When Marty woke to the sound of his alarm, he was surprised to find that he had slept at all. By the time he had finally gotten home from the emergency room, where they'd prodded, scanned, cleaned and dressed his bullet wound and made sure there was a police report to accompany it, his mind was reeling. What the hell had he done? What trouble had he brought to his doorstep? What could he do to send it away again, and go back to his perfectly fine life?
On the other hand, he'd made a difference last night. He hadn't had a gun with which to defend himself and Sarah, and he hadn't heroically dived on top of her to keep her safe, but if he hadn't shouted out that warning and led her to safety, she'd likely have been killed. And god, if that had happened, part of the responsibility would have fallen on him for failing to warn her in time. His stomach rolled over at the thought, at the idea of the heaping shit ton of guilt he'd have had to carry.
Yep, it was far better to have taken action, even if it screwed things up for him at work. That action, as clumsy as it had been, had made the difference in whether an innocent young woman was alive or dead, and he could live with the consequences. With that in mind, he got out of bed and tested his arm. It responded with an angry twinge of pain that motivated him to keep it as still as possible even as he declined to use the sling they'd provided him in the E.R. He slowly moved about his apartment and began to get ready for work.
He drove to the office and conferred with Jeannine, who took the news about his actions and his near-death experience poorly, fussing over him and fretting about his safety. They decided that he needed to immediately withdraw from the case. He chose to walk over to the County Jail, wanting some fresh air to try to clear his head and relax his nerves. And while the air on Main Street as it crossed over the bumper-to-bumper traffic on the sunken 110 Freeway below couldn't exactly be described as fresh, it served his purpose, enabling him to arrive at the jail feeling more centered. He would let Nikolai know and then deal with the judge afterwards.
This time the prisoner projected less the mannerisms of a laid back teenager and more those of an angry – and dangerous – man.
"You can't quit representing me, man, 'cause I'm firing you," Nikolai stated after Marty had broken the news.
"OK, fine, either way works for me, Nikolai. Good luck to you."
"No, man, good luck to you," Nikolai stated coldly. "I wonder, how many scruffy blond surfers in suits do you think spend their evenings running around Sherman Oaks mini-malls?"
Marty's blood ran cold at the news that Nikolai knew he'd interfered. He'd hoped the Russians would assume his actions had been those of an anonymous innocent bystander; instead, they somehow knew they'd been carried out by a meddling attorney. Last night, the possibility that he might need to testify about the shooting, testify against the Petrov family, had been more possibility than probability. With his identity becoming known so quickly, the prospects for his safety had taken a steep downward turn. And besides all that, had Nikolai just made another veiled threat, against him?
"What are you talking about?" he replied, trying to avoid confirming Nikolai's assertion while also fishing for additional information.
Nikolai smiled, a toothless grin that made Marty's skin crawl. "You know what I mean, man. You were supposed to keep everything I told you a secret. It doesn't look like you did. So, good luck to you," he repeated before he called for the guard and left Marty sitting at the table, absently wiping away a single bead of sweat that had run down his brow. He was in even more trouble than he'd expected.
Next up on this crappy day, Jeannine accompanied him a few floors down from their offices to see the judge, who gave him a massive tongue-lashing and threatened to write a letter of complaint to the Bar. Marty acknowledged his inappropriate contact with the witness but maintained that if he hadn't reached out to her, if he had pursued some other avenue to warn her, she'd have been killed. The judge grumbled some more and then dismissed him from the case. All in all, it could have gone much worse, although that didn't do much to qualm Marty's roiling thoughts.
After he had told Jeannine about his latest conversation with Nikolai, her concern for his safety had ratcheted up considerably. She demanded that he now follow up with the police to try to assess how much danger he was in, and to see if they would do something to help ensure his safety.
They'd discussed how much he could disclose to the LAPD. He could no longer report the previous threat to Sarah, since she was protected now and he no longer needed to do anything to prevent a criminal act against her. Nikolai's original threat now fell back under the category of privileged information. And Nikolai hadn't made an overt threat against him, even if Marty had interpreted his well wishes as being nothing but dangerously sarcastic. Reporting it would no doubt lead to more professional trouble for him, even if he wasn't sanctioned in the end. They decided that he needed to try to see how far he could get with the cops without divulging why he had intervened to protect Sarah. It was the best way to ensure he wouldn't risk a future appearance with the Board of Professional Ethics.
Detective Espinoza's card had indicated his assignment to the Organized Crime Section of the Major Crimes Division, located only a couple blocks away in Parker Center. Marty strode over, glancing behind him every few seconds to make sure no sinister-looking would-be attackers followed. As he looked backwards, he managed to bump into someone coming from the opposite direction, banging his sore arm in the process. He leapt away in alarm and pain, only to see an elderly woman who'd dropped her shopping bags in the small collision. He apologized profusely and handed her the bags as he continued to scan the crowded streets for threats. Every racing car engine or random pedestrian calling out to a friend rattled his nerves. He chided himself to get a grip and speed walked the rest of the way to his destination, all the while holding his throbbing arm protectively in front of his body.
He hadn't spent much time in Parker Center, although he regularly visited clients in its adjoining Metro Detention Center. He'd only been thirteen during the '92 L.A. Riots, but he'd gotten a feel for how many citizens saw the building as a symbol of all that was wrong with the LAPD. Still, as he walked into the imposing structure, he focused solely on securing his own personal safety. Simply passing through its metal detector-filled security area resulted in a noticeable decrease in blood pressure. He took a few deep breaths and enjoyed the temporary reprieve.
When he arrived at the Major Crimes offices, he was told Detectives Laurens and Espinosa were out, but that he could speak with their sergeant. He was escorted into a small conference room with floor to ceiling windows that looked back over the office's bustling activity. He sat facing the scene and couldn't stop the setting from carrying him back to another time when he'd looked out on a similar view.
Soon after the cops delivered Marty and Ray to the busy little North Hollywood police station after they'd caught them in the Camaro, they'd separated the two friends. Marty was alone now, and though he tried to play the tough guy, his rapid breathing and rigid body language gave away his growing anxiety. The cops who handled his booking didn't say much, their apparent boredom a huge contrast to his teeming emotions. They took his mugshot and fingerprints and deposited him in a small office whose interior windows faced toward the larger precinct space.
As he sat waiting to find out what would happen next, he watched some genuinely scary looking men with hard faces and hard, tattoo-covered bodies being processed through the system. Would he be locked up with them once the cops were done with him here? What would happen to his scrawny self if he were imprisoned with those frightening men? Could he, god forbid, eventually cross paths with his father? His heart pounded and he worked at taking deep breaths to keep himself calm.
At one point he noticed a resigned looking older man with grey hair sitting handcuffed to a bench. Marty supposed he'd been through this process many times before. When the man was pulled to his feet and marched past the office, they briefly made eye contact. In a few seconds, the man silently communicated not judgment, or anger. Just a sense of fate. Marty realized he'd always imagined he'd end up here, exactly like the man passing by. Exactly like his father. It was inevitable, really. His father had always told him he'd never amount to anything. He was finally fulfilling his destiny.
Yet he could also hear his mother's voice echoing in his head, telling him about his potential, just as some of his teachers had done. Such words had never managed to embed themselves in his mind for long, always rooted out by his father's biting assessments that blamed him for everything that went wrong. Marty had always made life harder for his family. He'd shot his own father for god's sake, and had sent that same father to prison. How could he ever be expected to excel at anything except getting into more trouble? It was apparently one of the few things he was good at. He couldn't envision an alternate future for himself, no matter how hard his mom tried to convince him it existed.
An alternate future free from trouble. Marty had worked so hard to achieve one, but everything he'd gained now felt as if it were slipping away from him.
After a good twenty-minute wait, a man in a suit entered carrying a file folder. His arrival pulled Marty fully back to the present, and he tried to shake off the old feelings of guilt and shame as he stood to greet him. He had nothing to feel guilty about with his current predicament, not really. He might have made a bit of a mess of things, but he'd saved a woman's life and deserved to get some help, some protection, from the LAPD.
"You're Martin Deeks, from the attempted murder in Sherman Oaks last night?" the man said. His pleasant face and closely cropped, slightly receding, greying hair framed intelligent hazel eyes that alerted Marty to watch what he said.
"Yes, but you can call me Marty," he replied, extending his hand in greeting.
"Uh huh," he replied, shaking Marty's hand. "I'm Sergeant Bates. What can I do for you, Deeks?"
Marty tried to suppress an eye roll at the use of his last name and attempted to figure out how to approach the conversation. He told the man, "Well, I had a few questions about last night."
Bates gestured for Marty to take a seat and then moved to sit on the table's opposite side. He leaned back and noisily plopped the file in front of him but didn't open it. Instead he rested his hands in his lap and waited for Marty to speak first.
"Well… I wanted to find out what you could tell me about what happened last night. Who those men were, and if the girl, Sarah, is OK and getting protection? And whether I should be worried about any sort of backlash from the shooters." He'd aimed to strike the right balance of asking for information without making Bates overly curious about him. He exhorted himself to play it cool.
Bates replied, "You're an attorney, correct?"
"Yes."
"You don't look like an attorney. You look like a hippy surfer."
"You can't judge a book," Marty smirked, enjoying the idea that he might have surprised Bates.
Bates' eyes narrowed slightly. "You're a public defender?"
"Yes." Marty wasn't going to say anything that wasn't absolutely necessary.
"I assume you know, then, that I can't share much about an active investigation with a witness, especially one who was there randomly, who wasn't the apparent target of the crime." Bates' emphasis on the word 'randomly' caused little warning bells to ring in Marty's head.
"Yes, Sergeant, I appreciate that. It's just that I'm really concerned that I could have become a target by virtue of my intervening last night."
"Ms. McKinley claimed you saved her life."
Marty shrugged modestly. "I saw them pull up and pull out their guns and I just reacted."
"Most people would have reacted by hiding or fleeing."
"I suppose. Honestly, my only thought was to protect her, to keep her safe."
"Mmm," Bates replied. After a pause, he continued. "Tell me about why you were there last night."
Of course Bates would ask the one question that could only lead to trouble. Marty couldn't continue lying to the police - it would eventually blow up in his face. He told Bates, "I told the detectives that I thought I might buy a present for a friend."
Bates narrowed his eyes again and assessed Marty carefully. He nodded and then switched topics. "OK then. Do you know anyone in the Russian mob, Deeks? In particular, the Invankov crime family?"
The subject change was disorienting and it put Marty even more on the defensive. "The what?" he deflected, feeling a new bead of sweat work its way down his back.
Bates leaned forward and repeated his words slowly, as if speaking to a child. "The Russian… mob?… The Invankov… Bratva, or crime family?"
Marty didn't want to lie, and he did need protection from said crime family. Lying about matters related to a police investigation could cause even more trouble for himself unless, fingers crossed, Bates might be clever enough to read between the lines.
"Well, I recently had a client with the last name Petrov."
Bates' face remained impassive, unreadable. "I see," he said. He sat quietly, seeming content to wait for Marty to say more. Bates' intentions were clear and Marty sat silently facing him, all the while trying to figure out what he could say that wouldn't get him disbarred. Finally Bates spoke.
"So tell me, Deeks, what's a public defender like yourself doing contacting a witness in his client's trial?"
Marty sighed and crossed his arms. Of course Bates knew all about the Petrov case. "I can't tell you that, Sergeant. Attorney-client privilege."
"What kind of attorney-client privilege would lead you to have an inappropriate personal relationship with a witness? Does the judge in your case know?"
"He does, actually. I spoke with him about it this morning… Hypothetically speaking, you know that there are very few things a client can tell his attorney that aren't protected by privilege, right?"
"Yeah. I know that attorneys are required - or at least encouraged - to reveal information if it's necessary to prevent a criminal act that might result in death or substantial bodily harm."
"That is true."
"Well if that's what happened here, why can't you talk about it with me now?"
"I didn't say anything about what happened here. And hypothetically speaking, if I did know of a threat, I would have to disclose as little as possible in the process of trying to prevent said death or harm."
Bates shook his head in frustration. "You attorneys want everything both ways, don't you? You want to claim privilege, you refuse to give me anything that could help my investigation, and yet you're here today hoping I'm going to protect you from the bad guys."
Marty felt his blood pressure rise as his own frustration built. "Listen, Sergeant, I have reason to believe my life is in danger. Is there anything you can do to protect me? 'Protect and serve' is your whole motto, right?"
"The officer who took your statement said you didn't think you could identify the shooters."
"It was dark and I was mostly focused on their shiny guns while I ran away from them as quickly as possible, so no, I didn't get a great look at their faces."
"Deeks, I don't know what you want me to do. We can put witnesses in protective custody, but you aren't really going to be of much help to our case, so I'd suggest you consider staying at a friend's or purchasing a firearm, if you don't already own one."
Marty tried to keep old memories of the feel of a gun in his hands at bay. Shit, he was so screwed. "So that's it?" he asked Bates.
"Listen Deeks, you should know this already, but maybe you're still too new to your job to have learned it. People who testify against organized criminal entities take their lives in their hands. If they have highly useful testimony, we may be able to get them into WitSec, but you know as well as I that that means changing everything about your life- your hometown, your friends and family, your job. Everything. Otherwise testifying is a risky endeavor because these syndicates have long reaches and lots of resources, and don't hesitate to make examples of people. I'm not sure you have anything to even testify to, which means that I honestly don't know how to help you out… But you do need to watch your back. If they put two and two together and figure out you interfered, you will not be safe. These guys kill people just to prove a point or teach someone a lesson."
Marty sat silently and slumped back in his chair, drained of energy, and hope. He raked his fingers through his long hair and blew out a loud breath before he looked Bates in the eye and told him, "I am definitely not safe, Sergeant."
"I'm sorry to hear that, kid, I really am. But there's just not a lot I can offer you in the way of help. If you notice any suspicious activity, if anyone tries anything, come back and let me know. I'm not saying I'll have a solution, but I'd like to help you out. You may be a hippy PD, but you did a good – albeit reckless - thing last night to save Ms. McKinley's life. If you have a gun, or buy one, I can expedite a concealed carry permit for you, otherwise you could be waiting months, and I know, as an upstanding citizen and member of the California Bar, you wouldn't want to carry a gun around illegally."
Marty couldn't figure out if Bates was enjoying his predicament, or if he genuinely wanted to help. Maybe he was just indifferent. "Thanks Bates," he replied. "I might take you up on your offer. And in the meantime, I'll try to keep you posted about my bullet-dodging activities."
"Just think, Deeks, about whether your job is worth your life. Because it feels to me that that's the choice you're making."
A/N: I do think it unlikely that Deeks met Bates so early on, but I couldn't resist using him because he's such an entertaining character. I hope I can do him justice- I'm not sure I'm funny enough, but I've done my best. And while my research indicates that Deeks might be within his rights to report Nikolai's veiled threat, I'm not sure it would change much in terms of the protection the cops could offer him. At any rate, my artistic license here is that the LAPD doesn't have the manpower or budget to put every witness to every crime in protective custody.
By the way, the flashback to Deeks at the police station was first written here for this story, but was first published in my one-shot "Deciding on Destiny," for wikiDeeks' never-ending attempts to encourage the showrunners to write a "Deeks, M." episode. Thanks to Lindy AKA Sweet Lu for her edits and suggestions on that one-shot.
Skip the rest of this note if you're not interested in architectural history… Parker Center had a long history of contentiousness. It came to signify some of the darkest moments in Los Angeles's history, standing in for its namesake police chief William Parker's aggressive policing tactics and the ensuing 1965 Watts Rebellion. It then served as a home base for the department during the Rodney King trial, the 1992 L.A. riots, and the Rampart scandal of the 1990's.
Even the building's construction in the 1950's was contentious: L.A. officials unscrupulously seized the land beneath it from Little Tokyo property owners, razing part of the neighborhood just as residents and business owners struggled to reshape it following the mass-internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.
Those associations led the Los Angeles City Council to deny an effort on the part of preservationists to landmark the structure in 2017. Instead, it was demolished, to be replaced by a 29-story high-rise set to anchor a larger overhaul of Downtown L.A.'s Civic Center.