Reason to kill, p.28
Reason to Kill, page 28
It’s a Saturday morning, a little after 11. Valentine’s Day is weeks away, but on television it’s like someone’s fired a starting pistol; they’re already off to the races. They’re talking about chocolates and sports cars and panties and diamonds. Diamonds for the woman in your life. I see it plastered on the rear ends of buses and inside magazines I pick up at the doctor’s office. This time don’t hold back. Give her what she’s always wanted. That’s a helluva message.
The light changes then, and I cross Hauser heading west. There’s a skinny teenage girl planted on the bench at the bus stop. Her legs are crossed. Her jeans are torn. Her hair is short and blond and needs a brush. Also something about her tells me she hasn’t had a shower in a while. A runaway? Maybe. She’s working on a cigarette with one hand and manipulating her cell phone with the other. I pause for a split second, then I walk on. There’s probably a story there, okay, and I’ll bet you a nickel it’s sad, but she didn’t ask me to help, now did she.
Loretta and me, we don’t do presents anymore; we’re too old and practical for that kind of mishigas. But if I were God, you know, if I could give her anything in the universe, it sure wouldn’t be diamonds. No, not at all. I’d give her back her mind. Fuck diamonds.
The sun is shining relentlessly. Omar meets me on the corner of Gardner and Third, next to the bronze statue of Haym Salomon. “One of my people,” I tell him. “He put up a lot of money for George Washington during the Revolutionary War. Kept him afloat.”
“Why’d he do that?”
“I dunno, I guess he was a true believer. Some people fight with guns. That’s all they have. Haym had cash. Turns out you can’t fight a war without money, not for long, anyway, not really. That’s what bankers are for.”
“Yeah, but it was a loan,” Omar says derisively.
“A loan that was never repaid,” I say.
We walk together under the jacaranda trees, past a sleeping homeless couple and down the dirt path that leads to a softball diamond. There’s a pickup game going on. A bunch of stocky, middle-aged guys in T-shirts and shorts and caps, running around, shouting encouragement in English and Spanish, trying to stay forever young. I can sympathize. We plop ourselves down in the grass near the first base line to watch.
I tell him I’m sorry for not showing up for a beer when he asked me the other night, that I was worn out and just plain overwhelmed by the whole Pinky Bleistiff matter. “You wouldn’t have wanted to be within three feet of me,” I say. “You didn’t miss much.”
“Yeah,” he says. “But you did.” Then he tells me he heard from a Latino lawyer friend of his downtown that they’re not going to press charges against Risa. That’s the word, at least.
“The lieutenant told me that, too. Can’t say I’m surprised. I’m sure the DA was always reluctant to put her on the stand. Who’d want to open up that whole can of worms about incest? Can you imagine how that would look?”
“Exactly,” Omar says. He pulls a toothpick out of his shirt pocket and starts working it idly around in his mouth.
“On the other hand,” I say, “they still have the Ballo case. It shouldn’t be a total loss, if you know what I mean.”
“The Burbank cops are handling that,” says Omar. “And don’t quote me, but they seem to like things simple in Burbank. What I heard. My friend thought they’re going to try to put it all on Javier.”
“Both murders?”
Omar shrugs his shoulders. “Ballo’s for sure,” he says. “They’ve got surveillance video, fingerprints, the whole enchilada, really. And it would be nice—convenient for everyone—if he copped to both of them.”
“Not for him,” I say. “Not if his attorney has anything to say about it. She’s sharp.”
“Of course,” Omar says. “But you can see how they’d lay it out, can’t you? Risa goes to get her things out of Pinky’s house. She brings Ray along because she’s scared. She and Pinky get into a shouting match at the door. Javier comes running out with the gun. He doesn’t know what’s going on. There’s a struggle. Words go back and forth. Everybody’s emotions are revved up. Maybe that’s when Pinky opens his big mouth, admits that Risa’s really his daughter. His flesh and blood. Maybe it’s all too much for Javier and he snaps. Bang, bang. Adios, Pinky.”
“Maybe,” I say. “Although right now Javier’s still not talking about that part. He told us, and okay, he said he told it to his priest, but more than that, it gets pretty murky.”
“Murky’s the word,” Omar says. He extracts the toothpick from his mouth and holds it in his two fingers like a tiny baton, like he’s a teacher up at the blackboard making a point. “I don’t know what they do with it, man. All I know is if they wanted to, they could probably tell a damn good story that he killed both of them. He had reason to kill, you know what I mean? And I tell you what, man, if I was on that jury, I’d believe it.”
The guy at bat, a short, heavyset, unshaven fellow in an old tattered Dodger blue jersey with VALENZUELA printed on the back, whacks the ball far into the left field corner. The man on third scores. The ball winds up in the bushes, and the batter, who was running at top speed, turns at first. He sees it’s going to be lost for a good long while, so he slows down and trots around the bases, beaming, clapping his hands over his head in triumph.
“Wow,” I say. “He put that one away, didn’t he?”
Omar nods.
I nod, too. I don’t tell him what I know. That Risa fired the first shot. That as he lay on the ground, Javier grabbed the gun and she ran back to the car. That it was Javier who finished him off. I could tell him, but he’s put together a wonderful scenario of his own. What good would it do?
And as it turns out, Omar’s dead right about the eventual trial, which is not a trial but a meeting, a negotiation, a compromise worked out by both sides. In court for slightly more than an hour, Javier raises his right hand and pleads guilty, not just to killing Ray Ballo, but also to the murder of Pincus Bleistiff.
I managed to get ahold of the transcript. On the witness stand Javier states that he felt he was commanded by God to put an end to the pestilence that Mr. Bleistiff represented. That while he feels deep remorse for his action in the heat of the moment, he believes that his reading of the Bible required him to do this. He also states that subsequent to Mr. Bleistiff’s death, Ray Ballo was extorting money from Risa Barsky, threatening to claim that she was responsible for Bleistiff’s murder. That he had gone over to Mr. Ballo’s apartment intending to pay him money on Ms. Barsky’s behalf but that Ballo had insisted it wasn’t enough, that he was going to take the money and expose Ms. Barsky anyway. Escovedo claims he tried to leave and that unfortunately a fight had ensued, which resulted in Ballo’s death.
Does the prosecution dispute any of this? the judge asks. No, Your Honor, we do not.
The defense attorney, Ms. Lincoln, then makes a short eloquent explication that Javier Escovedo, a loyal servant and a good Catholic who has lived an entirely moral life, was devastated when he learned about his employer’s abuse of Risa Barsky. Since the events of November he has been seeing a therapist twice a week and has spent the past several months attending church every day. He has also been actively working at the local food bank in his home community of Eagle Rock.
Her speech concludes with a fervent plea that the court take all of this information into consideration when making its final decision regarding Javier Escovedo, to see him not as a craven killer but as someone torn between his fixed religious beliefs and his sense of duty. There has been much retribution in this matter, Your Honor, but little or no justice here for anyone. No justice for Raymond Ballo, who was drawn in as an innocent but wound up trying to blackmail his lover; no justice for Risa Barsky, a footloose foster child who was lured to Hollywood and methodically abused by her father; no justice for Pincus Bleistiff, who fell in love with his own flesh and blood, who manipulated her for his own purposes and paid the ultimate price; and finally, no justice for my client, Javier Escovedo, a principled man, a God-fearing Catholic, who worked all his life for a depraved individual and simply could not abide it any longer.
These are the facts that need to be weighed, Your Honor, before you can come to a fair and compassionate understanding of this matter. Thank you for your time.
Risa Barsky’s album is called Hum a Few Bars. It’s a mix of sultry jazz standards and Yiddish love songs resurrected from the Depression era and before. It’s got a photo of her in a low-cut black evening dress, leaning seductively against a grand piano. There’s a debonair young man in a white tuxedo seated on the bench behind her, presumably making music. And on top of the piano itself there’s a pair of glasses, each holding something attractive and alcoholic. One looks like scotch on the rocks, the other could be a martini. They’re untouched. You can’t help but notice the cocktails because they’re perfectly lit by a shaft of golden light.
I buy three copies at Amoeba Records and drive over to my local post office at Beverly and Curson. One CD I drop in the mail for Lieutenant Malloy. He probably won’t care for her music, I figure, though the band is pretty tight, and there’s one standard tune at the end I want him to hear: “Bei Mir Bistu Sheyn” (“To Me You Are Beautiful”). Every Jew over a certain age has heard that. But even if he doesn’t exactly approve, I want him to have it just so he’ll know that life goes on, that something good can happen, even after a frustrating case like this.
The second one I send with a note to my cousin Shelly. I tell myself he’ll appreciate it, because we grew up listening to this stuff in my parents’ house, and because even though he acts like a tough, ballsy, know-it-all, when it comes right down to it Shelly’s like a balloon: He has nothing inside. Just a lonely old schlub with three ex-wives, all of whom he still secretly pines for. This will crack open his heart, I think, maybe give him back some memories. Good ones, I hope.
The third copy is for me. I bring it back to Park La Brea.
Loretta is giggling in the kitchen with Carmen; they’re finishing up a strange new form of dominoes when I come in. This game has no rules, as far as I can tell, and no one’s keeping score. I scratch my head: Loretta used to be a whiz at dominoes; she could count and calculate, far better than me. Now, she’s laying them down, one by one, even though they don’t match. And Carmen thinks it’s just fine.
A minute later, when Carmen says goodbye and closes the door behind her, I head for the living room. I drop my jacket on the couch, turn down the lights, and put Risa’s music on.
“What are you doing?” Loretta calls out from the kitchen. “I like the lights on.”
“Come over here,” I say. “I’ll show you.”
She pushes her chair away and edges toward me. There’s a shyness in her step. Carmen must have spent time with her this afternoon combing out her hair. Now I see it’s hanging in ringlets around her shoulders, the way it did when we were first together. Night is falling outside the window.
“Listen,” I tell her. “Listen, do you remember this tune?” Then I take her hand, squeeze it gently, lean my tired old cheek against hers. We lapse, like the couple we’ve always been, into a slow, spontaneous waltz. I can feel her heart beating inside her chest. It’s been years, but she hasn’t forgotten how to move. No, she has never forgotten. Light and effortless, like a carousel. One, two, three. One, two, three. Round and round. The memory is still there in her feet. “Close your eyes,” I whisper. “Close your eyes. Think about the day we met. Let’s pretend we’re in love.”
“Why pretend?” she whispers.
I kiss her then and she responds eagerly. And I close my eyes and smile. And even after the melody ends, we stand there clinging to each other for a long, long time. This is who we are. I breathe her in. It doesn’t get any sweeter than this.
A Few Words You Might Be Wondering About
alav hashalom - Hebrew, may he/she rest in peace
alte katchke - an old duck
beshert - fated, destined
bissel - a little bit
boychik - little boy
bubkes - nothing, or a very small amount
chutzpah - nerve, gall, impudence
daven - to recite prayers in Jewish liturgy
farblunget - broken down, wasted
farkachte - addled, confused, mixed up
goyim - non-Jews, gentiles
Kaddish - tradition Jewish prayer for the dead
kasha varnishkes - a cooked dish of bulgur wheat and bow-tie noodles
klezmer - a musical tradition blended from Eastern Europe; Jewish party and folk music
L’chayim - To life! Cheers! Traditional Jewish toast
landsman - a countryman, a fellow Jew
le sholem - (Hebrew) May he/she rest in peace, term invoked after the name of a deceased person
luftmenschen - dreamers, literally, “cloud persons”
macher - big shot, wheeler dealer
mamzer - bastard
megillah - a long involved story, or account, usually stated as “the whole megilah”
mensch - a man, in usage, a principled, decent man
meshugenah - nonsense, silliness
mishigas - craziness
mishpuchah - family, could be extended family
mitzvah - (Hebrew) a good deed
nebich - so what, whatever, big deal, who cares
nu - so, well
nudnik - a pest
oneg - a Jewish social gathering held on Saturday afternoon or Friday evening
rebbe - rabbi
schlub - stupid, clumy, oafish person
schmata - literally “rags,” but generally understood as clothes
shicker - a drunk
shmutz - dirt, filth, grime
shpilkes - pins and needles, connoting anxiety, tension
shtup - sexual intercourse (vulgar)
sufganiyah - (Hebrew) Israeli jelly donuts
tallis - prayer shawl
tchotchkes - knickknacks, little things
tikkun olam - Hebrew, the mystical concept of repairing or mending the universe; justice
tsimmis - literally, a Jewish stew, but more usually, a commotion, an upset or turmoil
tsuris - hurt, trouble, woes
tuchus - a person’s behind, rear end
Acknowledgments
We think of writers as loners, but nothing could be further from the truth. Yes, I often work in solitude at my kitchen table, but God knows I have help. I rely on a small cadre of far-flung fellow writers who read what I’m doing in its various stages. Their criticisms and thoughtful directions have shaped this novel, and I am in their debt.
In particular, I have to mention my writers group friends in Pasadena: Michael Farquhar, Ned Racine, Emily Adelsohn Corngold, and Melina Price. Also Ron Raley in Hollywood, whose screenwriting expertise was instrumental in helping me with plot twists I would not have otherwise thought about. Gracias siempre to Cheryl Howard in New Mexico, whose poetic sensibilities and knowledge of colloquial Spanish make me seem hip. On the legal side, my thanks to attorney Richard Conn and retired judge Ann Dobbs, who not only put up with all my questions, but actually answered them.
My family has been a great source of support. Sons Gideon and Tobias and their respective spouses and children have been there in good times and bad to cheer me on. Also, I should say a word about my brother, Jonathon, who is a veritable fountain of wild ideas when it comes to fiction. I don’t often use them, but they let me dare to think outside the box.
As always, I could not have managed without the tender care and nurturing of my staff at Readers’ Books in Sonoma: Jude Sales, Thea Reynolds, Rosie Lee-Parks, Brian Massey-Todd, and Barbara Hall. And in terms of its physical creation, I could not have done this without either the eagle-eye proofreading of Monica McKey, or the tutelage of Colleen Dunn Bates and her fearless crew at Prospect Park Books.
Oh, and thanks once again to Lise Solomon of Consortium for first connecting me with Prospect Park. It’s that kind of serendipity that makes this world so sweet.
Finally, inspiration for this book comes from many people I love. From my parents, Arthur and Moosie, whose New York working-class lives are partly mirrored in my characters, to my good friend Beth Hanson, who has taught me the value of kindness and patience, to, of course, my late wife, Lilla, whose spirit I hope lives on forever in everything I write.
About the Author
ANDY WEINBERGER is the author of An Old Man’s Game and a bookseller who opened Readers’ Books in Sonoma, California, with his late wife, Lilla Weinberger, in 1991. Born in New York, he grew up in the Los Angeles area and studied poetry and Chinese history at the University of New Mexico. He lives in Sonoma, where Readers’ Books continues to thrive.
Andy Weinberger, Reason to Kill
