“So all of sudden, today, I feel like there might be a reason to keep getting up in the morning. I'm still in shock. You got to understand, Nick, I've been living with this thing in my gut for twenty-five years. That's a long time. Can you please explain to me the complex I've got?”
Nick lapped with rhythmic indifference.
“Maybe I'm cat-atonic. Maybe I'm feline fine.”
No response.
“This is quality material here, what's up with you?”
“Quit feeding that devil cat.”
Mrs. Edna Mae Stanky was standing behind the bench. Steve hadn't heard her wheel up. She was on oxygen and had a tank on wheels and plastic tubes up her nose. At somewhere north of seventy years, she spent her days and evenings patrolling the grounds, looking for something to complain about. Steve knew this to be true, because he'd been Stankied on numerous occasions.
“You keep feeding 'im,” Mrs. Stanky said, “he'll keep coming back.”
“I'll make sure he behaves, Mrs. Stanky. How you feeling tonight?”
“He's got disease, you can tell by lookin' at 'im. We got kids who play down here.”
“Nick is as gentle as a . . . he won't hurt anybody.”
“Nick? Who's Nick?”
“The cat.”
“I need some Afrin. Would you run to the Rite Aid and get me some Afrin?”
Steve knew she also patrolled the grounds looking for people to run errands for her, people who weren't her immediate family, her immediate family being those who largely stayed away. It struck Steve then that Mrs. Stanky and Nick the cat had a little more in common than she realized.
“Sure, Mrs. Stanky. I'll pop right over.”
“And quit feeding that devil cat.”
Nick looked up from the bowl, singularly unconcerned.
“And I'm going to get somebody to turn off that devil music.”
Steve waited until the old woman wheeled off, then gave Nick a quick pat. “Hey, I've got a job. I'm a nasal spray delivery man. Aren't you proud?”
Nick turned his backside to Steve and started off toward another end of the courtyard. For a moment Steve envied him. Eat, drink, and be furry. Wander the earth without memory. Rely on the kindness of strangers.
Then he heard, “Mr. Conroy?”
Two men in suits had entered the courtyard from the front. They looked like government types. One was tall, with thinning, sandy-blond hair. The smaller one was well on the way to male-pattern baldness and didn't look happy about it. He didn't look happy about anything.
“Do I know you?” Steve said, not standing up.
The tall one took the lead. He was about forty and whipped out a leatherette case, flipped it open. Showed a credential.
“My name's Issler, and this is Weingarten. Mind if we talk?”
“What did you just flash?” Steve said.
“We're investigators for the US Attorneys Office.”
“FBI?”
“Special Task Force. Can we â ”
“You guys come to my house?”
“Apartment, isn't it?” Issler said.
“What's this about?” It had to be about Johnny, but this was too soon.
“Maybe we could go inside,” Issler said.
“Maybe not,” Steve said.
Issler looked at Weingarten, who looked even unhappier now.
Issler said, “Look, we don't want to conduct business out here, do we?”
“Tell me why I'm listening to you,” Steve said. “Then I'll tell you whether we'll keep talking.”
“It's about Johnny LaSalle, sir. I believe you saw him today.”
“Whoa. You were surveilling me?”
“If you don't mind, Mr. Conroy, not out here.”
“What kind of procedure is this?”
“Please, sir â ”
“I have an office.” Steve got to his feet. “You want to see me, call my receptionist and make an appointment.”
“You don't have a receptionist,” Weingarten said.
“I want to know why you were surveilling me. I want to know why you seem to know about my office. And what's your interest in Johnny LaSalle?”
“Are you his attorney?” Issler said.
“Why don't you tell me. You seem to know everything else.”
“This is really not very efficient for us. Can we please step into your apartment?”
“Me and William Pitt say no.”
“Excuse me?”
“William Pitt. They don't teach you guys about William Pitt at Quantico?”
Issler said nothing. Weingarten was unhappy again.
“William Pitt,” Steve explained, “stood up on the floor of parliament and said, âThe poorest man may, in his cottage, bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown.' ”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Weingarten said.
“It's the basis of the Fourth Amendment,” Steve said. “And it means unless you have a warrant, I don't have to let you in. I don't have to talk to you. And our little interview is over.”
“Shame,” Issler said. “We wanted to help you.”
“Sure you did.”
“We'll be back,” Weingarten said.
“Better have a judge's approval,” Steve said.
Issler nodded. “We will.”
They turned their backsides to Steve. Just like Nick, he thought. But these cats had sharp teeth. Johnny LaSalle was involved in something federal, and the US Attorneys Office didn't waste any time putting a tail on him.
There was something Johnny LaSalle had not shared with his brother, but his brother was going to find out.
As he drove to Rite Aid, Steve wondered if the two agents were following him. He even wondered if they were watching him buy Afrin, pay for it, drive back. A hot sense of paranoia settled over him, like a flu.
He'd only been involved with feds once before and hated every part of the experience. Especially their sense of entitlement, their unspoken expectation that all should bow before their mighty authority. But they still put their pants on one leg at a time, unless Quantico was teaching them new tricks.
So having a couple of agents show up at his
sanctum sanctorum
was not his idea of a great way to finish the night.
Mrs. Stanky was waiting for him at her open door, arms folding over her oxygen tubes. “What took you so long?” she said.
“I'm sorry, Mrs. Stanky. I had something come up.”
“You mean those men? Who were they?”
“Oh, just some gentlemen with questions.”
“Questions? What kind of questions?”
“Mrs. Stanky, let's get you sitting down.” Steve had done this several times before. The excitable old woman, a former grade-school teacher, needed to keep her blood pressure down.
He took her arm and guided her into the apartment, which smelled of hard-boiled eggs and walnuts. She resisted only slightly.
“I have a right to know what's been going on outside my door,” she insisted. “Were they police?”
“No, not police. Now why don't â ”
“FBI?”
“You're a curious one, aren't you?”
“What did they have questions about?”
“Feeding stray cats. I guess you were right to make a federal case out of it.”
“You're not making sense.”
“Not the first time,” Steve said. He got her settled on the brown sofa with red throw pillows, then opened the Afrin spray for her, putting the bottle on the coffee table.
“There,” Steve said. “You need anything else?”
“How come you have the FBI after you? What have you been doing?”
Resigned to his fate, Steve said. “Now don't you worry. You know I'm a lawyer, right? It's just a business call. I may be able to help those gentlemen on a case.”
Or not.
“Why did a nice young man like you become a lawyer?”
“Oh, well, I guess it's the only profession that would have me.”
“You could have been something respectable.”
“Like a teacher maybe?”
“That's right. Molding the young. Setting an example. Instead of trying to bend the rules.”
Steve cleared his throat. “I better get back. Are you all right?”
“Turn on the TV for me, will you?”
“Sure.” Steve looked for a remote, found the tail end of it sticking out from under one of the throw pillows. He clicked the tube on.
“Anything you want to watch?” he asked.
“See if you can find a
Matlock.
I haven't seen
Matlock
in a long time.”
“Uh, I'm not sure I can do that.”
“Can you find anything close?”
He did the best he could, which was an old
Law & Order.
That seemed to satisfy Mrs. Stanky.
He thought about his mother just then. She'd been a TV watcher near the end. Couldn't do much else as the cancer ate away at her. But whenever he would visit her at hospice, after school, she'd always want him to read to her.
Her favorite was Dickens. Steve read her
David Copperfield.
She'd smile and close her eyes and drift off to sleep. Maybe dreaming of Peggotty and Barkis, whom she loved. “Barkis is willin' ” made her laugh.
The last time he'd read to her, the night she died, her eyes never opened. He was reading the part where Aunt Betsey faces down the Murdstones. A good scene to end on, he thought. He cried for three hours after he left, before Mr. Casey, his first foster father, told him to shut up or he'd do the job himself.
So a little
Law & Order
to comfort an old woman hooked up to a tank. Not much, but maybe not so bad when you got right down to it.
She asked if he'd like to stay and watch. He waited until Jerry Orbach started grilling a witness. Always good, that Orbach. At the commercial Steve patted Mrs. Stanky's hand and said, “I think they can win this one without me.”
Mrs. Stanky smiled, and that was a good note on which to let himself out the door.
The next day Steve drove three hours to Verner to see Johnny in his new habitat. The terms of Johnny's parole had him working a job there. All the way out Steve kept thinking of two things â Johnny's professed conversion, and the two government types who had their eyes on him.
The religious angle was especially strange.
There was no God. Steve had figured that out when he prayed harder than anything in his life for God to bring Robert back. Prayed and promised that he would stop lying forever if God would do that for him. Prayed the way his mom had shown him when he was three. On his knees with his hands folded.
He remembered saying,
Dear God Dear God please please please.
Over and over, through tears.
Please bring Robert back please please Dear God.
But God didn't bring Robert back, so there was no God. It was simple. Simple as the alphabet and 2 + 2.
He had never found any reason to reconsider this conclusion. Not through the foster-care years, the high school football years, the college days, or at law school. God didn't help him an ounce when his first foster father beat the living crud out of him.
Most of his reasoning, though, had to do with Robert.
So what was he to do with this appearance â
resurrection? â
of his brother? Maybe fate just had a sense of humor.
All Steve knew about Johnny's parole so far was that it allowed him to live and work within a sixty-mile radius of Verner. He had to report to his parole officer once a week and, of course, was subject to both random drug testing and warrantless searches.
None of this seemed to bother Johnny as he met Steve outside a rustic home in the foothills. Verner was one of the oldest towns in California, off Highway 40. Steve had been there once before, on his way to Las Vegas. It was named for Samuel Verner, a cattleman from Colorado who came to the state in the gold-rush days. He established a ranch and started selling beef to miners and business owners. Made a bundle.
Now the place was a mix of old, new, and touristy. It had a museum of Shoshone and Paiute history. Boasted good fishing and a tri-county fair. The kind of place where a young family could live the slow life, or a parolee get a fresh start. With mountains close by, it was a postcard setting much of the time.
“Welcome, little bro,” Johnny said outside the modest clapboard house. It was off a dirt road, surrounded by plenty of property on either side. Had wooden steps and posts and a front porch with a swing. Without the obvious need for a paint job, it could have been a home out of a Norman Rockwell.
Johnny put his arm around Steve and walked him toward the house. “Any trouble finding the place?”
“MapQuest.”
“Man! That's the trouble. No privacy anymore. Government looking over your shoulder all the time. This isn't the America we grew up in.”
“Whose house is this?”
“The old man's.”
“Your â ”
“The guy who raised me. Eldon LaSalle. You know the name, I'm sure. Didn't you put it together with mine?”
Even after the second mention, Steve still couldn't connect the name to anything.
They went up the steps and into the house.
Johnny said, “This is just a little place some of us use when we need to. A little home away from home.”
“Oh yeah? Where's home?”
“Later, Steve. One step at a time.”
The inside smelled of beer and cigars. Like a Saturday-night poker game. On a sofa in the living room sat the guy who'd given Steve the five thousand dollars in the law library. He stood up.
“Hey, Neal, here's my baby brother,” Johnny said.
Neal shook Steve's hand. “Good to see you again.”
“Likewise.”
The room was small with several chairs scattered around. Reminded Steve a little of recovery meetings. On the mantel above a stone fireplace hung a wooden cross.
“This is where we hold some meetings,” Johnny said. “Helping guys get back on their feet. Like me.”
“Yeah?”
“We get some pretty messed-up people in here. We may not be what most people think of when it comes to a church, but God isn't finished with us yet.”