Try Dying

by James Scott Bell

  I shook my head. “Thanks for coming. I mean, that was real nice of you. But if you’re here to save my soul or something like that, that’s not exactly on my plate right now.”

  “I didn’t say anything about your soul. But anytime . . .”

  “Right.”

  “Merton also said that only the man who has had to face despair can be truly free.”

  “What did this guy do, sit around all day saying things?”

  “He lived in a hermitage. He had lots of time.”

  “Like me.”

  “Is there anything I can do for you?”

  “Sure. Bring me one of your holy fruitcakes with a file in it.”

  Father Bob laughed. He apparently appreciated gallows humor. “You’ll be out of here soon enough.”

  “Not if the prosecutor has anything to say about it. They actually think I did it.”

  “So does half the city.”

  “Thank you.”

  “But I don’t.”

  I studied his face. It was a good face, the kind you’d want around if you were looking for faces to comfort you. “Why not?” I said, suddenly interested.

  “It’s just an instinct. I’ve spent a lot of years looking people in the eyes. Some can fool you. I don’t think you’re one of those people.”

  “If it matters, I really didn’t do it.”

  “I believe you.”

  “Great. That makes three of us. You, me, and my lawyer. Now if I can just get you on the jury.”

  “Do you have representation?” he asked.

  “Marty Latourette.”

  “The Silver Bullet?”

  Now I laughed. “I guess you’ve really arrived when the Catholic Church knows your nickname.”

  Father Bob said, “If you need anything when you get out, you know where to find me. I don’t often venture this far.”

  “How’d you get here?”

  “Sister Mary Veritas. She’s the best driver we have.”

  “All right,” I said.

  “Hm?”

  “You and the good sister can do me a favor.”

  “Name it.”

  “Send up some prayers.”

  “Ah. So maybe you do believe in God.”

  “Let’s just say I want to cover all my bases.”

  Father Bob smiled. “You know, when Constantine was a Roman general, he faced off against a rival, Macentius, at the battle of Milvain Bridge. Had a vision of Jesus, so the story goes, and came up with a Christian symbol to put on his men’s shields. He was a pagan, but he was also covering all his bases. He won the battle, and came to power as emperor and made Christianity the official religion of Rome.”

  “Order me a toga,” I said. “Preferably one without stripes.”

  79

  BACK IN MY cell I kept trying to think about what Father Bob said about despair and being free. Sitting on the stainless steel can, looking at three walls and a door, I found it hard to believe.

  What I really found out was how easy it was to go crazy. They used to call prisons penitentiaries. They’d stick you in your box and have you sit there alone, thinking of your sins, until you repented.

  Most of the time prisoners went nuts.

  Because your mind doesn’t click off. It starts playing games with you. It gets the idea that now that you haven’t got anything to concentrate on, no work to do, it can come out and pretty much zigzag wherever it wants.

  And if it zigs to a place you don’t want it to go it laughs and keeps on going there, like to Jacqueline’s face the time we had our first blowout.

  We were at her apartment and she was making dinner for me. Italian. Sausages and sauce and pasta. I’d come from the office after a particularly bad day. One of our clients had screamed and yelled about a contrary ruling on a motion. McDonough was the one who’d signed off on it, but I’d done the bulk of the research and writing, and McDonough let me take most of the heat.

  So I was in a foul mood, and Jacqueline was happy because her fifth graders had all behaved themselves on a field trip to the Gene Autry Western Museum. She wanted to tell me all about it, and I didn’t want to hear.

  She kissed me and said it couldn’t be all that bad, and I said it was, and she said listen to what Armand said about the stuffed horse, and I said I didn’t care what Armand said about the stuffed horse.

  And Jacqueline stepped back and looked at me like she didn’t know me.

  I kept jabbing at her and eventually it made her cry and she fought back and then we made up.

  But it was her look saying that she didn’t know me that I kept seeing in my mind as I lay there in the cell. It was worse than the crying face, because I didn’t want Jacqueline to not know me.

  That would be my idea of hell.

  Her face just kept coming back, though, until I screamed and hit the wall with my fist. The pain helped. For about ten minutes.

  80

  ON SUNDAYS THE K-10’s get forty minutes for a single visitor if anybody wants to see them. I wasn’t expecting anybody. My arraignment was set for the next day, Monday, and Marty Latourette would meet me at the courthouse.

  But then I got the word that I had a visitor. As I wasn’t going anywhere, I let them chain me up and take me down to the visiting room.

  Seated on the other side of the Plexiglas was Agent Rubén Cisneros. I picked up the handset.

  “What are you doing in there?” he said.

  “I’m having a little disagreement with the prosecutor and somebody who is setting me up for murder, but other than that, everything’s cool.”

  “Setting you up? Like who?”

  “I wouldn’t want to mention any names, like Rudy Barocas, so I won’t.”

  “What a coincidence,” Cisneros said. “That’s the very name I wanted to talk to you about.”

  “I got nothing but time.”

  “Imagine my surprise to learn that you had been arrested for murdering a popular television reporter. You don’t seem the type. But now you’re big news.”

  “I haven’t been keeping up on myself lately.”

  “Oh yeah. You’re the next big thing in celebrity defendants.”

  “Great. When do I get a book deal?”

  “When you’re acquitted. If you’re convicted, they won’t let you collect any money on a book. Some First Amendment we got, huh?”

  “For what it’s worth, I didn’t do it. I didn’t kill her.”

  “You get representation?”

  “Marty Latourette.”

  Cisneros smiled broadly. “Now this case has everything. Sexy victim, ambitious young lawyer, and the Silver Bullet.”

  “I can do without any of it. I just want to get out of here and away from everything and never come out again.”

  “That’s what prison’ll do.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Tell me what happened.”

  Well, I guessed it wouldn’t hurt to have the Secret Service looking into this. I said, “I think maybe Channing Westerbrook was looking at Rudy Barocas a little too closely. Like I was. I think Barocas figured out a way to get rid of two annoyances. And here I sit.”

  “That would have to be a pretty elaborate setup.”

  “Anything is possible in America. Isn’t that what Barocas is always spouting about?”

  Cisneros nodded.

  “He followed me to Channing’s apartment the other night,” I said. “I went to see her, to talk about the story we were working on, and—”

  “Followed you?”

  “I came out and one of his guys was standing there, waiting for me.”

  “What’d this guy look like?”

  “Nice clothes, about thirty or so, strong, clipped moustache.”

  “Vargas,” Cisneros said. “Enrique Vargas. Barocas’s bodyguard. Used to run with the Lobos crew out of Eagle Rock. Very bad dude.”

  “Another one of Barocas’s success stories?”

  “If you believe the press releases. So what else makes you think Baroc
as had Channing Westerbrook killed?”

  “He had somebody call me up and set up a meeting, and I was stupid enough to fall for it. So I’m sitting waiting for nobody at the same time they’re killing Channing and leaving her body to be found.”

  “There’s the little matter of the blood.”

  I stared at him a moment. “What blood? The detectives said she died of asphyxiation.”

  “I talked to the D.A.’s office. Talked to ’em within an hour of when I heard you’d been popped. I may be telling you something your lawyer doesn’t even know yet.”

  “Tell me.”

  “They found blood on a blouse in her apartment. You know anything about that?”

  The back of my neck heated up again. “She gave me a good scratch Wednesday night. I don’t believe this! Is that my blood?”

  “If they match the DNA, you know what that means. The CSI effect.”

  The visitor’s room got real cold all of a sudden. “You mean a jury is going to think it’s a slam dunk against me because of DNA, just like on TV?”

  “That’s it.” Cisneros leaned a little closer to the glass. “I don’t think you did this. I know Barocas, and I know he could have set this up without much effort at all. The only problem is proving it.”

  “You have any ideas, I’m open.”

  “Why I came down here. I got some people might be able to look into some things. But I don’t want you to say anything to anybody, not even your lawyer. Not yet. Think you can do that?”

  “Not talk to a lawyer? Yeah, I think I can do that.”

  81

  EARLY MONDAY MORNING they put several of us on the sheriff’s shuttle to the criminal courts building on Temple Street, then took us up by private elevator to the fourth floor. The fourth held no courtrooms and allowed no public. It was a custodial floor. They held incarcerated defendants here before they appeared in court. The others on the ride got a community cell. I got an isolated as befit my keep away status. It was about four by eight, with an aluminum toilet and sink, dim, with a metal mesh over the lights. The walls were industrial green, dulled by time. Gang symbols and initials were scratched into the walls.

  They had the air-conditioning cranked up, as if we had to be preserved like meat before our appearances. The gate was plain jail bars, with a waist-high opening for stuff to pass through.

  The only thing that passed through it was air. At some point a deputy sheriff opened the gate and attached my shackles and took me to a stairway and up one floor. He passed me through a thick door and into the box of Division 30, the felony arraignment court.

  I felt like Liza Minnelli making another comeback. The courtroom gallery was full, and I could tell immediately that a cordoned section was for reporters. This bevy started scratching and mumbling as soon as they saw me. A TV camera had its eye aimed at me.

  The box was where a jury would have sat if this were a trial court. But it wasn’t, and this box was like a bullpen. There were nine wooden benches, worn down by countless criminal butts over the years. Plexiglas with a chin-high opening for lawyer chats spread across the front of the box.

  I shouldn’t have been surprised. This was the hot story in town.

  I sat on one of the benches—I was alone in the pen—and looked at the two long tables facing each other in the center of the courtroom. Behind each were lawyers and paralegals for the public defender’s and D.A.’s offices. There were computer monitors and printers on each desk, and papers strewn all over.

  The Silver Bullet was nowhere to be seen. Probably waiting to make a grand entrance.

  There was no one on the bench. I stared at the sign on the opposite wall.

  Communication With Custodies is Forbidden by Law

  La Ley Prohibe Communicarse Con Las Presos (4570 P.C.)

  82

  A LITTLE BEFORE nine by the clock on the back wall, my lawyer strode into the courtroom. He caused a stir like Springsteen entering a concert stage. At least the attention was turned away from me for the moment.

  He had an amazing presence, seeming to hold title to the courthouse. He was dressed in a black suit, the better to offset his hair.

  Behind him was a woman who looked like she’d stepped off the UCLA cheerleading squad and into a dark blue pinstripe suit. She had long dusky hair and brown eyes, and it was clear she was associated with Marty.

  After Marty gave the glad hand to a couple of the lawyers, he came to the pen and motioned me over.

  “How you doing?” he said.

  “I’d rather be in Philadelphia.”

  “No you wouldn’t. I tried a case in Philadelphia once. Lost. They don’t know what they’re doing out there. This is L.A. Here we win.” He looked at my jail scrubs. “Sorry about the uni. I requested plain clothes but got turned down. Commissioner K is in a foul mood this morning.”

  I looked at the woman.

  “This is Gabrielle Galloway,” Marty said. “My assistant.”

  “Hi,” I said.

  She nodded, all business.

  Marty said, “From now on you’ll be in a good suit. Today, just keep your head up like you’ve got nothing to be sorry about.”

  I looked over his shoulder and saw a formidable looking woman in a gray power suit looking at a file. “Is that the prosecutor?”

  Marty nodded without turning to see. “Usually they have an arraignment deputy for these things. But not when Marie Antoinette Rocha is on the case.”

  I’d heard of her. She had a nickname. The Dragon Lady. Terrific. The Dragon Lady and the Silver Bullet. I felt like I was in a comic book. Two superheroes about to face off with fire flying from their mouths.

  They were opposites. Where Marty Latourette was tall with white hair slicked back, Marie Antoinette Rocha was short with her black hair coiffed high. But she looked like she could take up the whole courtroom if she wanted to. Expando Woman.

  Marty explained a few things to me about what was going to happen and what I should say and how I should act. Then he said, “Just leave everything else to me.”

  A moment later the commissioner came in looking like he would rather have been in Philadelphia, too.

  Kenneth Khachatoorian was his name. He looked twenty years old. Arraignment court is not exactly a plum assignment, and more experienced judges avoid it. It’s left to the new kids on the block, usually lawyers employed by the county as commissioners, sort of judges lite.

  Commissioner K had olive skin and dark hair and eyebrows like feather dusters. He sat in the leather chair beneath the Great Seal of the State of California mounted on the wall.

  “Case number BA-361626, People v. Tyler Buchanan,” he intoned.

  Marty took two steps to keep in line with the TV camera. “Martin Latourette for the defendant, Your Honor. We will waive a reading of the complaint and statement of rights and are ready to enter a plea.”

  Commissioner K looked at the Dragon Lady. “Is there any reason why a plea should not be taken at this time, Ms. Rocha?”

  “No, your honor,” the Dragon Lady said with a theatrical tone.

  “Mr. Buchanan, has your lawyer explained to you the charge and your constitutional rights?”

  “Yes, your honor,” I said.

  “And do you understand those rights?”

  “Yes I do.”

  “Do you waive your right to have this court explain them to you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you ready to enter a plea?”

  “Yes.”

  “You are charged with violation of Penal Code section 187, murder, one count. To this charge how do you plead?”

  “Not guilty.”

  “Very well,” said the commissioner. “Do we have an agreeable date for preliminary hearing?”

  “We’d like waive time,” Marty Latourette said. News to me.

  “Mr. Buchanan, you understand you have the right to a preliminary hearing within ten days?”

  “Sure.”

  “Do you waive that right?”

 
“How many rights am I waiving today?” I said, generating some twitters in the gallery. But I was serious.

  Marty leaned toward me and whispered, “Just say Yes.”

  I whispered back, “I don’t want to sit in the can for who knows how long.”

  “Don’t worry, I’m getting you out.”

  “Mr. Buchanan,” Commissioner K said. “Do you waive your right to a statutory prelim?”

  “Might as well,” I said.

  “Is that a Yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Counsel join?”

  “Yes,” Marty said.

  “Now was that so hard? How does May 8 sound for coming back here to set a prelim?”

  Gabrielle looked at her PDA, tapped it a couple of times with a stylus, then nodded at Marty.

  “That works for us,” he said.

  “Ms. Rocha?”

  “Good for us, too,” she said.

  “Mr. Latourette, do you want to be heard on the matter of bail?”

  “You bet I do,” Marty said.

  “As you know, the presumptive bail is a million dollars. Do your best, Mr. Latourette.”

  “Your honor, this is a murder accusation,” Marty said, “and I fully understand that substantial bail must be applied. That’s what we are ready to comply with. A million is too much, of course, but a good quarter of that is more than enough to ensure my client’s presence at trial, in addition to my own persuasive powers.”

  “Legendary as they are,” Commissioner K said.

  “Need I say more?”

  “Some mitigation would be nice.”

  “It’s quite clear, your honor. Mr. Buchanan has substantial ties to the community. He’s been employed for five years by a prestigious law firm. He has no record, so there is no reason to suppose any future violent conduct. He also owns a residential property. He is certainly no flight risk. If this were not a murder charge, O.R. would be almost automatic.”

  “Well, why don’t we let Ms. Rocha give it her best shot, as long as she’s made the effort to be here.”

  Marty bowed slightly and backed up to the pen. I thought I was in the first row of a dinner theater.

  And now it was the Dragon Lady’s turn before the camera.

  “This is quite extraordinary, Your Honor. Mr. Latourette apparently believes his powers of persuasion are enough to offset the bail schedule and the heinous nature of the crime. I’m sure the court will pardon the People of the State of California if we take a different view. That view is that this will be treated as a first degree murder and that the defendant has the resources to make him a flight risk. He is not married, and he no longer resides at his home, because it burned down recently. We would ask that bail be denied.”