Bear is Broken

by Lachlan Smith

“Either you can phone or I’ll track her down without your help. I have proof she’s been in contact with your son.” It was an educated guess. “Just ask her where she was at seven on Wednesday evening and whether she remembers having a shocking effect on anyone. Use those words exactly. Then call me back and tell me where I should meet her.”

  “I hate this. I hate it,” she said with such vehemence that for a moment I thought she was about to throw down the phone. “I hate being put in the position of antagonist to my daughter.”

  She hung up. As I was winding down Redwood Road toward the freeway twenty minutes later, she called me back. Her voice was husky, with a slur that was either alcohol or depression or both. She was in a quiet place now. “I hope you’re happy. You’ve managed to provoke a full-blown fight. She’s too stubborn to back down, and I don’t know how to appease her.”

  I tried to apologize, but she spoke over me. “She’ll meet you at the student union.”

  “Thanks. I’ll try to smooth things over.”

  “Don’t bother. It will just make things worse.” She hesitated. “Mr. Maxwell, this is very awkward, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you where my daughter was Wednesday evening and how you know about it.”

  “Don’t worry about it, at least not for now. Give me a chance to talk to her. Let me see what I can do. It may be that we can simply put what happened behind us.” I didn’t mind leaving Greta Locke sweating a little.

  “For what it’s worth, she told me she hasn’t been in contact with Keith.” She hung up.

  I hadn’t lied to Greta Locke when I told her that I’d always wanted to go to Stanford. With its palm trees, mission architecture, and open vistas, the place had stood in my mind for paradise on earth since I was fourteen, when Jeanie took Teddy and me there to show us the campus. Jeanie wore her class of ’84 T-shirt, and walking beside her my brother seemed to puff out his chest and square his shoulders. I knew exactly what he was thinking: that people would notice her shirt and assume he was a Stanford graduate, too.

  The student union was really a bar, with abysmal techno music blasting over the speakers. There weren’t any tables open, but Christine had grabbed a booth by the rear exit. It was the girl who’d Tasered me, all right. The stunning effect was achieved this time without mechanical aids: She wore a black, low-cut sleeveless blouse and a pair of hip-hugging designer jeans with tan sandals. She had a pitcher of stout before her and was in casual conversation with a tall young man with shoulder-length red hair, a goatee, and the back and shoulders of an ironworker. He refilled her glass as I walked up, and I noticed the horny yellow calluses on his palms.

  “Just keeping the chair warm for you,” he said, getting up.

  Christine quickly drained what he’d poured for her. “So you’re Teddy’s brother.” She emptied the rest of the pitcher into her glass. “I can’t say I notice any family resemblance.”

  “Look closer. Think of Teddy, subtract about eighty pounds, add grooming.”

  She looked, then shrugged. “Now that you’re here, let’s leave. Too many people. Unless you want to keep getting interrupted.”

  I wasn’t sure I liked the idea of moving to a less public place.

  “Don’t worry,” she said, draining her glass again and starting for the door. “I don’t bite hard.”

  “You may not know this, but people die from Taser shocks. A person could have a preexisting heart condition, you give him a shock, and down he goes. Then you end up facing a manslaughter rap.”

  “Let’s walk.” She paused in the door, lifting her face to the evening air. “I feel like walking.”

  I didn’t, but I seemed not to be the one in charge. This puzzled me.

  “So now my mother has stooped to hiring lawyers to harass me on Friday nights.”

  “I’m not working for her, but I’ll go to her again if I need to. I want to ask you some questions. You give me the answers I need, and she’ll never have to know where you were Wednesday evening.”

  “Answers for whom? For Greta?”

  “For Teddy.” I bit the words off.

  “One way or another, you’re working for Greta. You people always are. Whether you come clean to me or not, whether you know it or not, you’re just another in a long line of handlers and spies my parents have hired to keep tabs on me all these years. First the nannies, then the private tutors, then the personal trainers—the list goes on. In high school I even had a personal assistant, my own Chloe, and I wasn’t allowed to fire her. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s how to deal with people like you, so take my advice and don’t bully me.”

  “How do you deal with them? With a Taser?”

  “Believe me, it would have saved a lot of grief.”

  We crossed the street and came to a path under the trees. A circle of drummers was playing inept but heartfelt rhythms down the path; otherwise we were alone.

  Christine took a seat on a bench carved from a log. “Are you tracking down all the girls your brother slept with?”

  I shouldn’t have been surprised. I couldn’t imagine Teddy knowing Christine and not trying to sleep with her. “Just the ones that were in his room on Wednesday. You and Martha.”

  “Martha’s becoming a bit of a problem, actually. I didn’t expect to see her there any more than I expected to see you. That’s one of the reasons I didn’t hang around to chat. She’s a prostitute. She was smuggled into this country five years ago and she’s been working ever since. At one time I thought I could help her, but it turned out she didn’t want to be helped. She went right back into it. She was arrested again tonight, by coincidence. She called me about an hour ago from jail. You could post her bail, get her story yourself.”

  “You were looking for something in Teddy’s room. I want to know what.”

  “A camera. Pictures. Videos. Okay? Do I have to spell it out for you?”

  “You mean of you and Teddy? So what was Martha doing there?”

  “Waiting for me. She knew about the camera. She must have figured I’d show up to look for it. Only it wasn’t there.”

  I turned toward her and grabbed her wrist. “Look, stop jerking me around.”

  She twisted her wrist with deliberate ease from my grasp. “What is it exactly that you want?”

  “I want to know who shot Teddy, and I want to know why.” If it was actually what I wanted most at this moment I wasn’t being very convincing about it. I was finding it difficult to think about anything but the cleft of her collarbone.

  “And you think I know something about that?”

  “I think Keith knows something. And that you know where to find him. I need to talk to him. That’s all. I need his permission to go to the police with some information that might lead them to the shooter.”

  “So this is about my brother?”

  “Why shouldn’t it be about your brother?”

  “On a Friday night you come down here looking for Keith, but instead of asking me straight out whether I know where he is you launch into all of this blackmail stuff about what happened Wednesday night.” She looked forlorn, sitting there staring off into the darkness while the drum cadence rose to a crescendo. She stood and held out her hand. “Okay. If that’s the way you want to play it, I can play it that way.” She pulled me to my feet. “Let’s go.”

  “What’s this?” I said, stammering, pretending not to understand.

  I followed her. Her dorm stood beneath the rim of the lake just on the other side of a parking lot. As we came up to it, I started to hear what sounded like thousands of bullfrogs calling. The lot was filled with Subarus and Volkswagons and even a few BMWs and Mercedes. College students drove these cars.

  Christine had a single on the second floor. She didn’t look in any of the open doors we passed or say hello to any of the kids in the hall, but I saw plenty of
eyes flash in her direction, eyes that snapped away as they met my gaze. Conversations stalled in our wake. At twenty-six, I was a little too old to pass for a student.

  Her small room was neat, with a Persian rug on the floor and a thick duvet on the bed. I shut the door behind us. Halfway across the room Christine turned, lifted off her blouse, and threw it on the bed.

  She unhooked her bra and let it fall. It was her beauty that made me look away, embarrassed at the squalor of being here with Teddy’s lover, this college girl.

  “Stop,” I told her, coming forward and grabbing her wrists as she began to unzip her pants. My fingers grazed the taut, bare, thrillingly warm flesh of her waist. A charge went through me. “I’m not doing this,” I said.

  She tried to kiss me, her eyes boring into my face, but I turned away and dropped into her desk chair and sat there without looking at her, afraid that even one more glance would break me.

  Behind me, after a pause, I heard a drawer slide open. When I glanced in her direction again she was wearing a sweatshirt and a frown. She had out her laptop and hunkered over it on her bed.

  “That might be the first time that’s happened to me,” she said after several minutes. “I’ve been with a lot of men. A lot of boys, actually. Prep school, college, it adds up. Most go right ahead, even if they know it’s a stupid idea. Even if they work for my mother and know they’re putting the knife to their throat. You being in here alone with me, you might as well have done it.”

  “So this is what you meant by knowing how to deal with people like me?”

  “One blackmailer deserves another.”

  “I’m not working for your mother, and I didn’t come here to blackmail you. I came because Teddy basically raised me, and they shot him right in front of my eyes. Didn’t you care about him? Don’t you even have some kind of reaction to what happened?”

  She didn’t say anything. I went on in a pinched voice: “I caught him when he fell out of his chair. I had his blood all over me, his brains. I can smell it, that rusty smell. And the police don’t seem to be that interested in finding the person who did it. They just want to pin it on one of his old clients, on this guy who killed two cops and got off, basically, because Teddy was his lawyer.”

  “Santorez.”

  “That’s right,” I said, surprised she knew the name. “They’re bringing an informant before the grand jury on Monday. I don’t know what he’s going to say, but the police seem to think it’s enough.” What could our father know, I wondered? Was he lying?

  She was still staring at her computer. “So you think Santorez isn’t behind it. What’s your theory?”

  Had Teddy not meant any more to her than this, that she could sit staring at the screen while we chatted about him getting shot in the head? I went on. “I think Teddy may have been shot to send a message to your brother not to talk about a homicide. This professor, Marovich, who was supposed to have gotten strangled in the Green Light, that sex club where your brother worked. Maybe the two of you crossed paths.”

  “Maybe I had a class with Professor Marovich last year.”

  “Maybe? Like you don’t fucking remember?”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “Your father is pretty sure Keith was the murderer, that when the police arrested him they got the right man.”

  She closed the laptop and turned to face me. “Did he tell you that?”

  “That’s what he told me when I saw him this afternoon. He said there was a boy at Choate, your brother’s roommate, who was strangled to death after being sexually tortured. The same way Marovich got it.”

  All the defiance washed from her face. She looked far more naked than she had been a minute ago. Then her lips parted, and hatred came into her eyes. “Teddy and my brother were friends,” she finally said. “Keith’s ten years older than I am, so I don’t have firsthand details, but I guess Teddy was just getting established as a lawyer, and he represented Keith on a sex-in-public charge and got him off, and after that he sort of looked out for him. I hate to deflate my father’s sick fantasies, but Keith never killed anybody.”

  I was surprised to hear that Keith and Teddy were friends, but I was always surprised by my brother’s tendency to form personal relationships with his clients. “Whatever Keith has done or hasn’t done is none of my business. I just want the right man arrested for trying to shoot my brother. I think Keith knows who did this, and I think I can persuade him that it’s in his interest to put the heat on someone else.”

  “Even if Keith is a sadistic killer?” She clearly had nothing but contempt for her father.

  I shrugged. “I just want the people who shot my brother. That’s all I have time to worry about.”

  “Ruthless.” She gazed at me steadily. “What if I asked you to help me find something I’m missing? To look around for it in Teddy’s things. At his office. His house. Would you have time for that?”

  I didn’t immediately respond. “You mean this camera with the videos of you and Teddy.”

  She nodded with a little wince, as if that wasn’t exactly it, and then went on: “Teddy isn’t on them, actually.”

  “Who’s on them, if Teddy isn’t?”

  She acted like she hadn’t heard the question, inclining her head, her eyes going to her desk. She pulled open one drawer, then another, and finally she came up with a sheaf of paper and clapped it against my chest. “I’ve been interviewing girls for my thesis. Most of them were from Asia, girls brought over here illegally to work in so-called massage parlors. The woman I’d gotten closest to was Martha. I wouldn’t want those videos to fall into the wrong hands. I loaned the videos to Teddy, because he wanted to look at them. Then he got shot. I want those videos back.”

  I lifted the document she’d dropped on me and looked at the title. It was called “Ho for a Week: One Sociologist’s Journey into the Under­ground of San Francisco’s Sex Trade.”

  “I’d maybe switch the word order on this title,” I suggested, just to have something to say while my head spun. “San Francisco’s Underground Sex Trade would sound better. Or maybe San Francisco’s Sex Trade Underground.” I flipped through the pages. The last chapter was titled “Turning Tricks: One Researcher’s Journey to the Other Side.”

  I rolled the document in my hand and looked at her, remembering Marovich’s research subjects from the CV in the file. She’d evidently learned quite a bit from this professor whose class she wasn’t sure she’d taken. “So what’s on those disks? Just interviews?”

  “That’s right. I’m not asking you to work for free. I’ll pay you. I have some money from my grandmother, and I can get more.”

  “How much more?”

  “Twenty thousand dollars.”

  That was a hell of a lot of money for a set of videotaped interviews. But then again, her family was paying for Stanford tuition each year. “Funny, your mom offered me the same amount to find Keith.”

  “See. I knew you were working for her.” She reached for the laptop again.

  “I turned her down, Christine. I’m not working for your mother, and I’m not working for your father, and I’m not working for you. I’m working for Teddy and for myself.”

  “You’re looking for Keith, aren’t you? And Keith doesn’t want to be found? And my mother wants you to find him?” Her voice paused. “Take my advice and take her money. Take it in advance. Either way, she’ll end up getting what she wants.”

  “How about you pay me in advance if you want me to keep my eyes open for that disk.”

  “I tried to.” She didn’t even blink. “You turned me down, too. Or are you reconsidering?”

  “Both of your offers have been generous. What I have in mind is you setting up a meeting for me with Keith. In return I’ll keep an eye out for the camera and the disks.” I stood and tapped the rolled-up thesis against my l
eg. “We can talk about money if and when I find them. Mind if I keep this?”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Home,” I said.

  “Wait,” she said, and now there was a breathless edge to her voice. “I can help you find Keith. I haven’t talked to him, but I’m sure he’s scared to death. Usually it takes a couple of days to get ahold of him. In the meantime, do you feel like going out for a drink and telling me a little about Teddy? About what he was like when he wasn’t trying to get laid?”

  Chapter 15

  We went to a bar on El Camino Real called Antonio’s, where you can eat all the peanuts you want and throw the shells on the floor. We talked about Teddy, and Christine cried a little. I didn’t, but I found myself telling her about the DA’s investigation of him.

  I thought it would make me feel better to tell someone. But it only made me feel worse.

  I kept saying it was time for me to drive her home, and she kept ordering more rum and cokes. She was a big girl in every sense of the word; if I didn’t try to stop her, I didn’t try to keep up with her, either. I thought she was probably working around to saying what she really wanted to say; I kept waiting for her to come clean and tell me the real story about the videos, her professor, and Teddy.

  Around midnight she went to the ladies’ room, and when she came out the hair at her brow was damp. She announced she was ready to go, and I drove her home. As I let her off in front of her dorm she leaned across the seat and kissed me sloppily. A kiss was okay. I didn’t object to a kiss.

  I wrote down her number and drove back to the city, circled for half an hour until I found a parking place for the Rabbit, and climbed glue-eyed up to my apartment, where I fell gratefully onto my mattress without getting undressed.

  I wish I could say that I slept like a baby until noon. I can’t. Almost as soon as I closed my eyes I was dreaming of Christine bare-chested in my arms, the clean smell of her in my nose, the warm touch of skin on skin. I kept waking and finding myself alone, twisted up sweating in the covers, my face deep in the pillow. I would fight to stay awake, trying to claw my way back to reality, but again and again I slipped back under the surface, and each time she was there waiting for me, ready to pick up where we’d left off.