Lion Plays Rough (13 page)

Chapter 18

I stopped for lunch and a beer at a Vietnamese restaurant on Grand Avenue. At that time of day it was empty, the manager at a nearby table going over his books. It was a good place to hide from Teddy, from Jeanie, from the office and the apartment, all the familiar faces that today would seem like sources of rebuke. I tried not to think of Scarsdale.

My promise to Mrs. Walker weighed on me. Unlike Marty Scarsdale, Debra Walker's son Jeremy had been innocent, gunned down in the street for no reason. The idea of his innocence disturbed me more and more. Finally I broke down and left a message for Car. “You can't say I didn't warn you,” he said when he phoned back.

“You never said I'd end up on the evening news, if that's what you mean.” I explained how I hadn't issued that press release and hadn't given the photos to the press, that I'd been set up by Nikki Matson.

He was unsympathetic. “When you've been in this business as long as I have, you know when a tip's too good to be true. I told you then and I'm telling you now. Maybe next time you'll listen.”

“I was hoping to ask you for another favor. Only this time it's not for me, it's for Teddy.”

“Let's get this straight. I worked for Teddy because he won cases. He took what I gave him and he got results. You and me, we don't have the same kind of relationship. If Teddy needs a favor, let Teddy ask.”

“It might help his love life,” I said. “Get him out of the office. You wouldn't mind that, would you?” I'd had the sense lately that Car and Jeanie were on the skids, and that Teddy was the problem.

“You call that a life?”

“I'll buy you a drink.”

He bought his own drinks, he said, but he told me to meet him at Frankie's in South San Francisco.

~ ~ ~

When I got there I saw Car in a red vinyl booth at the back, one leg up on the bench beside him. When he saw me walk in he looked away. I ordered a bottle of beer and another vodka tonic for him.

“Suppose you heard about the verdict by now,” I said as I set the drink down in front of him.

“I heard they didn't keep you waiting.”

“Guy must have wanted to go to prison. He fucked his whole case. Came out and confessed to me. Can you believe that? After he told me he did it, I couldn't very well put him on the stand, could I?”

“You shouldn't tell me that. Case is done. I don't need to hear it.”

“What did he want a lawyer for, if he was going to tell me the truth?”

Car stabbed at his drink with a swizzle stick. “Jeanie, she's a great lawyer, but she'll rep anything that comes through the door. When Teddy handed me a jacket I always knew if I pushed hard enough, something would crack. You can't learn that. It's instinct. Jeanie, I love her, but she don't got it.”

I watched him, wondering how long he'd been here drinking. “So you don't think I could have won it?”

“Not you. And not Jeanie. Maybe Teddy.”

“So Teddy could have won it.”

“The only person who could have told you that was Teddy, and he's gone,” said Car. “Gone but not forgotten.” He drained the rest of his drink and reached for the fresh one I'd bought.

“You and Jeanie on the splits?”

“Fuck off. What do you want from me?”

“I got a case; that's all. A good one. Favor for a friend.”

“Friend of yours or Teddy's?”

“Remember when he was in rehab?”

“Sure. I visited. Once was all I could take, though.”

“There was a girl there. Her name was Tamara.”

“I remember a girl.”

“She's one you would definitely remember. She had a virus. It doesn't look like there's anything wrong with her, but she's got a short-term memory of about half a minute. No joke. You'll be talking to her. Then she'll give you this blank look and say ‘Hi, I'm Tamara.' Then you have to start all over again.” I explained about her husband being killed and how Mrs. Walker, her mother-in-law, had contacted me. “Turns out Campbell was the detective on the case, and she thinks he was making progress, even after all this time. She seems to think that no one else is going to pick up the file now that he's on patrol.”

“She's probably right,” Car said. “Been a year?”

“More.”

“Then I doubt anyone's going to give it even a look. They'll just be waiting for a tip, hoping to get lucky. Or not. But that's how it usually goes. Let's say someone gets picked up for something else; they've got information they want to trade. That's the only way a case breaks when you've got no suspects and no witnesses.”

“You've still got a few contacts in the department.”

“Oakland PD? A few. More than I've got over here. Ever since Teddy and Santorez, the well kind of went dry on this side of the bay. What do you want?”

“Get a look at the file. See if she was right, if Campbell was pushing it. Maybe see how far he got, if there were any suspects. Maybe even drum up interest. See if you can't get them to take a look at it again.”

“They'll laugh. Why should I care? Why do you care? You've got no dog in this fight. This isn't a case. Unless you're planning to rep the killer if they find him. I don't think you're that desperate for business, are you?”

“Look, Campbell was dirty. We both know that.”

“Doesn't mean he wasn't a good detective.”

“Maybe that's what it is. This business with the tip, me being set up. The way I was thinking about it before, it was like—someone's trying to knock off Damon, or else trying to expose this dirty cop. One of Damon's guys, a business rival.” A feeling kept me from telling him about Lavinia. “Now I'm wondering if maybe Campbell was the target. Maybe it had to do with one of the investigations he was running.”

“Like he was making it too hot for someone and they wanted to cool things down?”

“This is just me thinking. But ever since Mrs. Walker told me about Campbell working her son's case—or at least making her think he was working it—there's been this nagging thought in the back of my mind. I mean what other cases isn't he working because he's down on patrol?”

“You could ask the man.”

“Forget that. He's got his own agenda. Mine is simple. Someone used me and I want to know why. And maybe in the process we can do something for Mrs. Walker and Tamara. Jeremy was my client. I got him off on a marijuana charge. I guess it made his mom overestimate my powers.”

“But I don't.” He rattled the ice in his glass. “You're a prick. You know that? I don't have time for this. I got no shortage of paying work. Every lawyer in town calling me. Take my choice.”

“So you'll do it.”

“For your brother's sake. I get the feeling he has his eye out for this Tamara.”

“They seem to understand each other.”

“The blind leading the blind.”

“That's about how it is.”

He looked up. “And if that little business works out you might have Teddy off your hands.”

I flushed. “And I'd be off his. He's got to figure out how to live on his own. He's the same Teddy deep down, whatever you say. He may not even realize it, but it's killing him, living with me like this.”

“Yeah, I can see how it would.” Car let his leg slide to the floor and stood up. “I'll sniff around. There may be nothing there. Cops aren't exactly keen to tell me things, like I said. But I've still got a few angles left, a few markers I can call. I'll tell them Mrs. Walker hired me, that might help.”

He mussed my hair. “Give Teddy my best.”

~ ~ ~

I lay awake most of the night listening to Teddy's snores through the wall, in bed but not trying to sleep, hands folded behind my head, eyes on the ceiling, mind running through the events of the trial. I took inventory, trying to decide how at fault I was, what I hadn't done that I should have done, what I'd said in front of the jury that was wrong. At key moments, sure, I'd been caught flat-footed. Maybe I shouldn't have reserved my opening, but that was always a judgment call, especially when so much depended on what I could get the witnesses to say.

He should have pled guilty, is what it came down to; we shouldn't have gone to trial. I could blame the client, but the truth was he probably would have pled guilty if I hadn't pushed him, and he would have gotten a sentence half as long as the one he'd get now.

In the morning Jeanie didn't come to see me right away, but after an hour or so she appeared in front of my desk. “Look, a client like that, there's nothing you can do. They'll always find a way to hang themselves. You've just got to put it behind you and move on.”

“Okay.”

She had a file under her arm. “Here.” She smacked it down, a thin misdemeanor file, a DUI. “I want you to step back for a while, focus on DUIs. I want you to defend nothing but drunk drivers until you can do it in your sleep. Then the next time you step up to felonies you'll be ready.”

“Come on. It's not that I wasn't ready this time. From the start you knew that Scarsdale was a loser and you dumped him on me.”

“If you'd been ready, you would have seen it for the loser it was and pleaded him out in five minutes. I wasn't getting anywhere with him. I thought maybe you could, and then you let him go to trial with a case you couldn't win. Better, at least, to make that mistake like this, with someone who's guilty.”

“Well, he was guilty, all right. We both know I did everything I could have done.”

“There's
always
something you could do better. The minute you start thinking, ‘Oh well, he was guilty anyway,' you're done.”

“Sure,” I said. I knew she was playing with me, trying to make like she'd set me up for some kind of a test that I'd failed. We both knew it wasn't that simple, but she was the boss—and that made me the one left standing when the music stopped.

~ ~ ~

With Car working on Campbell and his open cases, I decided to find out what I could about Lavinia Perry. It was easy to confirm the basics: in five minutes I had a printout listing all of her addresses for the last twenty years, her debt history, her employers, even her fishing license; I was able to confirm that she was married to Detective Campbell and that they hadn't divorced. There was a long list of cases in which she'd appeared as a testifying witness, and a civil lawsuit filed against her in federal court. But it had been thrown out without her having to give any testimony, a run-of-the-mill problem for any urban cop.

I decided to pay a visit to Nikki Matson.

Her office was in a rehabbed Victorian not far from the courthouse. It looked like she rented out the bottom floor, which had shabby curtains on the windows and a side porch full of junk. Across the street was a liquor store. An unmarked car sat double-parked as if watching the place.

The front door opened directly into a reception room. Nikki's secretary was a wizened black woman. An oxygen tank stood on a dolly beside her chair, the mask and hoses draped over the handles.

“I don't have an appointment, but I was hoping to see Nikki.”

“You don't have . . .” she began, then began to cough—a dry metallic sound.

I came around the desk and helped her adjust the mask, tucking in bits of her stiff, white hair. Then I turned the cock of the oxygen tank as she sucked.

“I can't let you in without an appointment,” she finally said.

“I hope you don't mind me saying this, but you don't seem to be in any condition to be working.”

“You call this work, all the hoodlums that come through here?” She took the mask from my hand. Then in a low voice, “I'll let the bitch know you're here. What name should I say?”

“Leo Maxwell.”

“She isn't taking new clients, and she doesn't pay referral fees. Just so you know.”

She got to her feet, holding on to her mask until the last second as she swayed away like a swimmer clinging to a rope. Then she went with short, quick steps across the reception area and through a door, activating the lock with a key fob she wore on a rubber band around her wrist.

I began to worry as soon as she was gone. There might have been another fifteen feet of hallway on the other side of that door before she reached her destination.

Just as I was getting ready to call someone she came back with a sheet of yellow notepaper in hand.

“She won't see me?”

“Yeah, she won't see you. She's in there with that client.”

I felt myself go stiff, a film of sweat breaking out on my brow. “Damon.”

“That's the one. You know what she calls him? A community activist.” She dropped into her chair and jammed the oxygen mask over her nose again.

I came around the desk and rested my hand on the cock of the tank, then gave it an extra half turn. She looked up at me, her eyes startled but not censorious. “It won't last,” she said in a whisper, her eyes locked with mine. I took my hand from the valve but she didn't turn it back to its previous level. She just sat there breathing. After a moment I gave it another half turn, and she drank it in, an actual, real breath for the first time since I'd come in, tears filming her eyes.

“He's got a man inside, in Santa Rita,” I whispered. “Probably another client of hers. I figure she's the one who carried the message. I want his name.”

She shook her head. “I don't know nothing.”

I stared hard at her, then twisted the valve, cutting off the flow of oxygen. No more Mr. Nice Guy. Her face grew more and more ashen as she strained to withhold the cough, but at last it tore itself from her. Now she stared hard back at me as her fingers scrabbled for the valve.

“Someone who was in last week, someone she went to see when there was no good reason to see him. He murdered my client, Jamil Robinson. Your boss set it up, making her as good as an accomplice. Just give me a name. I'll keep you out of it. Spell it on the table with your finger if you don't want to say it aloud.”