Try Darkness (2 page)

She was about thirty-five but carried an extra decade around like a peasant with a load of bricks.

The little girl had dirty-blond hair worn in a ponytail fastened with a green rubber band. The rubber band matched her eyes. She held a small backpack with a pink unicorn on it.

Father Bob got up and greeted them, showed them to our table.

We were at the Ultimate Sip, a coffee bar in a strip mall on Rinaldi. The Sip is an inspiration in our Starbucks-saturated world. A wholly owned independent subsidiary of the mind of one Barton C. McNitt. He’s a Vietnam vet, a little older than Father Bob. Father Bob affectionately refers to Barton C. McNitt as “Pick.”

“Because if there’s a nit, McNitt will pick it,” Father Bob told me. “He likes to argue.”

Pick McNitt had been a philosophy professor at Cal State Northridge until he went crazy. He spent some time in a sanitarium, where Father Bob met him by walking into the wrong room.

They argued then and have been friends ever since.

I pay McNitt a little chunk each month for the use of the Sip as an office. And for a p.o. box in the franchise McNitt owns next door.

“This is Reatta,” Father Bob said, introducing the woman. She nodded at me. “And this is Kylie.”

The girl looked at me, then put her head behind her mother.

“Garçon,” I called out to Pick McNitt. “How about three specials and a hot chocolate with lots of whipped cream for the girl?”

McNitt was behind the bar. He wore a billowing red Hawaiian shirt to cover his substantial girth. With his white beard and bald head, he was a perfect department store Santa, but for one thing—he’d scare the kids.

“All glory is fleeting,” McNitt called back.

“Can I color?” the girl asked Reatta. Reatta nodded. The girl plopped her unicorn bag on the table and took out some paper and crayons.

“Reatta came to me when I was doing some rounds downtown,” Father Bob said. “She’s just gotten a room at the Lindbrook Hotel on Sixth. But she’s facing life on the street again.”

“They won’t take my rent for next month,” Reatta said.

“What are they charging?” I asked.

“Four hundred a month. For a hundred and fifty square feet.” Her brown eyes scanned my face. They were searching, maybe for somebody to trust.

“And they’ve told you that you have to move out?”

She nodded.

“Why don’t they just take the rent money?” Father Bob asked me.

“It’s called the twenty-eight-day shuffle,” I said.

“Sounds like a dance.”

“It’s a dance around the law, is what it is. Here’s how it works. Downtown hotel owners shuffle their people in and out, to try to establish that they’re a commercial tourist hotel, not a residential hotel. That way tenant protection laws don’t kick in. So they say to people like Reatta here that she has to move out, stay out for a week, and then she can come back.”

“So this is better financially for them?”

“Not necessarily.”

“So why do it?” Father Bob asked.

“Because, my mass-saying friend, a commercial hotel property can be sold to a developer with very little red tape. Said developer can then turn said hotel into fancy lofts for sale to downtown professionals. That way, everyone makes money. Except the people who used to live there. They end up on Skid Row.”

“Very nice. And you say this is illegal?”

“If you can get somebody to do something about it.”

“What about the DA or the city attorney?”

“They’ve sued a couple of owners. But that’s it. The downtown developers have a lot of power. So it’s left to public interest law firms to try to take up the cases. But the hotels have big firms behind them. I know. I used to work for one of those firms.”

“Is there anything you can do for her?” Father Bob asked.

I looked at the girl who was busy coloring her paper. To Reatta I said, “Do you have anyplace to go if they don’t accept your rent?”

She shook her head. “A shelter is all. I hate those places.”

She had good reason to.

“How many more days do you have?”

“Seven.”

McNitt delivered the drinks. The little girl perked up at the sight of a cup with a mound of whipped cream on it, a Pike’s Peak of delight.

The other three coffees were McNitt specials. He called them Gandhi lattes. Said they promoted nonviolent resistance.

Kylie took a lick and got a little whipped cream on her chin.

“Tell you what,” I said. “I’ll take a trip down there later this afternoon and talk to the manager. See what I can find out. But if I do this, I’ll need a retainer.”

Reatta frowned.

“I’d like to have that picture Kylie’s been drawing,” I said.

The girl looked at me and smiled. “Okay,” she said. “But it’s a secret.”

“I can keep secrets,” I said.

She pushed the paper across the table to me. It showed two stick figures, one big and one small, holding hands in the upper part of the paper. My razor-sharp mind figured that to be Kylie and Reatta. A squiggly line came out from them and snaked all across the page, down to the right hand corner. In this corner Kylie had drawn several items of what I took to be candy.

Because she had written
Candyland
there.

“A map to Candyland,” I said. Razor-sharp mind again.

Kylie put a finger to her lips. “Shh! It’s a secret.”

4

BEFORE HEADING DOWNTOWN
, I stopped at the Van Nuys jail. Earlier that week I’d agreed to see Gilbert Calderón, twenty-eight. His mother, who came to mass at St. Monica’s almost every day, found out about me from Sister Mary.

Señora Calderón, a cheerful woman the shape of a gas pump, begged me to take the case. Gilbert was in for murder and she didn’t trust the PD’s office. They let her son go to prison once before, she said. Didn’t put up a fight, she said.

Maybe your son does bad things, I almost said, but didn’t.

So I went to see him. He was being held without bail. Soon he’d be transferred to the Twin Towers, near Chinatown, to await the preliminary hearing.

They brought Gilbert into the attorney room, shackled and in his carrot suit—the orange coveralls reserved for high-power inmates. Those accused of murder, mostly. They sat him down and attached him to the table.

Gilbert Calderón had all the marks of a gang
veterano
. Dark prison tats on his neck. Survival eyes. Lines at the corners from beatings taken and given. A hardness around the cheeks, as if his skin had been stretched by strong hands. A white scar under the chin.

But he was smiling. One of his front teeth was gold.

“Hey man, thanks for coming,” Gilbert said.

“Don’t thank me yet,” I said.

I took out a copy of the police report I got from the PD’s office. Five days before his arrest a couple of robberies were committed in the Valley in the span of half an hour.

The first robbery occurred at Fornay’s Flower Store on Sherman Way at 11:38 a.m. Twenty minutes later a Baskin-Robbins store on Topanga was hit.

It wasn’t ice cream they found on the floor.

When police arrived at the scene they found Simindokht Roshdieh, forty-two, dead, and her husband, Firooz Roshdieh, bleeding from the head.

Witnesses from both locations filled in the facts. An employee of Fornay’s, Denise Barr, described the robber as Hispanic, with short black hair and brown eyes. She thought he was in his early to mid-twenties, around five feet, ten inches in height, weighing between 140 and 170 pounds.

She told investigators the man wore a long black trench coat, tan pants, a tan scarf, and black and white Nike running shoes. She stated he had tattoos on his neck, possibly letters. At the time, Barr thought the man was dressed “inappropriately for the weather,” which she described as “warm.”

According to Barr, the man approached her at the cash register and politely asked, “Will you open the register, please?” Barr did not immediately respond and the man repeated his statement. At the same time he removed a gun and pointed it at her. Barr then opened the register and the man stepped around the counter, reached into the register, took the money. On his way out of the store, he grabbed a balloon from one of the displays.

“What about that?” I asked Gilbert.

His smile was long gone. “I wouldn’t do no dumb thing like that if I’m robbin’ a store.”

“What dumb thing would you do?”

“Hey man, ain’t you my lawyer?”

“Not yet. Let’s go through the rest of this.”

Heather Dowling, another Fornay’s employee, told police she had just returned from her break when she noticed a Hispanic man with a short haircut standing behind the counter. The man told her to “stop, stay” and pointed a gun at her. As he left the store, Dowling noticed a tattoo on the back of his neck that “looked like a name of someone or something.”

“What’s it say on the back of your neck?” I asked him.

“Consuelo.” He turned around so I could see the tat. Then back to me. “High school, man. Love. Lasted all summer.”

“So this witness Dowling was right about that.”

“You know how many
vatos
got names?”

“Let’s keep going.”

At the Baskin-Robbins store a customer named Byron Horne said he was about ten yards from the entrance when he noticed a Hispanic man wearing a black trench coat walk in. He saw several tattoos on his neck. He described the man as five feet, six to eight inches tall and weighing around 160 pounds. He heard two shots and saw the man run out of the store. Horne ran into the store and saw a bleeding Firooz Roshdieh, who was screaming, “Call nine-one-one!”

Horne called and a team was dispatched. No suspect was arrested that day.

Relying on the wits’ descriptions a homicide detective named Sean Plunkett searched a law enforcement database containing records of convicted criminals with tattoos. Gilbert’s name surfaced in connection with his detention at the Mexican border in February 2001. Border authorities had arrested Gilbert and photographed his tattoos. Plunkett learned that Gilbert had been detained with a woman named Nydessa Perry. He checked on Perry and found out she was on federal probation following a conviction for distributing crack.

A day later, Plunkett assembled a six-man photographic lineup. One of the photos was of Gilbert, taken from the California Department of Corrections.

Firooz Roshdieh identified another man, saying, “I never forget those two eyes.” Barr identified Gilbert. Horne was unable to identify anyone.

Nydessa Perry was called in to look at the security camera images from the Baskin-Robbins store. She gave a positive ID on Gilbert.

Who was not surprised, considering what he told me about Nydessa Perry. No love lost there. He had dumped her because of her drug use, he said, and she swore she’d get him someday.

5

“
SO YOU GIVE
me your side now,” I said. “Start with where you were that morning, when the murder took place. Can you do that?”

“Yeah,” Gilbert said. “Got it clear in my mind, man. I was with Jesus.”

I rubbed the bridge of my nose. “Gilbert, you have to trust me, okay? It’s a lawyer client thing. Client trusts lawyer—”

“Hey, last time I did that, I ended up in the slams.”

“And you probably lied to that lawyer too, am I right?”

He smiled again. “You’re pretty good. I like you.”

“Well that just makes my day, Gilbert. Now let’s forget about Jesus for the time being and you tell me exactly where you were in the late morning hours of March twenty-ninth?”

“Under a tree, man.”

“Tree?”

“In the park.”

“What park?”

“I don’t know, the one over there.” He nodded with his head, having no idea which direction he was looking.

“Did anybody see you at this park?”

“Jesus.” He smiled again.

“Anybody else?”

“I don’t know, man. I was out.”

“Why were you out?”

“
Cerveza
.”

“Did you drink alone? And don’t say you were with Jesus.”

“God and the Holy Ghost, too.”

I rubbed my whole head now. Here is a retirement plan for criminal defense lawyers: Get a dime for every client who finds Jesus behind bars. And a nickel for every one who gets paroled then goes back to being what they were before.

“Focus, Gilbert. It’s the morning and you’re drinking beer, right?”

“It was still dark when I started.”

“Why were you drinking?”

“Chase away the demons, man.”

“Did it work?”

He shook his head. “I didn’t kill nobody. You got to know that.”

“But the DA, Gilbert. He thinks you did do it, and he’s got some pretty strong evidence.”

“What evidence?”

“Nydessa Perry, for one.”

“Oh man!” Gilbert jerked his hands in the desk restraints. “She’s a liar and crackhead!”

“Quiet down,” the room deputy said. He was standing at the interview room door.

“So is that all you got?” I said. “You were asleep under a tree, no one saw you, and your ex-girlfriend is lying to get you?”

“Does that sound bad?”

“Like a garage band without the garage.”

“Eh?”

“Just sounds bad.”

Gilbert frowned.

“But we’ll see what we can do,” I said.

“You taking the case?”

“I said
we,
didn’t I?” I stood up.

“Where you going?” Gilbert said.

“I do have other clients.”

“You got trouble, is what you got.”

I just looked at him.

“I see it in your face,” Gilbert said. “So I want you to take care of yourself out there. You need any help, let me know.”

I almost choked to keep from laughing.

“Just keep it in mind,” Gilbert said. “We can talk. God talks to me and told me you were gonna get me out of here. Told me you were the man.”

I stood up. “Then ask him where I can find a witness who’ll corroborate your story. Get back to me on what he says.”

6

I PULLED OUT
onto Van Nuys Boulevard, getting a friendly wave from a guy standing on the corner with a cardboard sign. The sign read “
WHY LIE? I WANT A BEER.
” I admired his honesty. He wouldn’t have lasted long in the law game.