Try Dying Page 29

  “You ordered a manhattan last time we were together,” I said.

  “Always.”

  “See? Sometimes memory does serve.”

  She bit her lower lip slightly, like Bill Clinton being sincere. “Ty, I am so glad to see you, but what’s going to happen? Is there anything I can do?”

  “Actually, I’m here to help you with something.”

  “Me?”

  “I want to help you stay out of prison.”

  Her expression went south. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “I remember us talking about a guy named David Townsend. I asked you about him, and you played like you didn’t know who he was.”

  “Well, who is he?”

  “We found Lattimore.”

  No change in her eyes. In a stone-cold voice she said, “Who, or what, is that?”

  “He’s the guy you hired to keep David Townsend from flapping his yap. What I figure happened is you were looking into Kendra Mackee’s clients and used Lattimore. He got to Townsend and Townsend was going to talk about it. That would have supported the harassment story Claudia Blumberg is telling. So maybe you offered him money and he wanted more, or maybe you had Lattimore just pile on from the start.”

  “This is absolutely fantastic. Why are you saying this to me? I don’t know anyone by that name.”

  “He certainly knows you.”

  She froze.

  In court, a lawyer is ethically challenged. I mean, bound. Bound not to ask a question that doesn’t have a solid basis in fact. But I wasn’t in court now. I knew no bounds.

  “What if I told you,” I said, “that the curly-headed Mr. Lattimore is with the D.A. right now, pointing his finger at you?”

  “Pointing?”

  “For the murder of Channing Westerbrook.”

  Before Lea could react, the waitress returned with our drinks. She seemed to sense the mood and quickly placed the drinks and the check on the table.

  I took the check. “I insist.”

  Lea said nothing. She studied me, not bothering to sip her manhattan.

  “Did Channing start getting close to the story?” I asked. “And whose idea was it to include me in the mix? Did you just figure I’d be the perfect suspect?”

  That was the point at which she imbibed. It was a long, contemplative drink. “Ty,” she said, “can you help me?”

  “Help you how, Lea?”

  “With Lattimore.”

  “Whom you don’t know.”

  She waved her hand. “You know what you know. But he’s a liar. He did it all himself. And he’ll try to implicate me. I need help. I thought I could handle him. But he went off on his own. I can prove it. We can get him, you and I.”

  “Why didn’t you turn him over to the cops?”

  “That would have brought it all crashing down, wouldn’t it? My reputation. Gone. Everything. Now we have no choice. We have to move.”

  She reached her hand across the table. A plea. I took her hand. It was cold.

  “I can arrange for you to talk to the D.A.,” I said. “In fact, it may be sooner than you think.”

  She shook her head.

  “You see this watch?” I said. I held up my wrist and removed Jonathan Blake Blumberg’s prototype. “It’s an amazing thing. I mean, there’s a room on the third floor here where a Dragon Lady and a Silver Bullet are sitting with J. B. Blumberg himself and one Warren Lattimore. They’ve been listening to our conversation.”

  Now her face twitched. The cool exterior was cracking. “I don’t believe you.”

  “Why would I make this up?”

  “You can’t use that against me. There are privacy rules.”

  “I’m not going to use anything against you. We just wanted Mr. Lattimore to hear you put the needle on him.”

  At which point Dr. Lea Edwards, Harvard PhD and Danforth Award winner, stood up, uttered some very unprofessional words, threw the rest of her drink in my face, and walked out of Twist.

  Into the watch Blumberg had given me I said, “I think she’s a little upset.”

  122

  WARREN LATTIMORE SANG like a ten-year-old Michael Jackson. Real enthusiastic. In the hotel room with the Dragon Lady, the Silver Bullet, B-2, me, and a stenographer. He didn’t even want a lawyer. What he wanted was to make a deal to get out of being charged with special circumstances and getting a lethal injection. Giving up Lea Edwards was the price.

  “From the start she was out to get Mackee,” he said. “That’s why she brought me in.”

  “Why?” Marie Antoinette Rocha, the Dragon Lady, asked. “What did she have against Mackee?”

  “Lea caught her husband and Mackee in the old compromising position. She came home early from a lecture trip one day, walked into the dining room, and found more than a bowl of fruit on the table. I got involved during the divorce, which was kept low-key. Nobody wanted any bad publicity. Everybody said, Hey, let’s forget about it. Only Lea Edwards don’t forget. She was gonna take down Mackee no matter what. And she would’ve done it, too, but that reporter came around. She said she was doing some background on the case Peter Pan here was handling”—Lattimore nodded my way—“but she started to ask about David Townsend and in a real pushy way, if you know what I mean. She made it clear she was going to keep looking into this thing and that’s when Lea asked me to get rid of the problem.”

  “Why’d you agree?” Rocha asked.

  “Lea Edwards gets what she wants,” he said.

  “Were you sleeping with her?”

  Lattimore nodded slowly, with a faraway look. “She will eat you alive.”

  “I’ve got some teeth, too,” Rocha said. “Do you have any tangible proof to corroborate any of this?”

  “You can thank Mr. Blumberg for the Z-11. I got recordings for you.”

  B-2 smiled. “It’s what I do.”

  I said, “You have a recording of you calling me with a Mexican accent?”

  Lattimore smiled. “You’ll just have to trust me on that one.”

  Two days later, the D.A. formally dropped the charges against me.

  Two days after that, Lea Edwards hired a top-gun lawyer—ironically, a former partner of Latourette’s—to defend herself against the murder charge the D.A. dropped on her. The press loved it. Another celebrity trial had come to L.A. It would be fat city for a year.

  Two weeks later, another fugitive replaced me in the news.

  Rudy Barocas, American success story, was reportedly in France. When I saw that little item in the paper, I tried to get through to Cisneros. I’d tried several times before that, never getting a callback. So I left yet another message.

  This time, he did return the call. To Sister Mary’s phone. Gave her a location to give to me.

  I met him on a fire road off Mulholland Highway looking down at the Encino Reservoir, a patch of water in the middle of brown scrub and dirt.

  Cisneros was leaning on his car when I got there.

  “Anybody in the trunk?” I asked.

  He smiled. “Not today. How you feeling?”

  “My body’s just getting around to talking to me again.”

  “What’s it saying?”

  “Don’t get hit anymore.”

  “Good advice.”

  “I’d love to chat,” I said, “but I saw that Rudy is sipping French wine. What is up with that?”

  “Wanted to tell you about that when the time was right. Now it’s right.”

  “Hit me. I mean, tell me.”

  “Vargas is dead.”

  “What?”

  Cisneros nodded. “Barocas got him. Vargas was going to talk to us about what was in that journal and disk you gave us. It’s a pretty complete record of the Barocas counterfeit trail with all sorts of contacts. Good enough to go to the federal grand jury. Unfortunately, Vargas got bonded out and then didn’t want anybody to know where he was. Barocas found him before we did, at a house in Silver Lake. Took out two other people who were there, too.”

  �
��You know who they are?”

  “Not yet.”

  “One of them’s a guy named Gustavo, I’d be willing to bet. The brother of Alejandra Bonilla, who kept the records.” I felt numb. Even with Vargas dead I wasn’t relieved. Business still seemed unfinished.

  “We’re not going to give up on Barocas,” Cisneros said. “But it might be a good idea for you to lay low for a while. You need any help finding a place?”

  I shook my head. “I have somewhere in mind.”

  “You sure?”

  “I’m sure. God himself watches over this place.”

  “Sounds better than witness protection.” He stuck out his hand. “Take good care, Mr. Buchanan.”

  “Same to you, Agent Cisneros.”

  123

  A FEW HOURS later I was waiting across from the NoHo Theatre for David Townsend to show up for the evening’s performance. When he entered the front doors, I crossed the street and pushed my way past a guy who said, “Can I help y—”and caught up with Townsend going down the aisle toward the stage.

  When he saw me, he looked like he was going to scream.

  “Easy,” I said. “It’s over.”

  “What is?”

  I told him about Lattimore. He didn’t believe me at first. We went into the theater office, and I pulled up the story on the Times website.

  Townsend almost started crying.

  “You can rest now,” I said.

  “I guess I should say thanks.”

  “You can say it by doing one thing for me. And for yourself.”

  He waited.

  “I know a camera guy from KTLA. I want him to tape your statement.”

  “What statement?”

  “You’re going to come clean, David. Kendra Mackee manipulated you to come up with a repressed memory you didn’t have. That was used to bring down a good priest. You need to make that right.”

  He didn’t respond for a long moment. Then he started laughing.

  “What’s funny?” I said.

  “You got it wrong.”

  “What?”

  “Mackee didn’t do anything to me. I was the one in control. See how long it lasted?”

  “You saying you think you did repress those memories?”

  “No.”

  “Then what?”

  “It was the other chick who hired me.”

  “Hired you? Who—”

  “Dr. Edwards, idiot. You better sit down.”

  I did, on a folding chair.

  “It was her deal all the way,” he said. “Found me and coached me so it would look real. Paid me a good chunk. Then she was gonna use me to expose Mackee. Only when this Blumberg thing happened, I told her my price had gone up. That’s when she let Lattimore start convincing me otherwise.”

  “You are lucky to be walking around.”

  He laughed again. “I did one of those old movie things, told ’em if anything happened to me I had a statement on tape that’d go to the cops. They bought it.”

  “No tape?”

  Townsend shook his head.

  “Now you can make one for real,” I said.

  “If I do, what happens to me? Do I go to jail or anything?”

  “Nah. The only one who’d come after you is Father Robert. And he wouldn’t do that.”

  “I know,” he said. “He’d forgive me.”

  “He already has,” I said. “But I haven’t. You know what you did to an innocent man?”

  “Yeah, I know all about it.”

  “So come clean.”

  “Why should I?”

  “To make things right for Father Bob. You can help him and do a little good for your own soul.”

  “If I believed in a soul.”

  “I think you should,” I said.

  “Maybe I’ll think about it.”

  “Think fast.”

  124

  NEXT DAY I was in McDonough’s office. It was like a strange, parallel dimension. All the wood and leather and teak. All the glass-enclosed bookcases and corner windows looking down at the earth.

  A year ago I was picturing myself in an office like this someday. Now I couldn’t force myself into the picture at all.

  McDonough was all warmth. “Ty, we’d love to have you back with us. Despite what’s happened, all that’s water under the bridge. I know you were under a lot of strain. But you’re one of the best lawyers we’ve ever had here, and I’d hate to lose you.”

  “Aren’t you afraid I may dance on somebody’s conference table?”

  He snorted a laugh. “Not at all. Over and done with.”

  “But that’s the thing,” I said. “I’m afraid I might.”

  He looked at me.

  “I’m afraid I won’t be able to go back to doing things the way I did,” I said.

  “I think you can.”

  I shook my head.

  “But you have to do what you’re trained for,” he said.

  “I’ve been thinking about that. I might go out on my own.”

  “Do you know how hard that is?”

  “I figured out the secret, though. It’s real simple. Low overhead. No office. No home. A phone. And this.” I tapped my head.

  Pierce McDonough said nothing. A man who makes $750 an hour is not likely to process the term low overhead.

  “Pierce, I enjoyed working here. I really did. But I’m just not the same guy. I wouldn’t do the job you expect. Thing is, I don’t even know what to expect of myself. But I want a chance to find out.”

  “What do you think’s out there that isn’t here?”

  I shrugged. “More, I guess.”

  “More what?”

  “Just . . . more.”

  125

  ON THE WAY out I stopped by Al’s office. He was sitting at his desk when I poked my head in.

  “How goes it?” I said.

  He looked surprised, then sheepish. “Hey. A lot more work since Edwards got arrested. Thanks for complicating my life.”

  “It was already messed up.”

  He ran his fingers along a sleek, silver pen. “Ty, man, look—”

  “No need to explain. I just wanted to say good-bye.”

  He stood. “Why don’t we go to lunch?”

  “Another time maybe.”

  “Drinks after work?”

  “Go home to your wife and kids, Al.”

  “Ty—”

  “I mean it.”

  “What about you, man? What are you going home to?”

  I thought a moment. “I’ll let you know when I get there.”

  126

  ON A PRISTINE Friday night a week later, I went to a Brazilian place near the Northridge Fashion Center. Jacqueline had liked it. It was small but rated A and had a funky feel and all sorts of meat.

  I ate alone but didn’t feel alone. It was like somebody was with me the whole time, telling me it was all right now, that I could rest. Move on.

  Or maybe it was just my body and brain trying to convince me hope was more than just a four-letter word.

  My prospects were hardly the stuff of law school dreams. But I didn’t care, and it was nice that I didn’t. It wasn’t like I was completely tapped out. Jonathan Blake Blumberg had paid my defense fees because he said I was getting to be a good “hunter,” and he wanted to keep me on to help him clear his name. Said he’d submit to polygraph tests and do whatever it took. I said okay, because clearing names now seemed like a good specialty to be in. And David Townsend had agreed to talk, for Blumberg and Father Bob, too.

  After that, who knew? I had options. Living below my means for a while seemed like a good one. Not having to wear a suit every day would be sweet. The little things in life.

  I paid the check and went outside to a balmy Valley evening, wind coming out of the north and a near full moon rising.

  And a cool sound from the corner. Street music. A kid, maybe fifteen, was drumming on a plastic water bottle. Had a hat out for change.

  I fished out a buck and dropped it in t
he hat. Let him finish his solo.

  “Very cool, my friend,” I said. He had a tat sleeve and gap-toothed smile.

  Then I heard myself say, “Mind if I?”

  The kid was sitting on an upside-down paint bucket. He stood and said, “Go for it,” and handed me the sticks.

  They felt good in my hands.

  I sat and started in. Started slow and built, and in about a minute I was going like I’d never been away. Going and going under the moon and stars.

  I was all of them at once, the greatest drummers, the sultans of the skins, and I played on and on, lost in the music and the night.

  127

  “YOU WERE RIGHT, by the way,” I told Sister Mary the next day. It was morning at St. Monica’s and she was on the basketball court in her sweats, shooting around.

  “I was?” she said.

  “Wrath was the sin. Lea Edwards wanted good old-fashioned revenge. Isn’t there something about hell hath no fury like a wo—”

  “Watch it, bub, there are nuns present.”

  “Got it.”

  “So,” she said, “when will you be leaving?”

  “Is that any way for a Benedictine to talk?”

  “Let me rephrase. Will you be staying?”

  “Yeah. I think I will.”

  “Sister Hildegarde will be thrilled.”

  “I won’t be a slack.”

  “I know. The new ovens arrived yesterday.”

  “New ovens?”

  “As if you didn’t know. Thank you.”

  I cleared my throat. “I figure you all could use some legal work around here. Maybe some of the people in your parish, the poor ones.”

  “A lawyer who doesn’t want to make money?”

  “I’ll be the Bizarro World Johnny Cochrane for a while.”

  “We’ll keep you in fruitcake, if that’ll help.”

  “Sounds more like purgatory.”

  “No. Your purgatory will be on the basketball court.”

  “Why Sister Mary Veritas, it almost sounds like you’re calling me out.”

  “Just be warned. If you think hell hath no fury and all that, you don’t want to challenge me to one-on-one. I take no prisoners.”

  “What? A sweet, unassuming woman of God? I don’t believe it.”