by Michael Nava
“I don’t have all their follow-up reports yet,” I said. “I don’t know who they may have talked to about Chris’s movements.”
“Your Mr. X, you think that’s his kid, right? Joey?”
“So far,” I said.
“Because he’s mad at his daddy for going gay? So he kills him?”
“He knew about the obelisk,” I reminded him.
“According to you, you asked him the question, but he didn’t answer you.”
“I asked him if he knew his father had been killed with the award and he didn’t deny it.”
“Maybe that’s because he didn’t know what the hell you were talking about,” Freeman said, lighting another cigarette.
“I was there. I saw his reaction. He knew.”
“What about an alibi?”
I said, “As far as I know, the cops didn’t question him, so he hasn’t had to provide one.”
“That doesn’t mean he don’t have one.”
“Well, we’ll have to find out, won’t we? What about the car Zack saw? Joey drives a black Jeep Cherokee.”
“Like it’s the only one in the county of L.A.”
“Chris’s property was returned to the family,” I said, having learned that fact earlier in the day. “That includes his key chain with the keys to Zack’s apartment.”
“How do you know Joey knew where he lived?”
“He called him once,” I reminded him. “He must’ve got the number from Chris’s address book. Maybe the address, too.”
“How did he know your guy wasn’t going to be in his apartment?”
“The building across the street from Zack’s complex was on the front page of the Times,” I said. “He could’ve have read the story or heard it on TV, recognized the address and figured out that all the adjacent buildings had been evacuated. Or maybe he didn’t know, but took a chance and drove out there.”
“How smart is this kid?” he asked, signaling for another round.
“I’m not saying this was all planned out,” I replied. “It was a crime of passion. He killed his father in a rage, then started looking for a way out. Opportunities to frame Zack presented themselves and he took them. He had some lucky breaks, including the fact that the cops never suspected him. He wasn’t even interviewed. Bay didn’t mention that Chris had left her until the cops had already started to focus on Zack, and when she told him, she made a point of mentioning the will. That’s all McBeth needed. That, plus the anonymous tip. The cops never looked twice at Joey, and now that Zack’s been charged, their investigation’s closed.”
The waitress brought his drink. He sipped at it for a minute. “Why don’t you think the boyfriend did it? Because he told you?”
“I’ve defended a lot of murderers,” I said, “and you know what they had in common, Freeman? They were all a little dead themselves. Zack’s just the opposite. The things he’s been through should’ve killed him, but he kept himself alive.”
“Is that what you’re going to tell the jury?”
“No,” I said. “I’m going to tell the jury he didn’t have a motive.”
“The will?”
I’d thought about that. “Chris changed his will within a month of the murder. How much sense does it make to murder someone who put you in his will before the ink’s dry? Especially in such a sloppy way? You’d have to be pretty greedy and they can’t prove that on Zack.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Find out about Chris’s movements the night he was killed, especially where and with whom he had dinner.”
“There’s dozens of restaurants around the courthouse,” he said.
“Whenever we had lunch we always went to a place called the Epicenter on Second and Hill. Start there. His clerk might know if he had any other favorites.”
“Okay,” he said, scratching a note on a cocktail napkin.
“Joey Chandler,” I said. “He goes to USC. Talk to him there, not at his house.”
“What about the wife?”
I shook my head. “Leave her out of this for now. She’s an old friend.”
A half-smile twisted his mouth. “Not after this.”
I let it pass. “Joey probably won’t be particularly cooperative, so you’ll have to ask around him, friends, classmates.”
“What else?”
“I want to retrace Zack’s movements through the courthouse at night,” I said. “To corroborate his story. I can’t do it alone and then call myself to the witness stand, so let’s meet there Friday night. That’s the same day of the week Chris was killed.”
“Okay, down in the garage off Olive?”
“Yeah, say about ten.”
“You want me to check out Bowen’s apartment building and talk to the tenants?”
“I’m going out there as soon as we finish here,” I said. “There is one other thing, though. How are your lines to black officers on LAPD?”
“So-so,” he said. “Most of the ones I came up with are collecting their pensions.”
“I’d like you to find out what you can about McBeth.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t think she plays by the book,” I said.
“If she did,” he replied, “she’d be the first.” He called for the check and handed it to me. “The meter’s running,” he said.
Karen Holman had agreed to meet at the apartment complex during her lunch break. I got to the building a few minutes before our appointment, slipped beneath the caution tape and went out to the courtyard, carrying the camera I kept in my trunk. The complex was designed to cram as many people as possible on a narrow, rectangular lot. There were twenty-four apartments in all, twelve on each floor. They were arranged four on each of the long sides of the rectangle and two on the short ones. The floors were connected by open stairwells at either end of the courtyard.
The exterior, stucco walls were white. The doors to the apartments were blue and numbered, 101 to 110 on the first floor and 201 to 210 on the second. A few feet from the doors were small sliding glass windows. I looked into one and saw a kitchen. Above each door was a light. Other than these, there were no sources of exterior light except in the stairwells.
I went up to the second floor, coming out of the stairwell in front of apartment 201, at the east end of the floor. Zack lived in 206, straight down the breezeway at the opposite end. McBeth’s anonymous tipster said Zack had passed in front of his kitchen window. That meant his apartment was on the north side of the second floor, 202 to 205, rather than across the courtyard on the south side, 208 to 211. While it was possible that Zack could’ve been seen by someone standing at the window of one of those apartments, his view would’ve been obstructed by the waist-high retaining wall that ran the length of the second-floor breezeway. Additionally, he would have been looking across the courtyard, a distance of a couple of hundred feet. The tipster’s observations were too detailed to have been made by someone watching from that distance and with the wall between him and Zack. No, it had to be someone in one of the north-side apartments. I walked to the first window and stood there. I couldn’t see in, because the blinds were drawn, but I noticed immediately that the window was level with my chest. Zack was shorter than me by three or four inches. How could someone standing on the other side of the window have seen what was in his hands?
And the tipster hadn’t been standing. According to McBeth’s affidavit, he’d been sitting at the kitchen table.
19
I HEARD THE CLATTER of footsteps behind me.
“Mr. Rios?” Karen Holman said. She wore a white silk blouse, a gray skirt and low heels, the anonymous costume of a low-ranking office worker. I remembered she’d told me on the phone she worked for an escrow company.
“Hi,” I said. “Thanks for meeting me on such short notice.”
“No problem,” she said. “Real estate’s dead. Anyway, I was going to call you, because the owners want everyone moved out by the end of the week and you said you’d take care of Zac
k’s stuff.”
“Are they going to tear down the building?”
She frowned. “That’s what they say. I think it’s a scam to get around rent control.”
“You mean they’d get rid of the present tenants, then jack up the rents and find new ones? What about the damage to the foundation?”
“I know a contractor,” she said. “I asked him to come out and take a look around. He couldn’t find any structural damage, just some cracks is all. Nothing serious.”
“Have you filed a complaint with the city?”
“I wouldn’t know where to begin,” she said.
“Building and safety?” I suggested. “The rent control board.”
“That takes time,” she said, “and they want us out now. We all got letters yesterday.”
“The other tenants aren’t even here,” I said.
“I know, I know,” she said, her cheeks flushing with anger. “It’s just plain shitty, but that’s what the owners are like. I don’t know what I’m going to do. They give me a four-hundred-dollar break on my rent to manage the place. I don’t know where I’m going to find a two-bedroom that cheap around here. I don’t want to move and have to take Teddy out of his school.”
“I know a Legal Aid lawyer who does tenant-landlord work. If you want, I could put you in touch with him. It won’t cost you anything and it sounds to me like you’ve got a case.”
“Can’t they fire me if I give them trouble?”
“Matt wouldn’t let them get away with something like that,” I said.
“Matt?”
“Matt Chin, my Legal Aid lawyer friend. Look, I’ll call him as soon as we’re finished.”
“That would be great,” she said, visibly relieved. “So, how can I help you?”
“Someone told the police they saw Zack coming back to his apartment the night Chris Chandler was murdered,” I said. “I want to know who it was.”
“Don’t the police know?”
“It was an anonymous call,” I replied. “The caller said he was afraid Zack might take revenge.”
She clucked, “That’s ridiculous. Zack’s like the last person in the world who would hurt anyone. And we’ve had our share of assholes around here but people don’t spy on each other.”
“I’m interested in the four apartments along this hallway,” I said. “Who lives in them?”
We were standing in front of 202. “No one lives here,” she said. “Thank God. The last tenant was one of the assholes I was talking about and he left at the end of September.”
“Two-oh-three?” I asked, walking toward it.
“The girls,” she said. “Joan Woods and Darlene Sawyer.” She smiled indulgently. “Actresses.”
“Actress-waitress-whatevers?”
“You got it,” she said.
“Do you know where they are now?”
“Joan’s gone,” she said. “She split the day after the quake back to Michigan where she’s from. She said she’d had enough, what with riots, earthquakes and fires. Darlene’s staying with some friends in Hollywood. I’ve got all the information downstairs.”
“Okay,” I said. “What about two-oh-four.”
“The Wards,” she said. “Don and Donna. Honest to God. An older black couple. Really nice. They’re staying with one of their kids. I’ve got a number for them, too.”
“Is Mr. Ward the kind of guy who makes anonymous calls to the cops about his neighbors?” I asked her.
She shook her head. “Don’s no chickenshit. If he’s got something to say, he says it. Anyway, they were both friendly with Zack. They wouldn’t be afraid of him.”
“Two-oh-five?”
“Ben Harper,” she said. “Drives a truck for UPS and lives at the gym when he’s not. He gets a little loud with his music when he’s had a few beers, but he’s all right.” The color crept back into her cheeks. “I dated him a couple of times.”
“You have a falling-out?”
Her laughter was unexpectedly raucous. “No, nothing like that. I just couldn’t compete.”
“Another woman?”
“His mirror,” she said.
“I know the type,” I said. “Was he friendly with Zack?”
“No, I wouldn’t say that,” she replied. “Zack’s the one who complained about Ben’s music and I think Zack made Ben nervous, being gay and all.”
“Nervous enough to rat him out?”
“If he did, he wouldn’t do it behind Zack’s back,” she said. “Ben’s a big boy. He’s not afraid of anyone.”
“You know where he is?”
“Yeah, just down the street at the Double Palms motel.” She smiled crookedly. “Room one-oh-nine.”
We went down to her apartment, where she gave me phone numbers for Darlene Sawyer, the Wards and Ben Harper. I called Matt Chin who, after talking it over with her, agreed to get in touch with the owners about the situation at the building. She thanked me, and again said she’d do anything she could to help Zack.
“I may need you to testify at a hearing in a couple of weeks,” I said.
“Okay,” she said. “Just give me something to take to my boss so I can get the time off.”
“I’ll get you a subpoena,” I said.
I went and sat in my car for a moment. McBeth’s tipster was male. That let out the two women in 203, unless one of them had had a male guest that night, so it was either Don Ward on 204 or Ben Harper in 205. I got on the phone and starting calling the numbers Karen Holman had given me.
I’d expected to reach answering machines but, surprisingly, both Don Ward and Darlene Sawyer were at home and agreed to see me. I left a message for Ben Harper at his motel.
Mr. Ward had warned me he had a cold and when I got to his daughter’s house in Culver City, where he and his wife were staying, he greeted me in a bathrobe with swollen eyes and the sniffles. He was not a tall man, but he was powerfully built and, even with hair more gray than black, didn’t look old enough to have an adult daughter. He brought me into a comfortably furnished living room and listened intently as I explained in greater detail why I’d come to see him.
“So you want to know if I called the police on Zack?” he said, when I’d finished.
“Did you?”
He pulled a tissue from the box of Kleenex on the table between us and blew his nose. “Excuse me,” he said, “there’s some shit in the air that’s making people sick. They said on the news the quake shook it out of the ground.” He wadded the tissue and tossed it into a paper bag beside his chair. “Now, Mr. Rios, you say this fella told the police he saw Zack at one o’clock in the morning the night of the quake. Well, at one o’clock in the morning I was sound asleep in bed with my wife.”
“So you didn’t make that call?”
“Let me explain something,” he said. “Zack’s a good boy. I know he’s queer, but he never bothered me with any of that stuff and he’s always been polite and respectful, so even if I did see something like that, I’d forget about it.”
“But you didn’t,” I pressed.
“No, I was dead to the world until my wife woke me up screaming for Jesus.”
“Would you testify to that?”
He regarded me suspiciously. “You mean in court?”
I nodded.
“Well, I can’t say that I would,” he replied. “I mean, I didn’t see nothing, so it’s none of my business.”
“I need to prove that the person who called the police wasn’t a tenant,” I said.
“You said they found things at Zack’s apartment,” he said. “What does it matter who told the police? I mean, if the boy killed the man, he should pay the consequences.”
“Mr. Ward, does Zack seem like a killer to you?”
He reached for another Kleenex to cover a loud sneeze. “Bless you,” I said.
“Thanks,” he said. “Well, Zack don’t seem much like a killer to me, that’s true. But, hell, gays kill each other. Just look at that guy they put in the gas chamber up in Illino
is. Gacy.”
Great, I thought, now we’re all potential serial killers, as if every straight guy was a potential Ted Bundy.
“I’m talking about Zack Bowen,” I said, playing to his prejudices. “This is a kid who collects ceramic turtles and sews his own curtains.”
“Yeah, he is kind of a sissy. But if he didn’t kill the guy, how did that stuff get in his apartment?”
“What I think is that the cops were eager to make an arrest and they went after the obvious target without doing much of an investigation.”
“Yeah,” he mused. “That’s what they said about O.J.”
“All I’m asking you to do is testify that you didn’t make that call. I’ll keep the inconvenience to a minimum and you’ll help keep an innocent man from going to jail.”
“Would I be on TV?”
Simpson, again, I thought, the trial that had forever corrupted the criminal justice system.
“I don’t know,” I answered, truthfully.
“Leave me your card,” he said, “and I’ll talk to my wife about it and we’ll get back to you.” He sneezed. “And be careful of the air.”
From Culver City I drove back to West Hollywood, where Darlene Sawyer was staying with friends on a street not far from where Josh lived. I’d expected Sawyer to be one of the legion of pretty, aerobicized twenty-something would-be actors who roamed LA. with glossy head shots and perfect orthodontics. Instead, I found a thin woman in her mid-thirties with a frank, intelligent face and a whiskey voice. She ushered me into a plant-filled living room, offered me coffee, lit up a Virginia Slim and said, “So, who framed Zack Bowen?”
“I beg your pardon?”
She exhaled smoke and smiled, showing small, yellowed teeth. “You’re his attorney,” she said. “You must know he didn’t kill Chris.”
“You, either?”
“Honey,” she said, “Zack loved that man, and he was good for him. It doesn’t make any sense that he’d hurt him.”
“Nonetheless,” I said, “someone in your building said he saw Zack on the night of the murder wearing a bloody shirt and carrying the object that was used to kill Chris.”
“Well, it wasn’t me,” she said.
“No, the police said the anonymous caller was male. That lets you and your ex-roommate,” I glanced at my notes, “Joan Woods, off the hook. Unless either of you had a male visitor that night.”
