by John Decure
“Not too shabby,” I said. For all the money they’d amassed, the Kirkmeyers certainly didn’t throw much of it around. I looked around me again. Beneath the mess, this house was comfortable but very middle-class.
A pad in Big Sur was more like it.
“It’s nothing fancy,” she said. “They bought it for next to nothing from a friend of my mom’s in eighty-three, the year there was all that rain.” She held up the photo. “There’s a stream way down below. It runs down the canyon. Apparently some idiot whose place was farther up the hill had some flooding during one of those big winter storms.”
I remembered the winter of ‘83 quite well, having never seen the ocean that angry in all my life. The beach at Christianitos endured three months of pounding surf, monsoonlike rain, and high tides that swamped the million-dollar palaces abutting the sand. By February the far end of the pier was so badly battered by thick chocolate-colored storm surf that the lifeguards banned all pedestrians. On Valentine’s Day a ten-foot swell hit—along with rain and a thirty-knot wind. Surfing was out of the question. I stood on the Southside beach as a bulldozer chugged back and forth in the sand, rebuilding the berm from the previous night’s damage. A dozen or so neighbors and frustrated surfers were there with me, and we gasped as sections of pier fell away like a melting Popsicle. It took two years to rebuild the thing, but the strong crosscurrents coursing through the pier tore up the Southside sandbars, and the surf has never fully regained its pre-’83 form.
“That was a crazy winter,” I said.
“Well, somehow the guy managed to divert the flow down his driveway,” Kimberley went on. “Right at the cabin. The place had a solid foot of mud in it when my parents got it.”
“Big Sur,” Tamango said. “It looks like the mountains, not the beach.”
“I know, it’s amazing,” Kimberley said. “It’s a few miles straight up this really lush canyon, right off Highway One.”
“I don’t like it,” Dale said slowly. “Looks remote and high up. That’s a bad combination if those two are looking to create an accident for Rudy.”
“It’s just a picture,” I said.
“No,” Dale said, “you didn’t notice, did you?” He shrugged.
“What about this photo?” Tamango said.
“There was a row of them on a long bookshelf,” Dale said. “All knocked flat, like somebody played dominos with them. This was the only one still standing, and it was full of fingerprint smudges.”
“Like somebody pawed it before we did,” I said.
Kimberley moved closer to the detective. “What can you do to help my dad?” she asked.
He thought about his answer. “Very little right now, I’m afraid. This house may be disheveled, but there’s no evidence that a crime occurred.”
“But what if they kidnapped him?” she said.
“There’s no evidence of that. He hasn’t been gone long enough even to be considered a missing person.”
“So you’re gonna wait for them to kill him before you investigate?”
Another over-the-line crack from Kimberley, but Tamango didn’t bite. “I suggest you keep on the lookout around here. They’re bound to come back.” He nodded toward the fireplace. “They left the new TV.” Then he reached into his breast pocket, pulled out a folded piece of letter-size paper, and handed it to me. It was a photocopy of a classified-ad page full of job listings. One of them had been circled:
ATTORNEY WANTED: A1 Banning Legal Clinic. Head a staff of top paralegals in an office serving the community with first-rate low-cost legal services! Excellent salary! Great working conditions! To interview, fax resume to Mr. Julian at (310) 555-3232. No calls please.
I had heard of Banning but had never been there. It was an agricultural town way inland, east of San Bernardino. “Where did you get this?” I said.
“I drove out to Palm Springs with my wife last Friday night to play a little tennis and escape the weather for the weekend. It wasn’t much, though. This freezing wind was blowing across the desert valley. We stayed Saturday, did a little shopping and headed home. On the radio we heard the California lottery jackpot was over eighty million, so we stopped at a 7-Eleven in Banning to buy a few tickets. The line was out to the street. My wife stood and waited while I passed the time at the magazine rack. Eventually I picked up a local paper, saw this. When I did, my first thought was about the law center back in Glendale.”
“That’s the same guy I interviewed with,” Dale said.
“May I keep this?” I asked the detective.
“Certainly. Banning is well out of my jurisdiction.”
“Oh boy,” Kimberley said under her breath. “News flash: Officer Percy isn’t going to do anything.”
Tamango’s jaw tightened. “It’s Perry. Detective Perry. And I have already made a photocopy of it.
“Right.” She gave him a tinny smile.
“Madam, the more you talk, the more I begin to see why your father might have done this crazy thing.”
Kimberley flipped her hair back over her shoulder and glared at the policeman. “And the more you tell me there’s nothing the police can do, the more I see why these two guys”—nodding at Dale and me—“are currently up shit creek.”
Dale and I shared a private, mutually sympathetic glance.
The woman could be abrasive, but she had a point.
Twenty-four
“Why are we eating at a dive like this?”
I skipped right by Kimberley’s question. “The teriyaki bowl is their specialty, but the BLT is good, too.”
The proprietor, a middle-aged Hispanic man with a greasy white apron and a Raiders cap, folded his arms when he heard her crack. We were a block north of the state bar’s offices, at Tito’s Burger—not burgers plural, just burger, as if they had only one to sell and that was the end of it. The place was tiny but impossible to miss: a flame red log cabin from the 1920s that actually had some kind of architectural significance. A few months earlier I’d seen it pictured in a book on historic L.A. and really hooted at the accompanying historical blurb, a professor at USC quoting Horatio Alger and raving about the frontier ethic exemplified. To me the place is a much better example of your classic L.A. amalgam, in which eating an Asian dish prepared by a Mexican cook in a faux Davy Crockett shack that some academic yahoo has deemed a timeless artifact of American expansionism barely raises an eyebrow.
But it was the perfect place to meet Duke Choi.
“The usual?” Tito said.
“And a large ice water.” Ice water in wintertime. Only in California.
“For here?”
“I’ll have it in the dining room.” My standard line here.
“And for her?” he asked, avoiding eye contact with Kimberley.
She put the back of her hand to her forehead. “I don’t feel so hot,” she said to me quietly. “May I borrow the keys? Think I’ll go close my eyes for a few minutes.”
That solved the problem of talking to Duke confidentially. I’d let her tag along with me into Tito’s because I had a hard time telling a grown woman to wait in the car, but I was glad I wouldn’t have to let her sit in on whatever Duke had to tell me. I handed her the keys.
It was a little after three but the afternoon was unnaturally dark, so it felt even later. The sky was battleship gray, a misty drizzle wetting the pavement. The cars and buses and delivery trucks whizzing by on Eleventh were flicking their lights on for better visibility. I hoped that Carmen had thought to bring Max inside. I should have been hoping just that Carmen would still be there when I got home.
Bar personnel eat at Tito’s every day because it’s close by, the food is good, and the prices are low. But I felt reasonably certain that nobody from work would stumble in here at this hour. I didn’t want Duke to go out of his way, in case someone was watching him closely.
The dining area consisted of four outdoor picnic tables wedged so close together that most heavyset diners usually take one look and order their food to go.
Not that a guy my size has an easy time of it; when I eat here, I have to lean my back against the wall and stretch my legs over an entire bench. But space was not a problem, for I was Tito’s only customer. He closes at four and was busy refilling condiments and swabbing the stainless-steel appliances in preparation for the next morning’s business. I was probably the last order of the day Perfect.
The screen door flew open and Tito looked up from the shiny metal grill. Duke barely nodded at him and came back to my table, carrying a tattered black briefcase. His face was flushed and the tips of his black hair were glistening. He set down the briefcase and rubbed his hands. “Shit, it’s freezing out there.”
“Order something,” I said.
“I’m not hungry, I had lunch two hours ago.” He looked around. “Man, you got interesting taste in food.”
“Just order. I’ll buy.”
He placed his fist to his solar plexus. “I’m still recovering from Tommy’s. I can feel that chiliburger fossilizing right about here.”
“I’ll bring the Rolaids next time.”
“Right, next time. Don’t think this counts as lunch either, you still owe me a nice meal.”
“I know. Just order anything, on me. You don’t even have to eat it. It’ll just be less conspicuous if someone from work should happen by.”
His face grew serious. “Oh, okay. Yeah, that makes sense.”
I gave Duke a five, then watched him walk over and stare at the menu as if he couldn’t read. “Umm …” Tito leaned against the counter, suffering in silence. “Lemme see …”
This is ridiculous, I thought. “Get the special,” I said. “You can’t miss.” Duke was still holding the five I had given him like a meal ticket. Tito didn’t wait for him to change his mind and snatched the bill. A minute later Duke sat down across from me.
“So, what’s the special?”
“I have no idea. Probably something without chili.”
“I can’t wait.”
I nodded at the briefcase. “What did you bring me?”
He placed it on the table, spun the combination lock above the latch, and popped it open. Inside was a cardboard file folder full of documents, the kind of folder the bar uses for investigations. But this one was missing the usual label to identify the case name. He opened the file slowly.
“First thing I did was look into those consulting companies Bobby Silver worked for, the ones that did the seminars. Capitol Consolidators and Homeowners Fidelity Trust.” He pulled out two thick stacks of documents fastened at the top with metal clips. “They’re both limited partnerships. These are all their corporate disclosure docs. Articles of incorporation, bylaws, and statements of domestic stock.” He looked over his shoulder. One of Tito’s employees was changing a hose on the self-serve soft drink machine, but the place was still bereft of customers. “The statement of domestic stock is particularly useful here,” he almost whispered. “It lists the officers. Check it out.”
Duke flipped down through the piles of paper until he found the tabs he was looking for. A few of the names I didn’t recognize: Raymond Margrave, Edwin Stamy, Arthur Carroll III. The others I did: Nicholas Conforti, Tamango Perry’s chief. David Welterstrom, as in State Assemblyman T. David Welterstrom, a rich kid from Oklahoma via Santa Barbara who’d bought the seat three years ago. Willie Clyburn, a former Stanford running back who played five years for the 49ers before he blew out his knee. He was a popular guy who could smile his way through anything, and ESPN had hired him to stalk the sidelines at Pac Ten games, which he followed with an NBC gig. Now he was stalking the halls of the capitol as a state senator. Clyburn had been calling for total abolition of the bar for years. In his view, wronged clients should simply sue their lawyers, a notion that ignored the unfortunate reality that for most little-guy plaintiffs, the litigation process is too expensive and time-consuming to be worth a damn. Even if a client sues a cheating lawyer and wins, collecting is near impossible. Every hard-core legal bad guy I’ve ever prosecuted has hidden his assets completely, and there isn’t a lien or attachment in the land that can tap a judgment-proof lawyer. But to Willie Clyburn, the state bar was useless, a monument to bloated bureaucracy. A month earlier I’d read in the paper that he’d been the one that Governor Webb had chosen to select and approve the bar discipline evaluation panel. I was beginning to appreciate how slick a move it had been. With the probe, Webb had shown the voters he was concerned about governmental accountability, bureaucratic efficiency, and consumer protection. Hell, if the bar was better run, the People of the State of California were the big winners. But by having Clyburn handpick the panel, Webb would appease the antibar faction in Sacramento on an even higher level, no doubt gaining political leverage to be wielded later was when a piece of legislation was hanging in the balance and a few extra votes were desperately needed.
I read the last two names again and again.
Stanislav Greuber. Old Skip, always into his investments and talking about retiring early, but not known for having done much with his capital thus far. Word was he was burned out on management, but who wouldn’t be after ten years? I wondered whether Skip was a mere silent partner in all of this. Was this just another means to a healthy return on his investment dollars? No, a state bar manager who knows about money matters could spot a financial scam far more readily than most. Skip had to know exactly what was going on—and the rat bastard was using Duke to investigate me.
The last name: Miles Abernathy. Self-righteous ethicist. Clyburn’s choice to head the evaluation panel. No wonder Abernathy had such a hard-on against the bar. With him in charge, the review panel would be on a seek-and-destroy mission, and I was his first target.
“Try not to look so excited,” Duke said.
“I don’t know. The financial scam is pretty complicated, and these guys are prominent members of the community. Even if it’s a blatant rip-off, people are gonna have a hard time believing this.”
“You should see their bottom lines the last couple years. They’re making a shitload of money just from selling annuities and life insurance policies.” He sat back a little. “I always thought that kind of stuff was a difficult sell.”
“Maybe not when you package it right,” I said. I told him about my conversation with Mr. Carpio, the bakery owner.
Duke looked offended. “That’s despicable.”
“You can see why the Glendale PD didn’t go anywhere with that law center fire.”
“Aside from blaming it all on you.”
“The cops won’t charge me. I didn’t start that fire.”
His face was pensive. “I’ve been watching TV and reading the paper, J. And they already got you suspended.”
“Yeah, but with pay.”
I didn’t want him getting spooked. I had no clue yet as to how I could use this information to get my job back. I had to let the right people know about the fraud so it could be investigated and stopped. With Abernathy leading the discipline review panel, its credibility would be shot, yet somehow I suspected that the bar would come out looking lousy anyway. Bunch of corrupt lawyers who can’t even police themselves, the newspaper columnists would say. That’s an angle that will sell papers any day of the week.
I pictured that pair of cowboy boots pointing at a burning ceiling. Bobby Silver, whose original license to practice should have been issued on used toilet paper to provide fair warning to potential clients. I couldn’t exactly say I missed the guy. But he had been murdered.
I asked Duke what else he’d learned about the law center.
He went deeper into the file. “I called some realtors in Glendale and asked about commercial rentals on Brand. The second one I called”—he handed me the card of a broker named Mitzi Klinger—“handled the law center listing.” He pulled out a title document that looked like a property deed. “The law center was being leased by Capitol Consolidators. I don’t have a copy of the lease yet. Mitzi there didn’t feel comfortable faxing it, but she promised to mail it.”
/> “What’s this?”
“A copy of the deed. I got a title company to pull it.”
I scanned the document, recognizing the law center’s street address listed below the lot and parcel numbers.
“Alliance Pictures, Inc.,” I said. “Who’s that?”
“This is where it gets interesting. It’s a motion picture production company.”
“One that owns office space in Glendale that it rents to people who do UPL and run investment schemes on the elderly? That makes no sense.”
Duke smiled. “Till you check their articles. They’re incorporated in the Bahamas.” Waiting for my response, which didn’t come. “You don’t produce movies in the Bahamas, J. It’s a shell.”
Duke showed me the corporate documents on Alliance. “They have no product, never made a movie. You heard of that pornographer from Belgium, Yves Pasqual?”
I had. “He’s the guy that sued Steven Seagal for backing out of a handshake deal to do an action flick a couple years ago. It got dismissed. Judge said there was no evidence of a contractual agreement in the first place.”
“Pasqual’s in trouble with the IRS for back taxes. They’ve got liens on any income his adult bookstores make for the next ten years. He’s cash starved.”
“How do you know this?”
Duke leaned forward. “I’ve got an uncle who works for the IRS. But you can’t say where I got this.”
“How much is public?”
“The liens that are in place, and there was a prosecution a couple years ago where the government got their judgment.” He nodded at the file. “It’s in here. Just take credit for it yourself if anybody asks. But that’s not even the kicker. You know how that Glendale cop told you he thought the arson was a key to something? Guy was right.”
He folded back more documents, revealing a computer printout that listed various search results from a computer-driven inquiry. It was two pages long.
“So what am I looking at?”
“What I got back from the NICB. My search request was for any claims by Alliance for loss due to fire.”
