Joe Gores - Menaced Assassin

Outside, L.A. was being washed away by the pineapple express. This particular sort of storm system is created when a strong winter low born in the Gulf of Alaska dervish-swirls off the coast of Washington State to drag warm, waterlogged clouds up from the tropical Pacific. It explodes over Southern California, the L.A. storm drains overflow, electric power shorts out, and million-dollar houses slide off their hillside stilts to end up as kindling on the canyon floors below.

But here, high in his ark above the raging waters, St. John suffered at a perfect 72 degrees F. He looked more like a film idol than a film attorney, with his piercing blue eyes, beautifully coiffed and gleaming gray hair, impeccable clothing. Now a touch of sadness on his stern, angular, clean-cut features as he daydreamed of his lost daughter, Molly St. John-he would never think of her as Moll Dalton, not ever, never.

Oh Molly! Molly! You beautiful child who at age five would have put Shirley Temple to shame! On the particular afternoon he was remembering, Daddy had just bathed little Molly and somehow had gotten so splashed in the process himself that he had stripped to towel off also…

Thus was born Horsy, the little secret game between just the two of them. St. John naked on his back on the big round bed made popular by Playboy centerfold shoots of those days, tiny naked Molly astride his bucking-bronco hips, riding the horsy, hanging on for dear life, shrieking with delight. Gripping horsy’s pommel with her little hands as it got bigger and bigger and stiffer and stiffer, the bucking bronco bucking harder and harder and faster and faster, little Molly hanging on tighter and tighter with both little hands as she shrieked with laughter…

What an explosion, on that first dim afternoon with the shades drawn against the searing LaLa Land light! Shrieks and tears, of course-totally unexpected hot and wet and sticky stuff all over her little hands and Daddy’s lean belly…

But a week later, Daddy volunteered another half-day home from the office just to take care of adorable little Molly. Bath, splashing, naked, toweling off, big dim bedroom… This time it didn’t surprise little Molly when Daddy’s big stiff pommel suddenly spurted all white and sticky. By now it was just part of the game of Horsy…

The intercom buzzed. St. John got his feet on the floor, his mind back inside his head, and answered. “Yes, Angelle.”

“A Lieutenant Stagnaro from the San Francisco Police Department, Mr. St. John. He wants to talk with you about-”

“I don’t recall any appointment. But…”

But he recalled Stagnaro. That officious phone call that hideous night that his darling Molly… And, more recently, St. John’s letter threatening legal action to make him back off Atlas Entertainment… Better to get it over with now.

“All right, five minutes, and he’s damned lucky to get it.”

He expected the sort of bullying bureaucrat who turned timid the moment he was jerked out from behind his official shield. He got Fonzie grown-up with gray in his hair. The epitome of every ballsy Italian stud hanging around a street corner in the Bronx, moving easily, in terrific shape, with a mobile face and alert eyes that St. John was sure missed nothing.

“Mighty nice of you to give me these five minutes, Mr. St. John,” he said in a voice that wasn’t at all grateful.

“Say your say and get out, Lieutenant,” said St. John coldly, fighting down his surprise at the man facing him across the desk. “I am an attorney and I know my rights.”

But Stagnaro merely settled back in a costly designer chair as if for a long stay, hooking one leg over its arm and swinging his foot idly.

“I just bet you do, pal,” he said. “As for being an attorney-things like that can change.”

“I take that as a threat, Lieutenant.”

Stagnaro waved a hospitable arm as if this were his office, not St. John’s. “Take it any way you want.” He got a notebook from his pocket and set it open on his knee, then didn’t refer to it or write in it at all. “I have a few questions.”

St. John sighed in a long-suffering manner.

“Go ahead, then, Lieutenant.”

“You ever molest your daughter?”

It was exactly as if someone had kicked him in the scrotum. He felt his face get pale and knew his mouth was gaping, but there wasn’t a single thing he could do about it for the moment. Scant minutes ago he had been daydreaming about sweet Molly and himself and Horsy, and here was Stagnaro asking him…

“How…” He’d almost blurted out How did you know? but his attorney instincts took over. “How dare you-”

“Seeing as how you pimped for your daughter several times during her marriage to Dr. Dalton, I get the feeling you either didn’t value her enough or valued her way too much.”

It had to be bitch Gloria’s work, trying to hurt him even more by… but maybe, he thought, seeing a ray of light at the end of this particular horrible tunnel, maybe that abrogated the terms of the agreement under which he was paying her those ghastly alimony payments and she kept herself hard to find. She had put in writing that she would not divulge anything about… about him and Molly. So if she had gone public now, even a quarter century after the event…

“Such a disgusting accusation does not deserve the dignity of a reply,” he snapped belatedly. Perhaps too belatedly.

“Exception noted, Counselor-isn’t that what you lawyers like to say? So we’ll stick to the public record: the hard-core porn-film company you set up back in ’72.”

St. John’s name had appeared nowhere on those incorporation papers, and this hadn’t come from Gloria; she had walked off by then. His association with Mr. Prince had come about because she had walked off-with infant Molly and every dime he owned.

“Benny the Bullet-you remember Benny, don’t you, Counselor? He was looking at twenty-to-life for one of his little peccadillos, so he decided to fill us in on everything he knew about anything, even when he got toilet-trained. Verbal diarrhea, tell you the truth. Freedom Films came up.”

St. John rallied again. “If I did give free legal advice to some acquaintances in setting up a small corporation, there was nothing illegal about it. And in the early seventies-”

“A quarter of a mil and points to set up the fuck-film company is the way I heard it.” Stagnaro winked at him across the desk. “Never declared, Counselor. I haven’t talked with the folks over at the IRS… yet. But I bet they’d love to try to make a net-worth case out of it.”

He’d owed the shylock a lot of money and that Benny person had come around talking about electric drills and kneecaps. All that bitch Gloria’s fault, she’d stripped him naked and he’d had to borrow from the leg-breakers because nobody else would lend him enough to keep his nascent legal firm afloat…

“Why… are you here?” he asked hollowly.

But Stagnaro said, “My five minutes are up, Counselor.” He stood, leaned across the desk. “Atlas Entertainment,” he said. “Kosta Gounaris.” He dropped his voice lower. “Martin Prince.”

St. John jerked back as if Stagnaro were a viral infection. “What…”

“Maybe you have the impression that I’m a homicide cop, Counselor. I’m not. I head up the SFPD’s Organized Crime Task Force. Anything organized, not just the mob; but the thought of dropping on somebody like Martin Prince gets me so excited I have to go buff my nails. And you’re gonna help with my impossible dream, pal, ’cause you got short eyes.”

“Short… eyes?”

“Old penitentiary term for your kind of pervert. You like to do it with little kids-short people. But the big people you’re dealing with, they don’t like pedophiles.”