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  Caine said, “I have no questions for this witness.”

  Dexter Lewis dismissed Ms. Brodeski, who beamed proudly when she walked past Del Rio. Then Lewis said, “The People call Mr. Bradley Sutter.”

  Chapter 26

  IT JUST KILLED me to sit helplessly by as Rick was accused of bad character and a sickening felony I was sure he hadn’t committed. Lacking a smoking gun, the prosecution was going to play on the jurors’ emotions. And I had to admit, Dexter Lewis had the superficial charisma of a pretty good dramatic actor.

  I glanced up as Lewis called his next witness.

  Bradley Sutter looked to be in his late twenties, had thinning hair, and his scalp was pink from the sun. He wore a new khaki jacket and blue pants, a white shirt, no tie, and a wedding ring.

  He looked honest. He looked reliable.

  Dexter Lewis asked for his occupation, and Sutter answered that he was a driver for UPS, that he’d been on his current route for two years, that he liked his job a lot, and that Ms. Carmody was one of his regular customers.

  “I pick up and deliver to her on average two or three times a week,” said Sutter. “We talk about local news. I might tell her a joke. She liked a good joke. Excuse me. She likes a good joke.”

  “Now, do you remember delivering a package for Ms. Carmody about three months ago?”

  “I call her Vicky, by the way.”

  “Okay, Mr. Sutter. Do you remember bringing a package to Vicky on June thirteenth?”

  “Yes. It was an overnight letter from San Francisco. I checked my log.”

  “And did anything about that day stand out in your mind?”

  “Actually, yes.”

  “Please tell the jury what you remember,” Lewis said.

  “Okay. I went up to Vicky’s front door, handed her the letter, and asked her to sign. She did and we were talking, and then she said, ‘You remember Rick?’ I said, ‘Sure, what about him?’

  “And she said something like, ‘He just called. Said he wanted to come by tomorrow, return something I left in his house.’ And I said, ‘Are you sure that’s a good idea?’”

  “Mr. Sutter, why did you ask Ms. Carmody that question?”

  Sutter said, “Well, about six months before that, a couple days after Christmas, I had a delivery for Vicky, and I parked my truck in front of her driveway, blocked it, actually. I had a couple of boxes for her, and as I was going up her walk, Mr. Del Rio wanted to get his car out and he leaned on the horn.”

  Lewis said, “What happened after he blew the horn?”

  “I said to him, ‘I’ll be right back, Mr. Del Rio,’ and he said, ‘Now. You need to move your truck now.’ Something like that. And he got a crazy look on his face. He revved the engine like he was going to drive through my truck.”

  “Go on,” Lewis said. He made a half turn so that he could look at the jury as Sutter spoke.

  Sutter seemed to me to be a sincere guy and a credible witness. He had a good job and was friends with the victim, who couldn’t speak for herself.

  It was pretty clear that Sutter’s testimony was going to hurt Rick, and I already had a good idea about what he was going to say.

  Chapter 27

  DEXTER LEWIS SAID, “Mr. Sutter, please tell the court what happened after the defendant menaced you.”

  Sutter said, “I brought the boxes up to the porch as Vicky was coming out of her house. I’m figuring that if he runs into my truck, I’m calling the cops, and anyway, the truck is insured to the hilt.”

  “Please go on.”

  Sutter said, “So Vicky goes tearing out, shouts to Mr. Del Rio, ‘Rick, Brad will only be a minute. Please don’t get upset. I’m asking you, Rick.’”

  “And then what happened?”

  “He said, ‘Stay out of it, Vicky.’ Then he got out of his car and shouted at me, ‘Do you like your job? Do you?’

  “He pulled out his phone and I heard him say, ‘I want to report one of your drivers for unprofessional behavior and for blocking a driveway.’ He gave my license plate number. Nothing I could do, so I went to where Vicky was standing, got her signature, and asked her if she was going to be all right.

  “She said she’d broken up with Mr. Del Rio and that he was angry about it. I told her if she had any trouble to call me on my cell phone. And then, as I was trying to leave, he pulled his car in front of my truck and blocked me in.”

  “Then what?”

  “He said, ‘You haven’t seen the last of me.’ And then he called me an effing moron. He drove off a split second ahead of my own call to the cops.”

  Sutter shot a pointed look at Rick, who had already taken a few pointed looks from Geralyn Brodeski.

  Lewis was saying, “Okay, so, to make sure we’re all following you: According to Vicky, she broke up with Mr. Del Rio the day of this incident, which was two days after Christmas.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And then, about six months later, on June thirteenth, Vicky told you that Mr. Del Rio was coming over the next night. June fourteenth.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And why do you remember this?”

  “Because I was worried about Vicky.”

  Caine objected, said that the witness was speculating, that there was nothing in evidence or anywhere else to show that Mr. Del Rio was a danger to Ms. Carmody or even to Mr. Sutter. All Rick had done was call Sutter a moron.

  Lewis countered the objection, saying that the defendant had tried to intimidate the witness, and, further, he said that Vicky breaking up with Del Rio had made the defendant angry and hostile.

  But Judge Johnson sustained Caine’s objection, which clearly pissed Dexter Lewis off.

  The ADA recovered his glossy composure and said to Sutter, “Okay. Now, the next night, did you have occasion to see Ms. Carmody?”

  “I had a pickup from the Reynolds family across the street, and I happened to glance over at Vicky’s house, and she was at her front door. And Mr. Del Rio’s car was in the driveway. It’s a gray Land Rover. I see him get out of his car and go up the steps. Vicky let him in and she closed the door.”

  “And did you see Vicky after that?”

  “No. A few days later, I made a delivery to her neighbor Ms. Brodeski, who told me that Vicky had almost died from a beating and was in the ICU.”

  I wished I could take Sutter’s place on the stand, say that Rick’s temper was not a true indication of his character. That he had put his life on the line countless times to save soldiers and civilians. That he had helped put killers away in our city. That he was honest. That he was good.

  Lewis said, “Thanks, Mr. Sutter. You’ve been very helpful. Your witness,” he said to the defense.

  “Were you intimidated by Mr. Del Rio?” asked Eric Caine.

  “I need my job. It’s a good company, and I didn’t have a plan B.”

  “Were you intimidated, Mr. Sutter?”

  “No. I thought he was a jerk.”

  “Thanks for your testimony. No further questions,” said Caine.

  Chapter 28

  JUSTINE LEANED IN, whispered to me that she had to go to work. I moved so she could get past me and out into the aisle, and the prosecution’s next witness took the stand.

  Merle Widner was about five four and had red hair and an intense unblinking stare through his thick glasses. Widner was the 911 operator who had taken the call from Vicky Carmody.

  After the preliminary questions, the 911 tape was played, and it was awful to hear. On it, Widner talked to a muffled voice on the other end of the line, identified as belonging to Victoria Carmody. The only understandable word she uttered was help, which she got out in one long sigh.

  The operator said, “Stay on the line with me until help arrives, okay?”

  What had seemed almost theoretical, because Vicky Carmody was not present in court, suddenly became very real. Widner testified that he’d dispatched two ambulances and the police to the Carmody address, which served to establish the time lin
e and focus the horrified jury.

  “The People call Mr. Dandelion Adar,” said the ADA.

  Dandelion Adar had a shaved head and a confident walk. He cleared the length of the courtroom in five or six strides, swore to tell the truth, got into the box, clasped his hands at his waist, and leaned forward.

  Lewis asked Adar what he did for a living, and Adar said that he was a paramedic, that he and his partner had answered the emergency call to go to Victoria Carmody’s address.

  Lewis asked, “You were the first responder?”

  “That’s right. The police and another ambulance were right behind me.”

  “And did you assist the victim, Victoria Carmody?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Will you please tell the court where you found her?”

  “She was on the floor in the bedroom. She was holding the phone, a landline.”

  “And can you tell the court about Ms. Carmody’s condition?”

  “Her head was a bloody pulp. Right eye socket was smashed. Nose broken, and she was breathing with difficulty. Her pulse was very weak. Along with the obvious severe head trauma, her right arm was fractured, bone coming through the skin in two places. I noticed a table lamp with blood on the base that could have been used as a weapon.”

  “What other observations did you make in your role as a paramedic?”

  “I determined that the lady had been lying on the floor for quite a while, because the blood pool had coagulated and hardened. I thought that she had probably been coming in and out of consciousness between the incident and her phone call to 911.”

  Dexter Lewis nodded soberly, gave the jurors a chance to think about a woman beaten bloody with a lamp and left for dead. I’d seen Rick fight men far larger than him, break bones, knock out teeth.

  But I’d never heard of or seen him hitting a woman.

  Lewis said, “What action did you and your partner take, Mr. Adar?”

  “We strapped her onto a board with a neck brace, loaded her into the bus, gave her oxygen and fluids, rushed her to Cedars-Sinai. I’ve seen people with less trauma die en route. I didn’t expect her to make it to the ER.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Adar. That’s all I have for this witness,” said Dexter Lewis.

  “I have no questions,” said Del Rio’s lawyer.

  If Caine thought he could discredit the prosecution’s witness, he would have questioned him, which led me to the inevitable conclusion: If Caine’s argument for the defense didn’t annihilate the prosecution’s case, Del Rio was going down.

  Judge Johnson dismissed the witness, adding that court was adjourned until two in the afternoon. I left the courthouse by a back door, got out to the curb unnoticed to wait for my cab.

  I was looking up the street when a red Ferrari zoomed into my view. As the car came closer, the driver honked the horn.

  It was Tommy. Our eyes locked, and in that brief moment, he grinned and blew me a kiss.

  Asshole.

  My brother is a gambler.

  He was betting that he was going to take me down.

  How did he think he could pull that off?

  Chapter 29

  GOZAN REMARI WHISTLED through his teeth as he drove the rented Bentley north on Rodeo Drive, down the three-block-long strip of extravagant stores. The fantastic shopping area was planted with palm trees on the median, and palms poked through the sidewalks fronting the stores.

  Palm trees! In Sumar, there were no trees, and here, they were everywhere, waving their flirty branches, hellooo.

  There were really no suitable words in Sumarin to describe Rodeo Drive, so Gozan spoke in English, telling his nephew that Rodeo was the jewel in the crown of Beverly Hills.

  “Khezzy. Look here. Bulgari, Escada, Harry Winston, Gucci. Isn’t this wonderful?”

  Khezir was in a black mood since they’d gotten evicted from the Beverly Hills Hotel. He had liked the bungalow. He had liked the garden around it. He was not ready to go back to New York. And he might never be ready to go back to Sumar.

  “You need a nice new suit of clothes, nephew. That will cheer you up.”

  The traffic was clotted with flashy high-ticket autos, and wealthy residents and tourists strolled into the designer stores.

  Gozan parked the Bentley in a no-parking zone, waited for Khezir to get out, and then locked up. Khezzy called out to his uncle, “You think shopping is going to cheer me up? I don’t think so.”

  “Think again,” said Gozan.

  A peachy type of woman and a woman who looked just like a younger version of her were heading into a high-end shop called Mariah Koo. Each woman wore tight jeans, a blousy silk shirt, and high heels. The older one had a deep neckline with her bosoms almost spilling out.

  The Sumaris walked through the front doors of the shop, and Gozan was impressed by the scent of flowers, the upbeat techno music, and the elegant decor. The walls were seamless black lacquer, and the clothing was displayed on individual stands that were spotlighted islands of color against the black marble floor.

  A young man came over to where Gozan and Khezir stood inside the doorway. He was handsome, with blue eyes and thick black hair. A gold stud winked in the lobe of his left ear.

  He said his name was Brian and he asked how he could help them today, and would they like coffee or champagne?

  Gozan said, “Coffee, please. With milk and sugar.”

  Gozan saw that men’s clothing was to the left, and the women’s area was on the right. The two juicy ladies he’d seen going into the store were grazing among the clothing displays. He could tell at a glance that there would be a sparse selection for curvy women, so he and Khezzy would have to strike quickly, before the pair left the premises.

  Brian went off to get coffee, and Gozan and Khezir worked out a plan. It was one of their best yet.

  Chapter 30

  WHILE KHEZIR TRIED on sports coats, Gozan took possession of a silver-leather club chair in the ladies’ section. He was reading the Financial Times, smiling at the peachy women, when he got a call and was forced to get up from his fine catbird seat and have a conversation behind a rack of coats.

  The voice on the other end of the line belonged to someone he knew well, a man who was not in charge of him but still made demands.

  Gozan spoke into the phone, keeping his voice very low.

  “You worry too much. I understand. And you should understand whom you are speaking to.”

  He signed off, put his phone away, and took a moment to return to his earlier mood. Soon he was back in the fine leather chair, nodding approval when the daughter came out of the dressing room to spin in front of the tall, silvery mirrors.

  The women were brown-haired, and he preferred blondes, but their full figures were very choice. The daughter’s in particular, with its rounded buttocks and narrow waist. She was complaining about her thighs as she twirled in the skinny-girl dress.

  Gozan wondered how hard it would be to close the deal. He eased into a conversation with the mother, telling her that he was in the diplomatic corps and that he and his friend were on holiday.

  Gozan’s subtle accent and the cut of his clothes made a good impression, and soon this lady was telling him that her name was Susan, she was going through a divorce, and she lived in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

  She said that her daughter, Serena, was in law school and would be graduating next year. This trip to LA was a birthday present to her.

  During the conversation, Khezir came over a few times to get Gozan’s opinion of the various jackets in combination with shirts and ties. But now, Khezzy was flirting with Brian, and the flirtation wasn’t lost on the women.

  When Khezir returned to the men’s section, Gozan said, “Susan, it would give me pleasure to take you and Serena out to dinner tonight. A birthday celebration. Khezzy and I are here on business and he is very homesick for good conversation.”

  Susan said, “Oh, we shouldn’t. We have an early flight tomorrow and should really pack and get to bed.”
r />   “I understand,” Gozan said, looking very disappointed. “I understand that you don’t know us. We could be very boring dinner companions.”

  “No, no, I’m not saying that,” said Susan.

  “Good. Let’s have an early dinner,” Gozan said. “I’ll find the best restaurant within ten minutes’ drive of your hotel. If we pick you up at seven, you will be back in your room by nine thirty. Khezir is a very funny man. You will be glad you had a chance to meet one of the outstanding young heroes of Sumar.”

  The daughter said, “Please, Mom. It would be fun.”

  At that moment, a salesgirl said to Serena, “Let me take these for you.” The three women went to the desk, and Gozan joined them.

  When the purchases were tucked in tissue and bagged in black, Gozan called to his nephew, “Khezzy, please help these ladies put the shopping bags in their car.”

  Chapter 31

  KHEZIR HAD BEEN trying on a jacket, and he said to the salesman, “Brian, wait just a moment, won’t you? I’ll only be a minute.”

  Brian said, “Absolutely. I have some shoes I want to show you, Mr. Mazul. You will just die.”

  Gozan held the door open for Susan and Serena, then he and Khezir followed the ladies out to their rented BMW that was parked across the street. Khezir, still wearing the three-thousand-dollar lavender-silk jacket, went to the rear of the car, and when the trunk was opened, he put the bags inside.

  Gozan opened the driver’s-side door for Susan and said, “You can trust me on the choice of restaurants, Susan. I have researched the best of the best and I have some good ideas already.”

  Khezir said to Serena, “I am eager to be celebrating your birthday with you, young lady.”