Orange County Noir (Akashic Noir) (7 page)

There wasn't a lot to him, maybe 120 pounds stretched
over two or three inches less than six feet. A strong breeze
might be able to carry him to the Pacific, Lomax decided.

Only a few yards from him now, he tightened his grip on
the switchblade, saying, "I thought I'd see the swallows they're always writing about. How the swallows been coming to Mission San Juan Capistrano year in and year out, every year, for
hundreds of years."

"That happens in March, not this time of year," Six replied.
"And it's not happening so much in March anymore, either,
though no one knows why they stopped coming." He held out
his left palm like a traffic cop, adding, "And you can stop right
there, no funny moves, you know what's good for you."

He raised his other arm to give Lomax a better look at the
.22 caliber automatic he had aimed at him, its blue steel barrel
reflecting the bright sunlight.

"What's that all about?" Lomax asked, hanging onto his
cool, fishing for time while his mind raced after a way to do
Six before he could squeeze the trigger, the look on Six's face
telling him the poor schnook was working on a different unwritten law here, the law of survival, and would have no problem adding a third corpse to his count. "Some kind of joke you
like to play on strangers who stray off the guided tour?"

"Nothing personal. A matter of life and death. Quentin
Lomax dies so that Arthur Six can go on living. Simple as
that."

Right then, hearing Six speak his name, Lomax recognized that Judge Knott had played him for a sap. Set him up.
He said, "You know who I am."

"Yes, and don't move another inch, or else. I know how to
shoot this thing. See? The safety is off and all."

"You were expecting me."

"I was. You take a pretty nice picture, by the way, although
your smile leaves a lot to be desired. Braces growing up, they
would have helped."

"Braces cost money ... So, you also know what brought
me down to Capistrano?"

"A ruse. The judge said you'd be real easy for him to trick.
He was right as rain."

"Who are you? Einstein? Thinking no one will ever come
along and see through that stupid mustache you grew like a
vegetable, raise a holy stink about you being here, Mr. Arthur
Six with that dumb-ass John Brown name?"

"The law says I'm innocent until I'm proven guilty. Besides, I'm in a place where kindness, love, and forgiveness are
the rule."

"And killing me, they'll love and forgive you for that?"

"The way it looks-got attacked by this loony, speaking
gibberish and pointing a gun at me for no reason at all. We got
to fighting, the gun went off, and-"

"John!" A friar in a hooded cassock called for Arthur Six
from across the courtyard, distracting him.

Lomax leaped forward, barreling hard into Six, wrestling
him to the ground.

Six bear-hugged Lomax as they rolled in the dirt, knocking over the seed packages on sticks set in the ground to spot
the lima beans, the potatoes.

Lomax was too strong for him.

He broke free and forged possession of the .22, gripped it
by its pearl handle, and stuck the automatic under Six's chin.
Said, "You want to keep your head attached to your body, say
whatever it takes to make Friar Tuck go away, unless you want
me using him for target practice."

"Then what?" Six struggled for breath; barely able to get
the question out.

"What do you think?"

"You look surprised to see me, Your Honor."

"Surprised to see you inside my home, Mr. Lomax, enjoy ing the comforts of my bar," Judge Knott said, his face a study
in irritation and no small amount of concern; eyes blinking
furiously.

"French windows. You should remember to always shut
and lock 'em up tight if you're going out. Otherwise, they're
an open invitation to burglars, or worse ... The mixed nuts
on the stale side; you might want to do something about that
too, next time you go grocery shopping."

"Full of handy hints. A regular Martha Stewart, are
you?"

"Hardly. Martha Stewart, she served time, not me. Prison's not where I'm heading, if your word's better'n your bowl
of mixed nuts."

"Given this unexpected visit-shall I assume that you've
upheld your part of our arrangement?"

"Days ago."

"I've seen nothing about Arthur Six reported on the
news."

"Or John Brown, dumb alias he picked. And you won't,
never. I taught him the Jimmy Hoffa trick."

The judge half-smiled, nodded understanding. "Excellent," he said. "Then you're free to assume your case will
be fast-tracked by me out of my courtroom and the charges
dropped by the district attorney once and for good. My early
congratulations to you, Mr. Lomax."

"How many strings you pulling to make that happen, Your
Honor?"

"Mr. Lomax, do I ask you how you conduct your business?"

"No offense. Only curious. Wondering if it's as many
strings as for Arthur Six."

"For Arthur Six? Precisely what is it you think you know,
Mr. Lomax?"

"Only what Six thought he knew and was saying to me
before words failed him along with everything else."

"Care to share?"

"Six told me you got him a hung jury, not his lawyer, by the
way you kept shutting down the DA's people and holding onto
his leash through intimidation; said you told him you would
keep the DA from following through on retrying his sorry ass
if he was game for doing something for you in trade."

"Did he say what the trade might be?"

"Nah, like it was some giant, friggin state secret between
you and him, but he said he wrote it all down and gave it to
someone he trusted to pass on to the news bloodhounds if it
ever turned out you broke your word to him and didn't make
the charge blow away for good, or if something happened to
him, like it was about to."

"Such poppycock. Who would take the word of an absent,
accused murderer facing a retrial for killing his wife and her
lover over that of a distinguished jurist, an Orange County
Superior Court judge who has served with honor and distinction for twenty-four years?"

"I suppose anybody who decided to run against you in
next year's election, figuring a little scandal is good for the
ballot box, but I can see by looking at you that ain't gonna be
the case, right, Your Honor?"

Judge Knott gave Lomax the reassurances he wanted, several times, Lomax putting the question to him from different directions until, professing satisfaction, he allowed their
conversation to dwindle into small talk. He poured himself
another scotch, picked his way through the nut bowl, and left
the same way he had entered, making a show of shutting the
French window and testing the safety lock. A conspiratorial wink and an animated thumbs-up became the last the judge
saw of him before he disappeared into the moonless night.

The judge spent a motionless minute before he blew a fat
breath across the room and followed it to the bar.

A tall vodka helped him collect his nerves; then another
before he reached after his cell phone and had the service
connect him with Mission San Juan Capistrano; asked the
birdlike soprano who answered the call if he might speak with
John Brown.

No, sorry, she said.

Dear John disappeared earlier in the week without notice.

No telling when he might be back, if ever, God bless him.

The judge's next call was to the district atorney at his private number.

It was time to collect on a few past favors due.

He wanted the book closed on Six, wanted Six out of
his courtroom as well as his life, should the media ever come
around asking embarrassing questions, like why so many
postponements on a trial date or why no bench warrant issued for the arrest of a defendant who'd obviously fled. And
he had to make good on his deal with Lomax, construct a
wall of comfort between them until he could make other
arrangements.

"Spence, it's Ollie Knott here," he said into the phone,
and after some pleasantries, "Spence, I need a little help from
my friend . . . "

A week later, Lomax was in the courtroom with his impeccably groomed showboat of an $800-an-hour lawyer, Amos
Alonzo Waldorf, Esq., exuding a cocky confidence from a
back row seat as the judge mechanically breezed through the
first call on a morning calendar bursting with the usual run of motions and pleadings until Mary Rose Treeloar, the greenest
lawyer on the DA's staff, rose to request a dismissal.

A sleepy-eyed, overweight brunette in a cheap pinstriped
suit that told everything there was to know about her pay
grade, Mary Rose was facing the judge for the first time.

Her stammer betrayed her unfamiliarity with the Arthur
Six case as she alternated reading from her yellow pad and
fumbling after documents in a modest stack of manila file
folders with twitchy smiles for Judge Knott that seemed to beg
for his understanding.

The judge made a show of asking tough questions, an interrogation that soon had the young, inexperienced DA on
the edge of tears. He had bet himself he would have her crying
outright before second morning call, at the same time lamenting the sad quality of the lawyers being turned out nowadays
by even the highest-rated universities. She wasn't the first to
be put to his test. She wouldn't be his last.

He scored earlier than expected.

He had the tears spilling over her cheeks shortly before he
eased his reign of terror, accepted the DA's decision against
retrying Arthur Six, and removed the trial date from his calendar, saying, "I am similarly convinced the lack of any additional evidence against Mr. Six suggests we would only be
tossing substantially more good money after bad and wasting
valuable time that can be put to better use by this court."

Turning contemptuous eyes on Fix's preening lawyer, who
was smiling and nodding approval as if he had brought about
this happy turn, Judge Knott observed for the record, "I didn't
entirely buy into your shoddy excuse for your client's absence,
sir. His face was not one I needed to see again and further
delays would have changed nothing, but I strongly urge you to
never again let something like this occur in my courtroom."

Next, the judge moved up hearing a dismissal motion from
Amos Alonzo Waldorf to just before his toilet break, instead
of waiting until after lunch, where it was listed on the day's
calendar.

This threw Mary Rose into a mild asthma attack.

When she finished gasping for air, she requested that the
matter be delayed until after the lunch break, as scheduled,
or, that failing, second call.

She said, "I got assigned only this morning, the absolute
last minute, Your Honor," her voice an exercise in fear. "I
haven't had enough time as of yet to completely review the
Lomax files and compile my notes and-"

Judge Knott shut Mary Rose down with a school crossing
guard's gesture, looked at her like he was examining a wart.
"All interested parties are present and accounted for, Miss
Treeloar. Request denied, and I suggest in the future you work
longer and harder on your preparation skills."

He struck a pose, his elbows on the bench, hands forming
a pyramid, as Waldorf marched forward, adjusted his $3,000
Armani suit jacket, fussed a bit with his understated silk tie
and matching pocket handkerchief, and launched into a
catalog of reasons and citations for dismissing the murder
charge against his client, the put-upon and wrongfully accused Mr. Quentin Lomax, making a crown jewel of every
word he spoke.

Mary Rose stammered and stuttered through a set of
responses that earned frequent yawns from the judge. He
knocked them down, one after another, before hammering
her quiet, declaring, "Miss Treeloar, Mr. Waldorf's persuasive
arguments coupled with your ineptness oblige me to find in
his favor. Motion to dismiss granted."

Mary Rose promptly suffered another asthma attack.

Lomax pulled Waldorf to him and planted a fat kiss on the
lawyer's mouth.

A few nights later, the look on Judge Knott's face reminded
Lomax of that girl lawyer he had turned into hamburger, the
poor kid in a zombie-state and sucking up the oxygen, her
skin the color of chalk when the paramedics rolled her out of
the courtroom. Knott looked scared, wearing his nerves like a
heavy-duty aftershave, like he knew what had brought Lomax
uninvited into his home again; like he knew it wasn't just for
another taste of his expensive hooch or another trip through
the nut bowl.

"Glad to see you did something about the locks on those
French windows, Your Honor, but you shouldn't-a stopped
there," Lomax said. "This place is easy pickings even for an
amateur; easier to crack than an egg."

The judge, his composure back in harness, replied, "Having concluded our business, I did not expect another visit from
you, Mr. Lomax."

"Not exactly concluded, though. Some loose ends."

"How so these loose ends?" He soldiered across the den,
maneuvered behind the bar, helped himself to a vodka, and
offered a pour to Lomax.

"Stickin with the scotch," Lomax said. "I don't ever mix
my liquors, any more than I ever mix business with pleasure
... Cheers!" He clanked glasses with the judge.

"And these loose ends of yours, are they business or pleasure, Mr. Lomax?"

Lomax blew out an untranslatable exclamation. "You got
me there, Your Honor. Now I think about it, a little-a both.
You call it. Which you wanna hear first?"

"You choose," Judge Knott answered, circling back around the bar and settling in one of the leather recliners facing the
giant plasma TV screen occupying most of the paneled wall
across from the stone-faced fireplace. He used the remote to
turn on the picture and mute the sound.

"That old movies channel, huh? Me too, whenever I got
time," Lomax said. "The flick where Jimmy Cagney's in the
joint, listening to his boyhood chum, the priest, trying to talk
him into something. Never get tired of watching that one
whenever it's on."