Single Jeopardy (31 page)

Miller is ready to explode. He doesn’t say anything, but there’s a strange vertical swelling down the middle of his forehead. I’m wearing my good suit, so I step back, to avoid anything splashing on me if his head blows up. The judge calmly goes on “I couldn’t help but notice that you never seemed to complain about the alleged theft of this gun, but by coincidence, that investigator is no longer working for your office. He is now working for Miss Scot, and was instrumental in bringing the existence of this weapon to the court’s attention.

“
Now, adding all these juicy little tidbits up, it appears to me that the Defendant very well may have been telling the truth, so I’ll tell you what I’d like…” Miller’s mouth opens, as if he wants to say something, but the Judge won’t hear any of it. “Please, Mister Miller, don’t say a word, sit back and listen. Among all the laws I’ve become familiar with, one of them is the Law of Holes, which simply states
when you’re in one, stop digging
. Now that having been said, here’s a humble suggestion I’d like to offer you. Why don’t you just tell me that in the interest of justice you won’t object to a defense motion for dismissal? I won’t ask for any explanation, and then I’ll go into the courtroom, thank and excuse the jury and let you use the judge’s hallway and our private elevator to escape upstairs to your office, to contemplate your next move.” He looks around the room. “How about it Mister Miller, am I playing golf this afternoon? They’re waiting for me at Riviera, and Pacific Palisades is only about fifteen minutes away at this time of day.”

As Miller walks out of chamber he mumbles: “watch out for the ninth hole, I hear it’s a tough one.”

Miller doesn’t return to the courtroom. Instead, he sends one of his flunkies in. Myra makes the motion to dismiss and Miller’s flunky doesn’t object. It’s all over. The reporters quickly make it out to the hallway or their news vans. Miller is the invisible man once again.

I have to hand it to Myra. She’s got a lot of class. When the judge announced that the case was dismissed and excused the jury, the courtroom went crazy. The judge didn’t even care. He just banged his gavel down once, got up, and made a hasty retreat to the clubhouse. Outside of the courtroom, and all the way to the car, we’re completely surrounded by reporters. Myra only says that the district attorney had obviously found some weak points in his case that could only be remedied by the immediate dropping of all charges. And then one of the reporters drops the bombshell by asking a question that I didn’t’ think of.

“
Miss Scot, since you’ve shown the public that you can run circles around our present district attorney, are you considering running against him in the next election?” Myra doesn’t answer: she just smiles at the camera and says: “well, maybe it is time for a change in that office.”

Jack, as dependable as ever, brings the Hummer around to the front of the courthouse and whisks us away from the press. Once in the car, she reminds me of something. “You know, I just remembered. My car is in the public parking lot.” I tell her not to worry because Jack will drive her back for it after we’ve had a chance to unwind over a few margaritas at Pollo Meshuga. Neither one of us gave too much thought to Vito Renzi having been released directly from the courtroom; we figured he would find some way to get home without our help.

--------------

Back at the boat Suzi is not a happy camper, but we all know she did the right thing, so I’m confident that time will heal things for her. My main concern now is trying to save my friend Stuart’s assets from this nymphomaniac. A phone call to her lawyer might help, but I can’t find his card anywhere, and then remember that he didn’t give me one. No problem, his identification should appear on the top left corner of the lawsuit, so I take a good look at it. His name isn’t there. The caption lists Nancy Cook as the plaintiff, with her address given as being ‘in care of’ a legal workshop on Pico Boulevard in West Los Angeles. I drive over there and see it’s one of those self-help places that provides unlicensed legal advice and typing services to “pro per” clients, meaning people filing lawsuits on their own behalf. This can go either way. Sometimes a court will bend over backwards to help a girl like this who tries to represent herself, probably out of pity for the poor person who can’t afford an attorney. On the other hand, there’s always an outside chance that it can work in our favor. I call our attorney service and give them an assignment, and then find out why we were told to meet Miss Cook outside on that day of the deposition. Jack was parked down the street with his telephoto lens, getting a few pictures of her.

Our next move is to set the case for trial as soon as possible and to also request a pre-trial settlement conference in chambers, at the court’s earliest convenience.

The soonest available date that the judge can see us will be in a week, so it’s time for me to get back to other things on my plate. I check on the parking lot situation to see how it’s going and see that Vito Renzi is once again running the valet service for Palmer’s restaurants and the Chinese restaurant is being as generous as it can be with the parking spaces. They now provide a ‘drive-up’ service, so that the take-out customers don’t have to park. After calling in their Chinese food order and pre-paying by credit card, all they have to do is pull up in front of the restaurant and give their name and order number to the curbside guy, who goes inside the restaurant and then brings their order out to the car. Another problem solved.

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Once the insurance defense firm had an opportunity to evaluate how their defendants would come across as witnesses, they realized how futile a trial would be, and Maggie’s case settled easily for forty thousand dollars. I only took a twenty five percent fee, but with what was left over from Stuart’s faith-healer case, the Peter Sharp bank account is looking good enough for me to hop over to Maui for a week or so.

There’ll be nothing going on with doc’s lawsuits against the insurance company for a while. Myra is busy building up a private civil law practice and contemplating running for district attorney, so I think I’ll take some time off to get a little reading done under the Banyan tree. This trip is an extremely successful one. My completed reading list includes: on the flight there,
In Her Defense,
by Stephen Horn; under the tree,
Hard Evidence
by John Lescroart and
The Judge
by Steve Martini; in my room,
Material Witness
by Robert Tannenbaum, and on the flight back
, Extreme Justice
by Michael C. Eberhardt. This only leaves me with about thirty more to read by guys like Bernhardt, Freedman, Siegel, Turow and other guys who really know how to write and create characters I could use as roll models. I have a strange habit: every time I pass by the book section in Ralph’s market, if there’s a new legal thriller in paperback, I buy it. The actual reading might not take place for a year or so, but sooner or later I try to get around to most of them. To avoid buying the same one twice, I have a document in Microsoft Word saved as ‘Books’ that I update, print, and keep a copy with whenever I go shopping. After a book is read, I use a Sharpie to mark the completion date on the bottom, so I don’t re-purchase it by mistake.

I really feel a sense of accomplishment when finishing a book. A friend of mine once suggested that I take a course in speed-reading, so I could get through my backlog of titles quicker. That thought revolted me. Not only do I
not
want to read these books faster, I wish I could read them slower. Very few things upset me more than reaching the end of a book I’ve enjoyed and being forced to say goodbye to those characters I’ve gotten to know. Where do they go when I finish the book? I want to know. I want to go with them.

The plane touches down at LAX, our Los Angeles International Airport, and I take the ten-mile taxi ride back to the Marina. I’d rather not fly at night because there’s no sun shining in the window to read by, so arrangements are always made for me to get back home before dusk. When the cab drops me off at the gate to our dock, I look down and notice some activity going on. The Grand Banks is being towed away. When the taxi pulls out it has to stop by the underground parking exit to let a tow truck come up out the exit ramp. It’s towing my yellow Hummer away. Leaving my luggage by the dock gate, I walk down to the now empty slip and am greeted by a throng of people that include Suzi and company, the Asian boat boys, Stuart, Jack Bibberman, and some guy with a clipboard in his hand. I hate people with clipboards; they never have good news for you and they always ask questions. They’re all a bunch of little people who think those clipboards make them important. This particular twit is from a local organization known as the I.R.S. As he’s leaving, Stuart is shouting out at him “you’ll hear from my attorney.”

People are too busy to explain anything to me. Suzi is acting like a drill sergeant, giving out orders in a foreign language. The Asian boys are running around carrying things. One runs up to the dock gate and fetches my luggage. Their spokesman comes up to me and gives me a line I’ve heard before. He points at doc’s boat and says, “You live here now.”

At this point, everything in my life is just a movie that I’m allowed to watch. My bills are paid, I have a place to sleep, there’s always something to eat, and if I just stay out of the way of anyone who has a Saint Bernard, my life may go along just fine.

Doc’s 42-foot Californian trawler is a nice boat, but nothing compared to the Grand Banks. I’ve had some experience in the aft stateroom, so it isn’t a completely new environment to me.

Stuart finally confesses that he’s been so busy for the past few years he never got around to filing either state or federal tax returns. He was also too busy to pay attention to their very nice invitations to join them at their office in the nearby Federal Building on Wilshire and Sepulveda. And, because of his deposits of the large settlement checks from his uncle’s death and the faith-healing incident, some bells must have gone off at the I.R.S. center and they decided it was
their
turn to take a bite of the apple.

Unfortunately, the apple includes the Grand Banks that was still in Stuart’s name, as well as the Hummer, which he bought for me after the faith-healing case settled, but put the title in his name to protect if from my ex-wife’s lawyer. Well, as the Elvis song says,
Easy Come, Easy Go
. I don’t have either the energy or the knowledge to help him get his things back. To tell the truth, it’s partly my fault that they were taken away from me. If I weren’t trying to hide my assets from a then-angry wife, or trying to invent some way to avoid paying income tax on my earnings, I would have taken regular fees, paid my taxes and purchased the boat out of probate from L Martin’s estate - and bought the Hummer on my own. Now, as a result of my own greed and stupidity, I’m off to the Hertz Rent-a-car re-sale lot to buy a one-year old rental return Mazda 626, and it’ll have to do for a while.

Fortunately, Suzi was able to contact doc somewhere on a cruise ship and he graciously offered us his boat to stay on. It looks like he’s not coming back for another year or two, and when his insurance case finally settles up, he’ll be able to afford to buy George C.’s boat.

Not having a hell of a lot to do, I decide to turn full attention to clearing up Stuart’s negligent nymphomania case. Maybe that way I can get him out of my life. He’s really a nice guy and quite harmless, but every time I get involved with him I wind up getting screwed one way or another.

Stuart’s pre-trial settlement conference is scheduled later during the week, so I get together with Jack Bibberman to go over the results of his research assignments. If things line up the way I plan, I hope to be able to ‘thrust ho’ that nymphomaniac right out of court. Stuart complies with my request. When we all pile into my like-new Mazda, I see that he brought along the box I asked for.

This time there are no reporters on the courthouse steps. Nymphomaniacs aren’t that important to them if it’s not ‘sweeps’ week on television. During the rest of the year, strange sexual habits aren’t big local new in Los Angeles.

The clerk leads Stuart and I into the judge’s chambers, and at my request, the court reporter joins us. I notice that the tall well-dressed lawyer-like man has once again accompanied Nancy Cook, the nymphomaniac Plaintiff. Once we get into chambers and introduce ourselves to the judge, he signals the reporter to start the record, and then makes some remarks to indicate the name of the case and our purpose for being here. At this point, I make my first move “Your honor, for the record, we would request that all parties in the room identify themselves and state what their connection to this case is.” I go on to set a good example by stating my full name and State Bar number, and then add that I represent the Defendant, saying that he is present, and spell his name out too. Then I look over to the well-dressed man. “Your turn, sport.” He looks more like a judge than the judge does, so no one ever stopped to question his identity.

“
My name is Duane Hendricks and I am with the new West Los Angeles Center For Justice.” I can’t resist this one. It’s too good to let go by.

“
Excuse me Mister Hendricks, but I didn’t hear you say what your California State Bar card number is. Perhaps the judge would like to hear that; I know I would.” The judge nods and looks at him.

“
I don’t need a license to practice law. I am a sovereign state citizen and we are not compelled to comply with any of your petty unconstitutional judicial rules. I am here to assist this injured woman and to see that she isn’t brutalized by this corrupt system.” With that, he sits down and glares at everyone in the room. The last time I was glared at like that was this morning by the cat.