Try Fear Page 3

  “Didn’t you once?”

  “I showed wisdom and restraint,” I said. “The very thing you’re telling me to do now.”

  “And you must continue to do so.”

  “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  “Then you are wise,” he said. “That’s all I’m looking for.” He stood up. “And now I’ll get ready to head down to the Sip with you.”

  He went back to his trailer. A man comfortable in his own skin. Something I was not. Did he really have a bead on the truth? Or was it all just a happy illusion?

  And is there anything wrong with that? If an illusion gets you through the day, big deal. If it puts an ice pack on the groin kicks of life, why not?

  I tried to argue myself into believing that, but something about illusion bothers me. I always want to know the truth.

  They say the truth shall set you free. But sometimes it just elbows you in the chops.

  7

  LATER THAT MORNING, Father Bob and I entered the Ultimate Sip.

  Pick McNitt’s place is in a strip mall on Rinaldi. Pick spent some time in a sanitarium, where Father Bob first visited with him by walking into the wrong room.

  They argued then and have been friends ever since.

  I pay Pick a little chunk each month for the use of the Sip as an office. And for a P.O. box in the little franchise Pick owns next door.

  “Well there they are!” Pick shouted as we walked in. “The two most misguided men in the city and county of Los Angeles and perhaps in the whole of civilization.”

  He was spoiling for a debate, as usual. He was wearing his standard Hawaiian shirt, double X. With his bald head and full white beard, he could have been a Santa too. The Christmas spirit was getting a real going over with Pick and Carl Richess as reps.

  “Two specials,” Father Bob said.

  Pick said, “There is no greater business than knowing thyself, as the divine Socrates said.”

  “Didn’t Socrates commit suicide by drinking your coffee?” Father Bob winked at me as he took an Arturo Fuente cigar from his shirt pocket. He doesn’t wear the collar on the street.

  Pick himself smokes a pipe. Inside. He is on a one-man resistance effort against L.A. County smoking ordinances.

  The Sip is adorned with scads of framed political cartoons Pick has drawn over the years. He did an especially wicked Nixon, but his Bill and Hillary Clinton make me crack up every time.

  Pick delivered two Gandhi Lattes to our table. He sat, putting down his own cup of joe. He slid it toward us.

  “Smell that,” he said. “It’s Joan of Arc.”

  “Joan of Arc?” Father Bob said.

  “French roast,” Pick said. He took out his pipe and packed it from a leather pouch. As he lit up he said, “Anything more on the death of God?”

  And so it began once again. Wimbledon. I leaned back in my chair and listened.

  “Greatly exaggerated,” Father Bob said.

  “It’s in all the papers,” Pick said. “Just look at the evil out there.”

  “The acts of evil men prove only the existence of evil, it doesn’t—”

  “Then God cannot be good,” Pick said.

  “At least now you admit God exists.”

  “I admit no such thing.”

  “Of course you do,” Father Bob said with a glint in his eye. “You are arguing that the existence of evil isn’t compatible with a good God. Okay, then it may be a bad God, but there is a God. We can argue about his character, but not his existence.”

  Pick blew a plume of smoke my way. I fought it off with my hands and a few coughs.

  “I’m with Bertrand Russell,” Pick said. “If I face God after death I will tell him, ‘Sir, you did not give us enough evidence!’ ”

  “To which he will reply,” Father Bob said, “ ‘You chose to ignore the evidence you had.’ ”

  “And then what? God sends me to hell for that? For eternity? Because I didn’t see enough evidence?”

  “It is not good to ignore evidence. Any decent lawyer will tell you that.” Father Bob smiled at me.

  “When you find a decent lawyer,” Pick said, “send him over.”

  “Aren’t all the lawyers in hell?” I asked. “Isn’t that the old joke, where is God going to find a lawyer?”

  “Better to reign in hell,” Pick said, “than serve in heaven.”

  Father Bob took a puff on his cigar. “When he starts quoting Milton, I usually take my nap.”

  The door opened and a skinny, ponytailed guy of about thirty walked in. He wore a white T-shirt with a sprig of cannabis on it. “I’m looking for the lawyer,” he said.

  I offer free legal advice on Saturdays, for the benefit of the poor St. Monica’s sends my way. But word has gotten out, and all sorts of wonderful clients seep in throughout the day.

  Pick McNitt has taken to calling me Forrest Gump. Because, he says, I never know what I’m going to get.

  Boy howdy.

  8

  I TOOK MY place at the table in the far corner, by the magazine rack. Pick, who is the only receptionist I have, told Mr. Ponytail to ride on over.

  “My name’s Only,” he said.

  “Only what?”

  “Just Only.”

  “Only the Lonely?”

  “Right on,” he said, and laughed. Sort of a snort laugh. As he sat I caught a whiff of the Mary Jane.

  “This is free legal advice?” he said.

  “The Sisters of St. Monica’s are raising funds for their homeless shelter,” I said.

  “St. Monica’s?”

  “Up in the hills. Donate on the way out. Whatever you can.”

  “Cool.”

  “How can I help you?”

  “I got fired from the phone store, man,” Only said.

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  “Do you have an employment contract?”

  “Contract?”

  “I didn’t think so. How about an employee’s handbook?”

  He shook his head.

  “Were you given any verbal assurances, letters, e-mails, anything that would give you the impression you couldn’t be fired except for good cause?”

  “No, man.”

  “You’re what’s called an At Will employee, Mr. Only.”

  “Just Only, remember?”

  “I may have some trouble with that, but listen. An At Will employee means they can fire you anytime, without cause.”

  “But—”

  “And you can walk, whenever you want.”

  “I—”

  “Unless they did something like harass you, or discriminate against you.”

  “That’s it!” Only said, sticking his finger in the air.

  “That’s what?”

  “Discrimination, man! That’s what I been trying to tell you.”

  He was excited. I was not. I sighed. “Okay, and how did they discriminate against you?”

  “I’m part of a minority.”

  “Are you gay or a woman?”

  He blinked.

  “Are you black or Hispanic?”

  “No, but—”

  “Jew or Muslim?”

  “No.”

  “Quaker? Amish? American Idol loser?”

  “I’m an American, period, and I demand my rights. I got a doctor’s prescription.”

  “Medical marijuana,” I said.

  He smiled. “How’d you know?”

  “Wild, wild guess.”

  “Right. And my doctor—”

  “What’s your condition?”

  “I’m fine, man.”

  “I mean, that you smoke for?”

  “Oh. Back pain.”

  “How’d you get a bad back?” I said.

  “Skateboarding. I was bustin’ an insane acid drop and had to bail.”

  I just looked at him, wondering why I went into law.

  “Off my friend’s roof,” Only explained. “Caught a little air there.”

  “Let me see if
I’ve got this straight,” I said. “You skateboarded off your friend’s roof and fell and hurt your back?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And for that, you have a doctor’s prescription to suck ganja for the pain.”

  “Right.”

  “Is this a great country or what?”

  “Exactly,” he said. “So I smoke a little at lunch. Not at work, lunch. The manager confronts me. I show him my prescription. But they fire me anyway. That’s not right. They can’t do that.”

  “But they can.”

  “How?”

  “The California Supreme Court says they can.” Now we were on my turf. I know squat about skateboarding and I’ve been off hemp since college. But California law is my meat. “Even though medical marijuana is legal here, and even if you only use it off work, and even though it doesn’t even affect your job performance, an employer can still show you the door. Even if you’re not an At Will employee.”

  “I can’t believe that! What’s happening to our country?”

  “You got me, Only. It’s not like the old days, is it?”

  “No way. When Clinton was president, he understood. Even though he didn’t inhale, he knew what the score was. So what do I do?”

  “Smoke less, work more,” I said. “And don’t skateboard off any more roofs.”

  He frowned. Then smiled. Then frowned. Then smiled again. Like Stan Laurel.

  “That’s really good advice, man. Thanks.”

  It’s nice when you can change a person’s life for the better.

  9

  MY NEXT “CLIENT” was a woman—short, round, and fortyish—who wanted to sue her insurance company for bad faith. She had driven her Prius into her neighbor’s garage door. The front end of her car was turned into an accordion. She put in a claim.

  Which the insurance company refused to pay.

  “Maybe I’m missing something,” I said. “But didn’t you drive your car into the door?”

  “By accident, yeah.”

  “You were the cause of the damage,” I said.

  “No,” she said. “The garage door caused the damage.”

  I spent the next ten minutes trying to explain the rules of causality to her. She did not get it. Or refused to. She said I was a hack and she was going to sue the company herself and then maybe me for malpractice.

  I wished her well.

  She cursed at me.

  This is now my life in the law. Drunk Santa Clauses. Toking telephone store employees. People who drive cars into garage doors that are not their own, then want money for it.

  In many ways, it’s a lot more interesting than the white collars I used to rep at one of the biggest firms in L.A., Gunther, McDonough & Longyear. Most of those clients were of a piece. You don’t get as much diversity in corporate America as you do at the Ultimate Sip.

  Of course, you don’t get much money at the Sip, but I was in a whole reassessment mood about that. I’d sold my real estate before the southern California land bust of ’07, and the funds were sitting in some CDs, breathing along.

  It was kind of nice for a change not to be thinking about money.

  10

  WHEN WE GOT back to St. Monica’s, I thought the rest of my day would be like one of those old ranchero deals. That was L.A., originally. Rancheros and hammocks in the shade and everything moving to the rhythm of a slow burro.

  Not to be. Pulling into the lot, I saw a knot of nuns outside the office.

  “Not good,” Father Bob said as we got out of my car. He has a sense of these things, especially after getting hit with that false accusation of child molesting during the pedophile priest scandals. He’s sort of a walking Catholic radar system.

  As we approached, we got looks. Wide eyed. Sister Perpetua, the oldest nun in the community, motioned us over.

  “The devil is behind it all,” she whispered.

  She looked seriously spooked.

  The office door opened, and there stood Sister Hildegarde. She does not wear the habit. She favors off-the-Walmart-rack specials. Her short, graying hair is dead straight and parted in the middle.

  “Come in,” she said.

  Sister Mary was sitting in the office, her face devoid of color.

  “What’s going on?” Father Bob said.

  Sister Hildegarde shut the door. “I’ll tell you what’s going on. There has been an incursion. An e-mail.” She motioned to the monitor on the desk. This was the computer Sister Mary usually handled.

  On the screen was an e-mail, sent to St. Monica’s:

  Mary, Mary, quite contrary.

  I will do to you what you deserve.

  Don’t fear God.

  Fear the one you don’t know.

  I can’t wait to get to know you better.

  I looked at Sister Mary. Her eyes were more frightened than I’d ever seen them.

  “Who would do this?” Sister Hildegarde said.

  “A punk,” I said. “It’s cyberstalking. The address is no doubt fake, but we need to get the cops on it.”

  Father Bob said, “Wouldn’t this be an FBI matter?”

  “The feds leave this to the states. They haven’t got the manpower, unless they think it’s terrorist related.”

  “Is it a felony, then?”

  I said, “It’s a wobbler. Means it can be charged as a misdemeanor or felony, depending on how bad it gets.”

  “How bad is that?” Sister Hildegarde asked.

  I looked at her and said nothing. But my clenched jaw was a dead giveaway.

  “I think all of us need to catch a collective breath,” Sister Hildegarde said. “I’ve just been saying to Sister Mary, a retreat is in order. She’ll be going to Louisville for a time of self-assessment.”

  That sounded ominous. Father Bob nodded slowly, but not in an agreement way. It was an I-get-what’s-going-on-here nod.

  I got it a half second later. This was a way for Sister Hildegarde to put a black mark on Sister Mary.

  “Let’s get the cops up here and file a report,” I said.

  And hoped that would be the end of it. Some jerk had sent a single e-mail, and wouldn’t be heard from again.

  Yeah, that’s what I hoped, all the time knowing hope is for kids on Christmas. It’s not a thing the rest of us can lean on. You try to and you fall hard.

  Like getting dumped on the asphalt in a pickup game of hoop. You can get seriously hurt that way.

  11

  I SPENT CHRISTMAS Day with Fran Dwyer—who was to have been my mother-in-law—and the little charge, Kylie, she has taken in. Being with them brought up all sorts of memories, and pictures.

  I never got a Christmas with Jacqueline Dwyer as my wife. Even though I could see her here, decorating the tree. Unwrapping presents. Shadows of what might have been.

  As Kylie opened the present I got for her, McElligot’s Pool by Dr. Seuss, I got a jolt of joy for the first time in months. But joy is a plaything in the hands of chance. It gets tossed around, maybe you catch it for a while, but if you get too attached, it ends up getting lost or broken.

  So I didn’t grab too hard for joy as it passed by. I just kept wishing it for Kylie and Fran. Kylie hadn’t known much hope growing up. Didn’t know her father, and her mother was dead.

  And Fran was still devastated by Jacqueline’s death.

  But somehow, these two had found each other, and it was a good thing. It would fight back the loneliness. I thought about that, and thought maybe I was losing that fight. I had wanted Jacqueline in my life more than anything else in the world. There was a faint, shuddering fear creeping up in me that I’d never be able to replace that void. Not fully, anyway.

  Kylie loved the book. She made me read it to her three times, sitting on my lap, her arm around my neck. The little house in Reseda filled up with the smell of Fran’s cooking, and that was Christmas, a pleasant one in L.A.

  12

  IN THE MIDDLE of January the rains came.

  I don’t like L.A. in the rain. It seems out o
f sorts, like a dog in a sweater. It wants to roam free, but the wet puts the kibosh on everything. Beaches go deserted, tires skid on freeways, and at country clubs around the city retired vice presidents sit inside and suck gin-and-tonics and complain about their wives.

  The rains turned foul. Mud started sliding in Malibu. A couple hillside homes became ground-level houses. A large dollop of wet earth and rock tumbled across the Coast Highway, blocking access for days.

  It was not a fit season for man nor beast, so I spent a lot of time in my trailer, reading my buddy Plato and occasionally looking out at the wet basketball court. It looked sad, abandoned. And Sister Mary was in Louisville, doing Sister Hidlegarde’s peculiar penance.

  A friendly detective named Fronterotta, out of the Devonshire Division, was looking into the cyberstalking e-mail to Sister Mary. Which meant, if the tone of his voice was any indication, we had a better chance winning the lottery than finding the guy.

  I continued to dispense legal advice in the corner of the Ultimate Sip. I advised several people to start small-claims actions. I argued one woman out of filing suit against the government for invasion of her brain and got her to a hospital instead.

  I had one guy come in and describe himself as an “exotic talent coordinator.” A little delving and I found out he just didn’t like the word “pimp.” He thought that was beneath him. I told him the law didn’t care what he called himself, he still couldn’t peddle flesh.

  He wondered if he was protected by the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution.

  Um, no.

  Then a stripper came to see me. She was upset about her working conditions. I told her she could call herself a “disrobing technician” and quit.

  Only, the toking ex-employee, came back to see me. Said he got a new job that never required him to pee in a cup. I asked him what the job was. A psychic hotline, he said. He had come to thank me. And offered me a blunt. I told him no, I don’t take medicine away from the sick.

  “It’s a gift, man!” he said.

  “The greatest gift,” I said, “would be knowing that you’re back in full, vigorous bloom.”

  He looked at me and frowned. Then said if I ever needed some help with an investigation, to give him a call. He might be able to predict what moves I should make. Or, if he couldn’t do it, he could ask some of his psychic friends.