by Lia Matera
Unfortunately, the press—and even many lawyers, who should have known better—thought Bean had been acquitted because he’d watched too much television. TV syndrome had become a catchphrase for the subversion of justice by sneaky defense lawyers. In the year since the trial, I’d been on a dozen talk shows and given a hundred newspaper and magazine interviews to clear up the misconception, but people seemed determined to believe in the perversity of the legal system.
I was tired of trying to set the record straight. To the portly congressman, I said merely, “Bean’s was the first generation to base its concept of reality on what it saw on network television, sir. That’s rather frightening, when you think about it.”
I’d heard the congressman’s rejoinder so many times—we all watch TV, but we don’t all kill senators—that I put my brain on hold and began discreetly scanning the room, looking for an excuse to slip away.
And I saw Gary Gleason, standing near the door.
He wore a shiny sharkskin suit that looked straight out of a parcel with a Tokyo postmark. The bastard had kept slim, though; he’d aged well. He was shorter than I remembered, long in the torso and short-legged. His hair had thinned from an unmanageable tangle of brown frizz to a shorter, wispier style that showed more forehead than it had in his youth. And his face … well, it was similar enough to the face I’d fallen in love with to make me recall some of the old feeling. Some, but not much.
It still wore a habitual, thoughtful frown; his hazel eyes still peered out from the shade of it. His nose was straight, short and perfect. He still wore a full mustache on his long upper lip, though he’d shaved the bushy sideburns.
But he looked older. His cheeks were less plump, and there were squint lines around his eyes and frown lines in his forehead. And there was an aura of wariness about him—natural under the circumstances, perhaps—that was unlike the cocky arrogance of his youth.
My ex-husband, unaware of my scrutiny, looked around my well-appointed offices, shaking his head slightly.
I excused myself and strode toward him. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my papa watching, saw him grow still and tense, his hand poised in midair with his cigarette lighter aflame, like a torch.
Gary became aware that I approached, looked me up and down, forgot to smile.
“It’s been too long,” I lied. I shook the once-familiar hand and thought, You bastard, just wait. “How’s your practice going?”
He dropped my hand quickly. “Fine—great. Too great, really. There’s plenty of work in this town for a few more lawyers.” He glanced at the four rooms that composed my office suite.
“It’s just me,” I told him. “I’ll be in that office.” I pointed to one with a view of the courthouse. “I’ll install a detective in the one at the end, and the computer system in the one next to me. And the receptionist out here, of course.”
He glanced out the nearest window to hide his surprise. I remembered that mannerism. The window framed the main street of downtown, which was also part of Highway 101. A fifty-foot logging truck rattled by, a pyramid of redwood logs strapped to its trailer. For a moment, it obscured my view of Woolworth’s.
“Your own detective, huh?”
I nodded. “I like to have my own; I like the convenience. And I’ve gotten very high-tech lately. How about you? Have you entered the computer age?”
He shook his head. “We’re still using typewriters. In fact, you might have trouble finding a qualified secretary up here if your system’s very sophisticated.”
“I’ll be using one of White, Sayres and Speck’s paralegals for a while, while the firm moves to new offices. A real computer whiz, she is.” I smiled. “I think she agreed to come because of Sandy, my detective. He looks a lot like Gary Cooper.”
A slight rigidity of the chin told me Gary was bothered. “That’s great.”
“How’s Kirsten?” I hated speaking her name.
He met my eye. “Fine.”
“Any kids?”
Kids were a complication for which my plan made no allowance. I was relieved to hear Gary say, “No. Not yet.”
Time for the opening salvo: “I found out recently that Kirsten is White, Sayres and Speck’s landlord.”
Gary looked startled. A slight flush started up his neck. He didn’t say anything.
“In fact, she’s the reason the firm’s moving. Their lease expired, and the rent’s going up almost a thousand percent.”
Gary frowned. “I guess the only businesses in San Francisco getting bargains on rent anymore are the ones with the fifteen- and twenty-year-old leases.”
“Not like here,” I agreed. “When I heard how low the rent was on this office, I couldn’t believe it.” I waited until Gary began to look comfortable again. “But maybe now that Kirsten will be getting fair market value on those San Francisco offices, you’ll be able to invest in some computers.”
Gary squinted at me, preparing a reply.
I added casually, “By the way, did you know we’re neighbors?”
“Neighbors?” He looked horrified.
“My father says you live on Clarke Street. I just rented a house there myself. Number One Fifty-seven.”
“What are you—?” For a moment I thought Gary would lower the facade. But he caught himself, burying his fists in his pockets and observing, “We’re right across the street.”
“Tell me, do you ever seen Lennart Strindberg?” I noticed how quickly his flush died into pallor. “It’s been what, fourteen years since I last saw him. I thought I’d give him a call if he’s still in—”
“He died.” Gary’s tone was cautious. He didn’t believe that I didn’t know.
I didn’t care what he believed. “Lennart died?”
“Several years ago.” Fourteen years ago. “I’d have let you know—I assumed you did know.” He continued to watch me, uncertain now.
“And who did you think would tell me?” I let him see a little of the anger I felt.
Gary looked away. “I thought your father … I’m sorry.”
“Are you?”
We made eye contact again. I’d startled him all right.
“Yes, I am,” he murmured.
“Then perhaps you’ll stop by my house later and tell me what happened.”
He frowned, hesitating.
“This isn’t the place to discuss it,” I pointed out.
The frown deepened. “All right.”
“Seven o’clock?”
He nodded.
I turned to greet another guest before Gary could see my smile. But my papa, his lighter burnt out and lowered, did see it.
What he made of it, I don’t know.
4
The reception broke up at five o’clock, leaving me a little high on champagne and too restless to go home with my papa and my uncle.
I grabbed a couple of bottles of champagne and sped to Hal’s. I had a fancy to get him drunk and make him laugh.
I managed neither. My cousin didn’t invite me into his collapsing bower. Instead, he took the champagne bottles and started walking, apparently expecting me to follow. I picked my way over buckled sidewalks strewn with warped window frames and sandy strips of carpet. On either side of us, two-story houses rose from a litter of broken glass, dune weeds, and beer cans. Doors were nailed shut, windows were boarded up, and tattered condemnation notices flapped in the salty wind. Here and there, doors had been pried open, revealing carpetless floors, bits of abandoned furniture, and appliance-looted kitchens. Walls were graffitied with parodies of the developers’ motto, “Luxury You Can Afford.”
Then, fighting a freezing blast of wind, we crossed the sand flats that separated the sinking development from the bay. Hal led me to a jetty of giant, jagged rocks extending like a crooked finger out to sea.
I turned up my jacket collar. It was always painfully, m
iserably cold out on the jetty, and that evening was no exception. Waves battered the saw-tooth granite, and the wind whistled with sprays of spindrift.
“Not worried about your fancy clothes?” Hal inquired sardonically.
“I’ve got others,” I assured him.
He popped both champagne corks and handed me one of the bottles, sucking froth from the other. “Expensive taste in liquor.”
“In everything.”
“Things.” He sat beside me on a narrow ledge of rock. “They that important to you?”
“Things, no. Appearances, yes. They’re my stock-in-trade, Hal. My clothes, my car, my things tell the men around me—and it’s the only way to make some of them listen, believe me—that I have power, that I have brains, that I have ability.”
“Bullshit. It tells them you have money.”
“Try the champagne. You’ll be glad I have money.”
Hal drank. A third of the bottle, almost. A seasoned drinker, it seemed.
The jetty ended where the bay met open sea. From where I sat, I could see the bay curve past Hillsdale’s corrugated fish canneries and oyster farms, past the dockside Victorians of its first timber magnates. Across the bay, behind a bare strip of muddy sand, a nuclear power plant rose in an intricate pattern of white lights and metal braces. It was one of the first things my Uncle Henry acquired for the town when he became its mayor. The plant was obsolete and out of commission now, a potential catastrophe for the next hundred and fifty thousand years.
“What are you after, Laura dear?” Hal set the bottle between his knees, both hands still around its neck. “What are you getting me drunk for?”
“Your body?”
“No.” My cousin didn’t flatter easily. “You go for the body beautifuls. Part of your class act. The sports car, the clothes—and the hunk in the thousand-dollar suit.” His eyes had begun to glaze, just a bit.
I looked him over: broad shoulders, big arms, slender hips. An Yves Saint Laurent would work.
“The last man I was in love with didn’t even own a suit, Hal. He was very unpretentious and quiet, but you could tell by his eyes that he had a soul, you know what I mean?”
Hal looked down at his bottle, running his finger along the wet lip to make it hum. “So what became of your soul-eyed love? You get some clever revenge on him, too, like you’re going to get on your ex-husband?”
“He’s dead.”
Hal smiled down at me. He looked misleadingly sweet. “Happens to a lot of nice people, Mowgli.”
I was more than a little tipsy, staring up at him.
He slid away to the farthest corner of the ledge. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like I’m a pair of shoes in a shop window.” He shook his head. “I am not, I repeat not, for sale.”
“Meaning, I’m not your type? I already know that. You like your women the way you like your money. Borrowed without interest, quickly spent. Dumb as hell.”
“Oh, I’ll fuck a smart one.” His grin was ironic. “If she’s determined to slum it. But never a heartless one, never a Snow Queen like you.”
If he thought he could hurt my tender feelings by insulting me, then he didn’t know many litigators.
I poured out the rest of the champagne, watching it make a fizzy puddle in a crevice of rock. “Men like to believe successful women are unwomanly, Hal. They like to think we couldn’t have made it without being bitches.”
I glanced at him. His expression was misogynistic. I added, “Whoever got her hooks into you did a great job. If I’d done a tenth as much damage to Gary, I’d be satisfied.”
I handed him the empty bottle. “Here. Recycle it. And maybe someday you’ll be able to afford another.”
I walked away, staggering into a wall of wind. Before I’d gone twenty paces, I heard the champagne bottle shatter on the rocks.
5
I took the long way home, winding through the renovated waterfront. What had once been an honest slum of warehouses, thrift shops, and bars now had a brand-new “olde” look. A fountain, a statue, new cobblestones, and fresh paint embellished some modest art galleries, “taverns,” and import stores. But there wasn’t a tourist in sight. It would take more than a touch of Disneyland to draw people to a rainy town three hundred miles from the nearest city. It would take more than a few oyster bars to revive an economy that had clear-cut its way out of the timber business and fished its bay to depletion. It amazed me that term after term, bad idea after bad idea, the township of Hillsdale kept reelecting my Uncle Henry to solve its problems.
It was starting to get dark when I turned onto Clarke Street. The clock on my dashboard said six-fifty, and it was always right. I’d barely have time to de-Mowglify my
hair before Gary Gleason arrived at seven. I was hoping the movers had unpacked all my toiletries when I noticed the commotion on my block.
Two police cars, an ambulance, and a car from a nearby fire station—all with red lights flashing—blocked the street in front of my house. Onlookers huddled in hushed groups, looking somber in the twilight. Men in white uniforms knelt in the middle of the street. Fire fighters stood directly behind them. Police urged bystanders to go back to their houses.
One officer stood behind a tall woman in a Mexican peasant dress. His hands were on her shoulders, and he was forcing her back, away from whatever lay in the road.
I parked my car and approached the crowd. I was just about to ask someone what had happened, when I got a closer look at the woman in the peasant dress. It was Kirsten Strindberg.
She was more beautiful than I remembered, with a heart-shaped face, wide-set blue eyes, and a peachy, unblemished complexion. Her hair was pale gold, blunt cut to her shoulders, with full bangs. Her figure was hidden in the loose folds of her peasant dress, but I supposed (bitterly) that it was still terrific.
At this moment, her lips were pulled back with anxiety, her eyes were puffy and streaming tears, and her hair looked as if she’d been dragging her fingers through it.
Something terrible had happened to Gary Gleason; nothing else would account for the tableau.
I pushed past the spectators, knocking aside a policeman’s arm. I elbowed my way between two fire fighters who stood behind the kneeling paramedics.
Lying crumpled in the roadway, while a paramedic gingerly examined his abdomen, was my ex-husband, a few streaks of dirt on his face, his eyelids fluttering.
“Gary! What happened?”
One of the fire fighters snapped, “Christ!” and tried to nudge me back behind him. He reeked of English Leather.
I distracted him with an elbow to the rib cage. I repeated, “What happened?”
Gary Gleason’s eyes fluttered open for a moment. “Kirsten?”
“Laura.”
He looked up at me, wincing. He murmured, “It was Franco,” then he closed his eyes again, shuddering.
The paramedic barked, “Get her out of here!”
A cop materialized behind me, grabbing my arm and pulling me back.
English Leather said, “He told her something.”
I glanced at the cop. He was a young man with a wall of stupidity behind his eyes.
“Yeah?” The cop tried to look hard-boiled. “What was it?”
“I didn’t hear,” I lied.
The cop’s grip tightened on my arm. He turned to English Leather and repeated the question.
“Dunno.” The fire fighter pulled off his cap and wiped his forehead with his wrist. “Sounded like, ‘It was fun to go,’ or something like that.”
“He came to a party at my office today. He must have meant that.” I jerked my arm free. “Was this a hit-and-run?”
The young cop nodded sourly. “Who are you? Family?”
“Neighbor.”
“Well, go home. Everything’s u
nder control.”
The paramedics lifted Gary onto a stretcher.
English Leather muttered, “How many points for running over a lawyer?” and his partner snickered.
Kirsten, glancing at me with shocked eyes, followed the stretcher into the ambulance.
The ambulance pulled out, siren screaming, followed by the fire car and one of the two police cars. The other squad car continued to block the street, its radio squawking.
I stood there for a while, staring at my ex-husband’s house. The curtains were drawn and the lights were on. The front door was open, just a crack.
I thought about what Gary Gleason had said to me. It seemed—and it had to be—impossible.
I went inside my house. The movers had put things pretty much where I wanted them, and the result was pleasing, if unlived-in. I’d leased most of the furniture from an antique dealer, and the gleaming old pieces looked good in the small Victorian rooms.
I wandered through the house, missing my own less elegant things, wishing myself back home in San Francisco.
Six months. In six months I’d be home. White, Sayres & Speck wouldn’t put up with a longer absence. It had been good publicity for them, my winning the Bean case. They would humor me—for a while. But my savings account wouldn’t last much longer than six months, not the way I was throwing cash around.
In five months, Hillsdale’s board of supervisors would award the public defender contract. I’d planned to establish myself quickly, win the contract away from Gary Gleason, then strike my bargain with him. Once Gary accepted my terms and conditions, I would decline the contract, and go home.
But if Gary did not recover soon, or did not recover fully … There was nothing to be gained by sticking around defending rednecks who’d had a few too many. No, if Gary was seriously hurt, I was through.
Damn him! Not only had he put my inconvenient and expensive plan in jeopardy, but he’d added an additional complication.
