The Zen Man, page 5
“You think I’ll be out tonight?”
“Good chance.”
Talking like a lawyer, all bluster and bravado and bull, but better that than to share doom and gloom with the guy behind bars. I well knew from years representing people like me stuck in jail, it was a crap shoot to guess when the booking and release staff would finish processing the bond papers. All depended on their mood and whether or not the Broncos were on TV. No one ever gets out of jail during a Broncos game.
“What time’s the Broncos game?”
Sam was checking his watch again. “How would I know?”
“Well, if it’s in Denver, it’ll probably be at two, which means I’m either out over the next few hours, or it’ll be late tonight.”
“Uh-huh,” he said, obviously disengaged from the conversation because he had better places to go, women to do.
I almost asked about Mellow, but didn’t bother. I knew the answer. Her probate lawyer would’ve had the car towed to a garage, where it’d stay until her will was probated. If I got out of this mess, I was gonna bid on that car. Not sure what with, but I’d figure out something.
Sam and I said our good-byes, then Sheriff Stretched Shirt escorted me back to my cell. The shackles clanked and jingled as I walked, a weighty reminder that reality was a lot heavier than the frothy news my buddy-lawyer had just shared with me. Maybe I’d be out tonight, but maybe not.
At least those odds were better than Laura’s answer had been.
Seven
“Somebody has to do something, and it’s just incredibly pathetic that it has to be us.”
—Jerry Garcia
At one-thirty on Monday, Judge Mancinelli looked out over the courtroom and said, “People of the state of Colorado versus Richard Levine.”
“Tally ho, mon ami,” Sam murmured, standing.
The Jefferson County Courthouse made ample use of wood—from the walls to the jury’s chairs to the spectators’ benches—yet the rooms still lacked any warmth whatsoever. Judge Mancinelli’s pulled-back black hair and slash of red for lips didn’t make the room feel any cozier. From the orange hue of her skin, it appeared she spent as much time in the tanning booth as on the bench.
I followed Tally Ho to the podium. D.A. Brett Crain, who’d been sitting at the prosecutor’s long wooden table flipping through a file, stood. He looked like a younger Jimmy Stewart, all earnest and gangly in a navy twill suit. I half expected him to stutter when he spoke.
“Sam Wexler for the defense, your honor,” Sam said loudly. “Mr. Levine is present.”
I took my place next to Sam. “Good morning, your honor.”
She stared at me, Sam, back at me. “Mr. Levine, I’m sure you remember the Fifth Amendment. Use it. That’s the last thing you say in this courtroom without Mr. Wexler’s permission.”
I seemed to be on a run of badly perceived actions lately.
“Brett Crain for the people,” said Brett, smoothing his hand down the front of his jacket. “May I approach? I have charges.”
“You may, Mr. Crain.”
He crossed the room and handed a sheaf of papers to the judge with a flourish worthy of a Shakespearean actor. As much as law enforcement loved fucking with a defense lawyer, a D.A. loved it even more.
“Your honor,” he said, “please take note that together with these charges, the people have filed a motion to revoke bail because Mr. Levine is a flight risk and a danger to the community.”
My insides curdled. Flight risk? Danger to the community? As Brett walked back to his table, he smirked in my direction.
Then I remembered the Phillips case. Gang banger. First degree. His grandmother depleted her life savings to hire me as his counsel. In the course of our investigation, we discovered a dirty homicide detective had hidden evidence. Judge Hall, a wizened ex-prosecutor who valued perseverance over sleight of hand, had dismissed the case. After that, Brett Crain spent eighteen months doing DUIs in a rural courthouse before the D.A.’s office brought him back to the mother ship.
I may have thought I was fucked back in the jail, but I was really fucked now with a D.A. damn near salivating with his golden opportunity for revenge.
“May I approach for our copy of the charges and the motion to revoke bail, your honor?” asked Sam.
I thought the honorable judge did a lousy job feigning impartiality. I caught a slight smile cracking that orange tan.
“You may, sir,” she responded.
Sir Sam brought back the papers, laid them on the podium. “We waive reading of the charges and advisement of rights and request a preliminary hearing that is combined with the hearing to revoke bail.”
Any idiot lawyer would waive reading of charges and rights to streamline the proceedings when faced with a judge who would be ruling on his client’s freedom in a few weeks.
“No objection, your honor,” said Brett.
Mancinelli looked down at her desk. “Checking my calendar, I have the morning of January thirteenth available. Eight A.M.”
“Your honor,” said Sam, “I have a DUI trial in Gilpin County on that date—”
“Gentleman, that’s the date. We’re not playing battle of the network calendars here. If you have a DUI in Gilpin County on that date, call a lawyer with three years or less experience to replace you there. I need you here, and so does your client.” She looked at me. “Mr. Levine, your bond continues until that date and time. Oh, and no mistakes, Levine. Zero tolerance here.”
I nodded, knowing better than to utter a single word.
January thirteen. Thirty-one days from today. Although it’d be nice to think Sam’s relationship between the sheets with the good judge might mean she’d smile favorably on me on that date, the opposite was more likely true. No judge wanted his or her reputation sullied by innuendoes of bias. Knowing Sam’s penchant for flaunting his infidelities, Teresa Mancinelli would probably be harsher in her ruling to combat any gossip. Which meant if she revoked my bail on January thirteen, I’d be staring at bars until the trial took place, which could be any time from March to September.
Which meant I had thirty days to find the real killer.
My investigations were starting the moment I bolted this inner sanctum of justice.
Eight
“Talk about your plenty, talk about your ills, One man gathers what another man spills.”
—Jerry Garcia
“What?” The Durango lurched as Laura drove over a speed bump in the Jefferson County courthouse parking lot. “No. Absolutely not. Investigating your case is one thing, rolling in strangers’ filth is another.”
“Getting down and dirty is part of being a private eye.” I looked around the passenger seat. “The gloves?”
“Center compartment.”
I pulled out my nylon gloves, noticed she’d brought hers, too—black leather with rabbit lining.
“I’m not dressed for the occasion. This skirt is a Gucci.”
Laura’s partially open winter coat exposed a black knee-length skirt that matched the color of her low-heeled pumps. Hardly down-and-dirty wear, unless one had a serious school marm fantasy. Which this Deadhead boy might’ve had if he’d been stuck in jail another day. Instead, I’d morbidly fantasized about her rejection of my marriage proposal. If I’d been released last night, instead of barely over an hour ago with minutes to throw on a suit and race to the courthouse, I’d have already asked her why. Right now, we had work to do.
“Just keep the motor running, I’ll do the dirty work.” I pointed to an upcoming on-ramp. “Take 6 East.”
As she took the exit, I scanned the list of CrimDefs and their addresses that she’d printed for me. Being a third-generation Denverite, I knew my way around the city and its ‘burbs the way Jerry knew his way around a riff. Checking Lou’s street address, I knew he lived in a cushy suburb of Lakewood, Iris in culturally diverse Wash Park, south of downtown Denver. Lou’s address was closer, so he’d be first.
“Those bags will be full of…” She wrinkled her nose. “I’ll never get the smell out of here.”
“Just crank up the heater and drive with the windows down. After a day or two, you’d never know the Durango went undercover as a trash truck.”
“But there’ll be…gunk on the back seat.”
“Most people put their stuff in plastic bags.”
Checking the side mirror, she switched lanes. “Isn’t it illegal taking someone’s trash?”
“Lakewood and Denver deem curbside trash public property. Of course, we don’t know if today’s their pick-up day, but it’s possible their trash is accessible anyway. If either of them threw out anything after last Friday night that links them to Wicked or her murder, today’s a primo day to check.”
Fifteen minutes later, we pulled up in front of Lou Reisman’s home, a palatial number with rolling lawns and a garden sculpture that looked like a weathervane on growth hormones. All behind a massive wrought-iron security fence.
No visible trash cans. None in front of the other mansions, either.
“Drive down the alley,” I said, “let’s see if there’s a dumpster.”
There were none. I gave Laura directions to Iris’s home.
Half an hour later, we arrived in Wash Park, a sprawling residential area that boasted the second-largest city park in Denver and the largest number of jogging bodies stuffed into overpriced designer running duds. Back in the day, my dad’s bookie had lived a block down. A simple brick home with a view of the park. Had probably sold for a small fortune to some overpaid thirty-something who’d razed the lot and built a glass-and-stone monstrosity that were all the rage these days.
Iris, to her credit, hadn’t gone the razing route. Her single-level home was constructed of concrete in an Art Deco style popular in Denver after the Great Depression. Jack Kerouac, my teenage literary hero ‘cause he’d hung out in Denver and chased cool, had referred to a similar concrete building in his book On the Road, an eatery that had the balls to not put the sign “white trade only” in its window.
Cacti, yarrow, and yucca crowded Iris’s Xeriscaped yard. A closed one-door garage terminated the empty driveway.
I had an idea. “Pull up to that garage door.”
“But there’s no trash cans.”
“They’re probably inside that garage.”
“She could be home and her car’s in there.”
“She’s a public defender, which means she works eight to five and is at her office or in court.” I motioned for her to drive.
“But…opening that garage door is trespassing, right? Isn’t that a felony?”
“Misdemeanor.”
“Not a felony?”
“Only if we kill someone while opening the door. Now, either you drive up that driveway, or I’m jumping out of this car, jogging up there, and checking if that garage door opens. If it does, meet me down the block in ten.”
I opened my door a few inches.
Muttering something about idiots intent on more jail time, she jammed her foot on the gas. The Durango jerked down the driveway, then stopped abruptly. After killing the engine, she began yanking on one of her leather gloves. “With two of us grabbing that stuff, this will go twice as fast.”
We got out of the car, careful to shut our doors quietly, and headed to the garage door. I lifted the handle. It rumbled and creaked as I lifted it three, four feet—enough for Laura and I to slip underneath.
Seconds later, we stood in the shadowy room, inhaling the stench of oil and mildew as our eyes adjusted to the bulky shadows.
“She’s a packrat,” Laura muttered.
The light from underneath the garage door cast bluish shadows on stacks of crates and boxes crammed against the walls, leaving barely enough room for a car to park.
“Trash cans at ten o’clock,” I said, pointing to several barrel-shaped containers.
We hustled over, set the lids on the ground, and were lifting out plastic bags when Laura stifled a gasp.
“What?”
“To our right,” she whispered.
I turned. My gut shriveled.
Four green eyes, about three feet high, stared at us in silence. From their bulk, the sheen off their short hair, and the massive heads, I guessed them to be mastiffs. Had to be pushing a hundred and fifty pounds each, a fact I knew from a case where my client had been attacked by one, resulting in fifty stitches and a funny gait. Of all the memories I’d lost, hell of a one to remember.
They must have entered from some gargantuan doggie door after hearing us in the garage, but why hadn’t they yapped at us like normal, over-zealous dogs protecting their property? Their silence was more foreboding than any crazed barking.
One pair of green eyes blinked.
The other set, followed by a bulky mass of bad, stepped forward.
“Don’t make eye contact,” I whispered in a scratchy voice, “and back slowly to the garage door.”
A low, curdling growl filled the room as the second dog moved forward.
“Hold your trash bag…in front of you…” That garage door felt a mile away.
The bulky beasts tracked our slow, laborious path, snarling and growling their displeasure at the unwanted visitors. It felt as though we were traveling a millimeter a minute, that we’d never get there, when, miraculously, we reached the garage door.
“Laura,” I whispered, “put down your bag, get out…”
“I think I wet my pants.”
“Go goddamit.”
She slipped under the door, leaving me alone with Darth and Vadar, my only protection the smelly, soggy plastic bag I shakily held in front of me. I inched one leg underneath the door. The seeping light highlighted the reddish-gray sheen their coats—and that one had a mouth of canines like a T-Rex. A crazy thought crashed through my mind—could it bite right through the bag and me?
Bent over, my fingers digging into the bag, engulfed in the stench of rotting food and something icky sweet, my eyes locked with one of the green pairs.
“Good boy,” I murmured in an odd, high-pitched tone that sounded as though I’d been sucking laughing gas.
One of the beasts snapped at the air.
I bent over further, shifting my weight on my getaway-run-like-hell lead leg when… bang! I hit my head on the edge of the door.
All hell broke loose.
As the howling, barking beasts scrabbled and skittered toward me, I hurled myself and the bag underneath the door. I rolled down the driveway with the bag, screaming shut-the-fucking-door-shut-the-fucking-door, Laura screaming oh-my-god-we’re-going-to-die…
The door slammed shut with a resounding crash.
Nine
If only I could throw away the urge to trace my patterns in your heart, I could really see you.
—David Brandon, Zen in the Art of Helping
Around five P.M., Laura brought the Durango to a crunching stop in the gravel parking lot. “I really, really don’t think anyone saw us,” she repeated for the umpteenth time.
“That’s because we were the epitome of stealth, Mrs. Peel,” I mumbled, sliding out the passenger side. Shuddering at the blast of winter mountain air, I slammed shut the door, then stood there listening to the cooling engine ping and creak. The fading rays of the day coated the undersides of the gray clouds with an iridescent bronze-pink sheen that reminded me of the carnival glass my mother had loved to collect. We’d had so many bowls and cups and vases of it scattered all over the house, we’d looked like a factory outlet for the stuff.
Tried not to think of my mother too much. She’d given up on me after I’d called her too many times, slurring about my troubles or needing money. I heard one of her brothers had tried to find me after her stroke, but I was crashing at a new motel, nobody knew which one. Never got to say good-bye, never got to tell her I’d pulled my life out of the hole.
Sometimes I’ve thought that life isn’t so much about first steps as second ones. The chance to rectify a wrong, celebrate a milestone, heal a break. A writer friend once say that writing was rewriting. That pretty much summed up life, too.
Laura’s footsteps munched across the gravel as she walked around the Durango.
“I know we weren’t exactly stealthy,” she said, stopping next to me, “but as I’ve already told you, I looked around when we drove away and didn’t see anyone walking on the street, or anybody in the park across the street close enough to identify us or the license plate.”
I put my arm around here. “You’re a good private eye, baby. Sorry about that Mrs. Peel jab.” I nodded at the army green container at the edge of the lot. “We’ll toss the meaningless stuff there, take anything significant up to the lodge.”
Over the next few minutes, I rifled through the bag of trash. Found a small cardboard box whose print advertised a face power made of jojoba seed oil and corn starch, some written notes on an envelope, masses of slop I presumed were vegetables in a previous life, and a credit card statement. The latter surprising me as I thought an almost-judge would surely use a shredder. In the dusk, I couldn’t see all that well, was ready to give up, when I shoved aside a dog food bag and froze.
“Bingo.”
Laura paused, looked over. “What is it?”
I gingerly picked it up by the edge, pulled it out of the bag.
“Photo of Wicked.”
• • •
An hour later, we were back in the lodge, showered and changed into comfortable clothes, our booty from the trash hit—the envelope, credit card statement, photo of Wicked—laid out to dry on the kitchen counter.
Laura had turned on the XM radio to the Grateful Dead Channel, a kindness toward me as she wasn’t wild about their music (“Do they ever sing on key?”). They were playing “Jack Straw” from their Europe ‘72 live triple album. I listened to the words, feeling about as broke and desperate as the sorry dude in the song.
She brought me a can of root beer from the fridge. Handing it to me, our fingers touched, reigniting the gut-deep ache that had haunted me these last few days in my barren cell. Time to stop being a coward.
