Bear is Broken

by Lachlan Smith

  The wastebasket underneath the desk was nearly empty and too light to contain anything substantial. I tried the kitchen garbage: nothing under the bag, but in groping the outside of it I felt something hard edged and heavy inside. I got a pair of tongs from the drawer and fished around among the coffee grounds and melon rinds until I came up with a small digital video camera and disks sealed in a double layer of freezer bags.

  Twenty thousand dollars in my hands, if Christine Locke was as good as her word. Not that I planned to sell them. Tucking the bag with the camera and disks under my arm, I murmured a silent apology to Jeanie and put to rights the few items I’d disturbed.

  ~ ~ ~

  I was back on the freeway to San Francisco ten minutes later when my phone rang in my pocket.

  “Verdict,” Judge Iris’s clerk said simply, and I could hear by her voice which way the clerk thought it would go. “They’re bringing your client up. Can you be here in fifteen minutes?”

  It was going to be more like thirty, but I told her I’d make it as soon as I could.

  I drove fast, but not too fast, trying to think what I’d say to Ellis if the verdict was guilty. By the toll plaza of the Bay Bridge the words still hadn’t come. Sorry just wasn’t enough when the man you were apologizing to would likely be sentenced to fifteen years in prison. Maybe he was guilty, and maybe he wasn’t, but that wasn’t the point.

  Sorry was going to be the best I could do.

  I parked in the underground lot, then walked up the stairs to Civic Center Plaza and across the street to the courthouse. The clerk was stamping documents and threading them into a gigantic civil docket. Seeing me come in, the deputy yawned and put aside his Contra Costa Times. It was all the same to them, whatever happened to Ellis. It was just another day, another case, another set of administrative tasks. “You want me to bring him out right now or wait for the DA?” the deputy asked.

  “Now, please.”

  I ought to take Car’s advice, I thought as I waited, and forget about a career in the law. Imagine a lifetime of this feeling, I thought, swallowing back the acid that kept rising to my throat, hunching my shoulders at the tickle of sweat in the small of my back.

  The door at the back of the courtroom swung open, and the deputy followed Ellis, who looked both sleepy and hyperalert, his gaze darting around the courtroom but seeming to pass right through me, as if I were no longer entirely present for him. Indeed, there was nothing left for me to do but plead with Judge Iris for a lenient sentence if the verdict went against us.

  “What do you think my chances are?” he asked, moistening his lips.

  I shrugged. “Just have to wait and see.”

  “Pretty good, I’m thinking. They don’t reach a verdict Friday. That means the ones on my side are standing firm. They go home over the weekend, spend a few days thinking it over, verdict right away Monday morning. You don’t hold out over the weekend to give in Monday morning, do you? No way. They came back today holding firm. The others, the guilty votes, they’re the ones who caved. It’s better to vote not guilty than to risk convicting an innocent man. That’s what they said to each other, I’ll bet. Your words. I’m optimistic.”

  His voice trailed away. He wet his lips again. He didn’t look optimistic. He looked like he had a lifetime of dread and fear clamped onto the back of his neck.

  “Whatever the verdict is, don’t react.” It was what Teddy always told his clients. “If it’s bad news, be stoic.”

  “Easy for you to say.”

  “The judge is the one who sentences you if you’re guilty. She’s going to be watching you when the verdict is read. If you get angry, if you act sorry for yourself, she’s going to notice, and she’ll remember.” I wondered if I was going to be able to live up to my own advice.

  Melanie came in tight faced and nervous. Her skirt was so tight, a seam creaked when she sat down at the DA’s table. She opened a binder and began to scrawl notes on a pad.

  She must be in trial on another case already, and I felt a stab of envy, knowing that the only antidote to losing a case is to lose yourself in the next one. I envied the lawyer who was going up against her in whatever trial she was prosecuting next. A few hard-fought cases against an opponent like her would make me into a lawyer.

  Judge Iris walked brusquely into the courtroom. “Sit down, sit down,” she said. “Anyone have a record to make before we get started?”

  She was looking at me. After a moment I realized that Melanie was, too.

  Judge Iris went on more gently: “If you want to ask for a mistrial, now is your last chance.”

  The judge went on looking at me steadily, and I realized that she’d grant the mistrial if I asked for it. I couldn’t look at Ellis, but I was very aware of him breathing beside me with deep, almost unbearably slow breaths. I noticed a Bible on the table. His hands rested close to it, just his fingers touching the red-stained edges of the pages, the soft leather binding.

  “We’ll hear the verdict, Your Honor,” I said.

  “Let’s bring in the jury, then.” She nodded to the bailiff. He went out and a moment later came back in with his face transformed, as if he’d been dipped in a vat of solemnity. He held open the door for the jurors as they filed past him, one fumbling with his jacket, another scratching her neck, the lot of them generally looking about as uncomfortable as it is possible for a group of people to be who are not facing prison time themselves.

  I could make no sense of where their eyes went and where they didn’t. Each of the jurors avoided looking at Ellis: a bad sign. None looked at Melanie, either. Two of them met my gaze with flashes of curiosity before their eyes flitted away, as if repelled by the naked entreaty they found there. There was something splendid in their isolation. For these few minutes they knew what no one else knew.

  The judge waited until the jurors had filed into the box and taken their seats; then she addressed them. In her voice I heard a respectful withdrawal, as if even she partook of the awe that gripped me. “Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury, have you reached a verdict?”

  “We have, Your Honor,” said a woman from the back row, a software engineer Teddy had identified immediately as the foreperson and whose signature had appeared on each of the jury’s notes.

  “The bailiff will now retrieve the verdict form.”

  He crossed the courtroom, the solemnity beginning to wear off him now but still clinging in patches. He reached across the front row of jurors, took the verdict form, glanced at it, then delivered it to the clerk, who stood from her computer, scanned the form, and read aloud: “As to count one, we the jury find the defendant, Ellis Bradley, not guilty.”

  I was tingling all over, and I heard a rushing sound in my ears.

  “As to count two, we the jury find the defendant not guilty.”

  Ellis was on his feet, waving the Bible and shouting “Praise Jesus.”

  The judge sat looking at him with a grim little smile. “The Lord came down into this courtroom,” Ellis said. “The Lord was back there with you in that jury room.” As if only now remembering that I was there he turned to me and pumped my hand, pulling me half out of my chair. He smelled strongly of sweat with the release of his fear. I’m sure I was worse.

  “The Lord Jesus came down into this courtroom today,” he said, faltering a bit, still grinning, half standing over his chair, smiling blindly at the judge, the jury, the prosecutor. “Yes he did.”

  He sat down and slapped my shoulder with excess force, as if he were drunk. The clerk laid aside the verdict form, sat back down at her desk, and reached for her mouse. Just another day, another verdict, another docket to update.

  “You have now completed your jury service in this case,” Judge Iris read from the official jury instructions. “On behalf of all the judges of the court, please accept my thanks for your time and effort.”

&nb
sp; As she dismissed the jury, I basked in the feeling of having won. It was better than sex, booze, anything. I wondered if it was like this every time, if there had still been sweetness in it for Teddy after he stopped expecting to lose. I felt like a brilliant lawyer; I felt newborn. My misgivings drained away like water after a storm. I would do anything to have this feeling, I thought in the rush of the moment. Anything.

  It was one of those few moments in a life when one door closes behind you and another opens ahead, and you step forward to take your first definite possession of the life that will be yours. After the Ellis Bradley verdict, for better or worse, there was no going back.

  It wasn’t until we’d parted, Ellis a free man, me wandering down the windowed hallway toward the stairwell, that I remembered it was Teddy who had tried the case, Teddy who’d put on the probably perjurious testimony that had gotten Ellis off.

  Chapter 19

  I ended up in the basement cafeteria. I had a splitting headache and needed caffeine. When Teddy was in trial he used to send me down there for a double espresso during every break. The espresso was bitter and burned the throat, like swallowing a coal, and always left me feeling parched and quivery. I don’t know how he could stand the stuff.

  As I stood in line staring at the menu board, wondering if it was worth the wait for a sandwich, someone tapped my shoulder in an expert straight-fingered jab right where the bones knit together. I turned and saw Detective Anderson smiling at me.

  “This must be some place for doughnuts,” I said, my heart jumping as my body remembered that interview room where I thought he was going to nail me for murder.

  “Come on, Leo, if you’re going to follow in your brother’s footsteps you’re going to have to come up with something more original than doughnut jokes.”

  It was my turn to order. “Double espresso for me and a glazed, please.”

  I paid. Anderson ordered two coffees.

  “Extra one for dipping,” I suggested. “Good thinking.”

  The woman handed me the doughnut in a fold of waxed paper and I took a quick bite, just in case Anderson thought he was going to get it. His eyes narrowed.

  My coffee came, and so did Anderson’s. I was about to walk out of there when he said, “I’ll give you one guess who this second coffee is for.”

  Something in his voice froze me.

  “I don’t think I want to,” I said, but didn’t walk away.

  “Want to see him?” He shook packet after packet of creamer into one of the coffees. “You’ll be the first defense attorney to get a peek inside that door. The first on my watch, at least.”

  He smiled, showing me once again that I was in his power, and I knew I couldn’t just walk away now as I’d done for so many years. I was tired of being afraid of my father and what he’d done—what he was supposed to have done. I knew that sooner or later I’d have to face Lawrence, now that he was evidently trying to leverage Teddy’s shooting into a get-out-of-jail-free card.

  I gave Anderson a nod. We went toward the jury assembly room at the end of the short hall. Walking beside him, I remembered my old fantasies of killing my father. I’d rehearsed patricide in my imagination so often that I believed that I knew the feel of my flesh impacting his flesh, my skin tearing his skin, my bones breaking his bones. I’d stopped believing myself capable of murder, but as I followed Anderson through the cavernous room I once more breathed in the fury that had long been my only alternative to loneliness and fear.

  As we approached the unmarked door at the far end, Anderson handed me one of the cups. I didn’t have to ask whose coffee I was holding. It was for my father, I knew. Anderson knocked and the door was opened from within. At the end of a short hall I saw a room with a jury box not unlike the one in a criminal trial court, only this one had more chairs. There was a witness stand, a court reporter’s and clerk’s table, and one for the prosecution. There was none, however, for the defense. At the witness stand sat a slight, lean man in an orange jumpsuit and plastic-framed glasses, bald on top with gray hair cropped close at the sides of his head.

  Two alarmed-looking sheriff’s deputies barred my path. In no uncertain terms I was told to step back, that I had no business here. Anderson stood watching. Over the deputies’ shoulders my eyes locked with my father’s.

  I could not tell whether he recognized me; the glance we shared was too brief. His face changed, however. His eyes hardened, and I recoiled. What they seemed to hold was not apology but accusation, as if all these years I’d been the one in the wrong.

  For the first time I wondered why he hadn’t sought me out, sent me a letter. All these years he’d spent trying to convince the world that he was innocent, he hadn’t wasted even a single breath trying to convince me.

  The last thing I saw as they shoved me out the door, my father’s coffee sloshing over my hand, was Anderson’s face creased in amusement.

  Chapter 20

  All the thrill of my triumph in the courtroom had melted into the exhaust-laden air, and my headache was worse than ever.

  I wandered up Market Street toward the Ferry Building. Ellis Bradley was past; now only one case mattered. I didn’t really believe that Car was the one who’d shot Teddy. I wanted to believe it, because I didn’t like how close he’d gotten to Jeanie, but I couldn’t.

  Or maybe Car had been working for Gerald all along. That might explain why he was taking pictures of me with Christine Locke. Yet there were no apparent connections between my brother’s shooting, Marovich’s death, and Martha’s murder. That seemed wrong to me, not least because it required entertaining the idea that my father was innocent. Gerald was the wild card.

  I had to find out what was on the disks, but first I owed it to Teddy to tell him about the Ellis Bradley verdict.

  I caught a cab out to the hospital. Except for Teddy, the room was empty. I pulled a chair up to his bedside. “The jury came back not guilty,” I said. “Ellis yelled and waved his Bible around and walked out of there. I gave the closing argument for you last week. I didn’t want to tell you before, in case we lost. But we won. Not guilty, Teddy.”

  I held my breath. I took his hand. I couldn’t remember the last time we had touched before the shooting. “If you understand, squeeze my hand.”

  The bed whirred and tilted him away from me. Teddy’s breath wheezed in and out, in and out.

  ~ ~ ~

  I stayed for half an hour, then went back to the office to watch the disks.

  When I opened the office door I found myself facing Tanya over the barrel of the Saturday night special she’d just withdrawn from her purse. She held me in her sights, then put the gun down. Her eyes dropped to the desk, as if I’d ceased to be of any interest once I was no longer a target. The lights were off, the blinds half-slatted.

  I waited for her to say something. Finally I let out my breath and said, “Jesus, you might have killed me.”

  “Be glad you were you.”

  I dropped Teddy’s briefcase on the waiting room chair. “What rock have you been hiding under?”

  “I just came to pick up a few things.”

  “Don’t be too hasty about leaving. If you stay you won’t be working for me, you’ll be working for Jeanie. She’s taking over Teddy’s practice.”

  “I could never work for a woman,” she said.

  She could never work for a woman who’d been married to Teddy, is what I sensed she meant.

  “What are you going to do?”

  She shrugged. “Your brother always promised I’d be taken care of. I don’t suppose that means anything now.”

  I glanced into the inner office and saw the safe hanging open. Of course she’d had the combination. If she’d opened it earlier and taken the gun, there’d be no reason to open it again, and if she’d taken the gun, there was no way she’d admit it. I dec
ided not to say anything. “You must have known Teddy was going to file a habeas brief for my father,” I said.

  Her face closed down.

  “I saw the file. He’s been representing him for years.”

  She stepped around the desk and moved toward the door.

  “Tanya,” I said. “Listen to me. I have to know. Does Teddy really believe my father is innocent?”

  She turned, screwing up her face with deep offense. “What the hell does that matter?”

  “You must see that it would matter to me. We’re talking about my mother’s murder.”

  “I just put in the line numbers and the headings and file them with the court. I don’t ask Teddy what he believes.”

  “But you must have some idea.” I wanted to ask her about Gerald Locke, but I didn’t know how much she knew of what Teddy had known.

  “If you think so then you don’t know Teddy. It never mattered to him if they were guilty or innocent. Never. And he never speculated. With your father it would be no different. A client is a client is a client. That was Teddy. He was a lawyer, Leo.”

  She was radiant with the pride of possession, a possession somehow more complete now that Teddy was on his deathbed. She looked ten years younger, and I was shocked to see that under all the accumulated detritus of hard living, under all the damage that had been done to her, a furtive beauty remained.

  For an instant I wondered whether she and Teddy—

  No way, I told myself as she walked out the door.

  ~ ~ ~