Try Darkness

by James Scott Bell

  The smile left her. “Mr. Buchanan, a calling is not a gig. It’s not something I entered on a whim.”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “I know you didn’t.”

  “Dumb thing to say. Forget it.”

  She stood. “You need a calling, too. Everyone does.”

  “Who says I don’t have a calling?”

  “Well?”

  “It’s from the Latin. Carpe denim.”

  Pause.

  “Seize the jeans,” I said.

  She rolled her eyes. “Good night, Mr. Buchanan.”

  “Good night, Sister.”

  14

  I DREAMED THAT night in my trailer.

  They have two pretty functional trailers on the grounds here. One is for Father Bob. The other was empty and they let me use it. I can cook a little, wash a little, run a little electricity. I had a nice house near the 405 once. But stuff happens. At least I had some money in the bank. But money doesn’t stop bad dreams.

  In this one I was running away from a limo. It was chasing me down Hollywood Boulevard and even though there was traffic, it kept finding me. I even ran along the sidewalk, and the limo followed, scattering people.

  It felt like I was running with ankle weights on. I ran down an alley that ended at a wall about a hundred feet high. The wall had caricatures on it of old movie stars. They were grotesque caricatures. Charlie Chaplin looked like a serial killer. Gable had a wicked smile.

  The limo caught up with me. The door opened.

  Someone got out.

  It was the pope.

  He was dressed in a tux. He asked me if I wanted to go to the Oscars with him. He opened the door of the limo and motioned me to get in.

  Then I woke up.

  And lay there for about an hour, listening to the night, wondering who I was and what I was doing here.

  You’re a real treasure, Buchanan. Taking up these fine people who actually believe in something, taking up their space and their good wishes. They want to save your soul, that’s all, and you want to eat their food and live in their trailer. It can’t end well.

  Outside, the sound of the wind was the only thing I heard and it seemed like the only sound in the universe I’d ever hear.

  15

  MONDAY MORNING I went to see Fran Dwyer, Jacqueline’s mother. Fran is the only person resembling a relative I have in L.A. She likes it when I drop by. I make sure she has enough in the refrigerator and some books to read. She likes mysteries. Likes that Stephanie Plum.

  When her daughter died, Fran had a pretty hard time of it. But she was getting stronger, month by month. She’d even taken on a part-time job, Tuesdays and Thursdays, with the media department at Cal State Northridge. She went in and filed and answered phones and entered data on the computer. Good for her.

  She was tending her garden when I pulled up to the little house, fifties vintage, mid-century modern. Probably cost ten grand when it was first built. Now you could get half a mil for it.

  Fran waved at me. She was wearing a sun hat and yellow cotton dress. She told me to go in the house and wait. Said she’d just be a minute with the zinnias.

  I went in and got a strange feeling. As if Jacqueline were going to walk out into the living room, as vibrant and beautiful as ever. She’d run up and kiss me on the mouth and ask me where I’d been. I’d crack wise and she would laugh. We’d talk about marriage plans as we held hands.

  My chest caved in as the feeling passed. I almost ran out to my car to get away.

  Fran came in, wiping her hands on her dress. “Something to drink?”

  “No thanks.”

  “Mind if I?” She went into the kitchen. Her energy level was up. A good thing.

  I followed her. “How you getting along, Fran?”

  “Fine,” she said. “It’s good to be around young people.”

  “Oh yeah? What are they into these days?”

  Fran opened the refrigerator, took out a pitcher of what looked like iced tea. “Oh, you know, that stuff they call music. Whatever happened to the Beach Boys?”

  “Sunburned,” I said.

  “Or some of the great singers. When I was little you know who I liked?”

  “Who?”

  She paused in the middle of pouring tea in a glass. “Don’t laugh.”

  “Promise.”

  “Connie Francis. Now she could sing. Where the Boys Are—I was in love with that movie. She could eke out the sad notes in her voice. Oh my. Did you ever hear Connie Francis?”

  “Sure,” I said. “On an oldies sta—I mean, yeah.”

  Fran laughed. “I’m pushing sixty, kid. You can put me in the oldies category.”

  “Never.”

  She took a sip of tea and looked out the kitchen window. Sun dappled the yard through the spreading fruitless mulberry out there.

  “Any big plans tonight?” I said. “Movies? Friends?”

  Fran said nothing. For a minute I thought she saw something out there. A bird or squirrel. But then her head went down. She dropped her glass on the counter, spilling it.

  I went to her. She was crying. She turned to me and put her head on my chest. I put my arms around her.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “No, no—”

  “I just . . .”

  “I know.”

  I held her like that for a moment. Then she gently pulled away and grabbed a dish towel from the rack. Put it to her face. I took the other dish towel and started mopping up the iced tea.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I haven’t done that in a while. I was just remembering. She used to like to go out in the yard by herself.”

  “I remember you telling me that,” I said. “She’d eat oyster crackers.”

  “And grapes.”

  “Yes.”

  “And look at the sky and think and read. I can’t even think how many times I’d see her there. I’d feel so good. She was so good.”

  “She came from good stock,” I said.

  16

  I STAYED WITH Fran another half hour or so. She went back to her garden. I didn’t like her being alone so much. Wished she’d socialize more. But grief takes its own bitter time.

  I took Victory across the Valley and stopped in to see Hyrum Roddy.

  He had a modest office in a once fashionable section of Studio City. There are several two- and three-story professional buildings there from the fifties and sixties. The fancier firms had long since moved west to Warner Center or south into Century City or Westwood.

  Roddy’s office was on Ventura just east of Laurel Canyon. It was a law building, one where sole practitioners rented offices and shared a receptionist. I passed one of them with a diamond tie clip on the way in—he was on the way out. There was a sign for available space. Maybe when I finished raking Roddy over the hot coals of moral outrage, I could see about moving in. I was sure Roddy would be thrilled.

  The receptionist looked like she’d rather be hanging out at the Galleria than answering phones. I told her to announce me as Buchanan, a lawyer for a tenant at the Lindbrook.

  She did. Put down the phone and told me to wait.

  I sat on the couch and picked up an old Sports Illustrated. Read about a golf tournament Tiger Woods had won two months ago. And about the latest troubled life of a kid football player who had come out of college early, got the huge bucks, had a great rookie season, made the Pro Bowl, and raped a concierge in a Honolulu hotel room.

  He grew up on the streets, they said. His father, who wasn’t married to his mother, was killed when he was nine. His mother did drugs. Only football saved him. So you could understand that when he had it all, the demons would come roaring back. The demons never really left you, they said.

  Tell that to the concierge, I thought.

  A man in a white shirt and red power tie came into the reception area.

  “Mr. Buchanan? I’m Hy Roddy.”

  He shook my hand. He was about forty, with a full head of salt-and- pepper
hair and the practiced manner of a car salesman. “Come on back. I’ve been expecting you.”

  Expecting me? Al. Must have thought ahead, must have called him. That was Al.

  Roddy had me sit in a black leather client chair in his office. There were papers and files all over. He used half his floor as filing space. Brown accordian folders overstuffed with manila tabs were jammed against each other like old phone books.

  “I thought I might get a call first,” he said. “I talked to Al Bradshaw yesterday.”

  “Good old Al,” I said.

  Roddy smiled. Again, practiced. “Yeah! Al’s a great guy. Great guy. Golfing buddy. You golf?”

  “Windmill-and-clown courses only.”

  “You ought to take it up. Great game. Great game.”

  He reached for something on his desk and picked it up. Absently, like it was something he twiddled with when talking on the phone. His eyes never left mine.

  “Basketball’s my game,” I said. “The little white ball doesn’t really do it for me.”

  “You get used to it. First few years I had a nasty slice. Last few years I’ve had a nasty hook. Eventually it evens out, if you work at it.”

  Now he was squeezing and unsqueezing the thing in his hands. I couldn’t quite tell, but it looked like a little rubber animal of some kind. When he squeezed, something light brown protruded from the back end of the animal, then sucked back in when he let go.

  “Well, I’d love to talk about Tiger and Phil,” I said, “but that’s not why I’m here.”

  “I know. You’re here because you have a client, one of the Lindbrook people.”

  “You talk about them as if they were zombies.”

  “You ever been to the Lindbrook?”

  “As a matter of fact.”

  “It’s what they used to call the last stop.” Squeeze. Back end outcropping. Unsqueeze. “The people in there aren’t going anywhere, so it doesn’t really matter if they are transferred out onto the street for a while and then come back.”

  “Except, of course, that it’s illegal.”

  Squeeze.

  I said, “Can I ask what that is?”

  He held the animal up. “This? It’s a pooping bear. Got it in Alaska.”

  “A pooping bear . . .”

  He leaned forward. “Yeah, see? You squeeze it, and a little poop pops out.” He demonstrated. “You let go, and it pops back in.”

  “Sweet.”

  “It’s a gag thing, but it relaxes me.”

  “Bear poop’ll do that.”

  Roddy set the bear back down. “Look, you practiced law over at Gunther, McDonough. You know how it works. The system is a machine. What is legal or illegal doesn’t really matter. All that matters is that the machine runs, and as few people as possible get crushed.”

  “Except my client doesn’t want to move, and she doesn’t want to get crushed, either.”

  “That is so unreasonable. Talk some sense into her. Al filled me in on who she is. We’re not running blind here. She’s got a kid.”

  “She doesn’t want to go out on the street,” I said. “There’s nothing unreasonable about that. You ever been on the street?”

  “I know what it’s like.”

  “You know about being on the street the way I know about golf.”

  He just looked at me for a moment. “Al tells me you’re thinking of filing.”

  “If I have to.”

  “Then we just move to another part of the machine. And it all comes down to money. So let’s go there now. What will it take to make this go away?”

  “What if I told you it’s not a matter of money?”

  “It is always a matter of money.”

  He was right, of course. We both knew it. I was running around trying to be some white knight on a horse, and it didn’t take much to return to the real world. He was making an offer, and I would have to go over this with my client. She’d probably end up taking the money, and the twenty-eight-day shuffle would continue to turn in downtown Los Angeles.

  “What are you authorized to offer?” I asked.

  “I’m not that far along yet, but what if we make it a month’s rent? She can come back in a couple weeks and that will be that.”

  “And then?”

  “We’ll cross that bridge, so to speak.”

  “Maybe we should cross it now.”

  “Mr. Buchanan, let me tell you something. In golf, when you hit a shot out in a hazard, or miss a fairway and you’re in the trees, there’s an old saying. When you’re in trouble, get out of trouble. Don’t try to make the big shot, be a hero, try to get it all at once. Chip out onto the fairway and take your lumps and go from there. Why don’t you take this little chip shot. Get out of trouble. You can continue the game later on, if you feel like it.”

  “I’m a full-swing kind of guy,” I said.

  “You can break a club that way,” he said.

  “Or whack somebody who gets too close.”

  He smiled. “Crazy sport, huh?”

  “No crazier than squeezing poop from a bear, I guess.”

  His smile left.

  So did I.

  17

  I DROVE DOWN to the Lindbrook and walked into the lobby. A different Munchkin was behind the glass. A woman this time. But she didn’t look like a member of the Lullaby League. She was Asian-American and all business.

  Nor did I see Disco Freddy. I was actually a little disappointed at that.

  I took the stairs four flights and knocked on the door.

  The little girl was glad to see me. Maybe having a visitor was a nice little break in their routine. She had been reading a book on the floor. I wondered why she wasn’t in school. There were still truancy laws if they found you. Maybe the mother didn’t want to be found. Or maybe she was doing her version of home schooling. Whatever it was, I didn’t ask.

  “I went to see a representative of the owners of the hotel,” I said. “They don’t want to have a big legal fight. They have offered to give you a month’s rent if you won’t make a stink.”

  “I’m not interested,” Reatta said, her eyes flashing like a Spanish dancer.

  “I can always go back, give them another number. Is there a number that would work for you?”

  “No.”

  I was surprised but a little pleased by her attitude. “You mean you would rather fight this thing?”

  “Mr. Buchanan, as you can see, I don’t have much of anything. I never have. The only thing I have is Kylie.”

  “What about her father? What ever happened to him?”

  “He went away,” Kylie said offhandedly.

  Reatta nodded.

  “Do you know where he is?” I said.

  Reatta looked like she didn’t want to talk about it. I decided to ask her later.

  “What about family?” I said. “Or friends?”

  “Nothing,” Reatta said. “We have no one else. It’s just the two of us. I guess I’m tired of being pushed around. Just because people have more. More money. It isn’t right. I want a TRO and then an injunction.”

  “Wow, you’ve really thought this through. You didn’t happen to go to law school, did you?”

  She laughed. “Hardly.”

  “You mind if I ask what kind of work you do?”

  “I’m not right now. Looking.” Clipped, like she didn’t want this to go any further.

  Then she added, “Can you help us? I don’t have money to hire a lawyer. I feel bad about asking you. If you decide you can’t, I won’t hold it against you.”

  “Don’t worry about that. Just think long and hard. This trouble is something that can go away quite easily.”

  She looked at her daughter. “But what will that be teaching her? I want her to learn to stick up for herself. I want her to learn how to fight.”

  I liked her.

  Kylie looked up from her book and said, “I want to fight.”

  I liked her, too.

  “Okay,” I said. “We fight.”<
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  18

  TUESDAY MORNING I put on a suit and tie. I was going to court.

  In California a defendant is entitled to a preliminary hearing within ten days of arraignment or plea. In a murder case it’s usual to continue the prelim, which means to put it off until everybody’s happy enough to go forward.

  The only unhappy one is the defendant, who gets to cool buns in jail while the lawyers dance around.

  When the prelim finally rolls around, the DA tosses in some evidence and the judge almost always says there’s enough to justify a trial. The legal threshold is low and judges don’t like letting defendants off the harpoon without a trial. It doesn’t do their election prospects any good to be sending defendants home without a trial or plea deal.

  They hope that setting a trial date will be a good incentive for a defendant to cop a plea and take the paperwork off the rolls.

  Which is good for most defendants, who are, in fact, guilty. They get a lesser sentence and everybody goes home.

  But if you’re innocent it’s a different matter.

  I didn’t know what Gilbert was at this point, but I decided not to waive time, for two reasons.

  The first reason was a little inside information on the judge in Division 104. Her name was Noreen Anderberry and she had once been a public defender. This is rare among judges, who these days are usually drawn from the ranks of the prosecution.

  I thought if I could cast enough doubt in Judge Anderberry’s mind about the lineup ID, there was an off chance she might let the thing go. That didn’t mean Gilbert would be off the hook. The prosecutor could always refile. But they’d have to refile with more than they had here, and they wouldn’t be able to get it.

  The other reason I wanted to go forward was so the prosecution didn’t have more time to get ready. Catch them with their knickers down, so to speak.

  In other words, roll the dice and look for that seven.

  Then the deputy DA walked in.

  19

  HIS NAME WAS Mitch Roberts. He was my height and had toxic eyes. The prosecutors who handle capital cases are like that, I was told by a law school friend, one who worked for the Public Defender’s Office. They mean business, he said. They mean to put people on death row, on the gurney with the needle. They don’t play around. And what are you doing trying criminal cases, you idiot?