The Attorney (38 page)

"Your witness," says Ryan.

I can't wait to get at him. I arrive at the podium before Ryan can collect his papers.

"Mr. Jeffers, do you have a record?"

"Excuse me?"

"Do you have a criminal record?" I ask.

Jeffers looks at Ryan. "Do I have to answer that?" Ryan nods.

"Yeah. I been arrested, if that's what you mean."

"Isn't it a fact that you're a convicted felon? That you were sentenced to the state penitentiary at Folsom? That you did more than a year for embezzling money from a former employer?"

"That's true," he says.

Harry and I had gone over Jeffers's criminal history, though we had never expected him to be called. Harry had even managed to get a copy of the arrest records so that we know some of the details surrounding his conviction.

"How did you acquire this handgun that you testified about?"

"I bought it from a friend," says Jeffers.

"When?" Jeffers has to think for a moment. Looks at the ceiling.

"Probably four or five months before I went to work for Mr. Hale."

"Who did you buy it from? What's your friend's name?"

"Maxwell Williams." Jeffers doesn't hesitate with this, as if he was expecting it. Ryan has clearly prepared him.

"And how did you know this Maxwell Williams?"

"I met him in jail," he says.

"And how did he get this gun?"

"I don't know."

"How much did you pay for this pistol you testified about?"

"Two hundred dollars," says Jeffers.

"How did you pay for it? Check or cash, or did your friend take a credit card?"

"It was cash," says Jeffers.

"That's a lot of money for someone who can't even afford the price of a weekly motel room."

"I needed the gun for protection," he says.

"From who?"

"Living on the street," he says. "It can be dangerous." The problem with Jeffers is that everything he says has the ring of truth. I can see in his eyes that Jeffers can sense where I'm going.

Why would a man who is broke, and who spends two hundred dollars buying a pistol, leave it on his employer's boat when he quits?

So I don't go there.

"Mr. Jeffers, do you know it's a violation of federal law for a convicted felon to possess a firearm?"

"Yeah, I know," says Jeffers. "I found that out. That's why I told Mr.

Hale when I quit, that I left the pistol on his boat." It's why you never want to jump at a witness.

"I forgot all about it." Jonah says it to Harry out loud before we can stop him. "I dumped it. Threw it over the side when Amanda started coming on the boat," he says.

The courtroom is in an uproar. Peltro's hitting the gavel, nailing the wooden surface of the bench. Telling everybody to be quiet.

"Shut your client up, Mr. Madriani."

"I forgot." Jonah still trying to convince Harry.

"Mr. Hale, shut up," says the judge.

These are the last distinguishable words I can remember before Jonah's head hits the counsel table, dead weight, like a melon hittins a wooden wall.

chapter THIRTY.

i can see that Mary Has Been Here Before. she tells Harry and me about the other little room down the hall, the one with muted lamps on the side tables, large plush sofas against the walls, and blinds on the small glass window that looks out onto the hallway. That one is reserved as the family grieving room, the place where you do not want to be taken when the physician comes out with news.

"There was another lady when I was here last time," she says.

"They took her down there." As to be expected, Mary is on edge. She is reading every message, looking for hope in the expressions of strangers as they scurry about their chores in the busy hospital. A young man in hospital greens goes by the open door at a clip. Mary takes solace in the fact that he is at least running. "They wouldn't be running if he were dead," she says.

there are probably two dozen patients in the icu, and the kid in greens may have been called to clean out bedpans in another unit, but Harry and I don't say this.

For the moment we are in a small waiting room, next to the ICU, intensive care, bathed in antiseptic bright light from overhead fluorescents, waiting for some word.

I am told that Jonah never regained consciousness in the ambulance, but that there were vital signs: pulse and blood pressure.

They had him on oxygen within minutes. Fortunately, a team of paramedics was just down the courthouse corridor, waiting to testify in their own defense, a civil case involving negligence that had spilled over from the Hall of Justice due to limited space.

Mary was not allowed to travel with him, so Harry whisked her to the hospital, nearly beating the ambulance.

For long moments we sit in silence until a woman joins us, a friend of Mary's, a neighbor, one of the few who didn't sign the petition asking her to move. She has heard the news on TV. Harry and I take the opportunity to leave them for a moment, and step out into the hallway.

"Did you see him when they brought him in?" I ask.

Harry shakes his head. "They came in through the emergency entrance," he says. "Apparently they worked on him down in the ER for a while." It is possible to read something into the fact that they moved him to the ICU, though perhaps only to put him on life support.

I am looking over Harry's shoulder, down the long corridor, when I see Susan at the far end, rounding a corner, moving at a clip.

There are three little shadows behind her, Sarah and Susan's two girls.

The expression on Susan's face is one of angst.

She speaks before she reaches us. "How is he?" Children in her wake, trailing behind.

"We don't know."

"I heard it on the radio," she says. "I picked up the girls from school"

Sarah snuggles in close up against my side for a hug. I give her a kiss on the top of her head, and she smiles. I have not seen my own daughter in nearly a week. I am feeling incredible guilt for this.

"I miss you," she says.

Hugging my daughter is the best therapy I have had in weeks.

It seems that all the misfortune, anxiety, and mistakes of the trial slip away in this single, simple act of holding the child I love.

As we talk, the hum of whispers, another figure is closing in on our small group.

The look in her eyes tells me she's not walking by. A physician, green cap on, green pants and top, an African-American woman, she looks me in the eye. "Are you Mr. Hale's family?"

"His wife is inside." I nod toward Mary.

She's up off the sofa like a bullet, hands wringing, fingers suddenly interwoven as if in prayer.

"He is stable," says the doctor. "Out of danger."

"Is he conscious?"

"Yes."

"May I see him?" she says.

"In a moment. And just for a few seconds. He's had a heart attack.

We don't know how much damage has been done at this point. But he's going to be in the hospital for a while."

"Then he can't be in court on Monday?" says Harry.

"Absolutely not." The physician turns on him as if Harry's asking for her blessing to take her patient back to court.

Instead Harry smiles, gives me an elbow. Time to talk to Peltro about a continuance. A mistrial could be in the offing. The judge is not going to be comfortable with a jury on the loose for any extended period, state's case in their mind with nothing to contest it, and publicity running wild. It is a prescription for appeal, and Peltro knows it. The question now is how long Jonah is going to be laid up.

With this on my mind, Susan leans up close and under her breath, in my ear, whispers, "How about you and I go to Mexico?" she says.

Now is not the time. I give her a look, as if I'm chastising.

She cups a hand around the nape of my neck, presses her lips to the lobe of my ear, and whispers: "We've found Jessica."

chapter THIRTY-one.

the Drive in From the airport at los cabos seems to take longer than the flight from San Diego. The road is dusty and punctuated by potholes. The old GMC van, what passes for a taxi in these parts, has no springs left, and no air-conditioning.

Harry is watching Sarah, taking her to school and picking her up.

Susan's former husband has her two girls.

"So you combing town here to fish?" The taxi driver has one hand on the wheel as he looks at us over the back of the front seat.

The windows are all open to give us some air. Susan and I are getting facefuls of heat like a million-watt hair dryer.

"No." I have to shout above the roar of the wind.

"Bacation?" he says.

"You could call it that." He can call it whatever he wants, as long as he watches the road and keeps one hand on the wheel.

"You're taking us to Cabo San Lucas, right?" says Susan.

"Oh, si."

"How much farther?"

"Ah. Little bit," he says. "Where you from?"

"Up north," she tells him.

"Oh." He gets the message: we're not in the mood for conversation.

He's doing seventy, bald tires sliding on the sandy surface of the road, showing us with his one tree hand where the highway washed out in the last hurricane, as if the gully we just bounced over does not convey this. Every once in a while he hits the horn and waves to some other fool passing us at light speed in the other direction, another taxi with its load of norteamericanos headed for the airport.

Speed in Cabo is a measure of machismo.

Ten minutes later we pull into the driveway leading to the Pueblo Bonita Blanca, one of the high-rises on the water looking out at Land's End.

The resort itself is composed of luxury condos, time-shares. At the airport, sales pitches for these are so aggressive that those who come here regularly call it "running the gauntlet." If you're not careful coming off a plane, you may think you ordered a taxi and instead find yourself hustled off to a time-share for a weekend with a salesman from hell. The condos are sold mostly to rich Americans and rented out to other tourists.

This resort has white stucco walls that rise several stories like the ramparts of some Moorish fortress, with blue-tiled domes every so often for architectural flair. The interior courtyard faces the beach and surrounds a free-form pool larger than a football field. This feeds down some stairs to the beach, where the ocean water is a deep blue, except near the shore where it has a copper patina, turned light by the crystalline white quartz of the sand.

Susan and I check into the room and punch on the airconditioner. This requires the insertion of one of the room cardkeys into the power box on the wall near the door.

The room is hot and stuffy. The resort is nearly empty. Summer on the Mexican Riviera is not the high season.

We leave my key in the power box to allow the room to cool and take Susan's while we head for the open-air restaurant down by the pool.

Here there are paddle fans on the ceiling, cool breezes off the water, and a roof to shade us. There are a number of yachts anchored off the beach, and a large naval vessel that looks like a destroyer.

The Navy no doubt is hanging out at the bars downtown.

Cabo has been called one large tavern. There isn't much to do here except bake in the sun and drink.

I have been here only once before, with Nikki when we were first married. It is a place staked out by the ugly American. Though the Mexican government might disagree, the medium of exchange is the U.S.

dollar. Everywhere there are American males edging on forty trying to repeat their adolescence, engaging in the same bravado and bullshit they did the first time around, letting down what little hair they have left, getting stone drunk in Cabo at night, staggering back to their resorts at three in the morning to wake up with headaches and dry heaves, bragging about how they got rolled and beat up in town. A real adventure. They hang around the pools by day bellowing to one another on the balconies like sated bulls, wearing their Rolexes and always with the obligatory bottle of dos Equis in their hands.

There are American women in their twenties and thirties basting themselves in the sun with emollients and lotions, some of them with young children. It would not be difficult for Jessica Hale to lose herself in a place like this.

Susan has not said much since our meeting at the hospital. I have asked her how she found Jessica. She has avoided an answer, and given the whipping she has taken in court I have not felt free to press the issue.

If Ryan were to discover that we were down here looking, he would no doubt try to reopen his case, put Susan back on the stand and turn her on the spit one more time.

My suspicion is that she has two reasons for involving herself further, the first being by far the most compelling. If she can do anything to extricate Jonah's grandchild from a bad situation, she will do it. The other is that Susan no longer has anything to lose. She hasn't stated it in so many words, but from her demeanor I am assuming she is finished with the county. Ryan and his boss will be working the board of supervisors relentlessly, the inference being that Susan tried to acquire Brewer's cigar in order to destroy evidence, and that she was not forthcoming with Jonah's death threats.

In their eyes she has demonstrated that she is not part of the law enforcement team, but the enemy.

She orders a drink, some tequila to settle her nerves, a margarita.

"So I take it we find Amanda today?" I say.

The waiter wants to know if I want something to drink. I wave him off.

Right now I'm looking for answers from Susan.

"She is here in town?" Susan nods. "We'll need a car."

"That can be arranged."

"I have an address. We'll have to find it."

"How did you get the address?"

"That I can't tell you," she says.

I am assuming that Susan is protecting her staff, that she may have used her authority one final time, probably to flog one of her investigators, put him on a plane and ship him south. Whoever it was got lucky, or else Jessica got careless. This latter gives me pause for concern.

"If you were able to find her, Ontaveroz can, too," I tell her.