Private Screening (14 page)

“Nonfilter,” Lord said. “I'll remember.”

The deputy stepped between them, clapped Carson in handcuffs, and led him away. He did not look back.

DiPalma was waiting. “Got anything?” he asked harshly. “Or any
one
?”

“Not yet.” Lord hesitated. “Where do I find Damone?”

DiPalma's chin raised. “At the Fairmont.”

“Thanks.”

DiPalma stepped in front of him. “If I get no help from Carson, it's a death penalty case.”

“I'll hold the thought.” Lord brushed past him, headed for the elevator.

When he reached the entrance, the crowd remained, though it was nearly light.

Reporters surrounded him, cameras, flashbulbs. It had happened too quickly, Lord thought, and in the wrong way.

“Is there a conspiracy …?”

The question was lost in others. Into the nearest microphone, Lord said slowly and distinctly, “Mr. Carson has asked me to defend him. I intend to.”

“Fucker,” someone shouted from the sidewalk. “You'll get it in the back.”

Scattered cheers arose. Three police formed a wedge, breaking Lord through to the alley where he had parked.

His windshield was shattered.

“Thanks anyhow,” Lord murmured. Then he started along the sidewalk, past TV trucks and away from the crowd and cops, rushing toward his office, a mile away.

Cass was sitting with a newspaper folded in her lap. It was seven o'clock.

“Sorry,” Lord said. “It took longer than I thought.”

Cass brushed a hand through short red-brown hair. She looked tired, subdued. “What's he like?”

“Semidissociative or a brilliant actor.” Lord sprawled in his chair. “He's also a Vietnam vet.”

“
That's
his reason?”

The phone began ringing. “The reason he gave was politics.”

“Not money? Do you believe that?”

“Clients lie to you all the time.” Lord paused. “The stuff about politics sounded like a recorded message. So did everything else.”

“Maybe he eats junk food.”

Lord stared at her. “I know you liked Kilcannon,” he said at last. “But I can't turn this down.”

Cass smiled bleakly. “What does Marcia say?”

“What you'd expect. She liked Kilcannon too.”

The telephone kept ringing. After a time, Cass said, “I'll try to help keep things going. You won't have much time.”

Lord imagined trying to build a defense while it was examined by the media and second-guessed in bars. “I'll need help with Carson too. Right away.”

With exaggerated care, Cass picked up the telephone, depressed the button, and left it off the hook.

“Carson answered DiPalma with a formula,” Lord said, “right out of the manual for combat soldiers. It's interesting in light of how he acted.” Cass picked up a pad and pencil. “Call the VA and veterans' groups. Find out who I can talk to about Vietnam stress syndrome, especially psychiatrists.”

“Aren't you jumping to conclusions?”

“I have to jump somewhere. But I also want school, service and employment records, any priors, psychiatric treatment, et cetera, et cetera. Go heavy on political involvement—see if it's real. After that we'll talk to friends and relatives. I think he's got some in New Jersey—Monmouth County.”

Cass wrote this down. “Unless Carson gives me some basis for a deal,” Lord went on, “I'll have to plead him guilty or insane. DiPalma knows that. He'll try to connect Carson with co-conspirators, radical politics, or the robbery—any form of rational motive—and send him to the gas chamber. To prove him legally insane, we've got to show that he didn't understand what he was doing and that it was wrong.” Lord paused, searching for a rationale. “A jury might believe that shooting Kilcannon was a crazy thing to do.…”

As he paused, Cass glanced at the folded newspaper.

“What is it?” Lord asked.

She placed it on his desk, open to the front page. The headline was “Kilcannon Slain.” Beneath it, Stacy Tarrant bent over him, lips parted.

Lord stared at the photograph. “We met last night,” he murmured finally. “DiPalma's going to kill me with her.”

Cass turned away.

The telephone started buzzing, interrupting their silence. “The receptionist will need a standard speech,” Lord said, crisp again. “No interviews or statements until I decide otherwise. Meanwhile, I'm going to the Fairmont.”

She seemed to color. “You're trying to see Stacy Tarrant?”

“Her manager—a man named Damone. He reported the robbery. He also hired Carson, which bothers me. I'd like to get to him before he has time to think.”

“Isn't he the one in Chinatown who tried to save Kilcannon?”

“Was he?” Lord rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I guess that slipped my mind. Anyhow, I've got to see if he'll tell me what he told the police.”

He stood to leave, then turned back, angling his head toward the newspaper. “Read that for me,” he asked softly, “then throw it out, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Thanks.”

Lord headed out the door.

The trip was uneventful. The passengers on the bus seemed drained; the reporters watching the ornate lobby of the Fairmont did not yet know his face. When he picked up the house phone, asking Damone's room number, no one heard him.

He took the elevator to the sixth floor, to evade the guard who would be waiting on the eighth. But the second guard he'd half-expected patrolled the stairwell.

“Are you a guest, sir?”

“A vistor—to room 803.”

The guard shook his head. “That's Mr. Damone's.”

Lord took a card from his wallet, wrote “Harry Carson” above his name, then added, “Vietnam?” “Give him this.”

The guard stepped into the hallway, calling someone.

As moments passed, Lord had the sense of acting out a tasteless dream, certain that Damone would not see him. When a cop appeared to shepherd him upstairs, he was startled.

Two uniformed police watched the suite next to Damone's.

The guard followed Lord's gaze. Pointing to 803, he said, “It's
this
one.”

The door was cracked open. Hesitant, Lord knocked, then stepped inside.

The drapes were drawn. Sitting cross-legged on the floor was a barrel-chested man with olive skin, black eyes, and a black beard. He stared with such fixity that Lord simply murmured, “I'm Carson's lawyer.”

Damone's head tilted toward the next suite. The gesture said that Lord had so little excuse for coming that it did not require comment.

“Sorry,” Lord said. “But I'm trying to find out why.”

With the fluid menace of a boxer, Damone rose and pulled the drapes open. Turning, he asked, “What makes you think I know?”

Like the guarded suite, the sense of Damone's latent anger unsettled Lord. The sunlight hurt his eyes.

He turned from it, walking to the center of the room. “You never discussed Kilcannon?”

“No.” In the light, Damone's face was blunt-featured and hard. Only his voice became softer. “Doesn't he say why?”

“Not yet.” Lord saw that there were circles beneath Damone's eyes. “Before the concert, how did Carson act?”

“Edgy. But he did his job.” Damone finished with lacerating irony. “The sound system was perfect.”

To a jury, Lord knew, this would spell cool-headed sanity. “Did the police ask that?”

“Yes.” Damone watched him. “But not about Vietnam.”

“He mentioned you were there,” Lord offered. “I hoped maybe you could help me.”

“What does
he
say?”

Lord tried to deflect the question. “It's more how he acts—remote, almost detached. I thought somehow the war might have caused that.”

Damone was silent. “Nothing that happened there,” he said finally, “justifies
this
.”

“I guess I wondered about the nature of his service.”

Damone still watched. Lord began to feel a wordless second conversation beneath the first, in which Damone was warning him off. “We were in a special unit,” he answered tersely.

“What unit?”

“We didn't have a name. And I don't tell war stories.”

Lord tried another angle. “I guess he was okay in Vietnam.”

“Not exactly.” Damone's tone grew flatter, quieter. “He'd been in the Long Binh Jail. For assaulting an officer.”

At that moment, Lord saw himself as DiPalma, constructing a pattern of violence. “Was there a court-martial?”

Damone walked to the window. “No.” The voice was soft now. “I got him out.”

The answer had such resonance that Lord felt it in everything Damone had said or done before.

“What made you do that?”

“We were looking for volunteers.” Damone's shoulders dipped. “Before, they'd processed us into 'Nam together.”

“What was he like then?”

“Young.” Facing Lord, there was movement in the black liquid eyes. “Only kids and suckers fought that war.”

Lord paused. “But later, you hired him for Stacy Tarrant.”

“He couldn't keep a job—I felt sorry for him.” Damone looked at the floor. “Again.”

Lord let that linger. “When you tackled Kilcannon, was there something about Carson that worried you?”

There was a long silence. “It was reflexes.”

“War reflexes?”

“Yes.”

“But Vietnam doesn't relate to what Carson did.”

Damone's gaze rose to Lord's. “What makes you think,” he said slowly, “that anything I'd say would
help
Harry Carson.”

In his tone, Lord heard time running out. “What about the money?” he asked.

Damone gave a first, bitter smile. “Someone kicked in the door and ripped it off—happens all the time on the road. I forgot that when Harry shot Kilcannon.” His speech suggested barely suppressed anger. “You could say I blew my job.”

“That much cash would fill a suitcase. How could someone just walk off with it?”

Damone crossed his arms. “Did you at least see a
film
of the shooting?”

“Yes.”

“The people there,” he finished, “were watching Stacy and Kilcannon.”

There was feeling in the words, a guilt and self-division far deeper than anger. “How is she?” Lord asked.

Damone's face and eyes went hard.

“Take off,” he said.

“Remember where we were last night?” Marcia asked.

Lord ate chili from a can. It was ten o'clock; Christopher was in bed. He had not seen her since Kilcannon's death, had not slept in forty-eight hours. He did not answer.

The telephone rang.

Marcia answered. “He's eating,” she snapped. “Don't call here.” Slamming it down, she stared at Lord.

“I know how you must feel,” he said.

“They've been calling all day—not just reporters. Some man said he'd find
me
if he couldn't get to you.”

It startled him. “I'll call the police.…”

“How can you defend someone like that?”

Framed in the kitchen door, she was rigid. “I can't look at it as you do, Marsh. Sometimes I wish I could.”

“But this is the big case,” she said harshly. “Isn't it?”

He looked at the newspaper beside his plate. In black borders was a statement by the president, who had despised Kilcannon in life. “Today we mourn the tragic loss of a gallant young leader, so ripe with promises to keep.…”

“Yes,” Lord said finally. “This is the big case.”

“Even if it's a fucking
robbery
?”

“That's DiPalma's problem.” Lord kept staring at the paper. “In one sense, I'm better off not knowing where the money went. It might be no help to Carson.”

“I don't like you for that.”

“You're not alone.”

“Damn you. Don't you ever
feel
anything?”

He looked up again. “Maybe you should go to your folks.…”

“I'm not going to drop out of life because you've done this.”

“Then we'll put in an alarm system.”

“How can we afford that? Is Carson rich?”

Lord smiled faintly. “I'm afraid this one's at government rates.…”

“Tony, we can't take out a second mortgage. I won't sign.”

Lord watched her. “I'll call Tom Mulvaney at the police department,” he said finally. “How's Christopher?”

“Confused. The whole thing's over his head—he can't even understand why you couldn't go to the ballgame.”

Moments ago, Lord had gone to Christopher's room, remembering that he had done this the night before.

“Drop it for
his
sake,” Marcia said. Pausing, she finished in a lower voice. “After all, you're the one who wanted him.”

In that moment, Lord forgot himself. “Hasn't it been kind of handy to have someone
else
to blame things on? You might have won the Nobel Prize by now. Hell, you might even have gotten a job. I don't recall telling you not to.”

Marcia paled. In a trembling voice, she said, “That's unforgivable.”

“So much is.”

She turned away. Standing, Lord could not find words to cause the words before to vanish. “I'm sorry.…”

The phone rang again. Marcia started, but did not move. “We'll get an answering machine,” Lord tried.

She was silent; the phone kept ringing. Lord spoke to her back. “I have to go out.”

The phone still rang. “At ten-thirty,” she said dully.

“Yes.”

She folded her arms, hugging herself.

“Keep the dead bolt locked,” he told her, and left.

Crossing the tracks on the edge of Potrero Hill, Lord passed through blocks of corrugated warehouses. It was like the underside of any city, except that the lights of downtown San Francisco were bright and close.