Orange County Noir (Akashic Noir)

by Gary Phillips

  "Growing tomatoes, looks like," Lomax said, starting up small talk while heading toward Six from the sheltered archway, a distance of about twenty feet along the adobe path.

  In no hurry.

  Checking his bomber jacket pocket for the switchblade he planned to exercise on Six's throat.

  Saying, "Always taste better off the vine; what other vegetables?"

  "Fruit," Six said, sizing him up. "Tomatoes are a fruit, not a vegetable. Nothing a lot of people realize, but they are."

  "I learn something new every day ... Sounds like you know your fruits," Lomax said.

  "And vegetables. Over there, peas. There, carrots. Two favorites of the friars. This is their private garden, where the flower gardens, the bougainvilleas, and the water lilies floating in the Moorish fountain center of the patio area are also meant to be enjoyed by one and all, the visitors like you."

  "Corn?" Lomax searched over his shoulders for signs of tourist traffic.

  Nothing.

  He fingered the switchblade, figuring to have Six sailing over the edge in another minute, minute and a half, himself out and gone, back to the Amtrak station and waiting for his train to L.A. before anyone stumbled into the body.

  Six said, "The brothers eat store-bought corn now, after growing it for a while a lot of years ago. They love it, but don't like the way the stalks grow and, they say, distract from the beauty, the peace and solitude of the mission." He planted his trowel in a water channel and, rising, brushed himself off and stashed his gloves in his overalls.

  There wasn't a lot to him, maybe 120 pounds stretched over two or three inches less than six feet. A strong breeze might be able to carry him to the Pacific, Lomax decided.

  Only a few yards from him now, he tightened his grip on the switchblade, saying, "I thought I'd see the swallows they're always writing about. How the swallows been coming to Mission San Juan Capistrano year in and year out, every year, for hundreds of years."

  "That happens in March, not this time of year," Six replied. "And it's not happening so much in March anymore, either, though no one knows why they stopped coming." He held out his left palm like a traffic cop, adding, "And you can stop right there, no funny moves, you know what's good for you."

  He raised his other arm to give Lomax a better look at the .22 caliber automatic he had aimed at him, its blue steel barrel reflecting the bright sunlight.

  "What's that all about?" Lomax asked, hanging onto his cool, fishing for time while his mind raced after a way to do Six before he could squeeze the trigger, the look on Six's face telling him the poor schnook was working on a different unwritten law here, the law of survival, and would have no problem adding a third corpse to his count. "Some kind of joke you like to play on strangers who stray off the guided tour?"

  "Nothing personal. A matter of life and death. Quentin Lomax dies so that Arthur Six can go on living. Simple as that."

  Right then, hearing Six speak his name, Lomax recognized that Judge Knott had played him for a sap. Set him up. He said, "You know who I am."

  "Yes, and don't move another inch, or else. I know how to shoot this thing. See? The safety is off and all."

  "You were expecting me."

  "I was. You take a pretty nice picture, by the way, although your smile leaves a lot to be desired. Braces growing up, they would have helped."

  "Braces cost money ... So, you also know what brought me down to Capistrano?"

  "A ruse. The judge said you'd be real easy for him to trick. He was right as rain."

  "Who are you? Einstein? Thinking no one will ever come along and see through that stupid mustache you grew like a vegetable, raise a holy stink about you being here, Mr. Arthur Six with that dumb-ass John Brown name?"

  "The law says I'm innocent until I'm proven guilty. Besides, I'm in a place where kindness, love, and forgiveness are the rule."

  "And killing me, they'll love and forgive you for that?"

  "The way it looks-got attacked by this loony, speaking gibberish and pointing a gun at me for no reason at all. We got to fighting, the gun went off, and-"

  "John!" A friar in a hooded cassock called for Arthur Six from across the courtyard, distracting him.

  Lomax leaped forward, barreling hard into Six, wrestling him to the ground.

  Six bear-hugged Lomax as they rolled in the dirt, knocking over the seed packages on sticks set in the ground to spot the lima beans, the potatoes.

  Lomax was too strong for him.

  He broke free and forged possession of the .22, gripped it by its pearl handle, and stuck the automatic under Six's chin. Said, "You want to keep your head attached to your body, say whatever it takes to make Friar Tuck go away, unless you want me using him for target practice."

  "Then what?" Six struggled for breath; barely able to get the question out.

  "What do you think?"

  "You look surprised to see me, Your Honor."

  "Surprised to see you inside my home, Mr. Lomax, enjoy ing the comforts of my bar," Judge Knott said, his face a study in irritation and no small amount of concern; eyes blinking furiously.

  "French windows. You should remember to always shut and lock 'em up tight if you're going out. Otherwise, they're an open invitation to burglars, or worse ... The mixed nuts on the stale side; you might want to do something about that too, next time you go grocery shopping."

  "Full of handy hints. A regular Martha Stewart, are you?"

  "Hardly. Martha Stewart, she served time, not me. Prison's not where I'm heading, if your word's better'n your bowl of mixed nuts."

  "Given this unexpected visit-shall I assume that you've upheld your part of our arrangement?"

  "Days ago."

  "I've seen nothing about Arthur Six reported on the news."

  "Or John Brown, dumb alias he picked. And you won't, never. I taught him the Jimmy Hoffa trick."

  The judge half-smiled, nodded understanding. "Excellent," he said. "Then you're free to assume your case will be fast-tracked by me out of my courtroom and the charges dropped by the district attorney once and for good. My early congratulations to you, Mr. Lomax."

  "How many strings you pulling to make that happen, Your Honor?"

  "Mr. Lomax, do I ask you how you conduct your business?"

  "No offense. Only curious. Wondering if it's as many strings as for Arthur Six."

  "For Arthur Six? Precisely what is it you think you know, Mr. Lomax?"

  "Only what Six thought he knew and was saying to me before words failed him along with everything else."

  "Care to share?"

  "Six told me you got him a hung jury, not his lawyer, by the way you kept shutting down the DA's people and holding onto his leash through intimidation; said you told him you would keep the DA from following through on retrying his sorry ass if he was game for doing something for you in trade."

  "Did he say what the trade might be?"

  "Nah, like it was some giant, friggin state secret between you and him, but he said he wrote it all down and gave it to someone he trusted to pass on to the news bloodhounds if it ever turned out you broke your word to him and didn't make the charge blow away for good, or if something happened to him, like it was about to."

  "Such poppycock. Who would take the word of an absent, accused murderer facing a retrial for killing his wife and her lover over that of a distinguished jurist, an Orange County Superior Court judge who has served with honor and distinction for twenty-four years?"

  "I suppose anybody who decided to run against you in next year's election, figuring a little scandal is good for the ballot box, but I can see by looking at you that ain't gonna be the case, right, Your Honor?"

  Judge Knott gave Lomax the reassurances he wanted, several times, Lomax putting the question to him from different directions until, professing satisfaction, he allowed their conversation to dwindle into small talk. He poured himself another scotch, picked his way through the nut bowl, and left the same way he had entered, making a show of shutting the Fr
ench window and testing the safety lock. A conspiratorial wink and an animated thumbs-up became the last the judge saw of him before he disappeared into the moonless night.

  The judge spent a motionless minute before he blew a fat breath across the room and followed it to the bar.

  A tall vodka helped him collect his nerves; then another before he reached after his cell phone and had the service connect him with Mission San Juan Capistrano; asked the birdlike soprano who answered the call if he might speak with John Brown.

  No, sorry, she said.

  Dear John disappeared earlier in the week without notice.

  No telling when he might be back, if ever, God bless him.

  The judge's next call was to the district atorney at his private number.

  It was time to collect on a few past favors due.

  He wanted the book closed on Six, wanted Six out of his courtroom as well as his life, should the media ever come around asking embarrassing questions, like why so many postponements on a trial date or why no bench warrant issued for the arrest of a defendant who'd obviously fled. And he had to make good on his deal with Lomax, construct a wall of comfort between them until he could make other arrangements.

  "Spence, it's Ollie Knott here," he said into the phone, and after some pleasantries, "Spence, I need a little help from my friend . . . "

  A week later, Lomax was in the courtroom with his impeccably groomed showboat of an $800-an-hour lawyer, Amos Alonzo Waldorf, Esq., exuding a cocky confidence from a back row seat as the judge mechanically breezed through the first call on a morning calendar bursting with the usual run of motions and pleadings until Mary Rose Treeloar, the greenest lawyer on the DA's staff, rose to request a dismissal.

  A sleepy-eyed, overweight brunette in a cheap pinstriped suit that told everything there was to know about her pay grade, Mary Rose was facing the judge for the first time.

  Her stammer betrayed her unfamiliarity with the Arthur Six case as she alternated reading from her yellow pad and fumbling after documents in a modest stack of manila file folders with twitchy smiles for Judge Knott that seemed to beg for his understanding.

  The judge made a show of asking tough questions, an interrogation that soon had the young, inexperienced DA on the edge of tears. He had bet himself he would have her crying outright before second morning call, at the same time lamenting the sad quality of the lawyers being turned out nowadays by even the highest-rated universities. She wasn't the first to be put to his test. She wouldn't be his last.

  He scored earlier than expected.

  He had the tears spilling over her cheeks shortly before he eased his reign of terror, accepted the DA's decision against retrying Arthur Six, and removed the trial date from his calendar, saying, "I am similarly convinced the lack of any additional evidence against Mr. Six suggests we would only be tossing substantially more good money after bad and wasting valuable time that can be put to better use by this court."

  Turning contemptuous eyes on Fix's preening lawyer, who was smiling and nodding approval as if he had brought about this happy turn, Judge Knott observed for the record, "I didn't entirely buy into your shoddy excuse for your client's absence, sir. His face was not one I needed to see again and further delays would have changed nothing, but I strongly urge you to never again let something like this occur in my courtroom."

  Next, the judge moved up hearing a dismissal motion from Amos Alonzo Waldorf to just before his toilet break, instead of waiting until after lunch, where it was listed on the day's calendar.

  This threw Mary Rose into a mild asthma attack.

  When she finished gasping for air, she requested that the matter be delayed until after the lunch break, as scheduled, or, that failing, second call.

  She said, "I got assigned only this morning, the absolute last minute, Your Honor," her voice an exercise in fear. "I haven't had enough time as of yet to completely review the Lomax files and compile my notes and-"

  Judge Knott shut Mary Rose down with a school crossing guard's gesture, looked at her like he was examining a wart. "All interested parties are present and accounted for, Miss Treeloar. Request denied, and I suggest in the future you work longer and harder on your preparation skills."

  He struck a pose, his elbows on the bench, hands forming a pyramid, as Waldorf marched forward, adjusted his $3,000 Armani suit jacket, fussed a bit with his understated silk tie and matching pocket handkerchief, and launched into a catalog of reasons and citations for dismissing the murder charge against his client, the put-upon and wrongfully accused Mr. Quentin Lomax, making a crown jewel of every word he spoke.

  Mary Rose stammered and stuttered through a set of responses that earned frequent yawns from the judge. He knocked them down, one after another, before hammering her quiet, declaring, "Miss Treeloar, Mr. Waldorf's persuasive arguments coupled with your ineptness oblige me to find in his favor. Motion to dismiss granted."

  Mary Rose promptly suffered another asthma attack.

  Lomax pulled Waldorf to him and planted a fat kiss on the lawyer's mouth.

  A few nights later, the look on Judge Knott's face reminded Lomax of that girl lawyer he had turned into hamburger, the poor kid in a zombie-state and sucking up the oxygen, her skin the color of chalk when the paramedics rolled her out of the courtroom. Knott looked scared, wearing his nerves like a heavy-duty aftershave, like he knew what had brought Lomax uninvited into his home again; like he knew it wasn't just for another taste of his expensive hooch or another trip through the nut bowl.

  "Glad to see you did something about the locks on those French windows, Your Honor, but you shouldn't-a stopped there," Lomax said. "This place is easy pickings even for an amateur; easier to crack than an egg."

  The judge, his composure back in harness, replied, "Having concluded our business, I did not expect another visit from you, Mr. Lomax."

  "Not exactly concluded, though. Some loose ends."

  "How so these loose ends?" He soldiered across the den, maneuvered behind the bar, helped himself to a vodka, and offered a pour to Lomax.

  "Stickin with the scotch," Lomax said. "I don't ever mix my liquors, any more than I ever mix business with pleasure ... Cheers!" He clanked glasses with the judge.

  "And these loose ends of yours, are they business or pleasure, Mr. Lomax?"

  Lomax blew out an untranslatable exclamation. "You got me there, Your Honor. Now I think about it, a little-a both. You call it. Which you wanna hear first?"

  "You choose," Judge Knott answered, circling back around the bar and settling in one of the leather recliners facing the giant plasma TV screen occupying most of the paneled wall across from the stone-faced fireplace. He used the remote to turn on the picture and mute the sound.

  "That old movies channel, huh? Me too, whenever I got time," Lomax said. "The flick where Jimmy Cagney's in the joint, listening to his boyhood chum, the priest, trying to talk him into something. Never get tired of watching that one whenever it's on."

  "Pat O'Brien."

  "As the priest, yeah, sort of like you'll be now, while I need to confess something to you." Lomax moved his eyes away from the judge and focused on his drink. "It's like this, Your Honor-what I said to you before about Arthur Six telling me he gave a letter to a friend, for the friend to make public if you didn't square your deal with him?"

  "Go on."

  "Was a lie I invented. Insurance you would go ahead and square your deal with Arthur Six, get him off the hook on the murder-one charges. You came through with flying colors, so points for that. Any man who finds himself with a cheating bitch of a wife, he deserves all the sympathy and understanding he can get."

  The judge couldn't hide his annoyance. "That was definitely none of your business, Mr. Lomax. Our agreement called for you to deal with Mr. Six in a forceful manner that would allow me to unburden you of a trial and conviction of murder. Not Arthur Six, Mr. Lomax. You."

  "Except you made it my business, Your Honor, which gets its to my second lie, where I
said Arthur Six didn't tell me what the deal was he made with you? He did, though. How he was supposed to kill me when I caught up with him down in Capistrano? How you had it all arranged with him? That wasn't a very nice trick to play on me, Your Honor, not so very nice at all."

  The judge sprang to his feet, fists clenched and pounding the air, his head spinning out of control. Shrieking, "There are lies and then there are damned lies! That's a damned lie Six fed you, Mr. Lomax, clearly to save his own skin. Our deal involved a reasonable sum of money to be paid me for my cooperation in the courtroom, on Arthur Six's promise he would kill no more, never again. Were he here now, I would call him a liar to his face." He sank back into the recliner.

  "Why not?" Lomax said. He pointed to the archway that led to the central corridor, calling, "C'mon out and show your face, Artie."

  Arthur Six materialized to the invitation.

  Judge Knott groaned.

  Lomax laughed. "What say, Artie? Which one of you's been playing the truth for a sucker?"

  "You heard it all already, Quentin. That answer's in my checkbook. A big fat goose egg for a balance, not a golden goose. What little I had all went for lawyers already, why I was going to need a public defender if a new trial came about."

  "Him, Judge Knott, having you send me sailing over the edge?"

  "An answer to my prayer, the judge's offer. Before I knew you, Quentin, or I never would've gone along in the first place."

  "This is so much damned nonsense," the judge said, rising. "What's done is done. You're both out from under, free men, and that's what should matter most to you."

  "Until when?" Lomax said. "For how long? Until you can line up your next patsies, who'll come after me and Artie so you can protect your precious reputation?"

  "I'll give you my word," the judge said.

  "Why's that? Run out of two dollar bills?" Lomax advanced on the judge with the open switchblade he'd held out of sight until now. "You let me down, so I gotta put you down like the dog you are."