A Certain Justice

by John T Lescroart

  Wes pointed a finger at her. 'And you've been right.'

  Kevin was up now, limping toward the door. His face was drawn. He stopped. 'I'm going down and telling them the truth-'

  Wes laughed. 'Oh, that's great. That's really great, Kevin.' His expression withered Melanie. 'Would you two get real? You think anybody really cares about the truth at this stage?'

  'I do,' Kevin said.

  'Pretty fuckin' stupid, you ask me.'

  'Yeah, well thanks. That's really good to know.'

  Wes, a couple of shots of vodka and two beers in him, was heating up. He moved closer to them, his own volume rising. 'And what are you getting downtown in? Melanie's car? Which every cop in town is looking for? Or are you going to walk, limp, whatever the hell you're up to?'

  Melanie came between them. 'He's got a point, Kevin. The car, I mean. We can't-'

  'I'll give you my car,' Wes said, 'but for God's sake, use it to get out of this town.' His tone softened. 'Kevin, they will kill you. Somebody will put a knife in you, believe it. You won't last two days in jail. Sit down, will you?'

  'I'll ask for a private cell.'

  Rolling his eyes, Wes turned in a full circle. 'You think you know how it works? You don't have any idea how it works.'

  Melanie, stepping in. 'And you do, I suppose.'

  'Yeah, as a matter of fact, I do. And you know how it works? It doesn't. Which we're seeing a good example of now out of the window.' He faced Kevin. 'You want to put yourself in the middle of that?'

  Kevin had gotten to the wall by the door and was leaning up against it, obviously weakened by the outbursts. 'That's why I came to you.'

  'And what'd you think I was going to do? What miracle was I supposed to perform?'

  'Forget it, Kevin… let's get out of here-'

  'I thought you were going to help me, Wes. You know the ropes, you're a lawyer, get somebody to listen-'

  'People listen all the time, Kevin, they don't hear a damn thing.'

  Kevin reached for another breath. 'Well, I want you to hear me, Wes. This is not right. I did not do this. I tried to save him. You hear me? You hear me?'

  Wes simply shrugged. 'If you say so-'

  'Goddammit…' Kevin lurched forward and swung for Wes's chin, grunting with the pain.

  Wes stepped back, Kevin's fist missing him by half a foot, as Kevin's forward motion crumbled him to the ground. Bart jumped forward with a bark.

  'Bart!' Wes cuffed at him and the dog slunk to the side.

  Kevin was trying to get up. Melanie was down to him, cradling his head in her arms. 'You bastard.'

  Wes backed away. 'I didn't…'

  Melanie's eyes stuck with him. 'I don't care what happened to you,' she said. 'There's no excuse to explain somebody turning out the way you have.'

  An hour later, about noon, Kevin was passed out in Wes's bedroom, the blinds drawn. Wes had a supply of Motrin and Tylenol with codeine and they had pumped Kevin full of the stuff, washed down with a clam-tinged Bloody Mary.

  Barefoot, Melanie looked in on him after she came out of the bathroom. She had had a shower and changed into another pair of Wes's khaki shorts, held up with a length of laundry rope, and one of his white shirts, much like the one she had been wearing during the last twenty-four hours.

  'He's passed out,' she said.

  'He'll be okay as long as he doesn't operate any heavy machinery.' It was an attempt. Feeble, he knew.

  But she understood and even appreciated it – the atmosphere had been uncomfortable for the last forty-five minutes. She sat at the opposite end of the futon running a comb through her wet hair.

  Wes was watching the news. It was another banner day for the media – we may go down in flames, Wes was thinking, but at least we'll have commentary on it – with the continuing investigation into the death of Christopher Locke, the increase of the reward for Kevin, then the, to Wes, startling news of the re-arrest of Jerohm Reese, which in turn had galvanized Philip Mohandas into previously unsealed heights of rhetoric.

  Mohandas was on the screen now, carrying on about racism and calling for the ouster of Acting District Attorney Art Drysdale for approving the arrest of and allowing the charges against poor Jerohm, who had done nothing more than the other four hundred and sixteen citizens who had been cited with various violations over the past few days. No, he was saying, it was because Drysdale was white and Jerohm was black… that was why Jerohm was in jail. The only reason. No charge had ever been brought against him for Mullen's death.

  'Hey, Phil!' Wes was yelling to the television. 'Here's a flash for you. Two hundred and eighty-six of the other guys were black, too.' Then, to Melanie, in a different voice. 'I hate that guy. I really do.'

  One of the commentators was giving 'deep background,' dignifying Mohandas's charges – a recycling of Drysdale's past that presumably proved him unfit to serve in any capacity in the city and county. Seventeen years before, when asked about his stand on affirmative action in the DA's office, Drysdale had ventured the notion that perhaps there shouldn't be quotas used in hiring experts – for example, trial attorneys – that the people getting hired should be the people who could do the job, be they black, white, chartreuse, polka-dotted. 'Hell,' he'd said at the time, 'if monkeys could do it, I'd say hire monkeys. But they can't, so I wouldn't.'

  Naturally, this was interpreted as meaning that Drysdale had called all black people monkeys, and saying he would never hire a black person. The misunderstanding had marked the end of any political aspirations Drysdale might have had (which were few in any event), and over the better part of the next two decades he had gone on to become the rock of the DA's office, a counselor to anyone of any color or creed who needed his help.

  And now Mohandas was on him like yellow on a lemon. 'Poor Art,' Wes was saying. 'He's done.'

  'You know him?'

  'Everybody knows him. He's about the fairest man in the Hall of Justice.'

  'But-'

  'You watch. He's gone.'

  They stared at the picture for another few seconds until one of those 'why-ask-why?' commercials made Wes mute the screen. He liked all kinds of beer, but he'd asked why too many times about too many things to have any idea of what the damn ad was about.

  He sat, then, his bare feet flat on the floor, his elbows resting on his knees. 'Want a beer?' Although he didn't move to get one. Finally he sat back, patted the sofa, and Bart jumped into the space between him and Melanie, settling again with his head on Wes's lap. 'What did your parents say?' he asked her.

  Hers was an unpractised moue. 'About what you'd expect.' Then: 'What happened to you, Wes?'

  The abrupt segue wasn't clear, and he supposed he could have finessed it for a round or two, but of course he knew exactly what she meant. He had talked Kevin – both of them – into staying a while, into thinking through their strategy a little more carefully. At least get some rest.

  And why had he done that? Why hadn't he just let them go? Maybe it was time to find out what he was made of, what he was going to do. Maybe open his battered soul's door a crack and take a peek inside, see if there was anybody there he wanted to get to know.

  He wasn't very optimistic about it, but Melanie was here, listening – once again she reminded him of his daughter Michelle. All right, he could at least start, see where it went.

  'Mark Dooher. I met him in seventh grade. One of those guys the light always shines on, you know? Great-looking kid, he smiled at you and everything was possible. A little like our friend Kevin in fact. In that way.

  'And, lucky me, there's a chemistry. I'm not really in his shadow because I'm nothing like him – I've got to work at things, for example, and I swear to God Mark had it all without any show of effort. He once told me, said he didn't understand life – people working so hard to get someplace. To him, it just came. He told me if he had to work he'd probably fail at everything, but it just wasn't that tough for him – you believe that? And there was no arrogance about it, that was just who he was, s
ome guy that everything broke for the right way.

  'And I mean everything. Brains, looks, personality, talent, even luck – everything. I should have hated his guts. But a guy like that thinks you're his best friend, thinks you're cool, and that's the way it stays your whole life? Guess what? You figure in this one way maybe you've grabbed a little of his luck – for some reason, the gods like you too. You take it – figure it doesn't have anything really to do with you. Greater forces are at work.

  'So we go through life, Mark and Wes. We play ball together – he's shortstop and I'm second base. We go to the Babe Ruth World Series together and damn if he doesn't win the thing with a home run in the bottom of the seventh… and who's on base in front of him? Moi. A sweet moment.'

  He paused, scratching Bart absently. One of his feet was curled under him and Melanie thought that, in spite of the gray field of stubble, the long unkempt hair, he suddenly looked younger. He smiled, embarrassed. Perhaps there was something in Kevin choosing him as his friend.

  'Anyway,' he went on, 'Mark went to Stanford and I went to Cal, but we stayed close. He met Sheila, and Lydia and I got together – thank God we didn't go for the same type of women, never did – and we both started law school in the same boat down in LA – pregnant wives, living if you can believe it on the same street in Westwood. It was a good life in spite of no money… LA in the seventies.

  He did the first few bars of 'I Am, I Said,' got to the laid-back feeling point, and raised his eyebrows.

  'Naturally, Mark doesn't crack a book and somehow is law review and clerking with the majors and I'm living at the library pulling Bs. This story too long?'

  'No.'

  'So after law school he gets on the partner track here in the city starting in the high thirties. This is '75 or so, remember, and that was a ton of money then. I hang up a shingle and start hauling it in in the large hundreds doing low-rung criminal stuff. But that's okay. It's Mark and me, it's who we are. No sweat. We're still best friends. We've got kids the same age – baseball and soccer – we play bridge with our wives and the families do stuff together all the time. It's like we're all one family. My kids call him Uncle Mark and I'm Uncle Wes. It was nice, it was perfect, like everything with Mark. We both eventually wind up back here in the city, and even if he's in St. Francis Wood and we're up the Richmond – so what? We're all happy, what's the problem?'

  'So what happened?'

  'Well, wait, there's one other thing.' Wes stood, stretched, went to the salon's small refrigerator and took out two bottles. He twisted the top off a Mickey's Big Mouth and gave it to Melanie, who took it without thought. She couldn't remember any time she'd had beer in the afternoon. Well, first time for everything…

  Wes was back down, half-turned to her, one bare foot curled under him. 'There was the law. I don't think it's the law as you or Kevin think of it. Or too many other people. Maybe only me.'

  'And Mark?'

  He chuckled, and it seemed to her both brittle and bitter. 'And Mark, of course. You work in it long enough and I suppose it gets like anything else. You burn out, get cynical. But Mark and I… and this goes back to early high school, maybe before that… I don't know what started it, but we got into this, this attitude. It was like a deal between us.' He sipped his beer, taking a minute, then added, 'No, that's not nearly it. It was more a sacred pact.'

  'What was it?'

  'It was that we wouldn't lose faith. That sounds stupid-'

  'No, it doesn't.'

  'Yes, it does, believe me. We saw it happening with everybody around us in the law – how the hours would eat you up, the clients who lied or who were just plain guilty, the crap you had to put up with to survive.

  'But Mark and I stuck to our pact. He had this… this vision… don't laugh… that life had to mean something. That that's what made people successful – not what they did but how they did it, how they felt about it, that they didn't stop trying. And we're not just talking monetary success here – no, this was Mark Dooher, this was Life Success, What It Was All About, The Big Picture. So twice, three times a year, I don't know, one of us would get down on the whole thing and we'd take this retreat – go fishing, whatever – reaffirm, get back to What Counted…'

  Melanie was sitting forward, entranced. 'Everybody should do that.'

  'You're right. It was great. It worked.'

  'So?'

  Wes let out a long breath. 'So one night three years ago – both of our youngest kids had just moved out – a burglar breaks into Mark's house, rapes his wife and stabs her to death.'

  Melanie's beer stopped halfway to her open mouth.

  'And after about four months, Mark is charged with the murder.'

  The bottle, untouched, was back in her lap. She was tempted to ask if Wes was kidding her. It seemed the only thing possible. But she knew he was not. This had happened, and as the truth and portent of it began to sink in, she muttered, 'Oh my God.'

  'No kidding.'

  'He didn't do it, did he?'

  'Get real. This is Mark Dooher, senior partner in his law firm, major philanthropist, dedicated family man. Give me a break. But he got charged. It was, I thought, an extremely weak case, all circumstantial. His fingerprints were on the knife – but he was the cook in the family, of course his fingerprints are on the knife. Could be his blood type from the sperm samples – right, him and a thousand other guys. But no solid alibi – he'd been out late driving golf balls at Lincoln. Mark and Sheila had just raised their insurance, stuff like that. And he asked me to defend him. And of course I did.'

  'And?'

  'And I won. Fight of my life, case of my life. And I won it. Got out of the trenches. Mark was mega-high profile, put me on the map. Got two murder referrals in the next year and it looked like I was going to start making some money.'

  Melanie nodded. 'But he did it, didn't he?'

  He blinked back the dim shine in his eyes. His voice thick, he had to begin twice. 'The… the son of a bitch… the son of a bitch told me, said he didn't want the fact that he had killed his wife to get between us, we were still…' He wiped a hand over one eye, swore.

  'So that's why,' she said finally.

  He nodded. 'Yeah, that's why.'

  37

  After the speech and its aftermath – the supervisors unanimously recommended the two-hundred-thousand-dollar reward for Kevin Shea – Mayor Aiken thought his post-lunch meeting with Philip Mohandas would be smooth sailing, a photo op. Black leader, white leader, solidarity, ya, ya, ya.

  He was wrong.

  Mohandas, accompanied by his bodyguards Allicey Tobain and Jonas N'doum, was lounging in his outer office, having either intimidated or flattered Donald to get in. So at the outset, to Aiken, there was an odd dynamic – his natural turf had been usurped. Wondering where Donald had gone, he stopped in his doorway.

  'Mr Mohandas.' Recovering, smiling, striding forward, his hand outstretched. 'Good to meet you in person at last.'

  Aiken's eyes took in Mohandas's two aides, but they stayed seated, apparently awaiting instructions. Mohandas was not here to be friends. He got right down to it. 'Mr Mayor, I'm here speaking to you only because our mutual friend, Senator Wager, asked me to be. I'm frankly appalled at this city's official response to the situation we're now all facing.'

  Aiken, moving around behind his desk, felt the heat rising in his face. 'Well, sir, we've just gone a long way toward addressing that. The city's official response so far, besides trying to keep itself from burning down, has been to raise the reward on Kevin Shea. No doubt you've heard…'

  'No doubt you've heard, Jerohm Reese is back in jail, and Kevin Shea isn't. That's the reality I'm seeing. I'm seeing a white man, a murderer, walking the streets and an innocent black man being held in jail for no reason.'

  'Kevin Shea isn't exactly walking the streets-'

  'How do you know that?'

  Aiken didn't, of course. These were bad cards and he didn't want to play them. 'In any event, Jerohm Reese is not an inn
ocent black man, either. Not as I understand it.'

  'He's no more guilty than five hundred people you let go with tickets-'

  'Which doesn't mean he isn't guilty, does it?'

  'We're all guilty of something, Mr Mayor. What it seems is that Jerohm is not getting the same treatment as white folk. It means you got a bigot acting now as DA and he saw his chance-'

  'Art Drysdale's no bigot.'

  Mohandas took that for a beat, turned on a heel and spoke to Allicey and Jonas over his shoulder. 'This man don't want to help.' His people rising, Mohandas was halfway to the doorway, and Aiken was half-tempted to let him go.

  But if he didn't it would be worse.

  'Mr Mohandas. Wait a minute.' He came around the desk. Mohandas stood impatiently by the door. 'What would help? I don't want to argue small points with you, I want to help. I thought I'd done something very helpful this morning with the supervisors. Perhaps it wasn't enough. You tell me.'

  There was a quick gleam of triumph in Allicey's eyes, just as quickly quashed. Mohandas saw it, though, and let go of the doorknob. 'Alan Reston,' he said.

  'Who?'

  'Alan Reston. The deputy state attorney general. San Francisco born and bred. Former prosecutor in Alameda County. I've spoken to him this morning. He is available.'

  ' Available for what?'

  'Appointment to District Attorney.'

  The mayor was too stunned to respond. Mohandas breezed right on. 'Alan Reston has the credentials, the expertise, and the political acumen to help pull us through this difficult time. And' – Mohandas shot a finger into the air for effect – 'the fact that he is an African-American will go a long way to balance the lack of minority representation in city government that has been created here with the death of Chris Locke.'

  Suddenly Allicey Tobain stepped forward, her imposing presence dwarfing the mayor. 'Sir,' she said mildly, 'appointing Mr Reston at this time would not just be a gesture. It would have real meaning. It would demonstrate that the city is with us in a tangible way. And I'm sure that the community would respond in a similar fashion.'