Try Fear (25 page)

I said nothing. My face got a tad warm.

“Nice meeting you, Sister,” Kimberly said.

“The same,” Sister Mary said.

When we got back to our table, Sister Mary said, “She likes you. I can see it in her eyes.”

“What’s not to like?” I said. “I’ve got the whole package, don’t I? Charm, wit, sophistication.”

“Humility, too. Maybe you and she ought to get together.”

When she said that, it was almost like a request. As if she wanted it to happen for some unnamed reason. I thought about probing
a little, but decided not to. We had enough to think about without getting involved in all that.

Truth was, I didn’t want to think about it. If I did, it’d be like defusing a bomb. A chance to survive, but a chance to get
blown up, too.

B
UT THE VEAL
Parmesan was a Luigi’s masterwork, and the Chianti a perfect match.

Nothing blew up or even blew around. Until we got outside.

There was a somebody next to my car at the end of the small parking lot. Whoever it was, he was bending over, looking at it.

I touched Sister Mary’s arm and pulled her back to Luigi’s front door, out of sight. “Wait here,” I said.

“What are you going to do?” she said.

“If I’m not back in five minutes, tell Luigi to bring every Sicilian he can out to the lot.”

“Wait—”

I didn’t wait. I went around the other way, circling Luigi’s. There’s a small passage between the restaurant and an antique
store. Then you come to the retaining wall of Luigi’s parking lot, which is elevated in the back.

That gave me a vantage point to watch the guy, who was still eyeing my car. The lighting was dim here and I couldn’t make
out much about him. Whoever he was, he was taking his time.

And he was alone.

I thought about spooking him with the alarm. But I wanted to know who it was. I was tired of not knowing.

I took off my coat and laid it on the wall. I was able to get myself up to a position where I was still unseen. A nice fat
bush helped. About fifteen yards separated us.

Now what? I could charge like a Bruin linebacker. But I wasn’t feeling like tackling tonight. So I waited.

The guy walked to the front of my car, the farthest point from me, and sat on the hood.

He lit a cigarette.

Maybe he was just waiting for somebody while admiring my Benz, before parking his heinie on my car. Bad manners, but nothing
else.

Or maybe he was waiting for me. Or Sister Mary.

I took my keys and quietly put three of them between the fingers of my right hand, holding the rest in my fist. If I got attacked
I was going to make some holes in the guy’s face. Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu would have to wait.

Three people, two men and a woman, came out of Luigi’s, laughing, toward a car. The guy smoking on my hood turned his head
left.

That’s when I made my move from the right.

I got my Wolverine fist ready.

“Evening.”

He yelped. His cigarette tumbled out of his mouth. He jumped up like the hood of my car was a cattle prod.

He screamed the name of Sister Mary’s savior.

It was Nick Molina. He cursed again.

“Easy,” I said.

“Easy! You give me a heart attack.”

“What’re you doing sniffing around my Benz?”

“Waiting for you, man. Now the whole neighborhood knows.”

There was no neighborhood to speak of here. The nearest houses were in the hills on the other side of the freeway.

“Everything all right?” It was Sister Mary. Behind Nick. Who yelped again.

And cursed again. Then added, “Sorry, Sister.”

“How’d you know we’d be here?” I said.

“I followed you from court.” He drew out another cigarette from his shirt pocket and tried to light it with a Bic. But his
hands were shaking and it took a few seconds longer than it should.

“Why’d you do that?” I said.

He took a deep drag and looked up. “I’m a little nervous, okay? I don’t want to be seen, okay? I don’t want anybody knowing
I talked to you, got it? I told you I’d come to you when I was ready, so I’m ready now, and that’s it.”

“All right,” I said.

“Carl, maybe he’s dead because of Ezzo,” Nick said. “And Jamie MacArthur.”

“T
AKE IT SLOW,”
I said, wanting Sister Mary and I to hear exactly the same thing.

He rubbed his face. “You got any idea what kind of money is changing hands down there?”

“Where?”

“At the project.”

“Tell me.”

“Carl was part of it. They were all part of it. Here’s the way it works. The city hires a primary contractor. When they go
out and contract with the subs, there are supposed to be set limits. The city wants to control costs, so they have restrictions
on what can be paid out. It’s a way to keep lower-tiered subcontractors from nickel-and-diming them with markups.”

“Sounds like good business practice,” I said.

“Well, somebody in the know went to selected subcontractors and told them how to put in
usage
charges. It’s a bookkeeping category, and with the right billing it’s accepted by the controller’s office.”

I said, “A nice little bonus.”

“Then the money takes another trip, to the Laundromat.”

“But why, if it’s a legit payout, at least on paper?”

“That’s part of the deal. In return for getting the contract itself, and for some protection in the accounting, the sub agrees
to give back a percentage of the usage charges. Guess who those funds eventually filter back to?”

“The campaign coffers of a certain councilmember.”

Nick spread his hands with a gesture of
And that’s how it’s done.
“It’s so clean, the only way to get ’em is for someone to talk. And Carl was gonna blow the whistle.”

Now I felt like both Robert Redford
and
Dustin Hoffman. This was more than dynamite. This was C4, and it lined up around City Hall. “How much did Carl know?” I said.

“Just a week before he got it, we were having a beer after work. Carl had a couple of shots of tequila with his. He was drinking
a lot. He was nervous. And then he said he was going to talk. Because there was somebody trying to do him dirt. That’s what
he said. ‘Do him dirt.’ ”

“Did he say who this person was?”

“No, and I didn’t ask. ’Cause I didn’t want to get involved, which I am now because of you.”

“Did Carl say anything else?”

“Said he had an accountant friend who would help him put numbers on it, and then he was going to go to the
Times.
”

“Was this accountant a guy named Morgan Barstler?”

“No idea. But I told him, I told Carl, I said he shouldn’t say nothing. Because there’s enforcers on this thing. Every sub
got a visit, sometimes more. So what happens? Next thing I know he’s dead.” He let out a disgusted breath. “And they think
his brother did it. What a nice setup. They got this thing wired.”

“You ever heard the name Turk Bacon?”

Nick shook his head. “Sounds like a name to stay away from.”

“Is that it, Nick?”

“That’s it. That’s what I got.”

And what he had was at least the start of the proof I needed to offer an alternative theory of the crime. What Judge Hughes
required for me to argue it. It might not be enough to point to the actual perpetrators, but in my hands it would be enough
to create a reasonable doubt.

I said, “Will you testify?”

“No way,” Nick said.

“I need you to.”

Sister Mary added, “Please.”

Nick looked at her. She looked right back at him. Then he looked at the ground and shuffled his feet. “Sorry,” he said.

He walked.

I started after him. Sister Mary caught my arm. She pointed to herself. Then went after Nick.

I
GOT UP
early the next morning and made myself coffee. Showered in the trailer shower—which was built for the guy who played Mini
Me—and fired up my laptop for a look at the news.

The night before, in Luigi’s parking lot, Sister Mary had managed to get Nick to at least think about testifying. She’d call
him later. He made that clear. He didn’t want me calling him. I couldn’t blame the guy. I got him fired, now had him paranoid.
All in a day’s work.

I scanned the headlines in the
Times,
then popped over to LALawyerWatch.blogspot.com. It’s an insider gossip mill that just about every city reporter and lawyer
reads. It has some good stuff in it every now and then. I once got some useful info on an opposing lawyer that I used in negotiating
a settlement. I can’t prove it, but I think the info got my client another hundred grand.

Right out of the box, on the first entry, was this:

Who Was That Nun I Saw You

With Last Night? That Was No Nun.

That Was My Investigator.

You may remember Tyler Buchanan. He’s the lawyer who was accused of murdering L.A. news star Channing Westerbrook (turns out
he didn’t do it, but he did get to see the inside of the Men’s Central Jail, and lost his job at the boutique firm of Gunther,
McDonough & Longyear).

I almost snorted coffee out through my nose, because curses were streaming from my mouth. No privacy anymore. None. Zip. And
they couldn’t even get it right. McDonough wanted me back.

Well, last night at Little Luigi’s, we caught a glimpse of Buchanan with his investigator (so called), an actual nun. She’s
sitting right there with him in the courtroom in the Foltz Building, while Buchanan defends one Eric Richess on the charge
of murdering his brother.

So who is this nun? LALawyerWatch has learned her name is Sister Mary Veritas, and she is part of St. Monica’s, which is some
sort of Catholic enclave in the far west corner of the San Fernando Valley.

The two looked chummy as they sipped wine and, no doubt, talked about the day in court. Ty Buchanan has done the classic “become
a monk” routine after his come down. Word is he’s taking cases for the “little guys.” And why not? A little penance might
not be a bad thing for a lawyer these days.

If I thought this was going to be ignored, overlooked, or otherwise missed by the mainstream press, I was sorely mistaken.

“I
’M BECOMING A
distraction,” Sister Mary said as we drove downtown later.

“It’s not a big deal,” I said.

“I mean, not just to the case. At the community, too. We do not need this kind of attention.”

“What does that even mean?” I said. “You can’t just leave the world anymore. You have to expect you’re going to catch flak.
This isn’t the Middle Ages.”

“I didn’t say it was. But there is still a need for a place of prayer and piety.

Now more than ever.”

“You saying you want to pull out of the case?”

“No. I made a commitment. All I’m saying is I’ve become a distraction, and I’m distracted myself.”

She looked out the window. We were stuck in the morning commute, crawling past Vermont at about five miles an hour. A morning
news chopper hovered just above us. It wasn’t moving either. For some reason I thought the pilot was looking right at us.

Sister Mary, still looking out, said, “The first words of the Order of St. Benedict are, ‘Listen, O child, and incline the
ear of thy heart.’ To hear the still, small whisper of God, in both heart and mind, is what is needed for the vocation.”

“And the heart has its reasons,” I said, “which reason knows nothing of.”

She turned to me. “Pascal.”

“I’ve read a little bit.”

“You should read more.”

“So what’s your heart telling you?” I said. It suddenly seemed like the most important question in the world.

She seemed to sense the same thing. “God had a reason for me to be a nun.”

“Had?”

“I mean
has.
”

“Is that really what you mean?”

“I don’t care to be cross-examined on the way to court,” she said.

“Agreed,” I said. “When are you going to call Nick?”

“Later this afternoon.”

“Be sure to push that whisper-of-God thing on him. We need all the help we can get.”

T
HE NEWS CREWS
were camped out on Temple, waiting for us.

Sister Mary grabbed my arm as we approached. She had her head down. Reporters started shouting questions.

I waved it off, told them there was nothing to see, have a nice day. One of them almost got me in the face with his microphone
and shouted, “What is the nature of your relationship?”

I just looked at this dipstick and said, “What is the nature of your intelligence?”

He blinked like he didn’t understand the question. Case closed.

Security held the barking dogs at bay at the entrance, and we got inside and through the detectors. There was a clear vibe
in the air, like we were suddenly the center of attention for all of Los Angeles.

When we got off the elevator, the hallway outside Hughes’s courtroom was packed with court watchers. More than normal.

One of the county Safety Police guards, who keep order in the place, was waving her arms in a crowd-control gesture. It wasn’t
working.