“I want to tell you a story. Not all of the details are set or known. But I’ll tell it to you in the way I think it goes and then you tell me what you think and what I should do. Okay?”
“I like stories. Go ahead.”
“I don’t think you’ll like this one. It starts two years ago with—”
I stopped and waited while the waitress put down our salads and the cheese bread. I asked for another vodka martini even though I was only halfway through the one I had. I wanted to make sure there was no gap.
“So,” I said after she was gone. “This whole thing starts two years ago with Jesus Menendez. You remember him, right?”
“Yeah, we mentioned him the other day. The DNA. He’s the client you always say is in prison because he wiped his prick on a fluffy pink towel.”
He smiled because it was true that I had often reduced Menendez’s case to such an absurdly vulgar basis. I had often used it to get a laugh when trading war stories at Four Green Fields with other lawyers. That was before I knew what I now knew.
I did not return the smile.
“Yeah, well, it turns out Jesus didn’t do it.”
“What do you mean? Somebody else wiped his prick on the towel?”
This time Levin laughed out loud.
“No, you don’t get it. I’m telling you Jesus Menendez was innocent.”
Levin’s face grew serious. He nodded, putting something together.
“He’s in San Quentin. You were up at the Q today.”
I nodded.
“Let me back up and tell the story,” I said. “You didn’t do much work for me on Menendez because there was nothing to be done. They had the DNA, his own incriminating statement and three witnesses who saw him throw a knife into the river. They neverfound the knife but they had the witnesses—his own roommates. It was a hopeless case. Truth is, I took it on the come line for publicity value. So basically all I did was walk him to a plea. He didn’t like it, said he didn’t do it, but there was no choice. The DA was going for the death penalty. He’d have gotten that or life without. I got him life with and I made the little fucker take it. I made him.”
I looked down at my untouched salad. I realized I didn’t feel like eating. I just felt like drinking and pickling the cork in my brain that contained all the guilt cells.
Levin waited me out. He wasn’t eating, either.
“In case you don’t remember, the case was about the murder of a woman named Martha Renteria. She was a dancer at The Cobra Room on East Sunset. You didn’t end up going there on this, did you?”
Levin shook his head.
“They don’t have a stage,” I said. “They have like a pit in the center and for each number, these guys dressed like Aladdin come out carrying this big cobra basket between two bamboo poles. They put it down and the music starts. Then the top comes off the basket and the girl comes up dancing. Then her top comes off, too. Kind of a new take on the dancer coming out of the cake.”
“It’s Hollywood, baby,” Levin said. “You gotta have a show.”
“Well, Jesus Menendez liked the show. He had eleven hundred dollars his brother the drug dealer gave him and he took a fancy to Martha Renteria. Maybe because she was the only dancer who was shorter than him. Maybe because she spoke Spanish to him. After her set they sat and talked and then she circulated a little bit and came back and pretty soon he knew he was in competition with another guy in the club. He trumped the other guy by offering her five hundred if she’d take him home.”
“But he didn’t kill her when he got there?”
“Uh-uh. He followed her car in his. Got there, had sex, flushed the condom, wiped his prick on the towel and then he went home. The story starts after he left.”
“The real killer.”
“The real killer knocks on the door, maybe fakes like it’s Jesus and that he’s forgotten something. She opens the door. Or maybe it was an appointment. She was expecting the knock and she opens the door.”
“The guy from the club? The one Menendez was bidding against?”
I nodded.
“Exactly. He comes in, punches her a few times to soften her up and then takes out his folding knife and holds it against her neck while he walks her to the bedroom. Sound familiar? Only she isn’t lucky like Reggie Campo would be in a couple years. He puts her on the bed, puts on a condom and climbs on top. Now the knife is on the other side of her neck and he keeps it there while he rapes her. And when he’s done, he kills her. He stabs her with that knife again and again. It’s a case of overkill if there ever was one. He’s working out something in his sick fucking mind while he’s doing it.”
