by Lia Matera
Reiner inhaled deeply. “Botanically, it’s very rich. Seventy percent of the plants in Thomas’s Flora of California are in these mountains.” He uprooted a bit of greenery. “Miners’ lettuce. Edible.” He squatted in the tall grass, shading his eyes as he looked up at me. “I’ve learned what’s edible and what isn’t in the last few years.”
“What did you used to do for a living?”
“Prison guard. Soledad, among other places.”
A prison guard. I thought of the guard who’d let Raul lie there half a morning bleeding. Folsom Prison had fired him, but no other action had been taken. He’d vanished before I had a chance to spit in his face. Scot-free.
I heard myself murmur, “Do you know David Williams?”
Reiner shook his head. “Should I?”
“He was a guard at Folsom … Never mind.” I felt a needling of irritation. New case, new start. Forget Raúl. “Go on with what you were saying.”
“Well, it’s not a very popular profession.” A hint of rueful grin, then, “The way you’re looking at me … You know, somebody’s got to do it. There’s some hard nasty folks in there, and we can’t all rely on someone else to watch them.”
He stood, eyes flashing with defensive anger. Or maybe just fear. Soledad was a big place. No matter what jail Reiner ended up in—if he ended up in one—there would be a former Soledad inmate coming through, eventually.
“If someone did recognize you, what would he tell the other inmates about you?”
He stroked his jaw. “A diplomatic way of asking if I’m a sadistic asshole?”
“Are you?” My tone was sharp. Almost unprofessional.
“Goddam.” A stillborn grin. “Lady, who do you think is in there? Christian martyrs? We’re talking serious gangs—people who literally bite each other’s fingers off, ears off. Not nice people.”
My first case in three years. Had I forgotten how to act professional? “I’m asking how they saw you, not how you saw them.”
An exasperated wave of the arm. “I wasn’t any rougher than I had to be. Maybe they thought I was an asshole at times. Sometimes you have to clamp down for their own protection.” He looked suddenly weary. “It can be a real horror show, you have no idea. You start taking shit, and there’s no end to it. On the other hand, get too much in the middle, and you get hurt big-time. To some extent, you leave it alone. Other times, you get heavy. It’s a very fine line.”
A screwed-up system, my old boss used to say. Accept that or find some other kind of law to practice.
“Tell me about your arrest.”
Reiner brushed a lock of hair off his forehead. His hand was callused, nails trimmed but rough. His hand was shaking.
“It seems from your arrest report that the state has a very strong case against you, Mr. Reiner. If you are guilty …” Playing harbinger, my former boss called it; part of the job. “It might be possible to bargain the charge down to simple possession, if you’re willing to plead guilty. It could mean a much shorter sentence. And something else you should consider: There’s a statute allowing the government to confiscate your land if you’re convicted of cultivating marijuana on it.”
Jerry Reiner folded his arms over his chest. His eyes were open wide, unblinking.
I expected him to rail at the unfairness of the statute, the unfairness of the system. Most clients would. He didn’t.
It was a minute, maybe longer, before he spoke. His lips moved without sound, at first. His color flooded back. Fight, not flight. “Look, I mean it, they’ll kill me in there. So I’ll just have to take my chances, okay?”
My mouth felt dry, my throat tight. Three years of bitter nostalgia for criminal practice, but I’d let myself forget this part of it. Let myself forget how it felt to share a client’s fear. Except Raúl’s.
Raúl had said to me, “I won’t last a week in there, Frances.” And I’d replied, “Tell me what to do, and I’ll do it.”
To Jerry Reiner I said, “It’s your decision, not mine.”
His lips pursed and his brows pinched. There was determination in his eyes, raw and reckless. But no hint of supplication. No favors asked.
“So you won’t buy me a fake passport?”
The air temperature seemed to drop twenty degrees. I felt myself take a slow step backward.
“I kept track of you after the State Bar gave you that little slap on the wrist.”
“How did you know about—”
“Alegría was scum. A punk. A snitch.”
The landscape seemed to tilt. “How did you know Raúl?”
He pointed at me, two quick stabs of the index finger. “I think it’s bullshit you’re at a fancy law firm now. What’s the point of getting disbarred if you can go to work for a fancy law firm?”
“Why do you know this? Why do you care?”
“It’s not right.” Somewhere between a whine and a shout.
“Are you Jerry Reiner?”
“No.” He shook his head widely, emphatically. “Never heard of him, except what I read in the paper about his arrest. The article said his father’s a big-time farmer. I don’t know what made me run down who the father’s lawyer is. It was just a feeling I had. It was just”—he kissed his fingertips—“karma.”
I scanned the meadow. It ended in a tangle of shrubs. Then more forest.
“Who are you?”
“A three-year suspension—a fucking slap on the wrist. Now you’re back at a fancy firm.”
“On its bottom rung.”
“You know what I’ve been doing for the last three years? Grunt fucking labor. Whenever I can get it.”
“David Williams. You’re David Williams.” You let Raúl die. Let him lie in his own blood for hours.
He nodded. His eyes glinted, maybe with tears.
“It doesn’t matter.” I was chilled to the marrow in my wool suit. “Doesn’t matter what happened to me.” God knows I’d suffered as much as I could make myself suffer. “That’s not the point. What about Raúl? How could you leave him lying there?”
“I told you. Sometimes you can’t get in the middle. You’ve got to let them put the message out: Here’s what happens to guys try to rat out their friends and make a deal.”
“Our system’s based on making deals. If you can’t protect a prisoner who’s testified—”
“‘You.’ If ‘you’ can’t.” He ran both hands over his hair. “Leave it up to the prison guards, the garbage collectors. Sure, shun them, act like they must be mean stupid sons of bitches to want to do the job, but leave it to them to keep the psychos chilled. ‘You.’ You have any idea what kind of powder keg it is? How rigid the codes are? Fuck. Sure, I could have jumped in the middle when they went for Alegría, maybe started a fucking riot, lots of gunfire and stabbing and maybe hostages and people dying, because that’s the kind of place Folsom is. I could have rushed Alegría to the infirmary, but you know and I know he wouldn’t have lasted an hour longer. Even if he’d made it, they’d have got him next time, no joke.”
There were times, living in Fairfield, in Woodland, that I’d stared at the flat line of sky on field and become overpowered by a sense of unreality. I’d attributed it to the sensory deprivation of a barren landscape. But now, with grasses tickling my ankles and distant sea sparkling in my peripheral vision, I felt the same disconnection. Raúl was dead. The man who’d let it happen shouted at me. Defending himself. As if I could ever forgive him.
“And then a bunch of fat bureaucrats sit in judgment—why didn’t you stop it, all that bullshit. But if you’re not there, you don’t know. You can’t know.”
“I heard you got fired.”
“Fucking right.” He took two angry steps toward me, his face flushed red. “And what else am I trained for? Odd jobs, farm labor? I’ve been living in an old van last two years, you know that? You know how hard it is to get
by, get enough food when you’re trying to save for rent? That was my choice—roof over my head or beans on the table. And never mind finding decent work, never mind meeting women when you live out of your car.”
What was it Brad had said? Accept the consequences of your actions?
“Why?” I wondered. “Why did you go to all this trouble? Why lie about who you are? Why not just call me—”
“Oh, spare me! Look at you in your nice suit, working for a big law firm. You never would have talked to me.”
Why am I talking to you now? Why did you bring me here?
He clenched both fists. “You made out like a fucking bandit.”
“No.” I’d had a wider range of options to narrow, but I’d done it. For three years, I’d done it.
He pressed his fists to his eyes. It took me a moment to realize he was crying. Then his hands dropped. From his jacket pocket he drew a small bundle wrapped in a red kerchief. He held it to his temple.
He said, “I wanted you to see this.”
I had no idea what he was doing. It was unreal, and I felt incorporeal.
Not even the blast tipped me off. And when David Williams fell, the bundle arcing out of his hand, I thought he’d suffered a sudden failure of adrenaline.
I stood there a long time listening to grasses rustle, tree limbs creak. I stared at the dark spot on Williams’ temple, the slavering laxity of his mouth, the wide-open sheen of his eyes.
I moved toward him cautiously, crouching beside him and staring. Staring and still not believing he’d shot himself right here in front of me. When I finally did believe it, I crawled away, scrambling at first on all fours like an animal. Then I ran, ran like hell down the hill, away from him.
Before I reached the woods, a huge man caught me with a flying tackle, knocking the air out of my lungs.
I spat out a mouthful of grit, struggled against the hands on my arms, tried to see through tears and dust.
I panted, “Man shot himself. Up there.”
“What I saw was you crouched over him. I think you better wait right here.”
And wait I did, after the real Jerry Reiner frog-marched me back to his house so he could phone 911.
“Do I have to tell you again how it happened?”
Roland Tsieh examined the small room with interest. The Santa Cruz County Jail complex was relatively new. Winship McAuliffe Potter & Tsieh had never had a client here before. The tall man with the almond eyes and a supercilious face seemed pleased with me, for once—more pleased than he’d ever been when I worked for him.
He nodded. “From the time he’s waiting for you in Reiner’s driveway.”
Roland listened attentively as I went through it a second time.
“Roland, the physical evidence supports my story, doesn’t it?”
“The physical evidence. We have one small-caliber gun wrapped in a handkerchief about four feet from the body. Yes, yes, I know it flew out of his hand when he fell. But basically the gun’s right where you were standing. It’s unregistered. And you are known to have connections with unsavory people like passport forgers, so presumably you could obtain such a weapon. Also, which I did not realize, you know how to shoot a gun.” He shrugged. “Mainly, though, it’s who he was. The evil prison guard who let your pet client get killed. That’s really why you’re in here.”
“But I didn’t know who he was until I got there. He told me he was Jerry Reiner.”
“That’s what you say. It could have been the other way around. You setting up a meeting with him.”
“He phoned John Cusinich and pretended he was Jerry Reiner. We can prove that.”
“We can prove someone did that. It could have been you as easily as Williams. In fact, damn clever, if you set it up. That way, you can’t sell the shooting as suicide, you claim self-defense. Big guy lures you to the mountains.”
“But John Cusinich—”
“Credible lawyer that he is, says he fixed you up with a ‘client’ who claimed to be Reiner but wasn’t.” Roland nodded. “Look at it one way, Williams set a trap for you. Look at it the prosecution’s way, it could have been any man on the phone. It could have been your passport forger.”
Passport forger—again Roland raked me with the words. “How can they get a motive out of this, Roland? Just because Williams was on duty when they killed Raul—”
“‘Just because?’ Hell, Alegría dies, and you’re in deep mourning for three years.” He looked startled by my tears. “You never said anything to anyone about that, did you? Never complained that the guard was an SOB?”
“Only to Raúl’s mother.”
“Great. I can just see her on the witness stand, adding her own bit of venom as she repeats what you said. Anyone else?”
I shook my head.
Roland stood. “You’ve got the money, I assume? Your ten percent?” I could get ninety percent of the bail money from a bondsman. The rest would come out of my pocket. “If the bail’s under twenty thousand.”
“Twenty thou?” he scoffed. “Five times that, if we’re lucky.”
Bail was set at $650,000. It was that high because I had “so recently” demonstrated my willingness to abet a flight from prosecution.
Brad Palmer put up the shortfall of my ten percent. Even in his salary range, it probably stung to write the check.
I said, “Thank you. I’d have gone nuts in jail.”
He said, “I knew that three years ago.”
I briefly took and squeezed his hand. It was cold and creamed, but it felt like lizard skin to me. I couldn’t imagine ever having loved him. I felt nothing now. Except gratitude that he’d put up bail.
It helped square things between us. Close the accounts.
Because Brad would lose his money. Just as I would lose mine, plus what I’d spent getting back my license.
I couldn’t stick around. I’d been a criminal lawyer too long. I’d watched guilty men go free and innocent men go to prison. I’d watched a client die slowly because a cynical guard wouldn’t lift a hand to help him. (Yes, I did blame Williams. More than ever.) I wouldn’t risk my freedom, my life.
I still knew where to find the passport forger I’d contacted for Raúl. The minute Roland Tsieh mentioned him, I knew I’d go see him again.
God knew where I’d go from there. Someplace lusher than Fairfield—I would give myself a break, this time. At least I was used to drifting along without a career.
Maybe when she heard what happened, Martina Alegría would buy another Mass for me.
If It Can’t Be True
“If It Can’t Be True” was first published in Irreconcilable Differences, ed. Lia Matera, HarperCollins, 1999.
She regained consciousness seconds before the helicopter crashed. Gauges and instruments hurtled from one side of the claustrophobically small space to the other. Someone in the front was shrieking a panicked tone poem. Paraphernalia—stethoscopes, medicine bottles, clamps—hit her with the force of pinballs in a machine gone mad. An oxygen mask over her nose and mouth offered little protection.
She surfed a wave of dread, realizing this had happened to her before. She prayed it was just a bad dream this time.
When next she opened her eyes, she was still inside the helicopter but it was no longer in motion. A sheet of crushed laminated glass, glaring like glitter on glue, dazzled her. She was on her side, tipped toward the cockpit, the gurney wedged and buckled. A woman—a flight nurse?— was trapped under the gurney, her uniform soaked with blood. The nurse looked dead, red and wet like supermarket meat.
She supposed her own survival was a testament to good packaging and the tensile strength of the gurney. The plastic mask cut into her face, still feeding her oxygen.
Despite the fact that the gurney had twisted, the wristbands held. She jerked at them. Last time this happened, she’d been seat-belted like a
passenger, not strapped down like an animal.
She could hear wind whistling through gashes in the metal sides of the helicopter. The crumpled windshield ballooned toward her, spilling bits of safety glass from its sticky laminate.
She wrenched her hands through the restrains, scraping off skin. It felt like a grease burn, shocking and scalding, but a monstrous dose of adrenaline helped her ignore it. She pulled free.
She couldn’t remember what had put her into the helicopter, which she assumed to be a medical transport. It wasn’t the airplane crash, that was a long time ago. She’d been a child then. They’d taken her to a foreign hospital where none of the nurses spoke English.
But whatever had put her here now, all she cared about was getting out. The door near her gurney was blocked, smashed against rocky ground. She crawled toward the cockpit, hoping for an exit there. But the window openings were flattened to slits. Broken tree limbs poked through parts of the metal. A branch no thicker than her thumb had skewered the pilot’s body. She could see a second nurse’s arm and shoulder, jagged bones poking through the skin.
She forced her attention away from them. She had to escape this grave of bloody flesh. There was a gash in the side (now the top) of the copter, maybe big enough to squeeze through.
She began squirming toward it. Her mask pulled off, and she could smell mud and pines and fried wires. As she hoisted herself out, frayed metal raked her clothes. She was surprised to see she wore a jumpsuit. Institutional clothes? She had a vague memory of locked doors and a tiny unornamented room.
When she made it to the ground, she lay there panting, surrounded by splintered firs and scattered shards. A few minutes later, in horror of what had happened, she crawled a little farther away. And then a little farther still.
Drops of water from condensation on pine needles fell like light rain. Branches creaked and rustled in a cold wind. The helicopter settled and shifted with deep groans that sounded like dirges.
