The Burning Plain (22 page)

“You’re going to a lot of trouble for someone for whom you feel such contempt.”

“I told you, my only concern is the studio.”

“Married to your work?”

“Is this really why you called?”

“The cops found a bloodstain from the second victim in the trunk of the car, along with fibers that matched fibers taken from the first victim’s body,” I said. “They also found prints they’ve matched to Bob and paint from the car on the wall of the alley where one of the bodies was dumped. You searched the car. Any of this sound familiar?”

“Well, obviously I couldn’t have seen fingerprints,” he said, “but I know for a fact the interior and exterior of the car were clean.”

“You’re sure of that?”

He hesitated. “It’s complicated,” he began. I’d begun to realize when he used that word, it meant trouble. “There’s something I didn’t tell you yesterday.”

“What?”

“I didn’t find anything when I searched the car,” he said. “But afterwards, I drove it off the lot to a car wash and had it washed and vacuumed from top to bottom.”

“You what?”

“I swear, I didn’t see anything in the trunk or anywhere else.”

“Then why did you have it cleaned? In case you missed something?”

“I accept full responsibility,” he said, stiffly.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

A dog barked in the background. He shushed it. “Isn’t the important thing that the police found evidence where clearly there couldn’t have been any?”

“Are you prepared to testify to that and expose yourself to prosecution for tampering with evidence?”

“Obviously, you have to figure out a way to keep the case from coming to trial,” he said, adding airily, “Make a deal with someone.”

“You don’t seem to understand the gravity of the situation.”

The deep voice was peremptory. “This is what I understand, Counsel. I’ve given you hard proof that the police planted evidence against Bob. A first-year law student could take that to the bank.”

“With no way to prove it.”

“If you want off the case, just tell me,” he said.

“I’ll stay on the case,” I said, “but I’m warning you, Nick, I will put you on the stand if I have to, whatever the risk to you.”

“If you do your job right, it won’t come to that.”

“I can’t do my job if you keep withholding information.”

“I’ve told you everything,” he said. “I swear.”

I hung up, astonished by the conversation. If Donati was any indication, Hollywood was as lawless as Gaitan’s cohort in the sheriff’s department; but I understood police corruption. Nick Donati was something new.

Sometime during the night, a transient who’d been in and out of mental hospitals most of his life poured a gallon of gas over a patch of scrub in the hills above Sierra Madre and put a match to it. By dawn, the wind had blown the fire out of control. When I went downtown to the Criminal Courts Building to see Serena, soft gray flakes of ash were falling from the smoky sky and the acrid air burned my eyes. Office workers walked between the government buildings with handkerchiefs covering their mouths and noses. Looking northeast from Serena’s eighteenth-floor window I could see a funnel of smoke rising from the vicinity of Pasadena.

I hadn’t seen Serena since she’d turned up at the West Hollywood station where Gaitan was questioning me about the Baldwin murder. Her face was pale with fatigue. She twisted the gold band on the ring finger of her right hand as I began my pitch for access to the evidence reports. Two sentences into it, she stopped me.

“Henry, why are you doing this?”

“Doing what?”

“Taking on this case,” she said. “I mean, besides the potential conflict of interest, don’t you feel any moral qualms about representing someone who preys on gay men?”

“What conflict?”

“I could call you as a witness in the Amerian murder.”

“To testify to what? I wasn’t a percipient witness to anything.”

She frowned. “You were the last person to see him.”

“No,” I corrected her. “His killer was. My testimony wouldn’t be relevant to anything except possibly establishing the time of death, and the medical examiner can do that.”

She twisted the ring. “The relevance of your testimony is a matter for the court to decide. If you persist in representing Bob Travis, I’ll move to disqualify you.”

“Gaitan put you up to this, didn’t he?”

She glared at me. “No one put me up to anything, least of all Mac Gaitan.”

“If you charge my client, and if the case gets to trial and if you subpoena me, I’ll get the subpoena quashed on the grounds that any marginal value I might have as a witness is clearly outweighed by my client’s constitutional right to counsel.”

“The right to counsel,” she said, “is not a right to a particular counsel.”

“I can pretty convincingly demonstrate that he needs me to establish a defense of police misconduct.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Why is Gaitan still running this investigation?”

Her face reddened. “He isn’t running it,” she said. “I am. This case is a lot bigger than one deputy. There are homicide units from the sheriff” and LAPD working with me. Even the FBI’s assisting.”

“Gaitan’s still out there riding the range like a cowboy,” I said.

“I don’t understand your obsession with Gaitan.”

It occurred to me she hadn’t heard about the incident in the desert. I told her.

After I finished, she looked at me silently. “How can you be sure Gaitan was behind it?”

“I can’t, obviously,” I said, “but the circumstantial evidence is pretty compelling.”

She sank back in her chair with a complicated expression on her face. “What do you want, Henry?”

“I want to examine the evidence against my client.”

“Your client hasn’t been charged. If he is, you can file a discovery motion; Until then, he’s not entitled to anything.”

“The evidence is already tainted by Gaitan’s involvement in the case,” I said.

She sighed. “Can you be more specific?”

“I think he’s planted the evidence recovered from the Parnassus studio prop car.”

“I have an eyewitness who saw the second victim get into that car. The same with the third victim, Jellicoe. The actual search was conducted by forensics.”

“Who brought the cab in?”

“I don’t know,” she said, exasperated.

“According to the studio lawyer, it was Gaitan. How much time passed between when he brought the car in and forensics searched it?”

“Shouldn’t you be saving this for a jury?”

“I’m telling you Serena, I have information that will prove the evidence was planted.”

“What information?”

“I can’t disclose that without jeopardizing my defense.”

“You’ve just told me your defense.”

“Then believe that I can prove it,” I said. “Look, we can resolve this now before it goes any farther, or play it out in front of a jury and embarrass your office.”

“You’re that sure,” she said, wavering.

I decided to play my trump card. “I’m so sure that if you’ll agree to let me preview this evidence, I’ll submit my client to a lineup with your eyewitnesses.”

She cocked an eyebrow. “A lineup?”

“Do we have a deal?”

She thought about it. “All right. Deal. I’ll messenger you this afternoon.”

My car phone rang. It was Richie Florentino on the other end saying, “You’re holding out on me, Henry.”

I was stopped at a light on Sunset just outside of town. Ash rained down on my windshield. A plume of black smoke unfolded in the gray sky like a wing. The light went green and I lurched forward behind an exhaust-spewing, nearly empty bus.

“I’m very busy, Richie,” I said.

“I know you are,” he replied. “Working for Parnassus. My spies say you had a meeting with Nick Donati.”

“How could you possibly know that?”

“If I tell you, will you tell me what you talked about?”

“No,” I said. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw an enormous, filthy woman lift her voluminous skirts and squat in a weed-choked lot.

“I’ve got the dish on Donati,” he said.

On my right, a banner in a gay-porn store just outside Silver Lake advertised XXXXX-rated videos. “Richie, what do you think an XXXXX-rated gay video could possibly show?”

“Restraint?” he ventured. “Good taste?”

“That would be shocking,” I agreed. “I’m not interested in your dish on Donati.”

There was nothing like indifference to goad an inveterate gossip like Richie.

“He’s so far in the closet, you can’t see him for his suits,” Richie said.

“He told me he was gay,” I said, stretching the point.

“He did?” Richie was astonished. “What else did he tell you?”

“I went to see him on a professional matter,” I said. “I can’t say anything else.”

“A professional matter? You mean as in the police are after him?”

“No,” I said, adamantly. “The police are not after him.”

“Can I quote you on that?”

“Quote me? What are you talking about?”

“I have to say something in my piece on Parnassus about a big-time criminal-defense lawyer showing up for a secret meeting with the head of legal,” he said, adding a disingenuous, “don’t I?”

I pulled out of traffic and stopped in front of the Vista theater.

“This is extortion.”

“All I know,” he said, “is that I’m waiting for Asuras to try to close the Longstreet deal so I can run this story, and suddenly everything stops and I can’t find out why.”

A light went on. “Does Donati know about the Longstreet deal?”

“He’s Asuras’s shadow. Take away Asuras and Donati’s an empty suit with a two-hundred-dollar haircut.”

“How far would Donati go to protect Asuras’s interests?”

“As far as Asuras tells him. So I’m right,” he said triumphantly. “Your meeting with Donati had something to do with the delay in closing the Longstreet deal.” His mood changed to anger. “How could you double-cross me when you know how important this story is to me?”

“I’m not one of your spies, Richie,” I said. “I can’t violate attorney-client privilege to help you win the Pulitzer prize or whatever it is you’re running for.”

“This isn’t about any fucking prize,” he huffed. “It’s about protecting Hollywood from a homo-hating bigot. Whose side are you on?”

I waved away a tattered man who was trying to clean my windshield with a soiled rag. He muttered a stream of invectives and wandered off.

“I’m doing my job,” I said.

“That’s what the Nazis said at Nuremberg,” he shouted.

“Richie, calm down,” I said, thinking fast. I knew how destructive he could be when he was enraged. “Let’s make a deal.”

“I don’t make deals with collaborators,” he fumed, but he was listening.

“I can tell you this much,” I said. “Donati’s not the client. The client’s a low-level studio employee who’s suspected by the police of a serious felony. I personally don’t think this has anything to do with the Longstreet deal.”

“It has to,” Richie insisted. “Everything just stopped.”

“The police are at the point in their investigation where they either have to arrest him or let him go,” I said. “I expect a decision within a few days. Either way, I’ll call you and you can decide for yourself if it had anything to do with the deal.”

“So you’re saying it’s a routine case.”

“Exactly, it’s just a coincidence that it’s at Parnassus.”

“If it’s routine, why can’t you tell me about it now?”

“I’m at a very delicate place in my negotiations with the District Attorney,” I said. “If the story gets out prematurely, it could jeopardize them.”

There was a long silence. “I don’t know how much longer I can sit on this piece before Duke finds out about it.”

“What does that matter?”

“Are you kidding? He’s famous for killing books and stories about him,” Richie said. “Just last year he got an unauthorized biography literally pulled off the presses by his libel lawyers.”

“Haven’t your libel lawyers vetted your piece?”

“You let me worry about my lawyers,” he said. “I have a week to deadline for the September issue. If I don’t hear from you before then, I’m running with what I’ve got.”

“Richie, I’m speaking as a friend, here. If you make any statements implying I met with Donati because he’s the target of a police investigation you’re courting a libel suit.”

“I have a friendly warning, too,” Richie said. “Before you get too cozy with Donati, remember, everyone in Hollywood is either a flake or an asshole.”

“You don’t have to worry about me going native.”

“Just remember,” he intoned ominously. “A flake or an asshole.”

I
T’S FOUR IN
the morning, I’m writing this letter …

Wearily, I reached over and switched the radio off on Leonard Cohen’s lament, and got up to stretch. It was a little after two in the morning. The dining table was covered with police and lab reports, forensic texts, legal pads. For the past eight hours I’d been plodding through the Invisible Man files, paring down my thoughts and impressions to a couple of pages of notes. I put my pen down and read them.

1. Time. Gaitan impounds prop car at studio at 4 pm; search conducted the following day starting at 9 am. Seventeen hours enough time to plant evid.
Follow-up:
When was car booked, where? Who had access?

2. Fiber evidence. Hair and Fiber Unit match fibers combed from Alex Amerian’s body hair to fibers found in the trunk of the cab. Fibers identified as cashmere, light blue in color, between half an inch and an inch in length. Found everywhere from the hair on his head to the hair on his legs. Examiner says: body was wrapped in a cashmere blanket and transported from the murder site to the alley. Half-a-dozen fibers found in the trunk, which was lined with a short, gray industrial-type carpeting. The match was ninety-five percent certain. Fiber samples from body booked into crime lab.

Nota bene:
A. Donati says trunk vacuumed before Gaitan gets it;

B. Fibers should shed in pattern of how body positioned, should be numerous if entire body wrapped and stowed. Here only
six
fibers found;

C.
Query:
why no fibers found on bodies of other two victims if same car used to transport?

2. Blood evidence. Dime-sized bloodstain in the trunk of the car matches blood type of second vic, Baldwin. Type O positive, most common blood type. Sample sent out for DNA analysis to confirm blood Baldwin’s. Results not in.

NB:     A. Medical examiner takes blood sample from body for toxo analysis; booked into crime lab;

B. Without DNA confirmation, bloodstain could belong to anyone with O pos blood with access to car (
22
at least, per Donati);

C. Even if DNA confirms Baldwin, proves only he was in the car (eyewit says he saw him get into car; x-ref statement of Willie Wright);

D.
Only
blood of any vie found in car. How hard to borrow sample from Baldwin autopsy and drip it in trunk?

3. Paint transfer. Paint found on the fence in alley where Amerian’s body was dumped matches paint on the car from scratch on front bumper. The Materials Unit says match is ninety-nine percent certain.

NB:     A. Gaitan has plenty of time to drive to alley in car, scrape fence;

B. How common is paint? A hundred cars with same color? A million? May match this car but can’t prove for sure if many others also painted same shade of blue.

4. Fingerprint evidence. Prints from inside glove compartment, trunk, seat match Travis through his DMV print of thumb. (Wish Donati cleaning a little more thorough.) So what? Admit he used car. Trunk prints a problem? No, could’ve put groceries back there. NB: Prints hard to plant.

5. Eyewitness statements:

A. Willie Wright. Hustler. Sees cab pull up to corner on Sta. Monica Blvd. where Baldwin working. Remembers logo, Lucky, because that’s one of his street names. Sitting at bus stop twenty five feet away, about 1 a.m. Says cab off-duty. Sees Baldwin approach and interior light go on. Driver’s profile visible: white, “old,” baseball cap, dark glasses. Light goes out, Baldwin gets in. Total time elapsed: “couple of minutes.”

B. Parker Gray. Bouncer at sex club. Stationed in parking lot. Sees third vie, Jellicoe, leave club and cross street. Sees cab cruise street. Remembers logo;
his
nickname also Lucky. Cab stops beneath streetlight fifty feet away. De scribes driver: white, fair hair, thirties. No baseball cap, glasses. Jellicoe approaches. Talks to driver. Gets in. Total time elapsed:
2—3
minutes.

NB:     A. Both descriptions vague; even so, don’t match up.

B. Gray description stronger. Could fit Travis, could fit anyone who looks like Travis.

Conclusions: 1. Gaitan had opportunity to plant blood/fiber evidence. Only question is his access to crime-lab blood/fiber samples. Fibers
very
suspicious.

2. Only direct evidence linking Travis to car, his prints. No big deal, we concede he used it.

3. Eyewitness evidence, negligible.