The Whole Truth

by James Scott Bell

  “My name’s Issler, and this is Weingarten. Mind if we talk?”

  “What did you just flash?” Steve said.

  “We’re investigators for the US Attorneys Office.”

  “FBI?”

  “Special Task Force. Can we — ”

  “You guys come to my house?”

  “Apartment, isn’t it?” Issler said.

  “What’s this about?” It had to be about Johnny, but this was too soon.

  “Maybe we could go inside,” Issler said.

  “Maybe not,” Steve said.

  Issler looked at Weingarten, who looked even unhappier now.

  Issler said, “Look, we don’t want to conduct business out here, do we?”

  “Tell me why I’m listening to you,” Steve said. “Then I’ll tell you whether we’ll keep talking.”

  “It’s about Johnny LaSalle, sir. I believe you saw him today.”

  “Whoa. You were surveilling me?”

  “If you don’t mind, Mr. Conroy, not out here.”

  “What kind of procedure is this?”

  “Please, sir — ”

  “I have an office.” Steve got to his feet. “You want to see me, call my receptionist and make an appointment.”

  “You don’t have a receptionist,” Weingarten said.

  “I want to know why you were surveilling me. I want to know why you seem to know about my office. And what’s your interest in Johnny LaSalle?”

  “Are you his attorney?” Issler said.

  “Why don’t you tell me. You seem to know everything else.”

  “This is really not very efficient for us. Can we please step into your apartment?”

  “Me and William Pitt say no.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “William Pitt. They don’t teach you guys about William Pitt at Quantico?”

  Issler said nothing. Weingarten was unhappy again.

  “William Pitt,” Steve explained, “stood up on the floor of parliament and said, ‘The poorest man may, in his cottage, bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown.’ ”

  “What is that supposed to mean?” Weingarten said.

  “It’s the basis of the Fourth Amendment,” Steve said. “And it means unless you have a warrant, I don’t have to let you in. I don’t have to talk to you. And our little interview is over.”

  “Shame,” Issler said. “We wanted to help you.”

  “Sure you did.”

  “We’ll be back,” Weingarten said.

  “Better have a judge’s approval,” Steve said.

  Issler nodded. “We will.”

  They turned their backsides to Steve. Just like Nick, he thought. But these cats had sharp teeth. Johnny LaSalle was involved in something federal, and the US Attorneys Office didn’t waste any time putting a tail on him.

  There was something Johnny LaSalle had not shared with his brother, but his brother was going to find out.

  SEVENTEEN

  As he drove to Rite Aid, Steve wondered if the two agents were following him. He even wondered if they were watching him buy Afrin, pay for it, drive back. A hot sense of paranoia settled over him, like a flu.

  He’d only been involved with feds once before and hated every part of the experience. Especially their sense of entitlement, their unspoken expectation that all should bow before their mighty authority. But they still put their pants on one leg at a time, unless Quantico was teaching them new tricks.

  So having a couple of agents show up at his sanctum sanctorum was not his idea of a great way to finish the night.

  Mrs. Stanky was waiting for him at her open door, arms folding over her oxygen tubes. “What took you so long?” she said.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Stanky. I had something come up.”

  “You mean those men? Who were they?”

  “Oh, just some gentlemen with questions.”

  “Questions? What kind of questions?”

  “Mrs. Stanky, let’s get you sitting down.” Steve had done this several times before. The excitable old woman, a former grade-school teacher, needed to keep her blood pressure down.

  He took her arm and guided her into the apartment, which smelled of hard-boiled eggs and walnuts. She resisted only slightly.

  “I have a right to know what’s been going on outside my door,” she insisted. “Were they police?”

  “No, not police. Now why don’t — ”

  “FBI?”

  “You’re a curious one, aren’t you?”

  “What did they have questions about?”

  “Feeding stray cats. I guess you were right to make a federal case out of it.”

  “You’re not making sense.”

  “Not the first time,” Steve said. He got her settled on the brown sofa with red throw pillows, then opened the Afrin spray for her, putting the bottle on the coffee table.

  “There,” Steve said. “You need anything else?”

  “How come you have the FBI after you? What have you been doing?”

  Resigned to his fate, Steve said. “Now don’t you worry. You know I’m a lawyer, right? It’s just a business call. I may be able to help those gentlemen on a case.” Or not.

  “Why did a nice young man like you become a lawyer?”

  “Oh, well, I guess it’s the only profession that would have me.”

  “You could have been something respectable.”

  “Like a teacher maybe?”

  “That’s right. Molding the young. Setting an example. Instead of trying to bend the rules.”

  Steve cleared his throat. “I better get back. Are you all right?”

  “Turn on the TV for me, will you?”

  “Sure.” Steve looked for a remote, found the tail end of it sticking out from under one of the throw pillows. He clicked the tube on.

  “Anything you want to watch?” he asked.

  “See if you can find a Matlock. I haven’t seen Matlock in a long time.”

  “Uh, I’m not sure I can do that.”

  “Can you find anything close?”

  He did the best he could, which was an old Law & Order. That seemed to satisfy Mrs. Stanky.

  He thought about his mother just then. She’d been a TV watcher near the end. Couldn’t do much else as the cancer ate away at her. But whenever he would visit her at hospice, after school, she’d always want him to read to her.

  Her favorite was Dickens. Steve read her David Copperfield. She’d smile and close her eyes and drift off to sleep. Maybe dreaming of Peggotty and Barkis, whom she loved. “Barkis is willin’ ” made her laugh.

  The last time he’d read to her, the night she died, her eyes never opened. He was reading the part where Aunt Betsey faces down the Murdstones. A good scene to end on, he thought. He cried for three hours after he left, before Mr. Casey, his first foster father, told him to shut up or he’d do the job himself.

  So a little Law & Order to comfort an old woman hooked up to a tank. Not much, but maybe not so bad when you got right down to it.

  She asked if he’d like to stay and watch. He waited until Jerry Orbach started grilling a witness. Always good, that Orbach. At the commercial Steve patted Mrs. Stanky’s hand and said, “I think they can win this one without me.”

  Mrs. Stanky smiled, and that was a good note on which to let himself out the door.

  EIGHTEEN

  The next day Steve drove three hours to Verner to see Johnny in his new habitat. The terms of Johnny’s parole had him working a job there. All the way out Steve kept thinking of two things — Johnny’s professed conversion, and the two government types who had their eyes on him.

  The religious angle was especially strange.

  There was no God. Steve had figured that out when he prayed harder than anything in his life for God to bring Robert back. Prayed and promised that he would stop lying forever if God would do that for him. Prayed the way his mom had shown him when he was three. On his knees with his hands folded.

  He remembered saying, Dear God Dear God
please please please.

  Over and over, through tears.

  Please bring Robert back please please Dear God.

  But God didn’t bring Robert back, so there was no God. It was simple. Simple as the alphabet and 2 + 2.

  He had never found any reason to reconsider this conclusion. Not through the foster-care years, the high school football years, the college days, or at law school. God didn’t help him an ounce when his first foster father beat the living crud out of him.

  Most of his reasoning, though, had to do with Robert.

  So what was he to do with this appearance — resurrection? — of his brother? Maybe fate just had a sense of humor.

  All Steve knew about Johnny’s parole so far was that it allowed him to live and work within a sixty-mile radius of Verner. He had to report to his parole officer once a week and, of course, was subject to both random drug testing and warrantless searches.

  None of this seemed to bother Johnny as he met Steve outside a rustic home in the foothills. Verner was one of the oldest towns in California, off Highway 40. Steve had been there once before, on his way to Las Vegas. It was named for Samuel Verner, a cattleman from Colorado who came to the state in the gold-rush days. He established a ranch and started selling beef to miners and business owners. Made a bundle.

  Now the place was a mix of old, new, and touristy. It had a museum of Shoshone and Paiute history. Boasted good fishing and a tri-county fair. The kind of place where a young family could live the slow life, or a parolee get a fresh start. With mountains close by, it was a postcard setting much of the time.

  “Welcome, little bro,” Johnny said outside the modest clapboard house. It was off a dirt road, surrounded by plenty of property on either side. Had wooden steps and posts and a front porch with a swing. Without the obvious need for a paint job, it could have been a home out of a Norman Rockwell.

  Johnny put his arm around Steve and walked him toward the house. “Any trouble finding the place?”

  “MapQuest.”

  “Man! That’s the trouble. No privacy anymore. Government looking over your shoulder all the time. This isn’t the America we grew up in.”

  “Whose house is this?”

  “The old man’s.”

  “Your — ”

  “The guy who raised me. Eldon LaSalle. You know the name, I’m sure. Didn’t you put it together with mine?”

  Even after the second mention, Steve still couldn’t connect the name to anything.

  They went up the steps and into the house.

  Johnny said, “This is just a little place some of us use when we need to. A little home away from home.”

  “Oh yeah? Where’s home?”

  “Later, Steve. One step at a time.”

  The inside smelled of beer and cigars. Like a Saturday-night poker game. On a sofa in the living room sat the guy who’d given Steve the five thousand dollars in the law library. He stood up.

  “Hey, Neal, here’s my baby brother,” Johnny said.

  Neal shook Steve’s hand. “Good to see you again.”

  “Likewise.”

  The room was small with several chairs scattered around. Reminded Steve a little of recovery meetings. On the mantel above a stone fireplace hung a wooden cross.

  “This is where we hold some meetings,” Johnny said. “Helping guys get back on their feet. Like me.”

  “Yeah?”

  “We get some pretty messed-up people in here. We may not be what most people think of when it comes to a church, but God isn’t finished with us yet.”

  “Hey, doesn’t the Bible say, ‘Judge not’?”

  “Right on! We’ll make you a believer yet.”

  Don’t knock yourself out on that one, Steve thought. “Do you consider yourselves a church?” he asked.

  “Of course.”

  “What sort?”

  “Independent. The only kind the Bible ever talks about.”

  “No denomination?”

  “Name me a denomination in the Bible.”

  “I’m not really up on — ”

  “Go on. Try.”

  “Baptist?”

  “Not there.”

  “What about John the Baptist?”

  Johnny laughed and Neal joined him.

  “I like you, Steve. We’re going to get along fine, like brothers should.”

  Johnny took Steve out to the backyard. The grass was patchy and there was no fence. Pine and birch all around. A nice-looking, peaceful place, Steve thought. Not like city life. But not a place he thought he could ever live. He liked the beat of the city. He’d go crazy here.

  Steve heard a growl and turned. A dog with a big black head and eyes blacker than death was tied to a stake in the ground. Checking Steve out.

  “That’s Ezekiel,” Johnny said. “After the prophet. He’s a Presa Canario. Good-looking, huh?”

  “He thinks I look like lunch,” Steve said, feeling some wetness under his arms. He once had to defend a man who owned a pit bull, one that had mauled an eight-year-old girl. It was not pretty what the dog did to her. It wasn’t pretty what the judge did to the owner, either.

  This dog was bigger than a pit bull. Scarier.

  “Don’t you worry about Zeke,” Johnny said. “We trained ’im. He’s gentle as a kitten. Unless he thinks one of us is in trouble, of course. Then he’s got a whole Old Testament thing going on.”

  They sat at a redwood table in the sun. Neal made up tuna-fish sandwiches and brought out a big bag of Lay’s potato chips. Neal drank a Coors and Johnny a Coke. To keep from getting sloppy, Steve followed Johnny’s lead.

  Johnny noticed. “I like it that you’re watching yourself.”

  “How’s that?” Steve said.

  “Alcohol. It’s the root of so many problems. I gave it up myself. Neal’s on the way. Right, Neal?”

  There was a snap of authority in Johnny’s voice. Neal nodded obediently.

  “You staying off the ’caine?” Johnny said to Steve.

  “You know about that?” Steve said.

  Johnny smiled. “I know all about you.”

  “What, you had somebody looking into me or something?”

  “You’re not mad, are you?”

  “I don’t know — ”

  Johnny put his hand up. “It was all part of finding you, Steve. I didn’t know if you ever wanted to see me again, and I had to try to figure that out. So Neal here did some Internet searching and found out about that disciplinary thing. I’m only asking because I want to help you any way I can.”

  “How can you help me?”

  “By showing the deliverance of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the freedom we have in him.”

  “Why don’t we start with me just being your lawyer?” Steve said.

  “Let’s talk about why you don’t believe in God — ”

  “Johnny, I believe in the law and in getting things done. And I believe everybody is free to believe the way they want. If religion brings you peace, great.”

  “What about the truth?”

  “I’m all for that too.”

  “Jesus Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”

  Steve took a bite of his sandwich to buy time. He didn’t want this to turn into a high-pressure religious sales job. He washed the bite down with Coke and said, “What’s the nature of the work you want me to do for you?”

  “Set us up as a church under the laws of the State of California,” Johnny said. “I want to do it up right. I’ve decided to go into the ministry.”

  “He’s got the anointing,” Neal said.

  “What’s that?” Steve said.

  “God has set me apart,” Johnny said. “That’s the way he used to do it. Anointing with oil. Making people holy. Now it’s done by the Holy Ghost. I didn’t ask for it, Steve. It just happened.”

  “In prison?”

  “That’s right. Best thing that ever happened to me. Do you know the story of Joseph in the Bible?”

  “Jesus’ dad?”


  “No, way back. Joseph, son of Jacob. Jacob favored him and Joseph’s brothers got bent about that, faked his death, sold him into slavery.”

  “Okay.”

  “Joseph ends up in prison, but God is with him, right? God eventually makes it so Joseph is head dude in Egypt, right behind Pharaoh. There’s a famine, Joseph got Egypt to save up food, then Joseph’s brothers come down there looking for food, and that’s how God gets Jacob’s family down to Egypt and saves them. See, Joseph says it was all God’s plan.”

  “Prison was God’s plan? I should use that with my clients.”

  Neal laughed.

  “So what do you say, Steve? You can be part of God’s plan too.”

  Steve wasn’t sure about that. “Setting up a church shouldn’t be too hard to do. The law is pretty liberal when it comes to legitimate religious organizations.”

  “That’s your job, then. Make us legit. Neal’s got another five thousand for you. And there will be more, Steve. I can see you being like an in-house counsel. What would you say to that?”

  “You making an offer?”

  “Suppose I did? Suppose it meant a steady income?”

  Steve cleared his throat and looked at Ezekiel the dog. He was staring at Steve like he wanted to get to know him. Or his ankle.

  “First,” Steve said, “I have a question. Last night a couple of feds came to see me at my apartment. They knew we were talking at Wendy’s. Maybe they had me or you under surveillance. I’m guessing you, because you’re the one who would be easy to watch on parole.”

  Johnny shot a look at Neal, who shrugged. “Isn’t that what I’ve been saying?”

  “What exactly is it about? You said they’re after you for something. What is it?”

  “They just don’t leave you alone! They don’t think a guy can change. A guy does his time, and they’re waiting when he gets out! Can you do anything about this, Steve?”

  “I have to know what it’s about first.”

  “It’s nothing but a fishing expedition. They’ve been in our face for years. I just want to serve the Lord, and this is what they give me. Steve, can you do anything to stop the harassment?”

  “Well, your parole status is High Ser vices. That’s a break.” In California, a parolee with a record like Johnny’s would usually be classified as High Control. That designation had the most restrictions. Johnny must have been a model prisoner.