Eyes of a Child (61 page)

Brooks managed a thin smile. ‘You can't prove
any
of this.'

‘Because you'll
lie?'
Caroline gave him a look of mock amazement. ‘Oh, Mac, why didn't I consider that? Now let's see – you'll need
other
people to lie too, won't you? Such as a cop to say that
he
, not Colt, called you about Richie. Why do I keep remembering Richard Nixon?' She spoke quietly now. ‘You are
such
a fool. Drop the dime on Colt, and all you are is finished. Try to
lie
about it, and you'll do time.' She smiled. ‘Our prisons really aren't all they could be. How do you fancy becoming the special friend of someone named Bubba, a lonely guy with a yen for law enforcement.'

Brooks's eyes narrowed. ‘Paget will be right there with me. If you tie Richie to Colt, it's like writing ‘motive' in neon lights. Our good friend Victor will get
your
client on the way to getting
my
job.'

That might be right, Caroline guessed. But somewhere behind Brooks's opaque expression, a proposition was forming. ‘Assuming that the jury doesn't view Richie's demise as a public service,' she retorted. ‘But
your
demise is a given.'

Brooks sat back. ‘Spit it out, Caroline.'

Caroline gave him a long, cool look. ‘I want this case dismissed.'

Brooks's laugh was a curt bark. ‘Send me the subpoena. Like Victor, I prefer murder to suicide.'

‘Fine.' Caroline stood to leave. ‘I wish I could say this was interesting. But it hasn't even been that.'

Brooks shook his head in disbelief. ‘Quit the theatrics. You came here looking for a deal. Sit down and listen.'

Caroline stared down at him. ‘Only out of respect for your office,' she said, and sat again.

Brooks waited until she was settled. ‘One offer, my first and last. Are you listening closely?'

‘Just speak slowly, Mac. So that I can keep up with you.'

‘You get your voluntary manslaughter. Sixteen years – in reality, Christ Paget will be out in eight.' He paused. ‘I'll keep the offer open until the end of our case. Take a run at our eyewitness if you want. Then you can decide whether you want to take it or go for broke.'

‘And if we take it?'

‘
You
drop the subpoena.' Brooks paused for emphasis. ‘And you –
and
Chris – forget any thoughts you ever had about making my life hard.'

Caroline pretended to think awhile. ‘Doesn't that leave me with an unexplained loose end? The money.'

For the first time, Brooks looked genuinely amused. ‘The
drug
money, you mean? Make all the mischief you want with
that
, and I'll keep Victor out of your way. Which is what you've been planning on all along.' Brooks leaned forward. ‘One stipulation.
If
we find new evidence against Christ Paget, our deal is off. I don't want to get hung out to dry.'

That was reasonable, Caroline knew. ‘As long as you're not holding back some evidence yourself.'

‘We're not. If we were, and Lerner found us out, he'd dismiss the case.'

After a moment, Caroline nodded. ‘I'll talk to Chris.'

‘“If you could occupy any place in history,”' Carlo Paget read aloud, ‘“at any time, what would it be?”' He put down the assignment sheet next to his computer, muted the Pink Floyd disc on his player, and turned back to his father. ‘Any ideas?'

Paget thought. ‘How about: “I'd be President of the United States, with unlimited pardoning power.”'

Carlo gave him a pinched smile. ‘Not funny, Dad.'

By Paget's estimate, Carlo would be on the stand in two more days. ‘No,' Paget said. ‘I guess not. I gather that neither Marie Antoinette nor Ronald Reagan appeals to you much.'

‘Only as a couple.'

Paget took a seat on the end of Carlo's bed. The scene felt familiar. Carlo's room, with its view of the bay at night; the plaques from his athletic teams; the framed picture of his mother, Mary Carelli. Carlo himself, baseball cap stuck backward on his curly black hair, scowling at the computer. And Paget, inveigled by his son to help with an assignment. But this time, Paget sensed that Carlo did not need his help; this was a safe way of killing time together.

It was fine with Paget. His alternative was thinking about Terri's testimony, beginning tomorrow morning. Or, more painful, Carlo's right after that. It was good to be with his son when the ostensible subject was not the trial.

Their dinner had been too quiet. Paget had refused to watch the news. But Carlo, he knew, had sneaked upstairs to watch in his bedroom. Paget was equally certain that the shaken boy at his dinner table had heard about the fingerprints on Richie's answering machine: when, once more, Carlo tried to open the forbideen subject of what his father would say as a witness, Paget sensed that he was hoping for an explanation of the prints. Calmly, Paget had repeated his reminder that Carlo was a witness, that his job was to state the facts, and that no conversation they had could be private. His son's worry and frustration was a necessary price to pay for sparing him the greater devastation of the truth.

‘How about Ted Williams?' Paget said now.

Carlo turned from the computer. ‘For my essay?'

‘
I'd
do it. Williams was not only the best hitter in baseball history; he was the only subject my dad and I could really talk about.' Paget put his hands behind his head. ‘My father
loved
Ted Williams. The one special thing he did with me was to take me back to Fenway Park in Boston, when I was nine, to see Williams play in a four-game series with the Yankees.' He smiled. ‘He did it for himself, really – I was just an excuse. But by the time those games were over,
I
loved Williams too. Because he was a truly great player and because my dad spent time with me.'

Carlo gave him a look of interest; for years, Paget had told him more about Ted Williams than about his own father. ‘So
that's
how the Ted Williams thing got started.' His brow knit. ‘Was that hard – not being close to your dad?'

Paget shrugged. ‘He wasn't really close to anyone. It's just that I was his son, so maybe it hurt a little more. But after twelve, I was in boarding school. You develop a kind of prep school toughness: I tried to view my parents as a pair of socialites in San Francisco, who didn't have much to do with me, until they became more of an absence than a presence.'

Carlo studied him. ‘When they died in that car wreck, how did you feel?'

‘Angry. It was such a joke of a death. Or would have been, had my mother not suffered for days before she died.' Paget's tone mixed irony with regret. ‘My father was drunk as a lord. He'd found out my mother had taken a lover, and pulled her out of a party in some sort of rage. If he hadn't been so drunk so often, he would have noticed her lovers when I did – ten years before, when I was twelve or so and
asked
to go to boarding school. And if
she
hadn't been so drunk, she'd never have stayed with him. Or, for that matter, driven with him.'

‘How did you learn all that?'

‘About the accident? My aunt told me. She wanted to make sure I didn't turn into another inebriate.' Paget's voice turned cold. ‘And if
she
hadn't been such a malicious fool, she would have realized that drinking was the one way I would
never
be like them. Emotionally distant, self-protective, and afraid of intimacy – sure, I might become
all
of those. But a drunk? Never.' Catching himself, Paget shrugged again. ‘Sorry. I generally don't think about them. But parent-child stuff dies hard, I guess.'

Carlo looked into his face. ‘You've been a good dad, you know. The best.'

Paget was touched. ‘That's because
you
were the best thing that ever happened to me. At the risk of being sentimental, I got a great kid to care about and to take me out of myself. You've paid me back a thousand times. . . .'

Abruptly, Paget stopped; this was so true he could feel it in his throat. He had told Terri he wanted a family. But
Carlo
had been his family, a better one than most men had, and he was throwing it away.

All at once, Paget wanted to hug his son as tightly as he could.

‘Are you okay, Dad?'

The telephone rang on Carlo's desk. Carlo still watched his father, concerned.

‘I'm fine. Carlo. But maybe you could get that.'

Reluctantly, Carlo answered the telephone. He listened briefly, then held it out to his father. ‘Your lawyer,' he said in a flat voice.

Taking the telephone, Paget covered the mouthpiece. ‘Ted Williams,' he told Carlo. ‘That's where all this started. If you don't want to impress your English teacher by being Louis Pasteur, try Ted Williams in 1941. He hit .406 that year.'

His son tried smiling. ‘Four-oh-six,' he repeated. ‘Adjusted for inflation, that's seven million a season.'

Paget laughed, enjoying one last instant of this, a pantomime of their normal life. He took his hand off the mouthpiece. ‘Ted Williams,' he said, ‘thought only of greatness.' He held the phone to his face. ‘Isn't that right, Caroline?'

‘My father,' she said dryly, ‘lived and died with Williams. The Red Sox broke his heart.'

Somehow this snippet of biography sounded right; it reminded Paget of how little he knew about Caroline Masters.

‘What's up?' he asked.

‘I talked with Brooks. He's made us an offer.'

Casually, Paget strolled into the hall outside Carlo's room; the boy became too still, pretending not to listen. ‘What is it?' Paget murmured in the hall.

Quickly and clearly, Caroline explained the deal. ‘Choice one,' she finished, ‘is to plead to manslaughter if Mrs Keller stands up under cross-examination. Choice two is to turn down the deal and go for an acquittal. If we decide to do that, we also have to decide whether to savage Brooks, implicate Colt, and try to paint this as a political vendetta. At the risk of making Richie seem like your worst nightmare.

‘Choice one caps your time in prison. As long as there's no new evidence, if you're convicted you'll still be out in eight.' Her voice turned cool. ‘In other words, you don't die there. At least if you're careful.'

‘What new evidence,' Paget asked quietly, ‘does Brooks have in mind?'

‘I've no idea.'

Paget thought for a moment. ‘This loophole about “new evidence” bothers me. Do you think you can get Brooks to drop that? It's an excuse for him to gin something up and welsh.'

There was a long silence; Paget could imagine Caroline in her office, wondering why he had asked the question. ‘If you're worried about new evidence,' she said quietly, ‘you take the deal right now. Plead guilty, serve your eight years, and be done with it.'

Paget gazed in at Carlo. In the light of his desk lamp, Carlo was poised at the computer, pretending to write about Ted Williams. Eight years, Paget thought. He would be fifty-four, and Carlo twenty-four. They would still have time.

‘I'll take my chances,' he said at last. ‘I figure Victor will be through in four more days. Let's see how we feel then.'

Caroline swiveled her leather chair, staring out the office window at the skyline of the city at night – darkened towers, black glass, grids of light where someone worked late, high above the city. Only her desk lamp was on: at times like this she remembered growing up in New England – a girl who loved books and sailing and walks on the beach – and thought of how she had become who she was now, an ambitious yet prideful lawyer, the woman whom McKinley Brooks had called the cat who walks alone.

It might have been different, she knew. Less ambition, less solitude. But she had made her choice years ago: it was only at night, when the minutes slowed and a room grew quiet, that she wondered.

What untamed impulse, Caroline thought suddenly, had moved her to defend this case?

No good would come of what she had done, this treacherous game with Brooks, unless it was good for Chris Paget. Of course, that was what lawyers were
supposed
to do, protect their clients and not themselves. But how many really did that, let alone with the ruthlessness she had used on Brooks. Somewhere, James Colt had her name on a list; if Chris took Brooks's deal and Colt survived, she would have an important enemy for life.

Perhaps she had done all this, Caroline decided finally, simply because Chris Paget, who seemed so much like her, had let people into his life. With a fierceness she did not quite understand, Caroline did not wish for him to lose that.

It was not that she believed him innocent; Caroline had wavered on that question and did not choose to dwell on it. When her thoughts escaped her vigilance, she could not believe that Chris would be so stupid as to try to fake a suicide and yet leave fingerprints behind, or so blinded by hate that he could not find a better way to destroy Ricardo Arias than to kill him. Everything she knew about Chris bespoke a mind that moved coolly toward whatever it was that he wanted: the fact that what he most wanted was a life with his son, and with Teresa Peralta, made murdering Richie seem unthinkable. . . .

What
new evidence? Paget had asked her.

Replaying his question, Caroline felt certain that there
was
something else out there and that Chris knew what it was.
That
would explain why Chris had insisted on rushing to trial in the face of conventional wisdom. Which could make him a killer with an unusually clear head.

But she would expect such a man to take his coolness all the way and tesify. For although the law would not allow Salinas to say so, Chris's refusal to testify was the act of a guilty man, and a guilty man wishing to seem innocent would find a way to speak on his own behalf. And Christopher Paget knew this.