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Authors: James Scott Bell

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CHAPTER THREE

WHEN I WOKE up, the talons of a predatory bird were embedded in my head.

Hangovers, I’ve come to believe, are related to animals and come in various forms, such as the crushing press of an elephant’s foot or the sharp report of a woodpecker pounding out a new home in the cerebral cortex. Most often, for me, hangovers came in the form of talons gripping my temples. I groaned, rolled over, and saw an angry red 10:15 on my digital clock. I gripped my entire forehead with one hand. Forget about going into the office. I’ll just die here in bed.

As I lay there wondering whether to call the embalmer, the phone rang. The talons dug in harder.

I fumbled for the phone. “Yeah?”

“Jake?” It was my lovely ex, Barb, she of the exquisite timing.

“What is it?” I said.

“How are you?”

“You know me.”

“Taking care of yourself?”

“You a doctor?”

“Why do you always do this?”

“What did you call for?”

“Rick and I wanted to go away this weekend.”

“I’m thrilled.”

“Jake, please.”

I said nothing. I pushed a spot on my forehead with my index finger, trying to relieve pressure. It didn’t work.

“I was wondering,” Barb said, “even though it isn’t your weekend, if you could take Mandy. It would be a real favor.”

“I just love doing you favors.”

“Do it for Mandy then.”

“Not for you and Reverend Rick?” That was a low blow, I knew, but I wasn’t feeling charitable. Not in the least. I was a mess, so why suffer alone?

“Will you take Mandy or won’t you?”

“What’s it worth to you?”

“Don’t do this, Jake. She isn’t a bargaining chip.”

“Isn’t she? Wasn’t she just that when you hired that fancy divorce attorney?”

“I thought we were going to move on.”

“You wanted custody, you got custody. Now you can live with it.”

“Sometimes you can be so cruel.”

She was absolutely right, but I wasn’t about to admit it. “Fine. I’ll take her.”

“Thank you.”

I said nothing.

“Can I bring her by at noon?”

“Noon!”

“We want to get an early start.”

“Oh lovely.”

“Well?”

“Bring her.”

Again she thanked me without emotion. Then she added, “Um, Jake, one thing.”

“Now what?”

“Well, could you please . . . be careful?”

I felt my face heating up. “Careful about what?”

“You know.”

“You think I’d do something that would be harmful to Mandy? Is that what you’re saying?”

“I didn’t—”

“You really think that low of me?”

She sighed. “I won’t have this conversation with you every time.”

“Okay by me.”

“Believe it or not, Jake, I want you to be okay. Not just for Mandy, but for you.”

“See you at noon,” I said and hung up. Man, I was getting good at being a jerk. I decided not to shave so I wouldn’t have to look at myself in the mirror, but I did think it wise to get something in my stomach. I threw on some jeans and a sweatshirt and walked two blocks to Chipper’s Coffee Shop, one of the last decent breakfast joints in the Valley. The city was littered with Denny’s and IHOPs, not to mention Jack-in-the-Box and McDonald’s and all the other temples of culinary mediocrity. At Chipper’s they still made their pancakes as big as the plate, didn’t slight you on the butter, and knew your name if you came in often enough.

I bought a
Times
from the machine and took a place at the counter. Mary, the waitress who had worked there since Lincoln’s second inaugural, greeted me by name. I asked how she was and she said, “Never better.” I thought about asking her what her secret was but ordered coffee instead.

The
Times
front page had a story about the overcrowded conditions at the L.A. County jail. A guy from the ACLU was outraged about the “meat locker” atmosphere. A spokesman from the county sheriff’s office was outraged that the ACLU guy was outraged. I could smell a class-action lawsuit coming.

In the middle of the page was a story out of Tennessee. A junior-high-school kid had gone berserk and shot several of his classmates with a high-powered hunting rifle.

As Mary served me my coffee, she glanced at the paper. “You readin’ about them kids in Tennessee?” she said. She had a southern drawl herself.

“Yeah.”

“It was on the TV last night. Terrible.”

“Probably drugs or something,” I said, “or maybe he broke up with his girlfriend.”

“No,” Mary said ominously. “It was more than that.”

“More?”

“They said he was in a Satan worship group.”

“Satan? I can just see that as a defense—the devil made me do it.”

“It’s real, Jake.”

“What’s real?”

“Satan.”

“Well, I believe in evil spirits too, Mary.”

“Do you?”

“Yeah. I call them IRS agents.”

Mary shook her head and smiled and then slapped me on the arm. I ordered a short stack of pancakes with scrambled eggs and read on about the incident. Sure enough, near the end of the story, there was mention of some kind of occult connection. But the writer seemed as skeptical as I was.

It took me an hour to eat breakfast, finish the paper, and down five cups of coffee. The talons were replaced by a caffeine buzz, and by the time I left, I felt ready to accomplish at least one productive task before my daughter arrived. I had a stack of appellate reports from the
Daily Journal
at my apartment. I needed to scan them for the latest case law to give myself the illusion I was still a practicing lawyer. Then I thought I could find an old movie on TV to watch with Mandy, something from the 30s or 40s, so I could forget about a world where kids kill other kids.

The phone was ringing as I walked through my door. I didn’t recognize the woman’s voice even though she seemed to know me.

“It’s Janet Patino, Jake.”

“Patino?” Then it hit me. “Mrs. Patino?”

“Yes, Jake, it’s me.”

“Wow, it’s been a long time.”

“Yes it has. How are you?”

“Doing fine,” I lied.

“That’s good.”

“How’s Howie?”

There was a pause on the other end. “That’s what I’m calling about.”

“What is it?”

“He’s been arrested.”

“What?”

“In Hinton. I drove up this morning.”

“I didn’t know he was back here.”

“He moved when he got married about five years ago.”

“Howie’s married?”

I only heard labored breathing on the other end of the line.

“Mrs. Patino?”

“I’m still here.”

“What was Howie arrested for?”

Another short pause. “Murder.”

I silently mouthed
What?
then said, “Who is he supposed to have murdered?”

“His wife.” Then Janet Patino started crying.

“Okay now,” I said. “We’ll figure this out.”

“I can’t believe he did it,” Janet Patino struggled to say. “He’s so gentle. You remember, don’t you? Harmless. But they’ve got him in a hospital.”

“Why?”

“He was hurt. Cut with a knife . . . I’m scared to death. Jake, could you see him?”

“Has he talked to anyone? A public defender?”

“I don’t think so.”

I rubbed my eyes. “There’s probably local counsel up there who could see him, someone who knows the courts and the prosecutors.”

“Can’t you see him? Please? I know you’re practicing law out here. We always liked you so, Jake. We’ll pay you, of course.”

The word
pay
sounded nice, but I could have justified a refusal. It was a long drive to Hinton, and Howie would be much better off with a local. I could have done some song-and-dance, but this was the mother of an old friend, a mother who was obviously scared, and I thought I’d already used up my portion of jerk-ness for the day.

So I found myself saying, “Sure, Mrs. Patino. I’ll go see him this afternoon. Tell me where he is.”

Right in the middle of her doing that, I heard a loud knock on the door and a five-year-old girl’s voice shouting, “Lemme in, Daddy!”

CHAPTER FOUR

“NOW DON’T JUST feed her junk food,” Barb said.

“Your faith in me is touching.”

“Don’t.”

“You know you’re very good with that word.”

“What word?”

“
Don’t.”

“Please, Jake.”

“That’s better.”

Mandy was still hugging my leg in exactly the same spot she’d attached herself to the moment I opened the door.

“We’ll be back on Sunday,” Barb said, handing me a cloth bag with five-year-old essentials in it. “I’ll call you.”

“You don’t have to pick her up. She can spend Sunday night with me.”

“I’ll call,” Barb said. “Mandy, give Mommy a kiss.” She squatted, and our daughter ran over and planted a kiss on her mother’s cheek.

“Bye, Mommy!” Mandy said in her chirpy voice. Then she ran back into my apartment and went straight to the fun drawer where I kept the crayons.

“Thanks, Jake,” Barb said.

I didn’t respond. I waited until she reached the stairs and then closed the door.

Mandy was already setting up a small play space at the table, complete with a handful of crayons and several blank sheets of white paper, which I also kept in the drawer for her. I looked at her and realized she was the one bright spot in my sorry life. Mandy’s auburn hair was in a braid. With her sweet brown eyes focused on her paper, she was the very picture of innocence. There was still some of that left in the world.

“I can draw something, Daddy,” she said, not looking up.

“I’d like to see it.”

“Okay.”

I opened the curtains to give her more light. I had a view of the Van Nuys Airport. This wasn’t the best neighborhood in the city, and the vista wasn’t of ocean horizons, but I liked looking at the airport. Something about planes coming and going, about life happening normally, had a calming effect. As Mandy worked on her picture, I watched a couple of private planes take off toward the clouds.

Then Mandy said, “Look!” She held up a piece of paper. On it she had drawn three multicolored animals. That’s what I took the stick-legged creatures to be. “Horses,” she announced. The horse in the middle was smaller than the other two.

“Hey, terrific,” I said.

“That’s us.”

“That’s who?”

“You, me, and Mommy.”

I blinked.

“Don’t you like it, Daddy?”

“Sure, honey, it’s just great. If I were a horse, that’s how I’d like to look.” I took the picture and placed it on the universal forum for all children’s art, the refrigerator door. I secured it with a magnet. I knew as soon as Mandy was gone I’d remove the thing and dump it. I didn’t want a picture of Barb looking at me, even if she was depicted as a horse.

“Hey,” I said, trying to sound cheery, “how about we take a drive?”

Mandy was busy on another picture. “I don’t want to.”

“We’ll drive by the ocean.”

“I want to play here.”

“I’ll make us peanut butter and honey sandwiches, and we can eat them on the way.”

“And cookies?”

“Yes, I’ll get some cookies.”

“And milk?”

“Milk.”

She slapped her crayon down on the table, and in her precocious way, the one that made me think of her as twice her age, she said, “Deal!”

A half hour later we were on the freeway heading toward Hinton. I’d made the sandwiches, and then stopped at a convenience store for the cookies and milk. Mandy seemed happy about the cuisine. She gobbled her sandwich and sipped her milk through a straw. I did the same thing, only with one hand on the wheel.

“Where we going?” Mandy asked.

“Just to a little town for a bit. I have to do something there.”

“What?”

“See a person.”

“Who?”

“A person I used to know.”

“What’s his name?”

“Howie.”

She laughed. “That’s a funny name. Is he funny?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Why?”

“Well, he’s just . . . I think he’s sad right now. He’s in the hospital.”

“Is he sick?”

“He’s hurt.”

“Is he going to die?”

I glanced at my daughter. She was looking at me with extreme seriousness. “No,” I said.

She was silent for a moment. I could almost hear the wheels and pulleys in her head. Finally she said, “Are you going to die, Daddy?”

Now that was a left hook out of nowhere. I’d read somewhere that kids start to think about death around Mandy’s age. I also knew there was probably something more going on, something that had to do with the divorce. A divorce is like a death to a child. So, perhaps, is a father who drinks too much.

“Everybody dies sometime, Mandy, but I won’t be dying for a long, long time.”

“What happens?”

“When?”

“When you die.”

Why did I have to have this conversation? Why now? Why couldn’t I have been prepared? Why couldn’t I have been in Australia?

But I wasn’t in Australia. I was here in a car with my only daughter. There was a very good chance that I wouldn’t be seeing her much after this, and she had just asked me one of those key questions that can shape a kid for life.

I’ve defended some of the worst denizens of society’s underbelly and been asked tough questions by hardened criminals. I’ve trembled sometimes when I’ve answered, but never as much as I was trembling now.

What would Barb want me to say? I could just hear her screaming at me.
What do you mean you told her we just go into the ground? Why didn’t you tell her we go to heaven? How could you do this to her?

Barb and I had never really discussed Mandy’s religious education. Barb was all for it, of course. After our divorce she had “found Christ,” whatever that meant. I had no idea. I also had no faith. So what was I supposed to do now that my daughter was asking the ultimate question? Lie?

I decided to try finesse. I was a lawyer after all. “It’s too nice a day to talk about dying, Mandy.”

She thought about this for a moment and then shook her head and said, “But what happens?”

“Hey, how about we go get an ice cream cone when I finish my business? Huh? What do you say?”

“Okay!”

“Yeah!”

We smiled at each other, then Mandy frowned. “But what happens, Daddy?”

I sighed. “Have you ever asked Mommy about this?”

“Yeah.”

“And what does she say?”

“She says God takes us.”

“Well, there you go.”

“Does he, Daddy? Does God take us?”

“Mandy, listen to me. We need to think about life, not death. We need to do our best right now.”

“What’s God like?”

“No one really knows,” I said.

“How come?”

“Because they just don’t,” I snapped. Mandy flinched. When I got a look at her face, she was staring straight ahead with her lower lip sticking out. That’s her mad or sad look. Either way, I’d blown it.

When we finally pulled into the parking lot of the Hinton County Hospital, my head had a steady, Salvation Army drum beat going on inside it.

Now I had to figure out what to do with my five-year-old daughter while I talked to Howie Patino. Mandy did not want to sit in the children’s waiting area, even though it had toys, and a nice nurse who looked like Norman Rockwell’s idea of a grandmother offered to sit with her. She was just not going to let me go.

The uniformed police officer who was sitting just outside Howie’s room thought this was amusing. “Cute,” he said. “How old?”

“Five,” I answered.

“I got a ten-year-old girl,” the cop said. He looked around forty. His ample stomach pressed his pale blue shirt to the limit.

“I’m here to see Howie Patino,” I said.

The cop’s face changed faster than an auctioneer’s patter. He stood up. “Who are you?”

“A friend.”

“Nobody can see him.”

“His mother asked me to see him.”

“I don’t care if the pope asked you. He’s a suspect in a murder. Nobody sees him.”

I looked up and down the hall hoping to spot Janet Patino. I -hadn’t told her exactly when I would be here and didn’t know where to reach her. But I wondered if it would have made any difference to the cop one way or the other.

“All right,” I said, taking out my wallet and flipping to my bar card. “I’m a lawyer. I’m here to see him in a professional capacity.”

The cop glanced briefly at my card, then back at me. “I thought you said you were his friend.”

“That too. Can I see him now?”

“I’m not authorized.”

“Mandy,” I said, stroking my daughter’s hair, “you see that window over there?”

She looked and nodded her head.

“Go over there for a minute and look out of it,” I said. “I’ll be right over. Daddy needs to talk to this nice policeman in private.”

Mandy slowly edged away from my leg, decided it was safe, and went obediently to the window. I turned back to the cop. “Listen, Officer, I don’t know you and you don’t know me, but I’m an attorney practicing law in the state of California, which has a constitution just like the United States does, and you are bound by both. They say that Howie Patino has the right to speak to a lawyer, which is what I am. And if you don’t let me into that room right now, I will personally drag your tail before a magistrate and let you explain to him why an officer sworn to uphold the law decided the law didn’t apply to him.”

The cop blinked a couple of times. I tried my best not to.

“This is a small town,” the cop said finally. “People who come around here with an attitude usually don’t get very far.”

“I see. So you want to add a veiled threat to this routine? You tell me just how far you want to push it, Officer.”

I waited. The cop stared. “All right,” he said. “But I know you now.”

“My life,” I said, “is complete. Mandy!”

My daughter rushed back to my side.

“You can’t take her in,” the officer said.

“You want to watch her for me?” I said.

“No!” Mandy said.

The cop threw up his hands. “See if I care.” He plopped back into his seat.

Taking Mandy by the hand, I pushed into the room.