Death Gets a Time-Out Read Online Free Page A

moved in with my dad and mom—I mean my stepmother. Artie and Jupiter came around a lot when I was younger, but after Artie became Polaris and The Church of Cosmological Unity got to be such a big thing, my parents really didn’t have much to do with him. My mom had been elected to the Board of Supervisors by then, and I guess she figured it would look bad if she were associated with all those CCU nut jobs.”
    I could certainly understand that. It was hard not to be aware of Polaris Jones’s church. Certain parts of the city were liberally sprinkled with navy blue billboards, painted with silver stars and Polaris’s benevolent visage, and the stern warning that our extraterrestrial ancestors were watching our every move, and finding us wanting. I could never understand how anyone could be taken in by such an obviously ludicrous theology—not that I knew much about it—but I knew the CCU had a massive campus out in Pasadena, packed with disciples spending thousands of dollars on classes that would earn them the points necessary to achieve Primal Infinitude. Periodic newspaper exposés about its shady financial dealings seemed to have little effect on the CCU’s popularity. I think even the Scientologists were getting a little concerned about the thousands of seekers of enlightenment bypassing their Celebrity Center in Hollywood and heading out to Pasadena.
    “I don’t get it, Lilly. Why do you want to hire me? What do you want me to do?”
    She grabbed my hands in hers and squeezed tightly. “I want you to help Jupiter. They’ve charged him with capital murder, and I can’t
bear
the idea of him on death row. I don’t remember much about Mexico or my mom, but I do remember Jupiter. Neither of us spoke Spanish, so we were each other’s only playmates. He was littler than I was, maybe two years younger or so. We did everything together. We even slept in the same bed. Honestly, when my mother died and I came to live with my dad, I missed Jupiter as much as I missed her.”
    “Does he know you’re trying to help him?”
    She nodded. “He called me from jail right after he was arrested. Artie—Polaris—won’t speak to him. I guess that’s understandable, but Jupiter doesn’t have any money of his own. He lived with Polaris and Chloe. I hired his lawyers, and I’m paying them, but that’s a secret. Nobody knows that except them, Jupiter, and me. And now you.”
    “Who did you hire?”
    “Raoul Wasserman.”
    I whistled. I’d met the famous defense attorney only once, when we were arguing motions before the same judge. He’d swept into the courtroom like a queen bee surrounded by a swarm of busy little associates. He was empty-handed, which I soon realized was because one of the worker bees was carrying his briefcase for him. Another had hold of his cell phone. Wasserman must have been six foot five, at the minimum. I found out from Peter that in his day Wasserman had been one of the greatest Jewish basketball players ever to play in the NBA, not that there’s a whole lot of competition for that title. He had thick black hair swept high off his forehead, and a quiet voice that nonetheless managed to resonate throughout the high-ceilinged room. Even the judge deferred to Counselor Wasserman, pushing his motion to first on the docket, and nodding and smiling throughout his oral argument. The poor U.S. Attorney who had the ill luck to argue for the government seemed to concede defeat before he even began, and it took only a few moments for the judge to exclude all the evidence that Wasserman wanted out of the case. The legend and his coterie buzzed out of the courtroom, leaving the rest of us defense attorneys feeling suddenly shabby and ill-prepared. We all lost our motions that day.
    “If you’ve got
him
, why in heaven’s name do you need
me
? I’m sure he’s got a team of investigators working the case already.”
    She squeezed my hand harder. “Maybe. Probably. And he’s the best, I know he is.