Bobbie sat down and kept quiet.
“Mr. O’Brien, I don’t know what you may or may not have done, but that’s not why we’re here today. Do you have anything else to add pertaining to the case at hand?”
“Yes.” I pointed at Bobbi. “Miss Allen, I’m told, has an alleged jailhouse witness. She cut a deal with him to falsely testify that my client has confessed to the crime.”
Bobbi shot out of her chair again. “Judge, I won’t sit here and be accused of suborning perjury. Mr. O’Brien knows full well that I-unlike him-would not pull that kind of stunt.”
“I know nothing of the kind. I want the witness’s name, and I want to know what you offered him in return for his outrageous and mendacious statement,” I said.
“That’s enough, both of you. Mr. O’Brien, if you want any information from the prosecution, I suggest that you serve the proper discovery requests. Miss Allen, you will turn over to the defense any and all evidence required by law, including all witness statements. Is that understood?”
“Yes, Your Honor,” we both said in unison.
The judge glanced at Bobbi and then at me. “Anything else?”
“Bail,” I said.
“Denied,” he said.
We paraded back into the courtroom. Bobbi withdrew her motion on the record and Koito officially denied the bail request. The trial date was set for Monday, October 2. Judge Koito fined us both fifty dollars for the contempt citation, and admonished Bobbi, telling her the fine was personal. It was not to be paid by the district attorney’s office. He didn’t need to give me the same lecture. He knew I had to pay my own bills. Nothing more was said about Bobbi’s restraining order.
I loitered in the courtroom, scribbling on a yellow pad. I wanted to avoid getting into the elevator with Bobbi when she left the building. I didn’t think I could’ve handled that; might have said something I would regret. After she left, I went to the bank of payphones on the first floor.
C H A P T E R 31
“Rita, I’m just checking in.”
“How’d the hearing go?” she asked. “Like we expected?”
It was noisy in the hallway. I put the phone between my jaw and shoulder and tried to close the booth door, but the handle snapped. A bailiff, hands on his hips, glared at me. I shrugged.
“Yeah, guess so.”
“I’m sorry, Boss, but hang in there, you’ll win at the trial.” I heard her sigh.
“Thanks, Rita. Any calls?”
“Yeah, a cop from Long Beach. Said his name’s Detective Farrell. What’s this all about, Jimmy?”
I knew what it was all about, but I wanted to talk to the guy before I discussed it with Rita. “I’ll call him later and find out,” I said.
My next call was to Sol. I told him about the hearing, about the meeting with Hodges, and the call from Detective Farrell.
“Don’t worry. It’s a scam. You can beat these charges.”
“It’s basically my word against Vogel’s, but I did give him some money.”
“You gonna tell them that?”
“If I’m under oath I’ll have to, but Ron Fischer is the most important thing to worry about. We have to find the pilot fast. I desperately need his testimony.”
“I’m working on that right now. We have a lead and I’m waiting for a call back. It’s lunchtime. Let’s meet at Rocco’s. If the call comes in, I’ll have them transfer it to my table. We’ll go over everything there.”
“I’ll head over right now.”
“One more thing.”
“Yeah?”
“I had your apartment swept for bugs, too. Your phone was tapped.”
I racked my brain trying to remember what calls I’d made from my home phone. It depressed me to realize I hadn’t talked to anyone in the last couple of weeks.
Shortly after one o’clock, I entered Rocco’s. Lively music came from the bar. The piano player, a short cocoa-skinned man wearing an Afro, had a voice like steel wheels rolling on a gravel road, but he was spunky and the crowd loved him.
An unruly queue had formed in front of Andre, customers vying for tables. As I approached the dining room, he noticed me and gestured with his hand to follow him to Sol’s booth.
“Mr. Silverman hasn’t arrived yet,” Andre said. “His secretary called and said he would be here soon.”
I slid into Sol’s booth. Janine appeared, whisked away the reserved placard, and asked if she could bring me anything.
“Yes, thanks. A Coke, and a telephone,” I said.
Janine returned in a few moments with the phone. She plugged it in and a busboy rushed over with my Coke. I dialed the Long Beach Police Department. “This is O’Brien. I’m returning Detective Farrell’s call.”
“I’ll have to patch you through. It may take a few minutes.”
While waiting, I listened to the piano music that drifted into the dining room from the bar. The guy was righteous on the piano, but I wasn’t sure about the rest of his shtick. He had a way of taking popular songs, jazzing up the music, and altering the lyrics. He massacred “Alone Again, Naturally.” He sang with style, but he changed the words to “Alone Again, Ralph.” I didn’t know why everyone laughed.
“This is Farrell,” a listless voice said.
“Detective, I’m O’Brien. You wanted to talk to me.”
“Yeah, need to get your side of the story on the tampering complaint. The D.A.’s hot on this. I already talked to Vogel, said you tried to bribe him.”
I hesitated. I wanted time to think this through. I actually did bribe the guy, but only to get off his ass and look at the hidden meter, not to falsify evidence. But I had to figure exactly how to approach the problem.
I took a sip of my Coke. The gang in the bar was getting boisterous, the music louder. The piano player sang, “I’m in the nude for love”-riotous laughter followed.
“You there, O’Brien?”
“Detective Farrell,” I said, “I think you should drop the case.”
“Drop the case? I told you the D.A.’s all over me about this. What are you, some kind of nut?”
“Yeah, I’m a lawyer.”
“Hey, if you don’t want to talk to me, I’ll just file the report.”
“I’ll talk and tell you why you should drop this thing, now.”
“All right,” he sighed. “I’m listening.”
“First of all, it’s my word against Vogel’s.”
“You’re saying you didn’t give him any money?”
“That’s the point-I gave him forty dollars in cash, a service charge for the labor. I wanted him to unfasten a panel on the plane, check for an additional hour meter, then return the aircraft to its original condition.”
“A service charge?”
“Yeah, it looks like Vogel decided to pocket the cash, not turn it over to his employer. He’s trying to cover up a petty embezzlement. I paid Vogel to examine the plane for variations in the time flown and the time logged. That’s all- information useful for research purposes.”
“You get a receipt?”
“Embezzlers rarely give receipts.”
“Let me get this straight,” Farrell said. “You’re saying you just paid Vogel a labor charge. Is that correct?”
“That’s it.”
“And Vogel pocketed the money.”
“He sure did, Detective. There was no intent on my part to falsify evidence. There was no motive to do that. Alone, the fact that the plane had been flown extra hours wouldn’t do me any good with the jury. I needed that information myself, background. I wanted the truth. If the plane was flown those extra hours, then I would look for the person who was on the plane that night.”
“So you’re saying you had no motive. No evidence could come from the plane itself.”
“That’s right. I had no motive to falsify anything, but Vogel had a motive.”
“He did?”
“Yeah, he put the money in his pocket, and your case rests on my word against his.”
“I see your point, but why would the Deputy D.A. ask me to investigate if it was that simple?”