School Days

by Robert B. Parker

  “I might be able to do something about the lawyer,” I said.

  “Well, wouldn’t that work out good for me?” Cleary said. “If I am really cooperative, I can turn this case into a major headache for myself.”

  “The woman may have caused this,” I said.

  “Even if she did,” Cleary said, “even if he had a better lawyer, he’s going away.”

  “We need to know,” I said.

  “They don’t want a better lawyer. They want him gone.”

  “Maybe I could persuade them,” I said.

  “You got another lawyer in mind?”

  “Rita Fiore,” I said.

  “The best defense attorney in the fucking state,” Cleary said. “And you want me to help you bring her on board?”

  “Exactly,” I said.

  Cleary looked at me. I looked back.

  “You’re going to get your conviction,” I said. “Might as well have some justice on the side.”

  Cleary kept looking at me. I smiled at him warmly.

  Finally, he said, “Jesus Christ!” and leaned forward and picked up the phone.

  61

  “I DON’T WANT to talk to you,” Jared Clark said when they brought him in and sat him down.

  “I know,” I said. “Nobody does.”

  “Well,” he said. “I won’t.”

  “Beth Ann Blair says that she was in love with you,” I said.

  His eyes widened. “What?” he said.

  “Beth Ann Blair says she is in love with you and that you are in love with her.”

  He laughed. I didn’t know why, and I suspect he didn’t know why. But there it was: ha, ha.

  “We’re not supposed to tell anybody,” he said.

  “She told,” I said.

  “She told you she loves me.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  He laughed the same odd and inappropriate laugh.

  “You want to tell me about that?” I said.

  “She already told you.”

  “She told me how she feels,” I said. “I was wondering how you feel.”

  “She really told you,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Honest to God?”

  “Honest to God,” I said. “You love her?”

  He laughed. It wasn’t a laugh about funny. I winked at him.

  “Even if you didn’t,” I said, “Pretty good in bed, huh?”

  His face got red. “Don’t say that.”

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “I love her. She loves me. When people love each other, that’s what they do.”

  “Go to bed,” I said.

  He nodded firmly.

  “When did you start to love each other?” I said.

  “Since ninth grade.”

  “Wow,” I said.

  “Where does Mr. Garner fit in.”

  “Fuck him,” Jared said.

  “He knew you and Beth Ann were in love,” I said.

  “He was going to not let us,” Jared said.

  All of a sudden I saw it, all of it, full-formed, as if a magic lantern threw the patterns on a screen.

  “You had to stop him,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “She wanted you to,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “But you didn’t know for sure how to stop him, so you went to Dell, and he helped you.”

  Jared nodded.

  “But when you went to do it, Garner wasn’t there.”

  He nodded.

  “And things got out of hand,” I said.

  “Dell kept shooting,” Jared said softly.

  “And you never said why you did it, because it would hurt Beth Ann.”

  There were tears now. I didn’t blame him. I felt like crying, too.

  “So you got the chance to be a stand-up guy,” I said.

  He nodded. He was crying audibly. The tears were rolling down his face.

  “You were going to shoot Garner.”

  Nod.

  “And Dell was going to cover you.”

  Nod.

  “Dell plan this out mostly?”

  “Yes. He knew about things like that. From Animal.”

  “You didn’t plan on getting caught.”

  He shook his head.

  “Dell had a different plan,” I said.

  Jared looked at me blankly.

  “You shoot anyone?”

  “No.”

  I could hear myself breathing. I needed more oxygen than I was getting. My throat needed to loosen. My stomach needed to unclench.

  “We was going to get married,” Jared said, “when I was eighteen.”

  “Next year,” I said.

  He nodded. “You think she still loves me?” he said.

  I took in some more air.

  “Absolutely,” I said. “She loves you, and adores you, and admires very much how brave you are.”

  He nodded his head and continued to nod it while he sat there and cried.

  62

  RITA WAS WEARING a black pantsuit today, with a green silk T-shirt. She walked to her big picture window and studied her view of the south shore. Her pantsuit fit her very well. We were high, and there was no city sound, and her office was big and had a thick carpet, and there was almost no office noise.

  “Okay,” she said with her back to me, which was not a bad thing. “You say that since he was in the ninth grade . . . how old is that?”

  “Fourteen, fifteen,” I said. “I believe he was fourteen when it began.”

  “Since he was fourteen, he’s been having sex with the school shrink who is, what, thirty-five? Forty?”

  “Somewhere in there,” I said.

  “And the kid is functionally retarded.”

  “Mildly,” I said.

  “And the school president . . . what kind of high school has a president?”

  “It’s a private high school,” I said, “and it’s aiming to become a junior college as well.”

  “And the president finds out and blackmails the shrink into having sex with him, and she is feeling, ah, violated?”

  “Violated is good,” I said.

  “She talks the kid into killing the president,” Rita said. “Thus freeing her from his unwanted attentions and allowing the two lovebirds, Jared and Beth Ann, to be together again.”

  “Until Jared turns eighteen and they can marry,” I said.

  “Gee, I didn’t know he was the marrying kind. . . .” Rita said. “Makes him more interesting.”

  “He may be a little gun-shy right now,” I said.

  She turned away from the window and looked at me. Her suit fit very well in the front, too.

  “Aren’t they all,” she said. “So, he connects with the school badass, who hooks them up with a gangbanger, who gets them guns and teaches them how to shoot, and they go into the school like two commandos, only the president isn’t there that day, perhaps out tapping the school shrink against her wishes? So the kids start shooting the place up, except that our kid, Jared, says he didn’t shoot. Any way to prove that?”

  “Probably not.”

  “And the school badass says he did?”

  “Wendell Grant, yes.”

  “You don’t suppose the cops told him that if he ratted out his pal, he’d get a break?”

  “Cops do that?” I said.

  “He’s not going to get a break,” Rita said. “Not for shooting up a school. He’d lose nothing by saying Jared didn’t shoot.”

  “He might just enjoy taking Jared down with him,” I said.

  “Not easy,” she said.

  Her mouth was open. She was tapping her bottom teeth with a ballpoint pen. Her thick, red hair came to her shoulders. She was something to see.

  “You have a functionally retarded underaged boy whose parents really want to get rid of him,” I said. “Who was sexually exploited by an older woman. You oughtta be able to do something with that.”

  “Jared’s going away somewhere,” Rita said.

&
nbsp; “And probably should,” I said. “But maybe he shouldn’t spend the rest of his life somewhere, and maybe it should be a kinder somewhere.”

  “If such a place exists,” Rita said. “Will Beth Ann Blair stick to her story?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “And Jared?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “I love a nice, solid case,” Rita said.

  I shrugged.

  “The kid deserves better than he’s getting,” I said.

  She looked at me and smiled, which was something to see in itself, and walked to her desk and sat in her big leather partner’s chair and put her feet up and tapped her teeth some more.

  “Tell me something,” Rita said. “You have stuck by this kid, whom you barely know, like he was your own. But you don’t seem interested at all in the other one.”

  “Grant?”

  “Yes. Don’t you suppose he might have serious problems that weren’t addressed? Doesn’t he need help? Isn’t he a kid, too? Should he spend the rest of his life in jail?”

  “Nobody hired me to stick with Grant,” I said.

  “That’s it?” Rita said.

  “Yes.”

  “That’s all?” Rita said.

  “That’s all there is,” I said.

  “No right or wrong, nothing like that?”

  “Right or wrong?” I said. “Rita, you’re a lawyer.”

  “I know, never tell that I said that.”

  We were quiet for a moment.

  “There’s thousands of people need saving,” I said. “I can’t save them all. Hell, I can’t save half the ones I try to save.”

  “So you let chance decide?” Rita said. “Someone hires you?”

  “Chance and choice,” I said. “I don’t take every case.”

  “How do you decide?” Rita said.

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “I usually know it when I see it.”

  “You can’t save everybody,” Rita said.

  “And if I try, I end up saving nobody,” I said.

  “And saving one is better than saving none,” Rita said.

  I nodded. Rita looked at me silently before she spoke.

  “Do you know what I bill an hour?” she said.

  “I believe I do.”

  “How you going to pay me?”

  “I’ll give you every cent I earn on this case from here on,” I said.

  She looked at me some more and smiled wider.

  “They fired you,” she said. “Didn’t they?”

  “Well,” I said. “Yuh.”

  “And you’re offering me half of that.”

  “Yuh.”

  Rita laughed softly and flipped the ballpoint pen onto her desk.

  “I’ll take it,” she said.

  63

  I WAS IN MY OFFICE. Pearl was asleep on the couch. It was raining outside, and the colorful umbrellas over boots and fashionable raincoats were flowering once more on Berkeley Street. The office door opened. Pearl’s head went up. Royce Garner came in and closed the door behind him and pointed a gun at me.

  “I’m going to kill you,” he said.

  With his orotund voice, he sounded like Richard Nixon.

  Pearl growled.

  He turned toward her with the gun, and I shot him at an angle in the backside, so that the bullet passed through and lodged in the far wall. Confined by the small room, the gunshot hurt my ears. Garner fell over. Pearl jumped from the couch and scuttled behind my desk. Still holding the gun, I patted her as I went past her to Garner.

  “Should have kept the gun on me,” I said. “I’m a lot more dangerous than Pearl.”

  “You shot me,” he gasped. “You shot me.”

  I picked up his gun carefully and went back to my desk and put it in a large plastic Baggie. I put my gun back in the holster. Then I called 911 and ordered up an ambulance.

  “Help me,” he said. “I’ll die if you don’t help me.”

  “No you won’t,” I said. “You got shot in the ass. You’re not even bleeding that bad.”

  I went to the sink and got a hand towel and folded it up tightly and walked to Garner and squatted down beside him.

  “Oh, God,” he said. “This hurts. I’m bleeding.”

  I pressed the towel against his wound.

  “Roll over so you’re lying on the towel,” I said. “It’ll be like a pressure bandage.”

  “I can’t move,” he said.

  “Oh,” I said. “Well, maybe you will bleed to death.”

  He groaned and struggled over onto his side and groaned again, but his weight was on the wound and the towel. I stood and leaned my butt against the front edge of my desk. Pearl peered bravely around the edge of the desk at Garner.

  “Ow,” he said. “It’s, like, burning.”

  “Ambulance is coming,” I said.

  “I wasn’t . . . going to . . . shoot you,” Garner said. “I just wanted to talk.”

  “Which is why you brought a gun and pointed it at me and said . . .” I dropped my voice, imitating him: “I’m going to kill you.”

  “I wasn’t going . . . to.”

  “Sure you were,” I said. “I’m the only one that knew about the pictures and all. With me dead, you’d have everything back under control. You would be president of a nice junior college. The kid would be away for life. Beth Ann would be hauling your ashes again, and you’d have a nice alternative to the alcoholic oinker you married.”

  “No,” Garner said. “No, I was just going to talk. I can give you some money, maybe. I’m an educator. We don’t have a lot.”

  I shook my head. “Pal, you don’t have anything at all,” I said.

  I could hear the siren sound in the distance. Pearl crept out from behind the desk and went to Garner and sniffed at him. She was interested in the blood.

  “Don’t let her hurt me,” he said.

  I said, “Pearl.”

  And she came.

  I said, “Sit.”

  And she sat.

  I knew it wouldn’t last, but it was pretty impressive.

  Two uniforms came into my office first, then two EMTs, then Belson. When Pearl saw Belson, she stood and wagged her tail and walked over to him. The EMTs got busy with Garner.

  “I saw the call and recognized the address,” Belson said. “I didn’t want to miss out on anything.”

  “Too bad it’s not a happier occasion,” I said.

  I went to my desk and got Garner’s gun and handed it in its bag to Belson. He took it and handed it on to one of the uniforms.

  “This might be evidence,” Belson said. “Try not to lose it.”

  “He tried to kill me, officer,” Garner said as importantly as he could. The EMTs had pulled his pants down to put a pressure bandage on the wound, so that sounding important wasn’t easy. Belson looked down at him for a moment or two, scratching Pearl’s ear absently.

  “Goddamn,” he said to me. “You got another one.”

  64

  THE MEETING was in the big, flossy conference room next to Rita’s office on the thirty-ninth floor at Cone, Oakes, which was much too big for our small group. Finger sandwiches were served, and fresh fruit, and coffee, and bottled water. The coffee and the water were about the same temperature. Cleary was there; and Richard Leeland, theoretically representing Jared Clark; and Alex Taglio, Grant’s lawyer; and me. The Clarks had declined Rita’s invitation, as had Wendell Grant’s mother. Probably heard about the coffee.

  “I’ve taken the liberty of providing each of you with an outline of the situation in which we find ourselves,” Rita said, “which could be described as a mess.”

  “Can’t tell the players without a scorecard,” Alex Taglio said.

  “Correct,” Rita said, and went through the case, point by point, to where we were now. She was in full-power costume today. Black suit, white shirt, expensive pearls. She looked beautiful and flashy and formidable.

  Which she was.

  “We have some
administrative matters to get out of the way,” she said when she had finished her summary.

  She turned to Leeland and gave him a promising smile. Rita was never unaware of the amount of heat she generated.

  “Mr. Cleary and I have talked,” she said. “And we both feel it best if you resign the case and I take over as Jared Clark’s attorney.”

  “Excuse me?” Leeland said.

  “I’m a far better lawyer than you are, Mr. Leeland,” Rita said. “And your client will be much better off.”

  Rita deferred to Cleary.

  “Mr. Cleary?” she said.

  “Richard,” Cleary said. “I don’t know why you’d want to stay with this thing, but if you do, and you insist, I’ve already talked with Judge Costello about having you replaced.”

  Leeland stared at him. “By her?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  Leeland opened his mouth and closed it. He looked around the room. Nobody else said anything.

  “On what basis?” he said.

  “What was your last criminal case?” Cleary said.

  “I . . .” Leeland said. He waved his hand aimlessly and shook his head.

  “Exactly,” Cleary said. “You are not, by training or experience, competent to represent someone in a case of this nature. You tried to help out the family, like a good friend, but now, as we are beginning to push and shove, it’s time to let you off the hook.”

  Leeland looked around the room. No one interceded on his behalf. He picked up the handout that Rita had given him and folded it and put it in his briefcase. He stood up.

  “I guess there’s no reason for me to stay,” he said.

  “I’ll take that as your resignation speech,” Cleary said.

  “Yeah,” Leeland said. “Sure.”

  He walked out of the conference room and closed the door behind him.

  “Turning to the next matter,” Rita said, “I understand that both Mr. Spenser and Dr. Dix, as a condition of the interview with Jared Clark, reached an agreement with Mr. Cleary that Dr. Dix’s findings not be used in court.”

  Cleary took a drink of his coffee and frowned and looked at it for a moment and put the cup back in the saucer.

  “The situation has changed,” Cleary said. “I am willing to waive that agreement.”

  A secretary came softly into the conference room and said something to Rita.