and looked at the ceiling.

  “You going to tell me what’s going on now? Why you think you need to play Mel Gibson?”

  “It’s better you don’t know. It’s better you help me stay sane and keep my job.”

  “This sounds like a serious call for a pitcher of maggies—”

  “Not tonight,” I said.

  “Soon then.”

  “Sure.”

  Al paused then said, “You sure you’re okay?”

  “Someday I will tell all.”

  Kim buzzed and said, in a breathless way over the speaker, that two Los Angeles police detectives wanted to see me.

  Al looked at me. “You sure you didn’t shoot somebody?”

  “What is this about?” I mumbled, getting up and starting for the door.

  “Make ’em read you your rights,” Al said.

  “Shut up.”

  The two detectives—one about my height, the other shorter by a head—were standing at Kim’s cubicle just outside my door. Pierce Patrick McDonough stood with them, his arms folded.

  “This is Tyler Buchanan,” McDonough said to the detectives.

  “I’m Ben Sayer,” the tall one said. He had salt-and-pepper hair, a matching moustache, and a serious chest. “This is Mike Bloch. We’re with Wilshire Division. Is there somewhere we can talk?”

  “Take the conference room,” McDonough offered. His eyes offered me something else. A thorough clock cleaning.

  Kim brought in three Styrofoam cups of office joe. She looked worried. I told her Thanks in a way that tried to give her a comfort I did not enjoy.

  When we were all settled in like a Bible study, Detective Sayer asked, “What kind of law you practice, Mr. Buchanan?”