by Reason of Sanity (25 page)

yra has only two declared opponents in the pcoming race for District Attorney. One is a guy named Seymour, with the same seniority and experience that Myra has. He’s been the acting

District Attorney since his predecessor was forced out of office not too long ago. The other candidate is some pony-tailed activist who promises to legalize drugs when he gets elected.

I’ve never been up against Seymour in court, but word has it that he seems competent. Not too quick on his feet, but competent. I really think that Myra would make a better D.A., so getting her elected won’t give me any pangs of conscience. The other attorney running doesn’t stand much of a chance, because the people who would like to see drugs legalized for the most part have already had their right to vote taken away because of a felony conviction.

Seymour’s starting to run some negative campaign ads on local television stations, and his main thrust is that Myra lost the Blitzstien case. What a putz this guy is turning out to be. Harold may not have been a nice guy, but he was one hundred percent innocent and any prosecutor with an ounce of ethics would have done the same thing that Myra did. She got out of my way and let me prove it to the court. No excuses afterwards, no blaming her loss on unfair trial tactics, surprise, or technicalities, she just kept her mouth shut and accepted her loss like a real pro. I admire her for that, so I intend to make up for all those times I destroyed her by getting her elected. I just don’t have the slightest idea how.

At least I’ll have a good laugh along the way, because Jack B. tells me that he drove by the fast food place, and that they do in fact have some security cameras mounted on the outside of the building, pointed directly down at where the famous Olive-Harold incident took place. I drive over there to try and talk them out of some copies of the videotapes.

The manager has a typical fast-food place complexion and starts out being pleasant. I explain to him what I want, and his first response is the typical “no way.” I decide that some creativity is required here.

“Listen, I’m working with the police on this matter. As you probably remember, there was a squad car involved in the incident and the behavior of the officers is being called into question. Now you wouldn’t want to see some of your customers get a bad rap would you?”

“ If they’re cops, I couldn’t care less. In the past couple of months they’ve stuck my wife’s car with over a dozen parking tickets and I don’t think it’s fair.”

At this point I don’t think it would do any good to try and explain that uniformed officers in squad cars don’t usually write parking tickets, but I’m not here to educate him, I’m here to get those tapes.

“Okay, you’re right. It’s probably not fair. Tell you what… why don’t I take those parking tickets with me and show them to the parking ticket boss and explain how unfair it is. If I can get him to wipe out those tickets, would you let me borrow that tape to make a copy?”

He thinks about this for a minute. “You mean it won’t cost me anything? The tickets will be taken care of, one way or another?”

I assure him that they’ll be taken care of ‘one way or another.’
Thirty minutes later I’m at the Van Nuys courthouse standing in the ticket-paying line just off of the first floor lobby. Four hundred and twenty dollars later, the tickets have been taken care of - one way or another. I go back to the fast-food place, show him the dismissal receipts and pick up the cassette starring that famous team of Olive and her trained corpse.
Watching the video confirms my hunch that if it wasn’t for the fact that Olive’s underwear was around her ankles, this footage could definitely win some award on a reality-type of television show that solicits video footage of zany events from viewers.
If I’m going to have some meat, it’s not going to be at a fast-food place. I like high-class restaurants and my definition of high-class is any place where the napkins are not on the table in a dispenser. To reach five-star level in my mind, the napkins should be cloth, the booths should be upholstered, and there should be a rug on the floor. If there’s no spoon in the place setting, then I know the place is out of my price limit. Only the stratospheric joints leave out the spoon… you’re brought whatever type of spoon is required for the type of food you’re eating.
This is much better than watching video of people falling or getting murdered. This is enjoyable. I think I’ll offer it for sale to Christopher Guest or Larry David, to include in one of their next projects. Aside from me, they may be the only two guys I know of with a weird enough sense of humor to find this incident amusing.
Strangely enough though, there’s more interesting stuff here. I also enjoy looking at the characters that use this drive-thru facility for their nourishment. You can actually see how popular French-fries really are. It’s amazing how many people enjoy shoving that fried grease down their throats. It’s also enjoyable seeing the people in the cars and how they relate to each other. The guys asking their female companions for money, the looks they get when it’s given to them… wait a minute, there’s a kiss going on in a car parked two or three spots in line behind the squad car. That’s nice. Love in bloom. Oh-oh, another minute or two later, as the cars pull up to pick up their food from the cashier, I see that the kiss took place between an older guy and a younger man. Well, it takes all kinds. That’s their business. It was probably a father kissing his son. I like to give everyone the benefit of the doubt.

Good news. The reward money has come in from our now famous cracking of the bank robbery cases. I’ll be getting my yellow Hummer, the four Asian boys will finally be getting their own onebedroom apartment with indoor plumbing, Jack Bibberman is going to start night law school, Stuart is planning a cruise, Suzi is not telling anyone what she’s doing with her share, and Vinnie is getting married to Olive.

That therapy must ha ve really helped him, because Olive finally said yes. Of course the reward probably didn’t have anything to do with it.

Stuart tells me that they’re going to have the ceremony at a little church in North Hollywood, with the reception later that day at our favorite Mexican place, Pollo Meshuga. Patròn margaritas, here I come!

I call Myra and let her know about it and talk her into being my quasi ‘date’ that day. We might as well spend a little time together, because we haven’t got much of it left. After we get back from Hawaii, she’ll be busy running for District Attorney, and after that it will be awkward for us to be seen together if I continue to practice criminal law. It just wouldn’t look good for the District Attorney to be seen socially with a criminal defense attorney – especially one that she used to be married to. There’d be too many chances for people who oppose her policies to take potshots at her because of her social life. Maybe we can sneak around a little.

In between calls from Stuart, who’s constantly in a state of desperation trying to help make plans for Vinnie’s bachelor party and wedding, I try to do some research on Drago’s case and discover that it’s a lot harder to do legal research when you’re not getting paid for it.

If I’m going to be able to do a ny good I’ve got to put a stop to the settlement before it reaches the final disbursement point. If it goes through, the probate court will probably want to be responsible for distributing the funds, making sure that debts of the estate like medical and funeral expenses are paid. That should give me at least a couple of weeks to get the goods on him, so that the court can freeze the funds and possibly return them to the insurance company. As a last resort, I can put a kibosh on the entire probate procedure by proving that the deceased isn’t Mike Drago, but is actually his relative, Vlad. That would not only stall the entire probate, but might also give the insurance company a reason to allege fraud in the claim – especially if that lawyer knew that it was Vlad and not Mike.

Before getting too in volved in getting the insurance company’s money back, I’d better talk to Special Agent Snell again. The last time we spoke, it was to discuss the possibility of some additional reward money for establishing the identities of other members of the gang who haven’t been arrested yet. I didn’t get into too much detail with him then because at that time I wasn’t aware of the fact that both Drago and Harold were members of the gang.

Now that I know who the other two gang members are, I’ve got to make some arrangement with Snell so that even when he finds out that they’re both dead, my reward claim will still work. I call him up to discuss it and tell him I know the identity of the other two, but my main concern is the part that says
‘information leading to arrest and conviction.’
I don’t want my reward money depending on the authorities’ ability to arrest and convict. Snell agrees that if the other two are outside the United States, it might be difficult to find them, even with Interpol’s help. I decide to offer him a deal he can’t refuse.

“Agent Snell, I’ll tell you what. If we can agree on a fixed amount right now, I’ll provide you with the names of the other two members of the gang, along with their pictures and a local address where each one can be found. And if the current address isn’t correct and you can’t see each one of them, then I’ll give up any right to a reward.”

“You’re serious about that? You’ll give us addresses to go and pick them up?”
“I’ll give you the addresses. You’ll have to make your own decision whether or not you want to pick them up.”
“How much money are you looking for on these two?”
“Well, considering the fact that this will make you an even bigger hero for closing the file on that whole gang, I think that twenty-five thousand for each isn’t unreasonable.” There’s silence on the other end of the line. He doesn’t know that I’ll jump at anything over five grand for each of them.
“That’s a little high for a head-count reward, but I think I can swing twenty-five for both of them. That’s twelve-five for each. I’ll fax the agreement over to you first, so you can feel safe about the terms.”
“That’s okay, I’ll fax
you
an agreement to sign… and the twenty-five K total will work for me. What do you want first, the addresses?”
“That all depends. Are they on the move?”
“Not at all. In fact, I can tell you with complete certainty that they haven’t the slightest idea they’re under suspicion, and that they are definitely not on the move. They’ll be at their present locations for a minimum of another month or so and they never go outside.”
“They’re really lying low, aren’t they?” “You could say that.”
“Okay, first we’ll need their photo-graphs…”
I cut him off on that one. Once he’s got the pictures, the game is over. He’ll know that they’re both dead and I’ll be screwed out of the reward money. I’ve got to change the ground rules here. “Oh yeah, the pictures… they’re not immediately available, but I guarantee you won’t have any trouble picking up the wrong people… I’ll give you complete descriptions of them.
“And while I’ve got you on the phone, you should know that ever since the publicity we got last time for giving you that gang on a silver platter, my criminal practice has suffered. I’m afraid that if it gets out that I helped you discover another two members of that gang, I’ll completely lose any remaining integrity I have with the underworld and no crook will ever trust me. It’ll look like I’m too close with you feds. I’m going to need you to do me a favor. Keep my name out of it. Once it’s known that you found out about more gang members, you’ll be in the spotlight again - and that’s okay. You take all the credit. All I want is the reward money. Can you assure me that you’ll keep my name out of it?”
“Okay Sharp, I think we can do that. Discretion has always been one of our strong suits. You can take my personal word for it that I won’t mention your name once – to anyone but the person making out the checks for the reward.”
Vanity rears its ugly head. He goes for the chance to take all the credit and lets me draft the reward agreement. I word it so that there’s no mention of arrest or conviction. It relies entirely on my proof that they were both members of the gang and participated in at least one of the bank robberies. We exchange corrected copies back and forth by fax and the deal is sealed. I promise to deliver the location info on the other gang members to him by the end of the week.