Free Sins of the Fathers by James Scott Bell Page A

speak he owned the place.
    This guy could talk, and he looked good. Tall, slender. Midforties, Lindy guessed.
    He would have made a good lawyer. A great lawyer, in fact. He spoke for forty minutes and Lindy wasn’t bored once.
    Afterward, Travis Kellman invited them to brunch, but Lindy wanted to go home. She wanted to get to the Sunday Times , back to the normal world, whatever that was.
    She knew deep down it wasn’t a normal world, not with kids like Darren in it. And part of her wished the church thing was real so it could help her out.
    But Travis Kellman offered to pick up the tab, and so she acceded to brunch.
    3.

    “So what kind of artist are you?” Lindy asked Travis Kellman in her cross-examination voice.
    Roxy kicked her under the table. They were at a little bistro called La Frite, a place with big windows and outdoor tables with yellow umbrellas. The buffet-style brunch came up salmon and capers and shrimp for Lindy. The other two had egg concoctions.
    Lindy ignored Roxy’s nudge and kept her eyes on the goateed fellow.
    “Photo surrealism,” Kellman said.
    “You’re a photographer?”
    “No, a painter. But I paint to make my work look like a photo. When I succeed, that is.”
    “What’s the surreal part?”
    “I put in something that is not real. Like water rushing down a drain, and men in a rowboat going down with it.”
    “Bizarre.”
    “What’s bizarre about it?” Roxy snapped.
    “He just said it’s surreal. Isn’t that right, Travis?”
    “Right.”
    “So where’d you pick up this bizarreness? Where are you from?”
    Roxy said, “Lindy, will you stop?”
    “It’s okay,” Kellman said. “I’m from San Diego, originally.”
    “Went to school down there?”
    “Yeah. Till I dropped out and bummed around Europe.”
    “What about your family?”
    “Normal. Mom’s a receptionist. My dad was a cop.”
    “Was?”
    “He died last year.”
    “Sorry.”
    Kellman nodded.
    “He must have been one of the good ones,” Lindy said.
    Kellman looked at her oddly. “Good ones?”
    Uh-oh. Just crossed some line with him. Get sensitive, stupid . “You know what I mean.”
    “I don’t think I do,” he said.
    “Police. Cops. Some good, some bad.”
    “Mostly good, wouldn’t you say?”
    She sensed his question was pointed, inviting argument. “May I speak freely?”
    “What have you been doing?” Roxy piped in.
    Lindy shot her a glance then looked at Kellman. “I think cops in any big city are under a lot of pressure to lie in court. You get pressure from the DA, you get pressure from your own higher-ups, you get pressure from the citizens who want the streets cleaned up, and they don’t care how it’s done. And eventually that kind of stuff reaches critical mass, and the ACLU has to step in, or the feds, and order you to clean house.”
    Roxy poked at her sausage omelet with thin-lipped chagrin.
    But Travis Kellman spoke evenly,“Hey, look, I’m not going to deny there have been abuses.”
    “Abuses? Remember Rampart?” The scandal involving the gang unit at the LAPD’s Rampart Division had broken the city wide open several years ago. “Remember a kid named Franklin Jones?”
    Kellman kept his eyes on her and put a forkful of egg in his mouth.
    “They offered him a deal, the prosecutors did. Plead guilty to selling drugs he had not sold and serve eight years in prison. Or he could risk being convicted at trial and, as a three-time loser, be sentenced to life. In doing this the prosecutors and judges just accepted the word of cops that he was guilty. Turns out the evidence was planted. The cops were lying.”
    “But that’s being dealt with.”
    “Is it?”
    “Where haven’t there been abuses? You saying defense lawyers never hide evidence? Never lie to the court? Never tell the court so-and- so wasn’t on your witness list because you just found the guy, when all the time you had him in your back pocket? Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.”
    “But