He’d met Lulu, the woman who would become his third wife, in a working-class bar, Hernando’s Hideaway, located on Ramon Road in nearby Cathedral City. The roadside tavern had been his hangout. He spent hours there beguiling his fellow drunks, recounting his days as a big shot Hollywood movie star.
A few years back, on an abnormally hot October afternoon at around three o’clock Barr walked into Hernando’s, calmly ordered a beer, and told his drinking buddies that he was having a bad day. When his pals asked what was troubling him, he told them he’d just shot Lulu.
In 1972 he’d been convicted of murder in the second degree and sent to the prison where he met his fate.
I hung up the phone and explained to Rita what Sol had told me about Barr being murdered. “Another dead end, Rita. And I do mean dead.”
“Seems like a lot of dead people are related to the case.”
“Yeah but, it has been nearly thirty years,” I said, and then I told her about the DA’s offer to have Roberts pardoned.
“Too bad about Barr,” she said. “But I guess it’s over for us now. Roberts will be freed.”
“Looks that way.”
So I suppose you won’t need to hear what I’d found out.”
“Nope, suppose not.”
I nonchalantly reached into the bag resting on my desk and pulled out a glazed donut. I held it in my hand, turning it over a couple of times, casually examining it before taking a bite. Rita was dying to tell me what she’d discovered. And even if it had no relevance to the outcome I was curious to know what she’d learned. But I figured just for fun I’d let her dangle a bit. I took a sip of coffee.
Rita stood. “Okay. Bye, Jimmy. Got work to do.” She moved slowly toward the door.
“Rita.”
She turned and gave me a smile. “What?”
“Go ahead, tell me what you have.”
“Thought you didn’t need to know.”
“Might as well tell me anyway.”
“No point in discussing it. Bye.”
“Rita!”
She scrambled back to the client chair, pulling it closer. “The lawsuit never happened.”
“Lawsuit? What lawsuit?”
“Remember Mrs. Hathaway at the bungalow court where Vera was murdered?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Mrs. Hathaway said she’d sued the county for damages.”
I nodded. “Yeah, she said she’d won the lawsuit and the county had paid up.”
“I checked,” Rita said. “There was no lawsuit filed in 1945 by either Mrs. Hathaway or her husband, Dink. So I called her yesterday. Guess what she told me.”
“You’re starting to sound like Sol-”
“Just prior to filing the suit, her claim was settled out of court.”
“You mean to tell me the county coughed up the dough without a fight?”
“Nope, that’s not how it went down.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“She received a check for the full amount of her claim. The check came with a release and a non-disclosure agreement. Now get this: it came from a private attorney. She still has her copy of the release and she remembered the lawyer’s name.”
“Who handled it?”
“At first she wouldn’t tell me-the non-disclosure agreement, you know. But I convinced her that the statute of limitations had run out.”
“Then she told you?”
“Jerry Giesler signed the check.”
Giesler had been a famous Hollywood lawyer back in the forties and fifties. “Get me Giesler” became the catchphrase when celebrities needed a divorce or found themselves in trouble with the law.
“Jerry Giesler?” I said. “The lawyer to the stars?”
“That’s the guy.”
“My God, I can’t believe an icon like Jerry Giesler would’ve gotten tangled up with this.”
“Indeed,” Rita said.
On the drive out to Chino, I thought about Giesler. I wondered why he, or any private attorney for that matter, would settle a complaint lodged against the county.
Had Mrs. Hathaway actually filed her lawsuit, it would’ve been denied. Her claim didn’t hold water. No way would the county be held liable for damages to a citizen’s property caused by a crime committed on the premises. The county didn’t use private attorneys to handle their litigation, yet someone had hired Jerry Giesler to settle with Mrs. Hathaway. Someone who had wanted the case to vanish quietly without leaving a paper trail. But who?
I knew all about Giesler-a half-bald, paunchy guy in a pinstriped three-piece suit with a permanent question mark chiseled on his face.
When he died in 1962 I remembered reading his obit in the Times. The article highlighted his celebrated career defending movie stars such as Robert Mitchum, arrested for possession of marijuana; Errol Flynn, for a couple of statutory rapes; and when Marilyn Monroe divorced Joe DiMaggio she asked Giesler to deal with the messy particulars.
It wasn’t just actors and celebrities who retained Giesler. Over the years he also handled the legal affairs for a number of producers, moguls, and politicians.
In 1939, he even won an acquittal for Bugsy Siegel, the rakish racketeer. Siegel had been arrested and charged with murder after carrying out a hit contract on fellow gangster, Big Greenie Greenberg.
There was one thing Giesler couldn’t fix for Bugsy, though. The murder charge had cost Siegel his membership in the Hillcrest Country Club. Can’t have mad-dog killers with clubs in their hands running amuck on their pristine fairways. Unsavory.
But there was one Giesler case in particular that pounded in the recesses of my mind. Maybe it piqued my interest because it had to do the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office.
In the thirties and early forties, corruption reigned unabated within the hierarchy of the municipal government of Los Angeles. Even the county justice system was tainted. Buron Fitts, the DA at the time, had been indicted for perjury and bribery, accused of taking a bribe to squash a notorious rape charge filed against a millionaire businessman.
At Fitts’ much ballyhooed trial, Jerry Giesler had used the improbable defense of temporary insanity. The DA was acquitted and stayed in office until 1940, when he lost his bid for re-election to Frank Byron, running on a reform platform.
I wondered if Byron-the man who’d persuaded Roberts to plead guilty in 1945 by concealing evidence from him-had been troubled by the same affliction that had plagued his immediate predecessor and somewhere along the line had picked up a dose of temporary insanity, as well. Maybe Byron figured reform was an idea too heavy to tote around the Criminal Courts Building all day.
I also wondered, when Mrs. Hathaway started rattling cages, if it was Frank Byron who shouted, “Get me Giesler.”
But now almost thirty years later, the current District Attorney, Joe Rinehart, was offering to cut Roberts loose on the condition of his silence. I wondered about that, too.
CHAPTER 16
The continuous stream of news and rumor filtering through the prison grapevine system had alerted the authorities and correctional officers that something unusual was going down-a gubernatorial pardon. The guards treated me with more respect now that I seemingly had the backing of Ronald Reagan in my hip pocket. This time the meeting with my client took place in a carpeted conference room located in the administration building, which was used primarily for visits from CDC staff officials. Al Roberts was not chained or cuffed, but a correctional officer remained in the room with us. When needed, he’d witness the signing of the affidavits. In the meantime, he stood quietly in the far corner.
Roberts and I sat across from each other at a large conference table in the center of the room. I explained the details of the District Attorney’s offer. As I walked him though the litany of the deal-the unequivocal admission of guilt and remorse, the demand of public silence on his part and the caveat that he leave the state immediately upon release-he exhibited no reaction whatsoever. He just stared at his hands, folded tightly on the table.