Lion Plays Rough (3 page)

Chapter 5

The phone rang in my office at seven thirty Sunday morning, just as Lavinia had told me it would. I'd gotten up early and come to the office just to take the call. Again I accepted the charges. “You talked to my sister?” the voice asked.

“I talked to her.” It was already getting warm in the office. “She's a persuasive woman.”

“Tell me about it.” A laugh. “But she's fine, ain't she? Rich, too, thanks to that husband. He's the man we both have to thank.”

“What's he do?” I asked, thinking of the gun in her purse.

“He's flush. He ain't never wanted anything to do with any of Lavinia's people. He told her she had to make a break, and she did, except she couldn't turn her back on me.”

“I think I learned enough from your sister to get started. In fact, for now I think it's better if we don't talk about what happened the other night. I want to come over to the jail and meet with you this afternoon for half an hour or so. Have you been arraigned?”

“Yesterday morning. Just the felon in possession, though.”

“Okay. If there are other charges we'll take them as they come.”

“I don't want you coming over here this afternoon. There's other things going on then you need to be worrying about.”

“Like what?”

“She don't need to know nothing about this. You know that guy she told you about—but we don't need no names over the phone. Call him Mr. Soup.”

It took me a moment to get it. Like Campbell's soup, for the detective who'd found—or planted—the gun.

“Most Sunday afternoons Mr. Soup has a meeting with a friend of his. Old friend, from back in the day when they was kids. Call him Spoon. Spoon's also a friend of mine. That's how I happen to know about these meetings. You follow?”

“I think so.” He could only be referring to the survivor of the drug trade power struggle, the man supposedly behind the murder he was accused of.

Jamil went on. “Soup don't want to be seen with Spoon, and Spoon don't want to be seen with Soup, but they got important business. Still with me?”

“I think I am.”

“Now given the recent developments, and me being where I am, Soup and Spoon going to have to meet for sure. Soup got to say, Hey Spoon, I know you surprised at how hot I been getting, but don't worry, I ain't gonna let that mouth of yours get burned. And Spoon got to say right back, Soup, I'm gonna keep on slurping you up.”

“So there's going to be a meeting. Where?”

“Know Pinehurst Gate, off Pinehurst Road? A little parking lot up there. Another parking lot down in Canyon Meadow. Around three o'clock Soup parks at Canyon Meadow, laces up his running shoes. Spoon parks up at Pinehurst, walks in. I guess they meet in the middle, hike down a little side trail to a spot you can't see from above. Mr. Spoon always had me wait in the car, so I don't know what kind of things they talked about. But you can bet it wasn't what to get their mamas for Valentine's.”

“What do you expect me to do about it?”

“I think this is one of those situations where like they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.”

After all the buildup I'd been expecting something more substantial. “You give me a call tomorrow morning and I'll let you know if anything comes of it.”

He must have heard my disappointment. “Look, I ain't playing. There's damn good reasons why Soup and Spoon have their meetings so far out of the way.”

“It's pretty last minute to be hiring an investigator.”

“If you can't get this done, I'll just call Lavinia and tell her to come get her money back. You got eyes. You must know how to use a camera. You got a finger for pushing the button. You a little green, from the sound of it, but you keep your head on straight you'll be all right. They ain't going to shoot no white boy if they can help it.”

I wasn't comforted.

~ ~ ~

I called Car. I thought he was going to laugh at me for swallowing Jamil's story, but after hearing me out he was merely firm. “This is precisely the kind of job that could get me killed. And not in the name of virtue. It's a dirty job. Doesn't require any skill. I won't do it, and you ought to turn and walk real fast in the other direction.”

It was bad practice not to use an investigator. Anything an investigation turns up is liable to become evidence, and a lawyer must always avoid having to call himself as a witness. Without an investigator, there is no one to say that the photograph is what the lawyer claims.

There's good practice, and then there's the reality that sometimes there's no one else. “Maybe I could borrow some equipment,” I heard myself say.

A pause. “You said borrow, but there's no borrow, not from me, especially not to you. Rent, buy, or steal is the universe of possibility you and I are working with. I'm not a rental agent, and you don't have the balls to rip me off.”

It sounded like he was by the water. I heard gulls, maybe the bark of a sea lion, but I couldn't be sure. I always regretted calling Car. But he always came through, even if it cost me more in pride and money than I'd bargained. “I don't have much of a budget.”

“You said you needed equipment? We talking a backhoe, posthole digger? Or something a bit more intimate?”

“A camera with a telephoto lens.”

“I can set you up with two-year-old equipment, my old stuff. All digital, works fine, good condition. Since we're friends I'll cut you a deal. What do you say a thousand for the setup?”

“The best I can do is five hundred.” I knew he was cheating me.

“A thousand. If the price is too steep maybe the case isn't worth taking. Spying on people's shitty work. It only takes getting burned one time to spoil the fun. I'm speaking from experience. A thousand bucks shouldn't sound like a big investment. If it does, better to back out and go jerk off to all the money you saved than regret it later when someone is shoving a thousand dollars of camera equipment up your ass.”

I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, then opened them. “How soon can you meet me?”

“Forty minutes. Pick me up at the MacArthur BART. Oh, and Leo, I get paid in cash, I don't write receipts, and I don't take returns. I'll show you how to use the stuff, and after that you're on your own. I don't want any panicky phone calls.”

“You won't get any.”

“Right. Be seeing you.”

Chapter 6

From the BART station I drove up into the hills. The grass on the slopes was such a brilliant white gold it hurt my eyes. These hills had burned in the firestorm of 1991, killing twenty-five people. I remember my father driving me to the top of Potrero Hill to watch the fires at night. Even so far away I did not feel safe. I hadn't been. A few years later my mother was dead, my father imprisoned for murdering her, a crime he insisted he didn't commit. How, as lawyers, we came to be on the side of perpetrators rather than victims is something outsiders seldom understand.

My father was an unsuccessful lawyer; Caroline, my mother, sold makeup and jewelry at Macy's. She was unfaithful, and he was jealous. As far back as I can remember, our house was filled with raised voices or a silence I never mistook for peace.

My father could never be innocent where my mother was concerned, but after all these years I'd come around to believing that he didn't commit the ultimate crime. It was Teddy who put the pieces together. Then, as a reward for solving the decades-old mystery of who really killed her, he got a bullet in the brain.

I exited at Redwood Road and parked at the Canyon Meadow Staging Area. Some kids were running on the playground, oblivious to the heat; it must have been over ninety-five.

I knew these hills well. Teddy and Jeanie used to live just on the other side of the county line, and Pinehurst and Redwood Roads were one of my favorite road biking routes in Oakland. The spot Jamil had described was a bench on a little spur beneath the ridge trail, a steep hike up through toyon and oak.

I started my climb, and soon left the noise of the playground behind. I heard no traffic, no sirens, no sounds other than the titter of birds from the thickets and the buzz of insects from the shade beneath the spreading oaks. It was peaceful, all right. You could drag a body off into the woods and probably no one but the deer would ever find it.

I climbed one more thigh-burning rise and came to a hilltop clearing. Below was the little spur trail, almost like a game trail, which led to a secluded bench where I guessed the two would meet.

Green brush stood out against sun-bleached grass on line after line of hills. The pyramid-shape mass of Mount Diablo rose above the trees. Living all your life down in Oakland, you would never know how much space there was up here.

I found a place where I could see the bench without anyone using it being able to see me. I hoped. The hot wind was relentless. My tongue felt shriveled and dry.

I left my hiding place twice, worried I'd guessed wrong about the meeting place. I was coming back the second time when I passed a fit black guy in a Police Association T-shirt jogging the other direction. Detective Campbell. A surprisingly small man with a build like a dancer's.

He was in his late thirties, early forties. A handsome face—it would have looked fine in marble—with a shaved head, hollow cheekbones, brooding eyes.

When I reached the top of the other hill I looked back. He stood with a leg propped on the bench, stretching his hamstring. I went on over the hill, then worked my way through the brush, creeping on hands and knees the last twenty feet.

I peered through the camera and saw Campbell turn to meet a guy who'd just come down the trail from the other direction, dressed in slacks made of some loose, light fabric and a silk shirt. I snapped picture after picture, swiping the sweat away from my eyes with the back of my hand.

I saw Campbell try to shake hands. Spoon, slapping away the hand, drew a gun. I was too nervous, having trouble keeping the camera in focus. I wondered what I would do if Spoon shot him.

Campbell's hands soothed the air. After a minute Spoon began to nod, then tucked the gun away. They bumped chests in a one-armed macho hug, then went to the bench.

The years seemed to fall away from Campbell's face; he was no longer the hard-faced detective I'd seen on the trail. Before my eyes, the boys they must once have been together seemed briefly to eclipse the men.

After half an hour Campbell looked at his watch. They slapped hands and went their ways, Spoon down the trail toward Pinehurst, Soup back toward me, running with the same athletic bounce in his step as before, despite the heat.

The wind whisked through the bushes and made the oaks creak. When I was sure it was safe I crawled out of the brush and went back down the trail.

Chapter 7

Back in my office I loaded the pictures from the camera onto my computer, then began pulling up newspaper articles about the murder. None of the pictures showed the mystery man. I wasn't done. Knowing the murdered man had a legitimate front as a local businessman, I searched for his name. In one of the articles that came up I found a picture of the man from the hills. His name was Damon Watson. He owned a private security business operating out of East Oakland.

I called Jeanie. “I want to bounce something off you.”

“Do you know what my one overwhelming consideration was in hiring you? The knowledge that if someone had to work on Sunday night, it wouldn't be me.”

“I had a call yesterday from a potential client, and I've done some investigating on my own. I thought it was time to bring you into the loop.”

“How could I possibly be out of the loop, being your boss?”

“Two nights ago the police stopped a parolee and found a gun in his car. Jamil Robinson. He'd heard my name, and he called from jail, and his sister came to the office last night and told me some things he didn't want to talk about over the phone. Evidently the gun the police found is the murder weapon from the killing of a big player in the drug trade a few weeks ago.”

“How does she know?”

“I have only the client's word for it. Prospective client.” I told her what Lavinia had told me, the story of the client being pulled over, made to wait in the car, then Campbell arriving and discovering the gun. “I don't like it any more than you do. I still don't like it, but it just might be true. The new guy in charge, he and Campbell go back I guess, and it looks like Campbell may have been protecting his boyhood pal. What he gets in return I don't know.”

“We don't have time to take on a new client right now,” she said. “We need to focus all our energy on Scarsdale.”

“When I talked to Jamil on the phone this morning he told me about these Sunday afternoon meetings between Damon and Campbell up in the hills. So I thought I might as well head out there with a camera and see what I could see. And what do you know, I've got a series of pictures of Damon pulling a gun on Campbell and Campbell talking him down.”

“Leo, Jamil's just going to plead out. They always do, these guys, these low-level gangsters. We don't want to get mixed up with these people.”

“I've got a feeling about this one. I really think our guy might be innocent. Wouldn't you like to be on the right side for once instead of defending scumbags like Scarsdale?”

“No. I want to make enough money to retire in fifteen years. That's what's left of my idealism. I hate to break it to you, kiddo.”

“I already took the money. She gave me a ten-thousand-dollar retainer.”

“You did what?” Her voice was icy. “You're at the office? I'm coming in.”

“We can talk about it in the morning,” I said. “You don't have to drive all the way over here.”

“No,
tonight.
Because I'm not going to sleep otherwise, and if I'm not going to sleep, you shouldn't, either. Just when I was starting to think it was going to work out, you go and pull something like this.”

“Something like what?”

“Just wait there. I'll see you in half an hour.”

~ ~ ~

An hour later Jeanie and I were in the conference room. She kept pacing from one side to the other. The envelope of cash Lavinia had given me was lying on the table, but we hadn't gotten there yet. I'd shown her the pictures. Neither of us had said a word.

“Is he your client or isn't he?”

“I can't take on clients without your approval.”

She was as angry as I'd ever seen her, and she wasn't a woman to disguise her emotions. “The point isn't what you or I think. The point is what he thinks.” She picked up the envelope and tossed it at my chest.

I caught it. “He's my client.”

“What happens now?”

“Turn the pictures over to the DA. Jamil walks; Leo's the big hero.”

“These pictures don't prove shit. They don't show shit. And you don't even have enough money there to get you through the prelim.”

“Maybe it won't come to that.”

“I'll tell you what happens now. You give me one reason not to put you out on your ass. You and your ten-thousand-dollar retainer.”

Up until now I'd just been trying to weather the storm, thinking that she would rage for a while, and then we'd get down to business. “You're thinking of firing me.”

She looked at me steadily. “I warned you when I hired you that I had doubts about your professionalism and your judgment, and that I was going to keep you on a short leash until those doubts were gone. I wonder if I made the wrong decision.”

“Look at the pictures. Damon's holding a gun on him, they're hugging, and then they're talking like long-lost brothers. I found myself wishing this afternoon that I'd gotten it all on tape, but it's actually better this way. The pictures tell as complete a story as you could ever want to tell.”

“If you'd taped them you'd really be in trouble. You'd have broken the law.”

“Jesus, I know that. I did a damn good job.”

“Looks to me like you had it gift wrapped for you. How'd you say this person got your name?”

“He said he got it from someone in Santa Rita. He didn't tell me who.”

“No, I don't like it. If you'd come to me when you should have, I'd have said pass. It doesn't sit well, cash in hand and this unbelievable story and then these pictures. We're lawyers, not private detectives.”

“So what do you want me to do?”

“Turn the pictures over to the DA's office. Return the money to the sister. Tell Jamil you're sorry, but you can't take the case.”

I swore and threw back my chair, standing and turning to face the darkened window. I wanted to walk out on her, walk out on the practice, take Jamil and Scarsdale with me, and for a moment it seemed that I would. But she'd taken a chance on me, and I owed her too much.

“Fine,” I said through my teeth.

“Other lawyers, not just the DA's office but other defense
­lawyers—everyone respects a lawyer who plays to win. But when you cross the line, start breaking rules—” She paused. “I'm not saying that's what you've done, but it seems to me that's where this is leading. If you're going to work for me, we need to be crystal clear. We play by the rules.”

“And yet you worked with Teddy all those years and you had no idea that the entire city of San Francisco believed he was buying testimony wherever he could get it?”

She didn't answer.

“Fine,” I said. “I'll take the photos to the DA tomorrow and after that I'll tell Jamil he needs to find another lawyer.”

“Focus on Scarsdale. It's a good case. You can win it if you keep your eye on the ball. Something like this Jamil thing, when it seems too good to be true—the real ones are never this easy.”

Sh
e left. I locked the money in the safe and went out for a drink.