Try Darkness

by James Scott Bell

  Because she had written Candyland there.

  “A map to Candyland,” I said. Razor-sharp mind again.

  Kylie put a finger to her lips. “Shh! It’s a secret.”

  4

  BEFORE HEADING DOWNTOWN, I stopped at the Van Nuys jail. Earlier that week I’d agreed to see Gilbert Calderón, twenty-eight. His mother, who came to mass at St. Monica’s almost every day, found out about me from Sister Mary.

  Señora Calderón, a cheerful woman the shape of a gas pump, begged me to take the case. Gilbert was in for murder and she didn’t trust the PD’s office. They let her son go to prison once before, she said. Didn’t put up a fight, she said.

  Maybe your son does bad things, I almost said, but didn’t.

  So I went to see him. He was being held without bail. Soon he’d be transferred to the Twin Towers, near Chinatown, to await the preliminary hearing.

  They brought Gilbert into the attorney room, shackled and in his carrot suit—the orange coveralls reserved for high-power inmates. Those accused of murder, mostly. They sat him down and attached him to the table.

  Gilbert Calderón had all the marks of a gang veterano. Dark prison tats on his neck. Survival eyes. Lines at the corners from beatings taken and given. A hardness around the cheeks, as if his skin had been stretched by strong hands. A white scar under the chin.

  But he was smiling. One of his front teeth was gold.

  “Hey man, thanks for coming,” Gilbert said.

  “Don’t thank me yet,” I said.

  I took out a copy of the police report I got from the PD’s office. Five days before his arrest a couple of robberies were committed in the Valley in the span of half an hour.

  The first robbery occurred at Fornay’s Flower Store on Sherman Way at 11:38 a.m. Twenty minutes later a Baskin-Robbins store on Topanga was hit.

  It wasn’t ice cream they found on the floor.

  When police arrived at the scene they found Simindokht Roshdieh, forty-two, dead, and her husband, Firooz Roshdieh, bleeding from the head.

  Witnesses from both locations filled in the facts. An employee of Fornay’s, Denise Barr, described the robber as Hispanic, with short black hair and brown eyes. She thought he was in his early to mid-twenties, around five feet, ten inches in height, weighing between 140 and 170 pounds.

  She told investigators the man wore a long black trench coat, tan pants, a tan scarf, and black and white Nike running shoes. She stated he had tattoos on his neck, possibly letters. At the time, Barr thought the man was dressed “inappropriately for the weather,” which she described as “warm.”

  According to Barr, the man approached her at the cash register and politely asked, “Will you open the register, please?” Barr did not immediately respond and the man repeated his statement. At the same time he removed a gun and pointed it at her. Barr then opened the register and the man stepped around the counter, reached into the register, took the money. On his way out of the store, he grabbed a balloon from one of the displays.

  “What about that?” I asked Gilbert.

  His smile was long gone. “I wouldn’t do no dumb thing like that if I’m robbin’ a store.”

  “What dumb thing would you do?”

  “Hey man, ain’t you my lawyer?”

  “Not yet. Let’s go through the rest of this.”

  Heather Dowling, another Fornay’s employee, told police she had just returned from her break when she noticed a Hispanic man with a short haircut standing behind the counter. The man told her to “stop, stay” and pointed a gun at her. As he left the store, Dowling noticed a tattoo on the back of his neck that “looked like a name of someone or something.”

  “What’s it say on the back of your neck?” I asked him.

  “Consuelo.” He turned around so I could see the tat. Then back to me. “High school, man. Love. Lasted all summer.”

  “So this witness Dowling was right about that.”

  “You know how many vatos got names?”

  “Let’s keep going.”

  At the Baskin-Robbins store a customer named Byron Horne said he was about ten yards from the entrance when he noticed a Hispanic man wearing a black trench coat walk in. He saw several tattoos on his neck. He described the man as five feet, six to eight inches tall and weighing around 160 pounds. He heard two shots and saw the man run out of the store. Horne ran into the store and saw a bleeding Firooz Roshdieh, who was screaming, “Call nine-one-one!”

  Horne called and a team was dispatched. No suspect was arrested that day.

  Relying on the wits’ descriptions a homicide detective named Sean Plunkett searched a law enforcement database containing records of convicted criminals with tattoos. Gilbert’s name surfaced in connection with his detention at the Mexican border in February 2001. Border authorities had arrested Gilbert and photographed his tattoos. Plunkett learned that Gilbert had been detained with a woman named Nydessa Perry. He checked on Perry and found out she was on federal probation following a conviction for distributing crack.

  A day later, Plunkett assembled a six-man photographic lineup. One of the photos was of Gilbert, taken from the California Department of Corrections.

  Firooz Roshdieh identified another man, saying, “I never forget those two eyes.” Barr identified Gilbert. Horne was unable to identify anyone.

  Nydessa Perry was called in to look at the security camera images from the Baskin-Robbins store. She gave a positive ID on Gilbert.

  Who was not surprised, considering what he told me about Nydessa Perry. No love lost there. He had dumped her because of her drug use, he said, and she swore she’d get him someday.

  5

  “SO YOU GIVE me your side now,” I said. “Start with where you were that morning, when the murder took place. Can you do that?”

  “Yeah,” Gilbert said. “Got it clear in my mind, man. I was with Jesus.”

  I rubbed the bridge of my nose. “Gilbert, you have to trust me, okay? It’s a lawyer client thing. Client trusts lawyer—”

  “Hey, last time I did that, I ended up in the slams.”

  “And you probably lied to that lawyer too, am I right?”

  He smiled again. “You’re pretty good. I like you.”

  “Well that just makes my day, Gilbert. Now let’s forget about Jesus for the time being and you tell me exactly where you were in the late morning hours of March twenty-ninth?”

  “Under a tree, man.”

  “Tree?”

  “In the park.”

  “What park?”

  “I don’t know, the one over there.” He nodded with his head, having no idea which direction he was looking.

  “Did anybody see you at this park?”

  “Jesus.” He smiled again.

  “Anybody else?”

  “I don’t know, man. I was out.”

  “Why were you out?”

  “Cerveza.”

  “Did you drink alone? And don’t say you were with Jesus.”

  “God and the Holy Ghost, too.”

  I rubbed my whole head now. Here is a retirement plan for criminal defense lawyers: Get a dime for every client who finds Jesus behind bars. And a nickel for every one who gets paroled then goes back to being what they were before.

  “Focus, Gilbert. It’s the morning and you’re drinking beer, right?”

  “It was still dark when I started.”

  “Why were you drinking?”

  “Chase away the demons, man.”

  “Did it work?”

  He shook his head. “I didn’t kill nobody. You got to know that.”

  “But the DA, Gilbert. He thinks you did do it, and he’s got some pretty strong evidence.”

  “What evidence?”

  “Nydessa Perry, for one.”

  “Oh man!” Gilbert jerked his hands in the desk restraints. “She’s a liar and crackhead!”

  “Quiet down,” the room deputy said. He was standing at the interview room door.

  “So is that all you got?�
�� I said. “You were asleep under a tree, no one saw you, and your ex-girlfriend is lying to get you?”

  “Does that sound bad?”

  “Like a garage band without the garage.”

  “Eh?”

  “Just sounds bad.”

  Gilbert frowned.

  “But we’ll see what we can do,” I said.

  “You taking the case?”

  “I said we, didn’t I?” I stood up.

  “Where you going?” Gilbert said.

  “I do have other clients.”

  “You got trouble, is what you got.”

  I just looked at him.

  “I see it in your face,” Gilbert said. “So I want you to take care of yourself out there. You need any help, let me know.”

  I almost choked to keep from laughing.

  “Just keep it in mind,” Gilbert said. “We can talk. God talks to me and told me you were gonna get me out of here. Told me you were the man.”

  I stood up. “Then ask him where I can find a witness who’ll corroborate your story. Get back to me on what he says.”

  6

  I PULLED OUT onto Van Nuys Boulevard, getting a friendly wave from a guy standing on the corner with a cardboard sign. The sign read “WHY LIE? I WANT A BEER.” I admired his honesty. He wouldn’t have lasted long in the law game.

  And he’d probably make more than I would for the foreseeable future. There are lots of ways to make more than I do. A woman once tried to sell me some gravel from Michael Jackson’s driveway. She didn’t need my green. I knew she’d find someone else who’d give it to her.

  This land of dreams never lacks for schemes, and quick thinking to go with them.

  Once, outside the Galleria, a guy in a dirty fatigue jacket with a gas can asked me for a few bucks. I said I’d go with him to fill up the can. He said no.

  Three weeks later I was there again, and the same guy came up to me. I said, “Your car sure runs out of gas a lot. You hit me up last time I was here.”

  He blinked a couple of times. “That was my other car,” he said.

  In many ways, this town is an inspiration.

  I guided my silver Cabriolet to the 101 Freeway. Fought the traffic downtown. Got to Sixth Street and Main around four-thirty. I parked at an overpriced meter and walked a block to the Lindbrook Hotel.

  The Lindbrook was one of many single-room occupancy hotels for people on the economic fringe. It had a facade that looked like a movie theater from the twenties. It was six stories and had a fresh coat of dark gray paint. The fire escapes were candy apple red. Somebody’d had some fun.

  Several of the windows that looked out on Main had little American flags taped on them or stuck in window planters. That told me that this was home to some vets. Viet Nam and Gulf War guys who never made it all the way back. There were a lot of them around the city.

  The inside of the Lindbrook did not have a fresh coat of paint. As I walked into the lobby, I got a whiff of an odor no human being should have to endure. The nearest thing to it was the time I sat downwind of a three-hundred-pound Jabba at Dodger Stadium one fine summer night. He plowed down four Dodger dogs with onions and relish before the first inning was over. By the bottom of the second, my row was engulfed in a noxious cloud that could have bleached our shirts.

  That was bad, but this was worse. A struck match would have blown the place up. The source had to be either the collection of old men sitting on old furniture in the old foyer, or a sulfur manufacturer next door burning down his factory for the insurance.

  Afternoon light filtered in through the front windows, throwing weak beams of yellow on the black and white Chiclet floor. An old chandelier hung from a dark green chain in the beamed ceiling. A brown moisture stain spread out from where the chain was attached.

  I was making for the reception desk, enclosed in Plexiglas like a bank teller’s window, when I heard “MumbuddynomakenomubbamindGeneKelly” behind me.

  I turned around. A tall, thin guy, maybe seventy years old, with beard stubble and a blue scarf around his head, made wild eyes at me.

  “MumbuddynomakenomubbamindGeneKelly,” he said.

  “Sure,” I said, and went back to my business.

  The guy ran around in front of me. “Disco Freddy,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Disco Freddy! Mr. Gene Kelly!”

  His arms started whirligigging and his head shook like he was having a fit. Then he spun around three times fast and put his arms out in a “Tahdah!” gesture.

  “Gene Kelly!” he said.

  An older gentleman in one of the chairs in the lobby clapped his hands.

  “Terrific,” I said and tried once more to go by him.

  He jumped in front of me again. “Disco Freddy! Mumbuddynomake-nomubbamindFredAstaire!”

  “Oh, I get it. Now you’re going to imitate Fred Astaire.”

  Disco Freddy smiled and went into the same helicopter routine with his arms, spun around three times, and finished just as before. It was not an imitation that would have been recognized as a dancer in any known universe.

  “Mr. Fred Astaire!” he said.

  “That’s just great,” I said. “You do Donald O’Connor?”

  “Disco Freddy!” he shouted.

  “Paula Abdul?”

  I tried again to get past him. Disco Freddy was too quick. He put his hand out.

  “You want me to pay you for that?” I said.

  “Disco Freddy,” Disco Freddy said.

  “Got to pay the man,” the old gentleman in the chair said. He looked like James Earl Jones. Big, with a booming voice. Not bad for a guy who must have been seventy-five.

  “Do you do birthdays?” I asked Disco Freddy. “Bar mitzvahs?”

  “Disco Freddy!”

  I fished out a dollar just to save myself some time. Disco Freddy took it, pocketed it, spun around three times.

  “Mr. Rudolf Nureyev!” he said.

  7

  THROUGH THE HOLES in the Plexiglas I said, “I represent the tenant in room 414.”

  The fortyish man in the booth was about a hat taller than a Munchkin, with a slanted mouth that reminded me of the Lollypop Guild. His long hair was stringy and dark brown, like wheat pasta. He squinted at me like he didn’t understand. A sign taped to the window said,

  Rent Payable in Advance.

  Check Out On Time.

  No Refunds.

  I pulled out a business card, which Sister Mary had lasered for me a couple of days before. All it said was Ty Buchanan, Lawyer, along with the p.o. box I rented from McNitt and a cell phone number. I put it in the metal tray. The Munchkin took it and squinted even more.

  He shrugged. Turned to a big flat book on the table in front of him, like something out of Dickens. Opened it, flipped to a page, ran his little finger down the side, closed the book, and shook his head.

  “Moving out,” he said.

  “Change of plans,” I said. “They’ve decided to stay. I’m going to write you a check.”

  He shook his head.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m going to give you the check for 414.”

  “Won’t take it.”

  “You don’t take it, you’re in violation of the law. You understand that, right?”

  His eyes opened wide and he gave me a steady look. Not friendly. Not wishing to welcome me to Munchkin Land. Like he knew more than he was letting on but wasn’t going to let on that he did.

  “You wait,” he said, then scurried through a door next to the mailboxes.

  I turned around and surveyed the lobby again. Disco Freddy was by the front window, sitting on the floor, his knees at his chest and arms around his knees. Resting before the next big show.

  There were a lot of shows in L.A. these days. Especially down here near Skid Row. Hospitals were coming down at night, dumping mentals out on the street so the missions and private facilities could deal with them. That was also illegal, but the dumpers were good at picking their spots.

  Wha
t it did was put more mentals on the streets of the city, to fend for themselves. Most preferred the street, where they could get drugs. This was a world far removed from the one I used to run around in.

  That world was a big litigation firm on the west side and a nice house in the Sepulveda Pass.

  And a woman I was going to marry.

  Then she was killed. And I got set up for murder.

  Suddenly I was one of the shows. You stay in this town long enough, it happens.

  The man came back into the booth. He shook his head and slid a card through the tray to me.

  When I looked at it I almost spun around like Disco Freddy.

  8

  IT WAS A business card. For a lawyer. The Lindbrook’s lawyer.

  Al Bradshaw.

  My former colleague at Gunther, McDonough. We came up the ranks together. He used to be one of my best friends. Used to be.

  I called him. His assistant put me right through.

  “Ty? Is it really you?”

  “Really and truly and in the flesh and wandering through downtown Oz.”

  “Howzat?”

  “It’s very strange here, Al.”

  He paused. “Boy, how are you?”

  “Peachy,” I said. “There’s a karma thing going on.”

  “You coming back? You know McDonough would love—”

  “I’m talking good karma. Like dragging your sorry client into court and stepping all over his face.”

  Pause.

  “You’re kidding, right?” he said.

  “No,” I said.

  “You want to explain?”

  “I’m in the lobby of the Lindbrook Hotel.”

  Pause.

  “Can’t say much for the bar here,” I said. “But the floor show is aces. They got a guy here does Gene Kelly.”

  “You’re at the Lindbrook right now?”

  “Right now. And they’re trying to give my client the twenty-eight-day bum’s rush. You ought to tell them they can’t do that.”

  Pause.

  “Ty, this is really weird. How’d you get involved in this?”

  “I have a client. I’m setting up shop on my own.”

  “Solo?”