Сьюзен Стрейт: Orange County Noir

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.

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.”