Bear Is Broken (15 page)

I scanned the files for names on my list. My arms were full as I
flipped through the L-M-N drawer, and I almost missed it. Then I saw
the name Lawrence Maxwell on a much-handled, begrimed, and faded
series of Redweld folders. They took up more than half the drawer.

My father was in prison for murdering my mother. Knowing our
background, most people would find it hard to believe that Teddy and
I would devote our lives to defending people accused of crimes. To an
outsider my brother and I must have seemed natural-born prosecutors.
I bent down to set a stack of files on the floor. My hands shook.
There is a scene in every Hollywood depiction of domestic abuse
where the elder son jumps between the father and the mother and
stops what is happening, but in real life I doubt it happens more
than one time in a dozen. Over the summer I’d gotten the uneasy
feeling that Teddy despised all victims and that this moral cauterization
served him well in his work. Anyone inquiring into root causes
would have to conclude that such a failure of empathy must have
been born in the experience of watching our mother’s bullying at
our father’s hands.

From the files it was obvious that they’d been in close contact, that
Teddy had visited him at San Quentin numerous times over the last
decade. Perhaps he’d meant to spare me by hiding his legal work on
our father’s behalf. In retrospect, I ought to have guessed.
The entire record of our father’s trial was before me, three Redweld
folders filled with transcripts, evidence logs, and docket sheets. And
pictures. My God, pictures.

I didn’t mean to look at them—I didn’t look at them—but even
flipping through them in a hurry I couldn’t help glimpsing a particular
piece of scroll-worked wainscoting above the threshold between
the hall and the foyer of the Sunset District house where we’d lived
when we were still a family. It was at the very top left-hand edge of a
photograph taken by a police photographer who’d been standing at
the back corner of our living room, looking toward the front door.

I willed myself to see nothing, and then I was past the photographs
and back onto safer ground, but it was too late: I might as well have
looked at them. The glimpse of wainscoting was enough to bring it all
flooding back, maybe worse than if I’d actually looked at the pictures
of Caroline’s body laid out on the floor where my father had finally
managed to beat the life out of her, and where I would find her one
afternoon when I came home from school.

Save that. Leave it for later. It does no good to describe these things,
no more good than it would have done me to look at those pictures
or not to look at them, once I knew they existed.

I flipped through the other folders. Almost as soon as Teddy got
his California bar number he’d taken over our father’s appeals, which
were voluminous. My father had never stopped protesting his innocence.
Teddy had also filed a civil rights lawsuit after Lawrence
lost his left eye to an infection that the prison medical system had
left untreated. In that case he’d negotiated a settlement for forty
thousand dollars. There was a new-looking folder marked “notes for
habeas corpus petition.”

I don’t know how long I’d been sitting there with the files spread
out before me when the shock gave way to anger. My hands shook;
my veins filled with poison. I might have been fifteen again, squinting
at microfilm, stewing in rage, imagining how it might feel to kill my
father, to beat him to death the way he’d beaten Caroline. If I’d learned
of my brother’s efforts on Lawrence’s behalf while he was still whole
in body and mind, Teddy could at least have tried to justify himself,
explaining his reasons for what he did.

If he even felt he owed me an explanation, that is. I remembered
the letter that Car had tried to hide, the one Teddy had left in the
safe to be mailed in case of his incapacitation or death. I still couldn’t
imagine what it said, and I felt even more of a coward for not opening
it. I should have been left a letter. I was the one who deserved an
explanation, not our father.

I had no desire to look at the original trial record, with its promise
of a lurid trip into the abscess at the center of my life. I shut that file
and put it in a drawer of Tanya’s desk. That left the civil rights case
and the folder labeled “notes for habeas corpus petition.” I put the
first aside, since that old, closed civil case was unlikely to be relevant
to what had happened.

Paging through Teddy’s handwritten notes, I understood that he
intended his argument to rest on the idea that the DA had unlawfully
withheld evidence suggesting that someone else might have killed our
mother. Teddy had no definite proof of our father’s innocence, but his
argument raised the specter that the police had arrested, the DA had
prosecuted, and the jury had convicted the wrong man.

I had to throw down the brief and pace the office for several minutes
until I was able to see what was in front of me again. Cheap defenselawyer
bullshit was all it was, and for a quarter of an hour I shared the
visceral, principled contempt that a champion of justice like Melanie
had acquired for Teddy and all the rest of us, the whole sordid guild.

At last I was calm enough to return to the file. Teddy’s argument for
reopening the case was that new evidence had come to light. There was
an unsigned draft of an affidavit in Teddy’s handwriting indicating that
the affiant had once worked in the San Francisco Police Department
property room and that, according to old records, there had once been
evidence that another man had been in the apartment with my mother
the day of her murder—fingerprints on a beer bottle, blood spatters on
the wall, and semen from our mother’s body—but the evidence had
either been lost, destroyed, or withheld. There was another affidavit
from Teddy stating that none of the exculpatory evidence had come
to light at trial or had ever been disclosed to the defense.

Again I had to get up from the desk. Everything here stank, like
Sharla’s testimony in Ellis’s trial. The problem was not that Teddy had
drafted the affidavit—lawyers regularly did so, but rarely before they
knew the name of the affiant.

My head was reeling. I couldn’t think straight.

Glancing up, I saw that it was just after four o’clock, which meant
that Ellis’s jury was being sent home for the weekend. I felt a shock
of surprise, followed by elation. The jurors had not reached a verdict,
or the court would have called. If they couldn’t decide on a verdict
before the weekend, there was a good chance they wouldn’t be able
to reach one at all.

More pertinent, the end of court hours meant that I was free to
go wherever I wanted without having to worry about being held in
contempt again for breaking Judge Iris’s fifteen-minute rule.
Making a quick decision, I grabbed the Keith Locke file from the
briefcase I’d been carrying earlier. There was a contacts sheet with a
home phone number for Greta and Gerald Locke. I picked up the
phone and dialed.

The phone rang twice; then a woman with an African immigrant’s
accent answered. “Yes?”

“I’d like to speak with Mrs. Locke, please. Tell her that Mr. Teddy
Maxwell is calling.”

I don’t know why I said that, except that I wanted to hear what that
name would do to the mother of Teddy’s wayward client.
After a moment a composed voice said, “Teddy Maxwell was shot
Wednesday morning. Now please tell me who you are and what your
business is.”

“I see. Your maid must have caught the wrong name. This is Leo
Maxwell calling. Teddy is my brother. I’m over here at the office trying
to get his affairs in order. You see, I’ll probably be taking over his
practice, at least until he’s well enough to return to work.” It was the
first time I’d spoken the idea out loud. “I hope you don’t mind me
just picking up the phone.”

“I suppose whether I mind or not will depend on the reason for
your call, now, won’t it?”

It threw me that she didn’t offer even perfunctory condolences. She
might have been talking to a plumbing contractor about some shoddy
tile work that was going to have to be ripped out and done over—at
the plumber’s expense, of course.

“What reason could I give that wouldn’t be offensive to you? Maybe
we should start there.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Maxwell. I’m afraid I don’t have time to play twenty
questions.”

“Fair enough. I’d like to have a few words with you about your son.
This evening, if possible. I can make it brief. If you’d rather not talk
to me, I’ll have to go to the police.”

“It isn’t possible. We’re having guests for drinks before the opera.”

“Bad timing for both of us. I was planning to go to the opera this
evening myself,” I lied. “We could speak at intermission. I’ll buy you
a glass of champagne, and we’ll drink a toast to your boy Keith and
all his accomplishments. I’ve heard great things about their new Faust.
The soprano is supposed to be marvelous. Don’t worry, you won’t
have to look for me. I’ll find you.”

“Are you out of your mind?”

I took satisfaction in having cracked her composure. It had not
proved nearly as difficult as I’d guessed. The desperate edge in her voice
made her seem human. I liked her a little better for it.
“I’ll be there in thirty minutes, then. I hope you’ll be able to fit me
into your schedule.”

I hung up the phone without waiting to hear her response. I remained
sitting at the desk for a moment, nodding to myself. That was
how it was done, I thought. That was how to handle a situation where
you couldn’t take no for an answer.

Then I realized how stupid I’d been to say thirty minutes. It might
take me that long just to find a cab.

I was lucky. In ten minutes I was able to hail a cab, and it carried me
away from downtown traffic and through the Geary tunnel without a
single red light. I was at the address in thirty-five minutes after hanging
up the phone.

The Lockes lived in Presidio Terrace, built in the aftermath of the
1906 earthquake and marketed then as San Francisco’s only all-white
neighborhood, with only one entrance, a pair of granite gateposts at
the intersection of Presidio Terrace and Arguello Boulevard. Beyond
those, Presidio Terrace makes an oval. The properties at the center of
the oval back onto one another, while those on the outer ring turn
their backs on the city. The Tudor and mission revival and Beaux-Arts
houses wear hedges like insignias. On both sides of the street mature
palm trees frame the California sky. The roses had been pruned for the
winter. Not a blade of grass was out of line.

Oddly, the place made me think of Teddy’s neighborhood across
the bay in Canyon, that enclave beneath the redwoods, as exclusive in
its own way as this one. The two neighborhoods probably had more
in common than their residents thought.

The Lockes owned a relatively modest Tudor revival, a long lodgelike
place with mansard windows, a slate roof, and three chimneys. It
was probably worth only six million. To fit a house that size onto the
lot the builder had been forced to put it sideways. From the street I
had to proceed up a long sidewalk guarded by ankle-high hedges to
reach the front door.

I don’t hold anything against rich people. I am as guilty as anyone
else of envying them. I’d love nothing more than a stable of bikes to
ride and all the time in the world to ride them. I have this dream of
traveling again the way I did after high school, seeing the world from
the saddle.

The door was opened by the same woman who’d answered the
phone. I guessed she was Nigerian. She wore a sleek gray business suit,
and her hair was cut attractively short. “Mr. Maxwell? Mrs. Locke is
expecting you. Please come this way.”

The two-story foyer was immaculate, with gleaming wood floors,
a huge silver mirror, and a chest of drawers that looked pillaged from
a French chateau. On the floor was a massive Afghan rug. A curving
staircase led up to an open hallway on the second floor.

There were signs of human life. Mail and a few photographs occupied
the top of the chest of drawers, and the door to a deep closet
stood open, revealing rows of coats and boots. A dog leash hung on
the knob. A heavy oak door to my left was closed, and in front of me
one of a pair of double doors was ajar. Through the gap I made out
the back of a cream-colored leather couch and beyond that a sunlit
expanse of hardwood floor.

“What do you do here?” I asked, both because I was curious and
because she was beautiful.

“I’m Mrs. Locke’s personal assistant.” She shot me a quick smile
over her shoulder as she led me through an open door to our right.
“Chloe.” She wore no perfume. Perhaps Mrs. Locke had a rule against
it. Nevertheless she smelled wonderful. I wanted to ask her what kind
of soap she used.

“You plan on doing that for the rest of your life?”

Another look, this time with a challenge in it. “I’m starting a joint
JD/MBA program at Stanford in the fall.”

That shut me up, but only for a second. “Give me a call if you ever
get interested in criminal law. Who knows, maybe you’ll need a lawyer
yourself.”

She palmed the card with devastating politeness, knocked once on
a door at the end of the hallway, gave me another smile with nothing
behind it, and left me waiting for the door to open.
After a second it did. “Come in, Mr. Maxwell. Let’s make this quick,
shall we? You said it was something about Keith. You mentioned the
police.”

Greta Locke was nearly six feet tall. She had silver white hair cut above
her ears, a thin gray-eyed scholar’s face with a sharp nose, and a rail-thin
body that still looked young. She’d had her hair done but wasn’t dressed
yet for the evening. She wore a man’s flannel shirt and tights. She went
to the couch across from her desk and indicated a matching leather chair
beside her. One wall was filled floor to ceiling with bookshelves. The
other wall was taken up by pictures. Behind the desk a large dormer
window let in evening light through a row of shrubs.