Bear Is Broken (33 page)

“You’re insinuating that I want my son to go to prison for a crime
he didn’t commit.”

“He’s crazy. And almost certainly dangerous. I can’t help thinking
maybe you’re right. Maybe prison is about the best he can expect. So
how much is it worth? The photos from the private detective your
wife hired to look into your affair with my mother sixteen years ago,
that video of Christine, the whole package?”

“So you have the photos.” He was silent. “Just out of curiosity, how
did you get them?”

“My brother was going to make them Exhibit A in a habeas corpus
brief he was drafting. I assume he got them from Keith. Me, I’m not
interested in filing any briefs. I want to start my own practice. You
won’t find any of your relatives on my client list, believe me. I plan to
represent nothing but drug dealers and pimps. The pay is small but it’s
a constant stream, none of this feast-or-famine cycle my brother deals
with. To get off on the right foot I’d need something in the range of,
oh, two hundred thousand dollars.”

“This kind of blackmail is beyond belief. It’s one thing coming from
Keith, but from a stranger—” Gerald broke off.

“Did I say anything about blackmail? I had in mind a lawsuit. Wrongful
death. She wasn’t a stranger to me. She was my mother. As far as I’m
concerned, these are settlement negotiations. The statute of limitations
is long past, but never mind. Of course we would include a secrecy
agreement in whatever settlement we reach.”

“Settlement negotiations.” He gave a halting sigh, then ran his hand
through his hair. “It will take me some time to raise that kind of money,
if we’re talking about cash. I’ll have to sell investments. It might take
up to a week for the transfer to come through.”

“You see now why I thought you might not want to involve Greta.”

“Don’t tell me what I see or don’t see.” He rose. “We’d better join
them.”

We hadn’t settled on a definite amount, and we certainly hadn’t
shaken hands, but no matter. The money wasn’t what I was after.
He left his drink untouched on the desk. I went through the door
ahead of him, my skin crawling as I gave him my back. Christine was
lounging on a leather sofa. She looked up with a dazed expression and
her newlywed smile. She was sipping something clear and brilliant and
cold-looking. A martini. I glanced inquiringly at the drink, and with a
twist of her head she indicated a cabinet on the far side of the room.

The French doors were closed and the curtains were drawn. I made
one for myself and sat on the sofa beside her. She rested her hand on
my arm; I put my free hand on her shoulder. Her father was at the
stereo. The piano halted and something edgier came on, all screeching
horns and saxophones.

“Is it come to that, dear?” Greta asked, walking in from the hall.

Gerald stabbed a finger at the stereo and the music turned off.

“So you made the most of your visit to Stanford,” Greta said, her
anger under control now as she sank into the wing chair across from us.

“We’ll have to get on the waiting list for married-student housing,”
I said to Christine. “I can sneak into classes at the law school while
I’m waiting for my practice to get off the ground.”

Gerald had gone to the window and was looking out through a
gap in the curtains.

“So you’re hanging out your shingle,” Greta said. “What sort of
practice?”

“Criminal defense. Once it’s in the blood you can’t get it out.”

“You’ve never thought about prosecution? Don’t the best defense
attorneys always begin as prosecutors?”

“Some. But there is a difference between the two sides. The prosecutor’s
job is to take an eye for an eye. They call it justice. To me it
seems more like revenge. Revenge is fine. Actually, I approve of revenge.
I just wish they’d call it that instead of trying to invoke some
lofty principle. A defense attorney tries to save life rather than destroy
it. That’s the difference.”

“I must be old-fashioned,” Gerald said, coming from the window
to stand behind his wife, his face a twist of contempt. “I don’t have
any problem destroying a life that needs to be destroyed, to use your
words. The way I see it, we’re too soft on offenders in this society.
Especially in this city.”

“You’re certainly entitled to your opinion. You’ve come by it the
hard way, I’m sure. I know you’ve had some experience in these matters.
If the DA’s office had taken the hard line from the beginning,
Keith would have been out of harm’s way years ago, snug as a bug in
prison, and it sounds like a lot of trouble would have been avoided.”

Gerald looked pained, as if I’d done something on the rug. Christine
sat with her hand on my leg, her head lolling onto my shoulder.
Greta studied her hands, then looked at me, her eyes swimming but
with a diamond hardness behind the tears, the same hardness that
was in her eyes the last time I was here, when she’d spoken to me
of a mother’s need to touch and hold her son, when she’d begged
me to find Keith.

“I’m afraid I didn’t have much luck convincing Keith to see you,”
I said. “In fact, he pushed me off the rocks at Lands End. Now why
would he do a thing like that?”

Greta’s voice was suddenly sharp. “He pushed you or he was forced
to defend himself ?”

“Is that the way you heard it?” I asked.

Gerald looked at me, then gazed steadily at his wife with surprise
and incomprehension.

“What do you want me to tell you?” Greta asked her husband.

“That my son came to the house and I turned him away? He won’t
be back. He was here yesterday and gone again in half an hour. I gave
him enough to last quite a while this time.”

“What happens when the money runs out?” I asked. “And it will
run out, possibly much sooner than you expect. What happens the
next time he shows up on your doorstep?”

“An excellent question.” Gerald shot me another glance; then his
eyes went back to Greta. “How much did you give him?”

“Yes, how much?” Christine was perking up beside me, as if the
show she’d been waiting for was finally about to start. She took a sip
of her drink and moved her hand up my thigh. The skin of my leg
twitched and crawled.

“Enough,” Greta said.

Gerald chopped the air in disgust and stalked from the room.

“We might as well go in,” Greta finally said. “There’s no point waiting
for your father.”

The food was in a pair of warming dishes on the sideboard in the
dining room. The first warming dish held grilled salmon. The second,
roasted potatoes and sliced beets.
It made me increasingly uneasy to know that Keith had been here
since our encounter.

“She’s lying,” Christine whispered as her mother served the food.
“Keith’s still here.”

I gasped. “How do you know?”

Her mother was coming toward us from the sideboard with a steaming
plate in each hand.

“His shoes in the closet,” was all Christine had time to say as we
parted toward opposite sides of the table.

Greta took her place at the head of the table. She sat thoughtfully
for a moment, then looked up at me with a completely changed face,
a look of resignation. Her voice when she spoke was also changed. “I’ll
write you a check now for two hundred thousand dollars.”

I raised my eyebrows. “If?”

“If you agree to annul the marriage and stay away from us. Christine
included.”

“You could have bargained me lower, but all right. Two hundred it is.”

“Wait, don’t I have a say?” Christine asked. But her heart wasn’t in it.

Greta rose. “I’ll write you a check immediately.”

“I don’t get to stay for supper?”

She sounded almost happy. “You’re welcome to eat all you want
before I come back.”

I looked across the table at Christine as the door swung closed
behind her mother. “Presumably that includes you,” I said. “One last
kiss and good-bye?”

She flushed, frowning.

“What’s she think she’s buying with the two hundred thousand?”

I mused. “Surely she doesn’t give a damn one way or the other about
me and you. She must know it’s a sham.”

“She’s afraid of something,” Christine said. “She doesn’t like having
you here. It makes her nervous.”

“At least your father knew what he was paying for. I told him about
the disk. About the photos. But Greta hasn’t heard any of that. As far
as she knows, I’m just some rude kid who wormed his way into her
little girl’s heart.”

She gave a curt laugh. “Not into my heart. You’re getting your
money, more than you could ever have bargained on. I want the disk.”

“What’s Keith doing here, though? It would be a shame if we left
without seeing him.” Then something shifted in me, like an iceberg
rolling over, and I saw everything in a new light. “He did it. It wasn’t
Santorez, and it wasn’t your father. Keith shot Teddy, and now he’s
scared. He came running to Mommy and begged her to fix it. She
knows, and she thinks I know, too. She thinks I have proof. That’s why
she’s so eager to buy me off.”

I rose from my chair just as Greta came in.

“Here’s your check, Mr. Maxwell,” she said, holding it out to me.

“Now if you’ll permit me, I’ll show you the door. My lawyer will be
in touch to confirm the terms we discussed.”

I looked down at the check in my hand. Two hundred thousand dollars.
An incredible sum. “There’s no marriage,” I said and looked back
up at her. “It’s just a little joke we were playing. Maybe that changes
things.” I made to hand the check back.

She wouldn’t take it. “I want you to have the money. Please. Just leave.”

“What if money wasn’t what I came for? What if I want something
else?”

“Please,” she said again. “Just take it and go. It’s all you’re ever going
to get from this house. Perhaps if it does you some good—”

From somewhere above us there came a shout, then a thump. Followed
by the sound of a heavy object rolling very fast down the stairs.
Christine was first through the door to the hall, and I was right
behind her. We found Gerald Locke lying unconscious on the landing,
bleeding from a gash in his forehead. At the top of the stairs stood
his son.

Keith had a gun in his hand down at his side, a nine-millimeter
automatic like the one that had been used to shoot my brother. As
soon as he saw me he raised it in our direction.

“See, I told you he would come,” he said to Greta. “We can’t ever
get rid of him.”

“You didn’t expect to see me?” I asked.

“Mother, what should I do?”

“Put the gun down,” Greta said.

Christine straightened as her father groaned and sat up, holding
his head.

“I’ve written him a check for two hundred thousand dollars,” Greta
said, going to her husband’s side and putting her hand on his shoulder.

“I should think that would be more than sufficient to keep him quiet.
Now put the gun down, Keith.”

Instead, he aimed it at my chest. “I thought you were dead for sure.
That’s what I told Christine. I said, ‘He’s dead, we’ve got nothing to
worry about, you’re in the clear.’”

I was frozen, staring at the barrel of the gun, wishing it in my own
hand.

Christine scoffed. “You’re such a liar,” she said. Then to me: “He’s
lying.”

“Your father’s going to be okay,” Greta said. “He didn’t know you
were here. You surprised him, that’s all.”

“I’m okay,” Gerald said in a gravelly voice. “I’ll be fine.”

“He was going to throw me out. Right down the stairs. Instead I
threw him down the stairs.”

“Let’s at least go in and sit in the living room,” Greta said. “Can we
do that?”

Keith came down. Gerald got to his feet with his wife’s help, and we
all went into the living room. Christine and I sat on the couch as before.
Gerald sat in one of the armchairs, Greta in the other. Keith stood.
I was still holding the check in my hand. I looked down at it for a
moment, then tore it slowly in half, put the pieces together, and tore
again, repeating until there was nothing but tiny shreds. I let them
snow down on the carpet.

Keith addressed his mother: “What are we going to do?”

Gerald frowned. “We?” Greta didn’t have an answer.

Keith glowered at his father; then his look settled on Christine. He
stepped forward and slashed her viciously across the face with the
pistol. “You’re such a whore.”

Blood ran from the gash on Christine’s cheek. Her eyes blazed.
“You think you can buy me off just like him?” Keith said, his anger
returning to his mother. “There isn’t any difference for you between
your own son and that—person?”

“The difference is you take her money and I don’t,” I said.
Keith pointed the gun at me. “Fuck you.”

“You’ve got two choices. One, you shoot me dead and make a
better shot than you did when you shot my brother. Yeah, I know
you’re the one who shot him. Two, you walk out of here with your
mother’s money and do a better job of disappearing than you did
the last time.”

He walked toward me, holding the gun straight-armed. To reach me
he had to pass Christine. She stuck out her leg and tripped him, and
he came crashing down onto the coffee table. The gun fired. I didn’t
see where the shot hit. I looked down and saw the gun on the carpet
at my feet. I scooped it up.

Nobody seemed to be hurt. I let out a deep breath. “Get up,” I told
Keith. “Sit on the couch with your sister.”

He sat.

Still holding the gun, I took out my phone and dialed Detective
Anderson’s number. I told him where I was, that I’d been attacked by
one of my brother’s former clients, that I’d disarmed him, and that the
gun appeared to be the same one that Teddy had taken a bullet from.
I ended the call and turned to Greta. “Gerald was having an affair
with my mother. You found out, and shortly afterward Caroline was
killed. Do I have that much right?”

She wasn’t stupid. She knew better than to talk. We weren’t in a court
of law, and there was nothing in the world I could do to make her.