Penjeda. It’s the verdict.”
“Penjeda is the defendant?”
“That’s right.”
“And Jack got the call from the agent before you went to court to hear the verdict?”
“That’s right.”
“Okay, Law.”
I had gotten what I wanted. I tried to think what else I could ask him.
“Law? Did Jack say what the agent’s name was?”
“No, he didn’t say.”
“Did he say he would check out the information she gave him?”
“He said he’d do some checking but that he thought it was a bullshit call. He said he didn’t think it meant anything.”
“Did you believe him?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, Law, I’m going to tell you to open your eyes in a moment. And when you open them, I want you to feel like you just woke up but I want you to remember what we just talked about. Okay?”
“Okay, yes.”
“And the other thing is I want you to feel better. I want you to be… okay about things in your life. I want you to be as happy as you can be, Law. Okay?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, Law, open your eyes now.”
The eyelids fluttered once and then they were open. They strafed the ceiling and then came to me. They seemed brighter than before.
“Harry…”
“How do you feel, Law?”
“Okay.”
“You remember what we were talking about?”
“Yeah, that little Mex. Penjeda. We called him PinHeada. He didn’t take the deal the DA floated. Life with. He took his chances with the jury and got snake eyes. Life without.”
“Live and learn.”
What sounded like what might have been a laugh gurgled from deep in his throat.
“Yeah, that was a good one,” he said. “I remember when we were going over to court that day was when Jack told me about the call from Westwood.”
“Right. You remember when that verdict came in on Penjeda?”
“End of February, beginning of March. My last trial, Harry. A month later I took the bullet in that shithole bar and I was history. I remember watching PinHeada’s face when he heard that verdict and knew he was facing life without parole. Fucker got what he deserved.”
The laugh came up again and then I saw the light go out of his eyes.
“What is it, Law?”
“He’s up there at Corcoran playing handball in the yard or getting his ass rented out by the Mexican Mafia on an hourly basis. And I’m here. I got life without, too, I guess.”
His eyes looked into mine. I nodded because it was the only thing I could think of to do.
“It’s not fair, Harry. Life isn’t fair.”
17
The downtown library was on Flower and Figueroa. It was one of the oldest buildings in the whole city. Therefore it was dwarfed by the modern glass-and-steel structures that surrounded it. Inside it was a beauty, centered around a domed rotunda with 360-degree mosaics depicting the founding of the city by the padres. The place had been twice burned by arsonists and closed for years, then restored to its original beauty. I had come after the restoration was completed, the first time back since I was a child. And I continued to come. It brought me close to the Los Angeles I remembered. Where I felt comfortable. I would take my lunch in the book rooms or the upper-level patios while reading case files and writing notes. I got to know the security guards and a few of the librarians. I had a library card, though I rarely checked out a book.
I went to the library after leaving Lawton Cross because I no longer could call on Keisha Russell to help me with clip searches. Her call to Sacramento to run a check on me when I had asked her to simply run a clip search on Martha Gessler was the warning. Her journalistic curiosity would lead her further than my requests, to places I didn’t want her to go.
The main reference desk was on the second floor. I recognized the woman behind the counter, though I had never spoken to her before. I could tell she recognized me as I approached. I used a library card where a police shield used to do. She read it and recognized the name.
“Do you know that you have the same name as a famous painter?” she asked.
“Yes, I know.”
Her face flushed. She was midthirties with an unattractive hairstyle. She wore a name tag that said Mrs. Molloy.
“Of course you do,” she said. “You must know that. How can I help you?”
“I need to look for stories that were in the Times from about three years ago.”
“You want to do a key word search?”
“I guess so. What is that?”
She smiled.
“We have the Los Angeles Times on computer going back to nineteen eighty-seven. If what you are looking for was published after that, all you have to do is go online on one of our computers, type in a key word or phrase, like a name, for example, that you think is in the story and it will search for it. There is a five-dollar-per-hour fee for accessing the newspaper archives.”
“Fine, that’s what I want to do.”
She smiled and reached beneath the counter. She handed me a white plastic device that was about a foot long. It looked like no computer I had ever seen.
“How do I use this?”
She almost laughed.
“It’s a pager. All our computers are being used at the moment. I will page you as soon as one becomes available.”
“Oh.”
“The pager doesn’t work outside of the building. It also does not emit an audible page. It vibrates. So keep it on your person.”
“I will. Any idea how long it will be?”
“We set one-hour use limits, which right now would mean one won’t be available for another thirty minutes. However, people often don’t require the full hour.”
“Okay, thank you. I’ll be nearby.”
I found an empty table in one of the reading rooms and decided to work on the case chronology. I got out my notebook and on a fresh page wrote down the three key dates and events I knew.
Angella Benton-murdered-May 16, 1999
Movie set heist-May 19, 1999
Martha Gessler-missing-March 19, 2000
I then began adding the things I was missing.
