JO03 - Detour to Murder (10 page)

I was ready to leave, but Rita kept the conversation going. Maybe she liked the old guy. He was colorful. “Why’d your marriage break up?”

“My sweet little wife couldn’t stay away from her ex-boyfriend. The son-of-a-bitch. I think he eventually killed her.”

I perked up. What was he saying? Was he telling us that Roberts may have murdered Sue Harvey? He couldn’t have. “Alexander Roberts?” I asked.

“No, not that jerk. John Barr.”

“Who’s John Barr?”

“You never heard of John Barr?”

“Afraid not.”

“A lousy cowboy actor, that’s who he was, a real asshole with a short fuse. Strictly B-movies. Sue was shacking with him when I met her. One day shortly after the marriage, Barr and I got into it, a real slugfest. He was a lot younger and before the movies he’d been a professional prizefighter. He put me in the hospital. Made all the papers. Hedda wouldn’t let the story die; embarrassing. I was shooting a high-toned weeper at the time. MGM had to close down the set for almost two weeks while I recuperated. The guy never worked a day in Hollywood after that.”

“Where is John Barr now?” I asked.

“In San Quentin. He murdered his wife.”

C H A P T E R 
14

Sunday morning I rattled around
inside the apartment doing nothing, really. Reading the
Times
, I came across an article about the Grateful Dead concert at the Winterland Arena in San Francisco. What’s the story with these guys, anyway? Their stuff isn’t worth a damn. I guess I’m stuck in the sixties, the greatest music decade—ever. I popped a Beatles tape in my stereo, listened for a while, then put in Otis Redding and played his hit single, “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay,” a few times. I sat back and took a sip of coffee. Yeah, that’s cool. The guy had soul. Maybe he invented it. Sad—he died in a plane crash three days after recording the song.

I debated organizing my sock drawer, but instead turned on the TV. The L.A. Rams were hosting San Francisco. Should be a good game. It was a sellout, so the local station carried it live. I settled back with chips, dip, and a few cold cans of Coke and spent the next three hours watching the game. With their new quarterback, James Harris, the Rams beat the crap out of the 49ers. I’d grilled a couple of hot dogs during halftime and while I ate I talked to the chair, reflecting on my marriage.

In my past life, I had been known to take a drink on occasion—and everything was an occasion. I’d have a few in the morning to make it through the day, and a few during the day to get ready for the night, then at night… Yeah, I drank all the time and I drank a lot.

It started when I was patrol cop on the LAPD. Maybe it was the job, maybe it was me, or maybe I was just a drunk at heart. But anyway, I got hooked. Gin, vodka, cheap whisky, expensive French wines… I didn’t care; I’d guzzle it down, wipe my mouth and ask for more.

When it came to the bottle, my wife, and me—well, let’s just say not all stories have a happy ending.

Barbara and I had wed just out of high school and the marriage had been rocky from the start—too young, too many bills, and too little common sense, I guess. But the boozing was the worst of it. You can’t hold on to a marriage while hobbling around on eighty-six proof anesthetic crutches.

After she divorced me, my friends—the few that remained anyway—got on my case. One by one, they soon disappeared. Sol stuck by me, and he was relentless, determined to get me sober. He never gave up and he never let up. There were times when he came at me like a runaway freight train, screaming and threatening. Other times he’d just sit and talk calmly, sometimes for hours, using reason and logic. Not once did he put our friendship on the line and I loved him for that. One time, after a particularly ugly scene at Rocco’s, he threatened to take me out back to the parking lot and introduce me to someone I really didn’t want to meet. I didn’t remember how I got home that night. For all I know I crawled on my hands and knees.

He kept pounding on me, inexorable, like he was fighting the devil himself. I knew he’d eventually win. I just hoped I’d still be alive when he did. It took a while but Sol finally wore down my resistance. The day I quit drinking forever I felt like a splayed catfish, gutted and broken. But it was strange, because at the same time it felt as if the weight of the world had been lifted from my shoulders.

To quote W.C. Fields, “When enough people tell you you’re drunk, sit down.” I sat down.

Monday morning when I walked in the office I handed Mabel the police report and told her about the “hit and run.” I asked her if she had taken care of the insurance premium. Her eyes went blank and she said, “Well, duh,” as she snatched the paper from my hand.

I was eager to tell Sol about the actor, John Barr. I felt he could deal with the authorities at San Quentin and arrange it so I could meet with him. Figuring Sol wouldn’t be in his office this early, I asked Mabel to phone Joyce, his secretary, to see if she could work up a report on Barr to give to Sol the moment he arrived.

After walking into my office, I dialed the Deputy DA’s number. “This is O’Brien. I’m returning Stephen Marshall’s call,” I said to his assistant when she answered.

Instantly he came on the line. “Okay, O’Brien, I’ll cut to the chase. We’re willing to deal on Roberts. Time served.”

“C’mon, Steve, quit jerking my chain.”

“I ain’t kidding, my friend. Your boy will go free and you owe me lunch.”

I sat up in my chair. “Is this for real?”

“Yep, straight from the top. Our exalted leader, Joe Rinehart, has strong connections with Governor Reagan. Rinehart convinced the governor to commute his sentence to time served, pursuant to a sincere admission of guilt by Roberts, of course. He’ll have to reaffirm his guilt, confess to killing the woman, without reservation. No fingers crossed behind his back. He’ll have to sign documents.”

“What’s the catch?”

“No catch. If it were up to me the guy would rot. But your client will have to leave the state. And I mean the minute he hits the street. Do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars, and do not talk to the press. The county will buy him a one-way bus ticket, preferably to someplace far away.”

I was astonished; freedom for Roberts after twenty-nine years, after just being turned down by the parole board? Something wasn’t right.

“Why’s the DA so hot to set Roberts free?”

“What do you care?”

“I want to talk to Rinehart. Get the operator to switch me to his office.”

“Fat chance.” Marshall let out a sardonic chuckle, in essence saying I didn’t rate. A high-powered District Attorney like Joseph Rinehart would never discuss important affairs with a night-school lawyer like me. “What’s the matter with you, O’Brien? You won. Now hotfoot it out to Chino and let Roberts know he caught lightning in a bottle. I’ve already started the paperwork for Reagan to sign. Your client could be free in a few days. One thing, though.”

“What?”

“You have to keep all of this strictly on the QT until it’s a done deal. Reagan is going to announce his candidacy for president. He’ll be running in the ’76 Republican primary. There’s a lavish fundraiser bash being held Friday at the Beverly Wilshire. Big donors, a law and order crowd. After the event he’ll quietly sign the release forms. Remember if the news hits the media before he’s signs the papers, the deal’s off.”

“Any leaks won’t come from me. But when exactly will Roberts be released?” My hand started to shake as the realization that Marshall wasn’t joking swept over me. After twenty-nine years, my client was going to walk in the sun again, a free man.

“If all goes well, we could have everything wrapped up a week. They’ll cut him loose next Monday morning.”

“I’ll head out to Chino to give him the news in person this afternoon.”

“Okay, stop by my office on the way to meet your client. I’ll have the affidavits he’ll have to sign prepared, a document reaffirming his guilt, and a declaration of remorse. A correctional officer will witness the signing. After you see Roberts return the papers to me.”

Marshall hung up and I sat there with the phone receiver in my hand, stunned.

Rita knocked once and walked in. “Good morning, boss, coffee and donuts.” She was wearing a white silk crepe blouse, blue bell-bottom slacks, and one of her billion-watt smiles. She held up a small pink paper sack.

“Hi, Rita,” I muttered, still thinking about the strange offer coming from the DA’s office.

“I’ve been digging some more. Got something interesting to tell you.”

I looked past Rita at the wall, pondering. First, Marshall hauls his ass all the way to Chino to testify against Roberts at the parole hearing. Then when the board decides in his favor, he calls me with an offer of freedom.

“Hey, what’s going on?” Rita set the donut bag on my desk. “Why the funny face?”

Before I could tell Rita the news, the intercom came alive. “Sol’s on line two,” Mabel said.

I cleared my head and picked up the receiver. “Jimmy, I’ve got the information you wanted about John Barr, the prisoner.”

“Sol, I have extraordinary news—”

“Yeah, and I have news about Barr—”

“The DA called with an offer.”

“An offer?”

“Yeah. Get this,” I said, “they’re willing to set Roberts free, a governor commutation, time served.” I told Sol the details of the DA’s proposal. “I’m heading out to Chino this afternoon to tell him the news. But I wonder why they’d want to make a deal.”

“Why wonder?” Sol said. “You earned your fifty-dollar fee. Did anyone happen to mention that you worry too much?”

“Yeah. But—”

“Just chalk this one up in the win column. Now go tell your client he won the lottery.”

“Yeah, after almost thirty years he’ll go free,” I said. “But I still want to see John Barr.”

“Why, what’s Barr got to do with anything?”

I told Sol about the discussion Rita and I had with Francis Q. Jerome at the motion picture retirement home. “Roberts will probably want to know about Sue Harvey. I want to find out for sure if she’s really dead. Jerome wasn’t quite with it. He could be wrong about Sue being killed. But Barr was the last person we know of that had anything to do with her. Can you get the authorities at San Quentin to let me talk to him?”

“That’d be a trick,” Sol said.

“You don’t think you can arrange it?”

“Oh, I could arrange it with the prison honchos, all right. But I don’t think Barr would be in any mood to talk.”

“What not?”

“He’s dead, murdered in his cell last week.”

C H A P T E R 
15

I mulled over what Sol
had told me about John Barr and at first I wondered if his death had anything to do with the case. Maybe someone wanted him dead, someone tied in with the Roberts affair. But apparently his death was just a coincidence. Although the authorities had no clue as to who’d murdered him, they predicted that sooner or later his hostile manner would get him killed. Barr had been a hothead from the start, which jived with what he did to Jerome.

In the joint Barr stirred up more trouble than he could handle, pissing off some of the meanest cons. He was found lying face up in his bunk with a shank—a spoon that had been filed down—planted in his chest. The guards speculated that he must’ve been stabbed in his sleep. Mysteriously, the night he died, his cell door had been left unlocked. The prison authorities would not comment on that tidbit.

It seems because of the altercation with Jerome, Barr had been drummed out of the movie business. After a long downward spiral, a couple of ill-fated marriages, and years of alcohol abuse, he ended up working as a gardener in the posh resort community of Palm Springs. The locals would spot him trimming hedges and gasp, “Aren’t you the movie star, John Barr?” When asked how he learned the art of gardening he always responded, “From watching those Japs who landscaped at my pad in Beverly Hills.”

He’d met Lulu, the woman who would become his third wife, in a working-class bar, Hernando’s Hideaway, located on Ramon Road in nearby Cathedral City. The roadside tavern had been his hangout. He spent hours there beguiling his fellow drunks, recounting his days as a big shot Hollywood movie star.

A few years back, on an abnormally hot October afternoon at around three o’clock Barr walked into Hernando’s, calmly ordered a beer, and told his drinking buddies that he was having a bad day. When his pals asked what was troubling him, he told them he’d just shot Lulu.

In 1972 he’d been convicted of murder in the second degree and sent to the prison where he met his fate.

I hung up the phone and explained to Rita what Sol had told me about Barr being murdered. “Another dead end, Rita. And I do mean dead.”

“Seems like a lot of dead people are related to the case.”

“Yeah but, it
has
been nearly thirty years,” I said, and then I told her about the DA’s offer to have Roberts pardoned.

“Too bad about Barr,” she said. “But I guess it’s over for us now. Roberts will be freed.”

“Looks that way.”

So I suppose you won’t need to hear what I’d found out.”

“Nope, suppose not.”

I nonchalantly reached into the bag resting on my desk and pulled out a glazed donut. I held it in my hand, turning it over a couple of times, casually examining it before taking a bite. Rita was dying to tell me what she’d discovered. And even if it had no relevance to the outcome I was curious to know what she’d learned. But I figured just for fun I’d let her dangle a bit. I took a sip of coffee.

Rita stood. “Okay. Bye, Jimmy. Got work to do.” She moved slowly toward the door.

“Rita.”

She turned and gave me a smile. “What?”

“Go ahead, tell me what you have.”

“Thought you didn’t need to know.”

“Might as well tell me anyway.”

“No point in discussing it. Bye.”

“Rita!”

She scrambled back to the client chair, pulling it closer. “The lawsuit never happened.”

“Lawsuit? What lawsuit?”

“Remember Mrs. Hathaway at the bungalow court where Vera was murdered?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Mrs. Hathaway said she’d sued the county for damages.”

I nodded. “Yeah, she said she’d won the lawsuit and the county had paid up.”

“I checked,” Rita said. “There was no lawsuit filed in 1945 by either Mrs. Hathaway or her husband, Dink. So I called her yesterday. Guess what she told me.”

“You’re starting to sound like Sol—”

“Just prior to filing the suit, her claim was settled out of court.”

“You mean to tell me the county coughed up the dough without a fight?”

“Nope, that’s not how it went down.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“She received a check for the full amount of her claim. The check came with a release and a non-disclosure agreement. Now get this: it came from a private attorney. She still has her copy of the release and she remembered the lawyer’s name.”

“Who handled it?”

“At first she wouldn’t tell me—the non-disclosure agreement, you know. But I convinced her that the statute of limitations had run out.”

“Then she told you?”

“Jerry Giesler signed the check.”

Giesler had been a famous Hollywood lawyer back in the forties and fifties.
“Get me Giesler”
became the catchphrase when celebrities needed a divorce or found themselves in trouble with the law.

“Jerry Giesler?” I said. “The lawyer to the stars?”

“That’s the guy.”

“My God, I can’t believe an icon like Jerry Giesler would’ve gotten tangled up with this.”

“Indeed,” Rita said.

On the drive out to Chino, I thought about Giesler. I wondered why he, or any private attorney for that matter, would settle a complaint lodged against the county.

Had Mrs. Hathaway actually filed her lawsuit, it would’ve been denied. Her claim didn’t hold water. No way would the county be held liable for damages to a citizen’s property caused by a crime committed on the premises. The county didn’t use private attorneys to handle their litigation, yet someone had hired Jerry Giesler to settle with Mrs. Hathaway. Someone who had wanted the case to vanish quietly without leaving a paper trail. But who?

I knew all about Giesler—a half-bald, paunchy guy in a pinstriped three-piece suit with a permanent question mark chiseled on his face.

When he died in 1962 I remembered reading his obit in the
Times
. The article highlighted his celebrated career defending movie stars such as Robert Mitchum, arrested for possession of marijuana; Errol Flynn, for a couple of statutory rapes; and when Marilyn Monroe divorced Joe DiMaggio she asked Giesler to deal with the messy particulars.

It wasn’t just actors and celebrities who retained Giesler. Over the years he also handled the legal affairs for a number of producers, moguls, and politicians.

In 1939, he even won an acquittal for Bugsy Siegel, the rakish racketeer. Siegel had been arrested and charged with murder after carrying out a hit contract on fellow gangster, Big Greenie Greenberg.

There was one thing Giesler couldn’t fix for Bugsy, though. The murder charge had cost Siegel his membership in the Hillcrest Country Club. Can’t have mad-dog killers with clubs in their hands running amuck on their pristine fairways. Unsavory.

But there was one Giesler case in particular that pounded in the recesses of my mind. Maybe it piqued my interest because it had to do the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office.

In the thirties and early forties, corruption reigned unabated within the hierarchy of the municipal government of Los Angeles. Even the county justice system was tainted. Buron Fitts, the DA at the time, had been indicted for perjury and bribery, accused of taking a bribe to squash a notorious rape charge filed against a millionaire businessman.

At Fitts’ much ballyhooed trial, Jerry Giesler had used the improbable defense of temporary insanity. The DA was acquitted and stayed in office until 1940, when he lost his bid for re-election to Frank Byron, running on a reform platform.

I wondered if Byron—the man who’d persuaded Roberts to plead guilty in 1945 by concealing evidence from him—had been troubled by the same affliction that had plagued his immediate predecessor and somewhere along the line had picked up a dose of temporary insanity, as well. Maybe Byron figured
reform
was an idea too heavy to tote around the Criminal Courts Building all day.

I also wondered, when Mrs. Hathaway started rattling cages, if it was Frank Byron who shouted,
“Get me Giesler.”

But now almost thirty years later, the current District Attorney, Joe Rinehart, was offering to cut Roberts loose on the condition of his silence. I wondered about that, too.