Dan stood up respectfully. “Not guilty, Your Honor.”
“So noted. And in the matter of bail?”
Scarbrough said quickly, “A hundred thousand, Your Honor.”
“Did the complainant lose her baby?”
“Well, no, Your Honor, but—”
“Was she hospitalized?”
“No, Your Honor, but we have Polaroid photos showing—”
The judge gaveled him silent. “Those are for the trial, not here. Bail is set at ten thousand dollars, cash or bond.”
“Your Honor,” said Hec, “we request a speedy preliminary evidentiary hearing, so the court can determine whether the state has sufficient evidence to bring my client to trial.”
“Sufficient—” The judge stopped himself. He expected delaying tactics by the defense, not a rush to judgment. He said thoughtfully, “I see.” He looked over at Scarbrough. “Any objections, counselor?”
Scarbrough was secretly delighted. He had planned to ask for a fast prelim himself, giving Valenti a chance to eyeball Ellen Winslett in court before her bruises faded and before she gave birth. Beat up and pregnant. A dynamite combo. He had more than enough to bind Kearny over, and at trial the jury would convict without leaving the box. Tranquillini was a clown.
“None at all, Your Honor. We are happy to oblige the accused.”
“All parties will be advised of a court date,” Valenti said formally. “Defendant is released subject to bail being posted.”
Next morning at Brittingham’s Funeral Parlor, every viewing room was occupied, with several more Departeds on the runway, as it were, like jets waiting for clearance to depart. Two Rosaries tonight, three Viewings, in the morning four Funerals.
One result of all the hurry and worry was that Brittingham forgot all about Mrs. Karposki until a scant hour before her Viewing. He had left her hair and makeup to that strange little female person who had come around asking for the cosmetician’s position. Oh my!
He rushed down to the sterile, brightly lighted embalming area to find Harvey Parsons passing the time with eighty-three-year-old “Tex” Watkins. Tex was supine on a stainless steel table, nude, staring up into the round overhead lamp with in-different eyes. Harvey was about to drive a thick hollow steel spike down into his solar plexus to start the embalming process.
Nowadays they made a small incision above the clavicle and used an aneurysm hook to fish out the main carotid artery, put in an insertion tube, and pump in some formalin solution such as PSX. But Brittingham had trained Harvey himself in the old ways he secretly felt were still the best ways, and now couldn’t spare him for the time it would take to retrain him.
“Harvey, did that new girl, Miss Thatcher, come in today?”
Harvey was a strapping young man with a clean-featured, almost ascetic face, a shaved head, and no instinctual empathy for Bereaveds. But what that lad could do with viscera...
“She’s in the Readying Room, sir, with the Jones baby.”
Brittingham felt a thrill of anxiety. A baby! He trotted, slightly knock-kneed, across the cold, sterile embalming room to the pastel colors and soft lighting of the Readying Room. A place of preparation, a place of — dare he think it — hope?
A stranger in a white floor-length smock turned at his entrance — and was Becky Thatcher transformed. Gone under her crisp white cap was the mound of taffy curls. Gone the slanty glasses, gone the Day-Glo dress, the run-over shoes, the jangly jewelry, the garish lipstick. In their place, a doe-eyed refined-looking young woman of remarkable beauty and serenity. Only the soft voice with its tinge of accent remained the same.
“Oh, Mr. Brittingham, I’m so glad to see you, sir!”
And she stepped aside so he could view the infant. He almost cried out, My God, we’ve made a terrible mistake, that child is alive! But then he realized it was just her remarkable skill. Life glowed in the little cheeks, the chubby hands seemed to reach out for a hug, surely any moment childish prattle... He felt salt tears start in his eyes. Becky spoke earnestly to him.
“Babies is easy, Mr. Brittingham. Ones this small, they’s not much been did to them before...” She paused. “Now Mrs. Karposki, poor woman, she seen some rough things in her day.”
An abusive spouse, for one. Brittingham turned to the other wheeled gurney. All the physical bruises and psychic pain of assault were gone from the dead woman. She was surely only sleeping. And her hair! A silver halo around that thin, finally serene face.
“Miss Thatcher, what can I say?”
Becky suddenly giggled. “How about, ‘You’re hired, Miss Thatcher’? You say that, I’m one happy little hillbilly lady.”
She was infectious. Brittingham chuckled himself.
“You’re hired, Miss Thatcher.”
It wasn’t until noon that Hec could get away from court to join Dan Kearny and Giselle Marc for a council of war in the guaranteed privacy of DKA’s upstairs reception area. Hec listened attentively as Dan asked Giselle, “What did you do with Larry after the Winsletts showed up?”
“Took him off the classic cars right away,” said Giselle. “Tomorrow he’ll be back on his regular cases—”
“No. I don’t want him coming into this office at all until this thing is settled. Not even at night to type reports. Find him some work where he doesn’t have to show up for any reason.”
“Okay. For what it’s worth, he says the Winslett woman was totally cooperative, gave him the keys, even served him tea in the garage. The man he described coming down the street as he left matches Winslett himself.”
Hec perked up. “The beating was about the tea,” he said. “But wily Wiley showed Winslett how to make it pay big time.”
Giselle began, “Garth Winslett beat her up.”
“And Wiley set this up,” said Hec with a shake of his head. “This is about DKA and the cars. He sends ’em to an ambitious D.A. who files a criminal assault case against Dan personally. Once Dan gets convicted of that, the Winsletts’ll bring civil suit against him personally and DKA as co-conspirator, and take you all down.”
Giselle flipped the pen with which she had been taking notes neatly across the table to land by Hec’s fingers.
“I hate him. So what’s our strategy on this? Dan’s in all sorts of trouble and—”
“—and Hec is here on his white horse to save me.”
“Maybe,” said Hec. “In a jury trial you never know.”
Which didn’t make Giselle feel any too nifty about it all.
Seventeen
What’s this message on my machine?” demanded Ballard when he finally got hold of Giselle. “Get in touch with you immediately, don’t come into the office under any circumstances? And then you’re too busy to call me back?”
Actually, Larry was taking his ease in his broken-down easy chair with the phone to his ear, sipping a cup of his truly superb coffee; but trying to reach Giselle at the office for over two hours had gotten a little old, so he was passing it on.
“Yeah, busy on a mess of your own making,” said Giselle. “Dan gets back from Chicago yesterday, and two hours later gets arrested on a complaint brought by the Winsletts, thanks to Casanova. Now it’s criminal charges — aggravated assault and a bunch of other things. You’re to keep out of sight as long as it takes, and that doesn’t mean sneaking off up the coast after abalone, or entering some karate tournament somewhere.”
“Arrested? Dan? Criminal charges? Dammit, I told you I should go down to Pacifica and nose around for witnesses.”
Her tone changed. “Listen, Hot Shot, you’ve done enough damage already. This is straight from Mr. K: don’t come in, don’t even call in except on the unlisted number as Joe Bush.”