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  In a city this size, this guy was far too eager. “Thanks for the assist,” I said.

  “Mr. Shepard,” Sue Ellen went on, “like I was saying, do you think—”

  “Go,” I told her. “Now.” She looked bewildered, but I didn’t care to explain. I could feel an attack coming.

  “This thing’s really a sorry piece of shit, isn’t it?” the man said. “I mean, how can someone who can’t even afford a decent car think they can afford to raise a baby?”

  There it was. I slapped my hand flat against the door. “Go!” I yelled at Sue Ellen, who finally got the message and gunned it down the aisle and out of view. When I turned to face him he was already squaring off for action.

  “You’re a sorry piece of shit too, aren’t you partner?” he said. He was holding a metal object that looked like an unopened knife in his right hand.

  In an instant I saw his eyes registering my dimensions as if he was calculating odds. I was easily his size—maybe thirty pounds heavier—and at least ten years his junior. A flicker of doubt was all the invitation I needed to begin talking my way out of a fight.

  “Don’t do it,” I said, stifling my fear just enough to force a smile. “I get hold of you, I’m gonna drag you over to that parking block and break your legs over it. You ready for that reality?” I settled into a solid stance.

  He eyeballed the leg-breaking device I’d just pointed out. “The woman’s bad news,” he said. “You better stay the fuck away from her.” He hadn’t budged.

  We faced each other tensely, pacing and shifting for half a minute without speaking. I didn’t want to fight here at my place of work if I didn’t absolutely have to, didn’t want to find out how much it hurt to get cut by a blade, if that’s what he was holding. Just my shitty luck, I’d worn the light gray, glen-plaid suit today; a roll on this oil-spotted cement would ruin it. I couldn’t afford to replace the glen-plaid, couldn’t even afford to fix the broken dishwasher in my kitchen. The thought of being further impoverished by this phony Good Samaritan pissed me off, and I struggled to turn my anger into something approximating courage.

  “You did what you came here to do,” I said. “Walk away.”

  Just then Sue Ellen’s truck rounded into view from below. In the cab with her was a parking attendant, the Hispanic guy who worked the toll booth downstairs.

  “Lookie here, it’s the cavalry,” my opponent said. Without another word he turned and sprinted toward the stairwell and disappeared.

  Sue Ellen jumped out of the cab and ran to me. “What was that all about?”

  My heart was thumping, but the last thing I wanted to do was freak Sue Ellen. She needed to keep her composure over the next few weeks, long enough to have some nice get-acquainted visits with Nathan and help me tighten up our defense for trial. But the guy was after her; I was just the unwitting chaperone who got in the way. She had a right to know about any potential danger she’d be facing. I had to tell her, but I also had to choose my words with the utmost precision.

  “I’m not sure who that was,” I said, “but he doesn’t want you reunited with Nathan. Probably just a bozo who believes whatever he hears on TV just because it’s on TV.”

  “Oh my god! Did he try to hurt you?” she asked.

  I did my best to appear nonplussed. “Does it look like it?”

  Sue Ellen flipped her hair back and relaxed a little. “You don’t scare very easy, do you Mr. Shepard?”

  Right, I thought, my heart still thudding inside my chest. “Listen, I don’t want you getting hassled by any kooks like that, so if you’re going out, take your husband or a friend. Don’t go out alone.”

  “I won’t,” she said. She held her gaze on me. “Thank you. You make me feel safe. I really appreciate it.” Her eyes never blinked.

  I’d seen the look many times before, the universal sign of longing, part of that ancient, unspoken dialogue between the sexes. Fuck me, I thought, don’t do this, Sue Ellen, not now.

  “I’ve got to get back,” I told her, my voice cracking like a nervous schoolboy’s. As I walked away I heard her giggle just before the roar of the old Ford swept her away.

  My briefcase was still parked in the interview room off of Foley’s courtroom, but the bailiff had locked up for the noon recess. I had no cases left on the calendar for the day, but I was stuck and had to wait out the long noon recess reading the Times and eating a peanut butter and jelly on wheat from the cafeteria.

  After lunch, Shelly Chilcott took immediate advantage of my surprise reappearance by assigning me a physical abuse detention. The case involved a large Salvadoran family with Mother, Father Number One, Father Number Two, and three girls who told three distinctly different stories to the emergency worker about how their arms had gotten freckled with cigarette burns. Every available pick-up attorney in 302 was already on this one, Shelly explained as she handed me a fresh file. My client, Father Number Two, was the model citizen with the chrome lighter outlined in his jeans pocket when he straightened up to shake my hand. The man was ready to fight, but he spoke only the most rudimentary English; as such, his opening tirade was all but lost on me, and I could only nod along dumbly as he vented. After ten vein-popping minutes, he flat ran out of things to say and I slipped back inside.

  A fresh headache throbbed behind my eyes. The Randall case had tapped most of my energy and I wanted to go home, and soon. But this one would take time to get all the lawyers in sync. The others would need to know whether my client the pyromaniac would agree to temporarily move out so the kids could avoid a stay in foster care. Of course, since my client and I hadn’t actually spoken, I couldn’t say. Our language barrier was bogging down the whole damned effort.

  I searched the halls for Alfonso, the Spanish interpreter that usually worked 302, but had no luck. Then I tried the office upstairs by phone, but no one picked up. I headed for the elevators.

  The door to the interpreters’ office on the fifth floor was locked. I knocked but heard nothing. I tried to envision the rest of my day outside this place. A dip in the ocean, a brisk swim out around the pier and back followed by a stop-off at the Captain’s Galley. Happy-hour shrimp and finger tacos washed down by a liquid dinner, enough alcohol to numb the brain and cleanse the lingering aftertaste of dependency from my gills. I knocked again.

  Only two courtrooms operate on floor five handling overflow cases from downstairs. But they must have recessed for the day; the waiting area was empty, and beyond the wide windows in the distance, low cement buildings and warehouses shone in faded yellows and tans above a snarl of treetops, marking the sun’s slow retreat.

  “Hello?” I called through the door. At the far end of the corridor, a lone janitor methodically stroked a dust mop over a long, rectangular strip of linoleum as if he were mowing a lawn.

  Another door was open twenty feet away, so I headed over and poked my head inside. A young woman who looked to be in her mid-twenties was seated at a single desk, twisting a phone cord in her long fingers as she recited a series of highway directions into the receiver. When I heard the coordinates, I knew she was talking about MacLaren Hall. “Right with you,” she whispered as she motioned me to come in.

  I set down my briefcase and settled into one of the two chairs opposite the desk. The chair was small and hard, a stiff little armless job that instantly reminded me of my time served in Catholic school. The desk was crammed with low piles of files and papers, a computer terminal dominating the corner nearest the door. To my right, against the far wall, a bookcase was stacked with rows of ring binders labelled with names like “West Covina Pilot,” “E. L.A. Lifeline” and “Downtown Outreach.” Another shelf held a block of thick hardbounds on parenting and child development. The social worker’s tools.

  “Why don’t you read that back to me so we’ll be sure you’ll get there in time to have a visit today?” she said, sharing a small smile of understanding with me.

  I surreptitiously studied her. She didn’t resemble any social worker I’d eve
r seen. Much, much prettier. A kind, lovely face, straight nose, cocoa-brown eyes. She laughed at something, and as she did her fine black hair swished lightly across the front of her sleeveless beige dress. I was certain I’d never laid eyes on her before in this building; this was a face I would have committed to memory.

  She put down the receiver. Feeling like I’d intruded, I stood up quickly. “Hi, I’m J. Shepard. I work in the building.”

  “Sit down.” She waited. “Was that you knocking just down the hall?”

  I nodded. “Nobody there. You wouldn’t happen to know where I could find a Spanish interpreter, Ms. . . .” I wanted to know her name.

  “Carmen—Carmen Manriquez.” I thought she would offer her hand but she stayed behind her desk.

  “I work in three-oh-two, Judge Foley’s court. My client doesn’t speak English. Our usual interpreter must’ve bailed early. I’m kind of stuck.”

  “You’re stuck?” she said. “Think how your client feels.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s my . . . our last case on calendar today,” I said. I looked around. “I’ve never been up here. The interpreters usually leave this early?”

  “I don’t know. Let me call them,” she said, flipping through a master phone list that dangled from a thumbtack on a bulletin board behind the desk. We waited as she rang. “No one there.”

  “Great. Why does my last client of the day always seem to speak Spanish?” I smiled, turning to go.

  She seemed mildly taken aback. “Let me see. About sixty percent of L.A. County is Hispanic. That could possibly have something to do with it.”

  “So what’s the answer?” I said. “We all learn Spanish?”

  “Why not? Lots of Europeans speak the languages of their neighboring countries. Look at the map.”

  “I know. This used to be Mexico.”

  “My point exactly.”

  “I know some Spanish,” I said, not wanting to appear too completely out of touch.

  She folded her arms like an inquisitor. “High school?”

  I nodded, and when I did, I could tell she thought she had me. “But I learned some at home, too,” I told her. “From my mother.”

  “Oh, she’s a Latina?”

  “She was—she is. From Chile.”

  “I see.” She sighed as if mildly disappointed, then dialed the interpreters’ office.

  “What do you mean, you see?” I said.

  “Nothing.” She put back the phone.

  I was intrigued. “Don’t say nothing. Tell me.”

  She eyed a stack of papers on her desk. “Well,” she said, “you really have no excuse.”

  “No excuse?” I said, fearing an imminent attack. A good many social workers despise attorneys; some workers even have trouble distinguishing counsel from the perpetrators they represent. “I didn’t know I needed an excuse.” I liked the way she could hold my gaze, even in a budding argument.

  “The language. It’s part of your mother’s heritage.”

  “My mother’s heritage is a bit more complicated than that,” I said. “Listen, you’re right, learning Spanish is a good thing, and I shouldn’t bitch about needing an interpreter. But what difference does it make as to why I learn another language?”

  Carmen Manriquez looked bemused. “You may want to ask your mother about that.”

  My next sparkling witticism was a long way down the tracks. We both endured a patch of silence. “I knew you were a lawyer,” she said.

  “Boy. You don’t quit.”

  She nodded. “No, no. Your briefcase.”

  I’d lugged the thing upstairs as a sort of penance for leaving it behind before lunch, an oversight that had cost me the afternoon. “One of these days I’ll give it a decent burial.”

  My briefcase opened across the top, with zipping side pouches that stay out of the way of a file-toting cavern through the middle. I’d paid for it with funds from my first Legal Project paycheck, choosing it solely for its ability to hold more paper than any other case I could find, and it had done the job. But by now, after years of daily poundings, it was scuffed beyond belief, the top zippers frozen in place. Inside, a leather crease was studded with paper clips and a few cheap ball-point pens, the Sports section from yesterday’s Times wedged between the Randall file and a never-used commuter train schedule. Embarrassing.

  I did my best to appear breezy. “I suppose my briefcase is a microcosm of my legal career here,” I said. “A bit of a mess.”

  She laughed. “So why do you do it?”

  “Do what?”

  “Why do a job you don’t like?”

  It was the same question Phoebe had put to me at her father’s award reception, and I remembered my overly defensive reaction that night. But Carmen Manriquez had a different way about her, a directness that probably made her a very good social worker. This was no rich little daddy’s girl handing down judgment.

  My face felt flushed as I tried to compose an answer that wouldn’t sound too hard-bitten. I hardly knew Carmen but I wanted to make a decent impression. “It’s not all bad,” I said. “Just having an off day.”

  “I hope that one day you find what you really want to do,” she said. She’d mildly hassled me about the Spanish, but she had an appealing gentleness about her now. I imagined what it might be like to kiss her full on the lips. “And good luck with your adoption case,” she added.

  I realized she knew me from the Channel Six TV reports, but I didn’t want that spectacle to invade our conversation. “What do you do?” I asked.

  “You’ve heard of Las Palomas? This is our office. You just can’t see the sign when the door’s propped open.”

  “Good plan—hide the sign,” I observed. “Keep those friendly stop-ins at a minimum.”

  “You’re awful.”

  “Las Palomas,” I said. “I send my clients to your programs all the time. Wow, did I ever have a prime candidate for your in-home skills course last week.”

  “Why didn’t you send her up?”

  “I did. Darla Madden?” Carmen didn’t react. “Let’s just say you’d know her if you saw her.” I nodded at the door. “Darla would cut a rather dramatic swath through a space this size.”

  “I remember her,” she said. “Really raring to go. Told me her lawyer would—what was it? Have her ‘fanny in a frying pan’ if she didn’t enroll right away, that’s it.”

  “That’s my Darla.”

  “You sound like quite the motivator.”

  “Why, thank you.”

  I settled back into my rock-hard little chair, content to stay put for the time being. Carmen picked up the phone and began calling other court departments, asking for someone who could help build a bridge between Father Number Two and me.

  Seven

  I was easing the Jeep into my garage when Jackie bolted through the back door and rapped on my window.

  “What now?” I said. It was 9:15. My ass was dragging after a few slack hours of wrap-up at the office and a freeway trek at bumper-car speeds. I had just enough energy left to shower and dive into bed.

  “We got a visitor. Looks like a freakin’ gargoyle from hell. Scared the crap outta me, boss.” Jackie pointed across the dark backyard. A guttural snarl emanated from the spot Jackie had singled out. “Must be on some kind of a chain, or it’d be feasting on filet of Pace right now,” he said, panting.

  I crept through the back door and peered into the dark. “I think it’s hurt,” I whispered. “Listen, it’s wheezing.”

  We tiptoed another twenty feet along the side yard and sidled up the back porch. When I rattled my keys the unseen animal let off an unnerving, malevolent bark that made Jackie and me leap back, but the beast didn’t advance. “He’s tied to the tree,” I said. I opened the door and flipped on the porch light.

  “Judas Priest, what a specimen!” Jackie cried. “The biggest, mackingest Doberman I’ve ever seen!”

  “He’s a Rottweiler,” I said, and he truly was a creature of majestic proportions.
r />   A folded note rested in the screen door. It said:

  Mr. Shepard, Darla says tell you she did tried, but no one

  would take him on this short of notice. He is a good dog—no,

  really the best, likes a lg. can of Alpo with his dry, morn and

  nite. (Drinks lots of water, of coarse) THANKS for been our last

  resort, we owe you one, Pete. P.S. The kids would like to visit.

  “Look at him!” Jackie called to me. He’d moved in close enough to pet the toothy monster on the head.

  I circled the thick trunk of the pepper tree, my eyes following the counter-clockwise loops of chain. “Let’s get him untangled. Lift his paw.”

  Left alone and disoriented, the dog had run circles around the tree and lashed himself fast against the trunk. When I freed his front paws he raised his huge, rock-like head and licked me across the chin.

  “Good boy! He likes you, J.! What’s his tag say?”

  “His name is Max,” I said without looking.

  Jackie was puzzled. “So whose dog, man?”

  “Mine, I guess, at least for tonight. He belonged to a client.”

  “They dropped it off?” He stared at me incredulously. “They know where you live? You’re fuckin’ kidding me.”

  “I know, I shouldn’t have given them my address. But this lady, if you could see her, she’s pretty witless.”

  Jackie shot me a quick stink-eye. “Excuse me, man, but you’ve told me enough about those dipshit derelicts you represent to know you don’t ever want ’em dropping by the humble abode.”

  His words were dead-on. A few years back an L.A. dependency lawyer was murdered by one of his clients. The shooter was a distraught father who’d lost his job, his family and his marriage when his daughter testified that he’d made her jerk him off when Mommy wasn’t home. Of course, Father said he didn’t do it and sat back as if that was enough to win at trial. It wasn’t. The lawyer had been foolish enough to give Father his home address before the hearing so that Father could deliver a last-minute psych evaluation to him. A few days after the judge made her orders, Father was waiting at the foot of his lawyer’s driveway next to the Sunday paper, a loaded .38 in hand.