Jeff Sherratt - Detour to Murder

“Mabel, please. I have enough on my mind without listening to this crap.”

“Hold on, Buster, don’t get surly with me! I’m just trying to let you know the trouble we’re in. Did you know that there’s no money for payroll this week? I’ll work with you, but Christ…” She didn’t finish her sentence. She bent her head and started to shuffle papers-bills, most likely.

“Sorry, Mabel. You’re right. I’m a little tired, that’s all. Tell you what: I’ll pull Rita off the case. Tomorrow she can cruise the halls at the Criminal Courts Building, searching for people who might need our help.”

“What about you? Did you take Millie to lunch?”

Damn, I’d forgotten all about Millie. “Aw, yeah, Millie. Yeah, I called her. She couldn’t make it-”

She whirled around in her swivel chair. “Quit your goddamn lying. Millie called here looking for you. Said you stood her up again. She’s pissed, and so am I.”

“Thought you said there were no calls.”

“I said there were no clients who called.” She stood and marched to the door.

“Where you going?” I said to her back.

“Out to look for a job.” She slammed the door behind her.

I stood there without moving, hardly breathing, rooted in the middle of the mess I’d created. I wondered why I had to lie to people that I cared for. Maybe it’s because of the fact that I did care for them. Maybe I didn’t want them to worry. One person in the office scared out of his wits was enough, wasn’t it? But I knew that was a lie too. The real reason had to be… I didn’t want to face it. I didn’t want to admit that I had failed again, even to myself. I was already in my mid-thirties and had accomplished nothing. Bupkis , as Sol would say. It seemed my whole life had been one failed disaster after another: divorce, fired from the LAPD, and now I was about to lose my law practice. I was rushing headlong down a path to total ruin.

I set the telephone answering machine to pick up and left for Rocco’s.

“Hey, here’s Jimmy with the long face,” I heard Sol boom from his table in the middle of the cocktail bar at Rocco’s. I tried to put on a lighthearted air and even smiled as I worked my way through the group of regulars. I pulled out a chair and sat at Sol’s table, heaped with plates of appetizers.

“Jimmy, my boy. Here, take a bite of this.” Sol shoved some kind of canape in my face, a round cracker with a glob of pink paste on it.

“Not hungry, Sol. Mabel said you wanted to see me.”

“Eat the goddamn thing. You’ll feel better. I’m tired of your hangdog attitude. Now cheer up.” He kept jabbing the bite-sized snack at me.

I took a nibble. A delicious sensation filled my mouth. “Hey, Sol, this stuff is great.” I ate the rest of it, reached out and grabbed another one.

“My own secret recipe,” Sol said. “Andre has the chef make it special for me. I had him sign a non-disclosure agreement.”

“No kidding. What is it?” I asked, taking another bite.

“I said it was a secret. I’m not gonna tell you.”

By now I was on my third one. I didn’t realize how hungry I was. “Aw, c’mon, Sol. I won’t tell anyone.”

He looked around and then leaned into me, his eyes shifting from side to side. Finally he whispered in a slow conspiratorial tone, “It’s cooked lobster,” he leaned in closer, “mixed with a can of cold Campbell’s mushroom soup and smeared on a Ritz Cracker. But here’s what makes it good: I tell them to put in exactly eight drops of Tabasco.”

“Yeah, I can taste it. Gives it a little tang.” Sol was right; the lobster thing did make me feel a bit better.

He snapped his fingers. “Hey, Andre! Tell the chef to whip up another batch of Sol’s Delight and bring it to Jimmy.”

We sat there for the next twenty minutes eating a couple orders of Sol’s secret concoction. He drank a half-bottle of Dom Perignon with his. For a fleeting moment I wondered if giving up booze had been the wise thing to do. I could climb in that bottle of champagne and put the Roberts case behind me. Turn out the lights, the party’s over, Jimmy has left the building.

Finally, Sol leaned back. “A delightful repast, now it’s down to business.”

“You wanted to see me because Bugliosi called?” I asked.

“Did I beep you?”

I patted the beeper still in my pocket. “No, guess not.”

“Then it’s not about Bugliosi. Is it?”

“Aw, for chrissakes, Sol. Why’d you want to see me?”

“I have news about that Mercedes you spotted at the retirement home in Woodland Hills.”

“No kidding? What have you got?”

“First, tell me why you’ve been in a funk the last couple of days. Not like you, Jimmy.”

“I don’t want to talk about my problems.”

“You gotta talk. Get it out in the open.”

“What? Now you’re a priest, my confessor?”

“Yeah, Father Sol Silverman, the Jewish Jesuit.” Sol laughed. “Now cut the crap, Jimmy. What gives?”

“It’s this case. It’s got me all tied in knots. Mabel quit today because I’ve been acting like an asshole.”

“She quit? My God, you need her. She keeps that fahklumpt office of yours running straight. Give her a raise. She’ll come back.”

“Give her a raise? I haven’t got any frigging money as it is. How am I going to give her a raise?”

“Jimmy, I could loan you a few bucks. You’ve always paid me back-”

“No way, Sol, I’ve got to do this on my own. When I ask for your professional help with my cases you always come through. But enough is enough. I can’t ask for money on top of everything else.”

“First of all, when I work on your cases, I work for your clients. And when you’re working pro bono, so am I. And, what the hell, we’re friends aren’t we?”

“Yeah, we’re friends, but-”

“If you can’t stick it to your friends, who can you stick it to? Is that what you’re trying to say?” Sol said and laughed.

I laughed too, a mirthless laugh. “You know better than that, Sol. But I’ve been thinking, maybe I’d better forget about the case. I’ll never be able to pull it off. Maybe Sue Harvey’s dead. I’ll never find her, and Roberts is in the wind, gone to God knows where. I told him to get on that goddamn bus-”

“Yeah, good idea. Quiet. You’ll be washed up as a lawyer, but hey, I could get you a job mopping hallways in my office building.”

“Cut it out, Sol. I didn’t mean I’d quit the law, just this case.”

“You listen to me, Mr. Down-in-the-Mouth, you’re no quitter.” Sol paused in thought. “Well, you did quit drinking, but that’s not what I’m talking about. Anyway, if you quit Roberts you may as well quit the law business altogether, because you won’t be worth a damn after that. You’ll quit again the next time the going gets tough-and they’re all tough. Now, what’s Mabel’s phone number?”

“Why?”

“What’s her goddamn phone number?” he asked while signaling the waitress to bring him a telephone.

“You not going to call her, are you?”

“This is the third time. What’s the fucking number?”

I rattled off Mabel’s home number and at the same time Jeanine, the waitress, plugged the phone in at our booth. Sol started to dial.

“Sol, damn it. It won’t do any good. Her mind is made-”

“Hi, Mabel, this is Sol. Listen, sweetheart, Jimmy wants you to come back to work. He misses you desperately. He’s like a lost little boy without you. Now, I’ve had a firm talk with him, and from now on he’s going to treat you with the respect you deserve. He’s even offered to give you a raise-that is, as soon the Roberts case is over. You know, Mabel, when he gets that poor schmuck out of the jam he’s in, Jimmy will be famous. The phone will ring off the hook-”