Try Dying

by James Scott Bell

  “And you know Channing invited me up to her apartment a week ago and I left after that. I think you know even more. I think you watched me after I left.”

  It was a guess but apparently a good one because he put the phone back.

  “You saw me talking to a guy, didn’t you?” I said.

  “I’m not interested in you or anything you say.”

  “What did you tell the cops? What did you tell Detective Sayer? Did you mention that I was talking to a guy? Did you mention the Hummer sitting right across the street?”

  “I don’t know about any Hummer.”

  “I don’t think you’re being up front with me, Pete.”

  “Stop calling me Pete.”

  “What do you prefer?”

  “That you get out.”

  “I didn’t kill her. Look at me. I did not kill her.”

  “I don’t know what you did. But I’m not gonna talk to you about it.”

  “Just tell me what you saw. If you saw what you saw, it’s just a fact, right? I don’t care if you tell the cops or the D.A. or Good Morning, America.”

  “I didn’t see anything. This is a private building. You have to leave now.”

  “I’m not ready to leave yet. I—”

  The elevator in the lobby opened then, and an older woman in a running suit and blue baseball cap stepped out. She looked about seventy or so. She paused outside the doors and an even older woman emerged. This one also wore running togs and carried a cane.

  They linked arms and walked toward us.

  “Good morning, Samuel,” the younger older woman said.

  “Good morning,” the security guard formerly known as Pete said.

  The older woman nodded at him.

  The younger smiled at me and was about to say something when she frowned, as if she recognized me.

  “Good morning,” I said.

  “New tenant?” she asked.

  Samuel jumped in. “I’m dealing with it, Mrs. Morrison.”

  “Dealing with what?” the older woman asked.

  Mrs. Morrison turned to the older and said, “It’s nothing, Mother.”

  “Out for a run?” I asked.

  “Wait a second,” Samuel interrupted. “You talk to me, not them.”

  “Samuel, what’s the matter?” Mrs. Morrison said.

  “What’s wrong?” the mother asked.

  “Nothing’s wrong, Mother.”

  “Who is that?”

  “A new tenant.”

  Samuel said, “He’s not a new tenant, Mrs. Morrison. Shall I get the door for you?”

  “I’ll get it,” I said and before Samuel could emerge from his horseshoe I headed for the entrance.

  “What a nice young man,” the mother said.

  I opened the door and the two shuffled past me. I followed them out to the sidewalk.

  “Going for a little exercise?” I said.

  “Oh yes,” Mrs. Morrison said.

  “Would you mind if I asked you something?”

  “When are you moving in?”

  Samuel was at the door now. “You don’t have to talk to him, Mrs. Morrison.”

  She gave him a hard look. “That’s not the way to treat the new tenants, Samuel.”

  “He’s not—”

  “Go on.” Mrs. Morrison waved him away. He slunk back inside.

  “He gets a little snippy,” she explained.

  “He’s rude,” Mother added. “And he needs a woman.”

  Mrs. Morrison shook her head.

  90

  THE MID-AFTERNOON TRAFFIC was light on La Cienega. The sun was out. Good time for a stroll, but the ladies didn’t seem anxious to get on with it. I think I was a novelty for them.

  “You’ll like this building,” said Mrs. Morrison. She had an elfin face that must have made Mr. Morrison very happy at one time. I wondered what had happened to him. You could see the mother in the daughter, too.

  “I’m not moving in,” I said.

  “What’s that?”

  “I want to ask you about Channing Westerbrook.”

  A short silence passed, then the mother piped in, “She was murdered!”

  I nodded.

  “They arrested a man,” Mrs. Morrison said. “A lawyer.”

  “Saw it on the TV,” Mom said. “I hope they hang him.”

  Mrs. Morrison whispered, “Mother believes in the death penalty, but I don’t.”

  “I’m glad to hear that,” I said.

  “Did you know Miss Westerbrook?”

  “I did, actually.”

  “Lovely girl. She needed a good man. I didn’t care for some of the men.”

  “Did you see her with many men?”

  Daughter looked at mother, then back at me. “She wasn’t a loose woman, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Mom said.

  “She wasn’t!” Mrs. Morrison shook her head at her mother, then came back to me. “How well did you know her?”

  “Just starting,” I said.

  “Did you have the hots for her?” Mom said with a wry smile.

  “Professional,” I answered. “I was helping her with a story. But maybe one of those men can help me. Can you describe any of them?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Mrs. Morrison. “I’m not a snoop.”

  “Curly hair,” Mom said.

  I looked at her. “How’s that?”

  She wiggled wrinkled fingers over her head. “Curly. One of ’em had curly hair. I saw him once.”

  Her daughter shook her head, annoyed.

  “He came out of her place,” Mom insisted.

  “Anything else?” I said.

  “Hanky panky,” Mom said.

  “You don’t know that,” Mrs. Morrison said.

  “I could tell.”

  “Anything besides curly hair?” I asked. “Color?”

  Mom said, “Brown, I think. Or maybe blond.”

  “We need to go,” Mrs. Morrison said. “Very nice meeting you Mr. . . .”

  “Call me Ty,” I said.

  “Good-bye, Mr. Ty,” Mrs. Morrison said.

  “Come back and see us anytime,” Mom said.

  Not likely. They were nice enough but of no help. Curly hair of uncertain color. A million guys in the city could fit that. For some reason, though, I thought of one in particular. Because, depending on your interpretation of curly, you might be able to get away with saying that Frank Trudeau had a head like that. I had a distinct picture of it in my mind from the day he went nose to nose with me after Dyan’s deposition. He sure had a killer look in his eye that day.

  When I got back to Fran’s, I drove up on some bad news—the News.

  There was a little media camp outside Fran’s house. A couple of vans, two guys with cameras.

  One of them being Greg Beck.

  When they spotted me in the car, the cameras turned and the reporters, one man and one woman, started running toward me.

  Instead of pulling to the curb as I’d intended, I shot straight past them and kept going.

  I saw the cameras pointing at me in the rearview mirror.

  Now what?

  In L.A. some people live in their cars. Even lawyers. I remembered reading about a homeless lawyer who’d managed to get a case to the Supreme Court, all while living out of his ten-year-old Caddie. If I holed up in my Cabriolet, I could just consider it a studio apartment.

  Right.

  I called Fran and told her to stay inside. Then I drove up Reseda Boulevard, headed absolutely nowhere. I could see the Santa Susana Mountains to the north, it was a clear day. Clear enough to present a solution to my immediate problems.

  91

  SISTER MARY VERITAS looked up from the Mac laptop on the antique desk and almost jumped out of her habit.

  “Mr. Buchanan,” she said.

  “Hi.”

  “Um, welcome.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “I’m sorry.” She stood up and came around the de
sk. “I didn’t expect to see you.”

  “Why not?”

  “Your troubles have been widely reported.”

  “You’re following my case?”

  She gave a nod to the Mac. “I keep up with what’s happening in the city. It’s part of my service.”

  “The crime beat?”

  “The heartbeat. If we’re going to be any earthly good to the community, we need to take the pulse, don’t you think?”

  “Sure.”

  “And right now you’re big news.”

  “Guilty,” I said. “No, let me rephrase—”

  “No need. The presumption of innocence does not contravene Catholic teaching.”

  An inner door opened and a woman in her mid-fifties stepped in. She held a sheaf of papers in her hand and was already speaking. “Sister Mary, I thought the quarterly report for—”

  She saw me and stopped. She was dressed in a plain white blouse and brown slacks and what my grandmother would have called sensible shoes. Her face was grim and had no make-up. I figured her for some sort of controller or accountant.

  But then Sister Mary Veritas said, “This is Mr. Buchanan. Mr. Buchanan, our congregational leader, Sister Hildegarde.”

  Sister? She was out of uniform.

  “May I help you?” Sister Hildegarde said.

  “I was wondering if I might see Father Robert.”

  “Is there anything I can help you with?”

  “I think so.”

  “And that is?”

  “Father Bob, Robert, was telling me about your fine order.” I tried hard not to sound like Eddie Haskell. “And your dedication to hospitality.”

  At that the leader looked at Sister Mary, like both of them knew exactly what was coming.

  “I have the need for a place to stay,” I said. “And that’s why I’m here.”

  Sister Hildegarde frowned as wheels turned in her head.

  Sister Mary Veritas immediately said, “That is our calling, Mr. Buchanan. You are welcome here.”

  At which the leader glowered, then said, “Summon Father Robert.”

  Sister Mary headed for the door.

  92

  “I NEED TO kind of lay low for a while,” I told Father Bob. “Isn’t this place like a sanctuary?”

  He smiled. “You mean like in The Hunchback of Notre Dame?”

  “Whatever works.”

  “Those days are gone, my friend. Cops can even grab our private papers now. Forget the priest–penitent privilege. If they want to prosecute a priest, anything goes.”

  We were standing outside his trailer. The smell of sage from the hills was strong on the warm north wind. Father Bob was dressed for the weather, in a black T-shirt and blue jeans. “So what do I do? They rent out rooms here or anything?”

  He paused a moment. “See that trailer? That used to be where Father Maximilian lived. He’s now running a drug rehab program in San Francisco. It’s open. Would that do?”

  “I think it might do just fine.”

  “Then it’s yours. There is no charge.”

  93

  WHEN I WAS a kid I had a friend, Tony Paige, who lived with his mom in a trailer in a little park with a lot of other trailers with old people in them. We were friends from school and I never knew why his dad had run off or what his mom did to keep food on the table. When you’re eight, you don’t think about those things as much as you do about bikes and firecrackers and spit wads. But I do remember being in there once when Tony’s mom was out and he was making a mustard sandwich and the smell of the mustard filled the trailer. I felt like it was the smallest place in the world all of a sudden. How could anybody live there, let alone a kid and his mother? I suddenly got very sad, for Tony and his mom and anybody who had to live in a trailer, because you couldn’t get away from the smell of the mustard or the walls. I remember thinking if I ever had to live in a place like this I’d feel like I was in jail.

  All that came back to me as I sat in the trailer that was now my temporary home. It had nothing but faded flower curtains on the small window and a plain mattress on the bed that looked like it had come from Alcatraz.

  It was almost funny. Well-off lawyer with a nice house and beautiful fiancée, in the space of a couple of months is reduced to an unfurnished trailer in the hills above L.A. Among the Catholics yet.

  There had to be a comedy in this somewhere.

  A knock on the door sounded like a fist hitting cardboard. It was Father Bob with some items in his arms.

  “Thought you might need some essentials,” he said. He came in and put the things on the Formica table. Two bottles of water, a couple of cans of chili, and a big blue can with a blue plastic cap. He held the blue can up. “This will get you through many a night, if you’re careful with it and don’t stuff yourself.”

  I took the can. It said Trader Joe’s Rosencrunch and Guildenpop gourmet sweet popcorn, almond and pecan clusters.

  “Try it if you don’t believe me,” Father Bob said.

  I pulled off the plastic cap and peeled back the sealed top by the ring. I offered him the first take, but he nodded at me. “You first.”

  It was nice of him to do this, but I didn’t expect anything sensational. I was wrong.

  “I can see by your face you approve,” Father Bob said. “See what I mean?”

  “Good,” I said.

  “Just the right balance of butter, sugar, and salt. A tango of crunch. Nut and popcorn across the dance floor of the tongue. It’s a symphony in the mouth, is it not?”

  “It’s Beethoven,” I said.

  “Gershwin.”

  “Tell me if I’m safe here.”

  Father Bob finished his crunch. He nodded slowly. “I think so. No one goes searching monasteries these days.”

  “Who runs this place? Who was that Sister Hildegarde?”

  “She is the Superior.”

  “Superior to what?”

  “Everybody else.”

  “Why doesn’t she dress like a nun?”

  With a wry smile, he said, “Sister Hildegarde is of my generation, the Baby Boomers. Among the Benedictines, many of the nuns grabbed hold of Vatican II and sixties social movements and started trying to be, how should I put it, relevant. The old nuns’ habits were a relic of the past. They decided to be a little more now.”

  “But Sister Mary, she’s a young one and wears the whole thing.”

  “Ah, but this new generation wants to go back to the good ways. They actually want to be Catholic. They want to be like the nuns before Vatican II. They call those nuns the Greatest Generation.”

  I shook my head. “Whatever, I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad I’m here. I’m going to need to sort things out without getting found.”

  “You are welcome in the place, my friend. You have clothes?”

  “Just some gym stuff in my trunk.”

  “I can get you fixed with some basics. We have a little thrift store down the hill.”

  “So if I talk to you, I want you to consider it privileged.”

  Father Bob nodded. “You don’t even have to ask.”

  “Maybe your set of eyes and ears can help me.”

  “Glad to try.”

  I stood up as if I were going to address a judge in court. “All right. My fiancée is driving down the freeway when a freak thing happens. A body falls on her car. That is pure chance, pure accident. But she’s alive. Someone gets to her almost immediately. It’s raining and people are confused, so no one gets out of their cars and no one reports seeing this man. Except a strange little guy who looks like a rat. He comes to see me at Jacqueline’s funeral. Are you getting this?”

  “I was with you up to the rat.”

  I explained to him as best I could. “I don’t know what his connection is, but I do think there’s a link to a group called Triunfo and the guy who runs it, Rudy Barocas. The man who shot himself and fell on Jacqueline’s car was part of this group, and the guy who got to the car was, too. He wanted to make sure the
dead guy was really dead. Maybe he had something on the group that they didn’t want to get out. Then he found Jacqueline alive and killed her so she couldn’t ID him.”

  Father Bob didn’t say anything, but his cogs were turning.

  “A reporter, Channing Westerbrook, was on the scene, so I contact her and convince her there’s something going on. She sees me as a story to follow and wants to turn it into a book maybe. So we strike up a bit of a deal. Exchange information. She also decides to make a play for me one night.”

  “A play?”

  “Who knows why. She had a little to drink. She ends up scratching my neck. Outside I find Rudy Barocas waiting for me. In a big old limo. I think maybe Channing had started sniffing around Triunfo and Barocas wanted it to stop. He wanted me to stop, too. So he sets it up to kill Channing and put it all on me. My blood is on her blouse. How convenient is that?”

  “Sounds almost too good to be true, if you’re the district attorney.”

  “That’s what I think.”

  “You didn’t kill this woman, did you?” He said it as if he believed in me, not like he was cross-examining.

  “No.”

  “Then we have to try to figure out who did.”

  “We?”

  “I haven’t got that much else to do. Say mass, solve murders. All in a day’s work.”

  “All respect, Father, but I don’t want you to get yourself in any trouble.”

  “Life is trouble,” he said. “Only death is not.”

  “Thomas Merton?”

  “Zorba the Greek.”

  At that we paused for a handful of Rosencrunch. Then I said, “I talked to David Townsend.”

  The look in Father Bob’s eyes almost cracked my chest. It was a mixture of such loss and sadness that I thought he might fall into it and never come out. But then he blinked it away and asked, “What happened?”

  “Nothing much,” I said, “except he put up a hard line and then tried to choke me.”

  “Choke you?”

  “He looked a little nuts. Also scared.”

  “Why?”

  “Somebody did some work on his face.”

  “Like plastic surgery?”

  “Like with knuckles.”

  “Beat up?”

  “Could be anything. Mugging. Lover’s quarrel. Or maybe he just fell down the stairs. I don’t know, but I had a feeling there was a connection between his face and my questions. That’s why he was scared.”