Simple Justice (13 page)

The Mandarin Deli was an inconspicuous restaurant on the southern edge of Little Tokyo, located on a narrow side street crowded with sushi and dim sum bars.

During the day, it served as a favorite retreat for editorial staffers from the nearby
L.A. Times
who chose not to drink their lunch at a popular watering hole closer to the office. In the evenings, it was patronized largely by Chinese-speaking customers, who came for the authentic spicy food and modest prices. There were other branches, including one a mile north in Chinatown, but the Little Tokyo location had always been my favorite.

During our years at the
Times
, Harry and I had probably lunched together there a few hundred times. I missed the steamy garlic smell that hit you when you stepped in the door, and the reporters laughing in the booths, and the way the waitresses asked shyly if they were pronouncing English words correctly.

Most of all, I missed those moments with Harry, as we went over stories I was working on, or I threw out ideas for new ones. When we conspired about investigative projects that might have some impact, expose the scoundrels, get the rules changed. When we felt like we were doing something that had some value beyond just filling another news hole, getting out another edition, taking home another paycheck.

That was why I wanted to have dinner that night at the Mandarin Deli, though I wouldn’t have admitted it to Harry, and probably not to myself.

By the time Harry called to say he wasn’t going to make it, Templeton and I had already consumed a plate of scallion pancakes and were attacking the main course.

She handled chopsticks as skillfully as she handled horny senators with something more on their minds than media relations.

“I’m not a dainty eater,” she warned, digging into a platter of moo shu chicken. “You’ll have to fight for your share.”

I passed a plate of cold noodles with sesame sauce and told her I thought she’d managed the Masterman situation extremely well.

“Just the way we planned,” she said, referring to our scheme to slip her into the campaign, where she could dig around.

She handed across the sautéed spinach, heavy with garlic cloves, and we ate for a few minutes in silence. Once or twice she glanced over surreptitiously. It wasn’t difficult to tell she had something on her mind more personal than the Billy Lusk matter.

Finally, she set her chopsticks on the edge of her plate and reached into her big purse.

“I had a research librarian run Jefferson Bellworthy’s name through Nexus, like you asked.”

She pulled out a computer printout, folded into perforated pages, and glanced through it for the sections she’d highlighted.

“Running back for the University of Tennessee in the early Eighties. Played three years of college ball, one on academic probation. Suspended twice for fighting, once with a teammate, once with a coach. Left school early to sign with the Pittsburgh Steelers.”

She turned a page.

“Here’s the kicker. Arrested in his rookie year for attacking another man with a knife.”

“What was the disposition?”

She scanned the page.

“Never went to trial. Bellworthy pled guilty to attempted murder, spent six years in prison. Never played football again.”

She handed the printouts across the table, and I glanced over them.

The news reports were brief, offering scanty details. They alluded vaguely to an “argument that escalated into violence” and resulted in “serious injuries to the victim, who nearly died.” According to one article, Bellworthy refused to talk to the press about the matter and was just as taciturn in court, giving no explanation and expressing no remorse for what he’d done.

Then I came to the name of his victim, which meant nothing to me except for its ethnicity: Jorge Sandoval.

Bellworthy had assured me he had no special animosity toward Hispanics. Perhaps not, but he obviously had enough hostility toward at least one Hispanic to nearly kill him. I wondered if he had enough left over to send Gonzalo Albundo to prison for the rest of his life, or even to death row, by fingering him for a crime he may not have committed.

Templeton reached for my cup and filled it with steaming green tea.

“Do you think Bellworthy had something to do with Billy Lusk’s murder?”

“I have no idea.” I folded the printout and handed it back to her. “But we know he’s violent, with a criminal record. He and Derek Brunheim are connected in some way. And Brunheim got into a nasty argument with Billy only hours before he was killed.”

“You think Brunheim might have hired Bellworthy to do it?”

“Bellworthy’s been working double shifts to make ends meet, so we know he needs the cash. He claims he was in the restroom, alone, when Billy was killed. No alibi there. And he’s the only witness to nail Gonzalo Albundo.”

“Opportunity, possible motive, violent past,” Templeton said.

“At the very least, it raises more questions.”

“But if Gonzalo Albundo confessed, I don’t see how…”

“Neither do I,” I said. “But I think I should pay Mr. Bellworthy another visit.”

“For God’s sake, be careful.”

She sounded as if she was genuinely concerned. “Thanks,” I said.

“I will.”

I raised my tea in a toast to nothing in particular. She raised hers in return, and we exchanged smiles across our tiny porcelain cups.

Then we scraped the remaining food onto our plates, and resumed eating in silence. When I glanced over, I caught Templeton studying my face.

“What’s wrong? Grease on my chin?”

I swiped around my mouth with my napkin.

“No, your chin’s fine.” She smiled oddly. “In fact, you’ve got a very nice chin.”

Her words reminded me that she’d been playing the seductress only a few hours earlier. But there was something more going on now.

“What is it, Templeton?”

She laid her chopsticks aside.

“While I was in the library, I also did some research on you.”

“Is that so?”

“I warned you that I was curious.” She rummaged in the handbag. “I found some interesting clips.”

“Six years ago, it wasn’t hard to find my name on the newswire.”

“Not just the Pulitzer fallout, Justice. I found something that goes much farther back.”

I felt the tension coiling up inside. It made me angry, which made the tension worse.

“How far back would that be?”

“Twenty-one years.”

I pushed my plate away and sipped tea, forcing myself to look at her.

“You were seventeen,” she said. “And your name then was Benjamin Osborne.”

I reached for the teapot, drew it over, but didn’t pour. I just stared at it stupidly for awhile. When I finally looked over, she had an Eastman Reporter’s Notebook open, the same kind Harry used.

“The article came from the
News
in Buffalo, New York. Your hometown. A reporter there wrote a follow-up piece last year on the twentieth anniversary of your father’s death. He traced the seventeen-year-old Benjamin Osborne to the Benjamin Justice who wrote a Pulitzer prize–winning series six years ago at the age of thirty-two.”

“How enterprising of him.”

“He discovered through court records in New York City that you legally changed your name shortly after your eighteenth birthday.

“I took my mother’s maiden name,” I said. “I thought it would look good on a byline.”

“The reporter also wrote a detailed account of what happened twenty-one years ago, on a Saturday afternoon in late November, in the three-bedroom house where you grew up.”

The waitress cleared our plates and disappeared. Templeton continued scanning her notes.

“Your father was a police detective. Homicide. Quite a good one, when he wasn’t drinking.”

“So people said.”

“Some of your neighbors and teachers thought you might become a cop yourself. If only to please him, to win his admiration.”

I glanced at a booth across the way, where a little Chinese girl sat on her father’s lap, eating chow mein with chopsticks. He was grinning and coaxing her, even when she let the noodles slip back into the bowl.

“They characterized him as a cold, hard man,” Templeton said.

“How tactful.”

“He was also violent. Mostly at home.”

I turned my eyes back to her.

“You’re stirring up some warm memories, Templeton.”

“I can stop now, if you want.”

“No. You did your research. Let’s see if you got it right.”

She drew in a deep breath.

“Your mother was also an alcoholic. But she was a decent person, from all accounts. She tried courageously to keep the family together, took a lot of abuse.”

“She believed in keeping up appearances,” I said. “That’s not necessarily decency, or courage. Especially when kids are being hurt.”

“No, I guess not.”

Templeton flipped the page, glancing over the next one.

“As you got into your teens, you started fighting back. You were getting bigger, and when you began wrestling in high school, your father couldn’t beat you up so easily.”

“No, it took him a little longer.”

“Then, one afternoon, a Saturday, you and your mother went to the store. Your father stayed behind with your little sister, watching football and drinking bourbon while she did her homework. According to the article, she was eleven at the time.”

“She’d just turned eleven. We’d had a party for her the Saturday before. I’ve still got a photo.”

“On the way to the store, your mother realized she’d forgotten her checkbook. She drove back. As you entered the house, you heard your little sister crying in a rear bedroom.”

“So far, so good.”

“When you went to check, you found your father molesting her.”

“He’d penetrated her. He was halfway in, and still pushing.” I saw Templeton wince. “I think that’s called rape.”

She swallowed hard, turned a page in her notebook, and kept going.

“You attacked him instantly, pulling him off. Your mother went for the phone, to call the police. He grabbed the phone from her hands, started beating her. Worse than he ever had. He said he’d kill her if she told anyone, kill all of you.”

“Correct.”

“You tried to get him off her, but it was impossible. He kept hitting her, while your little sister cowered in a corner, sobbing.”

She looked up from her notes.

“Don’t stop now, Templeton. You’re almost at the best part. The payoff every reporter lives for.”

“You ran into the next room.” She recited now from memory, keeping her eyes on mine. “You grabbed your father’s police revolver, went back, and killed him. You were never charged. It was ruled justifiable homicide.”

“Don’t you just love a happy ending?”

“Four years later, your mother died of cirrhosis. You were in college then, studying journalism.”

“The University of Missouri, to be specific.”

“When she was nineteen, your sister died of a drug overdose. According to the article, she was a promising painter.”

“Her name was Elizabeth. Elizabeth Jane. Yes, she was quite a good painter, though she never quite believed it herself.”

Templeton slipped her notebook back into her bag.

“I’m sorry, Benjamin.

It was the first time she’d addressed me by my first name.

“Don’t be sorry for discovering the truth,” I said. “That’s what you’re trained for, isn’t it?”

“That’s what we’re both trained for.”

The waitress inquired politely in broken English if we wanted anything more. Templeton asked for the check, and the waitress went away again.

“I’m surprised there wasn’t more written about it at the time,” Templeton said.

“Buffalo wasn’t exactly the media capital of the country. And child molestation, especially incest, was a taboo subject then. So messy, so upsetting. Not considered fit for conversation or for print.”

I laughed a little. “Today, they’d make a TV movie out of it.”

“Maybe they downplayed it to spare your sister.”

“Maybe. Or maybe because my father was a cop.”

The check came. Templeton handed over her credit card and the waitress took it away.

Templeton reached across the table and touched my wrist. Aside from a formal handshake, it was the first physical contact we’d made.

“You have no reason to feel any shame about what you did,” she said. “You shouldn’t have to carry that kind of pain around with you anymore.”

She meant well, but I was tempted to laugh; she was so young and saw things so simply.

She leaned closer, and I felt her hand cover mine. I drew it away.

“He raped your little sister, Benjamin. He almost killed your mother. You had every right to shoot him.”

I smiled, which was unfortunate.