January Justice (29 page)

I wore the orange jumpsuit they had given me when I was booked. On the concrete beside my bunk were the cloth slippers they had given me when I gave up my shoes. I lay on a thin mattress, staring at the putty-colored steel under the mattress of the bunk above me. I was thinking about history. It is often said to repeat itself, and this was no exception.

I had been in jail before, in a Serbian-controlled village outside Sarajevo when my fire team had been overwhelmed after nearly three weeks in country, directing air strikes against Ratko Mladić’s artillery and mortar positions. The Serbs had been very unhappy with us. Compared to their accommodations, the Orange County Men’s Jail in Santa Ana was a five-star hotel. The snoring and occasional shouts and slamming doors made it tough to sleep. So did the fluorescent lights shining in my eyes from the corridor, but at least nobody was getting tortured down the hall, and my elbows weren’t wired together behind my back.

I also thought about other people’s history. Doña Elena’s, for example. Kidnapped before, and almost kidnapped again, if that had been their intention. It wasn’t surprising that she had managed to kill Castro. After the first kidnapping, it would have been much more surprising if she hadn’t begun to keep a weapon by her bed, and if she hadn’t learned to use it. But Alejandra Delarosa suddenly attacking her again after so many years… I hadn’t seen that one coming.

What had drawn Delarosa out of hiding?

The answer, I realized, might have been me. Me, asking all those questions up in Pico-Union.

I thought about Valentín Vega, setting me on Delarosa’s trail, and Castro, dead set against it. I remembered what Doña Elena had said about the other voices she had heard while Delarosa held her captive, men’s voices talking about the URNG. I wondered just how good a handle Vega had on his own operation. Was it possible a splinter group had been behind the kidnapping without his knowledge?

Or had Valentín Vega known that all along?

Maybe Vega had played me from the start, used me to stir the pot a little, make it hot for Delarosa and her confederates—Castro and whoever the other two men were. Maybe Vega had used me to get Delarosa to come out of hiding and to get Castro to show his true colors.

But even if Castro had been in on the kidnapping with Delarosa, why would they go after Doña Elena again? If the goal was to finish what they started, why wait so many years?

Maybe it wasn’t about the kidnapping. Maybe there was something else going on, something I hadn’t yet begun to uncover. For example, who were those two guys who had tried to kill me? Were they really with the Guatemalan junta, as I’d assumed? Were they actually allied with Castro in some scheme? Were they the two men Doña Elena had seen with him and Delarosa in her home? And if so, what was their interest in the situation?

I felt like a tourist from a far-off country wandering through a town where nobody spoke my language. Now and then I caught a word or two or saw a facial expression or a gesture that made sense, but mostly I had no idea what anyone was saying.

A guy passed my bunk, making for the head. A few minutes later, he came back. This time he stopped. He turned to face my bunk. He put his hand on his groin. I sighed. He was hidden from the stomach up by Flaco’s bunk above me, but I could tell he had to be at least six and a half feet tall. The big ones always overestimated their abilities.

Bending down, he said, “Move over, punk.” His low voice rumbled like distant thunder.

I focused on what Bud had said. You defend yourself, no matter what. Haley would be happy with nothing less. I said, “Keep moving.”

He chuckled. He bent a little more to look down on me. He said, “Move over and get naked.”

He was a white guy, late thirties, probably, with a full black beard grown nearly to his chest, a shaved head, and a swastika tattoo on his neck. I popped him in the crotch with the knuckles of my left hand. He grunted with pain and bent a little lower as I spun around on my back, braced my shoulders against the wall, and kicked his knees with my heels. There was a loud popping sound. He screamed and dropped to the floor.

I got out of the bunk, got a grip on his beard with one hand, and took the collar of his overalls in the other hand. The inmates on the bunks on each side watched silently as I dragged him down the aisle between them. It was hard work. He was heavy. His screams became whimpering moans.

“Oh, my knees. You broke my knees.”

I reached the open area near the door where the overflow guys were lying on the mattresses on the floor. The inmate closest to the door was a little fellow, maybe five feet four and one hundred and twenty pounds.

I told him, “Go find this guy’s bunk and get in it.”

The little fellow got up and went looking. I dragged the would-be rapist to the little guy’s mattress and dropped him there. The rapist was still moaning loudly. I banged on the door ten or eleven times with the side of my fist, and then I went back to my bunk.

A few minutes later, two guards came in. One of them knelt beside the moaning man while the other one stood facing the bunks. He shouted, “Who did this?”

I lay on my back, studying the underside of Flaco’s bunk above me. I was still thinking about what Bud Tanner said and what Haley would have said if only she were there. Step one is, you go on. You don’t take the easy out.
Semper Fi
, no matter what.

Again the guard shouted, “Who did this?”

Nobody answered.

A minute later, two other guards arrived. The four of them each gripped a corner of the sheet under the moaning man. They picked him up and carried him away. The door slammed behind them. Everyone was quiet. After a few minutes, someone in a nearby bunk began to snore.

32

In the morning the guards led us out
and down a hall into a large recreation area, where we lined up for chow. Powdered eggs, powdered milk, some sort of orange-colored liquid, cold bacon, and a slice of white bread. It wasn’t any worse than a meal ready to eat in the Marines. I found a seat at a round steel table and dug in.

About nine o’clock, four guards came into the recreation area and announced they would be calling names for court. Mine was the third name on their list. When I walked over to the deputies, they put cuffs on my wrists and chains around my ankles, which were connected by another chain to the cuffs. After they had called a dozen prisoners up to be restrained, we all shuffled off in single file.

It turned out the Orange County Superior Court had a courtroom right there in the jail. They kept us waiting in a holding cell until our names were called. When it was my turn, a deputy removed the cuffs and shackles and led me into the courtroom. It wasn’t a very big space. The ceiling was low. The public seating area was limited but completely full. I figured most of the observers were reporters. Obviously, a home invasion at a congressman’s residence was big news. I figured the reporters had already checked my criminal record and learned I was one of the butchers of Laui Kalay. Toss in a movie star like Doña Elena mortally wounding one of her attackers, and you had a global story.

I thanked God for the presence of mind that had led me to answer “self-employed private investigator” when they booked me into jail the day before. I told myself there was no reason the reporters would care about my employment history, no reason they would look into it hard enough to learn I was once Haley Lane’s chauffeur and bodyguard. I told myself the police file on Haley’s murder wasn’t public, so the reporters wouldn’t know I was the other victim on the night she died. I told myself those things and prayed they were true.

Teru was waiting for me beside a table in front of the raised platform where the judge was sitting. He looked good in a well-tailored black suit with a red paisley tie and a pair of tasseled Italian-looking loafers.

“Nice shoes,” I said.

“Can’t say the same about yours.”

Looking down at the slippers, I shrugged. “Comfort before fashion.”

We sat at the table. He put a piece of paper and a ballpoint pen in front of me. “Sign this power of attorney so I can tell Howard Williams to cover your bail,” he said.

“Howard Williams?”

“The lawyer in New York.”

“I know who you mean. But can’t I use my own savings and a bondsman?”

“With a bail bondsman, you’d have to cover ten percent. Do you have a hundred thousand?”

“You think it will be set that high? A million dollars, really?”

“At least.”

I sighed, picked up the pen, and signed where he pointed on the paper.

The bailiff called the court to order, and the judge asked the lawyers to go to work. A middle-aged woman sitting at another table rose and explained that the people believed I had participated in a home invasion. She listed their evidence against me. The judge asked me how I wished to plead. Teru and I stood up, and I told her I was not guilty. We sat down again. The middle-aged woman said the judge should refuse to grant me bail, because I was a highly trained ex-soldier with a criminal record, capable of great violence, and an obvious flight risk who had spent years traveling all over the world. Teru stood up and said the judge should grant bail because I was a highly decorated marine with strong connections to the community.

The judge cast her eye over the crowd of reporters and said, “Bail is set at one million five hundred thousand dollars. Bailiff, call the next one.”

The middle-aged woman at the other table looked smug. She probably assumed I wouldn’t be able to make that much bail.

Teru said, “Should I tell Williams to use a bail bondsman and pay the full amount directly?”

I thought about it for a minute. “If Williams pays it in cash, would the reporters find out?”

“No. The source of bail payments isn’t made public.”

“If I appear when I’m supposed to, the county returns the money?”

“That’s right, unless there are fees. They’ll take those off the top.”

I decided it didn’t make sense to pay one hundred and fifty thousand to a bondsman when I didn’t have to. Haley would want me to be smart with the money. “Tell Williams to go ahead and cover the whole million and a half.”

About two hours later, a deputy took me to the intake and release center, where my clothing and the contents of my pockets were returned. They didn’t return my firearm or my knife. Teru met me outside in the lobby. So did half a dozen reporters, including two camera teams. Everybody started asking questions at the same time. I had learned how to handle it from watching Haley. I smiled as widely as I could and looked straight at the cameras so my photos in the media would look wholesome and friendly, but I didn’t say a word. It was a great relief that nobody mentioned Haley.

Teru and I jaywalked across Flower Street, with the reporters all around us. He guided me toward the parking garage next to the municipal stadium. Questions kept flying in spite of our silence. I admired the reporters’ persistence.

At the parking garage, we took the stairs to the second level and got into Teru’s Porsche. He put his unlit pipe in his mouth, gunned the engine a couple of times to warn the reporters standing behind the rear bumper, and backed out of the parking place. He drove well through the little crowd. Not everyone knows how to drive a Porsche in low gear.

When we were on the road, I said, “Where’s the limo?”

“At the house. Detective Harper called and told us where to find it.”

“Good for him. How long has it been since you were in a courtroom?”

“Twenty years, give or take.”

“You were pretty good.”

“That was the easy part. Anyone could do it. But you’re gonna need somebody, Malcolm. Somebody very good. The assistant district attorney gave me their case file. They have your fingerprints in the house. They have Doña Elena Montes and Congressman Montes saying you told them you’re working for the URNG. They have your gun, and it was discharged in the commission of the crime. They have photos of you and Castro together in a couple of places.”

The photos surprised me. I wondered who had taken them and why Harper hadn’t mentioned them before. I said, “What places?”

“The cemetery in Newport. In front of Musso and Frank in Hollywood. Did you know the cops had you under surveillance?”

“I did not. Does the file say they took the photos?”

“No, I just assumed the Feds or LAPD were watching the Guatemalans for the congressman when you came along. Who else would have taken them?”

“Those two guys who tried to kill me, maybe. Or maybe not. I didn’t see them at the cemetery. That was Haley’s birthday, so I wasn’t in the best state of mind. I wasn’t paying much attention to my perimeter. But I did see them outside Musso and Frank.”

“Why would they give pictures to the police?”

“I don’t know.”

Teru aimed us at the on-ramp to the 55 and gunned it. The Porsche accelerated nicely.

I said, “How many miles on this thing?”

“Hundred twenty-two thousand.”

“I thought you said the miles were low.”

“Low for the price.”

Teru, it’s a Porsche. You don’t buy a high-mileage Porsche. What were you thinking?”

“I figured you could keep it running.”