The Whole Truth (6 page)

“Other than what?”

“You know I was suspended for a cocaine addiction?”

“I didn't know,” she said evenly.

“So now you do. And I'm going to sit here today and shake and try to prepare a closing argument. And maybe in my dreams it'll come to me why some slime in state prison wants to jerk me around and say he's my brother.”

Sienna leaned forward. “Is it possible he might be your brother?”

“No.”

“Wilder things have happened.”

“Not this wild. I looked at him. I — ” Suddenly he wasn't sure. And he was angry about it. What was this law school irritant doing by suggesting the impossible? “Why don't you run along. I'll get you your money — ”

“Maybe we should research this a little — ”

“No.” Steve slapped the table. “It's just digging up what I want buried.”

“But — ”

“Just go, will you? Just get out of here.”

“Won't you please — ”

“Get out. You're . . . fired.” Steve felt like a bad Donald Trump imitation, if there ever could be such a thing.

“I was never hired, sir.” Sienna looped her purse over her shoulder and started to leave. She stopped, reached into her purse, and took something out. She tossed it on the glass-topped desk, where it pinged to rest. It was a key.

She left without another word.

Steve picked up the key, looked at it. Then threw it as hard as he could at the far wall. It made a mark, one he could see from all the way across the office.
That's what you're good at, boy. Throwing stuff,
making marks on walls and people. Keep it up.

He saw the face of Johnny LaSalle in his mind and wished he could throw something at it. Make it go away.

EIGHT

Monday morning Steve gave his closing argument in the case of
People v. Carlos Mendez.

Moira Hanson preceded him, laying out the devastating facts that made Mendez out to be the proverbial toast. Steve had to admit she was good. Poised and professional. A little cold perhaps, but a DDA could get away with that.

Not so the defense lawyer. As Steve got ready to make his argument he kept thinking about the old saying, supposedly uttered by Abraham Lincoln himself.
When the law is against you, argue the
facts. When the facts are against you, argue the law. When both are
against you, pound the table and shout for justice!

Facing the jury, Steve thought Honest Abe knew what he was talking about. And as he had no facts or law on his side to speak of, he was going to start pounding the table.

He was simply going to persuade. That was the lawyer's bottom line, after all. You persuaded, you did the best with what you had. As his crim-law prof had said that first year, if you find a nit you pick it. And that was how you “make a noise like a lawyer.”

Could he still do it? Could he marshal all his inner resources and put them to work to change minds? For weeks he had kicked the dogs of self-loathing back. They always seemed to bay and snap before and during trial. Now was the final shot, and he told himself to give it everything. Make a noise like a lawyer. At least show the client he was getting his money's worth.

Which, considering Steve hadn't been paid yet, was a lot.

“Ladies and gentlemen, when you took your oath as jurors, you swore to do your duty to see that justice is done. You did not swear to listen only to the prosecutor, or me, or even to the judge alone. You stand in the most important position possible for a citizen in our country. You stand between the awful power of the State and a man who is presumed innocent. That is your role in our system of justice.”

Steve looked at the jurors for a face to connect with. Number six, a forty-year-old woman who worked for BlueCross insurance, nodded slightly.

“That means you must hold the prosecution to its burden of proof,” he said to number seven. “That's a great big burden too. Beyond a reasonable doubt. You know what that's like?”

Steve walked to the prosecutor's table, where Moira Hanson was wearing her best skeptic's expression for the jurors. “It's like there's a great, big boulder sitting here on the prosecution table. Can you see it?” He pantomimed feeling the contours of a gigantic rock.

“It's here, and Ms. Hanson can't just chip away at it, which she tried to do in her summation. No, she can't leave any of it on the table. Not even little pebbles. The rock is still here.”

He smiled at the DDA. She glared back. She hadn't been a happy camper when the judge decided to use the traditional jury instructions, called CALJIC. There'd been a revamping of instructions in California, to make them more “user friendly,” but some judges were sticking with the tried and true.

Which is what Steve knew best. He turned to the jury once again and said, “And you must also remember that you are the sole judges of the facts. And the testimony. Did you know you don't have to believe a police officer just because he sits in that witness chair? Police make mistakes too. Let's talk about that.”

And he did. For half an hour he put the best face on the bad facts that he could. That was his job. Defense lawyer. You don't lie down and die because a prosecutor has a slam dunk.

He finished with, “So remember, ladies and gentlemen, only you represent justice here. Only you. And Mr. Mendez and I know you will do your task well.”

This time, more than one head nodded in the jury box. Steve hoped that several members of the Mendez clan, out in the gallery, agreed.

Then it was Moira Hanson's turn to rebut. This would be the last word to the jury from either lawyer. The next step would be instructions on the law from the judge, and then deliberations.

“Do not be fooled by the empty rhetoric of the defense lawyer,” she said. “You know, Abraham Lincoln said when the law and the facts are against you, pound on the table and shout for justice.”

Steve's face started to burn. He just hoped the jury couldn't see it.

Hanson took just twenty minutes to wrap it all up. In another half hour the judge had given the jury instructions. At 11:57 the judge told the jury to go get lunch and be back by 1:30 to start deliberations.

Steve felt the urge to drink his lunch. He always felt that way at the end of a trial. Last time, in fact, he'd done that very thing and woke up in the parking lot in back of a Safeway.

In the hallway he was surrounded by Mendezes, Carlos's mother taking the lead. She was a fireplug of a woman looking up at him with ever-increasing intensity.

“What happen now?” she said. “What happen now?”

“The jury will come back to deliberate,” Steve said.

“How long it take?”

“We just don't know.”

“Carlos get out?”

“No, Mrs. Mendez, Carlos is in the lockup.”

“When he get out?”

“Um, the jury has to — ”

“He get out, right?”

Several Mendez faces looked at Steve expectantly. As if he were Harry Potter and could wave a stick and make everything all right. What he really wanted was an invisibility cloak.

“We have to wait for the jury, so I'll call you when they have a decision,” Steve said. “So just try to relax and — ”

“No relax! No, no!”

Steve patted her arm and was grateful when a couple of the men took over and led her toward the elevators. But all the while he was thinking it was always true when a jury was out.
No relax.

NINE

He sought some quiet in the courthouse law library. It was never populated with more than a lawyer or two trying to find that case the judge cited, or the occasional citizen representing himself or trying to find out how to sue his neighbor.

Steve snagged a copy of the
Daily Journal
, the city's leading legal newspaper, and scanned it to pass the time. Made sure his name wasn't in it.
No news is no noose.
Last time he got his name in the paper it was as a disciplinary stat and his career was hanging by the neck from a tree.

On the opinion page there was a column about a couple of horrific gang slayings. It wasn't just drive-bys this time. Two black gang members had been ritually skinned. Their inner works, so to speak, were spread around and their outer casings nailed to a wall.

Steve held in his breakfast. Just when you thought things couldn't get any worse in this world, good old reality comes along and gives you a fresh kick in the teeth. Nice place, the world. That's what cocaine was for, after all. So you could forget you lived here for a while.

Steve went to the editorial cartoon, this one of the US Supreme Court, and was admiring the rendering of Scalia when he sensed someone at his side. He tried to ignore the figure, but when a guy sat down in the chair beside his, Steve gave a quick look.

The guy was looking right at Steve. He wore a black shirt buttoned to the top, but Steve could still see the tentacles of a tattoo above the collar. His hair was blond, cut close to the pate. He had the prison look. Steve had seen enough of that in his career to sense it. Like a bad smell before you see the actual Dumpster.

“Mr. Conroy.” Not a question.

“Who are you?”

“I was watching you in there. Not a bad job.”

“You a reporter?” Steve asked facetiously.

“In a way,” the guy said. “I've got a report for you.”

Steve waited as the guy pulled a fat white envelope from his back jeans pocket and laid it on top of the newspaper. As he did, Steve saw some letters tattooed on his left hand, on the webbing between his thumb and forefinger.

“Johnny says go buy yourself a couple of new suits,” the guy said. “He wants you to. As a gift.”

“Johnny LaSalle?”

“Right.”

“My dead brother.” In a tone of annoyance.

The guy nodded.

“What's in here?” Steve asked.

“Five large,” the guy said. “Another five when Johnny comes home and you come work for him.”

Steve's instinct to push the envelope away was overcome by a neon thought blinking,
Ten thousand dollars. Ten thousand dollars.

Five thousand of which, if the guy was telling the truth, was under Steve's slightly trembling hand. Ten grand could keep more than a few wolves from the door. And a new suit sounded so right just about now. The one Steve was wearing, his best, had elbows you could almost see through.

But he picked up the envelope and tossed it in front of the guy. With a dry throat Steve said, “Not interested.”

“No, no,” the guy said. “That's yours. Like I said, a gift.”

“I don't want any gift from Johnny LaSalle. You can tell him that. Thanks, but no thanks.”

“Steve, there is no obligation. Johnny wants to give you a blessing. After all these years.”

“And you both can stop calling me Steve
.
You can tell LaSalle I don't want to hear from him again. Tell him he's a sick man.”

Aware that the librarian, a bespectacled man at the front desk, was looking at them with disapproval, Steve lowered his voice. “Is that clear?”

“Please, Steve, this is your brother — ”

“Listen.” Steve spun in his seat to face him. “There are cops and deputy sheriffs all up and down this building. If you don't leave now I'm going to walk outside and get one of them to explain the law to you.”

“So you don't believe Johnny?”

Steve suddenly sensed a security camera on him. In fact, there was. Looking at it only made him more nervous.

This was absurd, something out of a Martin Scorsese movie. People didn't just hand you envelopes with money, let alone somebody representing a guy who was still in prison.

Steve noticed his chair vibrating. And then realized his right leg was twitching.

“Take your money and get out,” he said.

“Johnny told me you might react this way. He really is a good judge of character. He's a man of God.”

“That's why he's doing time, I guess.”

“You do time when bad people are against you.”

“Like the police?”

The uninvited guest pulled a folded piece of paper from his shirt pocket. He unfolded it. It was notebook paper, three holes and lines. He put it in front of Steve.

“Johnny wanted you to see this,” he said.

Steve looked at it.

Brother I know I blew you away. I couldn't tell everything at once. I want to tell you face to face when I get out but you don't believe me and I guess I wouldn't either if I was you. Something bad happened back then but not what you think. I didn't die. I'm alive. My real name is Robert Conroy. And just to show you I tried to think of something that only you and I would of known of. That was kind of hard. We're talking 25 years, bro. I don't know how much you remember from that far back but I thought maybe you remember this.

Once upon a time there were two monsters named Arnold and Beebleobble. One was green and one was blue.

Steve's world, inside and out, started spinning. He thought for a second he might pass out. Light was fading and the guy's voice sounded off in the distance.

“The money's yours,” he said. “Johnny'll get in touch with you.”

He got up and walked out.

TEN

It couldn't be.

It was.

There was no way anybody would know about the monster stories Robert used to tell him. Oh, sure, maybe in a fantasy world of some kind, where coincidences rained like candy drops, this information could have come to a prisoner named Johnny LaSalle.

That was so unlikely.

Suddenly he was back in his old room. With the clown clock on the white chest of drawers and the red ball with the black stars. The way the sheets smelled like Tide and he'd put them up to his nose and breathe in deep.

And Robert, lying on top of the bedsheets, a teller of tales and protector of little brothers. Once, they'd been sitting on the sidewalk one summer day, enriched with two packs of M&Ms and a Mountain Dew from Sipe's Market, courtesy of Mom. Robert wanted to play Nerf football and ran in to get the ball.