to beat the machine, there’s no reason to go into who he was drinking with or why. This is a very limited set of facts we have here.”
“I’m just trying to get you to see,” Eric said. “Carl always seems to come up on the short end. I thought getting him this job in Hollywood would help.”
“What job?”
“That big office-building project, between Cahuenga and Ivar, south of Sunset.”
“What’s your line of work?” I said.
“Electrician,” he said. “Major industrial. I’m the sub on that, and Carl freelances in cement, from pour to finish. So I hooked him up with another sub. He liked it that we’d be together on this thing, even though not at the same time. But I just wish he wouldn’t drink so much. Beat this rap, will you?”
I wondered when the last time was that somebody actually used the phrase beat this rap.
“Believe me, I’ll do my best,” I said.
“Thanks,” Eric said. “That’s all I’m asking.” He turned and walked toward his car.
I checked my watch. Almost eleven-thirty. I was in Hollywood, so I drove down the boulevard to Musso & Frank. I found a meter in front, fed it, went in, and sat at the counter. And ordered liver and onions.
That’s what I said.
My mom used to make liver and onions, and I always liked it. With ketchup. The old waiter—there is no other kind at Musso’s—gave me a plate of sourdough bread and a dish with butter pats. He asked if I needed anything else.
“Ketchup,” I said. “For the liver.”
He leaned over, and with a slight Hungarian accent said, “Don’t tell the chef.” Then added, conspiratorially, “I like it that way, too.”
18
A COUPLE OF weeks went by. I thought about Sister Mary in the wilds of Kentucky. I thought about Kimberly Pincus in the wilds of L.A. courtrooms.
And on the Friday before Carl’s pre-trial hearing I was at the Sip, thinking about the laws of the State of California. When it comes to DUI, they are like the jaws of death. I had my laptop and was looking at the vehicle code. For something, anything, that I could argue on behalf of Carl Richess.
It was while I was lost in this vast desert of legal sanctions that Pick suddenly appeared at my table and said, “The canary is dead.”
I looked up. “Excuse me?”
“The canary! In the coal mine. You know about that?”
“Sure,” I said. “I grew up in a coal mining family. From West Virginia. The strike of ’ninety-four was—”
“Shut up! I mean the canary has died. In our civic life! The poison gas is unleashed. Did you see this?” He slapped the front page of the Los Angeles Daily News on the table. I looked at it.
The headline said that our mayor was suspected of having an affair with a local radio reporter. It was something everybody knew anyway. But denial is not just a river in Egypt. It’s the syntax and currency of every politician who gets his hand stuck in the cookie jar.
“So?” I said. “Political scandal is nothing new.”
“Not that! This!” He pointed to a story below the fold. It said that a wiener stand, Big Duke’s, one that had been a Valley institution for forty years, was closing down. Lost lease.
“That’s the tragedy?” I said.
“Look around you. Do you have eyes? Do you have any sense of history? What do you see, just outside these doors? Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf! Quiznos! Chipottel!”
“I think you mean Chipotle.”
“What is that? What’s a cheap outlay anyway?”
“It’s a type of jalapeño chile, dried—”
“That’s not the point! It’s the death of individuality, that’s the point! When I grew up out here, there were mom-and-pops all over the Valley. You knew the people who ran the stores. They didn’t hire the latest high school dropouts to stand behind a computerized cash register pushing buttons that add and subtract for them. You had to do your own adding and subtracting. It made you human. There is no humanity left, none. The canary is dead, and we’re next.”
With that he turned around and billowed back behind the coffee bar. I went back to my legal research. And it occurred to me Pick and I were more closely related than I thought.
He did not have a corporate headquarters to help him. Or to answer to. And I was trying to defend clients without the resources of a big law firm behind me.
But I didn’t want one. Because canaries died in law firms, too.