Sunset Express

'Have you been drinking?' Don't you hate smart women?

'Absolutely not.' Giving her affronted. Giving her shocked. Then I said, 'Well, maybe a little.'

She sighed. 'I heard on the news that the charges against Green were reduced. How's Angela?'

'Not great, but not bad, either. The public still thinks that she's rotten, but I've cleared her.'

'How nice for her children.'

'Green kept himself insulated so that there was always plausible deniability.'

'What about Truly's dying declaration?' I had told her about Truly weeks ago. 'That's legitimate evidence.'

'It is, but since it was witnessed only by me and Angela and Joe, the powers that be view it as questionable. Because I resigned from Green's employ, and because he accused Rossi, the powers that be feel that a jury would discount our version of events.'

She didn't say anything for a time, and then she said, 'Well, in this case the powers that be are probably right.'

I nodded, but she probably couldn't see it. 'I don't believe Truly had a secret agreement with Teddy Martin. Green fabricated that, just as he fabricated the business about Pritzik and Richards.'

'I'm sure you're right.'

'Truly was telling the truth.'

I'm sure of that, too.'

I didn't say anything. I was staring at the bubbles rising in the sauce and my shoulders felt tight and I was wishing that I hadn't drunk all the wine.

Lucy said, 'It hurts, doesn't it?'

I moved my tongue, trying to scrub away the wine's taste. 'Oh, God, yes.'

'You try so hard to make things right, and here's this man, and he's oozing through the system in a way that keeps things wrong.'

'He is defiling justice.' Defiling. That was probably the merlot talking.

She said, 'Oh, Studly.' I could see her smile. 'The law is not about justice. You know that.'

I finished the merlot and turned off the sauce. It was thick with chunks of tomatoes and black olives and raisins. I had cooked it without being hungry. Maybe I just wanted to give myself something worthwhile to do. 'Of course I know, but it should be.'

Lucy said, 'The law is an adversarial contest that defines justice as staying within the rules and seeing the game to its conclusion. Justice is reaching a conclusion. It has very little to do with right and wrong. The law gives us order. Only men and women can give us what you want to call justice.'

I took a deep breath and let it out. 'God, Lucille, I wish you were here.'

'I know.' Her voice was soft and hard to hear. Then she said, 'You're still the World's Greatest Detective, honey pie. They can't take that away from you.'

It made me smile.

Neither of us spoke for a time, and then Lucy said, 'Do you remember Tracy Mannos at Channel Eight? We met her at Green's party.'

'Sure. The program manager.'

'She called me last week. She arranged for the network affiliate here in Baton Rouge to shoot a test tape of me, and after she saw it she offered me a job as an on-air legal commentator.'

I said, 'In Baton Rouge?'

'No, Elvis. Out there. In Los Angeles.'

I couldn't say anything. The merlot seemed to be rushing through my ears.

Lucy said, 'It's more money, and we would be closer to you, but it's such a big move.' You could hear her uncertainty.

I said, 'You'd come to Los Angeles?'

'There's so much to think about. There's Ben. There's my house and my friends. I'm not sure what to do about Richard.'

'Please say yes.' It came out hoarse.

She didn't say anything for a time. 'I don't know just yet. I need to think about it.'

'I told Joe that I was thinking about moving to Baton Rouge.'

Another pause. 'Are you?'

'Yes.'

'Would you?'

'Yes.'

'Why?'

'You know why, Lucille. I love you.'

She didn't speak for another moment, and when she did her voice seemed lighter, somehow more at ease. 'I need to think.'

'Call me tomorrow.'

'I may not know tomorrow.'

'Call me anyway.'

She said, 'I love you, Studly. Always remember that.'

Lucille Chenier hung up, and I lay on my kitchen floor and smiled at the ceiling, and not very much later I knew that I had found the last and final way to bring Jonathan Green to justice.

Or, at least, a close approximation.

CHAPTER 39

I called Eddie Ditko first. He came over that night, coughing and wheezing, but happy to eat spaghetti with the puttanesca sauce and listen to my account of the events in the maintenance shed while he recorded my every word. He grinned a lot while I talked, and said that he could guarantee a bottom half of the front-page position for the story. He said, 'Man, the shit's gonna hit the fan when this comes out.'

'That's the idea.'

When Eddie was gone, I called Tracy Mannos, who put me in touch with Lyle Stodge at twenty minutes after ten. Lyle and Marcy anchored the eleven P.M. newscast as well as the five. Lyle was only too happy to talk to me, and only too happy to accept my offer of an interview. He said, 'We've been hoping to get you for a comment on all of this! Can you make the eleven o'clock?'

'Nope.'

'How about tomorrow at five?'

'I'll be there.' The five o'clock newscast had the larger audience.

I phoned every person who had interviewed me in print or on radio or television, or who had wanted to interview me. I spent most of the night and part of the next morning on the phone, and everybody was happy to talk to me. I called both Peter Alan Nelsen and Jodi Taylor, and asked if they could put me in touch with any of the major network and cable news people, and of course they could. Even Daily Variety wanted an interview. Everybody wanted to know if I had been duped by Theodore Martin, and everybody wanted to know what had happened in the maintenance shed, and everyone still considered me the hero of the defense effort, just the way Jonathan had hoped when he had staged the news conferences with his hand on my shoulder. I told them that I would be happy to tell them exactly what happened, especially if we were on the air live.

By three the following afternoon, I had completed eleven interviews, and had provided each interviewer with a copy of Green's amended retainer agreement with Theodore Martin. Seven other interviews were scheduled, and more would be forthcoming. I had copies for them, too.

At twelve minutes after three, I parked in a red zone outside Jonathan Green's Sunset Boulevard building and went inside. I shoved past the receptionist and ran up the stairs and barged past the army of clerks and assistants and minions. There was a noticeable absence of blueblazered security guards, but I guess those few who hadn't been killed in Baldwin Hills had been fired. All the better for Green to separate himself from Kerris.

The Inside News videographer and his sound technician were talking to a slim woman by the coffee machine when I went past. The videographer's eyes went wide when he saw me, and the sound tech dropped her coffee. The videographer said, 'What are you doing here?'

I grabbed him by the arm and pulled him along. 'Do you have tape in that thing?'

'Sure.'

'You're going to love this.'

The sound tech scrambled after us.

Jonathan Green's office occupied the entire east end of the fourth floor. An efficient-looking woman in her early forties tried to tell me that I couldn't go in, but I ducked around her and hit the door, only the door wouldn't open.