The Gods of Guilt mh-5 Read online

  “We can go now, Earl,” I said.

  He picked up speed.

  “Where to?”

  “Let’s go down the road a bit to Art’s Deli. We’ll pick up sandwiches and then I’ll go see Legal Siegel for lunch.”

  15

  At eight-thirty that night I knocked on the door at Kendall Roberts’s home. I had been sitting out in the Lincoln on her street and waiting for her to return.

  “Mr. Haller. Is something wrong?”

  She was wearing the same outfit from earlier and I assumed she had come from work at the yoga studio.

  “No, nothing is wrong. I just came back to tell you that you can forget about that subpoena.”

  “What do you mean? Did you take it to a judge like you said?”

  “Didn’t need to. I noticed after I left here that there wasn’t a seal on it from the clerk of the U.S. District Court. Moya’s case is in federal court. Gotta have that seal or it’s not legit. I think the lawyer, Fulgoni, was trying to see if he could get you to come in on the sly, so he doctored up what looked like a subpoena and had his man take it out to you.”

  “Why would he do that — I mean, want me to come in on the sly?”

  I had already been puzzling over this, especially since the subpoena Fulgoni had dropped on me had been legit. Why go through the correct motions on mine and not Kendall’s? So far I hadn’t been able to figure out why.

  “Good question,” I said. “If he wanted to keep it quiet, he could have filed the subpoena request under seal. But he didn’t. Instead he tried to bluff you into coming in for an interview. I’m probably going to go see him tomorrow and that’s exactly what I’ll ask.”

  “Well, it’s all confusing… but thank you.”

  “Confusion aside, we aim to please at Michael Haller and Associates.”

  I smiled and then felt dumb about what I had just said.

  “You know, you could’ve called me. I gave you my number. You didn’t have to come all the way back out here.”

  I frowned and shook my head like her concern was warrantless.

  “It was no problem. My daughter lives nearby with my ex and I swung by there for a bit.”

  It wasn’t exactly a lie. I had indeed driven by my ex-wife’s condo building and stared at the lighted windows of her unit. I imagined my daughter in there in her bedroom, doing her homework or on the computer tweeting or Facebooking with friends. I had then driven over to see Kendall Roberts.

  “So that means that next Tuesday I don’t have to go to that lawyer’s office?” she asked.

  “No, you’re clear,” I said. “You can forget about it.”

  “And I won’t have to go to court or testify about anything?”

  That was the big question and I knew I had to stop making promises I was not sure I could keep.

  “What I’m going to do is see Fulgoni tomorrow and make it clear to him that you’re out of it. That you have no knowledge that will be useful to him in this matter and he should forget about you. I think that should take care of it.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Anytime.”

  I didn’t make a move to leave and she glanced over my shoulder toward the street where my car was parked again in the red zone.

  “So, where’s your partner? The mean one.”

  I started to laugh.

  “Oh, Earl? He’s off now. He’s actually my driver. Sorry again about that today. I didn’t know what I was getting into when we came here.”

  “You’re forgiven.”

  I nodded. There was nothing else to say at that point, but I still didn’t move from my position on the front doorstep. The silence became awkward and she finally broke it.

  “Is there…”

  “Yeah, I’m sorry, I’m just standing here like a goof or something.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “No, I, uh… you know, the real reason I came back is I wanted to talk about that question you asked. I mean, from earlier today.”

  “What question?”

  She leaned against the door frame.

  “You asked me about the past, you know? About how I lived with the past. My past.”

  She nodded. She remembered now.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I was being sarcastic and that was out of line. I had no business—”

  “No, it’s fine. Sarcasm or not, the question was valid. But then that guy knocked on the door with the phony subpoena and I, you know, never answered the question.”

  “So you came back to answer it.”

  I smiled uneasily.

  “Well, sort of. I thought… that the past for both of us was something…”

  I started laughing with embarrassment and shook my head.

  “Actually, I don’t know what I’m saying here.”

  “Would you like to come in, Mr. Haller?”

  “I would love to but you have to stop calling me that. Call me Michael or Mickey or Mick. You know, Gloria used to call me Mickey Mantle.”

  She held the door wide and I stepped into the entry area.

  “I’ve also been called Mickey Mouth on occasion. You know, because lawyers are sometimes called mouthpieces.”

  “Yes, I get it. I was about to have a glass of red wine. Would you like one?”

  I almost asked if she had something stronger but thought better of it.

  “That would be perfect.”

  She closed the door and we went into the kitchen to get glasses and pour the wine. She handed me a glass and then took up her own. She leaned against the counter and looked at me.

  “Cheers,” I said.

  “Cheers,” she said. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “Your coming here, this isn’t some sort of thing you have, is it?”

  “What do you mean? What thing?”

  “You know with women… like me.”

  “I don’t—”

  “I’m retired. I don’t do it anymore, and if you went through this whole damsel in distress thing with the subpoena because you thought—”

  “No, not at all. Look, I’m sorry. This is embarrassing and I should probably just go.”

  I put my glass on the counter.

  “You’re right,” I said. “I should’ve just called.”

  I was halfway to the hallway when she stopped me.

  “Wait, Mickey.”

  I looked back at her.

  “I didn’t say you should’ve just called. I said you could’ve just called. There’s a difference.”

  She took my glass off the counter and brought it to me.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I needed to get that out of the way. You’d be surprised how my former life still affects my current one.”

  I nodded.

  “I get it.”

  “Let’s go sit down.”

  We went into the living room and took the same seats we sat in earlier in the day — across from each other, a coffee table between us. The conversation was stilted at first. We exchanged banal pleasantries and I complimented the wine like the expert oenophile I was not.

  I finally asked her how she ended up with a yoga studio and she matter-of-factly explained that a former client from her escort days had loaned her the initial investment. It reminded me of my attempt to help Gloria Dayton but obviously with different results.

  “I think for some of the girls, they really don’t want to get out,” Kendall said. “They get what they need from it — on a lot of levels. So they may talk about wanting out but they never do it. I got lucky. I wanted out, and there was someone there to help me. How’d you end up being a lawyer?”

  She had expertly if not abruptly thrown the lead back to me and I responded with the basic explanation about following a family tradition. When I told her my father had been Mickey Cohen’s attorney, her eyes showed no recognition.

  “Way before your time,” I said. “He was a gangster out here in the forties and fifties. Pretty famous — there’s been movies about hi
m. He was part of what they called the Jewish Mafia. With Bugsy Siegel.”

  Another name that did not register with her.

  “Your father must have had you late in life if he was running around with those guys in the forties.”

  I nodded.

  “I was the kid from the second marriage. I think I was a surprise.”

  “Young wife?”

  I nodded again and wished the conversation were going in a different direction. I had sorted all of this out for myself before. I had checked the county records. My father divorced his first wife and married his second less than two months later. I came five months after that. It didn’t take a law degree to connect the dots. I was told as a child that my mother had come from Mexico, where she was a famous actress, but I never saw a movie poster, a newspaper clipping, or a publicity still anywhere in the house.

  “I have a half brother who’s an LAPD cop,” I said. “He’s older. He works homicide.”

  I didn’t know why I said it. I guess to change directions.

  “Same father?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you guys get along?”

  “Yeah, to a point. We never knew about each other until a few years ago. So consequently I guess we’re not that close.”

  “Isn’t it funny that you didn’t know about each other and you became a defense lawyer and he became a cop?”

  “Yeah, I guess. Funny.”

  I was desperate to get off the path we were on but couldn’t think of a topic that would do it. Kendall rescued me with a question that broke new ground but was equally painful to answer.

  “You mentioned your ex. So you’re not married?”

  “No. I was. Twice, actually, but the second one I don’t really count. It was quick and painless. We both knew it was a mistake and we’re still friends. In fact, she works for me.”

  “But the first one?”

  “We have the daughter.”

  She nodded, seemingly understanding the lifelong complications and connections a broken marriage with a child produces.

  “And your daughter’s mother, are you on good terms?”

  I sadly shook my head.

  “No, not anymore. Actually, I’m not on good terms with either of them at the moment.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Me, too.”

  I took another drink of wine and studied her.

  “What about you?” I asked.

  “People like me don’t have long relationships. I got married when I was twenty. It lasted a year. No kids, thank god.”

  “Do you know where he is? Your ex? I mean, do you keep track of each other? My ex and me, we’re in the same business. The law, so I see her in the courthouse every now and then. If she sees me coming in the hall, she usually goes the other way.”

  She nodded but I didn’t detect any sympathy.

  “Last time I heard from my ex he wrote me a letter from a prison in Pennsylvania,” she said. “He wanted me to sell my car so I could send him money each month. I didn’t reply and that was about ten years ago. He’s still there for all I know.”

  “Wow, and here I was all ‘woe is me’ because my ex-wife turns away from me in the courthouse. I think you win.”

  I hoisted my glass to toast her and she nodded in acceptance of the win.

  “So, why are you really here?” she asked. “Are you hoping that I can tell you more about Glory?”

  I looked down at my glass, which was now almost empty. This was either going to be the end of things or the start.

  “You’d tell me, right, if there was something I needed to know about her?”

  She frowned.

  “I told you all I know.”

  “Then I believe you.”

  I finished my wine and put the glass on the table.

  “Thanks for the wine, Kendall. I should probably go now.”

  She walked me to the front door and held it open for me. I touched her arm as I passed by. I tried to think of something to say that would leave us with the possibility of another meeting. She beat me to it.

  “Maybe next time you come back, you’ll be more interested in me than the dead girl.”

  I looked back at her as she closed the door. I nodded but she was gone.

  16

  I was trying to talk a final shot of Patrón out of Randy after last call at Four Green Fields, when my phone screen lit up on the bar top. It was Cisco and he was working late.

  “Cisco?”

  “Sorry if I woke you, Mick, but I thought you’d want me to.”

  “No worries. What’s up?”

  Randy hit the bright lights and started blasting “Closing Time” on the sound system, hoping to chase the lingering drinkers out.

  I hit the mute button late and slid off the stool to head to the door.

  “What the hell was that?” Cisco asked. “Mick, you there?”

  Once I was out the door I took the phone off mute.

  “Sorry, iPhone malfunction. Where are you and what’s going on?”

  “I’m outside the Standard downtown. Trina Trixxx is inside doing what she does. But that’s not why I called. That could’ve waited.”

  I wanted to ask how he had found Trina but noted the urgency in his voice.

  “Okay, so then what couldn’t wait?”

  I muted the phone again and got in my car, pulling the door closed behind me. It had been a stupid move chasing the wine I had shared with Kendall with tequila. But I had felt bad after leaving her place, as though I had fumbled the ball somehow, and I wanted to burn away the thoughts with Patrón.

  “I just got a call from a guy who does me favors every now and then,” Cisco said. “You know the Ferrari dealership I told you about before?”

  “Yeah, the one on Wilshire.”

  “Right, well, I hit the gold mine there. A lot of video. They keep digital film for a year on the cloud. So we got double lucky.”

  “Did you see the man in the hat’s face?”

  “No, not that lucky. Still no face. But we went through the video on the night in question and I picked up Gloria and her driver going by. Then four cars back comes a Mustang and it looks like our guy. He’s still wearing the hat, so I’m ninety percent sure he’s our guy.”

  “Okay.”

  “One of their perimeter cameras shoots east along the front of the lot. I switch to that video and check out the Mustang.”

  “You got a plate.”

  “Damn right, I got a plate. So I gave it to this friend of mine and he just called me back after going into work tonight.”

  By “friend” I knew he meant that he had a source in the cop shop who ran plates for him. A source who obviously worked the midnight shift. This practice of sharing information from the computer with an outsider was against the law in California. So I didn’t ask Cisco for any clarification on who provided the information that he was about to share. I just waited for him to tell me the name.

  “All right, so the ’stang comes back to a guy named Lee Lankford. And get this, Mick, he’s law enforcement. My friend can tell because his address is not on the computer. They protect cops that way. They can put a law enforcement block on the registration of a personal vehicle. But he’s LE, and now we have to find out who he works for and why he was tailing Gloria. I already know this, he’s not LAPD. My friend checked. Bottom line, Mick, is I’m beginning to think there might be something to our client’s claiming he was set up.”

  I didn’t hear most of what Cisco had said after he mentioned the Mustang owner’s name. I was off to the races, running with the name Lankford. Cisco hadn’t recognized it because he wasn’t working for me eight years before when I made the deal whereby Gloria Dayton gave up Hector Moya to the DA’s Office, which turned around and gave him up to the feds. Of course, back then Lankford had nothing to do with that deal, but he was skirting around that case like a vulture.

  “Lankford is Glendale PD retired,” I said. “He’s currently working for the DA as an investig
ator.”

  “You know him?”

  “Sort of. He worked the murder of Raul Levin. In fact, he’s the guy who tried at first to pin it on me. And I saw him on this case at La Cosse’s first appearance. He’s the DA investigator assigned to the case.”

  I heard Cisco whistle as I started the car.

  “So let’s talk this out,” he said. “We have Lankford following Gloria Dayton on the night she was murdered. He presumably follows her home and about an hour later she is murdered in her apartment.”

  “And then a couple days later at first appearance, he’s there,” I said. “He’s assigned to the Dayton murder case.”

  “That’s not a coincidence, Mick. There are no coincidences like that.”

  I nodded, even though I was alone in the car.

  “It’s a setup,” I said. “Andre’s been telling the truth.”

  I needed to get to my Gloria Dayton files but Jennifer Aronson still had them. It would have to wait until the morning staff meeting. In the meantime, I was trying to remember those days eight years ago when I first met Detective Lankford and became his prime suspect in the murder of my own investigator.

  I suddenly remembered what Cisco had said at the top of the conversation.

  “You’re tailing Trina Trixxx right now?”

  “Yeah, she wasn’t hard to find. I drove by her place to get a feel for it and out she came. I followed her here. Same setup that Gloria had. The driver, the whole bit. She’s been inside the hotel for about forty minutes now.”

  “Okay, I’m heading your way. I want to talk to her. Tonight.”

  “I’ll make that happen. You okay to drive? You sound like you had a few.”

  “I’m fine. I’ll grab coffee on the way. You just hold her until I get there.”

  17

  Before I got to the Standard downtown I got a text from Cisco redirecting me to an address and apartment number on Spring Street. Then I got another text, this one advising me to hit an ATM on the way — Trina wanted to be paid to talk. When I finally got to the address, it turned out it was one of the rehabbed lofts right behind the Police Administration Building. The lobby door was locked, and when I buzzed apartment 12C, it was my own investigator who answered and buzzed me up.