Bear Is Broken (28 page)

“You shot him, didn’t you, Keith,” I said. “You’re the one who did it.”

“I’ll tell you what I told Teddy. I don’t need a lawyer cutting me any
deals, because that would mean testifying against my own sister, and
that I will not do. In confidence, though, she was fucking her thesis
adviser. She went too far, maybe on accident, maybe on purpose. He
was an asshole anyway. She called me, I came to the rescue, and I got
busted. That’s how it went down. So you going to represent me? We
got a deal?”

Keith was still between me and the tunnel.

“Teddy knew too much. Then Martha knew too much. And now
you’re the one who knows too much,” Keith said.

My hands shook and my chest was heaving. I took a half step closer
to him, away from the end of the tunnel, then glanced back. Just below
us a wild landscape of waves swirled and thrashed and climbed the
rocks, as if the waves themselves feared the ocean and were seeking
desperately to break free.

He held out his hand, and I took it. Not because I wanted to be
his attorney but because I felt a need to reassure myself that he was
not some whirling figment of a madness into which I was descending.
Because there was nothing else to grab.

Then we were breathing in each other’s faces, our feet scrabbling
for purchase on the sand. With a convulsive heave Keith broke free
and pushed me out the mouth of the cave, and the water seemed to
leap up at my back.

I should have died from the fall. As I lost my balance I saw the rocks
coming toward me, one in particular the size of my torso and jutting
like a rhinoceros’s horn. I managed to twist in midair and take the
brunt of the impact on my hip, sending a searing shock through my
body. The collision absorbed the energy of my fall, and I crumpled
and rolled into the water. Then the cold grabbed me by the nuts and
throat, and the waves sucked and churned around my face.

This is how the ocean kills you, I thought as I caught a wave in the
face, then another, and felt a third slam me against a rock and drag
me down, each from a different direction. The sea’s victims are found
with their skin stripped off, faces pulped by impact, lungs filled with
seawater, throats packed with sand.

I’ve never been a strong swimmer. As a kid I never even learned to
tolerate putting my face in the water—not that being a good swimmer
would have mattered. I had as little control over my fate as an ice
cube in a cocktail shaker.

It was a tiny, V-shaped cove filled with dangerous rocks, and I owe
my life to the fact that the notoriously strong currents outside the
Golden Gate quickly swept me free of it. My shoes and pants weighed
me down, but I was no longer being thrown against those rocks. With
every convulsive, gasping breath I choked on seawater. I hadn’t seen
Keith Locke since the instant I’d fallen. I wasn’t sure that he hadn’t
fallen, too

I was just about to go under when someone shouted, and then
there was a splash, and strong hands grabbed my arms. I flailed, thinking
it was Keith coming to push me under, finish me off. Then I felt
a surfboard being shoved under my elbows. “Take it easy, take it easy,”
the surfer was shouting.

I was shivering so violently that it was all I could do to hold on.
The guy wore a full wet suit, and he stayed in the water, guiding the
half-submerged board. The lower two-thirds of my body was in the
water, and the cold touch of it continued to terrify me.

“We have to get through the break here,” he warned. “Try not
to drown. When I tell you to hold your breath, hold it until we
come up.”

“Okay. Now,” he said, and I felt the sea turning over beneath us, as
if someone had decided it was time to roll it up and put it away. We
were gaining speed, then the wave left us behind and water pounded
down on top of me and I was turning over and over, and then there
was no more up or down. I lost my grip on the board, and the surfer
lost his grip on me, and I felt my face press the sand. In surprise I
gasped, and seawater filled me. Inside my lungs and stomach the water
was cold and completely hostile to the continuance of my life, but
after a while it started to feel okay. I drifted and the breeze warmed
my back. Roll over and breathe, a voice urged, but I let my head fall
onto the pillow.

Just five more minutes, I promised, then I’ll get up.

When I came to I was lying on my side vomiting seawater.
The current had swept us about half a mile down Ocean Beach,
and it took me a minute to get my bearings. The surfer was on his ass
next to me without his board. Behind me I heard the waves crashing.
The sound made me shudder. I didn’t turn to look.

The surfer was breathing hard. Evidently he had just dragged me
onto the beach. He was in his midthirties, with a bleached ponytail
and a face lined by the sun and wind. “Next time try the bridge,” he
said, getting to his feet. “At least out there in the gate you won’t be
fucking with anyone’s break.”

My awareness kept fading in and out. When it returned he was
walking away down the beach. His board turned and slipped in the
foam about two hundred yards down. He stalked up to it, retrieved
it, and turned angrily back toward me. A few people were standing
around asking if I was okay, if I needed help. A motorcycle cop still in
his helmet kept saying, “How did you end up in the water, sir? Can
you tell me what happened?”

“I’ll tell you what happened,” the surfer said, walking back up with
the board under his arm. “Fucker took a swan dive from the Point
Lobos cave. Try the bridge next time, asshole. It’s a sure thing.”

He sat down near the surf line, and I saw that he was fixing the
leash between the board and his ankle. Before anyone could stop
him he was wading back out. The cop shouted at him to wait, but
the surfer had already gone prone on his board and was paddling
through the surf.

“Who was that masked man?” I asked through clattering teeth, but
no one laughed.

It took me the better part of an hour, sitting wrapped in blankets in
the open back of the ambulance, to convince the cops and paramedics
that I hadn’t tried to kill myself. I could see that they didn’t believe my
version of events, which was that I’d leaned out for a picture from the
cave mouth and slipped, but the surfer didn’t reappear to contradict
my story or to say he’d seen a second person up there, and eventually
one of the cops agreed to give me a lift back to Teddy’s car. It was still
there, but the keys were gone and so was Christine. I pretended I’d
lost them in the water and got the cop to drive me home.

It frightened me to think how I’d walked into danger, thinking all
I would have to do was talk to him; maybe the police weren’t so far
off in assuming I was suicidal. Why had I done that, kept putting one
foot in front of the other when I knew where the path would lead?
Simply because I didn’t want to go back to the car and face Christine,
because I knew she wouldn’t be there?

My phone was waterlogged and useless. I took it apart and set it
on the radiator to dry, then with difficulty stripped off my jeans and
T-shirt and got into the shower.

The hot water stung my wounds. I had scrapes running the entire
length of my body from the fall. My hip felt like a red-hot poker was
buried in it, but nothing felt broken. Blood oozed from the worst
abrasions at my hip and shoulder and elbow. I’d been in a few nasty
bike crashes, though nothing quite this bad, and I knew that for
weeks the slightest movement was going to be excruciating. After
patting myself dry and slapping adhesive bandages on the worst
places, I sucked air through my teeth and then as quickly and gently
as possible dressed myself in my best suit, the one Tanya had bought
at Nordstrom. The damaged skin and strained muscles had begun
to tighten, making it hard to bend at the waist or reach behind my
back. It was going to be a chore getting out of the suit later, but I
tried not to think about that.

Luckily my face had not been injured. I was still pretty for the cameras.
With my suit on, the only visible injury was an abrasion on the
back of my hand, and I was able to cover that with a large bandage.
I couldn’t stop shivering even after a shower and half a microwave
pizza. I was so sleepy I kept having to pause and let my eyes close for
a minute while I shaved, standing at the sink with the razor poised at
my face. When I told myself in the mirror to get on with it the words
came out thick. I should have crawled into bed and stayed there about
eighteen hours.

Instead I went down to 850 Bryant to represent Ricky Santorez at
his arraignment.

The doors hadn’t been unlocked yet, and the hallway outside Department
Twenty-Two was filled with reporters. I sidestepped my way
through the bodies and nearly made the doors before they recognized
me. Then it was all “Leo, do you have anything you’d like to say to
Ricky Santorez? Do you have anything to say to the man who tried
to kill your brother?”

When I reached the door I turned, at the center of the throng. I
waited for silence, and then I said, “Since Mr. Santorez is my client,
anything I might have to say to him is confidential. After the hearing
I’ll have a few words for the press.” I turned and banged on the
door with my fist, ignoring the reporters’ questions, trying to ignore
the hands tapping me on the back and shoulders, though the contact
against my grated skin brought tears to my eyes.

The bailiff opened the door a crack and peered out at me. “I’d like
to go back and speak with my client,” I said, raising my voice over the
din. “Santorez. He’s on the arraignments calendar.” He nodded and
opened the door just wide enough for me to slip through, then closed
and locked it again.

As I walked in I felt sure neither of myself nor of my purpose in
the courtroom. Even after what Keith had told me, there was a good
chance that I’d offered my services to the man who’d ordered my
brother killed and that in doing so I was subverting the proper course
of justice. Still, I wanted very much to be right. I wanted to be the one
who stood in front of the cameras and told the world that the police
had arrested the wrong man. I wanted to be the hero, the lone voice
speaking out for justice.

I told myself that Christine had killed Marovich, had shot Teddy,
and had set me up this morning: She was the guilty one. Or, if not
Christine, then her father, or Keith—anyone but the obvious candidate,
my client. Purging my mind of reasoned skepticism, I was
intensely focused on showing as publicly and dramatically as possible
that Santorez’s indictment was ridiculous and that the real shooter
was still out there.

I was escorted through a reinforced door into the holding pen,
which was crammed with defendants in prison orange, many wearing
slip-on shoes. Someone had backed up the toilet, and the stink
made me gag. I was just going to have to suck it up. At 850 Bryant,
there were no cozy conference rooms for lawyers to speak with
their clients.

Santorez sat in a corner of the bench that ran the perimeter of the
room, as far from the unscreened toilet as you could get. I recognized
him instantly among yesterday’s catch of the drunk and addicted and
homeless. He wore an orange CDC jumpsuit, for one thing, rather
than the usual county jail overalls, and he was the only inmate granted
a two-foot radius of empty space.

I felt a churning in my stomach, thinking how Santorez had gunned
down those cops, how someone had gunned down my brother in that
restaurant right in front of me. “Just bang on the door when you want
out, and keep on banging until someone comes,” the deputy told me.
“Sometimes things get busy out here.” With a smile he clanged the
holding-cell door closed, locking me alone with the inmates in that
stinking, windowless, tile-floored space.

With the ease of a habituated prisoner Santorez stood and pumped
my hand. “Man, you don’t look nothing like your brother. Or your
father either, come to think of it.”

I didn’t say anything to that.

“I just want you to know, first of all, no matter what happens out
there, I’m not forgetting about the money your brother owes me. And
I don’t intend to forget it.”

“I understand. You’ve got to pay your phone bill.” The phone would
be up his ass, or up someone’s ass. Probably a man in his position had
a body cavity bitch. “We were talking pro bono, but if that’s your attitude
we should probably discuss a retainer.”

“You already got my retainer. In the trust account, remember?”

“I don’t know anything about it. That’s between you and Teddy and
whoever drained those funds.”

“How about you get me off and you don’t owe a thing.”

“I don’t owe you anything anyway,” I heard myself say.

He gave me a hard stare that didn’t have any trace of human feeling
in it.

“I wouldn’t talk about the money in here,” I went on. “That’s supposed
to be your motive, remember. You’re being charged with attempted
murder. If Teddy dies, the charge will be murder.”

“I beat that charge once already. And that time I actually pulled
the trigger.”

“You think that means you’ve got nothing to worry about this time?”

“Not if you do your job.”

Teddy and I had never really talked about the Santorez case, but I
knew it caused him more sleepless nights and stomach acid than any
other he’d tried. I’d never seen him so relieved as he’d been the day
the verdict came back. Now I understood why. Even Teddy could let
only so many implied threats sail past before he began to sweat a little.
I meant to discuss case strategy, go over my reasons for doing what
I was doing, make sure Santorez knew what he needed to know. “I’m
only representing you for this hearing. I’m doing it because I think
publicizing your innocence is the surest way to make the police start
looking for the person who actually did this. I don’t expect them to
drop the charges today, and after today you’ll have to find a different
lawyer. I’m not experienced enough to handle a serious felony.
Besides, there’s a conflict of interest. I think I explained all this to you
over the phone.”