your parents are around, and they’re halfway decent, don’t do this to them. It’s not worth it. Don’t—
The door next to the front desk opened and an officer came out with Carl Richess. I could tell it was him because he was holding his Santa hat. At least they were letting him keep the ill-fitting clothes that now covered him.
Ill fitting because Richess was huge. He had a head like a mastiff. Jowly, in keeping with his girth. Furrows in his forehead deep enough to hold loose change.
“My mom call you?” he asked after I introduced myself. His breath could have peeled paint.
“She called her priest, who called me,” I said. “Don’t say anything else.”
I signed him out and got him to my car.
3
“WHAT ABOUT MY car?” Richess said as we headed for the freeway.
“You’ll have to get it out of impound,” I said.
“What’ll happen to me? Will I go to jail?”
“You been convicted before?”
“Never.”
“Arrested?”
“No.”
“Okay, if you plead out, for a first offense, no jail time,” I said. “You’ll have your license suspended. Three years probation, DUI school. Fine, penalty, assessments. Standard package.”
“I don’t wanna plead.”
“Not many of us do.”
“We can fight it.”
I smiled. “Yes, we can fight it, but I have to tell you, you go to trial and lose, you’ll get slammed by the judge. You’ll do the max.”
“Then don’t lose.”
“Santa Claus, my jolly friend, you blew a one-eight.”
“So?”
“So that’s over twice the limit. Contesting a first deuce with a reading that high is a bad idea, unless you can find some obvious error. Like the machine was dropped in the toilet before the test. Or a rogue police officer poured a whole bottle of Cuervo down your throat, started your car, and sent you down the highway, and somebody captured it all on digital.”
Richess was silent. I hoped his brain was soaking up what I said. I wanted him to be disabused of any fantasies concerning his situation. A little straight talk up front saves a lot of grumbling down the line.
“Don’t mind my asking,” I said, “what were you doing in a G-string and Santa hat?”
“What’s that matter?”
“Just like to have all the facts, put it that way.”
He grunted. It sounded like a dog holding in a belch. “I was just being crazy. I was at a party and got crazy.”
“That’s one word for it.”
Carl burped, hiccupped, and groaned.
“What do you do when you’re not doing Santa?”
“Concrete,” he said. “So can you do anything for me or not?”
“I’ll check out everything I can. When we go in for the arraignment, you’ll dress in a suit and tie, and you’ll act sorry for what you’ve done, and we’ll see what the best deal we can make is.”
Santa sighed. “No,” he said. “No deals.”
“At least hear their offer.”
“No. We fight. We prove the machine was wrong.”
“We?”
“Can you?”
“Carl, a toaster could have told them you were drunk. Machine error might work on the threshold, but not on a one-eight.”
“I don’t care. I want to fight. I want somebody to fight for me. You’re getting paid, aren’t you?”
“Not yet.”
“You don’t want to rep me, I’ll find somebody else.”
“Frosty the Snowman’s free,” I said.
Carl Richess said nothing. A couple of minutes later he started snoring. He sounded like a leaf blower.
4
IT WAS A modest, two-bedroom home on Corbin Avenue in the part of the Valley called Winnetka. I pulled into the driveway next to a blue Civic that looked like it had seen a lot of miles.
I got out and went around and opened Carl’s door. I shook him awake. He snorted and sat up. “Wussgoinon?” he said.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “You haven’t missed it.”
“Huh? Missed what?”
“Christmas Eve. Come on.” I grabbed his arm and hauled him out. We went toward the front door. A light was on in the window. The door opened before we got there. A large woman, backlit, stood in the doorway.
“Carl,” she said, distress in her voice.
“Hi, Mom,” Carl said, like he was ten years old and had been caught picking the neighbor’s flowers.
She put her arm around him and walked him inside. She looked back at me. “Please come in. I’m Kate.”
I went in, closed the door, and waited as Kate took Carl toward a bedroom. I stayed by the door and looked around. The place seemed too small for the Richess family. This was more Mickey Rooney size.
But it had a warmth to it. Tidy, simple, and, I could imagine, full of laughter at one time. Before drunk driving charges. There was a wall