The Attorney (5 page)

From the Ocean Terrace Restaurant of the Del Coronado, overlooking the tennis courts and the beach, the screaming A-4s on approach come close enough to drop their landing gear in your coffee.

From the look of his face this morning, Harry hasn't shaved in two days.

During that period he has been on a mission to find out whatever he can about Jessica Hale, the friends she ran with, her background, perhaps leads as to where she might be. He has dredged up information from the parole board in Capital City, an old friend on staff. He has also copied whatever he could find from the court files in Jessica's drug conviction.

Harry sits perched on the corner of my desk perusing a good stack of paper, some of it filmy, thermofax documents.

"She's a troubled young lady," he says. "From all indications, an addict with a serious habit."

"Cocaine?"

"Methamphetammes. Lately, she's moved up the food chain to Black Tar."

It is one of the two types of heroin on the streets of America; the other being

"White China," from the poppy fields in Asia. Black Tar streams across the southern border from Mexico and has been on the rise as the drug of choice for the last several years. Police agencies will tell you it is a growing epidemic on the streets of the inner cities, and is acquiring a foothold among more affluent users.

"She may have been clean in the joint," says Harry, "but she had a habit that was running up a tab like the national defense budget when she went in. She had the crimes to go along with it." I look at him.

"Mostly burglaries to support her habit. She was on probation when they nailed her with the drugs."

"Any evidence that she might have been using inside?"

"Not from the parole reports. And she got out in the minimum-, which leads me to believe that they had no indication that she was doing drugs while incarcerated.

"Still," says Harry, "she could have fallen back into the habit when she got out." We are looking for a thread here, and Harry knows it. If Jessica was still using drugs, it would present us with a more immediate problem. Mother with a needle in her arm, on the run with a child.

But it would also offer the possibility of a lead.

"What are the terms and conditions of parole? Any drug testing?"

Harry looks at the documents in his hand. "Full supervision.

Weekly meetings with her parole officer, and drug screening-- every two weeks." He licks a thumb and forefinger, presses the faxed documents onto my desk, and quickly rifles through them looking for the same entry on each one.

"First screening was two weeks out. She was clean. Came back negative."

He flips through a few more pages, passes one, then quickly turns back to it. "She missed the second screening." A few more pages. "And the third." He looks some more. "Nothing after that."

"So she could be using again?" I say.

"I would say that's a probability," says Harry. "Why would she fail to comply with probation, unless she had a reason? Something to hide."

"That's one possibility. By the same token, why comply with probation if you already know you're going to run?"

"True."

"Still, it's an angle," I tell him. "Do we know who her supplier was, before she went to prison?"

"I'm still working on that one" says Harry.

"It could be a lead if she's using, and if she's still in the area." I am figuring the addiction would lead her back to her supplier.

"If she buys off the street and is known to have frequented the same location on a regular basis, we could have somebody stake it out, watch for her and try to follow her back to the child," says Harry.

He makes a note to push her dealer up higher on his list of priorities.

"According to Jonah, she was transporting for somebody when the feds picked her up."

"At San Ysidro." Harry fills in the blank.

I pick up the parole sheet that he's placed on my desk, and I study it.

The statutory code numbers on the document show convictions based on entry of a plea.

"These are state charges," I tell him. "Transporting across an international border, that would be federal."

"If they chose to prosecute," says Harry. "I am told they did not."

"Why?" Harry shrugs a shoulder, like he doesn't know.

"I've never known a federal prosecutor to turn up his nose at a case like that."

"You think they rolled her for some information?" he asks.

"It's what I'm thinking. Is there anything from the court file as to who she was carrying for when they nailed her?"

"No. I looked. The feds handed it over to the state, and the prosecutor dealt that away. Jessica copped a plea to counts of possession and possession for sale."

"Why were they so generous?" I ask.

Harry looks at me. "She had something they wanted?"

"Let's see if we can find out what." He makes another note.

"Also, do we know if they've violated her on probation yet?

Issued a bench warrant? Jessica has missed at least two meetings with her parole officer and has failed to perform required drug screening.

Sooner or later the state will catch up with her, at least in the judicial process, by scheduling a hearing to revoke probation."

"They'll be a month getting around to that," says Harry.

"So in the interim, if they stop her on a speeding ticket, assuming she's using her own license, they wouldn't even haul her in."

"Not yet, anyway," says Harry.

"Wonderful system," I tell him.

"Our clients don't usually complain," says Harry.

On this I can't argue with him. "What about friends? Anybody she was close to, who she might have kept in contact with?"

"I'm checking to see what I can find. Only thing I've come up with so far is a name in the court files." Harry looks at his notes. "A guy named Jason Crow. Apparently he's got a long record. He and Jessica were an item for a while. Crow went down on state charges for burglary about the same time that Jessica got nailed on the drug thing."

"So he wasn't a character witness?"

"Not hardly," says Harry. "He has a history. Reaches back to the juvenile side. I don't know what that was for. It's sealed. But as an adult he has convictions for assault, petty theft, and burglary. The biggest beef was a child-endangerment rap. He put the kid in a zipped-up sleeping bag and sat on the open end until the child passed out from lack of oxygen. Apparently it stemmed from a dispute with an ex whom he routinely used as a punching bag."

"Crow was married?"

"Was is the operative word," says Harry.

"Maybe we can find him through his ex-wife?"

"I doubt she'd keep in touch."

"What do we know about this Crow's relationship with Jessica?"

"They lived together for a while. Crow worked at the airport.

He was a luggage handler. Jessica was waitressing at a bar on one of the concourses."

"This was all in the court file?"

"The judge was picking up story lines for The Young and the Restless.

What do I know? He left notes at sentencing, half a legal pad with chicken scratches all over it. Apparently from what I could read, Jessica's lawyer tried to make the argument that Crow was a bad influence on her."

"Is there any indication he was involved in the drug thing?"

"What I was thinking," says Harry. "Given his job at the airport.

Stuff a few bags with heroin and have your friendly baggage handler remove 'em before customs gets a sniff. But there's nothing in the notes to indicate," says Harry.

"Where is he now--this Crow?"

"He's on parole, but I don't have an address. I can probably get it"

"See if you can get a lead on him. What else have we got?" about it. She didn't have a lot of friends. No women she ran with. I'm still looking.

But I could use some help." Harry's thinking a private investigator.

"I'm working on that, but for the time being, we're it. See if you can find an address on this guy. Crow. Maybe he knows where she is"

"We could go get an order to show cause," says Harry. "Go to the family law judge on the custody thing and try to get an order for contempt. See if we can draw Suade in."

"Its a good thought," I tell him, "but not likely to produce results.

I mean, there's no problem getting an order of contempt on Jessica. The problem is how to find her for service."

"If we could do that we wouldn't need the order. Just steal the kid back," says Harry.

"Jessica'd be in no position to complain. But as for Suade, }ve've got a bigger problem."

"What's that?"

"How do we make Suade a party? How do we get the judge to issue a contempt citation against Suade and her organization?" Harry thinks for a moment. "She did make threats to the old man. Didn't she tell Jonah that unless he gave the child back to the mother, he was going to lose the kid?"

"Yes. But you see the problem," I tell Harry. "Is that a threat?"

"I'd say so."

"Yes, but you're not the one wearing the black robes. Even if she admits that she was there, Suade is going to say her words were merely a prediction. That what she meant was that hostile actions toward Jessica by Jonah, taking custody away, was ultimately going to alienate the child. That that's what she meant by lose the child."

"And you believe that?"

"No. But a judge might. Particularly where there's no hard evidence, no witnesses to put her at the scene, and the alternative is a harsh jail sentence for contempt." Harry knows I am right.

"Most judges I know, while seeing through Suade's lie, would look for some artful way to avoid a contempt citation. In this case there are plenty of them, including the issue of whether the court even had jurisdiction over Suade as she was not a party in the original custody proceeding. We would have to prove that she acted as Jessica's agent in abducting the child. Without witnesses to put her there, it would be a tough sell. Unless I'm wrong, Suade would simply tell the court that she was trying to bring harmony to the family"

"Like Hitler in Czechoslovakia," says Harry.

"Maybe so, but right now I'm not even sure we could get Suade into a courtroom. No. Before we apply salt, we'd be advised to try a little sugar." Harry looks at me with raised eyebrows.

"I think it's time to meet with Zo Suade. Try to reason with her."

chapter Four.

a month after moving south i purchased an old CJ-5, an early eighties vintage Jeep that Harry calls Leaping Lena.

I got it from a kid, good at mechanics, who had babied the machine so that it ran like a clock. Its short wheelbase in two-wheel drive made it turn on a dime. I bought it, not for off-roading, but because it was easy to park in tight spaces, a valuable commodity in a crowded, car-happy state.

In the warmer months I keep the top up, but zip out the side and back-window panels, allowing the wind to run through my hair. This helps me to forget that there are now some wisps of gray also running with the wind. Maybe it's a second childhood. Who knows? But the wheels turn and the motor runs.

It has been four days since my conference with Harry, and this morning I bounce along the Silver Strand headed south toward Imperial Beach.

My mission this morning is one of those futile exercises that seem to defy better judgment, but is required in the grand scheme of crossing the Is and dotting the i's.

I pull into a strip mall on Palm Avenue and make a sharp turn into one of the parking spaces facing the street. The object of my attention is a small building across the street, a rundown, stuccosided commercial rental that fronts on Palm and backs up onto an alley.

From behind the wheel of Leaping Lena I can see the small parking lot behind the Copy Shop. Near the building's rear ironshuttered door are three spaces for employee parking. An alley runs the length of the block and comes out on the next side street. There is a large dumpster positioned haphazardly in the alley, one corner jutting out, an obstacle on a course, with a lot of trash around it like the owners of this business have bad aim. The shop is the universe of Zolanda Suade.

It is one of those places with machines that can kick out copies like ticker tape over a parade, where, for a fee, you can also rent a private mailbox. It's an interesting sideline for a woman with her own version of the witness-protection program.

I am sipping coffee from a paper cup, reclining in the driver's seat, feeling foolish even to be making this attempt. From everything I have heard, "rational" and "objective" are not terms that come to mind when considering Zo Suade.

Still, it is one of the things you learn in the law: that if you don't ask, some judge will surely look you in the eye and ask why not.

Suade may be the most virulent, male-hating feminist on the continent, but if I draw her into a courtroom before making an effort to reason with her, I will surely face the question from her lawyer, find myself on the defensive: Why didn't you give her the courtesy of inquiring before filing and serving papers, wasting the court's time?

There are a few people on the street, cars whizzing by on Palm.

Some rummy, wearing rags, pushes a shopping cart filled with his possessions heading up the street along the side of the Copy Shop.

He proceeds at no particular speed, with no apparent purpose other than to vacate one space and occupy another, living in that realm where moving is not so much a journey as an occupation.

He is midway across the entrance to the parking lot behind Suade's, at the point of no return, moving like a snail, when out of nowhere this boat, a large dark town car gleaming blackness, makes the turn off of Palm, rubber protesting on the road as it swings over the curb and into the driveway.

The driver makes not even a pretense of braking; there's not the slightest glimmer of red from the taillights. The car nearly spears the man, who moves only at the last instant.

Instead, the vehicle separates him from his belongings. A glancing blow sends the cart careening in one direction onto its side, the man sprawling in the other.

Plastic bags filled with private treasures spill over the sidewalk.