Сьюзен Стрейт - Orange County Noir

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.”

“Pat O’Brien.”

“As the priest, yeah, sort of like you’ll be now, while I need to confess something to you.” Lomax moved his eyes away from the judge and focused on his drink. “It’s like this, Your Honor — what I said to you before about Arthur Six telling me he gave a letter to a friend, for the friend to make public if you didn’t square your deal with him?”

“Go on.”

“Was a lie I invented. Insurance you would go ahead and square your deal with Arthur Six, get him off the hook on the murder-one charges. You came through with flying colors, so points for that. Any man who finds himself with a cheating bitch of a wife, he deserves all the sympathy and understanding he can get.”

The judge couldn’t hide his annoyance. “That was definitely none of your business, Mr. Lomax. Our agreement called for you to deal with Mr. Six in a forceful manner that would allow me to unburden you of a trial and conviction of murder. Not Arthur Six, Mr. Lomax. You.”

“Except you made it my business, Your Honor, which gets us to my second lie, where I said Arthur Six didn’t tell me what the deal was he made with you? He did, though. How he was supposed to kill me when I caught up with him down in Capistrano? How you had it all arranged with him? That wasn’t a very nice trick to play on me, Your Honor, not so very nice at all.”

The judge sprang to his feet, fists clenched and pounding the air, his head spinning out of control. Shrieking, “There are lies and then there are damned lies! That’s a damned lie Six fed you, Mr. Lomax, clearly to save his own skin. Our deal involved a reasonable sum of money to be paid me for my cooperation in the courtroom, on Arthur Six’s promise he would kill no more, never again. Were he here now, I would call him a liar to his face.” He sank back into the recliner.

“Why not?” Lomax said. He pointed to the archway that led to the central corridor, calling, “C’mon out and show your face, Artie.”

Arthur Six materialized to the invitation.

Judge Knott groaned.

Lomax laughed. “What say, Artie? Which one of you’s been playing the truth for a sucker?”

“You heard it all already, Quentin. That answer’s in my checkbook. A big fat goose egg for a balance, not a golden goose. What little I had all went for lawyers already, why I was going to need a public defender if a new trial came about.”