Corrupt Practices (10 page)

“The wife will get half anyway, right? Community property? And if the rest of the money would actually go to the wife and the kid, that would be fine with me. But the Assembly will try to take it all, and I won’t let that happen. I’ll donate the money to a real charity instead.”

Though I can’t be sure, he doesn’t seem like someone who wants to deprive a widow and child of their inheritance. He really seems to want justice done. But he needs to be realistic. “Mr. Baxter, if the Assembly sues you—and I don’t know that they will—it won’t be pleasant. In fact, I’d advise you to settle quickly. The Assembly settles cases all the time. On a one-sided basis, sure, but it’s better than going to war with them. And that’s what a lawsuit would be. They’ve broken men with far more money and power than you. And as for me being your lawyer, I don’t even have a law firm anymore.”

“I don’t give a goddamn rat’s ass about that,” he says, his lips contorted in anger. “And you shouldn’t either. Don’t you get it? You were supposed to be Richie’s lawyer, his advocate. You. He died on your watch. Not only did he lose his life, he lost his legacy. If the Assembly comes after the estate, they’re going to smear him. He’ll be remembered as Richard Baxter the suicide, Richard Baxter the crook, Richard Baxter the drug addict. You owe him a chance to clear his name.”

I start to protest, but I don’t have it in me. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll check around.”

“It’ll take more than checking around. I need legal representation.” He shakes his head. “I don’t know why I expected anything of you. Apologies.” He downs the rest of his drink and makes a move to leave.

I remember that biography of Gladys Towles Root. Whatever I might think of her ethics, she took on controversial, dangerous cases—a rape case in a hostile small Nevada town, the defense of the man who kidnapped Frank Sinatra’s son—in the steadfast belief that the law would keep her safe. The only reason I’d refuse to help Raymond Baxter is fear. I’m tired of being afraid.

“Wait.” He turns around. “I’ll look into it. I’ll act as the estate’s lawyer for the time being and start preparing a defense in case they do sue. I’ll also get the probate process going. We’ll see how it goes.”

He doesn’t respond, just looks at me, his eyes once again lifeless now that his anger has subsided. He reaches into the inside pocket of his windbreaker and takes out a pen and a checkbook. “How much of a retainer will you need?”

“Nothing. But I will need a copy of the will and all the other testamentary papers. The sooner you get them to me the sooner I can start. Send them to me at the St. Thomas More School of Law.”

“I’ll have them delivered tomorrow.” He drops a twenty-dollar bill on the table and shuffles out of the bar more slowly than he did when he came in.

Instead of holding my next trial advocacy class at the law school, I take my three students on a field trip—an inspection of the apartment where Rich Baxter supposedly hid out and committed his illegal acts under the name Alan Markowitz. It’s the beginning of the lawyer’s chase, which is mostly grunt work: pursuing recalcitrant witnesses who won’t cooperate because there’s nothing in it for them, sifting through trivia to try to glean one relevant fact, fitting disparate bits of information into a logical pattern.

We drive the short distance from the law school to the Silver Lake district, an area in the hills east of Hollywood known for its modernist architecture and bohemian residents. We talk about Rich Baxter’s alleged crimes and about the law. I spend most of the drive telling war stories about my days at the law firm representing celebrities, and the rest of it peeking in the rearview mirror because I notice Jonathan and Kathleen holding hands in the back seat. All the while, I hope Lovely will update me on her analysis of Rich’s autopsy report. She doesn’t say a word about it.

We arrive at a beige structure backed up against a steep hill. The apartment is constructed in a series of cantilevered terraced rectangles made of glass and wood and stucco. The design gives the illusion of a single family dwelling, but actually there are nine units. A nice place for Rich to hide out.

We meet the building manager, a man named Dale Garner. Anywhere between forty-five and sixty years old, he stands well over six feet and has the girth of a professional wrestler. But unlike a wrestler, there’s not a hint of muscle in his body. From the moment we walk in, his eyes fix on Lovely and rarely look elsewhere.

To establish our right to enter Rich’s apartment, I show him the document appointing Raymond Baxter executor of Rich’s estate, along with a letter from Raymond identifying me as the estate’s lawyer. Garner examines them meticulously. “How do I know you’re who you say you are?” He speaks in a reedy voice that doesn’t match his girth.

“I can show you my ID. And you can call my client. He’s standing by.”

“And how will I know he’s really your client?”

Garner’s clearly one of those petty people who likes to exert whatever scintilla of power he possesses. There’s only one way to handle guys like him.

“If you don’t let us in right now,” I say, “I’ll go directly to court and file a wrongful eviction suit citing your lack of cooperation. Today. I’m sure you know that the lease has an attorney’s fees clause. And you’re on notice, Mr. Garner—I’m expensive.”

He tries to stare me down, and when I don’t look away, he frowns and grudgingly hands me the key to Rich’s unit.

“OK if I ask you a few questions before we look at the apartment?” I say.

“I don’t know what you’d ask me. I don’t know anything.”

Jonathan raises his hand. “How about if Kathleen and I start looking through the apartment?”

I give him the key, and they leave.

“I don’t know how I can help you,” Garner repeats. “Everything I had to say I told the cops.”

“What kind of tenant was Baxter?” I ask. “How often was he here, who did he see? Anything unusual?”

“I just told you I gave all of this to the cops. You say you were his lawyer. Didn’t you read the report?”

“I never saw it. My client died before the US Attorney had to turn it over.”

“Well, isn’t that too bad for you and your client.”

“We know you’re a busy man, Mr. Garner,” Lovely says with a broad smile. “We don’t want to waste your time. But we’d like to hear it directly from you, if that’s OK. You know how the cops are. You can’t always trust what’s in a police report, am I right?” I expected her just to listen, to act like the student she’s supposed to be. When I was at the firm I always handled interviews myself.

“You are right,” he says, as if her words have jumpstarted his heart. “And call me Dale.”

“And you can call me Lovely.”

“That’s your name?”

“My real name.”

He smiles at her. “Well, it fits.”

“Why, thank you, sir.” She tilts her head and actually blushes. Her eyes glimmer. It’s as good as any performance I saw from the actresses I worked with as a kid.

“So what can you tell us about Richard Baxter?” she says.

Garner acts as if I’m not in the room. “Well, you call him Baxter, and that was his name I guess, but I knew him as Alan Markowitz. He signed a year lease. He had what looked like a valid ID, passed a credit check with flying colors, said he was a car dealer, seemed like a straight arrow. He sure put one over on me. In fact, he almost cost me my job.”

“He was a problem?” she asks.

“Yes and no. He kept to himself, didn’t annoy anyone, but that wasn’t the issue. He wasn’t here much, only a few nights a week. It became pretty clear why when those women started showing up.”

“What women?” she asks.

He folds his arms across his chest, making a show of moral indignation. “I’m embarrassed to say this around a nice young lady like yourself, but those women of his were obviously whores. The expensive kind. What do they call themselves these days? Escorts? They were well-dressed, you know, high class. But still whores. He probably got them over the Internet like that ex-governor of New York, what’s his name? I didn’t approve and didn’t appreciate that kind of behavior in my building. We operate a very respectable apartment complex, not a brothel.”

“Can you describe these women?” she asks.

“There were three of them. One was a sorority-girl type, satiny dresses, wholesome looking in a way. The one with the black hair was, what do they call it nowadays, Gothic? Dressed in black leather, freaky makeup, piercings, like some kind of S&M dominatrix. She looked like a character out of one of those vampire shows. The other one was just plain trashy—short skirts, spiky heels, that kind of thing.”

My body tenses. “The woman who dressed like a Goth. Did she have tattoos?”

Because I’ve spoken, he goes back into that place where recalcitrant witnesses go—on his guard, resentful and distant. “Can’t say one way or another.”

Lovely waits for me to follow up. When I don’t, she says, “You’re sure they were escorts?”

“Oh yes. By the way they walked and the way they dressed.”

“How old?” she says.

“I only saw them at night. Twenties or thirties, probably.”

“Just a couple of more questions, Dale,” she says. “Did you speak to any of these women?”

“I tried once. The night the cops came and raided the place and Markowitz . . . I mean Baxter . . . was arrested. Two hours later, I saw the sorority girl going up to his apartment. Don’t know what she was doing there. Maybe she didn’t know that he was in jail. Anyway, I was out in the driveway doing something when she came back outside. I said hello, tried to make conversation. I wanted to find out once and for all what Markowitz was really up to. Do you know that she kicked at me with those pointy heels and took off running before I could do anything about it?” He shakes his head. “All I wanted to do was talk to her.”

“You said that she was leaving his apartment,” Lovely says. “How did she get in?”

“Beats me. I assume she had a key.”

We shoot more questions at him for the next five minutes, but he doesn’t have anything else useful to say.

“You’ve been very helpful, Dale.” Lovely says. “Is there anything else that you can think of that’s relevant? Anything at all?”

“There might . . .” He hesitates. He’s fighting himself, torn between his inclination to stay uninvolved and his desire to please Lovely. “You know, I wanted Markowitz out of here for breaching the lease. Using his apartment unit for illicit purposes. But I had no proof. So I took some pictures. Of the women.”

Lovely and I glance at each other. I don’t say anything. This is now her show.

“Do you still have them, Dale?”

He hesitates again, and then nods. “They’re not very clear. I took them with my cell phone camera in the dark and uploaded them to my computer.”

“Can we see?”

He leads us into his bedroom, where the computer sits on a scratched-up pine desk covered with stacks of papers organized in discrete piles. He launches three thumbnail photos.

To say that the quality is poor is an understatement. It’s not just that they were taken at night. The women were obviously on the move, blurring the pictures. You can make out the hair color and the outlines of their bodies, along with the clothing—they look just as he described them—but their facial features are indistinct. They’re all petite. I ask Garner to switch the photos to full screen. The larger images are so pixilated that the women’s features have been obliterated. Unless we find something when we enhance them, these pictures are worthless, no more informative than construction-paper silhouettes.

“Is it OK if we get a copy of these images, Dale?” Lovely says. She reaches into her backpack and hands him a portable flash drive. “If you just put that in your USB port, you can copy them onto this.”

“Help yourself, Lovely.” He moves aside and pulls the chair out for her with a flourish.

After she’s made the copies, we leave his apartment, but not before he asks Lovely to have dinner or lunch or coffee with him, offers she deftly rebuffs.

“Good job,” I say when we’re out of earshot.

“The guy’s pathetic.”

“You got him to give up those photos. They’re a great find if we can enhance them and get a look at those women’s faces.”

“Did you notice why their faces are blurred, Professor?”

“Garner said he took the pictures at night when they were moving.”

Lovely shakes her head. “That might be part of it. But the creep wasn’t interested in their faces. He was trying to get a picture of each woman’s ass.”