Bear Is Broken (32 page)

I winced. It was madness, all madness. “We’re going to set up her
father tonight. Pretend we got married in Reno. So you’re coming
around to thinking Gerald might have done it?”

“If I did, I wouldn’t tell you. You’ve used up all your trust with me,
Leo.”

Just then Car turned the corner, coming toward us down the hall.
Just as Jeanie had done, he stared right through me. Then with no
warning he set his feet and punched me in the stomach harder than
I’d ever been punched before. I dropped.

“You pissant,” Car said. “Next week maybe Teddy wakes up and
tells the world she’s the one who shot him. You’ll have to fuck her in
one of those little prison trailers.”

I gathered my feet, stood, and swung at him. He stepped back, and
as I flailed by him he landed a neat uppercut to the chin that left my
head whirling and sat me back down on the floor.

“Get the hell out of here,” I said, staying down this time, swallowing
saliva tinged coppery with blood. “You goddamn thug.”

“Sure, I’ll leave. I been here all day today making sure that bitch
doesn’t show up to finish the job. And I’ll be here all day tomorrow,
too, and the day after that, and every day until she’s locked up safe.
Right now I’m going for a burrito, and when I come back you better
be gone, and you better not show your face here again unless you
want more of what you just got.”

He walked out. When I thought I could stand without puking I got
to my feet. Jeanie now had settled herself in the chair by the window.

She’d turned on some music, cool jazz.

“You better start thinking how you’re going to explain all this,”
she said.

“Can I talk to you in the hall again, please?”

My voice was tight. “He doesn’t ever have to know about Christine
and me.”

She stood shaking her head. “What could you have been thinking?”

I forced myself to look her in the face, though my cheeks were burning.

“Maybe at heart I’m still a teenage kid obsessed with stealing his
brother’s girlfriend. Or maybe this is my best shot at trapping Gerald
and proving he killed Caroline and had Teddy shot to cover it up.”

She met my eyes briefly, then looked away. “You’re not a kid anymore,
Leo. My God, you think you’re using her? Can’t you see she’s
using you?”

I stood there, trying not to be angry with her. Finally I said, “I’m
going to give a good shake to Gerald’s tree, and we’ll see what happens.
I’m having dinner with the family tonight to break the news of
my supposed marriage.”

“Gerald didn’t have Teddy shot.”

“If he didn’t, then Santorez did. Tanya stole that money from the
trust fund account. It had to have been her. When Teddy couldn’t pay,
Santorez had him shot. That works for me. But either way, Gerald was
the one who killed my mother. Teddy knew it, and I know it.” My
voice was tight again, and again I found myself straining to hold on
to reason, to keep the whole sequence of astonishing secrets in my
head at once.

“You don’t know when to stop.”

“Christine didn’t shoot Teddy.”

“Yes, Leo. She almost certainly did.”

“How can you be so certain?”

“How can you be sure she didn’t?”

“Because I’ve talked to them all. I’ve looked them in the eyes and
I know who’s lying to me and who isn’t. Keith and his father were
lying. Christine is telling the truth—at least, she finally is now. Gerald
is behind the shooting, and I’m going to force him to show his hand.”

“How? By asking leading questions? Even in a courtroom you
wouldn’t have anything on him.” Jeanie’s eyes focused over my shoulder.

I turned. It was Tanya, her face haggard, her voice tired. “I heard
Teddy might be going to recover,” she said, casting down her eyes as
if she couldn’t bear to look Jeanie in the face.

There was an awkward silence; then Jeanie turned and opened the
door to Teddy’s room, admitting her.

Tanya wouldn’t talk to us, wouldn’t talk to Teddy, wouldn’t say anything.
One way or another she was going to have to answer for the money
she’d stolen, but now was not the time.

I stayed until late-afternoon rounds. Dr. Gottlieb greeted me warmly
and restated what he’d told me before, emphasizing that Teddy’s prognosis
remained grim. He would surely suffer from cognitive impairment,
emotional alterations, and unreliable memory, and he would
likely never be able to practice law or otherwise support himself again.
In the face of that frank assessment, my elation subsided. I wondered
again if Teddy would want to live, if his life could ever be meaningful
without work.

When I got home I just had time to shower. I put on a dress shirt
and slacks, no tie, and drove out to Presidio Heights.

Chloe was leaving as I arrived. She cast a disdainful glance at the Rabbit
as she let me in. “What, no congratulations?” I asked.

“You shouldn’t be here, stirring up trouble.”

“I would have asked you to marry me, but I never thought I had
a chance.”

“Ha.”

“Good luck with law school,” I called as she reached the driveway.
Not that she needed it. She’d already learned the greatest skill any lawyer
can have, knowing when to walk away from a bad situation—one
I so far hadn’t managed to perfect.

I turned and found myself alone in the foyer. There was no sound
from the house around me. I was considering whether to retreat to the
porch and ring the doorbell a second time when Christine appeared
at the top of the curving balustrade.

“Oh. Hi. I’ll be right down.”

Watching her manage the stairs, I had a vision of her in twenty years
making the same tipsy descent in a house just as rich as this one, her
face deepened with age, her tight body gone to flab, her liver swollen
with secrets.

“My parents are in hiding,” she said with a delicious smile, leaning
in for a kiss. “They don’t want to see you.”

“We could just go out to dinner and live happily ever after.”

Her smile and eyes widened. “I’m not going to let them hide.”

I thought about what Jeanie had said about Christine using me
rather than the other way around. I wanted to tell her about Teddy, but
before I had the chance she turned and went down the hall through
the dining room to her father’s office. “Gerald!” she called, rapping
on his door. She came back into the foyer, planting a kiss on my lips
in passing, and proceeded to the other end of the long hall where her
mother’s office was. “Mother!” she called. “Our guest is here!”

She rejoined me in the foyer, twining her arm through mine.
Her father was the first to appear. He looked older than he had the
last time I’d seen him, dark circles under his eyes.

“Good evening, Dr. Locke.”

“Good evening,” he said, giving me a look suggesting he knew my
game, whatever it was. “You sure work quickly.”

“So Christine has told you our news.” I offered my hand but he
didn’t take it.

“There you are,” he said. It was Greta coming toward us from the
other direction.

“What kind of man are you, Mr. Maxwell?” she asked, getting in
my face.

“Greta,” Gerald said soothingly. He put a hand on my arm and
another on his wife’s, turning us gently away from each other. “Why
don’t Leo and I have a drink in my office.”

To Christine he said, “Put on some jazz, something celebratory. I
have a feeling it’ll be called for once Leo and I have talked.”

Christine gave him a quizzical look but went into the living room
with her mother. I followed him down the hall into his office.

As before, he poured us each a Scotch. When we’d settled in our
places—he behind the desk, I lurking at the bookshelves—he said,
“Normally a groom has this conversation with his future father-in-law
before the engagement. And normally the groom, not the father-in-law,
initiates the conversation. A father’s blessing doesn’t count for much
anymore. Children do what they’re going to do regardless of how the
parents feel. But from the day his daughter is born a man begins to
anticipate the hour when another man pays him the respect of asking
his permission to marry her.”

His drink sat untouched on the blotter before him. He looked at
me expectantly, leaning back. “Please. I’m all ears.”

“Cut the crap, Gerald.” I downed my Scotch in one burning swig.

“If I’d wanted your blessing, or whatever you called it, I would have
asked for it. I didn’t come here to play sentimental games.”

I went around behind him for another drink. When I came back
out to the front of the desk his face had gone pale.

“You must know that a Nevada annulment is about as easy to get
as a Nevada marriage license. They might as well come in pairs. That’s
what you really brought me in here to discuss, or am I wrong?”

“I hope you don’t view marriage so flippantly as to think you
could just return it like—like a wrong pair of shoes.” His tone was
unctuous.

To prove to myself that I wasn’t nervous, I went to the bookshelf
and took down the first book that caught my eye—an edition of
The
Sun Also Rises
. Flipping through the pages I saw that my hands were
steady, not shaking, and I felt more sure of myself. I read a paragraph
on bullfighting, then put it back on the shelf. I tried to remember
everything Teddy’d taught me about cross-examination and all that
I had learned from watching him. There was a definite technique to
leading a witness away from your true target, letting him think he
knows what you’re after, then striking home.

“Isn’t it customary in these situations for the father-in-law to ask the
son-in-law how much it will cost to make the son-in-law go away—
and stay away? Ever since I met Christine I’ve been anticipating this
conversation with you. I thought you might start the bidding, let me
know how much you think I’m worth.”

“Not one penny,” he said, tapping the desk with each word for
emphasis and looking very satisfied with himself.

“You like home videos, Gerald?”

He didn’t answer, but I saw that I had his attention.

“Most people don’t think about hidden cameras, but they should.
Almost anywhere you go now, it’s a possibility. And anyone with a
camera can put the video on a computer, put it on the Internet. All
these celebrity sex tapes, for instance. It’s not that celebrities are having
more sex. It’s just that it’s gone viral. You can make a million copies as
easily as blowing your nose.”

“I’m aware that my daughter has sex. If you’ve secretly videotaped
your activities, that’s despicable, but I’m not going to make it my
problem. I can’t shelter my children from humiliations they bring on
themselves.”

“Not her and me. What if I told you I’d obtained a video of your
daughter erotically asphyxiating her thesis adviser? Marovich. You remember
him. He was the one whose body your son was caught trying
to throw into a Dumpster down by Candlestick. It’s been generally assumed
that he was strangled at the Green Light, but there’s no evidence
of that other than Keith’s word. It could have happened anywhere.
And anyone could have done it.”

From the other room came the notes of a jazz piano piece.

Satisfaction now appeared in Gerald’s voice. “Just as I thought. You
don’t care about my daughter at all.”

“My guess is you’ll pay me to break the marriage, if it comes to that,
no matter what you say now. Surely you’d pay a little more to put the
rest of Christine’s troubles behind her?”

“Why should I pay you? Christine will realize her mistake in marrying
you soon enough, if she hasn’t already. All I have to do is wait,
and the marriage will fall apart on its own. If she stays with you, she’ll
be unhappy. And to be honest with you, I’m ready to hand off responsibility
for her unhappiness to someone else. When things come
tumbling down, you’ll be the one to blame, not me. And I’ll have my
daughter back.”

“All right, we’re not married,” I told him. “It’s a farce, a sham.”

He blinked. He started to rise. “Then I can show you the door.”

“That’s one option. But if you do that, I’ll have to tell your wife
about this video of Christine and her dearly departed professor. Maybe
even show it to her. I thought you and I might settle this without
involving Greta. After all, it’s a serious matter. You’ve already got one
child in trouble with the law. Do you want a pair of them?”

He hesitated, then sat back down.

“My brother received a copy of the video a week or so before he
was shot. As Keith’s lawyer, he felt he had an obligation to turn it over
to the police. He confronted your daughter, and they ended up in
bed. Maybe he blackmailed her, maybe it was more complicated. She
thought he’d destroy the video. He still intended to turn it over and
told her as much.

“The shooter is described as a tall young man wearing baggy pants,
a baggy sweatshirt, a baseball cap, and sunglasses. People were looking
at the gun, not at what may or may not have been underneath the
shooter’s clothes. No one looked too closely at this person’s face. I’m
not saying Christine shot my brother, but if the police knew about
the video, they’d have to look into that possibility. At the very least,
they’d have to ask some uncomfortable questions.”

“You said before that you want to find your brother’s attacker. Isn’t
it your obligation to turn the video over to them, not use it to extort
money from me?”

I shrugged. “The video’s a red herring. She says she had nothing to
do with it, and I believe her. But I think she knows more than she’s
telling me. I think she’s protecting someone.”

Gerald’s face was a knot. He was thinking so hard he seemed to
forget I was there. Finally he said, “And if I pay you, you’ll deliver the
video to me, and the police will never know it existed. Is that your
proposition?”

“Remember that we’re talking about two crimes here. Someone
may have murdered Marovich, and someone absolutely tried
to murder my brother. Last time I was here, you told me Keith may
have killed before. Now I’m wondering whether it wasn’t so much
a lie as a half lie, whether you didn’t have some inkling about your
daughter’s possible involvement and were trying to keep me away
from her. I’m not too fond of Keith myself. I can see how life might
be more comfortable for everyone if he were out of circulation, but
that’s really none of my business. Christine offered me twenty thousand
dollars for the video. The only reason she’s playing along with
this little charade tonight is because she’s hoping I’ll decide to take
the money and hand it over. Now maybe she has twenty thousand
bucks to give me, and maybe she doesn’t. Either way, I’m expecting
you to make me a better offer.”