In a gray voice, Larry asked, “Is he dead?”
“No. He’s in a coma.”
“How did it happen?”
I explained.
Larry raised the cup to his lips without drinking. The robe he wore fell away, revealing his thin, hairless chest, the skin as mottled as an autumn apple. A few sparse white hairs grew at the base of his neck. His face showed nothing of what he felt but the white hairs trembled.
“How stupid,” he muttered. “What a stupid thing to do.” “He was afraid,” I said.
“Well I know a few things about fear,” Larry snapped. He shut his eyes for a moment. When he opened them he said, “I’m sorry I said that.”
“Who better?”
“No,” he shook his head. “It’s not the same at all. I’ve had my life, but to throw it all away at eighteen…” He lifted his fingers from the table in a gesture of bewilderment.
“If you can’t imagine the future,” I said, “it must not seem like you’re throwing much away.”
Larry nodded. “You’ll have to do something about the trial.”
“I’ll ask for a dismissal.”
“Then what?”
“I suppose he’ll revert to the custody of his parents.”
Larry frowned. “The perfect son at last.”
I went upstairs to get some sleep. As I undressed I remembered the call I received the night before. I called my office and reached my secretary. I asked whether anyone had requested my number in the last day or so.
She went through the telephone log. There had been someone, a man named King who had insisted on getting my number in Los Angeles. The name meant nothing to me. I thanked her and hung up.
I got into the rumpled bed, naked between the cold sheets. Outside, a bird cawed. Inside, there was silence. I closed my eyes and slept a long, black sleep.
Three days later I was back in court. The press was out in full force. Pisano, the D.A., told the court he would not dismiss the charges against Jim Pears as long as Jim remained alive. He put Lillian Fox on the witness stand. She demanded that the prosecution proceed. I informed Judge Ryan that Jim had suffered permanent, catastrophic brain damage and was unlikely ever to revive. I asked the judge to dismiss the charges on her own motion, as the law permitted, in the interests of justice. However, as she had just finished pointing out, those interests were complex.
“Your Honor,” I said, “the medical evidence is that my client is, for all intents and purposes, dead. I don’t see what more could be accomplished by hounding him to the grave.”
Pisano was on his feet. “The medical evidence is not conclusive,” he said.
“It’s as conclusive as it’s going to get,” I snapped. “Jim Pears isn’t going to get much deader, short of driving a stake through his heart.”
“So dramatic,” Pisano said, mockingly.
“You’re just trying to squeeze another headline from this, aren’t you?”
The judge broke in. “Gentlemen, some restraint.”
“Speaking of restraints,” I said, angry now, “my client’s wrist is handcuffed to the railing of his hospital bed. Do the police really think he’s going to rise up and go on a crime spree? This entire hearing is ghoulish. Regardless of what Jim is charged with, what he may or may not have done, we’ve reached a point where simple decency demands that this matter be ended.’’
“Is that true about the handcuffs?” the judge asked.
“Yes,” I replied.
“It’s standard operating procedure,” Pisano put in, in his best bureaucratic drone.
“Even so,” Judge Ryan said to him, “it’s a little gratuitous, counsel, don’t you think?”
“Not at all,” he replied.
“The motion, Judge,” I said, “is pending.”
“Thank you, I’m aware of that,” she replied, sharply. Then, looking down at some papers before her, she said, “This matter is scheduled for trial in four weeks. I will continue it until that date for a status hearing. In the meantime, the defendant’s motion to dismiss is denied without prejudice to renew it at that point. That’s all, gentlemen.” She rose swiftly and departed the bench.
I turned to Pisano. “Think the streets are safer now?” I demanded.
He capped the pen he had taken notes with. “This isn’t personal, Henry. It’s business. Learn that and you’ll live a lot longer.”
“Calling it business doesn’t make it right.”
He smiled faintly. “You shouldn’t be a lawyer, Henry. You should be God.” He walked away to talk to Lillian Fox who was hissing his name behind us.
“Henry?”
It was Sharon Hart, looking like a giant bumblebee in a black suit and a yellow silk blouse.
“Hello, Sharon. I didn’t see you come in,” I said, closing my briefcase.
“I slipped in halfway through,” she said. “I’m in trial next door.”
“How’s it going?” I asked without real interest.
She shrugged. “My guy’s found Jesus.”
I smiled, in spite of myself. “What?”
“He admits everything but says that Jesus has forgiven him and the jury should, too.”
“Think they’ll buy it?”
She grinned. “Not Mrs. Kohn,” she said. “Juror number six. You were real good, just now.”
“Didn’t seem to help.”
“Don’t blame yourself, or Pat Ryan. Judges are elected, too, and if you’re black and a woman someone’s always gunning for you. She’s got to be careful.”
“The fact that the lynch mob has the franchise, instead of a rope and a tree, doesn’t make this justice. She should understand that.”
“I’m sure she does,” Sharon said, frowning. “Trust me, she’ll do the right thing. Anyway, it’s not like Jim’s innocent.”
“At this point his guilt or innocence is irrelevant,” I replied. “He’s removed himself from the court’s jurisdiction.”
“Tough way to do it,” she commented, sticking an unlit cigarette into the side of her mouth. The bailiff cleared his throat censoriously. The cigarette went back into her pocket.
“But effective,” I replied.
“Yeah,” she said. “I’ve got a couple of clients I’d like to tell to kill themselves.”
I shook my head.
“I’ve got to get back to my trial,” she said, and looked at me steadily. “But there’s one thing I’ve got to ask you. Do you think Jim killed Brian Fox?”
“Yes,” I replied, without hesitation. “1 do.”
She looked relieved. “Well, I guess this is goodbye,” she said, and stuck her hand out at me.
I shook it. “Goodbye, Sharon.”
“Good luck,” she replied. I watched her leave the courtroom. I began to follow but remembered the press outside. In no mood for further combat, I slipped out through the back.
Larry drove me to the airport and pulled up in front of the Air California terminal. We got out and I took my things from the trunk.
“You’re sure you don’t want me to see you off inside?” he asked.
“I’m sure,” I replied. We looked at each other. “You wanted me to balance the accounts. I didn’t do it, did I?”
Larry looked worn and frail. “I guess Jim showed us that people aren’t numbers.”
“No,” I agreed. “I’ll be back in a month.”
“Until then.”
We embraced and he kissed my cheek. I stood at the curb and watched his Jaguar melt into the frantic Friday afternoon traffic.
On the plane I thought about the loose ends: a drunken phone call from someone who claimed Jim wasn’t the killer, Jim’s own insistence that he hadn’t done it, the fact that Jim and Brian had been something akin to lovers, and Josh Mandel’s obvious lie about where he had been the night of the murder. Grist for speculation but hardly enough to take to the jury. Not even enough to change my own mind, really. Jim Pears had killed Brian Fox. That much was inescapable. And yet…
I looked out the window. The sea was white with light, an enormous blankness beneath a gentle autumn sky.
12
On Monday, December first, I found myself back in the courtroom of Patricia Ryan where the case of People versus Pears was about to end — not with a bang, but a whimper. The previous week I had worked out an arrangement allowing the D.A. to designate a neurologist to examine Jim for the purpose of assessing his chances of recovery. The doctor, a sandy-haired man with a vague air about him, sat beside the prosecutor, a young woman named Laura Wyle, the third prosecutor I had dealt with in the past month. The case was now of such low priority that it had trickled down through the ranks to the most junior member of the D.A.’s homicide unit.