$200 and a Cadillac

by Fingers Murphy

  Ed Vargas stood with his hands on his hips and surveyed the area. “It happened about 11:00. This place was packed. The party was really going.” He shook his head. Anger flushed his face. “There were cars everywhere outside. It was obvious there was a party going on. We’re gonna sue the shit out of these people. I want to bankrupt the city. What the fuck were these guys thinking? Getting called on a noise disturbance? Going around the side of the house instead of just coming to the door? What kind of bullshit is that?”

  Jendrek and I stood and listened. Neither of us tried to answer the question. Ed’s words echoed in the large room, bouncing off the tile floor and lingering in the air. It was the first hint of emotion I’d gotten from him. He caught himself and stifled it, trying to keep himself under control.

  Then he turned and went through an entryway that led into a wide corridor. “You might as well see where it happened,” he said. We followed.

  As I left the great room, I noticed for the first time that a young woman had appeared at the rail of the loft and was staring down at me. She wore black gym shorts and a T-shirt that hung over her large breasts like a sheet draped over furniture. She smiled down at me with a glow much like the young widow’s. It was as if beautiful women were being cloned somewhere in the house. But her expression was strained, the smile forced, like she didn’t know how else to look, even with the tragedy still fresh in the room. Her eyes followed me. I felt something tug inside me as I followed Jendrek down the hall.

  Ed stepped into a room on his left and said, “This is where they were.”

  “Who’s they?” Jendrek asked.

  “My dad and Pete Stick, a costume guy we work with. Pete’s an old friend of my dad’s.”

  I looked down and took a quick step back. My right foot had been on the chalk outline on the floor. It seemed like a desecration of some kind and a wave of panic and disgust went through me. Ed hadn’t seemed to notice. He was standing with his back to us, staring out the wide bay window. He pointed to a hole in the glass ringed by a spider web of cracks. It was low to the floor.

  “You can see they were standing right outside. The shot came through here and, well, you can see where the body was. Pete said he collapsed right where he was standing.”

  I surveyed the rest of the room. It was nearly empty. There was a desk on one side of the room and a bookshelf and leather chair on the other side. Other than that, the room was bare. It would have been a clear shot, and the shooter would have had a clear view of what was going on inside the room.

  I asked, “So the cops were just standing outside the window and shot into the house?” I could hear a tone of incredulity in my voice. Ed heard it too and smiled.

  “Yeah. Pretty fucking amazing, huh?” He turned back toward the window with the outrage starting to spill from him again. “I mean, what the fuck? They get called to investigate a noise disturbance. They show up at a house where there’s obviously a Halloween party going on. They go around the side of the house, look in through a window, and see two guys talking, one of them has a gun in his hand, so they just shoot him through the window? No warning? Nothing?”

  Ed turned back and stared at the chalk outline on the floor. “It’s crazy.”

  I walked over to the window. There was a walkway on the ground outside and a strip of grass between the walkway and the jasmine covered wall that marked the edge of the property. I asked, “Were there any people outside who might have seen something?”

  “Not that I know of,” Ed said. “The only guy who saw anything was Pete.” He thought about that for a second, and then added, “And the cops. But I don’t expect them to be too helpful.”

  Ed walked out into the hallway and turned toward the back of the house. We followed him through a back room with leather walls and a large pool table with bright pink felt. We went through a set of French doors out onto a wide deck overlooking the city. The hill dropped away below us and there was very little in the way of a yard behind the house. There were some steps that led down to a pool area where the walkway from the side of the house ended. We stood at the rail looking down at Los Angeles.

  Finally, Ed Vargas asked, more to himself than to us, “So now what?”

  Jendrek leaned sideways against the railing and spoke. “Well, I’d expect the police department will complete its internal investigation of the shooting very quickly. And, not to be too cynical, I’ll bet they conclude that the shooting was justified because they’ll be expecting us to file a lawsuit.”

  Ed’s eyes swelled with rage. “Well they damned sure better expect a lawsuit. We’re going to sue the hell out of them. How could they even think something like this was justified?”

  Jendrek held his hands out in front of him. “I’m not defending the police here. I agree with you. This is outrageous. Shooting a man at a costume party because he has a gun in his hand? I mean, you’ve got to be kidding. It never occurs to them that it could be a fake gun? I hear you. I understand where you’re coming from. But you’ve got to understand that suing a police department is not an easy thing to do.”

  Ed leaned his back against the railing and stared at the house. He was grappling with a whole range of emotions that I could only guess at. The incongruity of his haggard, sleep deprived face and the cheerful luster of his bellhop uniform was almost comical. But he didn’t look like he was finding much humor in anything. Finally, he said, “I want you to do whatever it takes to make them pay for what they’ve done to me.”

  Jendrek glanced at me and raised his eyebrows. The young man’s reference to himself instead of his father struck us both like a slap in the face. But Ed Vargas didn’t catch his slip and simply folded his arms across his chest, brooding and looking more exhausted with each second. Then, with a quick burst of energy, he took a few steps forward and turned back toward us.

  “Please, have a look around. Although I don’t think there’s much left to see. The cops took everything with them when they left. I’ll be back in a few minutes with a retainer.” Then he turned and walked back through the French doors we’d come through.

  Jendrek and I stood quietly for a moment, making sure he was gone. Then Jendrek raised his eyebrows and whispered, “What do you think?”

  I smiled back and said, “Why are you whispering?”

  Jendrek chuckled, and spoke in a normal voice. “I guess it seemed like the right thing to do. There’s obviously a lot of tension in the air.”

  “You can say that again. There’s something odd between the son and the wife.”

  Jendrek had a glimmer in his eye. “You think it could be because they’re the same age?”

  I smiled back and strolled over to the edge of the deck, peering around the side of the house. There was a narrow set of stairs leading down to the walkway and I started down them before looking back at Jendrek. “You want to check out the side of the house?”

  We ducked under a line of yellow police tape as we neared the window. There was a small circle of chalk on the sidewalk that Jendrek pointed to with his toe.

  “This must be where they found the empty shell from the shot.”

  I grunted at the spot and turned my attention toward the window. Although the glass was nearly floor to ceiling on the inside of the room, from the outside it started at about chin height on me. Looking upward into the room, someone standing outside the window would have to be reasonably tall and very close to the glass before they could see where the floor met the opposite wall of the room.

  “Pretty low angle,” Jendrek said from behind me. I turned to see him standing back about four feet from the side of the house, right in the center of the walkway. He couched and held his arms up like he was pointing a gun. It was an unnatural pose for his squat body.

  “You figure they had to be coming down the path when they looked in and saw whatever they thought they saw. Given where the bullet hole in the glass is and where the chalk outline is on the floor in there, the cop must have been shooting at a backward angle. Like they’d damned
near walked past the window before they saw what was inside.”

  I went and stood next to Jendrek to see what he was looking at. I was imagining the position of the chalk outline when I realized, “The shooter would have had a clear view of Vargas from at least the knees up. He would have been looking straight at him.”

  Jendrek went up to the glass and peered in at the outline. “I think you’re right, judging by that outline. It looks like he fell backward from a position facing where you’re standing right now.”

  I’d assumed the position of the shooter. I studied the surroundings, trying to imagine how it had been at eleven the previous evening. There were no lights along the walkway, so it would have been dark along the path. There would have been music or noise coming from inside; it had been a noise disturbance call, after all.

  “It was dark out here, but the light would have been on inside,” I said, thinking out loud. “They would have had a perfect view from out here. A clear line of sight view, right at Vargas.”

  “And,” Jendrek interrupted, excitement building in his voice, “because the light was on inside, Vargas wouldn’t have been able to see the cops out here. It would have been too dark. Even if they’d tried to signal him to put the gun down, there’s no way he could have seen them.”

  I stood there, mulling it over.

  I pictured the events again. Two cops arrived at the house, responding to a noise call on Halloween. They found a house where a party appeared to be going on. They decided to go around the side of the house for some reason. As they came along the dark path, they passed a window of a lit up room. Just before they pass it, they look inside and see a man facing toward them with a gun in his hand. There was another man in the room too. Something about what they saw caused them to react. A gun was drawn, a shot fired, and within seconds, Don Vargas was dead from a clean shot through the chest.

  Jendrek and I had always agreed between ourselves that nothing was ever too stupid to say, as long as it was just us. It was a rule he laid down when I started working for him. As I ran through it, I said, “I wonder what order they were walking in.”

  Jendrek gave me a curious look.

  “The cops, I mean. I wonder if the shooter was in the front or the back.” Jendrek still looked confused. I went on, “Because if the shooter was in the front, then it just doesn’t make any sense at all. But if the shooter was the one in back, then it’s almost like he was waiting for the perfect spot. You know, stopping where he had perfect aim, waiting for his partner to get out of the way. Almost like he meant to kill him.”

  A cold expression came over Jendrek. Like the possibility wasn’t something he even wanted to think about. I walked back down toward the front of the house, then turned and started walking back.

  “Look,” I said. “They’re coming along here. It’s dark. There’s a bright light spilling out of the window. You don’t think they look inside the second they come to it? Of course they do, it’s the only thing there is to look at, it’s nighttime, it’s pitch black out here. They look inside. They see Vargas and this Pete guy. But they get all the way to here,” I took five long steps and stopped where we figured the shooter had been, “before they shoot? Why? What happens in the two seconds it takes to cover this space that causes the cop to shoot? What happens inside the room to go from a situation that doesn’t require shooting to one that does?”

  I could see Jendrek running it through in his head, tracing my story along the path with his eyes.

  “At least one explanation,” I went on, “is that nothing changed at all. Vargas and Pete were standing there when the cops first saw them and they were still standing there a couple seconds later. Same positions, Vargas holding the gun the whole time, nothing’s changed except the angle from which to shoot. One explanation is that the cop took his time, lining up his shot, like he knew he was going to shoot the whole time.”

  Jendrek cracked a wide smile and said, “I think you’ve snapped, Ollie. Unless you can prove Vargas welched on a huge debt to this cop, I don’t think that theory is going to fly. Isn’t it much more likely that the cop’s just an idiot?”

  I said, “Probably.”

  Ed Vargas appeared on the path at the foot of the stairs leading down from the deck. “Mr. Jendrek,” he called out, waving something in his hand.

  Jendrek turned and walked back toward him. “Please, call me Mark,” he said as he reached Vargas. I followed behind. We went back up the stairs and I noticed the girl in the T-shirt sitting in a lounge chair on the far end of the deck. She turned to watch us as we walked into the house through the French doors.

  Vargas handed Jendrek an envelope and collapsed into a chair near a bar at the back of the room, away from the windows and the pool table. It was the second bar I’d seen on the main floor. It was as though the house was used for parties and little else.

  Vargas rubbed his temples and leaned back in his chair, almost crowding himself into the furthest corner of the house. He looked tormented, like a man who wasn’t sure about anything anymore and was just looking to sit still in a quiet, dim place until the world returned to normal.

  “That’s a retainer,” he said, pointing to the envelope. “Should be enough to get things started.”

  Jendrek didn’t look inside, he merely tucked it in the pocket of his tweed sport coat. Given the size and location of the house, I doubted money was anything we’d have to worry about. Putting together a winnable case, well, that was something different.

  Jendrek cleared his throat. “I know this is a stressful time,” he began. “But we’re going to need to talk to people at the party, anyone who might have seen or overheard anything.”

  Vargas waved his hand like he was batting a fly from the side of his face. He was irritated by something that didn’t seem connected with his father’s death. I studied the stubble on his chin. It appeared to spring from his flesh like worms escaping from something horrible inside him. He was suffocating on his own anger and exhaustion. Revenge and spite percolated through him.

  He said, “Brianna’s outside on the deck. She was here. She lives here. She helped organize the party, she can give you a good list of who was here. I’m not sure what good I’m going to be. I need to get some sleep.”

  Jendrek motioned for me to go talk to the girl on the deck. I crossed the room, running my fingers along the pink felt of the pool table as I passed it. “Now, I need you to understand a few things about the difficulty of a lawsuit against the police … ,” I could hear Jendrek say as I stepped back out into the bright, crisp daylight.

  I stood by the French doors for a moment, watching her. She sat facing out at the city. It was one of those spectacular autumn days in Los Angeles where the air is completely clear and the temperature mild. It was the kind of day that made Angelinos remember why they lived there, and why so many others had lived there before them.

  Women like Brianna were another reason people loved LA. She was aesthetically perfect, mesmerizing to look at. The kind of woman a man found difficult to take seriously as anything but an object. I traced the curves of her firm, tan body with my eyes, not wanting to disturb her, feeling intimidated and overwhelmingly attracted at the same time. Finally, she must have felt my stare because she turned to see me lingering near the doors.

  “Hi.” She smiled. “Something I can help you with?”

  I cleared my throat and walk toward her, trying to make it look like I hadn’t been standing there watching her. “Yes. I’m Oliver Olson,” I said, crossing toward her with my hand outstretched. She’d taken off the T-shirt and wore a black bikini top barely big enough to cover her nipples.

  She shook my hand and smiled up at me from the deck chair. “Nice to meet you.” Her blue eyes glowed in the daylight. She smelled of tanning oil. I tried to keep my tone serious, which only made me feel ridiculous.

  I tried not to stare at her tight stomach muscles as they rippled with her movements. “I’m an attorney. We’ve been called to look into the possibility o
f a lawsuit against the police department stemming from last night’s events.” I realized I didn’t have a note pad or anything to write with and I felt a sudden urge to do something with my hands to keep them from fidgeting like a schoolboy. “I understand from Mr. Vargas that you live here and that you helped arrange last night’s party. I would like to get a list of who was here and how I can get in touch with them, to the extent you know.”

  She was quiet for a minute. She sat with her hands in her lap and her shoulders slumped, staring out into the light blue sky. Even somber, she exuded a pure, objectified sexuality. Just the sight of her made me want to climb on top of her right then.

  Finally, she shook her head and said, “I’ve tried not to think about it all morning. You know, just get up and go about my business like nothing happened.” She looked up at me with sad, crystalline eyes. “But it’s stupid, y’know. I mean, Don was everywhere. Everything reminds me of him. I can’t stop wondering what the hell’s going to happen now.”

  “Are you a relative? Miss … ?” I realized I didn’t know her last name.

  She looked up at me with a quick, genuine grin. She almost looked amused. “Jones.” She shielded her eyes from the sun with her hand to get a better look at me. “I’m Brianna Jones.”

  She spoke in a way that said she was used to people knowing who she was. I didn’t. So I just nodded and said, “It’s nice to meet you, Ms. Jones.”

  She giggled at being addressed formally. “No. I’m not family. Well, you know, Don was the kind of guy who had a loose definition of ‘family’—a lot of people were either in or out of it over the years, from what I understand. Tiffany was his wife. Ed’s his son. I heard he was married once before. But beyond that, Don didn’t have much real family. But he was Uncle Don to a lot of people. Like me, I guess. People he took under his wing. He really wasn’t a bad guy, despite what some people said about him. He was like a father to me.”

  There was a strange mixture of innocence and weariness in her voice, and it made me wonder how old she was. She could have been seventeen, but her body said twenty-five. I asked the only thing I could think of. “So how long have you lived here?”