looking for tom, pt. 2
the real househusband of pasadena's final days at home
Hey, hello. Hope everyone is having an iconic Delta Variant Summer. Here’s the second and final part of our series about Tom Girardi. It’s already won an LA Press Club award. My friend and I spent the summer looking for him and getting really into Pasadena history, and we definitely did not go insane while doing it. You can read part one here. I wrote this one. Enjoy. I hope it takes your mind off things.
Tom Girardi is an absolute legend. He is the greatest lawyer of all time. He is my hero, and I think about him a lot. Look, he doesn’t have Alzheimer’s disease. He’s just a Gemini. Geminis have two heads so oblivious of each other that Tom the good boy and Tom the thief have never even met.
I recently checked this all out for myself, and did Tom’s astrological chart. And according to what I found, since his moon is in Libra and his rising sign is fire and because he was born at exactly 2:37 p.m Mountain Time on June 3, 1939, Tom’s chakras are perfectly aligned and he has no character flaws. It is cosmically impossible that he would steal from his clients.
“We don’t steal any money from anybody,” he told the Los Angeles Daily Journal in 1998. “First of all, we don’t have to. And even if we had to, we wouldn’t. And to be so frapped like that…my god it’s so bad it’s depressing.”
That’s a real quote.
You see, all of the allegations of embezzlement are just not true. Get real, people. First of all, I’ve read everything on the Internet about Tom. And he has racked up an anthemic number of awards. Everyone from the Consumer Attorneys Association of Los Angeles to the International Association of Top Professionals have given him the biggest fucking awards you’ve ever seen in your life. He has been named Top Lawyer every year dating back to the Clinton Administration. They made a movie based on one of his cases that is rated 85% on Rotten Tomatoes. He converted his wife Erika from provincial bimbo to viral celebrity. He also has unparalleled communications skills. Obviously, his command of tort law is incredible. But he also knows everything about sports, so when he’s around the office water cooler people are impressed by his references. Man, Roberts should have really pulled Kershaw while he had the chance. By the way, wow, look at that, a woman with a briefcase! When did I hire her?
If Tom Girardi weren’t real, then big law defense attorneys would have to make him up just to keep their jobs. Tom’s a king. You all eat McDonalds every day while he eats steaks the size of an ipad and acts like he doesn’t know you anymore. Okay, and also, Tom has great taste. His library inside his Pasadena mansion is filled wall-to-wall with interesting art books and really cool old paintings that are probably over your head. But Tom is really great at explaining what they mean. Tom will never die. He will live on as a brain floating in a glass jar of water. And he will continue to direct litigation strategy for Girardi Keese until the apocalypse.
* * * * * *
I returned home from the Stoney Point dinner with Paul and Lee a little empty. Lately I’ve been feeling sad. My name is Justin Kloczko, btw. I’m a reporter, and I also have a little part-time job working at a granola co-op. I don’t live in Pasadena like Tom. I live “far away” in Boyle Heights. The other day I took a selfie, and winced. My eyes in the photo were like big black pools of oil floating deep inside my sockets. I compared them to the photos of beautiful people I follow on Instagram. I only have 14 followers and I follow 9,000 accounts. There is nothing that I want more than an Instagram face.
I’ve also been hungry for days, too afraid to really eat anything though. But once I got home I did some deep Googlin’ on Tom, and I found a recipe for his world famous Tom Girardi mac n cheese. I swear to God it’s real! Look, the Daily Journal even published it. This is a dish that Tom has been making himself forever. Okay it requires two cups of Cavatappi noodles and like 5 different kinds of cheese. The midas touch is integrating Sambol Oelak chilli paste. It also says to use powdered Kraft mac and cheese from a box but that’s okay. No one has to know.
So I made the Tom mac n cheese. It was 3 a.m. when I sat down, a perfect meal in front of me, and I gingerly cut into a piece with a fork and knife. I took a bite. It was so good. And it changed my life. Look, listen, you have to believe me. I’m telling you this because before this moment I didn’t really exist. After I took that first bite of Tom’s mac and cheese, something started vibrating inside me. I was violently alert, irrationally alive. My days used to be blurred; things were always unclear, like if you smeared the edges of a neat painting. I was a confused person. Not anymore. A ladder of tears rolled down my cheek. I dropped my utensils and knew what I had to do: I had to find Tom, and thank him for curing my depression.
*** ***
In the morning I immediately drove to Paul’s house in Pasadena. Walking up, I heard a racket coming from his backyard. He was hunched over a bed of soil, assaulting it with a garden rake. I had never seen this behavior in Paul before.
“YOUFUCKINGPIECEOFSHITFUCKYOU.”
“Paul...PAUL,” I said, taking the rake from him.
He relented. “I’m sorry. I’m just really anxious for these radishes to come in. Also Tom was in my house last night. I ended up jumping out of my window into my raised garden and destroyed everything.”
“I believe you,” I said, looking over my shoulder and drawing a long hit on my vape. “I was up all night making his mac n cheese recipe. I think we need to keep looking. I feel it. He’s around.”
Paul wiped the beads of sweat on his brow. “Absolutely.”
He cleaned up, came back outside and started working the phones. “Okay,” he said, resting his cell between his right ear and shoulder. “I set up a coffee date with Contessa Shire. She’s president of the Horticulture Enthusiast’s Consortium, Pasadena chapter. She might have some leads.”
We went to a coffee shop on Arroyo. Inside, it was another psychotically arranged, Scandinavian-style coffee shop--a sensitive millennial’s wet dream, all bathed in bisexual lighting. The whole room felt very optimized, like I was living inside a podcast. Terrible things were being whisper-yelled to me in sensual ways. A cortado was $7, but I swear to god it made my hearing better.
“Tom Girardi is problematic. We must do better, and we cannot internalize the abusive power imbalance he forced on plant lovers in Pasadena,” Shire, our new contact, told us.
“Dude, I know. This guy fucked so hard, I mean, wow,” I snorted back, not reading the room.
Contessa and Paul exchanged stern looks.
“I’m sorry. Men are violent,” I apologized.
“Um, I mean, do you know how we can find him?” Paul asked, getting serious.
“I have an address for you. But first, let me give you a sense of our plans,” she said, pulling out an ipad.
Paul texted me under the table: “Our??”
“We’re trying to lobby the city council to make any mourning of his upcoming death a violation of local municipal ordinances.”
“Sounds like White Mom Nextdoor is getting wild,” I leaned back, draining my cortado. The music playing sounded monotonous, like one small part of an algorithm that goes on forever. It was the LA band Khruangbin.
Contessa ignored my comment and continued scrolling on her powerpoint.
“There is also a concurrent nationwide campaign to institute a blackout of any social media postings about him.”
“Okay, Okay. How are you gonna do that,” asked Paul.
“My dad is CFO at Facebook. It’s all been taken care of,” she added nonchalantly.
I looked at Paul. This woman was a cop. She wanted to cancel Tom. We had to get out of there. Walking to the car, I checked her Instagram story. It was her in a Warrior 2 pose with the caption “Balance.”
We got in my Prius and drove to Tom’s house. His Myron Hunt estate is perched above Annandale Golf course. After driving through a tunnel of peppermint trees and white orchid, I made the hairpin turn onto Los Altos Drive. But his street was gated. Damn. I made a 7 point k-turn while Escalades and other very expensive cars impatiently waited for me, then parked along the main drag, facing Tom’s street. I slowly rolled down the window. A carpet of vape smoke unfurled from inside. I lowered my tortoise shell sunglasses, and scanned the area. The early afternoon sun was smothering hot, like it didn’t want us there.
“Is that him?” lowering my binoculars.
No, it wasn’t Tom. Just a deflated lawn ornament. Nope...that’s actually a small child.
I took a sip of hot coffee from a KCRW mug. On my body a Coogi golf shirt and Z-laced Chacos paired with shorts that looked like underwear. I was dressed like a European tourist who learned American fashion from watching daytime 90s soap operas.
Paul wore a white collared shirt with stitched prints of tiny orange slices. On his feet were those cool espadrilles that Basque misogynists wear. We were both living out loud.
Once Tom’s mansion sells as part of bankruptcy proceedings, he has two weeks to move out. He owes clients upwards of $25 million, and Tom's total liabilities are estimated to be over twice that. But if anyone can make it out of this, Tom can!
He was up there, somewhere. That poor man, lost in his own mansion, sick with Erika Girardi brain. I pictured him staring out of a large bay window, wondering how he could possibly rejoin the outside world after all that happened. He needs my help.
“Wait, maybe this is him,” Paul leaned in.
There was a lot going in this little pocket of town. The same Porsche driven by an angry yuppie in a Vineyard Vines-branded Annandale cap kept zig zagging back and forth in circles, like it was trapped in a time loop. But no foot traffic, no sign of life. The rich keep to themselves.
Then, a USPS truck pulled up parallel to us. It was a Mercedes Sprinter van.
“They even got nicer mail trucks here,” said Paul, snapping a photo with his Nikon D5600.
I stuck my hand out of the window to flag down the mail carrier.
“Hey, do you deliver mail to a guy named Tom Girardi?”
He quickly shot back a hard “No,” and deflated any room for small talk.
We peered into another car careening down his street. It was a tinted black SUV, and I started following it. I knew Tom had a driver. The car quickly turned onto the 134.
“It’s happening,” I said, flooring the gas pedal of my Prius, which felt like driving a Macbook destined to get crushed in a 7-car pile up.
“Where do you think he’s going?”
“Closing arguments in a case that’s a really big deal,” I explained. I turned on Eco Mode and floored it.
“But this guy hasn’t been inside a courtroom since the iPhone 2,” replied Paul, his knuckles white as he grabbed onto the passenger handle.
“Whatever it is, it’s definitely important,” I said, keeping my eyes on the road.
The SUV rolled through an LA neighborhood with an exploding homelessness problem. Then, into a local nursery parking lot. The back of Tom’s head got out and he went inside.
“Ya see, ya see that?” I gestured broadly. “He’s a normal guy, doing normal guy home improvement things.”
About 20 minutes later, Tom rolled out a pallet of mulch, a chainsaw, and some cute plants. It actually wasn’t Tom after all. Just another suburban sociopath who came to do some lite gardening after beating the shit out of his wife.
“Fuck,” I smashed the Prius shifter into reverse, and got us out of there.
On a winding road that lined the Arroyo, somewhere near the 9th Circuit, we spotted our former colleague, Eli. We kept honking until he finally pulled over. I’ll let Eli take it from here and give you his take on the encounter.
I was driving back from Eagle Rock when the honking started. Short, frantic bursts from a Prius. Great, my first road rage incident in Los Angeles.
I pulled over, resigned to the fact that I was about get a tire iron to the skull. Or at least a stern talking to.
Out of the Prius jumped two white guys in shorts. I relaxed the second I saw their familiar faces.
“What’s up man?” said Justin. He was grinning, gaunt and tired. “We’re looking for Tom Girardi.”
I nodded. That made sense. I knew Justin had been stalking Girardi’s favorite haunts, hoping for a glimpse of the fraud-addicted geriatric who was getting elder abused by his TV wife. When I saw Justin’s companion, I realized he had hired a professional to help him on his safari.
Paul was Pasadena incarnate. Behind his brow sat a brain that brimmed with minutia about the placement of every man, woman and child in Pasadena’s inscrutable caste system. Paul was Pasadena—his DNA would probably unravel if he ever set foot beyond the Oak-shaded borough he called home. If anyone could locate Girardi in Pasadena’s labyrinth of hedges and Myron Hunt homes, it was Paul.
“Dude, I smoke weed now!” Paul shouted.
That was new. And maybe dangerous. Paul could cite federal appellate court briefs after pounding Beefeater by the gallon. But would cannabis dull his abilities as a Pasadena guide?
Paul was clearly hyped for the hunt. Without prompting, he began telling me about Pasadena. He spoke fast and without break, and I could only pick up snippets of his monologue:
“[Redacted for legal reasons] was banned from Bohemian Grove for getting drunk and pissing on the Golden Owl again.”
He pointed at a housing development on a nearby hillside. “That’s all new. Weight Watcher scam artists and unlicensed podiatrists from Pomona. Disgusting.”
“Back in the 90s, they tried to approve a Panera Bread downtown and a mob nearly lynched the chair of the planning commission.”
“Girardi’s worst crime was telling people that he owns a Myron Hunt mansion.”
“The Anschluss of South Pasadena is imminent.”
As my brain filled with forbidden knowledge, I felt it shutting down. Paul’s glistening face shimmered in and out of focus as my eyes closed and his soothing voice carried me on a dark current into the bowels of Pasadena.
I woke up sprawled on the pavement next to my car. Paul and Justin were gone. Thick black tire marks were the only sign they had ever been there.
Shaking, I climbed into my car and shut the door. I felt relief that I was not the target of their terrible hunt.
Leaving Eli, Paul and I drove back to our spot in Tom’s hood. I checked my watch. 4:43 p.m. We scrolled through our contacts, desperate for help.
I called up my Aunt Teddy, who recently had her 90th birthday party. She’s lived off Orange Grove in Pasadena for years and knows everybody.
“How are you Justin—I’m fine,” she said after picking up on the first ring.
“Hello Aunt Teddy. Sorry to be so forward, but: do you know anything about Tom Girardi?”
“He’s the man who plays a lawyer on the television, I believe.”
“Yes. Did you know that he lives in Pasadena?”
The line went dead.
I later found out Aunt Teddy died upon hearing the news that Tom did not live in Beverly Hills, but Pasadena.
Next I called the front desk at Morton’s Steakhouse.
“Hi, yes, this is Justin Kloczko calling. I dined with one of your regulars, Tom Girardi. I was wondering if you had seen him lately?”
A man with a deep voice took to the phone.
“No ‘Tom Girardi’ dines here,” he said matter of factly, and hung up.
Okay. I dialed Stoney Point, Tom’s local hangout, and put it on speaker phone. The phone kept ringing and ringing. Things started to feel like a time lapse. It was disorientating. Then, nothing. I hung up, and started Googling Stoney Point. I couldn’t find a website, or anything indicating that it even existed anymore. Just a news story reporting that it was shut down in the 90s for tax evasion. That’s weird, we’d just had dinner there.
Another nice car drove by. A man got out, stabbed an open house sign on the corner of the street, looked around, clapped his hands together once, and walked back to his car in a my-work-is-done-here energy.
I got out to flag him down.
“Hey, sorry, how are ya? We’re wondering if you’re showing the house at 127 Los Altos Drive, the Girardi property.”
The man, who looked like an unemployed Joe Scarborough, put his finger up to his lips.
“Shhh, keep it down,” he said, looking around. “We’re hoping to sell the property without the locals even knowing he lived here. It would set off a firestorm. They just wouldn’t know how to handle such details.”
Tom does not live here. We want nothing to do with him.
“You and your partner interested?” he said, grilling my Prius.
“Oh, my partner...yes, my partner. We’re from Walnut Creek. He runs an NGO educating Uzbekistani refugees about racism. And I stay home. Also, that Prius is a rental.”
“Oh, great! Big ally here,” he said, timidly raising up his hand. “Come on, hop on in you two. I’m Larry Astor, ” he said, dangling the keys in front of our eyes.
*** ***
Larry drove us through the gate and into Tom Land. Even the weather was different up there. A much more pronounced mediterranean climate seduced us as we ascended up to his property like it was the beginning of a fucked up Disneyland ride. Passed his gated driveway and into a huge motor court, a bronze front door greeted us.
“Yup, this sits on two acres. The house itself is over 10,000 square feet,” said Larry, opening the door and revealing a walnut-paneled interior. Coffered ceilings and a huge bookshelf bracketed off by two gothic fireplaces. On the shelf sat The Economics of Deregulation and OJ Simpson’s If I Did It.
“Is this silk wallpaper,” asked Paul?
“Yes.”
The interior felt like a plastic surgery victim from Beverly Hills decorated it while high out of his mind on Prosecco and Xanax. Very gaudy. Paul hated it, I loved it.
“How much?” I asked.
“$10 million. We had to lower it after getting no buyers.”
I gave Larry an enthusiastic head nod signaling my submission to the price.
“Here, let me show you the master bedroom. This is where Tom and Erika slept head to toe for 20 years. No sex stuff.”
It was a normal bed.
“Wow.”
It looked as if The Ivy was airlifted and placed into Tom’s home. The old money locals would be so offended seeing all this.
“They’re just mad Girardi is just like them, but louder,” Astor chimed in.
“Now let’s go down to his wine cellar.”
Paul followed while I stayed behind. What a life, I thought. I’d never leave. Nothing to be heard out here. The grinding, unbearable vibrations of Los Angeles didn’t reach his palace. I was honored to be there and took my phone out to take pictures. A tub with red silk walls. Dual dressing areas.
Then, a painting fell off the wall. It revealed an arrow pointing to a dresser. I put my phone in my pocket. Examining the dresser, I began pushing it to the side until it revealed what appeared to be a small door. I pushed it open. Immediately a plume of dust shot out at me. I stared into the void for a moment, then proceeded to walk in. It was dark but I didn’t get frightened until the lights turned on. Everything was drenched in a red hue. The walls were lined with magazine and newspaper articles of him. Nothing was framed. They seemed to be scrapped together like an insane puzzle. There was an urn in the corner. I smelled burning nag champa. On another wall were extravagantly framed portraits of people I didn’t recognize. They might have been clients. A burn victim. Someone with a leg blown off. They hung with corresponding dollar figures, I guess pertaining to how much money his clients scored him. It was a private chapel.
I turned around, and shrieked. I bumped into something. Looking up, it was a huge portrait of him. I stood looking at it, my mouth agape. Then I laughed. He looked so stately. Pulling out my phone, I wanted to take a selfie. I extended my hand, but in the place of my face was…Tom. It was hard to look at. Disgusting, honestly. I really wanted to turn away from it but I couldn’t. He was just staring at me, slack jawed, without expression. Then his lips began moving very slowly, and I dreaded hearing what he was going to tell me, but I couldn’t understand him because he sounded like a Tuvin throat singer. I started calling for help and ran out of there, through the bedroom and the front door. I screamed and I screamed but neither Paul nor Larry were around to console me. Bursting out of the front door, I ran toward the gate, but it was locked from the inside. I started tracing the edges of the perimeter, hoping for a way out.
Then, I got a ping on my phone. Someone was sharing their location with me. They were only a few hundred yards away. I went back through the front entrance. A wave of cool air came over me and I felt calmer. I kept looking at my phone. It was taking me to the backyard, where there was a veranda leading to a pool.
It was somehow night time now. A net of stars cloaked the sky. Somehow, an Enya song started playing. At the end of the veranda I saw an old man sitting under an awning. He was looking straight ahead. I knew it was him. He looked skinnier, and he was wearing huge shorts and a golf shirt. We came face to face . A basic covid mask dangled off his right ear.
Then he spoke.
“Thank you for letting me share my location, Justin.”
I didn’t say anything.
“I just got my first smart phone and this is a really neat trick.”
“Yea,” I trailed off.
He never looked me in the eyes. Half his brain seemed to be thinking about something else. Between speaking, his mouth was wide open. He seemed sick, and his sickness seemed contagious. I was afraid to get any closer. Then he turned to me.
“Please, ya gotta help me man. Have you seen Tom Girardi?”
...
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve been looking for him all my life.”
“But you are Tom Girardi,” I pleaded. “Please, I want this to stop.”
“I just want to be accepted by my peers,” Tom continued. “I want people to like me. I can explain everything.”
“I don’t even need your explanation. It’s cool,” I said calmly. “But I loved your mac n cheese. Thank you.”
He didn’t say anything. He got up, walked right past me, and slowly started wading into the pool water. He kept going until I saw his head disappear. Bubbles began to percolate. He started thrashing around like an animal, refusing to come up for air. The Enya song kept playing. It was “Only Time.” Then, he submitted.
Fireworks started going off, and the mansion began catching fire. I started running towards the car, getting there just as Paul and Larry did. No one spoke a word to each other for the whole ride down. After he dropped us off, Larry said, “That was crazy. Man, I love you guys.” We didn’t respond, and slammed the doors shut.
The decadent homes of Los Altos Drive burned like a sacred ceremony. It was calming. Paul and I didn’t speak. The Dodgers game over the radio did all the talking. I dropped him off, and as I started heading home I wondered: when is it gonna stop?