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  For eleven weeks Templeton rode the case like a cowboy on a bucking bronco. At first his antics in court made for rumors around the courthouse. At one point he set up two plastic recycling bins in front of the jury box and laid two twelve-foot boards across the top of them. He then climbed on top and proceeded to pace back and forth like a pirate walking the plank. After the jury stopped laughing, half of them fell in love. Templeton mesmerized them with an opening statement that lasted two days, alternating between a vaudeville act and a Harvard lecture on murder through the dark arts of toxicology. His activities in court drew headlines and feature articles in a dozen major newspapers across the country. When the jury came back with a verdict of guilty on a single count of first-degree murder, it was breaking news on all three networks. Then, in a showstopping penalty phase, Templeton convinced the jury, eight women and four men, that Bernard Russell Chester should be moved onto San Quentin’s death row. Chester would become the wealthiest man ever to be housed there.

  With eighteen scalps on his belt, Templeton has yet to lose a capital case. What he has can’t be bottled or bought. Most women would like to take him home in the same way that kids want perpetual puppies and kittens. Templeton eats expert witnesses for lunch. He can lecture most of them on nearly any subject, and he bonds with juries like a precocious child while he slays half of your witnesses with humor and microwaves the rest with a million kilowatts of intellect.

  We stand for several seconds in silence, pleasantries and smiles all around. We talk about the weather and the family photos on Millie’s desk. Finally I gin up enough sand to pop the question: Who brought the pink elephant to the party? “So tell me, Larry, you just filling in for the day, right?”

  Thumbs still planted firmly under his belt, Templeton puffs out his chest a little and gives me a kind of wicked sideways grin. “And some people will tell you that pigs can fly. But in the real world we believe in facts. And the fact is, I’m afraid you’re stuck with me.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “Wonderful,” says Harry. “we have a client who won’t tell us where he was or what he was doing for seven years, who is caught on video in the buff doing push-ups on top of the victim on her office couch. We have an exhibition of fine shooting that, in the absence of a critical piece of evidence or Annie Oakley, could only have been done by that same client. And if that wasn’t enough,” he says, “now we have to try the case against the ‘Death Dwarf.”’

  We are back at the office. I am going through phone slips as Harry paces in front of my desk. Included in the stack is a message from Herman Diggs, our investigator in waiting.

  “Picture it.” Harry holds out both hands like he is framing a shot. “You’re channel surfing and you tune in to see a lawyer the size of a fireplug shooting questions at witnesses on the stand. Now, I ask you, are you going to keep pushing the remote with your thumb, or settle back on the couch and be entertained?”

  The judge in Ruiz’s case has taken under submission the application by two cable stations to broadcast the trial live from a fixed camera in the back of the courtroom. Harry and I fought it tooth and nail, our worst nightmare, especially with Templeton now in place. Harry has visions of the prosecutor doing backflips across the courtroom between witnesses.

  “He did oppose the motion?” I ask him.

  “As I recall, Templeton told the judge that his office had ‘reservations’ concerning cameras. That’s not exactly storming the barricades,” says Harry. “You saw the gleam in his eyes. The thought of appearing daily on the small tube, given his track record in front of juries, could spawn a whole new fad in reality television: Lilliputians in Court.”

  “Okay, he’s a problem.”

  “A problem?” says Harry. “A nine-point earthquake is a problem. Getting too close to a star when it goes supernova is a problem. Mud wrestling with a midget in the middle of a murder trial while he moonwalks on boards in the front of the jury is not a problem. I would call that a catastrophe, maybe a cataclysm.”

  “If he gets out of control, Gilcrest will rein him in.” If Templeton is the dark side of our case, Sam Gilcrest, the trial judge, is the bright seam. He’s a former public defender, one of the last survivors, a point for our side. He’ll listen politely to Templeton’s arguments, but if he has to he’ll sit on him.

  “Be easier to disarm a nuclear warhead while you’re in the middle of a grand mal seizure,” says Harry. “Face it: this thing’s gonna be tried in the center ring of a circus. And you and I are likely to be outside the tent.”

  “I think you’re overstating it.”

  “That’s not possible,” says Harry.

  “It is what it is. At this point we don’t have a lot of choices.”

  “Kendal found one.” Harry means backing out of the case.

  “Even if I were inclined—which I am not—the court wouldn’t allow it. Not at this stage. Not this late. Not unless the client fired us, and I don’t think Ruiz is going to do that.”

  “If you let me talk to him alone, I think I can arrange it,” says Harry.

  I smile and ignore him. The message from Herman includes a number. According to the note, he’ll only be there until four o’clock. I check my watch. After that I’m supposed to join him. He’s left the name of the place and an address.

  “We end up doing this on live television,” says Harry. “Twenty or thirty million people watching while every unemployed lawyer in North America vies for face time so they can criticize our every move during each break. When it’s over, they’ll erect a tombstone out in front of the office. You know what it’ll say?”

  “No.”

  “‘Here Lie Madriani and Hinds, Killed by Tom Thumb.”’

  “I didn’t ask for Templeton. And unless you know something I don’t, there’s no process for removing a prosecutor with an affidavit. So, short of finding a magical shrinking potion, inhaling helium, or learning how to sing ‘The Lollipop Guild’ in falsetto, what is it you would like me to do?”

  “For starters, we could have somebody fall on the little fucker,” says Harry.

  “Or maybe you could just drop your briefcase on him.”

  “Hey. The man pushed me first. There is a limit.”

  “There’s also something called assault and battery,” I tell him.

  “I was defending myself,” says Harry. “The guy was trying to feed me the spiral end of his notebook.”

  I pile the telephone slips in the middle of the blotter on my desk, keeping only the one from Herman. I’m out of my chair and heading for the door. I grab my jacket from the coat tree as I go.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To get a drink,” I tell him.

  “First good idea you’ve had all day.”

  “Alone.”

  In the light of dusk you can see it a block away, the words Crash’N Burn in purple neon, blazing against the white stucco on the building’s façade. The place is set back from the street in a small strip mall about a half mile from the main gate at Isotenics, Inc.

  According to Herman, this is the chief watering hole for the programmers, the number crunchers, and a few of the execs at Software City, the principal after-work hangout at rush hour. They come here to down a drink or two while they kill time waiting for the solid stream of red taillights on I-5 to snake south and break up. Herman has been coming here every night for a week. Three days ago he made contact and has been cultivating it each evening since.

  Except for a small Chinese restaurant and a private parcel shop, Crash’N Burn takes up nearly the entire retail space along the mall. Its large neon sign spans the length of the building, emitting an eerie violet hue that illuminates the front of the club like a black light.

  It takes me a couple of minutes to find a parking space in the lot out in front. The place is packed. I leave my jacket, take my wallet and slip it into my hip pocket, and lose the tie. The object is to look as unbusinesslike as possible, hoping the man with Herman won’t recognize me, at leas
t until I have a chance to sit down.

  I lock the car and head for the entrance under the art deco canopy spanning the sidewalk in front. The sleeves of my white shirt take on a phosphorescent glow under the hum of the neon tubes overhead. The canopy leads to double doors of smoked glass, very heavy. I can feel vibrations from the bass boom of music inside before I arrive.

  I pull one of the doors open. Inside, the crush of bodies, laughter, and loud music from the sound system become an exercise in sensory overload. The place is a fire marshal’s nightmare. People are forming up and adhering in tight little circles like grease in detergent, some of them turned sideways just in order to move. Standing bodies everywhere, most of them holding cocktail glasses, some of them shimmying to the beat of the music.

  The lighting theme from the building’s exterior is intensified here. Black light transforms flesh into shades of bronze. Smiles become blinding.

  The crowd, mostly in their twenties and early thirties, is an assortment. Business types in suits mingle with the more casually dressed. Some of them have joined me in ditching their suit coats. Two young women, their backs to me, cocktail glasses in hand, block the way. One of them, wearing a short white shirtdress, seems to glow with incandescence as she gyrates in place to the music. She is shouting at the top of her voice in order to be heard by a young guy standing next to her.

  Off to my right is a bar that spans the room, all the way to the back. Behind it is a wall of mirrored glass and shelves of bottles. I count at least three bartenders pulling stemmed glasses from the overhead rack and juggling bottles to mix drinks, their hands moving at the speed of light.

  To my left, through an occasional parting of bodies, I can see people sitting at a few low tables. These are arranged like toadstools around a dance floor that is covered by humanity, standing room only.

  In the distance, on the other side of the dance floor, two terraced areas are set off behind a railing: booths and tables, all of them occupied.

  It isn’t hard to find Herman. When he stands up from the booth in the far corner to wave, the two people sitting at the table in front of him turn to see if the wall behind them isn’t moving. The size of a small house, tonight Herman is wearing a loud Hawaiian shirt, prints of tropical foliage covering enough cloth to outfit the sails on a schooner.

  I raise a hand to let him know I’ve seen him. Then I sidle and slither across the dance floor, slipping through the crowd and up the two steps to the raised area.

  The man sitting with Herman is also African-American. He’s busy scanning the rest of the crowd as I approach, looking the other way. By now Herman should have had a chance to feed him a couple of drinks and, if I am lucky, to put him in a talkative mood. He turns to look at me just as I reach the table. The light is disorienting. Above the collar of my shirt, my face is probably an orange blob. I don’t think he recognizes me.

  Herman is waiting for me with an outstretched arm. “Paul, I want you to meet a friend of mine.” He’s shouting into my ear to be heard over the music, then turns away so I can barely make out the rest of it. “Harold, this is Paul. Paul, Harold.”

  Harold Klepp has one hand cupped to his ear trying to pick it all up. Unable to stand, squeezed into the back corner of the booth, he leans over the table as far as he can and shakes my hand.

  Herman quickly sits down, blocking one end of the booth. I sit across from him, blocking the other.

  I figured that if Herman or anyone else showed up at Klepp’s house identifying themselves as an investigator in the case, they would get the door slammed in their face.

  “How you been? How’s tricks?” Herman looks at me and smiles.

  “Good. And you?”

  “Oh, I’m fine,” he says. “Have to order you a drink so’s you can catch up with us. Harold, how about you? Why don’t you have another one?” Herman pushes the drink menu toward me in its clear plastic stand-up display.

  “Not for me,” he says.

  As I read the menu I can feel Klepp’s eyes beginning to bore into me from the side. He’s checking me out, assessing, trying not to be obvious. “What’d you say your name was?”

  “Paul.” I say it without looking at him and try to swallow the word. I change the subject. “What’s good here?” The specialty drinks all have high-tech themes: The Memory Leak, The Data Bomb, The Meltdown, The Code Grinder, and The Infinite Loop.

  “They’re all good,” says Herman. “Try the Loop. It’s my favorite.”

  “Loop it is,” I tell him.

  Herman almost reaches out to tackle a waitress as she cruises by. “Loops all around,” he says.

  She holds up three fingers and he nods.

  “No, no,” says Klepp. “I’ve gotta get home.”

  “Oh, you have to have one more,” says Herman.

  The waitress waits for an answer.

  “Bring three,” says Herman.

  “Oh, what the hell,” says Klepp. He has one empty glass in front of him. I’m hoping that the waitress policed up at least one more dead soldier before I arrived. If I waited another half hour, Herman might have been able to put Klepp under the table and I could have crawled underneath to question him.

  As it is, he is beginning to take a keener interest in me. “One more time on the name,” he says. He leans over and shouts it into my ear.

  “Paul.”

  “You know, I think we met once before. Are you a lawyer?”

  Bingo. I snap my head toward him like I’m surprised. “Don’t tell me I represented your wife in a divorce?”

  “What’s your last name?”

  “Madriani.”

  If he is going to run, it’s going to be now. Instead he looks at Herman. “Do you two work together?”

  “Do I look like a lawyer?” Herman laughs without answering the question.

  Klepp isn’t sure whether to believe him or not, so he comes back to me. “You’re representing Ruiz.”

  “You know Mr. Ruiz?”

  “I work at Isotenics. We met at the office, at the meeting upstairs. Victor Havlitz, Jim Beckworth. In the conference room.”

  “You were there?”

  He nods.

  “What is it you do again?” I ask.

  “Acting director, R&D. Research and Development.”

  “Oh, yeah. I remember. We didn’t have a chance to talk. You were down at the other end of the table.”

  He nods. He’s wary.

  “As I remember … what was his name? Your boss?”

  “Victor Havlitz.”

  “Yeah, Havlitz. He kept getting his shorts in a wedgie. Very uptight,” I tell him.

  This draws a smile. “Uptight isn’t the word for it,” says Klepp.

  It was clear from the meeting that among the executives at Isotenics, Klepp was feeling like the odd man out. While he may not be at the center of power, I am guessing that if anybody is going to talk openly about what was going on inside the company at the time Chapman was killed, Klepp is the most likely candidate.

  I’m moving to the music again as if I have only a passing interest in conversation. A few anxious seconds pass as Klepp sits there, trapped in the middle, looking at the two of us. He’s not sure if it would be impolite to leave. The waitress arrives and deposits our drinks on the table.

  Herman puts them on the open tab and slides one of the full glasses over to Klepp. Then Herman gets rid of the straw from his own glass as if to say, “Only sissies use straws.” “Drink up,” he says.

  I’m afraid Klepp is going to get lockjaw. If he gets up to go to the restroom, I can tell he won’t be coming back.

  From the look on Herman’s face, he knows one of us is going to have to jump into the void.

  “You know”—Herman leans across the table toward me and shouts so that Klepp can hear it—“I got tickets to the Lakers game Tuesday night. Harold and I are goin’. Why don’t you come with us?”

  I figured this would probably come later, after we broke the ice. But since we are walking
on a glacier … “Gee, I don’t know.”

  “You don’t mind, do you, Harold?” Herman looks at him.

  “Sure.” Klepp’s expression is something less than certain, but what can he say? “Why not?”

  “Sounds like fun,” I say.

  I had my secretary buy three tickets online the minute Herman told me he’d connected with Klepp. It wouldn’t do to yank on the man’s arms and twist for too much information on the first date. A long drive to L.A., the three of us in the car talking, drinks over dinner, basketball, followed by a long drive home. If we’re lucky, we’ll catch Klepp talking in his sleep.

  I try to take the edge off with some small talk. I have to repeat myself every once in a while to be heard over the music. It takes me ten minutes, but I learn that Klepp is a graduate of Ohio State, a degree in business, with a master’s in software engineering from Pennsylvania. He has a wife and two sons, one in high school, the other in middle school. Once he starts to talk, the anxiety takes over and I learn everything I ever wanted to know about high school soccer. In between I’m taking sips from my drink.

  Challenged by Herman, I have to down The Infinite Loop without the straw. He has done his homework. I’m betting it’s the most potent thing on the menu. Based on the blast of alcohol that hits me when I first lift the glass, I’m guessing that if you lit a match it would blow the hair off my head like a torch.

  The fact that Klepp is working on his second and possibly third, not slurring and still sitting upright, gives me a new sense of respect for the man. As for Herman, I have watched him drink enough tequila in Mexico to know that his insides are clad with copper.

  Klepp and I cover the personal points. Then we sit in silence for about a minute with just the music filling the void. Finally he feels compelled to say something. “How’s your case going?” The only thing he can think of that we have in common.

  “It’s coming along.” What’s one more lie?

  “I, ah, I didn’t know Ruiz very well,” he says. “Ran into him a few times in the building. He came up and sat with me one day in the lunchroom. We talked for a while. He seemed like a nice enough guy. You know how you get a feeling for somebody?”