Guilt

by John Lescroart

  'What did they do, Mark? What did they do?'

  'They abandoned me, Goddamn it! They didn't believe me, don't you see? They emasculated me. Except with you, it's more literal. That's what tonight was about, all these times it hasn't worked. I can't take your doubts anymore. What's happened is you cut my balls off.'

  'Mark

  'No! We've taken it this far. I don't feel like I'm a man around you anymore. I'm afraid the smallest slip of the tongue, the tiniest slip in behavior, and I'm back on the block being scrutinized and judged – and asked- over and over again. Well, I can't do it. My body doesn't lie. I'm not loose. I'm not having any fun. Nothing's easy anymore. It doesn't feel like you love me.'

  He put his hands under her shirt and ran them over her belly, her breasts. She didn't want that – any part of it. What was the matter with him? Couldn't he tell that?

  But he had just told her it didn't feel like she loved him anymore. And now, if she told him to stop, it would be worse.

  She no longer felt she knew what the truth was. Maybe the whole thing was her fault, her weakness in not being able to believe.

  She understood why he wouldn't tell her again, once and for all. He was right – it wouldn't be once and for all. The last time she asked him, it had been once and for all then, too. The question had been asked and answered. How many times did she have to ask, and what damage did it do to him each time?

  He was going to be the father of their child, and her own inability to trust was threatening all of them.

  But it wasn't all her. She knew that. Something had darkened in him. His hands were still moving over her, his breath quickening.

  Maybe the darkness had always been there and it had taken these troubles to make it visible. But the way he treated her now, talked to her, it was coarse. He had coarsened. She didn't respond to it and never would.

  She felt his hands on her. He was strong and powerful and she realized that she was afraid. Her skin seemed to crawl under his touch. After all they'd covered tonight, she couldn't imagine that he felt amorous. He pulled her shift up, brought his mouth to her breasts.

  God, what made him work?

  He yanked at the rope that held his robe and it fell open. He was hard, protruding. He took her hand and put it on him, exultant at the simple functioning. 'Here's something for you now.'

  He pulled her underpants off – quickly now, roughly – afraid that the moment would pass again.

  No words. He was pushing her back into the chair, opening her legs. There was a savage set to his jaw, and emptiness in his eyes.

  She could do nothing to stop him.

  CHAPTER FOURTY FIVE

  After the trial, Wes Farrell gave up for a long time.

  He decided not to cut his hair again until something – anything – made sense. He stopped cleaning his apartment, not much of his forte anyway. Enrolling in night classes, he started taking history courses because everyone in them was already dead and couldn't hurt him anymore.

  As part of his decision to quit the practice of the law entirely, he gave up the lease on his North Beach office. He located and reattached the ten pounds he'd lost for the trial, cut off his fancy mustache and mothballed his fancy clothes.

  The world was a sham. People – particularly charming winners – were scum. Any form of idealism was delusion. Since a quick and painless suicide by, say, gunshot wound smacked of commitment, he elected to pursue the more leisurely course of gradual alcohol poisoning.

  There had been a short window of opportunity right as the trial was winding down during which he considered calling Sam Duncan. After he'd read Diane Price's diary, he knew he'd been an arrogant fool and was wrong on all counts.

  After he'd heard from Flaherty and decided to abandon the character issue, Wes realized he would not have to cross-examine Diane Price. He would not have to take her apart.

  And that, in turn, might give Wes the chance to tell Sam that he'd come to believe her. He was a schmuck. He loved her. Could they perhaps try again?

  But Wes wasn't Mark Dooher with his good timing and phenomenal luck. He was the punching bag for a hostile universe. The Diane Price fiasco with her rogue firearm took his play with Sam out of the game.

  Since he was down anyway, Lydia chose this moment to confide to him the tender tale of her and Dooher's carnal union on the day of Sheila's funeral.

  So Wes decided to sink for ever into his quagmire of drink and despair over humanity. Lydia's story strengthened his resolve against women in general. He couldn't let himself forget that any commitment in the love area was bogus and suspect and programmed for failure. And he'd had enough failure.

  In what he took to be a sign of his mental health, he forged a firmer bond with Bart, firing the graphic designer in his building who had been taking the dog out for walks. Wes started caring for Bart – albeit haphazardly – on his own.

  The dark period lasted seven or eight months, but the race riots that nearly destroyed the city in the summer following the trial got his attention and he wound up being coerced by circumstances into helping a fellow student who was being framed for a racial murder, and making an unlikely ally in Abe Glitsky.

  Finally, he'd done some good as a lawyer.

  So he cut his long hair and broke out his old suits and started again.

  And by then, time had healed some of Sam's wounds as well.

  He put the full court press on her with apologies and flowers and apologies and dinners. And apologies. He was an insensitive non-Nineties type of guy but he was going to try and change. And he meant it.

  Almost a year to the day after Dooher had been found Not Guilty, they moved together into the upper half of a railroad-style Victorian duplex on Buena Vista, across from the park of the same name, not two blocks from Sam's old place on Ashbury, not much further from the Center.

  They were sitting in striped fabric beach chairs on the tiny redwood deck that a previous tenant had built within the enclosure of peaks and gables on the rooftop. They were planning to barbecue large scampi on the Hibachi when the coals turned gray. They were drinking martinis in the traditional stem glasses. The latest CD from the singing group Alabama wafted up through the skylight, the country harmonies sweet in the soft breeze.

  Far down below and across the street, they could see the light-green slope of the park, the strollers and frisbee players, the long shadows, a slice of the downtown skyline beyond.

  It was the last week of May. The weather had been warm for two entire days in a row – San Francisco's abbreviated springtime. To the west, behind them, a phalanx of fog was preparing for its June assault, and it looked like it was going to be right on time and the long winter that was the city's summer would begin on the next day.

  As a favorite topic of conversation, Mark Dooher did not make it to the Top 100 of their personal hit parade, so Sam had been avoiding it for several hours, but now she decided the moment was propitious. 'Guess who I saw this morning?'

  Farrell dug out his olive, sucked it, then tossed it over to Bart, who caught it on the fly. 'Elvis? He is alive, you know. It was in the Enquirer at the counter, absolute proof this time, not like all those phony other times.'

  'You know what I'm looking forward to?' she asked. 'No, don't answer right away because it kind of relates. I'm looking forward to some day I ask you a question like "Guess who I saw today?" or "You know what I'm looking forward to?" and you say, "Who?" or "What?" – whichever word happens to apply in that given situation. I think that's going to be a great day, when that happens, if it ever does.'

  Wes nodded somberly. 'I'd pay you a dollar if you could diagram that sentence – if it was a sentence.'

  'That's what I mean,' she said. 'That's a perfect example.'

  'It is a problem,' he agreed. 'I must not be a linear thinker.' Then, reaching over and putting a hand over her knee, leaving it there. 'Okay, who?'

  'Christina Carrera.'

  She saw him try to hide his natural reaction. He took in the information
with a slow breath, threw a look off into the distance, took his hand from her knee, sipped at his drink. 'How was she?'

  'She was pregnant.'

  'You're kidding, yes?'

  'I'm kidding, no.'

  A glance, still guarded. 'Wow.'

  'She came by the Center. No,' sensing the question he was thinking, 'just to visit.'

  'Catch up on all those good old times?'

  'That's what she said.'

  'How long did you believe her?'

  'I didn't check my watch, but less than three seconds.'

  'Good,' he said. 'That was long enough. Give her story a fair chance. What did she really want?'

  'Now, see, here – if I were you I'd give you an answer like, "She wanted me to help her negotiate a new treaty between Hong Kong and China for the new millennium." But I don't say stuff like that. Usually. I try to be responsive.'

  'That's because you're a better person than I am. So what did she really want?'

  'I don't know for sure. Just to talk with somebody she used to know. Take a reality check. She was scared and didn't know how to admit it.'

  'I'd be scared too. Did you tell her she was smart to be scared?'

  'No. That wouldn't have helped. We talked. Well, mostly I listened and she talked, pretending she really had dropped in out of the blue to say hi. She was in the neighborhood. And after a while the pretense kind of ran out of gas and she got to it.'

  Wes stood up and walked over to the roof's edge, looking out across the park. 'He beating her?'

  She was next to him, an arm around his waist. 'No. She says not. It doesn't look like it.'

  'How pregnant is she?'

  'A lot. It looks like she's getting close. Then after a while, maybe an afterthought to be polite, she got around to asking a little about me, what I was doing, my personal life. I told her about me and you.'

  'Not all the good parts, I hope.'

  Sam squeezed against him, then lifted herself on to the edge of the roof. 'When I mentioned you, it was like I threw her a rope. She said she'd looked you up, but didn't know what she could say. She didn't believe you'd talk to her.'

  Wes was silent. There was more than a little truth to what Sam was saying, he probably wouldn't have talked to Christina if she just walked in on him. During the trial, the teams within the defense team had split up, obviously and cleanly – Wes on one side, Christina and Mark on the other.

  Afterwards, as his doubts about Dooher grew, Christina made it clear she didn't want to hear them. Her own agenda with Mark, her own priorities had taken over.

  Then, when it was done, Wes had felt the tug of his misguided idealism again. He had tried one last time to get to Christina, to get her to consider, in spite of the Not Guilty verdict, that their guy had done it.

  Maybe his timing had been wrong – it certainly wouldn't have been the first time – but she was already wearing an engagement ring. That should have been his first clue. She had asked him for proof, for something new that they hadn't seen at the trial or during preparation for it.

  And Wes had really blown it then, coming right out and telling her that Mark had told him…

  'He told you? He admitted it?'

  But Wes had to be honest. He always had to be honest. Someday, he was sure, it was going to do him some good. But this hadn't turned out to be the day. He said, 'In so many words.'

  'You mean he didn't tell you and he didn't admit it? Is that what you're saying?'

  At the time, Wes had ruefully reflected that she sounded like him on cross. So by having Christina watch him during the trial, cop some of his moves, he had probably helped turn her into a lawyer. He wished, hearing her now, that he could work up some soaring sense of accomplishment, but it just didn't come.

  Instead, he admitted that Dooher had not admitted…

  And that had been that. She wasn't going to consider it.

  Farrell thought she probably wouldn't believe it if Mark himself told her. She'd worked herself up into being a true believer and Wes Farrell's niggling doubts only served to reinforce for her the fact that she and Mark were in this alone together.

  She'd told him about his problem. He was jealous that Mark had come to depend more upon her than on him, that Wes's role in Mark's life was going to diminish, that…

  He'd tried. He really had.

  'I'll consider it,' he said. 'Okay, I have. No. I don't think so.'

  'She asked if I would talk to you.'

  'And you have.' He walked to the other end of the tiny hollow in the roof. There was really nowhere else to go. He turned back, facing her. They were going to have to expand this deck, give him someplace to hide. 'And what am I supposed to say to her that I didn't try to say last time?'

  'I don't know. Maybe this time she'll be disposed to believe you.'

  'I don't care if she believes me! I don't care what she believes!' His volume was rising. He heard it and didn't like it. He didn't want to yell at Sam. He loved Sam. This didn't have anything to do with the two of them. He tightened down the control button.

  'She's living with a murderer, Sam. What am I supposed to tell her, exactly? Here I am, listen. "Hey, look, Christina, maybe it wouldn't be too good an idea if you kept living with your husband because, see – now how can I put a nice pleasant little spin on this for you? – he kills people once in a while. Not everyday, you understand, and I'm not saying he'll kill you, of course, but just to be safe…'" He shook his head. 'No, I don't think so.'

  He put his hand up to his forehead, combed his hair back with his fingers. 'And after that, what's she going to do anyway? Leave?'

  'She might. It might save her life.'

  'She could leave now. Save her own life. It's not my job. No part of it is my job. Shit.'

  Sam came toward him – she always did this because it so often worked – and put her arms around him. 'I think she wants to know what you know, Wes, that's all. She's carrying his baby. That's a hell of a commitment. She can't just walk out. She's got to be absolutely sure.'

  'She'll never be sure, Sam. She knows everything I know already. It's all in her head, damn it.' But his arms came up around her, his head down to the hollow of her neck.

  'When?' he asked.

  'I told her tomorrow morning,' she said, smiling sweetly up at him, going up on her tiptoes to plant a kiss. 'Would that be a good time?'

  Glitsky had moved in his deliberative way back to the land of the living.

  Nat, at seventy-eight, started studying to become a rabbi. He was doing aerobic walking from Arguello to the beach every single day and was never going to die, wasn't even going to age any further, and for this Abe was grateful.

  Glitsky's oldest son Isaac was graduating from high school in a couple of weeks, and he'd turned into a reasonable approximation of a young adult. On the day after graduation, he was leaving on a bicycle tour of the West Coast with three friends. He planned to be gone for most of the summer and had been accepted at UCLA in the fall.

  Jacob – his hip seventeen-year-old – had gone on what Glitsky thought had been a mercy field trip to the Opera with his godmother, one of Flo's old college roommates. Over the howling derision of his brothers and his own misgivings, Jacob had spent an evening in San Francisco's Grand Hall. Then another. The experience – the grandeur, drama, emotion, tragedy – had transformed him. Before too long he was going down for Sunday matinees, standing in the back, buying discount tickets with his own money.

  He'd started buying CDs. First the old duplex had been filled with the strains of the Three Tenors doing songs. But in short order he'd branched out into arias, then whole passages. He would study the scores, the librettos. He began taking Italian, of all things, as a special elective in school. Discovering that he had a rich baritone of his own, Jacob found an instructor who said it could be developed.

  And the youngest boy changed his name. Living in the house of a half-black cop, the nickname O.J. had to go, so now he was Orel James, his given name. The boy looked more and
more like his mother, Flo, each day.

  Orel was still having a difficult time. At school, he remained withdrawn. He did a lot of headphones time, his Walkman. SEGA Genesis ruled the rest of his waking hours. And he'd developed a stutter.

  His older brothers didn't play with Orel like they used to. Abe knew, heart-rending as it was, that this was how it should be – everybody was growing up. The older boys had their lives. Orel wasn't their responsibility anyway.

  It fell to Glitsky, no one else. He accepted it, and sometimes thought that somebody else needing him was what saved him, what pulled him through it finally.

  He had to start coming home, to help Orel with homework, to go to parent conferences about his boy, to be free on weekends. Abe had played college football – tight end at San Jose State – and Pop Warner needed coaches.

  Suddenly he found himself out among humanity. Fathers, women, non-cops, other children. This was disorienting at first, but then he and Orel would go out for a shake afterwards and they'd have some things in common to talk about. Football, then – startlingly for both of them – what they were feeling.

  He started making it a point whenever he could to be home in time to tuck Orel in at night, to sit and see Flo's face in his son's and realize part of her was still there, and listen to the stutter lessen as sleep closed in.

  And then, gradually, starting to hear the boy himself, his own voice and identity, what he was saying – his secrets and worries and hopes – and sometimes he didn't know what this feeling was for his baby, it was so strong. Where before, he had barely known Orel.

  Wondering – marveling – at the seeds that could spring up after the forest had been felled and cleared, he'd sit there, Orel sleeping with his breath coming deep, and he'd rest his hand on the boy's chest in the dark. Empty.

  Filling up.

  Now he was washing the dinner dishes, looking out his open back window into the Presidio National Park. A glorious evening, the sky above dark blue, almost purple. The day's remaining light had a peculiar reddish glow. Fog over the ocean.