Killer

CHAPTER 25

Sherman Oaks is an upscale neighborhood but there’s a stretch, where Ventura Boulevard crosses Van Nuys and slithers west, where the ambience dips to fast food, questionable merchandise, and deferred maintenance.

Myron Ballister’s office was located square in the middle of that downgrade, on the ground floor of a two-story Band-Aid-colored building slivered between a Farsi-bannered outfit hawking disposable cell phones and a once-grand art deco movie theater converted to a “bargain emporium.”

The interior was two units wide but only one tenant deep, with Suites A and B divided by a strip of green-carpeted hallway that died at a pebbled-cement stairway. Ballister’s slide-in door shingle said he practiced solo. The door was plywood in need of refinishing. Unlocked.

What passed for a waiting room did double duty as a reception area, with barely enough space for either function. Myron Ballister’s staff consisted of a girl around twenty stationed behind a warped desk. Her hair was a whirl of wheat-colored dreadlocks. Two visible tattoos: Tinker Bell cavorting on her left forearm, Choose Your Weapon on her right. Her armaments were a two-line phone, a closed laptop, and an iPod playing Pink’s “Don’t Let Me Get Me.”

Milo’s badge elicited, “Cops? What’s up?”

“We’d like to talk to Mr. Ballister.”

“He’s at lunch.”

“Where?”

“El Padron.”

“Where’s that?”

“Up the block.” She pointed to the left. “Uh no, that way.” Aiming right.

“You been working here long?”

“He’s my cousin,” she said. “I’m filling in.”

“For his regular secretary?”

She giggled. “For him. He used to do everything himself, then I came down to go to school and he’s like help me look like a lawyer, Amanda, I’ll even pay you.” She shrugged. Dreads swayed, a ballet of chorizo. “I’m like, sure.”

“What’re you studying?”

“Aesthetic technology.”

“Beauty school?”

She pouted. “It’s a lot more. We learn the science of how skin works.” She peered up at his ravaged complexion.

He said, “Hopeless, huh?”

“I mean … there’s always help. You should do moisturizer — no, maybe something actually to dry it up.”

“Thanks for the advice, Amanda. What does Myron look like?”

“He’s got pretty good skin.”

“How old is he?”

“Like thirty.”

“What’s he wearing today?”

“Um um um um … black shirt … gray tie … he’s a little fat but don’t say I said that.”

El Padron turned out to be El Patron. Mock adobe, mock Spanish tile, mock leaded glass, mock wrought iron. The logo above the door was a spavined, serape-draped burro eyeing a droopy cactus. The cactus had a disturbingly human face — lewd, squinty-eyed, unctuously malevolent.

Milo said, “Fat, cute, black shirt,” and pushed his way in.

The dining room was commodious and dim, filled with blue vinyl chairs and booths and tables molded from the same polyvinyl as the door. Fuzzy-focus bullfight poster prints hung too close together. Mariachi heavy on off-key trombones comprised the soundtrack.

For all that, nice aromas prevailed: frijoles, corn, tomatillo. The beefy sizzle of carne asada.

The host booth was unoccupied. The reservation book was blank. As our eyes accommodated to the darkness, a waitress in an off-the-shoulder peasant dress circled into view. “Señors? Vaya con dios!”

Sixtyish, blond, she had an open face owing more to Ghent than Guadalajara.

Milo smiled but looked past her. Only three parties in the big room, all in booths ringing the west wall. Middle-management types drinking Dos Equis and Margaritas, an elderly couple ignoring each other as they shoveled food, a younger couple ignoring their food as they held hands and nose-nuzzled. The young man was fair-haired, wore a black shirt and a gray tie, the woman dark-haired and petite, had on a sleeveless white dress.

Milo told the waitress, “Our friends are over there.”

“Okay muy bueno. I’ll fetch you some menus and while you’re looking you want a couple Margaritas we got frozen strawberry on special today it’s fresh blended with real fruit?”

He read her name tag. “That’s awfully tempting, Louella, but we won’t be sticking around long enough.”

“You want nothing?”

“Not for now.”

We proceeded toward Ballister and his girlfriend. Her back was to us. Ballister’s wasn’t but he was wrapped up in her, paid no notice as we got close. His light hair was straight, waxy, longish, edging into blond at the tips. Styled for surfer, whether or not he’d ever stepped onto a board.

He had broad shoulders, a long face, big hands. No evidence of obesity.

He and the dark-haired woman continued to link fingers. He was grinning.

Milo stepped up to their booth, announced, “Sorry to intrude, kids,” with utter lack of sincerity.

Myron Ballister’s pale eyes widened. Up this close he remained lean, the only aspect of his appearance remotely suggesting spare adipose the beginning of a double chin.

“Pardon?” he said. Boyish voice. Smooth brow untrammeled by worry.

Milo said, “Myron Ballister?”

“Uh-huh—”

The woman in the white dress swung around and stared at me. “You? What the hell?”

Ballister said, “Honey, you know these—?”

Medea Wright jerked her small, manicured, bejeweled hand out of his. The other one had already formed a fist.

I made the introductions, explained Wright’s role in the Sykes case. Milo said, “So this is what, a legal conference?”

More likely the aftermath of the convention in Palm Springs. Continuing education, indeed.

Wright grimaced. “I demand an explanation—”

Milo said, “You two were on opposite sides, now you’re an item? Which came first, work or romance?”

Medea Wright’s perfect makeup couldn’t hide the color in her cheeks. “That’s your business? Who the hell are you, anyway?”

Milo handed her his card.

“Homicide? What the hell’s going on?”

“You don’t know.”

She drew herself up to the max but genetics limited the drama of the gesture. “If I knew would I ask you?”

Myron Ballister said, “Honey, this is getting weird—”

She showed him her palm. “Don’t say a word. Who the hell knows what they’re up to.”

Milo said, “What I’m up to is solving a murder, Ms. Wright. No curiosity as to who the victim is?”

Wright said, “Either way, you’re going to tell me.”

Singular tense; Ballister had become irrelevant.

He said, “Oh, man. Someone got killed?”

Without looking at him, Wright said, “That’s what murder usually means.”

Ballister’s face remained blandly surprised. No offense taken. He probably figured he was out of his league in the first place.

Medea Wright pointed at Milo. “Okay, go.”

When her gaze faltered, he said, “Your client, Constance Sykes.”

She shrieked, “What!” Her voice was talons ripping satin. The drinkers at the end of the dining room put their glasses down and stared. The elderly couple paused in their gorging.

Louella hurried over. “Everything okay?”

Medea Wright waved her away. “We’re having a discussion.”

Louella said, “Well, obviously,” and left.

Wright said, “Tell me exactly what happened.”

Milo said, “A couple of nights ago someone killed Dr. Sykes.”

“That’s insane.” Wright plucked a corn chip out of a lava-rock bowl, nibbled nonstop like a rabbit on meth. Swallowing hard, she pulverized two more chips with power-grinder jaws.

Ballister watched her with awe. Then he turned to us. “You’re actually saying—”

Wright cut him off. “That is totally totally insane.”

Ballister said, “Totally,” and reached for her hand. She drew away. “Who did it?”

Milo said, “That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

She glared at me. “So why’s he here?”

“Dr. Delaware works with us from time to time.”

“Does he? Doing what?”

“Psychological consultations.”

“I know all about his consultations. He’s a courtroom regular.” She smirked. “You’re trying to tell me he just happened to be on call for the police department when a case he had prior involvement with turned … bad?”

Milo said, “Actually, Ms. Wright, Dr. Delaware was already involved. On a whole different level.”

“What are you talking about? Stop dancing around the facts and spit it out.”

He gave her a minimally brutal summary of Connie Sykes’s aborted murder plot.

She gaped. “What? That’s impossible.”

He began to repeat himself.

She said, “I heard you, I just don’t believe it … this is bizarre.”

Milo said, “Believe it, Ms. Wright.”

Ballister muttered, “Totally nuts.”

Wright said, “You’re claiming Connie actually threatened him?”

Milo edged so close to her that she was forced to crane. “No need to defend her, Counselor. She can’t be held accountable anymore. So this is the first time you’re hearing about the plot.”

“Of course! What do you take me for?”

“Well,” he said, “maybe just a lawyer doing her job. Or thinking she was. Anything a client tells you is confide—”

“Not when someone’s life is at stake, that’s revolting and insulting, you’re being absolutely …” Swallowing whatever nasty adjective she’d intended, she breathed in and out three times, spread her hands on the table. The color had spread below her perfect jawline. She tried to slow her respiration but failed.

High-strung, compulsively combative woman, the kind of temperament that builds certain types of careers but can also corrode the psyche.

She turned to me. “You think I’d actually let something like that happen to you or anyone else? That hurts my feelings. I can’t believe you’d actually believe—”

Milo said, “Neither I nor Dr. Delaware believes anything at this point, Ms. Wright. It’s my job to ask questions.”

“Well, here’s your answer: I had nothing to do with anything. And I can prove my moral fiber because when I was aware of possible peril, I did provide notice to the intended target.”

I said, “Connie threatened someone else?”

“It didn’t rise to the level of—”

“Who?” My voice had turned hard.

She said, “Judge Maestro. Whom I promptly informed, okay? So if Connie had told me anything about you, I’d have informed you as well.”

Milo said, “You told the judge but not the police.”

Wright’s hands were fists again. “Now you listen: I was under no obligation to tell anyone because the level of threat was ambiguous. But I did so anyway. At the risk of putting my standing at the bar in jeopardy. Why? Because I’m a moral person. Now, who killed my client?”

Milo said, “What was ambiguous about the threat to Judge Maestro?”

Sharp intake of breath. “Dr. Sykes never came out and said she was planning to harm the judge or anyone else. After the case closed, she phoned me to vent, it’s a common after-reaction. And understandable, she was outraged about what she considered a miscarriage of justice. A conclusion with which I concurred. She felt the system had failed her and that the child would suffer. I allowed her to express herself. For closure. The more she talked the more worked up she got and then in the course of her discourse she said she felt like killing someone. Immediately after that, she went on a rant about Judge Maestro, specifically. How biased she’d been from the onset, how unwilling she’d been to have an open mind. It was the association that concerned me.”

Milo said, “Wanting to kill someone, then seguing to the judge.”

“There you go, Lieutenant. You’re getting it. Quite obviously, there was no actionable threat. But I warned the judge anyway and if that’s not proof of—”

“How did the judge respond?”

Beautiful teeth chewed Wright’s upper lip. “I left a telephonic message.”

“You assumed she’d receive it.”

“I never heard she didn’t receive it.” She gave another dismissive wave. “I have nothing more to say to you.”

“Actually,” said Milo, “it was Mr. Ballister we’re here to see, not you.”

Not being the focus made Wright frown.

“So if you’d give us some time with Mr. Ballist—”

“You want me to leave? Fine! I’m gone.” Milo stepped away and she slid out of the booth, stamped off.

Myron Ballister said, “Oh, man.”

Milo said, “Sorry to ruin your hot date.”

“She’s like a Ferrari, zero to a hundred in … whatever. What do you guys need from me?”

“How long you been practicing law?”

“Me? Just this year.”

“Helluva case to start with.”

“I had others before,” said Ballister. “A couple.”

“Also child custody?”

“No, just … coupla traffics … one DUI.”

“So you don’t specialize in family law.”

“I’m still trying to figure out what I’m into.”

Milo slid into the spot vacated by Medea Wright. I took up the remaining space in the booth. Ballister, hemmed in, eyed the bowl of chips.

Milo nudged it just out of reach. “Who referred Cherie Sykes to you?”

“That’s confidential.”

“Really? Something silly like that?” Milo inched closer to him.

“Whatever, Craigslist. I have an ad there.” Ballister fidgeted. “Starting out’s tough.”

“Hey, whatever works, Myron.”

“Go to Yale like Medea, it’s easier.”

I said, “You won the case.”

“Yeah,” he said, as if he still couldn’t believe it. “The day after, Medea calls, I’m thinking, It’s finished, you lost, now what? But she was different. Friendly. She asked for a meeting. Dinner, near her office. I didn’t get it, but, okay, why not?” Baleful smile. “I was hoping she was impressed with my winning, her firm wanted to interview me or something.”

“So you guys had dinner.”

“Not for long.” Ballister’s Nordic complexion made blushing a quick process. Sweat beaded his nose. “I’m thinking this can’t be happening, she went to friggin’ Yale.”

Milo said, “A girl who knows what she wants, Myron. Lucky you.”

“Yeah.” Ballister’s shoulders relaxed. He grinned. Now we were just a bunch of guys talking about women. “She says it — the attraction — is because I’m easygoing. Both of her exes were total assholes.”

“Sometimes nice guys finish first.”

“I like to go to sleep feeling okay about what I did that day. Before I went to law school I worked at a nonprofit for a couple years. Social work assistant, helping farm people get benefits. I ever pay back my student loans I’ll go back to that but as an attorney.”

“Public interest law.”

“Medea calls it public nuisance. She can get a little … outspoken.”

I said, “You like helping people, so when Cherie Sykes came to you …”

“I was surprised. That she’d just do it with Craigslist. I mean traffic is one thing, even a DUI if it’s a first offense. But your kid? I told her I’d never done anything like that, maybe she wanted someone with more experience. She said nope, she liked the vibe I gave off.”

His smile was gentle. “I figured maybe she also liked the price.”

I said, “You actually charged her?”

“A little.” Another shrug. “She’s not exactly rich, right? Not like her sister, that’s what bothered me, her sister having someone like Medea. It wasn’t balanced.”

I said, “Luckily the law was on your side.”

“After I read up on guardianship I realized that. But still, you never know. I figured we needed for Ree to not look like a serious criminal or an outright psycho. Which she isn’t — she’s a really nice person, am I right, Doctor? But with the system, you never know. When I worked at the agency I saw all sorts of crazy stuff go down, shit that didn’t make sense but there was nothing you could do, judges are in charge. When I found out we were getting Judge Maestro I tried to research her, couldn’t find any pattern. She wasn’t doing much guardianship, period, it was mostly inheritance disputes, conservatorships, whatever. So I just didn’t know. Anyway thanks for your report, Dr. Delaware. It really helped.”

Milo said, “Obviously Connie sure thought so.”

Ballister’s brow furrowed. “That must’ve been scary as hell. I could tell Connie was weird. But like that?”

“Weird, how?”

“She just didn’t react normally — like she was part person part robot.”

“A cyborg.”

Unfamiliar term to Ballister. “Whatever.”

Milo said, “A weird woman, Myron. Now someone’s gone and killed her.”

“Wow. That’s totally crazy.”

Louella the waitress cruised past, trying hard not to notice us. Milo said, “Pardon?”

She stopped, half swiveled. “Yes, sir?”

He produced his wallet, peeled off money. “Sorry for taking up space, and sorry for my daughter’s outburst. Hope this covers it.”

She took the cash, counted silently. “This is way too much.”

“It includes what they had and what we didn’t order.”

Ballister said, “You don’t need to do that.”

Louella said, “You’re sure? This is way too much.”

Milo patted her hand. “Sure as I can be.”

“You’re an angel,” she said, and left retabulating her bounty.

Ballister said, “That was cool of you, man, but really it’s not necessary to comp my—”

“Paid off my student loans a long time ago, Myron. Let’s talk about Ree Sykes.”

Ballister’s fingertips tapped his glass. “Don’t take offense at this, sir, but if you think paying for—”

“No tit for tat, Myron. Just tell me what you feel comfortable talking about.”

“I know you’re doing your job, sir, but since she was an actual client, I can’t divulge—”

“I’m not concerned with anything related to the lawsuit, Myron. Only Ree’s feelings about her sister.”

“Feelings? Oh, no, no way, man, you can’t be thinking that.”

Milo was silent.

“Not a chance,” said Ballister. “She’s just about the most nonviolent person I ever met.”

“Maybe, but I still need to talk to her. Unfortunately, she’s left town.”

“Why would she do that?”

“Good question, Myron.”

“Well, I don’t know.”

“She never mentioned travel to you?”

“No, never. She take the baby?”

“Sure did.”

“So maybe it’s a vacation. After all the stress.”

“After her sister gets murdered.”

“No way,” said Ballister. “She doesn’t have a violent bone in her body.”

“I’m sure she seemed that way but I’ve been doing this job a long time and I still get surprised.”

“That would be a huge surprise, man. No way, I can’t see that.”

“What if she thought Connie would take her back to court?”

“She figured that would hap — shit, forget I said that.”

“She expected to be sued again.”

“She figured there was a good chance. I told her I’d represent her, we’d win again. And Medea — oh, shit—”

“Medea wouldn’t be representing Connie?”

Ballister groaned. “You can’t repeat this, man. I’d be toast.”

“Deal, Myron.”

“Yeah, Medea said she was through, if Connie asked her she’d refer her to someone else. Because the case was a loser. So you see, Ree had nothing to worry about.”

“Except a whole lot of emotional stress.”

“Even so. She’s like a … lamb. When I was at her apartment interviewing her she found a spider and picked it up gently and put it outside.”

Milo said, “Flower child.”

“Exactly.”

“Kinda like the Manson Family?”

“Oh, man … listen, you have to do your job but trust me, Ree did not kill her sister. I’d bet on it.”

Delivering his argument in a new voice: determined, deeper, as if a sudden hormonal surge had annealed him. Maybe he’d master that over time, end up an effective courtroom warrior.

Milo said, “I’m not into betting, Myron, I build up facts. What would help Ree out is having her talk to me so I can eliminate her. You have no idea where she is?”

“None.”

“If you did, would you tell us?”

“Probably not,” said Ballister. “I’m being honest.”

“Best policy, Myron.”

“Not really, sir. Not in the actual world. But it’s hard to change.”