Final Vows

  Chapter 30

  The article appeared in the Los Angeles Times on March 15 in the highly visible Metro section. The headline read, “Burbank Man Charged With Murdering Wife in ‘Burglary.’ ”

  Suzan Brown had woken up at five that morning—part of the routine she had adopted since being admitted to the psychiatric unit of the Veterans Administration hospital in San Bernardino County. Up at five. Walk the hallways. Seven times. Get the paper. Back to bed. Read the paper. Climb into the wheelchair. Watch the others rise. Wait an hour. Start the day.

  Not surprisingly, doctors at the hospital believed Suzan was still in need of mental help and had therefore not permitted her release.

  That morning Suzan mindlessly opened the newspaper and her eyes fell on that particular headline. It was as if someone had punched her in the stomach. In one jerky motion she closed the paper and pushed it noisily under the sheets of her hospital bed. She sat straight up, motionless except for her eyes, which began darting about at her sleeping roommates.

  Had they seen her? Maybe they knew the truth and now they were only pretending to be asleep. People pretended things like that. Suzan pretended things. Her eyes raced one way, then the other, desperately searching the room for any sign of life. There was none.

  Slowly Suzan allowed her back to settle against the curved pillow behind her. Then she heard it. A loud, constant thumping. Someone was in the room, someone who knew the truth. She looked around and saw no one. The sound grew louder. Faster and louder. Thump, thump, thump, thump. Maybe someone was trying to break through the walls or the floors. Maybe they were coming through the ceiling.

  At that moment Suzan recognized her own heartbeat. The sound had come from her. She relaxed a bit more and waited. Six o’clock. Seven. Eight. The minutes ticked by with no concern for the heavyset woman waiting anxiously, desperate for her two roommates to leave the room.

  Finally it was 10:30 A.M. Everyone was up, dressed, and out in the yard. She waited until she was absolutely certain no one was in the hallway. Then, jerking the newspaper out from underneath the bed covers, she tucked it under her arm. Rising with quick, stilted movements, Suzan lifted herself from the bed, walked to the wheelchair, and sat down. She opened her eyes so wide that they looked perfectly round. Glancing in as many directions as she could without turning her chair, Suzan spent five minutes making certain no one was watching her.

  She was alone. Trying to appear relaxed, she slowly thumbed through the pages to the article. Then, hungrily, she began reading.

  A man who two years ago told Burbank police his wife was shot to death and he was wounded when they surprised a burglar in their home, has been charged with murdering his wife, authorities said Wednesday.

  Police said Daniel J. Montecalvo, 48, shot himself as part of an elaborate plan to cover up his part in the March, 1988, death of his 43-year-old wife, Carol.

  Suzan took a sudden deep breath and shut her eyes tightly. Something deep inside her screamed it wasn’t true. They couldn’t be blaming Dan for a crime he didn’t commit. Impossible. She felt her wheelchair spinning in circles but when she opened her eyes everything in the room was perfectly still. Gradually Suzan’s eyes made their way down to the newspaper until she found her place again.

  Montecalvo, who was being held without bail in Los Angeles County Jail, was arrested Tuesday night in Burbank . . . He was scheduled to be arraigned today in Burbank Municipal Court on one count of murder.

  “It’s a bizarre case,” Burbank Police Sergeant Don Goldberg said. “The evidence indicates he shot his wife, Carol, to death and then shot himself to make it appear they had been shot by an armed burglar.”

  Goldberg said the motive for Carol Montecalvo’s murder was financial gain, but he would not elaborate.

  It’s true, Suzan thought, tilting her head back and staring at the water-stained ceiling. Carol was killed for financial gain, but not for Dan Montecalvo’s financial gain. She snapped her head forward and stared at the article.

  The gun used in the killing has not been found.

  That was it—that moment Suzan knew everything was going to be all right. Her terror began to subside, almost as if she had finally found the perfect fix. Her heart began beating normally, and her muscles relaxed. The gun had not been found. Of course. And the gun would never be found. Everything was going to be all right.

  Without a gun there was no way on earth Dan would go to prison for a murder he did not commit. Suzan drew in a deep breath and started laughing. All that worrying for nothing. She laughed and laughed until finally the sound attracted the attention of an orderly.

  “Everything okay in here?” He leaned into the room and saw an obese woman with short, straight brown hair and tattoos covering her body sitting in a wheelchair laughing.

  Suzan turned to stare at him, tears streaming down her cheeks.

  “They can’t . . . find . . . the gun!” she said, laughing too hard to catch her breath.

  The orderly frowned and took another step inside the room. “What gun?”

  Abruptly, Suzan stopped laughing.

  “Clowns.” She spoke the word flatly. All traces of laughter had completely disappeared.

  “What do you mean ‘clowns’?” The orderly sounded concerned. “You said, ‘They can’t find the gun.’ ”

  “No.” Suzan stared at him. “They can’t mind the fun. Clowns.”

  She raised the newspaper and began shaking it in her hand. The orderly took one step back and made a note to ask his supervisor for a job transfer. He’d spent enough time in the psych ward. The woman was still staring at him and it was beginning to make him feel nervous.

  “Can’t a girl read an article about clowns without getting the third degree around here?” she snapped angrily.

  The orderly shrugged. “Read what you want, lady. Whatever floats your boat.”

  “Leave.” It was a command.

  A chill made its way down the orderly’s spine. There was something frightening in the woman’s eyes. As if some part of her had died years ago and what was left was capable of unspeakable evil.

  Chapter 31

  Dan had no trouble deciding which defense attorney to hire. Word of mouth in the Los Angeles County jail had it that a handful of attorneys took it personally when their clients were convicted. Not coincidentally, these attorneys were also the most successful. Among those Dan heard about, one name kept coming up: Lorn Aiken.

  The man had an office just outside Koreatown on the poorer side of downtown Los Angeles. There in a red brick building built long before the days of earthquake safety codes, Lorn Aiken and his legal assistant rented office space. Actually the rent served two purposes because when Lorn wasn’t working there, he made the place his home.

  The items strewn throughout his office were normally an unrecognizable combination of personal and business belongings. Not that the status of his office bothered Lorn much. After all, most of his client meetings were held in conference rooms at the county jail, which happened to be the setting for Lorn’s first meeting with Dan Montecalvo.

  It was March 16, three days after Dan’s arrest. Dan sat nervously in the small nondescript room where a thousand defense attorneys had met with their accused clients in the past. He gripped the arms of his chair tightly. So much hope rested on this meeting with Lorn Aiken. Dan knew that he could very possibly be convicted of murder and forced to spend the rest of his life in prison. Even with one of the most successful defense attorneys in the business. He closed his eyes and tried to shut out the frightening thought as a film of sweat began to appear on his upper lip and forehead. Dan looked at the clock on the wall. 3 P.M.

  Suddenly there was a sound at the door and Dan turned to see a burly mountain of a man enter the room and then move quickly to join him at the table.

  “Lorn Aiken,” the man said brusquely, sitting down and stacking a pile of dockets and folders on the table beside him. “You must be Dan Mon
tecalvo.”

  Dan nodded. “That’s right.” He had never pictured Lorn Aiken looking as he did. Lorn looked more like a renegade linebacker than a defense attorney. A generous amount of unruly dark curls covered his head and face. His beard was lightly peppered with gray and he had the most piercing blue eyes Dan had ever seen. Despite a slight limp, which he aided by using a solid walnut walking cane, Lorn Aiken was a hulking specimen of a man with a broad back and shoulders that filled out his six-foot-three-inch frame.

  Lorn had finished organizing his notes and he looked across the table at Dan.

  “Okay, here’s my rules,” Lorn stated. For a moment Dan felt like an inept athlete getting a verbal lesson on the basics from his coach. “You lie to me and it’s like cheating at solitaire. It’s only a win if you don’t cheat.”

  Lorn paused until he was certain Dan was paying close attention.

  “Clients don’t lie to me. Ever.” Dan imagined the things this man could do to him if he ever caught him lying. Lorn leaned across the table and looked directly into Dan’s eyes. “You know why?”

  Dan shook his head quickly. “Why?”

  “Because this case is no longer about you. It’s about me. If you let me walk into court and let some pencil-neck D.A. tear my case apart”—Lorn paused and his voice grew softer and more deliberate—“I’m going to rip your head off and puke down your neck.”

  Lorn noticed the wide eyes of the small man before him and he knew Dan believed his threat. “Understood?”

  Dan nodded. “Understood.”

  “Good. Because I care a whole lot more about my reputation than I do about yours. My reputation depends on winning. And that depends on you telling me the truth.”

  “Okay.” Dan swallowed hard and it sounded like a hiccup in the silent room. Lorn narrowed his eyes again.

  “Ready to begin?”

  Dan nodded.

  “Okay, now tell me what happened. From the beginning. Don’t leave anything out and don’t forget the rules.”

  Dan nodded again and started talking.

  Lorn Aiken had never planned on being a defense attorney. Growing up in northern Oregon and Washington, young Lorn was a rebel and a drifter who learned early on that he had been gifted with a lucrative talent: salesmanship. The combination of his dark looks and his quick wit gave Lorn the uncanny, natural-born ability to sell things people neither needed nor wanted.

  Not long after he graduated from high school, Lorn began making money with his talent. His first sales jobs took him door to door and he sold everything. Encyclopedias, shoes, vacuums, Fuller brushes. In the late 1960s, when Lorn was nineteen, he sold seventeen vacuums in one day, turning a profit of more than two hundred dollars. But what Lorn remembered most about the day was the occupation of four of his customers. They were vacuum salesmen.

  When Lorn was twenty-two, a manager at a Portland stereo store recognized his sales ability and hired him. Lorn flourished in the job, breaking sales records and making more commission than any other two salesmen combined. But his personal life took a turn for the worse when he and an acquaintance exchanged words and the acquaintance drew a gun and began firing. Lorn took several bullets in his right leg and abdomen and was in critical condition from loss of blood when he arrived at the local hospital.

  Lorn liked to say he had a little chat with Mr. Death that night and—always the salesman—sold him on the idea of returning at a later date. After several days of flirting with nurses and making a nuisance of himself, Lorn left the hospital. A month later he moved to Southern California and began working for the Federated Group selling stereos as if his life depended on it.

  Later that year, Lorn befriended one of his customers, defense attorney Lawrence Davis. Whenever work permitted, Lorn began visiting the courthouse to watch Davis in action. He was fascinated. Legal defense was nothing more than a professional sales job—selling a jury on the reasons to return a not-guilty verdict. Lorn began understanding some of the more common defense tricks and before long he was giving Davis suggestions.

  “Hey, Davis,” Lorn would say over lunch. “Your guy’s guilty, right?”

  “Right. Caught him red-handed with a truckload of stolen ammunition. His partner had an alibi prepared, but the cops took care of him with a coupla quick .38s.”

  “It’s perfect.”

  Davis looked up from his bowl of steaming chili and frowned. “Not from where I’m sitting. Eight cops caught him red-handed with the goods.”

  Lorn smiled. “Could he help it if his armed partner had forced him at gunpoint to hijack a truckload of ammunition?”

  Davis raised an eyebrow and the first sign of a smile appeared on his face. Normally he would have laughed out loud at a stereo salesman offering him advice on how to defend a criminal. But something told Davis the idea just might work. A week later the two shared lunch again and Davis smiled broadly.

  “Drinks are on me.” He lifted his glass for a toast.

  “Why?”

  “Because it worked.”

  “What worked?”

  “Your idea. The mother walked. Caught him red-handed and he walked.”

  Lorn slapped his leg and let out a loud whoop. “Course it worked. It’s an old sales trick. Always two ways of looking at something.”

  Davis shook his head in awe.

  “What you need is a law degree, buddy.”

  “Naah.” Lorn took a long swig of his drink. “Too much work.”

  “Make you more money than selling stereos,” Davis said. “Besides, you’d have a job.”

  Lorn looked doubtful. “Where?”

  “Right here. Working for me.”

  Lorn pondered Davis’s statement for two months before applying to the San Fernando Valley College of Law. He had never attended college, so he was required to pass a bachelor’s degree proficiency test before being accepted. The test took four hours and Lorn passed it with high marks. He graduated two years later and passed the bar on the second try.

  True to his word, Davis offered Lorn a partnership and the pair worked together successfully for the next eighteen months. That was exactly how long it took Lorn to realize he had absolutely no need for Davis. He set up an office in a one-room guest-house apartment in the eastern San Fernando Valley. It was impossible to see the place from the road and Lorn often said people needed more than a map to find his office. They needed a tour guide. After three years he moved into his downtown office.

  By then Lorn had fully developed his legal philosophy and he liked explaining it to clients.

  “I mess with cops,” Lorn would say, narrowing his brilliant blue eyes and pointing his thumb proudly at his puffed-out chest. “It’s my job. If I don’t mess with cops, the next door they knock down will be yours. If there are no rules to follow, this will be Romania in a heartbeat.”

  Lorn would pause a moment and pull out a tin box of Shermans. Removing one thin brown cigarette, he would light it and take two or three deep drags before continuing.

  “I’m the last line of defense between this being the good ol’ U.S. of A. and this being Romania.”

  Lorn didn’t just say these words, he believed them. And he had another rule. No rape or incest cases. Once, when Lorn was representing a man arrested on assault charges, one of his colleagues met him in the hallway.

  “Changing your rules, huh?” The man gave Lorn a knowing look. At some point in their careers, most defense attorneys wind up representing criminals they never intended to work for.

  “Meaning what?”

  “The scumbag in there, your defendant.” The attorney pointed toward the courtroom.

  “In for assault, so what?”

  “That’s not what I heard. The D.A. worked out a deal to reduce the charges, but it wasn’t assault that brought him here.”

  Lorn could feel his face reddening. The man had told him a story about beating up some guy who owed him money. “What else did you hear?” Lorn asked.
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  “Word is two witnesses saw him force some pretty little nine-year-old girl to, shall we say, perform oral copulation and a few other acts on him,” the man said.

  Rage began building in Lorn. He listened as his colleague continued.

  “Girl wound up with gonorrhea, he winds up with an assault charge.”

  Lorn dropped his cigarette on the tile floor and smashed it angrily with his boot toe.

  “I’ll be back.” He stormed into the courtroom, walked up to the defendant, and with very little effort turned the man’s chair so that they faced each other.

  “You lied to me.” Lorn fired the words at the quivering criminal.

  “Why, no, Mr. Aiken. It was just one of those—”

  Lorn did not allow him to complete the sentence. He drew his hand back and released it across the man’s face so hard and fast it sent him tumbling to the floor.

  “Scum.” Lorn seethed with rage as he stared at the frightened defendant. Then, in a suddenly controlled manner, Lorn looked up at the judge.

  “Your Honor,” Lorn said calmly. “I will not represent this man. He’ll be needing new counsel.” With that, Lorn left the courtroom in what seemed to be three giant strides.

  The judge later reprimanded Lorn for his actions that day but Lorn knew he would handle it the same way again. There was nothing he hated more than a client who lied to him. He had obtained acquittals and reduced charges for seventy-one of his seventy-three defendants. Lorn believed his record was a reflection of his unquenchable thirst for truth. It was the same with any sales job. You needed to know everything about the product, good or bad. Only then could you really make a sale. The truth was so important that Lorn was always skeptical about his first meeting with any defendant, including Dan Montecalvo.

  Lorn had heard about the case and had been prepared for Dan to tell him how he had been involved in his wife’s murder. Lorn figured he must have shot her first and then turned the gun on himself. He had already looked at police reports. If police arrived at the scene in less than a minute and no neighbors saw anyone leaving the house, Lorn was convinced Dan didn’t have a partner. Whatever the situation, Lorn was certain he could help him.