Sins of the Fathers

by James Scott Bell

  “But it turns out the police didn’t follow the exact rule for serving the warrant,” Benni continued.

  George Mahoney added, “It’s called the knock-notice rule. It requires police to knock on a door, announce their presence, and wait for a response. Well, they knocked, announced, waited twenty seconds, and went in. A judge ruled that twenty seconds wasn’t a long enough wait. Result: the gun could not be used as evidence.”

  One of the other women in the room said, “Can you believe it?”

  Benni said, “I nearly lost my mind. And that’s when George, who was one of the police officers, came to me and said we need to do something about this judge. That’s all I needed to hear. I started VOICe, and the first thing I did was talk to the press and name that judge. I called him a disgrace. Meantime, his ruling was being appealed. People started making contributions to VOICe, and I was able to hire a great appellate lawyer. That’s where the power comes from.”

  “We got the decision reversed,” George said. “Last year we went to trial again.”

  Mona sighed. “So justice was finally served.”

  Benni’s face hardened. “Oh no. The new judge let the defense lawyer run all over the witness. You see, the witness was also a gang member. A rival gang. The defense lawyer tied him up in knots and the judge let him get away with it.”

  “What happened?” Mona asked.

  “The jury came back with a not-guilty verdict.”

  “And that’s that,” George said. “The two scum who did this are walking the streets right now, because they can’t be tried again for the crime. Double jeopardy. And all because of two judges who perverted justice.”

  “But they won’t be able to do it for long,” Benni said.“We have so many people ready to target them in the next election, they won’t be on the bench. That’s the power of VOICe.”

  Power. That’s what Mona wanted. Needed. The power to do something. The power to make a difference. The power to help Matthew.

  She almost cried out with gratitude. She was home. This was her church.

  5.

  Lindy knew the crummy little house in Sunland was deserted, even before she reached the door. The lifelessness about the property made it seem suitable for ghosts.

  So when she knocked, she didn’t expect anyone to answer. Her expectations were borne out.

  She decided, since she’d come all this way, to try the back door.

  The side yard was a strip of brown grass and dirt patches lining a profusely cracked cinder block wall. Probably the result of earthquakes and neglect. Dust and spatters of dry mud coated the house. An ancient gas meter stuck out from the wall like an old man’s chin.

  She felt the crush of weeds and dirt clods under her motorcycle boots. She’d never make it as a cat burglar. Especially not with the dog on the other side of the wall barking its fool head off.

  The bark sounded mean. Pit-bull mean. There were a lot of them out this way, with owners just as mean, who didn’t really care if little Bluto bit off the leg of a postal worker. Some didn’t even care when a toddler got chewed to death, which had happened more than once.

  The backyard looked like a fading postcard from the fifties. Clothesline posts with drooping wires leaned at odd angles. A cracked cement walkway led from the porch to the unattached garage, a miniature of the house, with windows covered in grime and oily rags.

  A fruitless apricot tree twisted out from the center of what had once been a lawn, its spindly limbs pointing in several directions at once.

  Lindy stepped up on the concrete slab that was the back porch.

  A rusted screen separated her from the door. The upper left corner of the screen flapped over, leaving a triangular hole.

  Her rattling knock went unanswered.

  The pit bull kept barking. He sounded hungry.

  She knocked again, then tried the screen door. It creaked open.

  She tried the inner door, and found it was unlocked.

  She opened that door now, stuck her head in. “Hello? Anybody home?”

  Nothing.

  Maybe they just weren’t home. Maybe they were hoping to avoid her. Maybe they were dead in the bathroom.

  But she had come all the way out here and wasn’t going to just ride away into the sunset. She could wait.

  “Turn around,” said a voice, the male equivalent of the pit bull’s bark. And for that reason alone Lindy was afraid to turn.

  “Turn around now.”

  Her slow rotation brought her face to face with the largest handgun she’d ever laid eyes on. And it was held by one of the largest hands she’d ever seen, connected to a tree-trunk arm covered in dark blue tattoos.

  At the end of it all was a gray bearded, mean-eyed dude who surely just returned from Hells Angels central casting.

  “You’re bothering my dog,” he said.

  6.

  Leon Colby examined the list of possible witnesses for the preliminary hearing. His chief investigator, Lorenzo “Larry” Lopez, had conducted the initial interviews.

  “Like choosing which candy, huh?” Lopez said. He was a pretty good investigator, one Colby had worked with before. Around forty, hard worker, knew the streets. He was dressed in a brown suit and wore his shirt without a tie. Here in Colby’s office, with one leg over the arm of a chair, he looked entirely too relaxed.

  “I’m not much of a candy eater.” Colby scratched his trial goatee, his one superstition. Shave the goatee after a trial. Grow it back for the next one.

  “What do you like?”

  “Meat. You saw these people face to face. Which ones seemed most credible?”

  Lopez shrugged. “They’re all pretty good. Some maybe come across better than others, just because that’s people, you know?”

  “You practicing psychology now?”

  “Hey, my brains, your good looks, we got this in the bag.”

  Colby shook his head. “There’s always a weakness in a case. Even one like this.”

  “I don’t see it,” Lopez said.

  “Look harder.”

  The investigator pulled his leg off the arm of the chair. “You serious?”

  “Yeah, and I expect you to be too.”

  “Hey, Leon, chill a little.”

  Colby kept his irritation in check. This wasn’t the time for a major face-off, but the man needed to know this case was not a walk in the park. Colby would have to win this thing, and in swift and unambiguous terms, if he was going to make a run at DA. In fact, avoiding a trial altogether would be best of all. A strong showing in the prelim might just convince Lindy Field to hang it up and take a deal, on his terms.

  “You going to answer my question?”

  “All right, man,” Lopez said. His normally jovial face was suddenly all business, business he’d been dragged into. “I think the Kean woman would be good. She had a son out there who didn’t get shot, and remembers a lot of details. Also Mrs. Glover.”

  Colby returned his gaze to the list of names and the chart he’d drawn up earlier in the day.

  “Any family for Dorai?” Colby asked.

  “Not out here. Some friends.”

  “How many is some?”

  “Two.”

  “That’s not some. That’s two. Come on, Larry. Who are these friends?”

  Lopez looked at the small spiral notebook in his hand. “A teacher, who he worked with, Kim Fambry. And some guy named Stalboerger.”

  “Who is?”

  “I think he’s a computer guy.”

  “You think?”

  “Come on, how deep do you need to go?”

  Colby shook his head and scanned the list again.“How about Mrs. Romney? She seemed to have a strong appearance when I met her.”

  “I don’t know,” Lopez said. “She seemed to have something going on.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Like she’s ready to blow. I’d wait until trial for her, when the jury’s watching.”

  “We handle this right, maybe we d
on’t need a jury.”

  Lopez flashed his teeth. “Maybe we need a nomination party, huh?”

  “Just what are you saying, Larry?”

  “I’m behind you all the way, Leon. You’ll make a great DA.”

  7.

  “You mind putting that cannon down?”

  The bearded guy held the gun steady and eyed Lindy like she was some sort of bottle for target practice.

  “You tell me what you’re doing around this house,” the guy said.

  “I’m a lawyer. I came to interview a witness.”

  “Lawyer?” The guy looked her up and down. “You look about as much like a lawyer as I do.”

  “Want me to show you my bar card?”

  “Wanna know what I really hate?”

  “It wouldn’t be a lawyer, would it?”

  “Public defender got me ten years once. Did most of it in Soledad. Wanna know why I got it?”

  Lindy didn’t say anything. She knew she was going to be told.

  “Because my guy didn’t lift two fingers to do any work. I tried my own appeal, ineffective assistance of counsel, got squat. Eight hard in Soledad. Thank you, Mr. Lawyer.”

  The unforgiving eye of the barrel of the gun stared, unblinking, at Lindy’s nose. Cold snakes of disquiet squirmed in her stomach. This section of the Valley was known for its denizens of the crystal-meth trade, guys who shouldn’t be crossed. Most of them had done hard time and had very little to lose if they ever wanted to snuff out inquisitive and unwanted pests.

  “I’m looking for Drake DiCinni,” Lindy said. She thought the direct approach, and the truthful one, was best under the circumstances.

  The bearded man squinted. “Don’t know him.”

  “Does he live here?”

  “Just told you, I don’t know the dude.”

  “Do you know the people who live here?”

  “This a deposition?”

  “No, it’s assault with a deadly weapon. Now why don’t you quit messing around and lower that stupid gun?”

  I’m dead.

  But then the guy smiled. His teeth were like pylons coated with ocean grime. He lowered the gun. “Not even loaded.”

  “Not loaded!”

  “You think I want to shoot somebody? I ain’t going back to the slam.”

  Lindy realized her heart rate was dangerously high. “Are you crazy?”

  “Just a good neighbor. Alice don’t like no snoops.”

  “Listen, I am representing a kid accused of murder, okay? I’m not snooping. I really need to talk to the kid’s father. But you say you don’t know him.”

  “I don’t know anything about his kid.”

  “Then you do know the guy who lives here.”

  “Yeah, a guy lives here. Friend of Alice. But his name ain’t whatever you said it was.”

  “DiCinni.”

  “Not it.”

  “You mean that’s not the name he gave you.”

  The big guy crossed his arms, tucking the gun below one of his massive biceps. “You’re not by any chance a cop, are you?”

  “I’m telling you, I’m just a lawyer trying to do what your lawyer didn’t do. Some work.”

  The man nodded. “I believe you. It’s a good thing too. ’Cause if you were a cop I might forget myself and blow your head off.”

  “I thought you said your gun wasn’t loaded.”

  “Did I say that?” He pointed his gun at the apricot tree and fired.

  The explosion scattered a huge chunk of tree all over the yard.

  “My mistake,” he said.

  8.

  Why can’t I pray?

  For a long time Mona sat on the edge of her bed, asking herself the question. Was it because she had done something terribly wrong?

  Was it because she had chased Brad away, refusing even to talk to him?

  Why couldn’t she pray about that?

  The quiet house, haunted by the memories of Matthew’s voice—she tried to will it back, the sound of his calling. From the bathtub when he was four and cried, “I’m over floating!” Or when he accidentally dropped an army figure into the toilet and ran through the house shouting, “Man overboard!”

  Mona put her head in her hands. Why can’t I pray?

  This time an answer came, a voice in her head at least as real as the remembered voice of her son.

  Because there is work yet unfinished.

  Work? What work?

  Mona did not need a voice to tell her. She knew. The killer’s lawyer had to be stopped.

  And Mona was filled with fire.

  9.

  The closest Lindy had ever come to dying was the time one of her client’s brothers mistook her for a narc and fired a shot close to her head. It seemed an intentional miss, a warning. But later Lindy discovered the guy was jacked up on PCP and had really tried to shoot her.

  And now she had this crazy man firing guns and playing with her head. The gun he had just fired into a tree had been pointed at her face, and what if that had accidentally gone off?

  Was her luck running out?

  “Now you better be moving along,” the man said.

  Lindy didn’t need to be invited twice. She stepped down off the porch and started for the side of the house.

  “I’ll just walk you,” the man said, coming alongside like a prom date.

  Great.

  “Name’s Wolf,” the big man said, his smile halfway between amused and homicidal. “What’s yours?”

  “You don’t mind, let’s just leave it at this.”

  “That’s not very sociable. After all we been through.”

  When they got to the front,Wolf put his hand on Lindy’s arm, stopping her. “That your ride?” He was looking at her Harley.

  “Yeah.”

  “Sweet.” He went to it, ran his hand along the seat, bent over and looked at the engine. “Very sweet. Can you keep ’er on the butt?”

  “Of course.” Now, suddenly, they were pals.

  “Little thing like you?” He loped his leg over the seat and settled onto the bike. He kept his gun in one hand and stroked the Harley with the other.

  “You seem like a farm fresh,” he said.

  Lindy blinked.

  “Good egg. That’s what my pappy always said.”

  Pappy?

  “So what’s your handle?”

  “Lindy Field.”

  “You’re doing a capital case?”

  “Not death penalty. A juvenile.”

  A light went on in his eyes. “You repping that kid who shot up the baseball field?”

  Lindy nodded.

  “Oh man, you are gonna need help. And I might be able to give you some.”

  “How—”

  A horn blared as a dusty red pickup rolled by on the street. Wolf waved at the driver. A woman. He continued to watch as the truck pulled into the house next door, the house he had presumably come from, with the yard and the upset pit bull.

  “My woman,” Wolf said. “Been married twenty-two years December.”

  “Oh?”

  “She stuck with me, all the time I was inside. You don’t just find those kind of women walking around the mall.”

  “Right.”All this talk of married bliss from an ex-felon, sitting on her motorcycle with a gun, was too absurd, even for L.A.

  “So whattaya want to know?” he said.

  A lot of things. “The man who lives here, with Alice. You know him well?”

  Wolf shook his head. “Not too. Been over here a couple times to break bread.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Michael something.”

  “What’s he look like?”

  Wolf described someone very much like the Drake DiCinni she’d interviewed, but when he mentioned the spiderweb tattoo on the back of his neck, that nailed it.

  “And you’re sure he called himself Michael?”

  “Yeah. That’s all I know about the dude. You saying he’s the kid’s father?”

  “Wha
t I’m saying.”

  “Makes sense.”

  “Why?”

  “He talked about his kid, but didn’t say much. Got the feeling he was jacked about something. Wouldn’t say. But if that’s his kid, it seems to me a good reason to change your name. Around here people do it all the time.”

  “Do you have any idea where he is, or might be?”

  Wolf shook his head. “Maybe to see his old lady. She’s gotta be going through hell too.”

  Lindy cocked her head. “Drake . . . Michael, he has an old lady?”

  “The kid’s mother, yeah. He said they split up.”

  “He said he has an ex-wife who is alive?”

  “I don’t know if he said ‘wife,’ but they were together and now they’re not. Kinda like a country song, huh?”

  “Have you got any idea where this woman might be? The name of any city or anything like that?”

  “Nope.”Wolf slid off the motorcycle. “I gotta go tend to my own wife. She’ll be wantin’ me to fire up the barbecue.”

  “Wait!” Lindy fished in her back pocket and brought out a wrinkled business card.“Will you call me when they come back?”

  Wolf took the card and gave it a glance. “I dunno . . .”

  “At least tell this Michael to call me. Tell him I need to talk to him. About his son.”

  “I’ll keep this.”Wolf put the card in the pocket of his shirt. “You never know. I may get busted, may need a lawyer. You look better’n most.”

  10.

  Lindy took the 118 freeway home, so she could roar. She could always go faster on the 118, even though she had to keep a watch for the Chippies. The highway patrol loved to park on the shoulders of on-ramps. It was practically entrapment.

  As she roared along, she mulled over her odd encounter with the domesticated biker named Wolf. Was he just messing with her? The whole episode with the gun was weird. Besides which, she’d had biker clients before, and few of them were well versed in the truth-telling department.

  And where was Drake DiCinni?

  She blasted down the 118 to Topanga, then dropped down into the Valley. On clear days, she could see all the way across the Valley from here, but lately it had been hazy. She hated that. She liked to see where she lived and worked. It gave her a sense of belonging, even hope.