The Flaming Motel

XXIII


Liz made me come get her. “What the hell do you know about arraignments?” she said. And she was right. I’d never done one before. Not that the arraignment would be immediate. Tomorrow morning at the earliest, I assumed. But in any event, I’d never even visited the downtown jail before. Liz had at least done that much.

But before I left the parking garage, I checked the trunk and glove compartment. I ran my hands through the pockets in the doors and seats, everywhere something could have been planted. Under the seats. Under the floor mats. When I was done I walked around the outside of the car. I don’t know what I was looking for, I was just hesitant to climb in and drive away.

I called Liz when I was nearly there and she met me on the street out front. She looked somber, wearing a coat the seemed too heavy for Los Angeles, even if the night air was getting cold. She climbed in and didn’t say anything for a few minutes. I was doing eighty down the freeway, toward downtown, when she said, “This is going to be tough to prove.”

I didn’t have much to say to that. She was right. Despite the fact that the mere suggestion that Jendrek was dealing heroin was ludicrous, there was no good way to explain how a sack of it ended up in his car. Jendrek might have been the kind of guy to keep an ounce of weed stashed in his sock drawer, and that probably shouldn’t be a crime anyway, but heroin? No way.

I tried to keep the conversation to a minimum all the way there. Liz didn’t seem that interested in talking anyway. I just wanted to focus on the hum of the tires on the asphalt, to tap into that droning frequency, as though its steady, mindless whine could calm my nerves and ease me back into some kind of normalcy. I was worried, sitting next to Liz in the confines of the car, that despite my frantic cleanup I smelled faintly of semen and that she would know it, instinctively, through some biological marker deep in her blood.

And that thought took me back, in looping circles, to Brianna Jones; to the stained mattress; to the fact that David Daniels was Tiffany’s brother; to the cop’s gun in my face, the pebbly texture of the street against my cheek, and now the planted evidence in Jendrek’s car. Then there was Pete’s Stick’s death, the phone call from the gatehouse. Tiffany Vargas firing us, bright and early Monday morning. Her inheriting an estate worth tens of millions of dollars. David Daniels washing up on a Malibu beach. By the time I got off on the Third Street exit, I was as tense as ever. What the hell had we gotten ourselves into?

“I don’t know,” Liz said from beside me. Apparently I’d been mumbling out loud.

Police don’t respond well to threats. They’re all like schoolyard bullies. They can dish it but they can’t take it. The mere thought that their authority might be questioned sends them into an irrational panic that causes them to lash out at anything and overreact to everything. It’s even worse when the threat comes from a lawyer. That’s why you never scream and holler and pound your fist on the counter like they do in the movies—this is an outrage! I demand to see my client!—that’s all bullshit. It gets you nowhere.

You go in. You tell them who you are and who you’re there to see. The desk sergeant checks the file, looks on the computer, makes a phone call or two. You wait around for forty-five minutes or an hour. Then some fat bastard who hasn’t lifted anything but a Krispy Kreme in years opens a locked doorway to a long corridor and waves you through, giving you the stink-eye the whole time—so you’re the guy with the smart ass client, he seems to be saying.

They put us in a windowless interview room. I immediately scanned the corners where the walls came together, the tiles in the ceiling, the surfaces of the drab metal table, for anything that looked like a microphone. I doubted they’d be that stupid, but at this point I was suspecting everything and everyone, everywhere I went. Liz watched me, grinning, not from humor but desperation and worry.

“We’re deep in the enemy camp,” I said. “I’m not taking any chances.”

“I’m just waiting to discover this is really a cell and they’ve just gone ahead and arrested us too. Terrorism charges or something worse.” Liz sat in one of the stiff wood chairs and let out a long, slow breath.

I sat beside her and we waited for five minutes. Then another five. There was an old clock on the wall with a mesh grate over it to keep someone from breaking it. It was one of those cheap government clocks, about a foot across with a white face, black numbers, black hands, and a thin red second hand that roamed steadily around the circle, marking off the inexorable pace of our existence. The wire cover seemed an elaborate and expensive method of protecting a very inexpensive clock. And who would want to break it anyway? It wasn’t like smashing it would stop time. And even if it did, who would want to be frozen in a moment where they were trapped in a police interrogation room?

In the stillness, Liz said, “I’m sorry I snapped at you this afternoon.”

It caught me off guard. “Don’t worry about it,” I said. Then I realized I had a litany of things to apologize to her for, but I kept them to myself. We just glanced at each other a few times, like there was something else in the room with us that we didn’t want to look up to see.

Then the lock in the door turned and we could hear movement outside. When the door opened, Jendrek came in wearing one of those bright orange jump suits with his gray hair tousled and his eyes and face looking tired, angry, and terrified all at the same time.

I said, “Nice threads.”

He said, “I’m going to kill one of these a*sholes before this is over.” Then he nodded at Liz. “Hey Liz, great to see you.” He spoke like they’d run into each other at the beach.

Jendrek sat in one of the chairs opposite Liz and me and folded his hands together on the table. His thumbs and fingers fidgeted and he rested his weight on his elbows, hunching toward us like someone was trying to listen in. He seemed to be thinking about where to start. He had the look of a man who always suspected life would screw him and screw him good, and he’d finally been proven right.

“So I’m leaving the office, right?” he began. “It’s five o’clock or so. Everything’s normal. I come out of the garage, I start driving my regular route home. I’m damned near there when all of the sudden this unmarked police car pulls me over. I’m thinking that’s kind of weird, I mean, these aren’t the kind of guys who make traffic stops. But I was probably speeding. I don’t know. I wasn’t paying attention. But I figure that’s what it must be.”

He gave his head a quick shake, as if confronting the unbelievable. “But I knew something was wrong right away. These two get out of the car, both dressed in bad suits, your basic plainclothes guys. I can see the one on the passenger side reaching inside his coat for something. He stays at the back of the car while the other guy comes up to my window. He’s got a gun in his hand. I’m reaching for my license and insurance card when the cops yells for me to keep my hands on the steering wheel. Right away, I know this is going to go bad, real fast.”

Jendrek let a short, defeated laugh go and shook his head some more, slower this time. “Thing is, when I first got in the car in the garage, I noticed something was wrong. The shit in the console between the seats. It wasn’t right. It all seemed to be a little off, like it had been moved around. It was only slight, not like someone had rummaged through the car or anything, it was just like things weren’t exactly where they normally were. I didn’t really think anything of it. But now I know. Someone got into my car when it was parked in the garage.

“This crosses my mind as this cop is pointing a gun in my face and telling me to keep my hands up. Then the cop asks me if I’ve got a weapon in the car. I tell him he’s f*cking up, that he better be damned sure he’s right before he does anything else. He just tells me to shut up and get my ass out of the car. I do and he pats me down. He asks me if I’ve got any drugs in the car. I tell him to f*ck off. And he asks if it’s alright if they search it. I tell him to f*ck off again. He finds some business cards in my pocket and sees I’m a lawyer.”

Jendrek’s hands were in fists now and he was tapping them up and down on the table, lightly but firmly. “Those two a*sholes start joking with each other about, ‘Oh, got ourselves a lawyer here. Guess he knows his rights.’ Shit like that. And now I’m getting pissed. So I tell the guy he damned well better have probable cause and he tells me not to worry about it. He says they got an anonymous tip that described me, the car, and the route I’d be driving. All of which checked out. Then this son of a bitch says the tip also said that I deal to high-end clients, using my law practice as a front, and that there’d be a sack of heroin in the glove box. This a*shole leans right in my face and asks me, ‘What do you think? You wanna bet that’s going to check out too?’”

I said, “Jesus Christ.”

Liz said, “That’s Illinois v. Gates. It’s right out of the textbook.”

Jendrek nodded his red face and slammed his fist on the table. “You’re goddamned right it is.” Then he leaned back and shrugged. “I’m f*cking standing there on the side of the road and I can see it plain as day. I know it’s a setup. I know what they’re going to find when they open that glove box. So I say to the cop, ‘If there’s anything in there, I didn’t put it there.’ The whole time, all I can think about is that case. Illinois verses f*cking Gates. It was bullshit when it was decided, and it’s bullshit now, for this very reason. It makes a setup and an anonymous tip a piece of f*cking cake.”

I said, “So they open the glove box.”

“Right. The cop says to me, ‘Why don’t you lean over and look in the window so you can observe.’ So I do. And the other cop comes from the back of the car, opens the passenger side door and flops the glove box open. Sure as shit, there’s a bag full of white powder.”

We all sat there for a minute. No one said anything. There wasn’t much we could say. It was the perfect setup. I drummed my fingers on the table for a second and glanced back and forth between Liz and Jendrek. Finally, Liz erupted.

“William f*cking Rehnquist. That ignorant son of a bitch.” She practically screamed it. “When exactly did the courts decide that cops never lie and that everything they say should be believed? Does anyone know when that happened? This is f*cking outrageous.”

“Totality of the circumstances,” I said. “Reasonable basis for knowledge,” I added. “It sounds just like what it is. Bullshit.”

“I said that when the goddamned decision came out,” Jendrek said. “It was like no one was listening. No one wants to believe that anyone would ever abuse their power. It’s f*cking crazy.”

“So,” I said, trying to quell the ranting. It was already nine thirty at night and we would have to figure out what we were going to say at the arraignment the next morning. “In Illinois v. Gates, the cops get an anonymous letter that says this couple is dealing drugs and that they periodically fly down to Florida and then drive back with a trunk load of pot. The cops observe them getting on a plane. Observe them driving back into town rather than returning on an airplane. They pull the car over and find the drugs in the trunk. The Court holds that that’s sufficient probable cause to search the trunk, despite the fact that the letter itself was anonymous and there was no way to determine that the information in it was credible.”

“Right, but the Court lets it slide because the totality of the circumstances provide a reasonable basis for the knowledge that the drugs are in the car.” Jendrek leaned forward against the table again, speaking like a law professor now.

“I’ve seen it before,” he said. “The Court held that the letter itself, on its face, was insufficient. However, the subsequent corroboration of some of the anonymous information provided a reasonable basis to conclude that the rest of the information—the drugs in the trunk—was correct.”

“It’s such f*cking bullshit,” Liz said. “So, what then, as long as an anonymous tip contains some information that can be independently corroborated the tip is good? What the f*ck is that? So if I want to frame someone, all I have to do is know a few of their routine patterns, plant the drugs in their car, and then include the routine information in my anonymous tip? I just call up and say, ‘Yeah, Oliver Olson drives a black BMW. He usually leaves work about 5:30 and drives east on Santa Monica Boulevard, takes a right on fourteenth and heads north toward Montana Avenue. He generally carries a key of marijuana in his trunk.’ So I put the weed in his trunk, they watch him drive home and pull him over and now they have probable cause simply because they’ve watched him drive home—which is perfectly legal and which he does every f*cking day. It’s f*cking insane.”

Jendrek ran his fingers along the sleeves of his orange jumpsuit, like he was displaying merchandise on a game show, and said, “Tell me about it. Unfortunately, it’s also the law.”

“What’d these cops look like?” I asked, hoping to hit the jackpot.

“The one on the driver’s side was mid-forties, bald, kind of scrawny. The other one was a pretty burly Mexican guy. Never took his sunglasses off.”

Liz and I exchanged looks. I said, “Neither of those is our guy.”

“They wouldn’t need to be,” Jendrek pointed out. “These were probably just two cops following up on a tip. But I’ll bet I know who phoned in the tip. It’s a much safer approach than doing it himself because he knows you two would be able to identify him as the one who pulled you over.” Jendrek’s cynical grin was settling back onto his face where it belonged, displacing, or at least covering, the other, more troubled emotions. Then he smiled and shook his head. “Jesus, you’ve got to hand it to the guy. It’s damned clever.”

I said, “So how do we prove it?”

He raised his eyebrows and shook his head, like a man contemplating the impossible. “I demanded that they leave the car undisturbed. I want it fingerprinted and examined. But it won’t do any good. I’m sure he wore gloves. Maybe we can find evidence that the car was broken into. He’d have had to disable the alarm somehow, but I’m sure that’s simple if you know what you’re doing.”

“It is,” I said, reaching back into my past. Back home to the blue collar neighborhood and the friends I once had. “I knew a guy once who made a living stealing car stereos. All you have to do is crawl under the car and short the alarm out. Usually it’s pretty easy to do, especially on an old car like yours, with an after-market alarm.”

“Then I doubt we’re going to find much. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find out there are security cameras in the garage, but I’m sure he thought of that too. Shitty building like ours probably doesn’t have them. But we need to check.”

“And if we don’t find anything?”

Jendrek pursed his lips and brooded over the table for a moment, then flashed a sarcastic smile. “We can always try to overturn Illinois v. Gates.”

Liz and I must have looked mortified. Jendrek smiled at the two of us and said, “We fight it like anything else. You raise enough Fourth Amendment challenges, who knows. Besides, it’s going to be prosecuted by a city attorney who has a hundred other active cases and won’t want to deal with an aggressive defense. There’s lots of easy ones to prosecute, why spend your time on a hard one? We might get lucky in the end and the whole thing will just go away.”

I couldn’t tell if he really believed that or not, but it sounded reasonable. “But for now,” he added, “I’ve got to get the hell out of here. There’ll be an arraignment in the morning. They’ll give me bail, I’m not a flight risk, I’ve lived in LA my whole life. The only question is how much they’ll want. You need to be ready to argue that and be ready to get a cashier’s check out of the firm account for my bail. If I’m lucky, I can at least be back on the street by noon tomorrow.”

He seemed satisfied enough by the prospect of just getting out of jail. One small step at a time, I figured. But then that left us with the mess to deal with, looming out there like an approaching storm. I hadn’t even mentioned the day’s other main event, the discovery of the relationship between David Daniels and Tiffany Vargas. That fact seemed insignificant compared to what we were facing now, but it was obviously related. Someone wanted us to stop looking, and they were doing a hell of a job distracting us.

“And when you’re back on the street,” I said, “then what?”

Jendrek’s eyes narrowed and hardened. There was a galvanized look to them. “Then we figure this mess out,” he said. “I’ll be damned if I won’t get even with someone for this. I’m going to make someone pay if it’s the last thing I do.”

“I think we’re getting close to something,” I said, without much basis to say it. Perhaps the reassurance of the words themselves was what I wanted to hear. “Whatever is going on, whoever’s behind it, they sure think we’re on to something, which must mean that we are, without knowing it. We’re not the only people who’ve been threatened.”

Jendrek looked at me, waiting for the rest. “I met with David Daniels’s girlfriend today. It seems our friend paid her a visit as well. He scared her so bad she’s running for the hills. Another day and I don’t think I’d ever have found her.” I debated telling them more, but what he did to her seemed unnecessary, both in the doing and the retelling.

“What did she say?” Jendrek asked.

“She said a cop showed up wanting to ask her some questions. She let him in and he roughed her up and threatened her and asked her what she knew.” I paused, figuring that was enough of a description. “She told him she didn’t know anything. Eventually he left. But between that and Daniels washing up on the beach, she’s going to do her best to disappear. She was so freaked out when I came by she pulled a gun on me.”

“You didn’t tell me that?” Liz sounded shocked. I knew there was a lot more about what the cop did to that girl that would shock her, but I left it at that.

“I don’t think she was serious,” I said, although I knew she was completely serious, at least at first. “She was just scared. But she did tell me something that she swore she didn’t tell the cop.” I cleared my throat, shifted in my seat, and went on. “She said two things actually. The first is that for a month or two before he got killed, David Daniels was periodically bringing home wads of cash, like ten grand at a time. Second, and this is the biggie, David Daniels was Tiffany Vargas’s younger brother.”

“What?” Jendrek almost came out of his seat with surprise. “What does that mean?”

“I have no idea,” I said. “It may not even be true. But the girlfriend sure seemed to think it was.”

“Jesus, so what’s going on? He was pulling a scam on his sister, is that it? Him and Pete?”

“I have no idea. The girlfriend said that his sister got Daniels the job with Pete. And then all the sudden, just recently, he started bringing home the cash. She didn’t say anything more, and I got the impression that she didn’t know anything else. She said that Daniels made her swear to never tell anyone that he was Tiffany’s brother. She hadn’t, until now. I guess she figured she was splitting. Daniels was dead. She’d tell me and let me deal with whatever it meant.”

We all sat around thinking about it for a few minutes, but it was clear that no one was going to come up with any revelations. Finally, Jendrek ran his fingers through his hair, messing it up, and left it tangled around his head, like a sculpture of what was going on inside of him. He said, “Well, I can’t worry too much about that right now. We’ll have to figure that out after I get out of here. It all adds up to something, but we’re not going to figure it out now. Whatever’s going on, I’ve got to get out of here before I worry anymore about it.”

“What time is the arraignment?”

“Check at the desk. They’ll know. It’s the same time every morning.” Jendrek shook his head and laughed. “F*cking a*shole. Whoever this guy is. This is perfect for him. He doesn’t care if I go to jail or not. What he really wants to do is distract us. Every minute we spend trying to defend this bullshit case is a minute we aren’t spending trying to catch this guy. As far as he’s concerned, the plan has already worked.”

“Well,” I said, scooting my chair back. “Get some rest, and don’t let the man keep you down.”

“You kidding?” Jendrek stood and leaned over on the table, his palms flat against it like he was about to come at us right over the top of it. “These f*ckers are going to regret having me in here. I’m staying up all night with the guys on the cell block, helping them draft habeas petitions on rolls of toilet paper. By Friday, the docket’s going to be flooded with more writs than these people have ever seen.” Jendrek went to the door and knocked on it, then turned back and said, “A pissed off former ACLU lawyer with too much time on his hands? I’m the last guy they want to have in here.”

The door opened and he stepped out into the hallway. “See you bright and early,” he called back.