Try Fear (4 page)

“St. Monica’s?”

“Up in the hills. Donate on the way out. Whatever you can.”

“Cool.”

“How can I help you?”

“I got fired from the phone store, man,” Only said.

“And?”

“And what?”

“Do you have an employment contract?”

“Contract?”

“I didn’t think so. How about an employee’s handbook?”

He shook his head.

“Were you given any verbal assurances, letters, e-mails, anything that would give you the impression you couldn’t be fired
except for good cause?”

“No, man.”

“You’re what’s called an At Will employee, Mr. Only.”

“Just Only, remember?”

“I may have some trouble with that, but listen. An At Will employee means they can fire you anytime, without cause.”

“But—”

“And you can walk, whenever you want.”

“I—”

“Unless they did something like harass you, or discriminate against you.”

“That’s it!” Only said, sticking his finger in the air.

“That’s what?”

“Discrimination, man! That’s what I been trying to tell you.”

He was excited. I was not. I sighed. “Okay, and how did they discriminate against you?”

“I’m part of a minority.”

“Are you gay or a woman?”

He blinked.

“Are you black or Hispanic?”

“No, but—”

“Jew or Muslim?”

“No.”

“Quaker? Amish?
American Idol
loser?”

“I’m an American, period, and I demand my rights. I got a doctor’s prescription.”

“Medical marijuana,” I said.

He smiled. “How’d you know?”

“Wild, wild guess.”

“Right. And my doctor—”

“What’s your condition?”

“I’m fine, man.”

“I mean, that you smoke for?”

“Oh. Back pain.”

“How’d you get a bad back?” I said.

“Skateboarding. I was bustin’ an insane acid drop and had to bail.”

I just looked at him, wondering why I went into law.

“Off my friend’s roof,” Only explained. “Caught a little air there.”

“Let me see if I’ve got this straight,” I said. “You skateboarded off your friend’s roof and fell and hurt your back?”

“Yeah.”

“And for that, you have a doctor’s prescription to suck ganja for the pain.”

“Right.”

“Is this a great country or what?”

“Exactly,” he said. “So I smoke a little at lunch. Not at work, lunch. The manager confronts me. I show him my prescription.
But they fire me anyway. That’s not right. They can’t do that.”

“But they can.”

“How?”

“The California Supreme Court says they can.” Now we were on my turf. I know squat about skateboarding and I’ve been off hemp
since college. But California law is my meat. “Even though medical marijuana is legal here, and even if you only use it off
work, and even though it doesn’t even affect your job performance, an employer can still show you the door. Even if you’re
not an At Will employee.”

“I can’t believe that! What’s happening to our country?”

“You got me, Only. It’s not like the old days, is it?”

“No way. When Clinton was president, he understood. Even though he didn’t inhale, he knew what the score was. So what do I
do?”

“Smoke less, work more,” I said. “And don’t skateboard off any more roofs.”

He frowned. Then smiled. Then frowned. Then smiled again. Like Stan Laurel.

“That’s really good advice, man. Thanks.”

It’s nice when you can change a person’s life for the better.

M
Y NEXT “CLIENT”
was a woman—short, round, and fortyish—who wanted to sue her insurance company for bad faith. She had driven her Prius into
her neighbor’s garage door. The front end of her car was turned into an accordion. She put in a claim.

Which the insurance company refused to pay.

“Maybe I’m missing something,” I said. “But didn’t you drive your car into the door?”

“By accident, yeah.”

“You were the cause of the damage,” I said.

“No,” she said. “The garage door caused the damage.”

I spent the next ten minutes trying to explain the rules of causality to her. She did not get it. Or refused to. She said
I was a hack and she was going to sue the company herself and then maybe me for malpractice.

I wished her well.

She cursed at me.

This is now my life in the law. Drunk Santa Clauses. Toking telephone store employees. People who drive cars into garage doors
that are not their own, then want money for it.

In many ways, it’s a lot more interesting than the white collars I used to rep at one of the biggest firms in L.A., Gunther,
McDonough & Longyear. Most of those clients were of a piece. You don’t get as much diversity in corporate America as you do
at the Ultimate Sip.

Of course, you don’t get much money at the Sip, but I was in a whole reassessment mood about that. I’d sold my real estate
before the southern California land bust of ’07, and the funds were sitting in some CDs, breathing along.

It was kind of nice for a change not to be thinking about money.

W
HEN WE GOT
back to St. Monica’s, I thought the rest of my day would be like one of those old ranchero deals. That was L.A., originally.
Rancheros and hammocks in the shade and everything moving to the rhythm of a slow burro.

Not to be. Pulling into the lot, I saw a knot of nuns outside the office.

“Not good,” Father Bob said as we got out of my car. He has a sense of these things, especially after getting hit with that
false accusation of child molesting during the pedophile priest scandals. He’s sort of a walking Catholic radar system.

As we approached, we got looks. Wide eyed. Sister Perpetua, the oldest nun in the community, motioned us over.

“The devil is behind it all,” she whispered.

She looked seriously spooked.

The office door opened, and there stood Sister Hildegarde. She does not wear the habit. She favors off-the-Walmart-rack specials.
Her short, graying hair is dead straight and parted in the middle.

“Come in,” she said.

Sister Mary was sitting in the office, her face devoid of color.

“What’s going on?” Father Bob said.

Sister Hildegarde shut the door. “I’ll tell you what’s going on. There has been an incursion. An e-mail.” She motioned to
the monitor on the desk. This was the computer Sister Mary usually handled.

On the screen was an e-mail, sent to St. Monica’s:

Mary, Mary, quite contrary.

I will do to you what you deserve.

Don’t fear God.

Fear the one you don’t know.

I can’t wait to get to know you better.

I looked at Sister Mary. Her eyes were more frightened than I’d ever seen them.

“Who would do this?” Sister Hildegarde said.

“A punk,” I said. “It’s cyberstalking. The address is no doubt fake, but we need to get the cops on it.”

Father Bob said, “Wouldn’t this be an FBI matter?”

“The feds leave this to the states. They haven’t got the manpower, unless they think it’s terrorist related.”

“Is it a felony, then?”

I said, “It’s a wobbler. Means it can be charged as a misdemeanor or felony, depending on how bad it gets.”

“How bad is that?” Sister Hildegarde asked.

I looked at her and said nothing. But my clenched jaw was a dead giveaway.

“I think all of us need to catch a collective breath,” Sister Hildegarde said. “I’ve just been saying to Sister Mary, a retreat
is in order. She’ll be going to Louisville for a time of self-assessment.”

That sounded ominous. Father Bob nodded slowly, but not in an agreement way. It was an I-get-what’s-going-on-here nod.

I got it a half second later. This was a way for Sister Hildegarde to put a black mark on Sister Mary.

“Let’s get the cops up here and file a report,” I said.

And hoped that would be the end of it. Some jerk had sent a single e-mail, and wouldn’t be heard from again.

Yeah, that’s what I hoped, all the time knowing hope is for kids on Christmas. It’s not a thing the rest of us can lean on.
You try to and you fall hard.

Like getting dumped on the asphalt in a pickup game of hoop. You can get seriously hurt that way.

I
SPENT
C
HRISTMAS
Day with Fran Dwyer—who was to have been my mother-in-law—and the little charge, Kylie, she has taken in. Being with them
brought up all sorts of memories, and pictures.

I never got a Christmas with Jacqueline Dwyer as my wife. Even though I could see her here, decorating the tree. Unwrapping
presents. Shadows of what might have been.

As Kylie opened the present I got for her,
McElligot’s Pool
by Dr. Seuss, I got a jolt of joy for the first time in months. But joy is a plaything in the hands of chance. It gets tossed
around, maybe you catch it for a while, but if you get too attached, it ends up getting lost or broken.

So I didn’t grab too hard for joy as it passed by. I just kept wishing it for Kylie and Fran. Kylie hadn’t known much hope
growing up. Didn’t know her father, and her mother was dead.

And Fran was still devastated by Jacqueline’s death.

But somehow, these two had found each other, and it was a good thing. It would fight back the loneliness. I thought about
that, and thought maybe I was losing that fight. I had wanted Jacqueline in my life more than anything else in the world.
There was a faint, shuddering fear creeping up in me that I’d never be able to replace that void. Not fully, anyway.

Kylie loved the book. She made me read it to her three times, sitting on my lap, her arm around my neck. The little house
in Reseda filled up with the smell of Fran’s cooking, and that was Christmas, a pleasant one in L.A.

I
N THE MIDDLE
of January the rains came.

I don’t like L.A. in the rain. It seems out of sorts, like a dog in a sweater. It wants to roam free, but the wet puts the
kibosh on everything. Beaches go deserted, tires skid on freeways, and at country clubs around the city retired vice presidents
sit inside and suck gin-and-tonics and complain about their wives.

The rains turned foul. Mud started sliding in Malibu. A couple hillside homes became ground-level houses. A large dollop of
wet earth and rock tumbled across the Coast Highway, blocking access for days.

It was not a fit season for man nor beast, so I spent a lot of time in my trailer, reading my buddy Plato and occasionally
looking out at the wet basketball court. It looked sad, abandoned. And Sister Mary was in Louisville, doing Sister Hidlegarde’s
peculiar penance.

A friendly detective named Fronterotta, out of the Devonshire Division, was looking into the cyberstalking e-mail to Sister
Mary. Which meant, if the tone of his voice was any indication, we had a better chance winning the lottery than finding the
guy.

I continued to dispense legal advice in the corner of the Ultimate Sip. I advised several people to start small-claims actions.
I argued one woman out of filing suit against the government for invasion of her brain and got her to a hospital instead.

I had one guy come in and describe himself as an “exotic talent coordinator.” A little delving and I found out he just didn’t
like the word “pimp.” He thought that was beneath him. I told him the law didn’t care what he called himself, he still couldn’t
peddle flesh.

He wondered if he was protected by the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution.

Um, no.

Then a stripper came to see me. She was upset about her working conditions. I told her she could call herself a “disrobing
technician” and quit.

Only, the toking ex-employee, came back to see me. Said he got a new job that never required him to pee in a cup. I asked
him what the job was. A psychic hotline, he said. He had come to thank me. And offered me a blunt. I told him no, I don’t
take medicine away from the sick.

“It’s a gift, man!” he said.

“The greatest gift,” I said, “would be knowing that you’re back in full, vigorous bloom.”

He looked at me and frowned. Then said if I ever needed some help with an investigation, to give him a call. He might be able
to predict what moves I should make. Or, if he couldn’t do it, he could ask some of his psychic friends.

I told him to get off the Jane and try fresh juices.

He said, “Something’s going to happen to you, I have a real feeling about that.”

“You’ll go far, my friend,” I said.

T
HE RAINS LET
up toward the end of the month. And on a sunny Tuesday in January, I had an actual court appearance. Nothing like going to
court to clear out the existential toxins. You could concentrate on the venom of the justice system for a while.

Even with a client like Carl “Santa Claus” Richess. Not exactly a name to inspire fear, like Sammy “the Bull” Gravano.

But it was all I had, and I was glad. I needed to get back in the game.

The Hollywood branch of the Los Angeles Superior Court sits in a sand-colored building on Hollywood Boulevard, east of Gower,
bracketed by a tattoo parlor on one side and a meeting hall of the Salvation Army on the other.

What a town this is. You can get tagged, convicted, and saved, all in the same day, without walking more than a block.

I parked in the front lot and went through security and into Department 77, the only courtroom on the first floor. It was
half filled with people waiting to be arraigned, or waiting with family members waiting to be arraigned, or people who, in
the future, would no doubt be arraigned.

And some lawyers.

Carl Richess was waiting for me inside. He stood up, filling about half the courtroom. The other half was filled up with two
more of the Richess family—Kate and a guy almost as big as Carl. Carl introduced him as his brother, Eric.

“Moral support,” Eric said. He was dressed in blue jeans and a denim shirt with the sleeves rolled up. I could see the family
resemblance, though Carl looked a bit more like his mother. Still, I couldn’t help thinking of Tweedledum and Tweedledee.
Put the brothers in striped shirts and beanie hats, and you’d think you were at Disneyland.