Try Fear (2 page)

I looked around. On the wall, facing the desk, were some framed portraits. I had no idea who they were. A couple of them looked
1950s vintage. Severe hair. Serious looks. Jack Webb types. It was Webb and
Dragnet
that made the LAPD famous. So I’ve been told. I never saw
Dragnet.
I grew up on Thomas Magnum.

When I was twelve I almost ran away to Hawaii. I was going to work until I was eighteen, then get a private investigator license.
My mom put the kibosh on that. My dad had died a couple years earlier and she wasn’t about to let me even think something
stupid.

But she did buy me some Hawaiian shirts. I wore them all summer, tucked into jeans. Little Magnum.

Howser came back and said I was in luck. “If you call it luck.”

“Meaning?”

“I’m authorized to tell you his reading, on both tests, was point one-eight. Sound’s like a fun one to handle, huh?”

“Fun’s why I went into law,” I said. “How dull would it be if my clients blew oh-threes.”

“He’ll be out. Have a seat.” Howser went back to his computer monitor.

I sat on one of the black metal bench seats and waited. A middle-aged woman in a faded pink sweatshirt came in the front doors
and used the QuickDraw. They put ATMs in a lot of the stations so people can get money without fear of being robbed on the
street.

Now if they could only put in a machine where criminal defense lawyers could withdraw a little respect.

A couple of plainclothes detectives came in. I could tell because they went right through the door marked “Detectives.” I
am very sharp that way.

Through it all the kid by the vending machine just sat there, looking at nothing in particular. Probably waiting for someone
to pick him up. I wondered who it would be. Did he have a father, one who was actually around? Or one who liked to take out
his own frustrations on the kid’s skin?

Did he have a mother who cared about him? Or did she like to get high while her kid went out and did whatever the hell he
wanted?

Part of me wanted to talk to him. Wanted to say,
Look, if your parents are around, and they’re halfway decent, don’t do this to them. It’s not worth it. Don’t—

The door next to the front desk opened and an officer came out with Carl Richess. I could tell it was him because he was holding
his Santa hat. At least they were letting him keep the ill-fitting clothes that now covered him.

Ill fitting because Richess was huge. He had a head like a mastiff. Jowly, in keeping with his girth. Furrows in his forehead
deep enough to hold loose change.

“My mom call you?” he asked after I introduced myself. His breath could have peeled paint.

“She called her priest, who called me,” I said. “Don’t say anything else.”

I signed him out and got him to my car.

“W
HAT ABOUT MY
car?” Richess said as we headed for the freeway.

“You’ll have to get it out of impound,” I said.

“What’ll happen to me? Will I go to jail?”

“You been convicted before?”

“Never.”

“Arrested?”

“No.”

“Okay, if you plead out, for a first offense, no jail time,” I said. “You’ll have your license suspended. Three years probation,
DUI school. Fine, penalty, assessments. Standard package.”

“I don’t wanna plead.”

“Not many of us do.”

“We can fight it.”

I smiled. “Yes, we can fight it, but I have to tell you, you go to trial and lose, you’ll get slammed by the judge. You’ll
do the max.”

“Then don’t lose.”

“Santa Claus, my jolly friend, you blew a one-eight.”

“So?”

“So that’s over twice the limit. Contesting a first deuce with a reading that high is a bad idea, unless you can find some
obvious error. Like the machine was dropped in the toilet before the test. Or a rogue police officer poured a whole bottle
of Cuervo down your throat, started your car, and sent you down the highway, and somebody captured it all on digital.”

Richess was silent. I hoped his brain was soaking up what I said. I wanted him to be disabused of any fantasies concerning
his situation. A little straight talk up front saves a lot of grumbling down the line.

“Don’t mind my asking,” I said, “what were you doing in a G-string and Santa hat?”

“What’s that matter?”

“Just like to have all the facts, put it that way.”

He grunted. It sounded like a dog holding in a belch. “I was just being crazy. I was at a party and got crazy.”

“That’s one word for it.”

Carl burped, hiccupped, and groaned.

“What do you do when you’re not doing Santa?”

“Concrete,” he said. “So can you do anything for me or not?”

“I’ll check out everything I can. When we go in for the arraignment, you’ll dress in a suit and tie, and you’ll act sorry
for what you’ve done, and we’ll see what the best deal we can make is.”

Santa sighed. “No,” he said. “No deals.”

“At least hear their offer.”

“No. We fight. We prove the machine was wrong.”

“We?”

“Can you?”

“Carl, a toaster could have told them you were drunk. Machine error might work on the threshold, but not on a one-eight.”

“I don’t care. I want to fight. I want somebody to fight for me. You’re getting paid, aren’t you?”

“Not yet.”

“You don’t want to rep me, I’ll find somebody else.”

“Frosty the Snowman’s free,” I said.

Carl Richess said nothing. A couple of minutes later he started snoring. He sounded like a leaf blower.

I
T WAS A
modest, two-bedroom home on Corbin Avenue in the part of the Valley called Winnetka. I pulled into the driveway next to a
blue Civic that looked like it had seen a lot of miles.

I got out and went around and opened Carl’s door. I shook him awake. He snorted and sat up. “Wussgoinon?” he said.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “You haven’t missed it.”

“Huh? Missed what?”

“Christmas Eve. Come on.” I grabbed his arm and hauled him out. We went toward the front door. A light was on in the window.
The door opened before we got there. A large woman, backlit, stood in the doorway.

“Carl,” she said, distress in her voice.

“Hi, Mom,” Carl said, like he was ten years old and had been caught picking the neighbor’s flowers.

She put her arm around him and walked him inside. She looked back at me. “Please come in. I’m Kate.”

I went in, closed the door, and waited as Kate took Carl toward a bedroom. I stayed by the door and looked around. The place
seemed too small for the Richess family. This was more Mickey Rooney size.

But it had a warmth to it. Tidy, simple, and, I could imagine, full of laughter at one time. Before drunk driving charges.
There was a wall with some family pictures, a few black and white that hearkened back to the forties or so. I could see a
brick fireplace in the living room and a sandstone hearth.

Kate came back alone. “He just fell asleep in his old room,” she said. “Was he very drunk?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Please, come sit a moment.”

Kate Richess looked in her late fifties. She had short brown hair with gray streaks, and wore a voluminous, orange-flowered
muumuu above blue slippers. Her face had a kind of dignity. Immediately I thought she was a straight shooter, and one who
expected you to be the same. In that way she reminded me of my own mom.

She had me sit in a recliner in her living room. I saw a couple of framed photos on the mantel. One was of a large kid in
a football uniform. I assumed it was Carl. There was another one of a woman in a numbered jersey of blue and white.

She saw me looking at it. “I was on the Roller Derby circuit for a while,” she said.

“No kidding,” I said. “My mom used to watch that in Florida.”

“She a fan?”

“Was. She passed away.”

“I’m sorry. How long’s it been?”

“I was fifteen,” I said.

“That’s hard,” she said. Her eyes were sympathetic, inviting me to talk about it if I wanted to. That we had come to this
level of intimacy so quickly told me a lot about Kate Richess. She was the kind of woman who opened her arms to the world,
and sometimes got slapped for it. But would do it again if she thought you were hurting.

What she didn’t know, and what I barely knew at the time, was that I was incapable of talking about my mom’s death. That event
was hidden away behind a locked door in a dark corner of my mind.

My dad’s death was different. That was vivid to me. Maybe because I didn’t see it, and my imagination took over. He died in
the line of duty as a Miami cop. I was ten and remember all the details from the finding out, to the screaming into my pillow
until I wore out and fell asleep, to the fear of the unknown, the wondering how I’d ever get along in life without him.

All those things I could see and hear, usually without willing it. Anything could set the visuals in motion. A black-and-white
driving by. A cop movie trailer. Anything about cops, in fact. Or frightened boys, or funeral processions through city streets.
Anything like that and then there they’d be—the pictures of Dad leaving my mom and me, spilled out all over my brain’s landscape
like a batch of color photos dropped from a plane.

Not so with Mom’s death. All I had there were fuzzy images of hospital rooms and IVs and neighbors paying visits. And that’s
all I ever wanted to see.

It doesn’t take a psych to know it was a defense, that at fifteen I wanted to push it all aside. I never talked about my mom
dying to anybody. The family I went to live with after—my friend Vincent’s—wasn’t the warm, open kind, so it never came up.

Now, for some reason, with Kate I felt the key in the lock of that closed door starting to turn. I heard a click, and stopped
it right there by saying, “I’m impressed. Roller Derby’s not for wimps.”

She smiled.

“Ever miss it?” I said.

“Sometimes I hear the sound of skates in my head. But then I remember I have two blown-out knees and my right shoulder will
never work like it used to. Still, I was one great blocker in my time.”

“If you ever want to go down to Hi-Fi, catch a match, let me know.” Hi-Fi is Filipinotown, northwest of downtown Los Angeles.
A warehouse down there has become the center of a resurgent Roller Derby circuit in L.A.

“I don’t know,” Kate said. “The girls are a little different these days. Names like Eva Destruction and Broadzilla and Tara
Armov. They’re more into hurting each other than good theater.”

“A little more punk than back in the day?”

“Not to say that in my prime I couldn’t have taken one of these little wisps out. That was always fun. But fun doesn’t last,
and you get old.” She sighed. “I gave it up when I got pregnant with Carl. He needed me because I’m all he has. Me and his
brother. His father was not exactly present. He left for good when Carl was seven.”

I said nothing. If she wanted to go on, she could.

“Donald was a big man,” she said, “but not in the character department. He was a wrestler who never quite made it. And a drunk.
Carl is like him in that way. He can’t handle alcohol.”

“That’s the way it is for some.”

“Can you help him at all?”

“I’ll do what I can, Mrs. Richess, I—”

“Kate, please.”

I nodded. “But I have to be up front. His breath test came out really high, and that’s almost always the whole thing. If he
pleads no contest, he’ll get the standard first offense package.”

“Will he have to go to jail?”

“No. But he told me he wants to go to trial. I have to do what he wants, but you need to be aware that if he loses at trial,
the judge’ll get a little mad. He’ll think we’re making him work for no good reason, clogging the system. They toss people
in the can after all that.”

She shook her head. “You know, Carl just never seems to get a break. Ever since he got out of the navy. He was going to get
married, but when she left him, he kind of went into a spin. That’s when he really started drinking a lot.”

“Has he tried AA?”

“It didn’t take.” She looked at the window without looking out of it.

“Tell you what,” I said. “Let me take a look at everything and see what’s there, and I’ll let you know.”

She turned back, relief on her face. “That would be wonderful.”

“Done.”

“How much do I owe you?”

“You’re one of Father Bob’s parishioners?”

“I go to mass up at St. Monica’s.”

St. Monica’s is the little Benedictine community in the Santa Susana Mountains where I get to stay, for the time being, in
a trailer. The one next to Father Bob’s.

“I know they’re trying to raise money for their homeless shelter,” I said. “Why don’t you give a donation and we’ll call it
square?”

“Are you sure?”

“They’re treating me nice up there. I offer some legal services for them. It all works out.”

“I can’t tell you how much that means to me,” she said. She reached out her hand and I took it. It was delicate. So unlike
what I would have associated with a Roller Derby queen. It reminded me of my mother’s touch. Mom was a smallish woman, but
fought like a tigress if she thought I was in need.

“It means a lot to me, too,” I said.

And that was how I came to represent Santa Claus a little before Christmas.

S
ATURDAY MORNING MEANT
my usual game of one-on-one with Sister Mary Veritas.

The sparky nun who had once run the hardwood of Oklahoma high school gyms likes to shoot hoop on the court in the back section
of St. Monica’s. It’s right outside my trailer.

If I’m not up and ready by 7 a.m. on Saturday morning, she dribbles around and throws the ball against the board, until I
get the message.

There was also something going on beneath the surface. In both of us. Sister Mary had told me a while back that she didn’t
want me to leave St. Monica’s. I ran after her and turned her around in an alcove and almost kissed her.

“Will I go to hell for this?” I said.

There was a second where it looked like she wanted to cross the line too, forget her vows, and in that second I felt sick.