Try Dying Page 19

  “Civil litigation mostly,” I said.

  “Ever do any criminal work?”

  “No.”

  “Good. That’s not a specialty we particularly warm to.”

  Detective Bloch, who was younger than Sayer and a little on the Pillsbury Doughboy side, said, “I like the civil guys much better, too. My brother-in-law, he’s a defense lawyer out in Riverside, and I don’t like him at all. Makes Thanksgiving a little difficult.”

  I said, “What is it I can help you with?”

  “We’re investigating a homicide.”

  “Homicide? What’s that have to do with me?”

  “Do you know Channing Westerbrook, sir?”

  74

  I MANAGED TO say, “No way.”

  “You denying you knew her?” Sayer said.

  “No—”

  “So you did know her?”

  “Well, yeah. Sort of. I can’t believe—”

  “How well did you know her?”

  My mind was shrinking down to a size that could only repeat a loop showing Channing Westerbrook alive. I couldn’t get myself to believe she was dead.

  “What was the nature of your relationship?” Sayer said.

  “It was purely professional,” I said. “She did a news story about my fiancée’s death, and that’s how I met her.”

  “You weren’t romantically involved?”

  I thought about her kiss and her eyes. “No.”

  “When was the last time you saw her?”

  “Wednesday.”

  “What time?”

  “Around eight or so.”

  “Eight at night?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where?”

  As I answered I could sense the skepticism starting to build in the cops, and I couldn’t blame them. “I went to her apartment.”

  “For business?”

  “Hey, guys, I’m not a suspect in this thing, am I?”

  The detectives looked at each other, then back at me, like synchronized swimmers. “We’re just here to ask some questions.”

  Sweat started to bead my armpits. “I didn’t kill Channing Westerbrook.”

  “Nobody’s saying you did,” said Sayer.

  I didn’t believe that for a second. This was beyond unbelievable, a nightmare. Somebody murdered Channing. It probably had something to do with me. But these detectives had the wrong idea. How was I going to convince them of that when I’d been up in her apartment only a couple of nights ago?

  Detective Sayer said, “Would you mind telling us where you were last night?”

  “What time?”

  “Say from seven on.”

  “Well, I had a meeting around eight o’clock. But the guy never showed.”

  “Who was this meeting with?”

  “Is that really relevant?”

  “ If you’ll let us ask our questions and answer them fully, we can wrap this up and let you get back to your business.”

  “All right, let me try to explain,” I said.

  “That would be nice.”

  “Channing Westerbrook and I were working on a book together. What I mean is, she wanted to write a book about me. She wanted to write about how I was dealing with my fiancée’s death. A human interest kind of thing, I guess. I said she could do that if she would help me out, too.”

  “Help you out how?”

  “I think somebody might have killed Jacqueline. It was supposed to have been a freak accident, but I got some information, and I followed up on that and some things started happening to me.”

  “What kind of things?”

  “Have you ever heard of Rudy Barocas?”

  “Sure, he works with gang kids.”

  “What if I told you he followed me to Channing’s apartment on Wednesday? And he was waiting to talk to me when I came out?”

  “Is that what you’re telling me?”

  “Yes. And I would put him on your list of people to talk to.”

  Bloch was taking notes and wrote something down. Then his cell went off, and he stood up and walked to the other side of the conference room to take the call.

  Sayer said, “So you were in Channing Westerbrook’s apartment on Wednesday?”

  “Yeah, we were talking about the book.”

  “At her apartment?”

  “She requested it.”

  “Let’s finish up about last night. Where were you having your meeting?”

  “At a club.”

  “Where?”

  “Koreatown.”

  “A little off your track, isn’t it?”

  “A place I know. Mongoose.”

  “Anybody see you there?”

  “I got tossed out by the bouncer.”

  Sayer frowned. “What time was that?”

  “I don’t know, maybe around nine.”

  “Can you account for your time after that?”

  “I went driving.”

  “Where?”

  “Nowhere in particular. I was mad. I was—” I looked at both of them. “Set up.”

  Sayer said, “What’s that mean?”

  “I got a call from a guy, said he had pictures of Channing with Rudy Barocas and so I wanted to see them. She didn’t tell me she was meeting with him.”

  “Should she have?”

  “We were supposed to be working together, and she wasn’t telling me something.”

  “Allegedly.”

  “Yeah, allegedly.”

  “So you might have been a little angry with Ms. Westerbrook, is that safe to say?”

  I glanced at Bloch who was still listening on his phone, holding his off hand over the other ear. He was looking back at me.

  “No, I didn’t have enough time to get mad at her,” I said.

  “So you’d say that your relationship with her was, what did you say, purely professional? Nothing else?”

  “That’s right. Nothing else.”

  I was watching Sayer’s eyes, reading doubt there, when I became aware that Bloch was standing directly behind me. I whipped around in my chair. “Hey.”

  “Ask you a question, Mr. Buchanan?” Bloch said.

  “Sure.”

  “How’d you get that mean looking scratch on your neck?”

  “What scratch is that?” Sayer asked.

  “Back of the neck,” Bloch said.

  My face got hot, and the place on my neck where the scratch was burned hotter. I must have looked guilty as sin, back when people still believed in it.

  “Now I’m a suspect,” I said. “Now I better talk to a lawyer.”

  “You’re not under arrest, Mr. Buchanan,” Bloch said.

  “You’re accusing me.”

  “We haven’t,” Bloch said. “Still asking questions. Do you want us to stop?”

  “You’ll find out anyway. Channing scratched me. She was trying to kiss me and I pulled away.”

  Sayer squinted. “I thought you said it was purely professional?”

  “We had some wine, she got a little playful. I told her I wasn’t interested.”

  “So for that she attacked you?”

  “I didn’t say attacked.”

  “She’s quite a looker,” Bloch said.

  “Was,” Sayer said.

  “What’s your blood type, Mr. Buchanan?” Bloch asked.

  “What’s that have to do with anything?”

  “You refusing to answer?”

  “B positive.”

  Bloch looked at Sayer and nodded. Then back at me. “By the way, her body was found five minutes away.”

  “Five minutes away from what?” I said.

  “From where you were that night. Little park on Ardmore.”

  My throat went dry. “That’s it.” I stood up. “This interview’s over.”

  “Is it over?” Sayer said to his partner, not to me.

  “Let’s do it,” Bloch said.

  “You’re under arrest, Mr. Buchanan. Put your hands behind your back, please, while I sing that good old Miranda son
g.”

  Sayer read me the rights as Bloch put metal cuffs on me. They paraded me out of the office with everybody looking.

  Kim almost started crying.

  McDonough turned his back and walked the other way.

  Al fell in step with us and said, “Don’t say anything to anybody. I’ll call a lawyer. The best in L.A.”

  “No such thing,” Bloch said, and smiled.

  75

  AT WILSHIRE DIVISION they took all my personal effects, printed and photographed me, entered me into the system. They gave me a phone call, and I decided to use it to call Fran. I didn’t want her hearing about this on the evening news.

  There was no easy way to do it.

  “How you doin’, kid?” I said.

  “Baking,” she said. “I thought you might like some of my famous cornmeal muffins. Maybe some chili to go with—”

  “Fran, about that. I’m not going to make it.”

  “Oh? You have to work?”

  “Listen to me for a second and promise me something. Will you do that? Will you promise?”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Promise me you won’t get upset because I’m not. I’m just fine.” What a practiced liar I was.

  “Are you hurt? Are you in the hospital?”

  “Fran, there’s been a big misunderstanding. You know that TV reporter who covered Jacqueline’s accident?”

  “Channing Westerbrook. Yes, I like her.”

  “Something’s happened, Fran. They found her. She’s dead.”

  “What?”

  “And I’d been seeing her. She wanted to do a story on me. Well, now that she’s dead they think I might have had something to do with that, and they’re talking to me about it.”

  “Who? The police?”

  “Yeah. Now would—”

  “Oh Ty—”

  “Listen Fran. Just listen. Call Al Bradshaw.” I gave her the number. “He’ll give you more info.”

  “Ty—”

  “All right?”

  “Yes, Ty.”

  “And try not to worry. I’m not guilty of this. I’ll be out in no time.”

  Sure.

  They parked me in a cell. It was a little like the Old West, these cells were. About a dozen of them, I guessed, steel bars so everybody could see everybody else. A bunk that smelled like old bread and ammonia.

  76

  NEXT MORNING THEY cuffed me and loaded me on a sheriff’s bus, drove me and a few other accused felons to the men’s central jail, which was between Chinatown and Union Station. Many well-known defendants had been housed here, including O.J. and Robert Blake. Both walked out free men.

  But I never won a Heisman Trophy or had a hit TV series. My hole cards weren’t too hot.

  They herded us off the bus in a line, into a booking area where I was told to strip. All the way. Then they handed me a T-shirt, boxers, and orange scrubs, the latest fashion statement in municipal incarceration. Actually, I was told, this was because I’d been designated as a keep away.

  Later I learned that was the vernacular for a K-10, which is a prisoner they want to keep away from the other inmates, either because they are high-power dangerous, or were involved in a big case, like I was. Channing Westerbrook had been murdered, and it was all over the news.

  I was being kept away for my own protection. Inmates could improve their reps by taking out someone like me.

  O.J. and Blake were both keep aways, so I was in good company.

  They also gave me a pair of black Vans tennis shoes, without laces, and flip-flops for the shower, a bedroll, and a towel. They put a plastic wristband on me with my name and number. And then, all shackled up, the nice deputy walked me to my cell, my home away from home.

  It was a small box with a toilet, a table and a bunk, white walls, and a smell like moldy oranges. When they locked the door on me, I thought about how much we take privacy for granted. The deputies watched us from a thick steel and glass enclosure out beyond the railing.

  Later, when they turned down the lights, the screaming started. Somebody was up and wanted everybody to know about it. He screamed, and he rapped, and he did jam poetry, and he screamed some more.

  All night long.

  Men’s Central Jail

  77

  NEXT MORNING THEY served up powdered eggs and warm bread and an orange. Then I was told I got an hour of roof time, which was their idea of outdoor exercise. It was like a cement playground, only the chain link was over the top of the yard, with razor wire around the edges. There were a couple of basketball hoops and a handball wall. On another wall were stainless steel toilets and pay phones.

  But none of that was for me. The K-10s got put in a sort of cage, with a pull-up bar in it.

  I did twenty pull-ups before my arms started to burn. Then I sat and looked at the sky through the chain link.

  A deputy named Reynal came up and said I had a visitor. He put the bracelets on me and brought me down to the attorney interview room, sat me on a stool at the end of the row, unshackled my hands, and put them in the set of cuffs fastened to the table.

  “Wait here,” he said. Jailhouse humor.

  A moment later a man I’d seen only on TV walked in and sat across from me.

  Martin Latourette was known around town as the Silver Bullet. Silver because of his hair, full and white and worn long. Bullet because he was the desperate defendant’s last shot and very often the winning one.

  Like a lot of successful criminal defense lawyers, Latourette had started in the D.A.’s office, gaining valuable trial experience and an insider’s view of the system. He went out on his own and had a good ten years of defense work under his belt when the case that made him a legal superstar came calling.

  That was the Ben Soledad murder case. Soledad, the TV star from the eighties, was accused of murdering his model girlfriend, Stacy Regis, in the parking lot of the Sherman Oaks Galleria late one night. Public opinion and late-night comedians had Soledad in San Quentin from the start. But then Latourette took over.

  He was everywhere. Latourette was on talk shows and outside the courtroom, wherever there was a camera. And then he went to court and actually got Soledad acquitted.

  Now this legal magician was sitting across from me in the attorney room at L.A. County Jail and asking if I’d like him to be my lawyer.

  “I don’t have your kind of money,” I said. “Even after I sell my real estate and tap all my accounts.”

  “What if I told you money was not a concern?”

  “I’d ask why.”

  “Let’s not jump the gun here. I haven’t said I’d take the case yet.”

  I shook my head.

  “I’m only asking at this point if you’d be interested in discussing it further.”

  “Yeah, I would,” I said. “I shouldn’t be here.”

  Latourette smiled and nodded. “Then tell me exactly what happened. Tell me as if you were talking to a jury in the courtroom. I’m going to listen to you. I may ask a question or two. When you’re finished, I’ll tell you if I can take you on as a client, and if I do, you won’t have to worry about the money aspect.”

  With a shrug, I told him everything, and he just sat there with this intense concentration. It was a little disconcerting at times, like he was able to climb in my head and root around for information I wasn’t giving. I talked while he opened drawers and looked under beds and scavenged in the closet.

  When I was finished he folded his hands. “Quick arrest,” he said. “They must have something more on you.”

  “What could they possibly have? I didn’t do it.”

  “That’s what they all say.”

  “Hey, don’t you—”

  “I’ll take your case, Tyler.”

  “Just like that?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Without a retainer?”

  “Right.”

  “This is all a little sudden.”

  “Like a guy asking a girl to marry him on the
first date.”

  “Something like that.”

  Latourette said, “Let me take you through arraignment and bail hearing.”

  “You think I might get bail?”

  “If the prosecutor doesn’t allege special, and I don’t think they will. That’s the good news. The bad news—bail schedule says a mil.”

  “Hey, no problem. Pocket change.”

  “I’ll try to knock it down. You have something you can put up for a bond?”

  I started to shake my head, then said, “I own some land. Used to have a house on it. But the land itself is worth that much.”

  “All right. Let me try to get you out of here. If I do, you can keep me. If I don’t, you can fire me. I won’t mind. Any questions?”

  “Yeah. One. Why are you doing this?”

  He stood up. “Ego. Pure ego. I’m one of the few lawyers who’ll admit that. I love to win and I hate to lose, and I’ll fight for you like nobody’s business. Because your case is high profile and so am I, and I like appearing on Larry King. Oh yeah, and one other thing. I’m convinced you’re not guilty. It would be nice for a change to represent someone I think is innocent.”

  “What about Ben Soledad?” I said. “Didn’t you think he was innocent?”

  The Silver Bullet smiled and winked at me, and left without another word.

  78

  A COUPLE OF hours after my meeting with Marty Latourette I was told I had another visitor, one I had not expected.

  Father Bob was sitting on the other side of the glass and asked through the handset, “How you doin’?”

  “I’ve been better.”

  “I hear you.”

  I said, “What brings you down here?”

  “Came to see you.”

  “Why?”

  “Suffering is wasted if we suffer entirely alone.”

  I just looked at him.

  “Thomas Merton said that.”

  “Who?”

  “Merton. A Trappist monk. He wrote that in No Man Is an Island.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  Father Bob nodded.

  “Easy for him to say.” I paused. “No offense.”

  “You can’t offend me,” Father Bob said.

  “You haven’t heard me try.”

  “You want to?”