Virtually Dead

Chapter Forty

The Orange County Superior court in Santa Ana stood back from the road in Civic Center Drive, behind a screen of trees and bushes. A modern building of concrete and glass. Reflecting that, the courtroom itself seemed to lack the gravitas of many older courts — buildings which owed more in architecture and design to the influence of the Europeans.

But the hearing itself had been grave enough. The subjects under discussion — fraud, theft, and murder. Being decided here was what culpability, if any, could be placed at the door of Michael Kapinsky for the murder of Janey Amat, and the subsequent shooting of Angela Monachino. As well as whether there were sufficient grounds to charge him in connection with the theft of more than three million dollars.

Michael had been dreading it. After five weeks of recuperation from his stabbing, he had finally been deemed fit enough to go before a judge, and the stress of it seemed to make his shoulder ache all the more.

Now, as his legal team walked him from the courtroom, he could barely believe that, finally, it was over. He was still shaking. His legs felt weak. His attorney, Jack Sandler, slipped a triumphant arm through his and leaned in to whisper, “It’s finished, Michael. Relax. You’re home free.”

But not entirely. The judge had ordered that as soon as the sale of Michael’s property in Dolphin Terrace was completed, $3,183,637 of the proceeds were to be sequestered pending an inquiry into where the money had come from and into Arnold Smitts’ connections to the mob. The good news was that no one, either officially or unofficially, believed that Michael had stolen it. So he was off the mob hook as well.

The only thing, it seemed, that everyone agreed upon was how foolish he had been. And the judge had not been slow to pass comment on the subject.

Gillian MacCormack sat in the hall outside the courtroom, a sixty-seven-year-old lady in a grey tweed suit, sandwiched between a young lady lawyer sharply dressed in black and an older, male assistant. She stood up, filled with trepidation, as Michael emerged, pale and relieved. And for a moment their eyes met.

She had told police that when she and Michael exchanged RL names in SL, she had taken the first available flight from Sacramento to John Wayne airport, Orange County, a mere fifteen-minute taxi ride away from Newport Beach. Her instinct had been that he was in imminent danger and might need her help. Which had turned out to be extremely prescient. Of more concern now, it seemed, than even the shooting of Angela Monachino was how she had managed to smuggle a gun on board her airplane. To the consternation of the federal aviation authorities and Homeland Security, she had told them quite simply that she had wrapped it in a pair of camisole knickers and packed it in her check-in bag. Her lawyer made the point, quite validly, that she was unlikely to have been able to access the hold and retrieve the gun during the flight.

An enquiry had, however, been launched and was likely to take several months to complete.

She held Michael’s gaze for a few brief moments. She was very petite, with a remarkably smooth and unlined, elfin face, and the bluest of blue eyes that seemed to penetrate his very soul. Her luxuriant silver hair was tied back in a ponytail. They had barely spoken in the weeks since the shooting. And although he owed her his life, his overwhelming emotion on each occasion they had met, was embarrassment. And humiliation at the recollection of the confidences they had exchanged, the intimacies they had shared. He was not sure he could ever forgive her the deception. She was, after all, thirty-five years his senior.

He didn’t linger, or meet her eyes for more than a few seconds, acknowledging her only with the merest of nods, before allowing his legal team to steer him away toward the door and the Californian sunshine that split the sidewalks outside.

But even as he felt the warmth of it on his skin and turned his face toward the sky, he felt an ache of regret deep within. For the fundamental truth was that he missed Doobie Littlething.

Gillian MacCormack’s attorney took her by the elbow and led her toward the courtroom. In a sense her situation was the graver of the two. It was she who had pulled the trigger, she who had taken a life. And the court would decide today whether or not she was to face charges of manslaughter.