“You’re interfering. Step outside or you’re taking a ride.”
My nerves were stretched tight and Hammer was plucking the strings. One more twang and they would snap. I needed to cool off.
I knew if I stuck around, I’d do something reckless. Being frogmarched to the Downey lockup with my arms cuffed behind my back wasn’t going to help matters. I needed to get out of that apartment fast, go to the office and get the gun and bring it back. If I did, then the cops would have no excuse to tear my place apart.
I jumped in the Vette and peeled away from the curb. By the time I hit Paramount Boulevard the speedometer needle was swinging through its arch, bouncing off 80.
I clipped the light at Florence Avenue and shot up onto the Santa Ana Freeway. Swerving to miss a pickup truck, I almost went into a sidespin, just missing a couple of nuns in a Dodge station wagon going about five miles an hour. I realized that racing around like a madman wasn’t going to help, but I had to get the gun back to Hammer before they did any more damage to my home.
I swerved off Cecilia Street, bounced the Vette into my parking spot, and rushed to my office door. It wasn’t locked. Damn, I was careless. Mabel was always on me about locking up, but I didn’t have time to think about that now.
I charged to my desk and pulled the drawer open-no gun! I rifled through all the drawers, still no gun.
Where in the hell is it? Maybe it was in Mabel’s desk. Maybe she thought she’d feel safe with it. Couldn’t blame her. We had a client list filled with bad guys. That’s how it is being a criminal lawyer, I thought, as I rushed to her desk. I went through her drawers. Not there either.
The gun was gone. I spent the next twenty minutes rummaging through all the desk and cabinet drawers with no success. Someone must have come in here and snatched it. And if someone had taken my gun, what were the odds that it was used to murder Hazel Farris? If it was my gun that killed her, then that meant someone was trying to set me up for sure. Who… and why me?
I had to go back to my apartment and face the heat like a man, like an officer of the court, like a person who believed that our system of justice sooner or later would make things right. Without the law, who was I? Just another two-bit hustler out to make a buck off some poor sap’s misery. But what’s the use? Hammer would be gone by now and my apartment would be destroyed.
I got in my Corvette and drove home.
When I pulled up to the curb this time, sure enough, the cops were gone. The patrol cars had left, but Rita’s yellow Datsun was parked there. I climbed out of the Vette but didn’t bolt up the stairs like before. I felt downhearted, and it would show. I wanted time to improve my attitude before seeing Rita. I was her mentor, after all, and I had to be strong.
As I climbed the steps, I wondered why she’d stopped by. But I was glad she did. Maybe I just needed to see a friendly face, someone on my side for a change.
Reaching the top step, I stood still and thought for a moment. Other than Rita and Sol, I really didn’t have many friends. Oh, there was Bobby Pollard, my buddy all through high school, but when he graduated from college he got a job with an insurance company and moved to Chicago. The last time I talked to him, he tried to sell me a whole-life policy. Double benefits if I got run over by a train.
The front door was open. Rita stood in the middle of the living room, hands on her hips surveying the damage. My TV was smashed, stuff overturned, furniture torn apart. The kitchenette-the bit I could see out of the corner of my eye-had been ransacked and looked as if a tornado had hit it. A tornado named Hammer.
Rita turned when I walked in. There was a moment’s silence, a warm acknowledgment of our friendship.
“Oh, Jimmy, your apartment is a mess.”
“Cops,” I said.
“I know. They were still here when I arrived. Hammer gave me a copy of the warrant. I’m sorry, Jimmy.”
“Hey, Rita, I planned on doing a remodel job anyway, and now it’s done-Early Cop.” I laughed an empty laugh.
“They’re looking for your gun.”
“They knew it wasn’t here. They were looking for something else too, a fishing expedition. But I’m really worried now. I looked in the office, and my gun is gone. Someone stole it.”
“Jimmy, this could be trouble.”
“Yeah, I know. The gun all of a sudden goes missing, and a woman is murdered with the same kind of weapon. I don’t like coincidences.”
“My God,” she said. “Do you think someone took your gun and shot Robbie’s mother with it?”
“I don’t know, Rita. I don’t know what to think.”
“You didn’t just misplace it?”
“Nah, I put it in my desk drawer a few months ago. Haven’t touched it since. But I know one thing.”
“What?”
“If my gun is the murder weapon, as sure as I’m standing here, it will turn up.”
CHAPTER 11
I woke up tangled in the sheets, the blanket in a heap on the floor. Stumbling into my kitchenette with the sheet draped around my middle, I rooted through the junk scattered all over the floor and found the coffeepot. I glanced up at the open cupboard; the cops had dumped out my Yuban. A small heap of coffee was on the floor next to a broken jar of strawberry jam. I wasn’t upset about the jam, it was moldy anyway, but I was pissed about the coffee. I scooped up enough for a cup and called the office while it brewed. No one was there, but Rita had left a message on the answering machine.
She had an early appointment scheduled with a Deputy D.A. in Pacoima and would touch bases with me later in the day. I was to leave my client’s file with Mabel, and she would review it before she phoned the guy. She wished me a good day and said, “Keep smiling, boss. It will work out.” Yeah, I’ll keep smiling, I mumbled, and poured myself a cup of freshly brewed dirt.
I drifted into the bathroom, showered, shaved, and after dressing-chino pants and a sport shirt-I left the apartment.
I called the office again from a payphone outside of Dolan’s Donuts. This time Mabel answered. I told her where to find the client file for Rita and said I would be tied up for a while. She said, so what, I didn’t have any client appointments anyhow. Before hanging up, I asked her if she’d seen my gun anywhere, and of course, she said no.
After the call, I headed north on the Santa Ana Freeway toward Chatsworth, then made the transition to the Ventura Freeway. The traffic was a breeze, and forty-five minutes after I’d left Downey I turned off at Winnetka Boulevard.
Gene Krupa, the great jazz drummer, told us a long time ago that the big wind blows and brings the big noise from Winnetka. There were no big noises coming from this Winnetka-just a lot of small noise, traffic noise, busy people being busy noise, and the noise of strip malls going up on every corner. I was in the San Fernando Valley, not Winnetka, Illinois.
On my right, halfway between the freeway and Devonshire Avenue, just past Nordhoff, I saw a closed-up White Front store that had been converted into the Divine Christ Ministry Church. The plain vanilla-white building, with its huge arch soaring over the entrance, was set back beyond a million acres of cracked blacktop, the old store’s vast parking lot. There were only a few cars scattered around there, but I imagined on Sunday the lot would be jammed and overflowing. Salvation was a hot ticket these days. Parked at the front, in the shade of the building, was a black Mercedes 600 stretch limousine.
I pulled up to the main entrance, parked next to the limo, and glanced up at a new sign mounted over the doublewide doors. Painted in red letters on a white background was the church’s name, Divine Christ Ministry. Directly below that in script were the words: A day without Jesus is like a day without sunshine. I wondered who came up with that slogan. It seemed a bit trite. I shook my head. Hey, we are talking about the Almighty here. It seemed to me they could have picked something a touch more magnanimous, something like, “Give money, or go to Hell.” Tell it like it is, I always said.