“And the murderer left it here. My God, he was here in my office twice, once when he stole the gun and again when he brought it back.”
“He came in here, got the gun, drove to her trailer, shot her and came back,” Rita said. “He had to come back to hide the gun. He just waltzed in and out like he owned the place. You never lock the doors at night, Jimmy.”
“Maybe it was one of our clients.”
“Don’t be silly, boss, we don’t have any clients. But the killer had to have been here both times. He had to be here when you weren’t sitting behind your desk. He had to know your routine. And he had to know you were defending Robbie. Maybe he was following… or maybe, there were two guys. One guy who stole the gun…”
“Aw, Rita, nobody followed me. Anyone could’ve come in here and taken the gun, and brought it back during the day, even.”
“Like who?”
“We’ll ask Mabel if any delivery guys happened to drop by when neither of us were here,” I said.
“Oh, Jimmy, I hope it’s not the pizza guy. He’s kinda cute.”
“Rita, he’s a pimply-faced kid. You can do better, for crying out loud,” I said with a disingenuous smile. “Anyway, Hazel Farris was killed with a bullet, not a bad anchovy.”
“That’s not funny.”
“I know…” We fell quiet again. Finally I broke the silence. “And now, young lady, you are going to march into the other room and call Hammer. You’ve got to call him before he gets the warrant and comes barging in the door.”
“This is all they’ll need. They’ll come looking for you. They’ll arrest you. I’m not going to bury you.”
“Then I’ll call him myself.”
“You do,” Rita turned and pointed, “and I’ll walk right out that door. You’ll never see me again.” Her voice was filled with strong determination and she waited for me to make my move. I knew Rita, and I knew she meant what she said. She wasn’t bluffing.
“Rita, listen to me. I’m your boss.”
“And, I’m your lawyer, and I’m-”
“Listen to me, please! It might not even be the murder weapon.”
Her face taut, she looked at me. “Wanna bet?”
“Rita, I couldn’t live with myself if I let you violate your personal code of ethics, not to mention break the law. When you first became a lawyer you told me that when the time comes, the time when you have to make the hard choice, you’d do the right thing.”
She stood there and stared silently at her shoes.
“Do you remember saying that?”
“Yes.”
“Are you going to make the call?”
Her head snapped up. “No! And I’m not kidding, I’ll walk!”
CHAPTER 16
After my discussion with Rita, I left the office and drove back to Dolan’s to grab a dozen glazed. As the counterman quickly tossed the donuts in a bag, he looked at me with his eyes wide as if I were about to drop dead, or maybe he figured he saw a ghost. I thought about making a scary face, but that wouldn’t be a dignified way for a lawyer to act, so I just said boo. Then I headed directly to the ten-story office building that housed Sol’s corporate security and investigations firm, Silverman Investigations, Inc.
Joyce escorted me along a marble-lined hallway leading to Sol’s private office at the end of it. I amused myself with his lava lamp until he appeared promptly at nine a.m.
I apologized about the disconnected phone call. He frowned and commented about how someone who didn’t know me might feel as if I had hung up on him. I chuckled. “Imagine that,” I said. We shared the donuts, washing them down with a gallon of Sol’s special grind of Kopi Luwak coffee. He wouldn’t tell me the secret method that the growers in Sumatra employed in the bean’s preparation. But I didn’t care how it was made, the coffee tasted great.
While we ate the donuts and drank the coffee, we discussed the murder investigation. Without bringing up the discovery of the gun-the less said about that the better-I told him my reasons for the Barstow trip. I explained how I’d tried to find the teen drug center. I mentioned the old man in the Bright Spot Cafe, and told him about my meeting behind the Harvey House with Jane. And, of course, I added how the girl had been afraid of being punished, how the old man, Ben Moran, allegedly ordered beatings. We both agreed that the center was the key to solving the mystery of Robbie’s escape, and that Robbie’s escape was the key to Hazel Farris’ murder.
“Now all we have to do is find the center.” Sol started to rise out of his chair. “And we can’t do that sitting here on our fat asses.”
I gingerly placed the donut in my hand back in the box.
He summoned the Deacon, his number one operative, and Cubby, his principal driver, and soon the four of us were in Sol’s big black limousine. We cruised northeast, rolling at a hundred miles per hour on Interstate 15 heading for Barstow and the Bright Spot Cafe.
The mobile radiophone buzzed. The Deacon, sitting on the jumpseat in the back of the big limousine, reached out with his massive arm and lifted the receiver from its cradle. After he listened for a moment, he handed it to Sol. A few moments later, Sol replaced the radiophone receiver in its cradle and turned to me. “That was Joyce. Mabel phoned her. She had a message to give you.”
“Yeah, what was it?”
“Said the cops came to your office with a search warrant looking for a gun.”
My stomach did a little samba. I cleared my throat. “What did they find?” I asked with all the calmness I could muster.
Sol’s eyes bored into me. “Nothing. But why would they expect to find a gun there?”
My heart sank. “You mean they didn’t find it?”
Of course, I was relieved that I wasn’t going to be arrested the minute I showed up back in Downey, but at the same time, I was disappointed. After a serious discussion, Rita and I had come to an understanding. We agreed that we’d put the gun back where it was found. I’d explained that it wasn’t her responsibility to do the cops’ job, searching for evidence, and as long as the evidence wasn’t tampered with, she had no obligation to tell them what she knew. When the cops finally got their search warrant, and found the gun … well then, so be it. We’d fight the section 187 charge, and we’d win. She reluctantly agreed and gave me her word she wouldn’t dig the gun out again and hide it. Now it troubled me to realize that Rita hadn’t kept her promise.
“Hey, buddy boy, you said nothing about a gun. What gives?” Sol asked.
I blurted out the whole story: the cops looking for my gun, Rita finding it, and our agreement.
“Gott in himmel!” Sol shouted. “You mean to tell me you had the gun in your hand? The murder weapon, the piece of evidence that could put you in jail for life, and you wanted to leave it there for the cops to waltz in and pick up? You shmuck! Thank God for Rita, at least someone in that feckockteh firm has a brain.”
With a wave of his hand, he indicated his immediate need for a drink. I was glad Sol wasn’t holding the gun at that moment; he probably would’ve shot me with it. He was that angry. And I couldn’t blame him. After all, he had my best interests at heart, and he was doing his utmost to help me find Robbie so I’d stay out of jail. But I was still disappointed that Rita broke her word.
The Deacon opened the sliding door of the small bar built into the seatback and started to fix Sol a drink.
“Sol, listen,” I said. “I couldn’t let her do it. But she did it anyway.”
The Deacon handed Sol the drink, his signature martini, one-hundred-proof vodka in a glass.
Sol took a sip, then put his arm around my shoulder and tousled my hair. “Ah, Jimmy, my boy, you big oaf,” he said. “That’s why you couldn’t make it as a cop. Too damned softhearted.”
“Yeah, should have run you in when I had the chance,” I mumbled with a weak grin, but the expression on my face must’ve mirrored my feelings. While Rita had violated my trust, she’d done it for me, and the thought of that tugged at my heart.