Bear is Broken

by Lachlan Smith

  Car’s face puckered. He turned on the television. The screen was blue; then it flickered and showed an empty room with a bed, a room I recognized immediately as Martha’s, a different setting from the other disks, which had been filmed at the Green Light.

  The image was muzzy, as if some thin material were hanging in front of the lens. Car fast-forwarded through an empty twenty minutes, then slowed the tape to normal speed as a woman and a man walked into the room. They were kissing. The woman was Christine, and the man was the college professor Marovich. I recognized him from the picture in Keith’s file.

  They seemed practiced with each other’s bodies, sure of themselves and of their responses. The camera angle was a bit off for how they were lying, showing them only from the waist up, so we were spared a direct view of their coupling, but the camera saw enough, more than enough. It made me feel excited, embarrassed, and ashamed to watch a woman I’d just made love to make love to another man.

  Marovich said something, and she tied his wrists to the bed, then slipped a cord around his neck and began to draw the slip knot tighter. She rode him faster, and I saw her come but keep going, shudders running through her as the motion of her hips became spasmodic. The veins on his neck stood out from the cord, and his eyes bugged; then his hips convulsed. Christine ground to a halt and let herself collapse forward on top of him.

  A moment passed before she sat up, looking down at him. Her breathing slowed. He was unconscious, and still she waited. An agony to watch. She began scrabbling at the cord with her fingernails. Her hands were shaking almost too badly to undo the knot, but it loosened and she yanked it off. She sat motionless, then gave a scream, and brought her fists down on his chest.

  Marovich coughed once, twice, then his eyes opened and he twisted, gasping, and she touched him tenderly on the side of the head.

  ~ ~ ~

  I was flooded with relief. “She didn’t kill him,” I said. My pulse was racing. It was hard to catch my breath.

  “This time,” Jeanie said.

  “That was Martha’s apartment. He died at the club.” It was a non sequitur, I knew. Marovich could have died anywhere.

  “I was the one who opened the package when it arrived,” Car said. “Completely anonymous, no markings, no nothing, sent directly to the office. No note. And then we watch the videos, and lo and behold here’s this clip that seems to exonerate Teddy’s client while hanging Christine up by her twat hairs. And since Teddy is Keith’s lawyer, it’s his job to string her up.”

  “You really think Christine killed Marovich?”

  “The point is not what she did or didn’t do,” Car said. “The point is what she’d do to keep that video secret. Teddy knew she was Keith’s sister and he confronted her about it, let her know he was going to turn it over to the prosecution. Then someone puts a bullet in his head.”

  We all sat in silence for a moment. I was guessing that Christine’s relationship with Teddy had begun more recently than she’d implied—probably right after he confronted her about the video. “I think I could use one of your martinis,” I said to Jeanie.

  She seemed about to tell me to fix it myself, then changed her mind, and went into the kitchen. She came out with three glasses of cold gin.

  “Christine said that she had a class with Marovich. She was helping him with his research and writing her thesis about prostitution. Keith said the guy was her thesis adviser.” I left out the part about Keith telling me she’d killed him. Part of me still wasn’t ready to admit it.

  “We want to be able to prove she shot Teddy,” Car said. “To do that we probably have to prove she killed Marovich. Before we go to the cops we need to have her case tied up neat. Because she’s going to have a lawyer every bit as good as Teddy was. We build the case against her, then hand it all over. We do their job for them, and we do it right, and then—only then—we go public if they drag heels. You have the proof, you have the power. Until then you’re just pounding sand. What you did this afternoon, you might as well have been jerking off in public.”

  “So I guess you didn’t kill him. I probably owe you an apology.”

  “Sorry to disappoint you, Monkey Boy. Your brother was my bread and butter. See, I like working for winners, and Teddy was a winner. Now I got to go back to working for lawyers who can’t find their dicks without a compass. No offense to Jeanie. You’re a winner, too, aren’t you, babe?”

  Jeanie frowned. I wanted to ask Car whether he and Teddy had ever manufactured evidence, whether they’d knowingly put a liar on the stand in Bradley’s trial. For an instant I wondered if Car could have faked the video he’d just shown, pasted Christine’s face onto another body. I felt a surge of hope and fear that died away as soon as it was born.

  Then with renewed energy I said, “It doesn’t stop with Christine. It’s the whole family. Now we know Christine’s father was sleeping with my mother before her death and that Teddy was accusing him of murder. Trying to exonerate our father, who suddenly pops up as the snitch against Santorez. That’s right,” I said, noticing the astonished look on Jeanie’s face. I was coming unmoored again, losing my bearings, the way I’d felt just before Keith pushed me, as if the world was dissolving around me and taking me with it. “What was I supposed to do, just let them frame Santorez?”

  Neither of them said anything. I went on wildly: “Christine knows that Gerald killed my mother. She’s known it all her life. Keith knows, too. That’s why he went to Teddy, that’s why they became friends. Because Keith was curious about the son of the woman his father had been having an affair with, the woman he killed while letting her husband get sent away for life. Everything that’s happened has grown out of Locke’s beating my mother to death and getting away with it. Except he didn’t get away: Now Teddy was about to expose him.”

  Car took a drink and made a face like he’d swallowed broken glass. “Leo, it’s a black hole,” Jeanie said. “It nearly swallowed your brother. He was obsessed with proving your father innocent. Be thankful he spared you. It was heartbreaking to watch a great lawyer like Teddy fall again and again for Lawrence’s scams and keep chasing down leads that proved to be bullshit. Your father’s a master manipulator who had Teddy wrapped around his little finger. But you and I both know that Lawrence was far from innocent, that even the best defense lawyer in the world couldn’t change that fact. In Teddy’s mind, though, the truth was whatever he could make people believe, whatever story he could convincingly spin. It was all very, very sad.”

  I said, “But don’t you see, everything grows out of that. We can’t get justice for Teddy without getting it for my mother. We have to go back to the beginning. We have to finish the job Teddy started.”

  “That’s your business, kid,” Car said. “You don’t want to help us nail Christine, you don’t have to. But you do have to lie low until we do what we have to do.”

  I sat back into the couch cushions, cupping my drink. “What are you going to do?” I was almost in tears with frustration at their refusal to listen to me.

  “Get back on her tail for one,” Car said. “I had to let her slip to grab you this afternoon. Believe me, I didn’t want to do it, but we had to make you see sense.”

  I stared at him, wondering if he’d been there this morning, if he’d known what was going to happen to me but had held back, preferring to let me take my chances rather than to show himself to Christine. He stared back at me. I ran a hand over my eyes, pressing down on them. “How long did she wait for me in the car this morning?”

  “You tell me, kid.”

  “Weren’t you there?”

  “What’s he talking about, this morning?” Jeanie asked.

  “Christine took me to meet Keith at Sutro Baths and I ended up taking a swim.”

  “You must be a pretty good swimmer,” Car said. “You say hi to Keith like I said?”

  “Wait,
are you saying Keith pushed you?” Jeanie asked. “And Christine set you up?”

  “Something like that,” I told her.

  “I wasn’t there, kid. I wish I could say I was, but I went home to take a shower.”

  I gave a sigh, as if I could expel my tremendous fatigue. “What do you want me to do?”

  It was Jeanie’s turn: “Call her up. Bring her here. Get her to confess and get it on tape.”

  “Pretty simple, really,” Car said.

  ~ ~ ~

  I found Christine’s number in the sheaf of credit cards and bills I’d taken from my sodden wallet, now stored in a plastic bag in my pocket. I went out on the deck, closing the door so Car and Jeanie couldn’t listen in.

  “Do you still want that missing disk?” I asked when she picked up.

  “Leo?” was all she could say. She was surprised about something. Either that I was alive or that I was calling her—or that I had the disk. “What happened to you?” She recovered her breath. “I waited for nearly an hour.”

  “Really? And then?”

  “Then I had to get to class. I left the keys under the seat and took a cab to Caltrain and took Caltrain to Palo Alto and took the shuttle to Stanford and walked into lecture ten minutes late without my books.”

  I hadn’t looked under the seat. “Do you want the disk?”

  “Yes, but you don’t have it. You told me so this morning.”

  “I have it, and I’ve seen it, and I’m ready to deal. Just so that you know I have it, the video was taken in Martha’s apartment. You probably didn’t know the camera was there, or you would have untied that knot a lot sooner. Maybe you waited a little longer the next time. Maybe one of those times you waited a little too long and had to call your brother to come rescue you. That’s what the police would probably suppose.”

  She gave a plaintive sigh. “I want it.”

  “Good. Then meet me at Teddy’s place in two hours. And bring your checkbook.”

  After we’d hung up I remained standing on the deck, looking out into the watery daylight under the trees. After the initial surprise in her voice she’d recovered quickly, as if nothing had happened beyond what she’d claimed: that she’d waited for me, gotten annoyed, then made her own way down to Stanford. Maybe that was exactly what had happened. Maybe Teddy’s house would lift up off its foundation and float away to the moon.

  Back in the living room Jeanie lay on the couch holding her drink. Car was sitting on the floor with a briefcase that was all foam rubber inside with notches to hold what looked like eavesdropping equipment. “Booty call successful?” he asked.

  “She’ll be here in a couple of hours. I don’t suppose one of you would mind taking me back to the city to get Teddy’s Rabbit, so she doesn’t wonder how the hell I got over here?”

  They shared a glance; then Jeanie put her drink on the floor and sat up. “I can take him. Unless you trust me to get this place wired for sound.”

  “You go,” Car said without looking up.

  Chapter 25

  “I checked with the hospital while you were on the phone,” Jeanie said as we merged onto the freeway.

  “And?”

  “No change.”

  I was silent. There was nothing to say.

  “So what’s your plan?” she finally asked.

  “I guess I’ll apply to PD offices around the Bay. If Teddy dies, then maybe also So-Cal, the Central Valley.” I didn’t look at her, not wanting to see the disapproval on her face at this thought. “A change of scenery would do me good.”

  “With Christine, I meant. What’s your plan for making her talk?”

  “Oh.” I waited, but nothing came to me. “I guess I’ll ask if she killed Marovich. If she says yes, I’ll ask her if she shot my brother. If she says yes, I’ll ask her if she’s going to shoot me.”

  “Don’t count on us to swoop in and save you.” Jeanie hesitated, then went on: “Look, I’d be glad to make some calls for you when all this is over.”

  “I think I’d rather you didn’t.”

  “You’re pissed at me for what? For Car?” For about a mile she drove with her eyes fixed on the road ahead, her hands tightly gripping the wheel. Then she said, “You have no right to be angry with me about him. Other things, maybe, but not that.”

  She was right. She didn’t owe me anything, and I had no reason to blame her. Why then did I feel this paralyzing resentment, this childish blame? I only knew that I did feel it and that the feeling kept me from apologizing.

  We drove the rest of the way in silence.

  ~ ~ ~

  After I’d driven the Rabbit back to Canyon and Jeanie had left with Car, I sat out on Teddy’s deck and had another martini. I didn’t want to be inside. Car had assured me the entire house was wired: They would hear everything spoken in there, and everything would be recorded. The deck was the only place in the house where I could feel alone, and I needed to think. I’d let them believe I’d go along with their plan to record Christine, but I hadn’t come this far to blindly follow anyone’s lead.

  I wondered what justice would mean to Teddy. Now that I was the one in the victim’s chair, I knew for certain that an eye for an eye was not an empty concept. I couldn’t make Teddy better or get back Caroline or recover those lost years, but I could get revenge. Not against Christine; I didn’t care about Christine. I wanted what Teddy wanted, our mother’s killer. And I wanted to believe what Teddy had believed, that the killer was Gerald Locke.

  From where could that cold man have summoned the rage to do the damage I’d seen in the crime scene photographs?

  It was dusk when I heard the purr and clatter of a car coming up the hill. Turning in my chair, I looked through the house and saw Christine walking up, a Safeway bag dangling from her fingers.

  She didn’t knock. According to the plan I should rise and meet her, so that we could end up sitting inside with the microphones, but Car and Jeanie didn’t care about setting up Gerald Locke. They wanted Christine, and if I gave them the evidence they needed, they’d go straight to the police. The cops would take over, and I’d be left with no leverage over Gerald and no control over what happened to Christine. I stayed where I was. To get Gerald, I needed her help. Maybe I was even willing to let her off the hook if she helped me finish the work Teddy had started.

  Or maybe I’d fallen for her and wasn’t thinking straight. Maybe I’d rather sleep with her than put her away.

  “I brought food,” she called, coming through the house to the door of the deck when she saw me there. “I figured you’re probably just like your brother. Am I right? Nothing in the fridge?”

  She showed me what she’d brought: three bottles of wine, bread, several cheeses, smoked salmon, oranges, and apples. She set down the bags, came out, and met me as I rose with an awkward half embrace, half kiss, my lips seeking hers, hers avoiding mine.

  “What are you going to do, toss me over the railing?”

  I don’t know why I tried to kiss her. As a test, I suppose.

  She drew back from me as if she’d been burned. “Why would I do that?”

  “Isn’t this as good a place as any to finish the job? I suppose you’ll wait until I tell you where the disk is.”

  I began to unbutton my shirt. Misinterpreting my actions, she caught my wrists. I pushed her away and finished taking off the shirt, displaying my injuries.

  “What happened to you?” she asked after a pause.

  “I took a little swim this morning after you dropped me off. Out the end of the tunnel at Sutro Baths, down onto the rocks, out into the cove. I got polished on the rocks for a while, and then the waves swept me out to sea. A surfer ended up bringing me ashore.”

  “It looks like you slid down a gigantic cheese grater.”

  “It could be worse. My
brains are still on the inside.”

  “How did it happen?” Her eyes flashed. “Keith didn’t—”

  “He took me down there to kill me. But not until he’d told me that you were the one who shot my brother.”

  There was fear in her eyes. Her voice was weak and breathless. “He told you that?”

  I reached out and slid the door closed. I wanted to hear it before the others. I wanted to decide. I stood in my plain white T-shirt, the wounds on my arms itching in the chill, the flesh on my back and side and hip crawling painfully. “He said it was you, all you. And Martha drove the getaway car. And you killed Martha.”

  “And you believed him?”

  “Why shouldn’t I? You lied when you said you gave the disks to Teddy. Actually they came anonymously in the mail. From Martha, is my guess. What happened—she tried to shake you down and you told her to go to hell?”

  Christine had moved away to stand by the railing, her back to me. “Something like that.”

  “Teddy was going to turn that video over to the police. Keith was his client, and where clients were concerned Teddy didn’t make exceptions. Not even after he slept with you. Maybe he blackmailed you into it, maybe it was your idea. In the meantime you and Martha worked out a deal, and Teddy ended up with a bullet in his head. You showed up at his hotel room, but the disk wasn’t there. Instead of paying Martha whatever you’d promised her in return for keeping quiet and helping you get back the disks, you killed her with Teddy’s gun, the one he kept here. Or didn’t you know about the gun in his bedside table?”

  “I knew about it,” she said in a low voice.

  “Marovich was your thesis adviser.”

  She turned. “Leo, I didn’t kill him.”

  “Of course you didn’t.”

  “Let’s go inside. I’m cold.”

  Now was the time to take her inside, get her on tape, but that would have meant handing Christine over to Car and Jeanie and their ideas about what happened, and losing Locke. Not to mention losing Christine. “Why don’t you tell me about Marovich first.”