The Disappearance (11 page)

“If Joe Allison goes to trial with a run-of-the-mill lawyer, and gets convicted, there will always be a doubt,” De La Guerra explains. “The appeals process will drag on interminably. If he’s convicted—”

“You mean ‘
when
’?”

“—it might be overturned on a technicality. And there will be those who will say he was railroaded.” He puts a hand on Luke’s forearm, as a father would a son. “We can’t have that. It could be Ralph Tucker all over again.”

Ferdinand De La Guerra was the judge in that case. He, too, was scarred.

Luke jerks his arm away. “We? The great omnipotent ‘we’?”

De La Guerra knows Luke has to vent; he keeps his silence.

“And why should I do this?”
Jesus Christ, you old bastard, how dare you do this to me?
“Whoever takes this case is going to be vilified.”

“Because you’re the only lawyer I know who doesn’t care about his standing in the community. And because you know what can happen. And because you’re as good as they come. Are those good enough reasons?”

Luke doesn’t answer.

“There’s money,” De La Guerra offers. “You can use money, can’t you?”

“Don’t I look like I’m doing okay?” Luke asks in anger.

The old judge knows he’s angered Luke, but he has to speak his mind. “Luke Garrison living with the girlfriend of a drug dealer who’s in prison for murder? That isn’t you. You may have gone native, Luke, but that isn’t you.”

“It is now.”

“No. I don’t think so. I think this is a facade, this Luke Garrison. The real Luke Garrison loves justice. Finessing a murder charge for a drug dealer …” He lets the rest go unsaid.

Luke leans against the railing, staring up at the stars. He loves the way you can see so many stars up here. Some nights he mans his telescope for hours, getting lost in these stars. “Just out of idle curiosity,” he asks. “Not that I want to get involved in this crap.” He turns to De La Guerra. “Who’s going to be prosecuting this?”

“Ray Logan. Personally.”

Luke grimaces. “His ticket to ride.”

De La Guerra nods.

“But of course.” He bites at a piece of cuticle on his thumb. “Who’s going to pay for this defense? Capital murder case, that’s big money.”

“Allison has a hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars of his own, and he’ll find more if he has to. He doesn’t qualify for a public defender, and he wouldn’t take one anyway. He wants a quality litigator who knows his way around a courtroom.”

Luke wraps a comforting arm around his mentor’s shoulders.

“It’s great having you up here, Freddie,” he says warmly. “I’ve missed you.” He leads the older man back into the house. “But not enough to fall on my sword in front of Ray Logan and the rest of the world.”

Lying in bed awake, staring at the ceiling upon which the moon, shining through the high uncurtained window, makes rivers of light that lap rhythmically from corner to corner, Luke is aware of Riva, also awake, naked like he is, her back to him. She isn’t confident enough in their relationship to feel comfortable intruding on whatever’s going on inside his head. They have been living together for months, but they’re not partners like that.

“You’re awake too.”

“Yes,” she says, grateful that he is letting her in.

“Do you know why the old man came up here?”

“He wants you to go back to Santa Barbara for some purpose, I assume.”

“He wants me to take on a case.”

That’s enough of an excuse to roll over and face him. “What would be the point of that?” She looks at his profile, trying to figure out what’s going on. She wants to get inside him. He has not yet let her; they’re good as far as they go, but they don’t go as far as she would like.

She’s in love with Luke, and doesn’t want to lose him.

“There’s good money in it.”

“That’s the reason? Are you boning me?” She’s a plain talker; in her world you don’t put doilies under your teacup.

Now he turns so they’re looking at each other. “The reason would be ego,” he admits. “So I could kick some hometown ass.” He looks away again. “To show the bastards they didn’t run me out of town,” he confesses to the wave pattern on the ceiling. “I left of my own accord, and now I’m coming back the same way.”

“That sounds good, Luke. It’s also a lie.”

He’s still having a conversation with the ceiling. “Yeah, but if I say it enough, maybe I’ll start believing it myself. Which I need to do,” he adds, “at some point in this lifetime.”

“Why do you want to hurt yourself when you don’t have to?” she asks. Then she says, “Aren’t you happy here? Reasonably happy?” She doesn’t want to say that—it’s pushing him into a corner—but she can’t help herself.

He turns back to her. “Yes, I am.”

“But a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.”

“I can’t live off you indefinitely, Riva. I’ve always felt guilty about that.”

“You live with me in a house I’m lucky enough to own which the feds would’ve confiscated if you hadn’t pulled off the defense you did,” she tells him in exasperation—how many times have they had this stupid conversation? She sits up. Her breasts are small, lovely in shape; the nipples, long and slender like her fingers and toes, stiffen from the sudden contact with the mild chill in the air. “Stop beating yourself up about that, okay? And me. And stop using it as an excuse to feel sorry for yourself. You don’t have anything to feel sorry for, Luke. Your wife left you. It’s not the end of the world.” She touches his temple with the tips of her fingers. “Look to your future, Luke, there’s plenty there. The stuff back in Santa Barbara’s over. That’s why they call it the past.”

He sighs. “I’m hung up on self-image, I guess. I left with my tail between my legs.”

“There’s other ways to resolve that, and you know it.”

“Oh, yes, I know it. I don’t know that I’m going to go back and do this. It sounds like a stone-cold loser to me, and when I go back—make that
if
—I want to make sure I’m covered in glory. An up-front done deal.”

“Then you’d better not go back yet,” she says sagely. “And that’s me talking without even knowing what your old friend’s hocking you about.”

Enough with the talking. This conversation isn’t doing anything for either of them except making their heads hurt and driving a wedge into something that isn’t that strong to begin with.

She rolls onto him, rubbing her chest against his, kissing him on the mouth. Down lower she feels him becoming aroused—almost, she thinks, despite himself.

She does the work. He doesn’t fight it, that’s the best he can do with all these conflicts fighting for space in his head. In his heart, too.

Breakfast is light—coffee, muffins, fruit—and early. Riva sets the ingredients on the kitchen table. She’s dressed in a tailored skirt, high-necked silk blouse, pantyhose, low heels. With her lipstick and makeup in place she’s striking enough to be a model in
Vogue
. “I’ve got a five o’clock class, so I won’t be done until seven.”

“Maybe I’ll come in and we’ll have dinner down there.”

“Let me know.” She shakes De La Guerra’s hand. “It was nice meeting you. I hope you’re not trying to talk him into something he’ll regret.” There is no smile in the voice as she says this.

“So do I,” the old man answers truthfully. He hadn’t known Luke was with a woman. A good woman. He might not have come, had he known.

The glasspack mufflers trumpet Riva’s departure. Luke pours coffee for De La Guerra. “She’s a bail bondsman in town,” he explains. “She used to be a paralegal, but the murder thing screwed that up. She’s a survivor, is what she is.”

“I like her, Luke.”

“She likes you, too, but she isn’t happy you came up here. Not with that crappy offer you made me.”

“I gathered that. I’m not sure I am, either, now that I’ve seen what you have here.”

Luke spears a piece of melon. “I don’t know what I have here, Freddie,” he says. “Whatever it is, it isn’t the whole picture,” he adds candidly. “I’m smart enough about myself to know that.” He takes a bite off the end of his fork. “And if what’s here’s the right thing, it’ll still be here whether or not I go down to S.B.”

The old man takes a thick sheaf of papers from his briefcase and lays them on the table. “This is the indictment and all the corollary material,” he says. “In case you want to look it over.”

“I’ll think about it, Freddie. No promises.”

De La Guerra starts the engine on his rental car. Luke grips the old man’s shoulder through the open window. “Don’t be a stranger, now that you know the way.”

“You too.” He feels tears welling in the corners of his eyes. As he gets older it seems they come more easily—an intimation of mortality, he’s sure. Then he says what he’s wanted to say since he saw Luke last night, and saw what a changed man he’s become. “You can’t live in your pain forever, Luke. Sooner or later you have to face your demons and conquer them.”

First her last night, Luke thinks, now him. Opposite sides of the same coin. “Why do I have to?”

Because of who you are, the old man thinks. But he doesn’t say that. “See you again, I hope,” is all he says.

“See you.”

The old man takes off down the long driveway. In the rearview mirror he sees Luke watching him. He turns his attention ahead for a moment, to make sure he doesn’t run off into the ditch.

When he looks in the mirror again, Luke is gone.

Riva’s crying; she can’t help it. “You’re an asshole.”

He knows he is. “I’m merely going to go down and take a look around,” he says, disgusted with his own evasion even as he hears it coming out of his mouth. “I haven’t been back in a long time. I want to see my old friends.”

“Yeah, right. Like you’ve been dying to go back and see all your old friends. What were their names again? I don’t recall hearing about one of them.”

Since De La Guerra left, Luke has spent the day reading the material, his interest slowly but surely captured. Like the old firehorse whose ears prick up when he hears the alarm go off, the combative juices have started percolating.

It’s a great case for the prosecution—he would hit this one out of the ballpark with one hand tied behind his back. The key chain and running shoes are damning pieces of evidence, overwhelming. And Allison knew the girl, knew his way around her house. What more could a prosecutor want?

Granted, there are a few holes in it. There are holes in every case. These are technical holes, nothing substantive at the core, barely enough for a crafty defense lawyer to start to build a defense around. Make that the shell of a defense; there would have to be more than technical holes to mount an honest-to-God defense.

But then he has to step back and look at reality.
Who are you kidding?
he says to himself. The only way the prosecution’s case could be any better would be if Allison had actually been caught in the act of killing her.

Luke lays the material aside. He’s deceiving himself if he thinks this has any kind of a chance. The guy is guilty.

Get real with yourself: this case isn’t what’s pulling you in. It’s the past that’s talking to you, dude, whispering in your ear. The voice from the grave of Ralph Tucker, the guilty man you prosecuted and sent to his death, who was innocent after all.

He can’t imagine he ever will get over that. His old mentor, Judge De La Guerra, can’t either, which is why he came. And why Luke will drive down there and talk to Joe Allison, the hapless defendant.

It can hurt Riva, a woman who loves him who has taken a big risk in doing that. The problem is, he doesn’t love her, not enough. Not the way she loves him, not with the depth. He is still, after three long years, too unresolved about Polly to love another woman that way.

Face up to your demons, the old man had admonished him. That’s what he wants to do.

Riva isn’t buying that excuse, not for one second. “You want out,” she said when he’d told her his plans. “You didn’t even know it until that old man came up and gave you an excuse, but you do.”

He doesn’t know if that’s true or not, but there is something tearing at him and he has to go and check it out. “I’ll be back in a week.”

“That’s why you’re packing for a year.”

“In case I have to stay longer than a week.” Hearing these phony words come out of his mouth, he feels ashamed. At least don’t lie to her. She deserves more than that. “I’ll call you tonight.”

“Don’t hold your breath waiting for me to answer the phone.”

Luke motors into Santa Barbara in the glasspack-muffler pickup truck, a 1965 Dodge with a ridiculously huge V-8 that gets six miles to the gallon. The truck is pulling a U-Haul rental cube in which are an old Triumph Bonneville motorcycle, bought when he moved up north and changed his life, and a surfboard. If nothing else comes out of this, at least he’ll get in some righteous surfing.

De La Guerra has booked a suite for him at the Biltmore—Joe Allison is footing the bill, why not go first class? Allison also wrote out a check for five thousand dollars, which will cover Luke’s other short-term expenses and buy a few hours of his time. In the unlikely event Luke stays with this, his fee will be three hundred dollars an hour, plus living expenses and other necessities, such as a private investigator. Three hundred an hour is top money for Santa Barbara. Luke warned De La Guerra that if he was coming back, he was coming back in style, first class. Allison, through De La Guerra, was happy to pay the freight.

“He has no choice,” De La Guerra candidly admitted when Luke phoned and said he’d come down for a look-see: no promises, no commitment, just a meet-and-greet. “I’m glad you’re coming, Luke, and if you decide it’s hopeless, or not for you, I’ll understand.”

Luke decides to pass on the Biltmore. For now, he wants to maintain a low profile. His presence in town will be known soon enough, but as much as he can, he wants to stay out of the limelight.

He takes a room at one of the nondescript motels on Upper State Street and checks in with De La Guerra. They’ll get together in an hour, then tomorrow morning he’ll drive over to the jail to see Allison. He helps himself to a vodka from the minibar, sits on the edge of the bed, and dials long distance.

The answering machine picks up. Riva’s voice, cool and efficient. “At the tone leave your name, phone number, the time of your call, and we’ll return it as soon as we can.” Plus a new line, just added on. “If this is you, Luke, go fuck yourself.”