Howtown (15 page)

“Ruth Soto?”

He nodded brusquely and walked to the other side of the room, slumping against a wall, arms folded across his chest. “I took them in the park from my car. She knows my car.”

“Where does she live?”

“Paradise Slough, with her mother. On La Honda Road. It’s a yellow house near the end of the street. You’ll recognize it from …” He hesitated, drawing upon a memory. “From the roses. There are some bushes in front of the porch. I planted them.”

Nodding, I said, “All right, Paul, I’ll go see her tomorrow.”

He dropped his hands to his sides. “Yeah, do that. And tell her I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?”

“To get her involved.” He came back to the table and sat down. “I wanted to keep her out of it. She’s already done enough for me.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“When she wouldn’t testify,” he said. “She did that for me, because …” He shrugged. “You wouldn’t understand.” Bitterly, he added, “Your biases won’t let you.”

The security guard at the building where Clayton had his office wasn’t going to let me upstairs. I stood at his desk bickering with him, a skinny, crew-cut geezer, who kept saying he didn’t know me from Adam. The feeling I got was that in his book a Mexican in a suit and tie was still a Mexican and probably up to no good. Our voices ricocheted off walls of polished granite in the big, cold foyer.

“Look,” I said, “why don’t you call Mr. Clayton. He’ll tell you that it’s okay.”

He moved his head slowly from side to side. “We ain’t supposed to disturb the tenants unless it’s an emergency.”

“Well, is anyone up there?”

He moved a finger across the pages of a sign-in log. “Someone named Stein,” he said, finally, “but I ain’t …”

“Never mind,” I snapped, and went back outside into the humid September night. I walked up and down the Parkway until I found a phone and dialed Clayton’s office. After a dozen rings, someone picked up and said, “Law offices.”

“Peter?”

“Yeah,” he said cautiously. “Henry?”

“Yes, it’s me. Look, Peter, I wanted to come up and do some work but I can’t get past the security guard. Could you call down and tell him it’s okay?”

“I’ll come down and get you,” he said.

“Great, I’ll meet you in the lobby.”

When I got back to building, Stein was joking with the guard. He saw me coming in, smiled and waved me over. “Hey, Henry. I guess you met Mr. Johnson.”

“I had the pleasure,” I replied.

The guard said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Rios. We ain’t supposed to let strangers in.”

“No problem,” I said, and started moving toward the elevators.

“Uh, sir. Mr. Rios?” the guard called. “You gotta sign in, sir.”

I went back and scribbled the name in his log. “Remember my face, would you, Mr. Johnson. It’ll save us both some wear and tear.”

On the way up in the elevator, I pointed at Stein, who was wearing jeans and a yellow polo shirt, and said, “You’re out of uniform.”

“I came back after dinner,” he replied. “Bob’s got me cross-indexing some depos. Real fun.”

The elevator came to a stop and the doors slid open. As we exited, I said, “It must be a big case. That’s usually paralegal work.”

Stein grimaced. “It’s not a big case.” He unlocked the office door and let us in. “And you’re right, it’s shit work.”

“Trouble in paradise?” I ventured, as we walked down the hall toward my office.

Stein stopped. “You want to know the truth, Henry? I’m sorry I ever left the DA.” He jabbed his chest. “Man, I was trying major felonies but here they don’t trust me to try a little slip-and-fall.”

“Is there any coffee?”

He shook his head. “I’ll make some.”

“Do that,” I said, “and then come on in and kibitz.”

A big smile split his face. “Funny, you don’t look Jewish.”

I tossed my briefcase onto my desk and dialed Sara Windsor’s number. She answered on the second ring and I was relieved to find that she was more or less sober.

“I wanted to talk to you after court,” I said.

“I was trying to escape the reporter from the
Sentinel
,” she replied. “Have you seen the paper?”

“No. What does it say?”

Paper rustled on her end of the line. “The headline is ‘Pornographic Pictures Link Windsor to Murder,’ ” she read and then asked, anxiously, “Was it Paul in the pictures?”

“The man’s face wasn’t visible,” I replied.

After a moment’s silence, she asked, “Is that a ‘no’?”

“Paul says no,” I replied. “He insists the pictures he took were pictures of Ruth Soto.”

“But what do you think?”

“I really don’t know.”

In the pause that followed I heard the clink of ice against glass. “I wanted to ask a question, Sara,” I said. “The night McKay was killed. What did Paul look like when he came in? Did you see any signs that he’d been in a struggle?”

“Was he drenched in blood?” she asked caustically.

“Yes, for starters.”

“I don’t remember.”

“Come on, Sara. How can you not remember what he looked like?”

“I just don’t,” she said dismissively.

“You’re bailing out, aren’t you?”

“I have to go now,” she said, hanging up.

I put the phone down and jerked my tie loose, fumbling with my top shirt button. Plan A, getting the complaint against Paul dismissed at the prelim, was history, and plan B, attacking the prosecution’s evidence as insufficient, looked a lot worse than it had when I’d awakened that morning. I was mulling over the prosecution’s offer to allow Paul to plead to manslaughter when Peter Stein came in with mugs of coffee. He set one in front of me and sat down.

“So,” he said, cheerfully, “I was watching the six o’clock news tonight. Sounds like you got nuked at the prelim.”

“That’s a fair assessment,” I replied. I sipped the coffee, scalding my tongue. “You’re an ex-DA,” I said, “let me run a few things by you.”

Peter threw a heavy leg over the arm of his chair. “Shoot.”

“Do you know Dwight Morrow?”

He shook his head. “Yeah, I tried some cases with him as my investigator.”

“Like him?”

“He’s a regular bloodhound,” Peter replied, “but not the friendliest guy in the world. Why?”

“Well, if he wanted to nail someone, how far would he go?”

Peter looked a little less friendly at this question, the prosecutor in him showing. “What do you mean. Henry?”

“Would he perjure himself?”

He shook his head. “Not Morrow. He plays by the rules.”

“Always?”

“What are you getting at?”

I explained the situation about the pictures—that Paul claimed the film had been switched, with the likeliest candidate being Morrow, who had taken part in the unsuccessful prosecution of Paul for molesting Ruth Soto.

“What did you expect Paul to say?” he asked shortly. “Come on, Henry, he’s a con. He’ll say anything to get off.”

I nursed my scalded tongue, aware of how naive I must sound to Peter but also keeping in mind Paul’s challenge to me to believe him. There’d been enough truth in his accusations of how easily I’d discounted his protestations of innocence to make me wary.

“What if I came up with a witness to corroborate him?”

Peter assessed me. “Someone who says he took pictures of the girl?”

I nodded, but in a little spasm of paranoia—he
had
been a DA—didn’t say my potential witness was Ruth.

“Then it’s straight credibility,” he said, “and take my word for it, Henry, ain’t no one in this town that’s gonna believe Paul Windsor or any of his witnesses over the cops.”

I decided to level with him. “Even if it’s the girl?”

He smiled happily. “Now that would be fun.”

“You still think the jury would believe the cops?”

He drank some coffee, thinking it over. “The thing is,” he said, finally, “people around here believe that the Windsors paid her off last time not to testify. If she testifies for him, they’re likely to believe she was paid off again.”

Reluctantly, I nodded. “I see your point. Let me ask you something else. Why would the DA be offering me a manslaughter on this case?”

His eyes widened. “Did Dom do that?”

“Right after the prelim.”

“The case
is
thin,” he said tentatively. “Maybe second-degree thin, but manslaughter?” He looked at me with puzzled eyes. “Might be Mark.”

“Mark?” I said, incredulously.

“Might be that Mark cut a deal with the DA—not Rossi, someone higher up.”

“Why?”

“The case is an embarrassment, Henry,” he said, decisively. “The Windsors, Mark anyway, are still pretty well entrenched with the local powers …”

“Not the
Sentinel
” I said quickly.

“They don’t give a damn about the
Sentinel
,” he said. “To them, Gordon Wachs is just a pushy Jew.” He smiled. “Like me. Mark’s money in the bank.”

I let this information sink it, recalling Paul’s theory that Mark had been behind his arrest in the first place. “Would it also be to Mark’s advantage to have his brother safely in prison so that he couldn’t muck around with Windsor Development?”

Peter raised his shaggy eyebrows. “Paul sold out his interest.”

“He thinks Mark cheated him by not telling him about the development deals he was lining up that would have increased the value of his interest,” I replied. “Sara told me he was threatening to sue.”

“Well, well,” Peter said.

I took a slug of coffee. Even my skin was tired. “What do you think?”

“I think maybe I’ll review some client files,” he replied. “Partner.”

I smiled. “What about your loyalty to Clayton and Cummings?”

“This sounds like too much damn fun to pass on. You going to be around here tomorrow?”

“At some point.”

“Good, I’ll talk to you, then.” He looked at me. “You really look beat, man. Go home, get some sleep.”

“Not yet,” I said, “I want to do some research on a change of venue motion. If there is going to be a trial, I’d prefer it to take place far away from Los Robles.”

“What about Rossi’s offer?” he asked.

“I haven’t told Paul about it, and I won’t until I investigate his corroboration.”

Peter got up to go. “Okay. You know I did a lot of research on venue when I was a DA. I’ve probably still got it somewhere. It’s opposition, but it might give you some case to get you started.”

“I’d appreciate that, Peter.”

“There’s a condition,” he said. “You go get some rest, and I’ll get them to you tomorrow.”

Wearily, I nodded. “Okay. Thanks.”

He smiled. “No, thank you. This is the most excitement I’ve had in months.”

On my way out of the office, I stopped by the receptionist’s desk to check for phone messages and found a folder that had been delivered earlier in the evening. Tearing it open, I found a Xeroxed copy of a log with a note scrawled on a slip of paper attached to it. The note, from Rossi, said it was a copy of the evidence locker log showing the time that Morrow had booked the film. The log showed that he’d booked the film at 10:45. I thought back to his testimony and calculated that this meant he would have driven back to the police station, filed his report for the search warrant and booked the film within two hours of the search. That didn’t seem unusually long, considering the paperwork that must have been involved. Disappointed, I folded the paper and slipped it into my coat pocket.

There was also a phone message, from Josh. Calling him back from the hotel gave me something to look forward to as I headed out the door.

As I walked down the Parkway toward the hotel a black man wearing a dirty red kerchief around his head, eyes downcast, stumbled toward me, stopped and asked for a quarter. He looked younger than I, and it was clear from his ruined physique that he’d been a big man once. Now his skin hung from him like a dirty, oversized coat. His shoulders stooped as if they’d been broken and he stank of the rankest alcohol.

“What’s your name?” I asked him.

Startled, he glanced up at me. “James. James Harrison.”

“Nice night, isn’t it, James.”

“Homeless people don’t have no nice nights,” he replied.

“The Bible says the meek will inherit the earth.”

“Shit, ain’t gonna be worth having when rich people done with it.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” I said, reaching for my wallet to give him a dollar. All I had were tens and twenties. Somehow, turning him down because I didn’t have change seemed wrong so I gave him a ten.

He looked at the bill and asked, “What’s your name?”

“Henry,” I replied.

“Got a brother Henry.”

I smiled. “Where’s he?”

“Folsom.” With that, he nodded and headed down the street toward the neon sign. I went off in the other direction.

Entering the hotel, I found another message from Josh and a second message from Ben Vega, asking me to call him. Too tired to speculate on why the young cop might have called, I tucked both messages into my pocket and headed toward the elevators with nothing more ambitious on my mind than a hot shower and a sitcom. As I pressed the elevator button, a hand clamped my shoulder. I shook it off and turned around.

“Josh, what the hell are you doing here?”

He wore khaki shorts and a blue button-down shirt, open to expose the crystal he’d taken to wearing on a leather loop around his neck.

“Waiting for you,” he said wearily. “I’ve been here since nine but they wouldn’t let me up into your room. I tried to call.”

“I know. It’s been a long day. I’m glad to see you,” I said, embracing him. The elevator door slid open and a middle-aged couple stared awkwardly for a moment and then passed around us.

“Henry,” he said, smiling, “don’t you know what day it is?”

“What do you mean?”

He let go of me and laughed. “September fourth.”

It took me a moment to get it. September 4. My birthday.

“I
THINK SOMEONE’S AT THE
door,” Josh whispered into my ear, waking me. I opened my eyes to the alarm clock on the nightstand.

“It’s not even six.”

“I’ll see who it is.”

I rolled over onto my back and watched him pull on a pair of boxer shorts. “If it’s the grim reaper, tell him he’s a couple of years early.”