Justice at Risk (18 page)

“I understand Winston was married.”

“Yes.”

“Children?”

“His wife got pregnant but miscarried.”

“Boy or girl?”

“Girl.”

“Your mother knew?”

He nodded.

“Natural miscarriage?”

He flushed.

“I was young. I didn’t know about those things. I just know she lost the baby.”

“What happened to Winston’s wife after your mother sent Winston packing?”

“My mother sent her back to Taiwan, paid money to have the marriage annulled.” I felt his hand seize my arm. “Tell me what happened, anything you know. Please.”

“Fifteen years ago, your brother was beaten up by the police. He was dressed in women’s clothes when it happened, something he apparently did fairly often, according to the police report.”

Franklin’s grip loosened, and he looked away.

“You’re sure about that?”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t know about that.”

“Does it make you love him less?”

He faced me quickly.

“No. No, of course not. It’s just—I didn’t know, that’s all.”

“Winston told the police who investigated that he was heterosexual, which is quite common among transvestites. That he’d secretly been dressing up this way since high school, that he felt compelled to do it. That he couldn’t stop himself.”

“My mother found this out?”

I nodded.

“She managed to keep things quiet, cover the whole thing up. Kept it out of the courts, out of the papers.”

He crossed his arms and hugged his chest, as if pressing in his emotions.

“I understand now why she always pressured me to marry. Why she started in on me so young.”

“You didn’t want to marry Lu-Ling?”

“It’s not a question of what I wanted. In our family, a son must marry, no matter what his feelings.”

“It must be awfully hard on the wives when the love isn’t there.”

“My mother says there’s no such thing as love. That it’s a silly notion, foolishness. She says that only three things matter—loyalty to family, making a good business, and eating well.”

A car door slammed behind the store. Through the screen of the rear door, I saw the side of a black Mercedes-Benz sedan.

“That’s my mother. You’d better go.”

“I’ll call you here if I need to talk.”

“What’s your name?”

“Benjamin Justice.”

“Why are you involved in this?”

“I’m not exactly sure.”

“You knew Winston?”

“No.”

“You must have a reason.”

“There have been two murders that may be related to the beating incident fifteen years ago. I have friends who’d like to see them solved.”

We heard the rear door slam, and I started out. He followed me as far as the front door, grabbing my arm again.

“Do you think Winston is alive? Will I ever see him again?”

“I’m sorry, Franklin. I don’t have an answer to that.”

He turned back, and I disappeared into the passing crowd. A moment later, as I stood behind the fat trunk of a curbside palm, I heard Pearl Tsao-Ping’s shrill voice, screaming in Chinese. I watched her through the window, flailing her hands, castigating Lu-Ling for the work she’d done on the window display, while Franklin took the crying baby from his wife’s arms.

Mrs. Tsao-Ping stepped up into the window, tearing down the streamers her daughter-in-law had just hung. She shook them with disgust, then flung them at the young woman, who lowered her head in shame, fighting back her tears.

“I’m off the story, Justice.”

“What?”

“Roger Lawson told me to back off the Tsao-Ping angle, to cover the police chief story completely straight.”

“Meaning what?”

Templeton paced the spacious living room of her Santa Monica condo as a faintly salty breeze wafted in from the big balcony. It was almost noon, and she was still in her bathrobe. I’d never seen Alexandra Templeton in her bathrobe, and certainly not this late on a Saturday morning.

“Lawson ordered me to write a series of evenhanded portraits of all the top candidates. I’m supposed to sum up their backgrounds, with a few quotes from each man about his plans for the department if he’s selected. He told me to write each profile the same length to be sure we’re not showing any bias toward one candidate over another.”

“What about Harry? He’s the
Sun
’s news editor. Harry’s your boss, not Lawson.”

Templeton stopped pacing to face me. There was something missing in her—her usual spirit, her fire. It was gone, extinguished.

“Harry called late last night. A lot has changed since yesterday.”

“Like what?”

“Lawson’s now the editor in chief.”

I’d been sitting on the long white couch. I was suddenly standing.

“Roger Lawson’s the editor in chief of the
Sun
? The most gutless guy at the paper?”

“The top man quit, took a payout, got out while he could. Lawson’s in charge.”

“Jesus fucking Christ.”

“Word is, Lawson wants to consolidate his power, look like he’s in charge when the paper shuts down. That way he gets to make the farewell speech, make a name for himself before he goes looking for another job.”

“What about Harry?”

“Harry has to answer directly to Lawson now, not just on fiscal matters, but editorially. Frankly, when I talked to him again this morning, he sounded ill.”

“I’d be sick too if I had to report to a prick like Lawson.”

“I’m serious, Justice. I’m worried about him.”

Templeton was on the verge of tears. I went to her, slipped an arm around her shoulders.

“So am I.” I tried to show her a smile. “At least he’s home, getting some rest.”

“I hope that’s enough, Ben. I’ve never seen him so stressed out, so down.”

“You’re not exactly a picture of tranquility either.”

“I couldn’t stand it if the
Sun
folded, Ben.”

“Better prepare yourself, kid. Happens a lot these days.”

She chewed at a nail, her eyes roving the room.

“Or if something happened to Harry.”

I had no advice for that one.

“When’s your interview with Taylor Fairchild?”

Her eyes came back, and her mind seemed to follow. She separated from me, pulled her robe together, found a photograph of the assistant chief among some papers on the glass-topped coffee table. It was a head shot, a standard handout from the LAPD public affairs office.

“There won’t be an interview with Fairchild, or any of the other candidates. Lawson told me to make up a list of questions for his approval. I’m to submit the questions to each candidate, who will then write their own answers, which I’m supposed to insert into the profiles.”

“A total puff job, in other words.”

“I told Lawson I wouldn’t put my name on them.”

“Good for you.”

“He said I might not have a job that long anyway. He really enjoyed it when he told me that.”

“Spineless bastard.”

She handed me the photograph of Taylor Fairchild. It showed a lean, sandy-haired man in his late forties whose mild eyes were at odds with his tightly set jaw. He was clean shaven except for a neat mustache; even his sideburns were short, military style.

“I tried to set up an interview with Fairchild anyway, on the Q.T. I got the runaround over at Parker Center. Word got back to Lawson, who warned me to back off. And he told me in no uncertain terms never to approach Rose Fairchild again.”

“So they’ve gotten to Lawson, too.”

“Fairchild and the other candidates are all playing in the police-celebrity golf tournament today. Out at Rancho Park. I’d planned to go there, get some color for my series, see how they behaved with a golf club instead of a carefully prepared transcript. So much for that idea.”

Templeton sagged wearily into the couch, rifled through the papers.

“I’ve got the police and autopsy reports you wanted. Katie brought them by this morning. Also, a few clippings on Matthew Fairchild, the brother, which I haven’t looked at yet.”

She handed over the police and autopsy reports while I sat, and kept talking.

“Callahan suffered pretty badly. Beaten repeatedly about the face and body, broken teeth, broken jaw, fractured right arm. He was also cut up with a razor or a very sharp knife, very methodically.”

“Sounds like a thug with a deep sadistic streak.”

Templeton pointed to a section of the autopsy report.

“He took a pair of pliers to Callahan’s nipples, which were twisted off. Pliers or a similar tool. Callahan’s genitals also got a good going-over. It’s all there, if you have the stomach for it.”

Templeton’s voice was flat, her litany of torture matter-of-fact.

“You OK, Templeton?”

When she looked at me, it was with the face not of a journalism grad student, eager but wet behind the ears, but of a hardened reporter who had paid her dues on the police beat. In the last three years, without my quite seeing it, Templeton had been developing the tough shell and emotional survival skills needed for the job.

“I’m a news reporter, Justice. Just the facts, ma’am. Isn’t that how it’s supposed to be?”

“Do you really want to close yourself off behind that kind of armor, Templeton? The way I did when I was starting out.”

“Right now, it feels like the only protection I’ve got.”

“You’ve got me. And Harry.” I glanced at the framed photograph of the handsome, middle-aged couple on the mantelpiece. “Your folks.”

“But not the
Sun
, Justice. Not the paper anymore. What do we do when the paper’s not there?”

“We’ll think of something. Don’t we always?”

Her smile was small, unsure.

“I guess.”

I scanned the police report on Byron Mittelman’s death.

“At least Mittelman didn’t suffer like Callahan before he died. A single shot behind the ear. Probably never felt a thing. These two murders couldn’t have been more different.”

Templeton indicated the autopsy reports.

“There is one similarity. On the strange side.”

She took the autopsy reports, laid them side by side on the glassed-top coffee table, then put a finger on each one, indicating lines of medical information that said essentially the same thing.

“The rectums of both men showed signs of trauma.”

I leaned forward for a closer look.

“They were sodomized?”

“Possibly, if a condom was used. Or else raped with an object, a dildo, something like that.”

“No semen?”

She shook her head.

“And no foreign pubic hairs at the site of entry. Mittelman showed the least damage, by the way.”

“That doesn’t make sense.” I thought out loud. “Mittelman was straight. Callahan was queer. If it was forcible rape—”

“The autopsy clearly showed more bruising and tearing on Callahan.”

I checked the two reports. Templeton had it right. I sat back on the couch, trying to make some sense of it.

“Presumably, since Callahan was gay, he would’ve had some practice taking it up the ass. It should have been the other way around—Mittelman would have been the one doing the most resisting.”

Templeton offered an explanation, in her chilly reporter’s voice.

“Not if he was dead when it happened, Justice.”

She handed me several press clippings, paper-clipped together, from the
Sun
, the old
Her-Ex
, and the
L. A. Times
.

“The only thing Katie found on Matthew Fairchild were news reports on his death, and obits. They all give essentially the same facts. He was a moderately successful lawyer, unmarried, who led a quiet life. Kept to himself pretty much, except for his work with the Boy Scouts. He died in a boating accident in sixty-six. About fifteen months after his brother died in that robbery shoot-out.”

“And not long after Rose Fairchild learned that Matthew was getting into her son’s pants.”

I glanced at one of the news clippings, which was boxed as a sidebar:

A
TTORNEY
D
ROWNS IN
B
OATING
M
ISHAP
O
FF
P
ALOS
V
ERDES

REDONDO BEACH—A Pasadena attorney died in a freak boating accident several miles off Palos Verdes yesterday afternoon, despite the efforts of two others aboard to save him, according to Coast Guard officials.

A Coast Guard spokesman reported that at 4:17 p.m. yesterday a Coast Guard helicopter answered a radio call for help and met the 24-foot sailboat as it returned to harbor. The helicopter airlifted the unconscious victim, Matthew Fairchild, 39, to South Bay Hospital, where he was pronounced dead shortly after arrival.

According to the Coast Guard, Fairchild fell overboard during an outing with his sister-in-law, Rose Fairchild, and Larry Bingham, a family friend. Bingham, the skipper of the craft, told authorities that the victim struck his head as he fell when a gust of wind suddenly rocked the boat. Despite wearing a life jacket, and efforts by Bingham and Mrs. Fairchild to rescue him, the victim drowned in the rough seas. Because of the weather, most other boaters had returned to harbor, officials said, and there were no other witnesses to the incident.

Matthew Fairchild was the brother of Mrs. Fairchild’s late husband, police captain Rodney Fairchild, who died in 1965 when he was struck accidentally by a bullet fired by a detective during a robbery stakeout in Los Angeles.

I laid the clippings back on the table.

“You’re better acquainted with Mrs. Fairchild than I am, Templeton. And appearances can be deceiving. But she doesn’t strike me as the type to be out sailing on a small boat in blustery weather. Or any other time, for that matter.”

“No, she doesn’t.”

“And this family friend, Larry Bingham. I wonder what his story is.”

“I’ve already made a few calls this morning, to friendly sources within the LAPD. Larry Bingham was a retired cop.”

“You don’t say.”

“He’d been Rodney Fairchild’s partner and best friend before he was killed in that stakeout in sixty-five.”

“Maybe we should talk to him.”

“Only if you’ve got long distance to the afterlife, Justice.”

“When did he die?”

“He had lung cancer at the time of the boating accident. Knew it was terminal and died within the year.”

“Isn’t that neat.”

“I called the mortuary that handled Bingham’s funeral, found an old-timer who’d been around for the services. All he remembers is that Bingham got quite a send-off, a lot of cops showed up for the funeral, and Rose Fairchild paid for everything, sparing no expense.”

I smiled, to myself more than anyone else.

“A very generous lady, our Mrs. Fairchild.”