by John Decure
“Did the smoke get him?” I asked.
There was a pause. “It certainly didn’t help.”
“Heart attack?”
“That’s what I thought, at the scene. But the primary cause of death was blunt trauma to the head.”
“I guess part of the ceiling could have fallen and hit him. Except …”
“Except what?”
It didn’t fit. “Well, the couch I found him on was mostly clean. Just a few chunks of burning tile.”
I felt Carmen recoil when I mentioned the tile. Shit. I’d successfully downplayed my role in the incident at dinner, writing it off as a right-place, wrong-time deal and nothing more, complaining about my sooty duds and the obscene dry-cleaning bill that was sure to result. Choosing my words with care, not wanting her to worry needlessly or lecture me again about overstepping.
But by now she’d figured out that someone had died in the fire, someone I’d tried to pull out in time. Which meant that I, too, could have been injured, or worse.
“Ceiling on fire, huh, J.?” Carmen whispered acidly. “Must’ve missed that detail at dinner.” Carmen hates being bullshitted, even when it’s justifiable.
“It wasn’t a falling object,” Tamango said. “Someone smashed in the back of his skull with a heavy object, probably left him there to die. The coroner said he never regained consciousness. That’s why he looked asleep when you found him.”
“Jesus.”
Bobby Silver had been murdered. Had his bungling of the Rudy Kirkmeyer situation cost him his life? Then again, God knows how many clients and former clients the man had bilked in his time. Perhaps one of the betrayed that had never gotten over the sting of being flimflammed had finally caught up with him.
Contemplating the news, I almost didn’t notice Carmen slipping free from my grasp. The fluorescent lights came on overhead, assaulting my eyeballs. Squinting, I turned toward the light switch near the door, but Carmen had already left the room.
Damn. Another opportunity to improve my standing with my fiancée shot to hell. I’d probably have to throw in a bubble bath on top of the sundae just to get her to listen to my apology.
“J.?” the Caribbean voice said over the phone.
I shut my eyes. “Yes. You were saying.”
“The fire marshal saws signs of arson,” Perry went on. “They found traces of residue from a low-grade, highly flammable liquid, probably lighter fluid.”
“Any idea who did it?”
I heard him sigh.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m not happy about this, not at all. But you’ll know soon enough. Your role in this is also being examined.”
A wave of shock rolled up my spine. “What the … Tamang … Detective, with all due respect, that’s ridiculous. You called me. I went over there because you called me. How could you think—”
“J., wait, I don’t think anything of the sort.”
“Then who’s saying this?”
“Chief Conforti.”
“Your boss.”
Nicholas Conforti had been chief of police in Glendale for about three years, and had landed in the pages of the Times on several occasions. Unlike the LAPD, which was always being criticized for using too much force, Conforti’s department had a well-known reputation for not doing enough. A few years ago he’d failed to quell a spate of armed robberies in parking lots and structures adjacent to the local shopping mall, loudly insisting that the problem would be solved if merchants paid more for increased security. Then he took the worst of those crimes, a knifing murder of an old woman for thirty bucks and an old Timex, and used it to publicly demand more budget money to hire additional men. He got his money from the city, $3.5 million, but then hired not a single new man, citing a serious need to “retool” within the existing force. His opponents would say that “retooling” was merely a code word for bolstering the perks attendant to the job, but the chief was always quick with his rationalizations. When a spending audit last year revealed that two cops in vice had blown nine thousand bucks on Internet porn from their desktops in one month alone, Conforti explained that in order to catch deviants, his cops had to learn to think like them. This was why he’d listed the expenses as “educational” in the books.
“When I got back to the station Conforti asked me for my report,” Tamango said. “As soon as I wrote it up, he took it into his office and shut the door. I can only surmise that he came up with a list of suspects without my knowledge or consent.”
“A list of suspects.” I didn’t like the sound of that.
“So far, you and Mr. Bleeker are the only names on that list.”
I was too stunned to speak for a time. “Will I be arrested?”
“Doubtful. There’s no real evidence linking you in my report.”
“No shit,” I said.
“Try not to get too upset, J. I will tell you, between us, I also know that someone with access to the place did this. Both the front and back doors were locked. Keys had been broken off in the locks, to make sure Mr. Silver couldn’t escape. I had a locksmith remove the remnants. Both of them fit the locks.”
“So why Dale and me?”
Another pregnant pause on the other end.
“I don’t know, although I might venture a guess. I think that your and Mr. Bleeker’s involvement with that law center could cause undue attention to be paid to it, and that has made somebody very uncomfortable. I see this as an attempt to shift the focus away from the law center and onto you.”
“You mentioned this to your boss, I hope.”
“Unfortunately, Chief Conforti is more a politician than a cop. And he knows a lot of people.”
“So he wasn’t exactly receptive.”
“That’s a good way of putting it.”
“I still don’t get how Dale and I fit in.”
“Plan on watching the local news tonight, Channel Three, Channel Six. They both interviewed the chief.”
Great. I can think of no worse source of accurate information than local TV news.
Tamango muffled his phone to talk to someone. Then he came back on. “I am sorry, I have to go. You have my cell phone number, use it. Don’t call me at the station anymore.” The man sounded concerned for his own job.
“I won’t, don’t worry.”
“And please be careful. Understand?”
“Fully,” I lied.
I hung up the phone. In the living room I could hear Pat Sajak and Vanna White saying their good nights over the delirious cheers of their studio audience. I called Dale into the kitchen and told him everything, the two of us leaning against the long counter, staring into the darkened dining room. He didn’t flinch when I told him the part about his being a suspect. I suppose that by that point in his life, he’d grown accustomed to bad news.
Dale wanted to know what he could do, but, since I had yet to determine the extent of our problems, I just asked him to keep an eye on everybody for a little while. The late news wouldn’t come on for a few more hours, and my brain was on overload. I wanted to fixate on Carmen, run a mental tape of our kitchen embrace on rewind, forget about this mindbender of a day I’d had, salvage the night. All I could see was Bobby Silver’s dead legs on that burning couch, a judge angry about my involvement with Dale’s probation, Roger Turnbull sheepishly getting his ass fired in the hallway outside court, Therese Rozypal’s doelike eyes when I passed her the basket of flat bread, Angie clawing at Rudy’s hand at the savings and loan.
Dale was staring at me.
“What?” I said.
“Your face. When I was prosecuting crimes, I used to see that look all the time.”
“With the criminals or the victims?” Dale looked stymied. I flashed him the old shit-eater with not a whiff of confidence behind it. “Don’t answer that, I don’t want to know,” I added.
Dale managed a hollow guffaw or two. I was thinking: Christ, I’ve got to get out of here, and now. Fleeing my own fucking house, for God’s sake. I found a jac
ket, put Max on his choke chain, and lit out toward Main to pick up a can of whipped cream, maraschinos, and some macadamia nuts.
Fourteen
Carmen and I lay sideways across the king-size bed in my room, still panting from a pass between the sheets that I will describe only as athletic. My head was swimming in the afterglow of that sweet release, but I was wondering, staring at her hourglass shape, if the unhinged, wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am quality to our coupling was a sign that we were drifting apart. Tenderly, I stroked her hair. I wanted to tell her things, remind her that I loved her, thank her for helping with Rudy, apologize again for Albert’s mishap, and I waited patiently for her to face me so that I could say my piece with my eyes as well. But she didn’t turn around, and when the clock radio clicked over to eleven o’clock on the bookcase near the door, she sat up, plucked the TV’s remote off the big oak dresser beside the bed, and pointed it at the set.
“J. Shepard, fallen hero, that story and more news at eleven,” she said, mimicking a promo teaser. “This I’ve gotta see.”
Earlier, I’d told her Tamango Perry’s news as she devoured her ice-cream sundae. She’d said little, refraining, thankfully, from any editorializing about me needing to mind my own business. All she wanted to know at the time was what I expected to get in return for feeding her such a splendid confection. I told her, figuring she didn’t want to hear any more about my deepening entanglements with the law center. Apparently I was mistaken.
Carmen went to my closet and found a blue cotton dress shirt, pulled it on, and sat back down on the bed. The Channel 6 newscast rolled along for about ten minutes without mention of the fire. The anchor, a white-haired, smiling dandy named Phil Newton, promised a look at the weather, “but first, a look at a developing story in Glendale that was literally sparked”—ha, ha, ha—“earlier this evening by a fire in a legal office on Brand Boulevard in downtown Glendale. Our Channel Six field reporter Deidre Sharpe has the story.”
Deidre Sharpe was a bright-eyed, statuesque blond thirtysomething who used to model and once dated Hugh Hefner before becoming a hard-hitting news reporter. I’d seen her interviewing Tamango tonight in the street. She was easily six-two and stood eye to eye with the detective. The inside skinny was that Deidre always reported from the field because Phil didn’t fancy looking like a runt sitting next to her at the Channel 6 anchor table. The way-inside skinny was that Phil had once tried to make it with Deidre, but was too small for her in more ways than one.
Deidre’s good looks were downright distracting.
“Hugh Hefner is a god,” I muttered.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
Deidre related the basics about the fire, declaring that a man identified as Robert Silver, a lawyer who’d recently run afoul of the State Bar of California, was dead. Fire officials were investigating the blaze as possibly the work of an arsonist. At this juncture, Phil Newton—no relation to Isaac in the brainpower department, to be sure—furrowed his famous caterpillar eyebrows and began lobbing in-studio queries at his reporter. Instinctively, I reached for a pillow and used it to cover my privates, as if in anticipation of the swift kick to the balls I felt coming.
“Why do the police suspect arson, Deidre?”
“That hasn’t been ascertained yet, Phil. What’s more, police are indicating that they’ve opened a murder investigation. They believe that Silver was killed by a sharp blow to the head, and that his body may have been left to perish in the fire.”
“Can you tell us, are there any leads, suspects, or arrests yet, Deidre?”
“No, Phil, but sources tell us that police may be looking into a possible link, an unusual connection between Silver and two Los Angeles lawyers, one a state bar prosecutor.”
Carmen sat up straighter. “Here we go.” I felt the bites of ice cream I’d pilfered from Carmen’s sundae an hour ago inching their way back up my throat.
Deidre laid out the basic facts behind my meeting Dale, handling his probation-monitoring duties, Dale’s employment at the law center—which was merely “alleged” at this point. My testimony at Silver’s reinstatement hearing this morning. Notably absent was any mention of Rudy Kirkmeyer, Angie, and Carlito.
“How the hell did she get this?” I said. No one from the press had seen fit to observe Silver’s hearing this morning, and there was no way Channel 6 could’ve gotten hold of a transcript.
“All she said was ‘sources say,’” Carmen observed. “She’s keeping it confidential.”
Then Deidre tied her story together in a way I hadn’t seen coming.
“Glendale police are looking into the possibility that the fire may have been part of an attempt to destroy client files, files that would have implicated Bleeker as an attorney who took his clients’ money without performing services. Apparently the city has had complaints.”
“Tamango didn’t say anything about any complaints,” I said.
“Maybe Deidre got that part herself,” Carmen said.
The report wound down.
“Although no one has been arrested or charged, Phil, police are confident that the perpetrators will be brought to justice. Glendale police chief Nicholas Conforti had this to say.”
The chief’s forehead shone like a collector’s nickel as he stood on the steps of the police station, a microphone under his chin.
“Deidre, I can assure both you and the viewers at home that Glendale is a safe community and will remain a safe community.”
“What a relief,” I said. Carmen shushed me.
By now I had an idea about what was going on. Tamango Perry was probably right: I’d stumbled onto something with this law center, and obviously, somebody wanted me out of the picture. What better way than to get me shit-canned at my place of employment? That little opera would likely play out tomorrow.
“This going to cause a problem at work?” Carmen said.
“No.”
She’d find out soon enough if I got suspended or fired. No need to cause her additional worry tonight.
“I should sue Channel 6 for slander,” I said only half seriously.
“It’s owned by that billionaire Aussie, Shelby what’s–his–name. I’m sure they won’t put up a fight if you sue, J.”
Carmen’s mild sarcasm brought a smile to my face. I’d been hammered by the press before and had lived through it. A hidden camera once caught a distraught female client of mine hugging me in gratitude. That night, a Channel 6 reporter used the footage to speculate as to whether I was having impermissible sexual relations with the client. I was nearly thrown off the client’s case, but I told the judge the truth and the controversy died.
Just now, I hoped the truth would be enough to get me through this little tight spot as well.
On the tube, Deidre said, “Back to you, Phil,” and was replaced by a walrusine weatherman with a handlebar mustache and a grin shaped like a quarter wedge of watermelon.
“A new low-pressure system is headed across the Pacific, Phil, and …”
I’d have to check the surf in the morning. What difference did it make if I got fired at nine or ten, anyway?
We watched more news. They cut to sports; a slow night with no scheduled contests for the local college or pro basketball teams. Cut to the Laker Girls promoting a new calendar to raise money for MS research. Major cheesecake shots to help plug the product.
“Well, what do you think?” Carmen said.
“What can I say, they’re goddesses, but they probably couldn’t spell ‘multiple sclerosis’ to save their lives.” Ducking the obvious.
Carmen persisted, yanking the pillow from under my leg and thwacking me on the head with it. “Not that, smarty.”
“Someone inside the bar fed Deidre Sharpe that information. How else could she connect the dots so quickly?” Watching the Laker Girls do their hardwood boogie was not exactly speeding my mental processes, so I rolled onto my side and looked at Carmen. “I think this crap is just a diversion.”
�
�Maybe so, but it’s a pretty powerful diversion. Like the sundae you made me tonight.”
I shook my head. “That sundae was a catalyst, my dear, not a diversion.” Reaching for the remote, I turned off the TV. Carmen’s bare legs ran off the bed, and my eyes ran after them, all the way down to her toenails, which were painted in the French manicure style. In spite of the mounting chaos, all I could fix on now was how much I wanted to make love to her again. The bedsprings creaked as I leaned forward and wrapped her up from behind.
“No,” she whispered. “I don’t want to be just a diversion from your problems, J. That’s what it felt like earlier.”
I had no response, save for a feeble apology for the rough sex.
“You could lose your job,” she said.
“I haven’t done anything wrong.”
Her eyes were downcast. “Neither did Albert. Look what happened to him.”
I got up early for work the next morning, reaching for the alarm long before it was time. Thought about getting fired again and decided to surf. Twenty minutes later I was alone on Southside, groping through a fog so thick it looked like another dimension. But the surf was a touch overhead, clean and well focused on the sandbar, and the dull green shadows kept coming through the mist at me, forming up like the curved back of a breaching whale. I rode to forget my troubles, but the fog and the empty lineup had me straining for something that seemed missing, and my rides, though technically proficient, lacked that creative spark that good surfing requires, that feeling of freedom from which a coherent style emerges. And if you don’t surf with style, you’ve missed the point.
The sound of rising swell followed me home and upstairs, where I laid out on the bed my best prosecutor’s suit, the black one, draped a red foulard power tie over the lapels, and stood back. It was the suit I wear the first day of any important trial, the time when projecting a no-bullshit, all-business aura to those with whom I will tangle is paramount. But today it looked lifeless and rather ordinary, as if the last dry cleaning had shaken the magic from the threads. I knew that wasn’t it. Today I would not be prosecuting. The first act was not mine to orchestrate. Today the allegations would be aimed at my head, my job, and my reputation. The fuckers were going to shit-can me.
