Bear Is Broken (23 page)

“For what it’s worth, I always said that he should tell you what he
was doing,” she said. “You were bound to find out sooner or later.”

“Well, now I’ve found out.” I took the gin out and poured some for
her into a coffee mug. “Why did you and Teddy split up?”

“The marriage or the practice?”

“Were there different reasons?”

“What are you driving at, Leo?”

“They’re convening a grand jury tomorrow. I told you, they’ve got
a snitch from San Quentin who’s going to testify that Santorez was
behind the shooting.”

“And—?”

“I don’t know what his testimony is going to be. Only that the detective
on the case, Anderson, seems to think it’ll be pretty damning.
Supposedly Teddy stole a lot of money from Santorez.”

She blinked, then knocked back a slug of gin. “If that’s true, then
the Santorez idea suddenly makes a lot of sense.”

“You told me before you thought it was this other guy, whomever
Keith was covering for. His partner, I guess.”

“Maybe it was.” She watched me over the rim of her mug.

“Teddy was putting together notes for a habeas brief for Lawrence.”

I opened the file, took out the stiff envelope, and opened it. My voice
wanted to quit on me but I went on. “These pictures were in the file.
That’s Gerald Locke going into my parents’ old house. That’s Gerald
and my mother in the park.”

“This would be Keith Locke’s father, I presume?” Jeanie studied the
prints as if she’d never seen them before. Maybe she hadn’t. “You’ve got
to hand it to Teddy,” she finally said. “Imagine the odds of something
like this turning up after all these years.”

“Teddy obviously was going to argue that the police knew another
man had been with my mother the day she was killed. If she’d been
having an affair with Gerald, that’d make him suspect number one. But
why wasn’t he? There was evidence of her having been with another
man, evidence that was either lost or deliberately destroyed and never
disclosed to the defense. When Teddy filed that brief, Gerald’s name
was going to be all over it.”

She started to say something, then didn’t.

I put the pictures back in the envelope. “Do you think these are real?”

“As opposed to figments of our imagination?” She tried for a smile.

“We both know that Teddy has a reputation for fabricating evidence.
That’s what I was getting at when I asked why you split up. Was it
because you found out how dirty he was?”

“If you believe that, you’re just as bad as the rest of them.” She was
pale with anger. She went on: “This stuff about your brother fabricating
evidence and putting on perjurers started in the DA’s office.

The truth is that Car went out there and pounded the pavement and
found the witnesses Teddy needed to win tough cases. He’s the best
investigator in the city. And Teddy’s light years better than any other
defense attorney in town. He’s smarter and he works harder. He has
no life. That’s the reason we broke up, if you need to know.” She took
another swallow of gin. “I wanted a life. I still do.”

“Car killed a woman yesterday. A prostitute named Martha.”

“What?”

I told her a simplified version of my activities without mentioning
Christine Locke. I said that I’d met Martha at the Seward and that I’d
gone to her apartment and found her shot to death with Teddy’s gun.
I told her about my interview in the homicide office at 850 Bryant.
Someday maybe it would make a funny story, how scared I’d been.
For now I could only tell it straight.

“And why do you think Car would have killed her?”

“She knew something about why Teddy was shot. Either that or she
knew whatever it was they shot Teddy for knowing.”

“So Car killed this prostitute, and Gerald Locke had Teddy shot.
Have you got any kind of theory that makes sense of all this?”

“Teddy was shot for a reason, right?”

“That doesn’t mean they were shot for the same reason.”

Remembering the message on my brother’s home answering machine
—Martha’s voice,
This is Chris and Martha calling
—I was sure that
Christine hadn’t told me the half of her relationship with my brother.
I was working on the assumption that the person who’d killed Martha
had shot Teddy, too.
Fix this.
The gun in Martha’s apartment, the
money missing from Santorez’s trust account—it all seemed to come
back to Car.

Jeanie went on: “For me the chief thing is that Teddy’s lying there
in the hospital. I’m not in the business of solving crimes, Leo. I’m not
a lawyer on this one, and I’m certainly not a cop. I’m just someone
who cares about your brother. My ex-husband.”

Maybe it didn’t matter to her who had shot Teddy, not the same
way that it mattered to me. She’d spent her adult life undermining
assumptions most people took for granted—that it was possible to
say for certain that this event had happened, that this person was
responsible, and that he should suffer this penalty for his crime. The
human world was about chaos, her weary gaze seemed to warn, and
it was the worst kind of foolishness to believe that we could impose
order on it.

She paused. “Maybe the police are right,” she said. “Teddy might
have stolen the money from Santorez. After all, it’s hard when you’re
in a solo practice. One year there’s money, the next there isn’t, but the
bills keep coming. And that big fat client trust account is just sitting
there. Maybe he figured he could take some out, then put it back when
he caught a big case. It wouldn’t surprise me if he’d done it before and
gotten away with it.”

“No one else had access to the gun,” I said. “It had to be Car. On
Thursday he was here when I came back to the office. I pulled it and
he took it away from me, locked it in the safe. I didn’t have the combination,
but he did. He’d already opened it and taken something out.
I’m sure that was the gun in Martha’s apartment, the one she was shot
with.” I didn’t mention the twin in Teddy’s bedside table.

Jeanie said, “I think we should go out for pizza rather than sit here
and drink all this gin.”

She rose. I had no choice but to follow. I knew of nothing else I
might say to hold her in that chair.
We cut through the empty financial district to North Beach, Jeanie
keeping half a step ahead of me. I tried to draw abreast of her but she
only walked faster. It was a long walk.

The entrance of Tommaso’s was crowded with people waiting for
tables. I had to edge through to put our names in. When I returned
I half expected her to be gone, but she was leaning outside the door
holding two glasses of wine.

I found that my appetite for asking unanswerable questions had
passed. Right now it seemed enough to be with her, waiting for a
table, sharing our grief over Teddy, even if that grief expressed itself in
each of us differently.

I’d told the host we wanted a booth, because we’d have no privacy
at the long communal tables. We drank two glasses of wine each before
being seated. Tommaso’s had always been our place, hers and mine
and Teddy’s.

“You don’t actually know it was Teddy’s gun in that apartment,”
Jeanie said when we’d sat down. “The police nodded, they acted like
what you were saying was very interesting, they took down your
completely insane statement, and then they let you walk out of there
when they got bored.”

“The gun might not have been registered. They had no way of
knowing.”

She spread her hands on the table. “Leo, Car didn’t do this. Hurting
women isn’t really his style. Much less murdering them. Trust me.”

“You must know what kind of man he is, Jeanie.”

“What kind of man is he?”

“He’s a pimp. Keith’s partner. It’s probably Car that Keith thinks
he’s hiding from, if he’s hiding from anyone. Which I’m beginning to
doubt.”

She was laughing now, so hard that she blushed in embarrassment.

“The Green Light? You think Teddy would’ve allowed that?”

“Car was recruiting Teddy’s clients, setting up his operation. They
had an argument the week before Teddy was shot. That was when the
lid came off. Teddy must have finally figured out what Car was doing.”
This time she didn’t try to suppress her laughter. “Half an hour ago
your prime suspect was Gerald Locke. Now you’re saying Car killed
Teddy?” Her tone was exasperated.

My head swam from the wine. A wave of dizziness washed over me.
“I don’t know what I’m saying.”

She went on more gently: “If Car was doing what you say he was
doing, Teddy would have known. And if Teddy knew, then either he
would have had to be in on it or Car would have been gone. I’m not
saying Teddy wasn’t in on it. He cared about helping clients. He didn’t
particularly care how they made their living. If he saw a chance to get
some girls off the street and improve their quality of life, maybe he
would have gone for it. But Car couldn’t have done it alone without
Teddy knowing what he was up to.”

She was right: Teddy was too familiar with his clients for something
like that to escape him. He would have known.

The pizza came. It was Jeanie who broke the silence, once we’d
stopped eating. “I think prostitution should be legal. So did Teddy.”

“Obviously, if he was in on the Green Light. With Santorez’s money,
no less.”

“Come on, Leo.” She paused again. “Look, I should have told you
this sooner, but I’m going back to private practice. I’ll be taking over
the lease on the office and representing most of Teddy’s old clients. I
imagine that Tanya and Car will work for me, but, of course, they’re
free to do what they want. There’s still an empty desk. You could use
it until you get on your feet.”

I just stared at her, thinking of all that I’d learned about my brother
in the last four days. I thought about her refusal even to entertain the
thought that Car might have been the one to kill Martha, cleaning up
loose ends. And then the disappointment hit me. I should have known
it was too ambitious to be true, my own plan to take over Teddy’s practice.
There was no question of going up against Jeanie. If you were a
defendant searching for representation, who would you prefer, Monkey
Boy or Jeanie Napolitano, with two hundred jury trials under her belt?
I took a deep breath and let it out. “In that case, I guess I should
let you know that I’ll be representing Santorez at his arraignment
for attempting to murder Teddy. Assuming the grand jury returns an
indictment. I expect it will.”

Now it was her turn to stare. Then she dropped her eyes and lifted
another slice of pizza. “You want to be disbarred for harboring a conflict
of interest, you go right ahead. But if I were you, I’d try to hang
on to that bar card now that you’ve got it.”

“He’ll sign a waiver. He has a right to the attorney of his choice,
and I won’t be representing him in any substantive proceeding. What
I’m going to do is enter a not-guilty plea; then I’ll march out of the
courtroom and inform the press that the DA’s charged the wrong
man. I can’t prove Santorez didn’t do it. But even if Teddy did take
that money, it doesn’t feel right.”

She chewed slowly. She wiped her mouth, drained her glass, and
signaled the waiter for our check. “It doesn’t
feel
right,” she echoed
skeptically. “Just don’t make the mistake of thinking you know what
you’re doing.”

I’d imagined Teddy saying much the same thing to me. Without
warning there were tears in my eyes. She reached across the table and
touched my hand, then quickly withdrew the touch. I grabbed the
bill when it came.

During our long walk back through the financial district I racked
my brain for some neutral topic of conversation but quickly realized
we had nothing more to say to each other, a feeling that came to me
like news of the death of someone I’d known long ago.

At her car Jeanie touched cold lips to my cheek. “Try to remember
you still have a brother,” she said. “I’m afraid someday you’re going to
wish you’d spent more of this time with him. I’m not judging you.”

I looked away, impatient to be gone. I knew she was right, but I
couldn’t tell her that. She drove off, and I walked home and fell into bed.

Monday morning found me once again standing in the doorway of
Teddy’s hospital room. It was early, too early even for Jeanie. I’d passed a
restless night. I’d kept dreaming that he was dying and I couldn’t get to
him. I ran up and down stairways and halls in a building more sprawling
and labyrinthine than any hospital in existence—but always I found
the last door locked. Meanwhile the alarms sounded
code blue, code blue.
The arrival on rounds of Dr. Gottlieb and his four residents prodded
me into the room, if only because I knew they’d quickly kick me out.
Teddy had gotten a shave but otherwise looked no different, maybe
slightly gaunter, like something that had wilted in the refrigerator.
I went down the hall to wait in the lounge. I kept expecting Jeanie
to show up, but she hadn’t arrived by the time Dr. Gottlieb came down
the hall to talk to me.

“I was hoping I might catch you this morning,” he said, sitting down
by me. “How’s the legal profession?”

I was dressed for court. “It won’t ever be the same without my
brother.” I steeled myself. “Where are we at with what we discussed?”

“In regards to that conversation I told you we might have? Nothing’s
changed. Your brother’s condition hasn’t improved; but at the same
time, it hasn’t gotten noticeably worse. Of course, lack of improvement
is itself a concern. At this point we can only wait and hope. Every
day that passes without improvement, however, makes the prognosis
slightly worse.”

“I can’t stand having him like this,” I heard myself say. “I can’t stand
it. I know he’d hate it. I don’t want this—this suffering—to go on a
second longer than it has to.” It was not what I’d meant to say, but I’d
said what I meant.

“Whose suffering—yours or his?”