Shenk started pulling papers from his bag, sliding them onto the table, looking for something. “Richard wants to plead guilty, skip the trial, OK, that’s his business. So my job is, I gotta push the sentencing date as far down the road as I can, and then use that time to put together a brief on mitigation. That’s a legal term for you. Mitigation. Just meaning, anything we can say to get the judge to lessen Richard’s sentence. Get him thirty years, fifty years. Instead of death.” Shenk sighed once more, a long, last sigh. “That’s the best-case scenario.”
He handed over what he’d been looking for, a single sheet of paper, and Ruben ran his eyes along the words at the top. A mitigating circumstance or factor is any fact or condition that reduces the defendant’s blameworthiness or otherwise supports a less severe punishment.
Ruben ran his bandaged finger down the bulleted list. The circumstances of the crime…lack of violent criminal activity in the past…was the defendant intoxicated or otherwise impaired…
“What did you do, Jay? Did you just print this from the internet?”
“Yes! I did!” Jay barked out a laugh, something a little crazed in it that caused the deputies to look over.
Ruben had noticed what his dad had done. The telltale syllable, the Shenkian devil he’d released into the slipstream of the conversation, disguised as just another fish.
We.
Shenk presuming that Ruben had already agreed to do what Shenk hadn’t even asked yet.
Anything we can say to get the judge to lessen Richard’s sentence…
“All right, Jay, let’s have it,” he said flatly. “What do you want from me?”
“Oh.” Jay’s smile flickered nervously, like it was plugged in and the cord was slightly loose in the wall. “Well, it’s perfect, isn’t it? I need some investigation done, on this mitigation stuff. And you know, I don’t know how to do it, and here my own son is a…” He trailed off, opened his palms. “You know.”
“No. I don’t know.” Ruben squinted at his father. What the hell was going on here? “Your own son is a what?”
“A—a private detective.”
“No, he’s not.”
“What?”
“What?”
Ruben gaped at his father, and his father gaped back.
“I’m sorry,” said Jay. “I don’t—you’re not a private detective?”
“No. Of course I’m not. Where would you…”
Oh Lord. Even as he formed the question, he knew the answer. Ruben was not a social media person and had only been on Twitter for maybe a minute, maybe a year ago, after Sunny heckled him relentlessly for weeks, demanding he join the rest of the fucking human race already. But he hadn’t gotten much further than uploading a profile picture (it was Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, dozing in a meeting—ironic, get it?, that’s not me) and it had taken Ruben forty-five relentlessly self-critical minutes to write one of the jokey sentence fragments people use to describe themselves in the text box below their handle.
He had been, at the time, down a rabbit hole of mystery fiction, reading and rereading a handful of crime authors—Ruth Rendell, George Pelecanos, Ross MacDonald—which for whatever reason had suggested to him the halfhearted, self-deprecating pun, which seemed to fit the bill: self-descriptive, brief, and almost-but-not-quite clever.
Private. Defective.
His father had seen it. His father, who of course had been keeping tabs on him over the years. Jay Shenk at the keyboard, at twilight or dawn, his tongue poking from the corner of his mouth, Google searching, tapping one letter at a time. He had seen his son’s dumb Twitter account, seen the dumb joke and dumbly taken it for true.
For one hot instant, the Rabbi was alive with love. His father, blinded by feeling, had unquestioningly accepted that he—Ruben Shenk—had actually become a private investigator, that not only had he gotten his shit together and found a career, but one that required guts and smarts and will. A private detective! But of course, as in all things with Shenk, this misplaced faith in his son was driven by ego: Jay believing that Ruben had transformed into Sam Spade was Jay telling Jay a story, allowing himself to think that everything had turned out all right.
Behind them, at the next table, one of the kids was crying. The man shouted, “Shut up,” and the woman pleaded with him to keep his voice down. Ruben’s eyes sought out the deputies but they were gone, their two trays abandoned like a dereliction of duty. They’d left the TV on.
“I’m not a private detective, Jay. I work at a salad restaurant.”
“What is a…” Shenk’s face wrinkled with confusion. “What is a salad restaurant?”
“One of the places where you get a bowl, you pick a protein, and then you—you pick your different toppings and everything. You get a dressing?” He kneaded his temples with his fingers. Now he had to explain fast-casual dining? “It’s called Killer Greens.”
“Oh. And, what? You own it?”
“No, I don’t own it. I’m on the line. I do prep.”
The Rabbi watched in silence as a gust of disappointment passed across the old man’s face. His only son. Fruit of his failure.
“Do you like it?” he asked quietly.
“Sure,” Ruben said. “I like it.”
This was a lie. He had never thought about it before because no one had ever asked, but no, he did not like working at Killer Greens. He had accommodated himself to it. He had over time discovered its satisfying aspects. He liked Sunny. He liked the immersive nature of the work. He liked the neatness, the start and stop, the specificity of the world and the fact that it did not require him to care about anything beyond doing his one job to the best of his ability. Straight chopping. Clear mandate. That was enough.
“OK, Jay. Well. Sorry I can’t help you. I’m not a detective.”
He pushed his chair back to leave, and Shenk reached across the table and clutched his arm. Ruben jerked it away, scowling.
“Wait, wait, wait. Just a second, son.”
“You know what, Jay—”
“You fucking cunt,” said the man behind them, and Ruben stopped talking and looked over his shoulder. “You shut your fucking mouth.”
The man talking was a wiry dude with a collar of dark tattoos at the base of his neck. Something itchy in his eyes. The woman, pale and tearful, sat nodding meekly, as if in agreement: Yes, I’m a fucking cunt. The two kids had turned away from the argument and they faced each other, playing a game of meshed hands, tugging grimly on each other’s fingers.
“Please,” said Jay, as Ruben turned back—not my business. Not my story. “I really need you, son.”
“For what? To wash lettuce?”
“Come on,” said Jay. “Don’t do that, don’t run yourself down.”
“Stop it.”
“What? Stop what?”
Ruben winced. It was too much. The blare of the TV; the heat; the cafeteria stink; his finger, pulsing in its mummy of gauze. It was all too much.
“What?” said Shenk again, and Ruben threw up his hands.
“Flattering me, being sweet—” Loving me. Being my dad. Stop it. “Stop.”
“Please, Rubie.” Shenk unceasing, unabating, impossible. “Please. It’s really, it’s just—I need someone smart. Someone who doesn’t scare easy. That’s you, Ruben. That’s you.”
Ruben laughed darkly at how far removed his father’s version of him was from reality. Someone who doesn’t scare easy?
But that wasn’t the point, of course. None of this was real. Jay Shenk wasn’t looking for a private detective; he was looking for a chance to make everything OK. So he could once again look in the mirror and see a good person. Ruben saw all of this and it was so galling. The presumptuousness of Jay Shenk. Small as he had become, lost inside his suit, it was still him in there. Shenk after all this time doing what Shenk always did: seizing upon a terrible situation and turning it to his own purpose. Yes, he could do a good turn by the Keeners, whom once upon a time he had wronged. And he could bend their old res
entment of him into a shape resembling forgiveness. And, just for bonus points, he could recruit his son to the cause, redeem himself in a whole other arena, bury all their old enmity in new business.
And—and—and—
Ruben felt his dad’s charm working on him, the tractor beam of it, the magnetic sweep. Even with the diminishment of years, Jay Shenk was a gravitational force, a dark planet pulling him in. Pulling and pulling.
He had come, hadn’t he? Here he was.
There was a sharp snap of sound from behind them, and Ruben wheeled around. He’d hit her: the asshole with the tattoos had smacked the woman, an open-hand shot across the face. He pulled his hand back, quick, like a snake, and stormed out. The woman’s face trembled, fear mixed with anger in her eyes. The kids stared at her, scrawny and forlorn.
“Hey,” said the Rabbi haltingly to the woman, while his father sat there, slumped and blinking. “You OK?”
“Fuck you, asshole,” she said and grabbed her two kids, one with each hand, jerked them up of out their chairs, and left. Ruben watched them go.
His finger had stopped hurting. Maybe, he thought, the nerves had all died.
“Hey. Jay.” He spoke quietly. “Who did he kill?”
Shenk looked at his watch, transparently dodging the question. “Geez. I really gotta get up there.”
“Jay?”
“What?”
“Who?”
Shenk grimaced. Ruben’s chest tightened.
“You remember Theresa Pileggi?”
Of course, thought Ruben, and then, immediately, again: Of course.
“Why did he kill her?”
Jay exhaled. “Because he blames her, I guess. He hates her. I guess he’s always hated her. I don’t know. But, so—can you—Ruben?”
“What?”
“Are you going to help me?”
In Jay’s mind, Ruben was sure, it had never even been a question. Of course he was going to help. Of course he would say yes.
“No, Jay,” he said as he rose to leave. “I’m not.”
2.
Judge Elsie Scanlon, of the Los Angeles County Superior Court, appeared from her chambers and moved very quickly to the bench. She sat down, huffed her robes out around her, and rapped her gavel quickly: pop-pop-pop.
“All right, then,” she said to her clerk, rolling the words together—allrightthen—“what do we got?”
“People versus Richard Keener, charge is first-degree murder.” The clerk was a prim woman who sat at a low desk just beneath the judge’s high one, half-hidden behind a mountain of manila folders. She seized the top folder and passed it up to Scanlon, who snatched it and snapped it open.
“Right,” said the judge. “Keener. Déjà vu all over again.”
“Your Honor?” Shenk rose, tentatively holding up one hand. “Respectfully, Your Honor, my name is Jay Shenk, for the defense.”
“Hello.” Judge Scanlon’s head tilted down as she skimmed the complaint, her tiny reading glasses precarious at the end of her nose.
“If it pleases the court, I have limited experience in criminal matters, so I may need on occasion to, uh, to—”
“Shh.”
“What?”
Judge Scanlon had a finger over her lips. She was in her seventies, fiery-eyed and skeleton skinny. “Shhh.”
“Sorry, I just…” Shenk looked around. The prosecutor was at the other table, stifling laughter. “I was gonna say—”
“Nope.”
“What?”
“Stop.” Scanlon eyed him evenly over the little glasses. “You’re new here, you said?”
“Uh—yes, yes, ma’am. Generally I practice on the civil side. Personal injury, mostly. But I, uh, I have a connection to the family here, and—”
“Stop.” The judge waved her hands in Shenk’s direction, as if trying to put him on mute. She had some kind of unreconstructed ladies’ hairdo, dyed jet-black and swept defiantly upward.
“We’re busy here. Busy, busy. You came in through the hallway? You maybe noticed there’s a lot going on?”
“Yes, Your Honor.”
It was true. Shenk had felt, emerging from the elevator onto the seventh floor, trying to find the right courtroom, like he had stumbled into some sort of chaotic corridor of the damned. Families like the one in the cafeteria, in various states of catastrophe, arguing with one another or huddling with clutched hands, carping at their breathless and overworked defense attorneys.
“We like to keep things moving,” Scanlon said. “Chop-chop.”
“OK, sure. So—”
“Sit, Mr. Shenk.”
“I—”
“Sit!” She barked it, like you do for a puppy. “Sit! Sit!”
Shenk sat. He scratched his forehead and looked around the courtroom. He saw Beth Keener, in the same shapeless tan coat and housedress she’d been wearing when she showed up in his office a week ago, resurrected from his distant past, asking him and then beseeching him and finally insisting he come to her aid. Her face had been reshaped by sadness. Sadness and weariness and work. The Keeners had had to sell their place in Studio City and move to a smaller house—not that the Studio City house had been such a palace to begin with, that Shenk could remember. Apparently Beth was cleaning houses, six days a week, except for the weeks when she lived out in the desert, with Wesley. They had him in a cabin or something out there. The details weren’t clear.
Shenk steadied his hands on the sides of the rickety lectern thing they gave you in here, to put your papers on. The courtrooms he usually practiced in, the civil courts, they had more windows; sturdier furniture. Just a more high-class experience, all the way around.
Rich was standing just a few feet away, in bright prisoner’s orange, hands shackled before him. He did not look at Shenk, or at the judge, or even at Beth. He seemed not to be looking at anything. God, what a reunion, the whole gang of them gathered to witness Shenk’s first-ever turn in a criminal court. A command performance for a gathering of ghosts.
“Mr. Thomas?” Scanlon turned her attention to the prosecutor. “Refresh us?”
The lawyer for the State of California hopped up. He was a young and handsome African American man in a cheap blue suit he’d gussied up nicely, with a shiny tie and pocket square. He nodded at Scanlon once quick and said, “It’s our understanding the accused is ready to enter a plea of guilty, and the State is prepared therefore to proceed to sentencing.” He nodded again, sharp as a razor, and sat.
“OK. Mr. Shank?”
“Shenk.”
“Fine.”
Scanlon scowled, waved her hands again, generously granting him the pronunciation of his own name. “I seem to recall that Mr. Keener intended to enter this guilty plea against the advice of appointed counsel. Now he’s got private counsel. Is it still his intention to so plead?”
“As far as I know.”
“As far as you know?”
“Yes, ma’am. Yes, Your Honor. Sorry. My client has not, thus far, been open to uh—to communicating. With me. In any way.”
“No kidding?”
“No, Your Honor. No kidding.”
Shenk tried and failed to make eye contact with his stubborn client. Richard Keener in his jumpsuit wore an expression of stoic dignity, like a captured king. But Shenk was beginning to hope that this efficient, peremptory judge would set the impossible situation to rights: order Richard to act in his own best interests, or maybe bind him over for psychiatric evaluation or something. Could she do that?
“Mr. Keener? Hello?” Scanlon snapped her fingers at the defendant. “You still want to plead guilty?”
Rich nodded, the first indication that he was even paying attention.
“I need it on the record, please. Mr. Keener, do you wish to plead guilty to the murder of”—a glance at the file—“Theresa Pileggi?”
“Yes,” said Rich.
“Wait,” said Shenk. “If I could just have a moment here.”
“Nope.”
“Bu
t—”
“Sit,” the judge said to Shenk, and then, to everyone, “A guilty plea having been entered, we’re ready to schedule for sentencing, which by statute occurs twenty days from today, not counting weekends and holidays. Ms. Nguyen? Where does that take us?”
The clerk shuffled rapidly through calendar pages. Shenk, who had just sat down, stood up again. “Uh, excuse me. Your Honor?” He had done his research on this score, put in a call to Herb Schuster, a criminal guy down in Santa Barbara with whom he used to play a little golf.
“The defense respectfully requests a continuance of six months, in order for us to prepare our arguments on capital mitigation.”
“Mr. Thomas?”
The prosecutor was up—“Your Honor, the State of California has no objection”—and then down again.
Shenk exhaled. The timeline is pro forma, is what Herb had told him. Everybody pushes it. No one expects anyone to be ready in twenty days for a life-and-death hearing.
“No,” said Richard Keener. He was still staring straight ahead. He didn’t turn his head to look at the judge, or at Shenk, or anyone else.
“Wait,” said Shenk, “hold on,” and Judge Scanlon scowled at the defendant and said, “What do you mean, no?”
“Twenty days is all right,” he said. “We can do it in twenty days.”
“Now—hold on—” said Jay. “Wait.” He looked pleadingly at Beth where she sat in the benches, and she looked back at him, confused, no help. Shenk pivoted toward the judge, hands in the air. “Your Honor, I object.”
“You can’t object to your own client, Mr. Shenk.”
“Right, but I need time. The—sorry, Your Honor. The defense requires more time to prepare. Don’t we get more time? If we ask?”
“No,” said Rich again. “No more time,” and Shenk wheeled back around to him, saying “Richard, come on, stop,” and Judge Scanlon smacked her gavel a couple times quick.
Mr. Thomas for the State of California watched all of this with a sly glint. Beth was shaking her head, baffled, twisting the chain of a locket through the intersecting lines of her fingers. She was maybe twenty pounds thinner than on the day Shenk had first seen her, in the lobby of Valley Village Methodist in the autumn of 2008, tearing the head off the dumb-shit apparatchik who’d gotten in her way.
The Quiet Boy Page 7
