Thorson pulled to a stop at a curb marked for deliveries only. He threw the car into park and looked at me.
“What did you say? What’re you saying?”
“You heard what I said. You were in there. I might not have the proof now but if Warren comes up with anything ahead of me, I’ll go to Backus anyway and tell him what I saw.”
“Listen, sport, see that coffee? That was my peace offering. If you want to throw it in my face, fine. But I don’t know what the fuck you are talking about and for the last time, I don’t talk to reporters. Period. I’m only talking to you now because you have special dispensation. That’s it.”
He jammed the car into drive and lurched out into traffic, prompting an angry rebuke from the horn of another driver. Hot coffee slopped onto my hand but I kept silent about it. We drove in silence for several minutes, entering a canyon of concrete and glass and steel. Wilshire Boulevard. We were heading toward the towers of downtown. The coffee no longer tasted good to me and I put the cap back on it.
“Where are we going?” I finally asked.
“To see Gladden’s lawyer. After that we’re going out to Santa Monica, talk to the dynamic duo that had this dirtbag in their hands and let him go.”
“I read the Times story. They didn’t know who they had. You can’t really blame them.”
“Yeah, that’s right, nobody’s ever to blame.”
I had completely succeeded in taking Thorson’s offering of goodwill and flushing it down the toilet. He had turned sullen and bitter. His usual self as far as I could tell, yet it was still my fault.
“Look,” I said, putting my coffee on the floor and holding my hands in an I-give-up gesture, “I’m sorry, okay? If I’m wrong about you and Warren and everything else, I’m sorry. I was just looking at things the way they seem to me. If I’m wrong, I’m wrong.”
He said nothing and the silence became oppressive. I felt like the ball was still in my court, that there was more I needed to say.
“I’ll drop it, okay?” I lied. “And I’m sorry about. . . if you’re upset about me and Rachel. Things just happened.”
“Tell you what, Jack, you can keep your apology. I don’t care about you and I don’t care about Rachel. She thinks I do and I’m sure she’s told you that. But she’s wrong. And if I were you, I’d watch my ass with her. There’s always something else going on with her. Remember I told you that.”
“Sure.”
But I drop-kicked that stuff as soon as he said it. I wasn’t going to let his bitterness infect my thoughts about Rachel.
“You ever heard of the Painted Desert, Jack?”
I looked at him, my eyes squinted in confusion.
“Yeah, I’ve heard of it.”
“Been there?”
“No.”
“Well, if you’re with Rachel, then you’re there now. She’s the Painted Desert. Beautiful to look at, yeah. But, man, once you’re there, she’s desolate. There’s nothing there past the beauty, Jack, and it gets cold at night in the desert.”
I wanted to hit him with some kind of comeback that would be the verbal equivalent of a roundhouse punch. But the depth of his acid and anger stunned me into silence.
“She can play you,” he continued. “Or play with you. Like a toy. One minute she wants to share it, the next she doesn’t. She disappears on you.”
I still said nothing. I turned and looked out the window so I wouldn’t even have him in my peripheral vision. In a couple of minutes he said we were there and he pulled into the parking garage of one of the downtown office buildings.
After consulting a directory in the lobby of the Fuentes Law Center, we silently rode the elevator up to the seventh floor. To the right we found a door with a mahogany plaque set to the side of it that announced the law offices of Krasner & Peacock. Inside, Thorson placed his opened badge and ID wallet on the counter in front of the receptionist and asked to see Krasner.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “Mr. Krasner is in court this morning.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure. He’s in arraignments. He won’t be back until after lunch.”
“Down here? Which courthouse?”
“Down here. The CCB.”
We left the car where it was and walked to the Criminal Courts Building. Arraignments were held on the fifth floor in a huge, marble-walled courtroom heavily crowded with lawyers, the accused and the families of the accused. Thorson approached a deputy marshal sitting behind a desk at the first row of the gallery and asked her which of the lawyers milling about was Arthur Krasner. She pointed to a short man with thinning red hair and a red face who was standing near the court railing talking with another man in a suit, undoubtedly another lawyer. Thorson headed toward him, mumbling something about his looking like a Jewish leprechaun.
“Mr. Krasner?” Thorson said, not waiting for a lull in the conversation the two men were having.
“Yes?”
“Can I have a word with you out in the hallway?”
“Who are you?”
“I can explain in the hallway.”
“You can explain now or you can go out to the hallway by yourself.”
Thorson opened his wallet, Krasner looked at the badge and read the ID, and I watched his small porcine eyes move back and forth as he thought.
“That’s right, I think you know what it’s about,” Thorson said. Looking at the other lawyer, he said, “Will you excuse us now?”
In the hallway Krasner had regained some of his lawyerly bluff.
“All right, I have an arraignment in there in five minutes. What’s this about?”
“I thought we were past that,” Thorson said. “It’s about one of your clients, William Gladden.”
“Never heard of him.”
He made a move to go past Thorson to the courtroom door. Thorson nonchalantly reached out and put a hand on the other man’s chest, stopping him dead.
“Please,” Krasner said. “You have no right to touch me. Don’t touch me.”
“You know who we’re talking about, Mr. Krasner. You are in serious trouble for hiding this man’s true identity from the court and the police.”
“No, you are wrong. I had no idea who he was. I took the case at face value. Who he turned out to be was not my concern. And there is not one scintilla of evidence or even a suggestion that I knew otherwise.”
“Never mind the bullshit, Counselor. You can save it for the judge in there. Where is Gladden?”
“I have no idea and even if I did I—”
“You wouldn’t say? That’s the wrong attitude, Mr. Krasner. Let me tell you something, I’ve gone over the record of your representation of Mr. Gladden and things don’t look good, if you know what I mean. Not kosher is what I am saying. This could be a problem for you.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“How did he come to call you after his arrest?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t ask.”
“Was it a referral?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“From who?”