Orange County Noir (Akashic Noir) (6 page)

ndel Cream, the chief deputy working the overnight shift at the Orange County Central Men's Jail
in Santa Ana, owed Judge Oliver Wendell Knott a
favor, which is why the judge was able to slip in after hours
without a security search or a need to sign the visitor's log, a
phony Vandyke beard and wraparound sunglasses sheltering
his identity from the security cameras.

"Least I can ever do for you, Your Honor," Ondel said for
the third or fourth time while guiding the judge to one of the
second-floor Module-R conference rooms reserved for pretrial
maximum-security inmates and sexual predators, where he'd
stashed Quentin Lomax twelve minutes earlier, wrists cuffed
to the anchored cast-iron table, ankles secured to the castiron chair.

Ondel said, "What you went and done for my baby brother
Marcus, a righteous act not another judge woulda done," his
hoarse baritone echoing in concert with the squeak of his
rubber-soled combat boots along a dimly lit corridor that
reeked of a disinfectant not strong enough to entirely eliminate the layers of prisoner sweat insulting the judge's nose.

Judge Knott smiled benignly, wished the deputy would
shut up, but he knew better than to destroy the mood or otherwise disrupt the bond that grew between them after he'd
sized up the deputy as somebody he could manipulate to his advantage and dismissed the drunk driving charge hanging
over Ondel Cream's brother.

He said, not for the first time, "Marcus struck me as a
young man who deserved a second chance more than a third
strike," and, adding a fresh bit of friendship massage, "especially given an upstanding, God-fearing sibling like you to
keep him grounded on the road to good citizenship."

"Amen, Judge, sir, amen to that, and you seeing it for the
truth. Marcus, he ain't had nothing hard to drink ever since,
but only once where I needed to slap him around some to
keep a shot-a the hard stuff from cursing his lips."

They reached the conference room.

Before turning the key in the lock, Ondel assured him,
"You'll be safe as my own son in there, Judge, what with Lomax secured tighter than a virgin's precious jewel. It's a precaution worth taking, since no telling what all could happen if
that murdering cuss was crazy enough and free enough to go
for your jugular."

"Lomax hasn't been tried and convicted yet in my courtroom, Ondel, so fairness dictates we withhold judgment until
all the evidence is in and a jury renders its verdict."

"What you say, Judge, but you might sing a different song
if you saw him up close here, days in and out, and listened to
his mouthings. Ain't for no reason at all he's kept in solitary,
in the block reserved for the worst of the worst. And even the
worst of the worst, they scared of Lomax just being so close to
themselves. Mark my words, no jury is ever not gonna escape
seeing that ... Fifteen minutes, you said you need?"

"Maybe twenty, but certainly no longer."

The deputy raised his wristwatch to his eyes and squinted
after the time. "Need to get Lomax back where he belongs before the next bed check, so that works out fine. I'll be outside keeping guard, so knock if you finish up your business early or
need me any reason at all, Your Honor. A shout and I'll come
running."

Quentin Lomax eased back as far as the security restraints allowed and studied the judge through deep-rooted black eyes
fired by a mixture of curiosity and contempt. They seemed
a mismatch with the oversized features of his pockmarked
face and a wrestler's body stretching the limits of his orange
jumpsuit.

"I don't know you from spit or why you're here all dressed
up like it's Halloween, thinking the beard's fooling anybody,"
he said. "Trick or treat or whatever in hell's going on, you're
getting not a word from me without my lawyer, so who in hell
are you anyway?"

The judge stroked his fingers over the Vandyke to strengthen
the spirit gum holding it in place, removed the sunglasses and
parked them inside the breast pocket of his jacket.

He flicked a smile and said, "If you're a praying man, I'd be
inclined to say I'm the answer to your prayers, Mr. Lomax."

"And if I ain't?"

"I'd say the same thing."

"That sort of gag goes with the whiskers . . . or you on
something, mister? I don't know what you're talking about."

"Of course you do, Mr. Lomax. We both know the murder
you're about to stand trial for was not your first murder, only
your sloppiest. A particularly bloody crime you won't slip out
from under, the way you have more than a few times in the
past."

"Hurry this up, will ya? I gotta piss real bad."

"Your lawyer, Mr. Amos Alonzo Waldorf, will be up to his
usual courtroom stall tactics, but in the end they'll all be struck down, one after the next, and, it follows, justice will prevail.
You'll be judged guilty and sentenced to death by lethal injection. Appeals will keep you alive for some years. They'll be
struck down one after the next, and in time your mother will
cry over your grave, but-"

"Leave my mother out of this!"

Lomax's face turned a fiery red. He pushed up from the
chair and, shouting curses, aimed a headbutt at the judge,
falling short by two or three feet because of the cuffs and leg
irons. He dropped back into the chair, struggling for breath,
his eyes promising some future menace.

Knott, who'd stayed still as a statue through the attack,
answered him with a smile. "May I continue?"

"Screw you. I want my lawyer."

"As I was about to say, it doesn't have to be like that, Mr.
Lomax. You take my offer seriously, you'll be a free man before
you know it, out from under the shadow of prosecution. Back
to making regular visits to your mother at the Sunny Acres
nursing home. All your other habits, good and bad."

"Who are you to talk? My judge?"

"Yes. Your jury and executioner as well, if it comes to that.
Are you ready to listen?"

"What the hell. Spill it."

When the judge was finished, Lomax said, "That's all of it?
I send him sailing over the edge, this Arthur Six guy, and-"

"Exactly, Mr. Lomax. Arthur Six dies, you will go free,"
Judge Knott said, making it sound like an elementary exercise in justice. "The Arthur Six jury made a mockery of my
courtroom when it bought into the so-called Unwritten Law
invoked by his crafty lawyers, who cloaked Six in sympathy,
laid the blame on the victims, and convinced enough of the
jurors to cause a hung jury."

"My legal beagle's no amateur, so maybe I take my chances
with a jury. They vote my way-what then? It becomes my
turn. You set me up for a whack, send me sailing over the
edge?"

"You keep your end of the bargain, Mr. Lomax, I'll keep
mine."

"How much time I got before you need my answer?"

"Until I reach the door and call for the guard," the judge
said, rising.

At Central Justice Center in Santa Ana later that week, the
judge flipped through some legal paperwork before he spit a
little cough into his fist and announced, "Allowing that the
defendant has never been tried, much less convicted, of the
multitudinous crimes the district attorney maintains were of
his doing, the court denies the prosecution's motion to remand the defendant to custody. Bail is set at ..."

Lomax missed how much he'd have to fork over for his
freedom, too busy bear hugging his attorney, like it was Amos
Alzono Waldorf who'd pulled it off, at the same time thinking
how Judge Knott had delivered on his part of their deal, how
now it was Quentin Lomax's turn.

He already knew where to find Arthur Six.

The judge had seen to that.

Six was down south in San Juan Capistrano, at the mission, working as a gardener and handyman in exchange for
room and board in the friars' quarters; hiding his history as
an accused murderer under an assumed name, John Brown;
Lomax chuckled every time he thought about it on the train
ride down, trying to figure how much imagination it took to
come up with an alias like John Brown, as in not very much
imagination at all.

Stepping off the Amtrak at the station, he considered
what name he might pick for himself, it ever came to that,
not all that convinced he'd want to give up Quentin Lomax,
mainly because that would also mean giving up the rep he'd
worked damn hard to achieve over all these years with clients
who paid top dollar to get the kind of contract service that
would never track back to them.

Even that last friggin contract.

A fluke he got caught, but no way he'd let it go to touch
tag with the people who'd put their confidence in him, paid
him the cash money.

One of the reasons he gave in to Judge Knott, to prevent
something being said in open court that would implicate them.

Sail Arthur Six, a.k.a. John Brown, over the edge?

A cheap price to pay for the privilege.

Lomax fell in with the tourists window-shopping the antique stores and souvenir shops along the main drag leading
to Mission San Juan Capistrano. He bought himself through
the gate for seven bucks and split from the pack to go looking
for Six, confident someone who couldn't do better than John
Brown for an alias was no master of disguise.

He found Six after fifteen minutes of wandering around
what the tour brochure said was ten acres of gardens. Six was
on his knees, pulling weeds and puttering around inside a vegetable garden. Except for the Charlie Chaplin-Hitler kind of
mustache sitting slightly crooked under his eagle beak of a
nose and dirt smears on his forehead and cheeks where he
had been swiping off sweat with his muddy gloves, he looked
exactly like his mug shot.

"Growing tomatoes, looks like," Lomax said, starting up
small talk while heading toward Six from the sheltered archway, a distance of about twenty feet along the adobe path.

In no hurry.

Checking his bomber jacket pocket for the switchblade he
planned to exercise on Six's throat.

Saying, "Always taste better off the vine; what other
vegetables?"

"Fruit," Six said, sizing him up. "Tomatoes are a fruit, not
a vegetable. Nothing a lot of people realize, but they are."

"I learn something new every day ... Sounds like you
know your fruits," Lomax said.

"And vegetables. Over there, peas. There, carrots. Two
favorites of the friars. This is their private garden, where the
flower gardens, the bougainvilleas, and the water lilies floating in the Moorish fountain center of the patio area are also
meant to be enjoyed by one and all, the visitors like you."

"Corn?" Lomax searched over his shoulders for signs of
tourist traffic.

Nothing.

He fingered the switchblade, figuring to have Six sailing
over the edge in another minute, minute and a half, himself
out and gone, back to the Amtrak station and waiting for his
train to L.A. before anyone stumbled into the body.

Six said, "The brothers eat store-bought corn now, after
growing it for a while a lot of years ago. They love it, but don't
like the way the stalks grow and, they say, distract from the
beauty, the peace and solitude of the mission." He planted his
trowel in a water channel and, rising, brushed himself off and
stashed his gloves in his overalls.