Guilty or Else

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They say never blame it on the weather. But I had to come up with something, a story that would explain why I was running late for Judge Johnson’s command performance. Today, unlike most days in sunny California, the rain beat down in a mind-numbing torrent. These late August storms blew in from the Pacific Ocean, hung around for about an hour, dumped a billion gallons of acid rain on the smog-choked, sun-baked, paved-over landscape known as the L.A. Basin before they disappeared, leaving the freeway system and feeder roads a tangled mess.

Not that the current storm caused my tardiness. I’d overslept. But I had to place the blame somewhere. “Be here at nine A.M., exactly!” Judge Johnson demanded when he’d called my office yesterday. He didn’t say why he wanted to see me, just be there on time.

My four-year-old ’68 Corvette skidded into the last parking spot at the South Gate Municipal Court and I rushed into the single-story brick building. When I bolted into Johnson’s courtroom, the bailiff shook his head ominously as he pointed to the Judge’s chambers.

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