JO01 - Guilty or Else Page 5

  Bobbi had beauty and brains, but I wondered about her integrity. Would she play it straight? “Remember, Bobbi, we’re going to be square on this, no tricks. Right?”

  “No tricks, he says, and coming out of the gate, he goes running to Silverman.”

  “I’m not saying I did, but hypothetically, so what?”

  “He knows more tricks than Rex the Wonder Dog.”

  “Just a minute ago you said if I hired Sol it’d be a smart move.”

  “Jimmy, you’re going to need all the help you can get. But, my friend, I’m still going to pound you into sand.” She flashed a half-second smile. “No offense.”

  “None taken,” I said. “But with Rex the Wonder Dog on my side, how can I lose?”

  The County picked up the lunch tab. I offered, but Bobbi insisted on paying. She said she had an expense account. We left the restaurant together; she went her way, and I went directly to Angelo’s Fat Burger for a real meal without the pompous bullshit. I asked the fry cook where he got his salt.

  “From the bag in the backroom,” he answered.

  I figured I’d survive.

  C H A P T E R 8

  “Gotta go, honey, the boss just came in.” Rita hung up the phone.

  “That your boyfriend?” I asked.

  “Yeah, how’d you know?”

  “Just a guess. Listen, Rita, I’m going to work here a while longer. There’s no need for you to stick around.”

  “Thanks, Boss. By the way, a reporter from the L.A. Times called.” She scoured her desk for the message. “Richard Conway. Wants information on the Rodriguez case.” She handed me the slip of paper with the number on it. I knew it would only be a matter of time before the story broke.

  “The Los Angeles Times,” I said. “That’s big time.”

  “Are we gonna be famous, Jimmy?” Rita winked. “A little publicity for the firm?”

  “I don’t know.” The press could be a big help if I could pull it off, but I’d have to be prepared, have snappy one-liners at my fingertips, and know the case thoroughly, backwards and forwards. One slip and the newspapers would crucify me. The trial would be over before it began.

  “Shall I get him on the phone for you?”

  “Let’s wait on this, if he calls back, tell him I’m not in.”

  She placed her hand over her heart. “You want me to lie to the press?”

  “Cut it out, Rita. Just tell him I’m not here, okay?”

  She looked disappointed. “Seriously, you don’t want to talk to him? The PR could help.”

  “Not yet, but I’ll hang on to the number.” I stuffed the pink message in my pocket. “I’m sure we’ll use him before it’s over. I want to be prepared, that’s all.”

  I walked into my office and moved to the desk, carrying the Rodriguez file. At this point, I had nothing to offer the media, but I was eager to dig into the file. Perhaps it contained hidden information that would help me point the finger at Welch. Without evidence, speculation about the senator wouldn’t fly. Even Sol’s news couldn’t be used at this point. I’d need more than rumor and innuendo before accusing him in the press of having an affair with Gloria. I’d need hard facts to support my theory that Gloria threatened to go public, and when she did, he killed her.

  I cut the rubber bands and spread the work on my desk. Photos of the dead woman jumped out at me. Lots of them. I looked them over carefully. The vivid color photographs were an assault to my eyes. The file contained dozens of clinical photos taken at the morgue. They would be used to back up the autopsy. The file also held horrendous pictures shot at the murder scene. Her once pretty face was battered almost beyond recognition, its frozen expression one of silenced terror. Her dull eyes stared directly at the camera. Large glossy pictures showed where sharp steel had sliced her torso, almost cutting her in two.

  Obviously, the murder wasn’t the result of a robbery gone wrong. It was personal, an act of revenge. If Welch did it, he must’ve hated her. Maybe he hated all women. But there was one thing I knew for sure: Rodriguez didn’t fit the profile. Couldn’t the police see that?

  “I thought you’d be working late so I made some coffee.” Rita entered, carrying a steaming mug. “I hope it’s okay. I never made just half a pot before.” Her vibrant face brought me back to the living world, where I wanted to stay. I put the photos back in the file.

  “Thanks, Rita. I’m sure it will be fine.” I took a sip and felt my toes curl.

  “Is it too strong?”

  Strong, she asks. The coffee made Big Foot look like a wimp. “No, it’s fine,” I said. “You know, Rita, when you’re a lawyer you won’t have to make the coffee any longer.”

  “Oh, Boss, you’re always kidding around.” She smiled. “I don’t have to make it now.” She turned and walked away.

  I heard the front door slam, Rita had left for the day, and I edged back into the file.

  Senator Berry Welch and his wife had flown to Sacramento on the Thursday afternoon two days prior to the murder. They flew as guests of a guy named Andreas Karadimos, owner of the Acme Refuse Corporation. They flew in his Citation business jet. Riding in the plane with the businessman, the senator and Mrs. Welch were Judge Johnson and his wife. Another couple—Thomas French, the attorney, and his wife traveled with them. The only other person on the plane that day had been the pilot.

  The group flew to Sacramento to attend a thousand-dollar-a-plate Welch re-election dinner, which was held Saturday night. The group returned in the same jet after gathering for a Sunday morning brunch, which had been held in the Senator’s suite at the Sacramento Inn.

  I leaned back in my chair. Welch’s alibi was ironclad. Saturday night at the time of the murder, he was four hundred miles to the north at the Sacramento Inn doing the money shuffle with a couple hundred of his supporters, glad-handing, backslapping, and for all I knew kissing babies, or maybe even making them.

  Damn, the killer had to be Welch. No one else in the report had even the slightest motive to murder Gloria. But how could I prove it? Juries hadn’t bought the premise that a person could be in two places at once. I doubted I could convince them otherwise.

  I stood, stretched, and walked to the window. Night crept over the horizon. Cars whizzing by on Lakewood Blvd. clicked on their headlights and the neon sign atop the Broadway in the Stonewood Center blazed red against the darkening sky.

  Sitting at my desk again, I continued to study the file. I needed to know more about the victim—about Gloria—but there wasn’t much in the report. She’d been born in Kansas and had family there. She moved to L.A. after high school.

  While attending UCLA, she’d met a guy who became her boyfriend. They both majored in political science, but split up when the guy hit the big time, assistant to Congressman Chet Holifield. The cops found out about him from Gloria’s coworkers. They called him, but he had an ironclad alibi. He’d been even farther away than Welch had been at the time of the murder. The ex-boyfriend was in DC working the phones on the day of Gloria’s death, raising money for Holifield’s campaign. He was making calls from the congressman’s office, phoning plutocrats who did business with the government.

  The telephone company had the records. The file contained Gloria’s phone records, as well. Only two long distance calls were made from her house on the day of the murder, one at three-eighteen in the afternoon to a Kansas number, and another to the Sacramento area at four fifty-three. I called the Sacramento number. An operator at the Sacramento Inn answered. I hung up. The call must’ve been made to Welch. If so, other than Rodriguez, Welch would’ve been the last known person to speak with her. I combed the files, going through them over and over. Several more hours flashed by. Still nothing to crack Welch’s alibi.

  My stomach rumbled. I glanced at my watch: eleven P.M. I realized I hadn’t eaten anything since the Fat Burger at lunch—except Rita’s coffee that I’d chewed on earlier.

  Luigi, the owner of Luigi’s Italian Deli on Paramount Blvd., greeted me as I came through the door. “Hey, Goombah, whaddya know, whaddya say?”

  “I don’t know much, and I’m saying less.” I grabbed a table up front and plopped down in a chair.

  Being here felt great. My migraine was waning, and I liked Luigi. There was something genuine about him, and his food.

  “You wanna eat, my friend?”

  “I’ll have a pizza. The one with lots of anchovies. And a Coke.”

  “You got it.” He turned his head and shouted to his wife in the back, “Hey, Momma, one number six pie. It’s for Jimmy, double the anchovies.”

  “You and Maria working late tonight?” I asked.

  “Yeah, the night guy, he didn’t show. I stayed. Momma won’t go home without me.” He leaned in close. “Donna Bella, they’re all after my bod,” he whispered. A furtive grin filled his face. “Momma has to protect her interests.”

  The bod that all the beautiful women lusted after stood about five foot-six, weighed in at around two hundred-fifty pounds, and waddled when it walked.

  “Yeah, Luigi, she can’t be too careful.”

  I glanced around the deli and looked out at the parking lot. There weren’t any other customers in the place, but there were two cars in the lot: mine, and a blue Buick sedan. I thought I saw a shadow inside the car. The shadow moved.

  Someone sat behind the wheel.

  I called to Luigi, wiping down tables across the room. He waddled over and I pointed to the Buick. “Hey, Luigi, is that a customer out there?”

  He looked out the window. “Dunno, but I’m getting ready to close.”

  He went outside and spoke to the guy in the car. Shortly after, the engine started and the Buick pulled away slowly.

  Luigi came back in and went directly to the kitchen. A few minutes later, he emerged and walked to my table, carrying the pizza and Coke.

  Curious about the sedan, I asked him, “What did the guy in the car say?”

  “He was trying to decide if he wanted to come in and eat, but I told him he’d better hurry and make up his mind, that I’m closing soon.” He sighed. “It’s been a long night.”

  “I can take the pizza home if you want to close up and leave,” I said.

  “Nah, stick around. Momma’s gotta count the drawer and tidy up.”

  The bod waddled to the front entrance, flipped the sign to read ‘closed’ and locked the door.

  I started in on my meal. The banner out front said it was world’s greatest pizza. I had no reason to doubt it. But I couldn’t eat the whole thing. They say breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Might as well start the day right; I’d have the leftover pizza in the morning.

  It was around midnight when I carried the half-eaten pizza to my car.

  Downey tucks itself in about nine every night. By nine-thirty, the stores are dark and the streets quiet. By ten o’clock, most of its citizens were home watching the Wacky World of Jonathan Winters on TV, howling at his stunts. By eleven, they were all asleep. At twelve, the crickets chirped.

  When I zipped past Mathews & Son gun shop on Paramount Ave., next to the deli, I saw the Buick from Luigi’s lot parked there. I hung a right on Florence. But when I turned on Fifth Street, the street where I lived, something flashed in my rearview mirror. I wasn’t alone. I glanced back.

  The flash became twin beams. I continued down Fifth, past my apartment building, and made a U-turn. Flipping off the lights, I pulled to the curb, killed the engine, and waited.

  The Buick accelerated and blew past me. I turned to see its crimson taillights fade. I sat in my Corvette surrounded by darkness and silence.

  Was I becoming paranoid, a little jumpy, seeing boogiemen in the shadows? Maybe the Buick was a coincidence, some guy going home after a night out. Of course, that had to be it. What’s the matter with me? Is the pressure of defending a murder case getting to me already? I started my car, left the lights off, and edged toward my apartment.

  C H A P T E R 9

  I lived in a monument of sorts to the 1970s musical taste of America. The Carpenters, the singing duo—Karen and her brother, Richard—had a ranch-style house north of Florence Ave. in Downey. The house came fully equipped with wall-to-wall carpeting, built-in washer and dryer, and a professional recording studio.

  Unlike most of the musicians and singers I’d met during my drinking days and others I’ve read about, these youngsters seemed to have their heads screwed on straight. They took some of the profits from their hits and bought half a block on Fifth Street, tore down the pre-war tract houses and built two apartment buildings. They named the buildings after a couple of their blockbusters.

  I lived—or at least slept—in the apartment building known as “We’ve Only Just Begun.” My bedroom window looked directly into my neighbor’s window across the street, “Close to You.” I’d rented the one-bedroom unit the same week that I had hung out my shingle. I thought the name was a good omen. The song title matched my high hopes.

  The apartment came unfurnished and mostly stayed that way. In the living room, an old armchair faced a black-and-white TV. The chair had been part of my divorce settlement. Barbara didn’t want the chair, or me, but I loved the big ratty old thing. It was warm, comfortable, and cozy to come home to at night. I could talk to the chair. It rarely talked back.

  I put the leftover pizza in the refrigerator, my prized possession. Luigi got it for me wholesale from a commercial restaurant supply in Norwalk. It was overkill: the unit was too large for me but too small for a restaurant. The only things in it right now were the pizza, three cans of Coke, and several boxes of my laundered white dress shirts, folded and pressed.

  In the bedroom, a box spring mattress—no headboard or frame—took up most of the space. I didn’t have a chest of drawers, hence the shirts in the fridge. It was a good idea. In the winter, I had to remember to take a shirt out before I showered to warm it up a bit, but in the summer, it was great. I left the shirts in until the last minute. Very refreshing.

  I didn’t know what time it was when I nodded off, but when I awoke, I was still engulfed by the big armchair with the file opened in my lap. Sunlight streaked in through the living room window, and the sounds of morning traffic rumbled around me. I looked at my watch: seven-eighteen. I showered, got a shirt from the refrigerator, gobbled a pizza slice, and headed for the office.

  My heart almost stopped when I walked out the front door of my apartment. The blue Buick, the same one I’d seen the night before, was parked across the street about twenty yards away. I stared at it for about fifteen seconds. A big guy with a buzz-cut sat in the driver’s seat reading a newspaper. I debated walking up to the guy and asking him why he was stalking me. But then I thought he’s probably a private eye keeping tabs on my neighbor, Poppy Jasper. She had several boyfriends, all of them married, or so I’d heard. If it was the same car I saw last night, then the guy had probably mistaken me for his client’s husband. If this were a movie, my character would jot down the guy’s license plate number, and in the last reel, he’d turn out to be the mad-dog killer. I chuckled and walked to my Corvette.

  But when I drove past it, the Buick pulled out and followed me. What the hell? I turned on Downey Ave. The car stuck with me and remained three car lengths behind.

  Enough is enough. I had to straighten out his mistake. I veered to the curb, parked in front of the Meralta movie theater, and started to climb out of the Vette.

  I flagged the driver of the Buick, figuring he’d stop as well. But the car crawled up next to me without pulling over. The driver pinned me as he passed and pointed his finger like a gun. Our eyes met, and he mouthed the word “Bang.” This guy was no P.I looking to snag a wayward husband. No, the ugly son-of—a-bitch knew who I was. I sensed it. Something in his eyes told me he knew he had just shot Jimmy O’Brien.

  When I reached the office, it was 8:30 and Rita hadn’t arrived yet. It was just as well. My hands shook a little when I made the coffee. Guys shooting you can do that; make your hand shake a little—unless they use real bullets, of course.

  While waiting for Mr. Coffee to complete its cycle, I sat at my desk, picked up the telephone, and called Welch’s district office in South Gate.

  “Good morning, Senator Welch’s office. May I help you?” The voice conveyed a polished warmth, no doubt to convince the constituents that the Senator cared.

  “My name is O’Brien, I’m the attorney representing—”

  “Yes, we know all about you.” The tone dropped about eighty degrees. “What do you want?”

  “I need to speak with the Senator. I understand he’s back in town.”

  The phone clicked, silence, then it clicked again. “I’m Paul Tidman, the Senator’s Assistant to the Chief of Staff. What can I do for you, Mr. O’Brien?”

  “I need to speak with Senator Welch. It’s urgent.”

  “I’m sure your call is urgent and most likely related to Miss Graham’s unfortunate demise. You’re the attorney representing the accused, are you not?”

  “I am.”

  “Well, first of all, the Senator isn’t in, and secondly, I’ve been instructed to inform you that the Senator’s personal attorney, Mr. Thomas French, here in Downey, will be handling all matters relating to the tragic event.”

  “Let me get this straight, are you saying that Welch hired a lawyer?” My heart rate increased. “Does he feel he needs an attorney, has something to hide?”

  “No, of course not, strictly routine. The Senator is extremely busy doing the People’s business. Your business as well, Mr. O’Brien. Surely you can see he just can’t drop all his important work any time someone such as yourself calls.”

  “I don’t give a damn what he’s doing. I have to speak with him.”

  “Come now, Mr. O’Brien, even you must know how valuable the Senator’s time is.”

  I didn’t like this guy’s condescending line of bullshit.

  “Look, Tidbit, or Titman, or whatever the hell your name is. Damn it, this is a murder case, and the Senator has information that I need.” I took a breath and tried to cool off. I realized I was talking to a messenger boy, an assistant’s assistant. “Look, Mr. Tidman, tell Welch that if he doesn’t call me, I’ll get a subpoena, drag him in—”