Brian.”
“You have some evidence?”
“Maybe. I’m not sure — look, can I see you tonight?”
“I have plans, I’m afraid.”
His face was adamant. “It doesn’t matter when. I’ll be home all night.”
“Give me your number,” I said, after a moment’s hesitation. “I’ll call you.”
“Okay.” He pulled out his wallet and extracted a bank deposit slip, jotting his number on the back. “It’s in Hollywood,” he said.
“I’ll call,” I said, accepting the paper.
“Thanks,” he said, and stuck his hand out. I shook it. I watched him go. Handsome kid, I thought, and felt disloyal to Jim for having thought it.
Walter Pears folded his hands in front of him. They were big hands with stubby, hairy fingers. He wore a heavy gold band on one finger and what looked like a high school graduation ring on another. His wife, introduced as either Leona or Mona, sat a few inches behind him as watchful as a little bird. I sat down in the only other chair in the room and closed the door behind me.
I waited for Pears to speak.
“As I told you earlier,” Pears began after a few uncomfortable seconds, “I am also a lawyer. A tax specialist.”
“Yes,” I replied. “You told me.”
“I know nothing of litigation.”
It was clear that he expected congratulations.
“Well, some lawyers just aren’t cut out for it,” I said.
A bit of color crept into his neck. “That’s not precisely why I introduce the subject.”
“Do I get three guesses or are you going to tell me?”
He straightened himself in his chair. “I take exception to your tone.”
“You’re wasting my time,” I replied. “And, as one lawyer to another, you know what billing rates are like these days.”
For a moment he simply stared at me while his knuckles went white. Then he cleared his throat and said, “My wife and I wish to file a suit against the county. That is, I believe, the proper governmental entity responsible for the maintenance and operation of the jail.”
“That’s right,” I said, outrage beginning to flicker in some dim corner of my brain. “What cause of action do you have against the county?”
“I have undertaken a preliminary investigation of the circumstances surrounding my son’s suicide attempt,” he announced. “It appears that the medication he took was prescribed to him by a physician at the jail.”
“There’s no mystery about that.”
“Then you will agree that the authorities at the jail failed to monitor whether James was, in fact, taking that medication when it was given to him?”
“I wasn’t there,” I said. “The fact is that he managed to stockpile it. You can draw an inference of negligence by the jailers if you want.”
“I do,” he said. “Indeed, I do, Mr. Rios. Not merely negligence, but gross negligence.” He pushed his glasses back against his face from where they had slipped forward on his nose. Only his eyes reminded me of Jim. “As a proximate result of that gross negligence, I have been injured.”
“You?” I asked.
He corrected himself. “My son has been directly injured,” he said, “but certain interests of mine are also implicated.”
Leaning forward, I said, “Mr. Pears, will you stop talking like a Supreme Court opinion and tell me what the hell it is you want from me?”
“I told you,” he said, stiffening. “I intend to sue the county.
I want you to represent me or, rather, to represent Jim since the suit would be brought on his behalf.”
I stared at him. “You son-of-a-bitch.”
“Don’t you dare address me in that manner.”
“The night your son tried to kill himself you didn’t even have the decency to show up at the hospital. I know that because I was there. And now you think I’m going to help you pick his bones?” I had leaned further across the table until I was within spitting distance of Pears. His face was aflame.
“We’re not rich people,” a tiny voice ventured from a comer of the room. I looked at Mrs. Pears. “Hospital care for Jim will be so expensive.”
“Don’t tell me you don’t have medical insurance,” I snapped. “Besides, if you had any respect for Jim you’d pull the plug and let him die.”
“We’re Catholics,” she peeped.
“I was raised Catholic, Mrs. Pears,” I said, “so I know all about Catholics like you who can’t take a shit without consulting a priest.”
Suddenly, Walter Pears jumped up, sending his chair skidding across the floor with a metallic shriek. I got up slowly until we faced each other.
Pears said, “If you were a man I’d kill you.”
“If you were a man,” I replied, “your son wouldn’t be a goddamn vegetable in the jail ward of a charity hospital.”
The door opened behind me. Judge Ryan’s bailiff stuck his head into the room. “Everything okay here, folks?”
Mrs. Pears got to her feet. “Yes, officer. We were just leaving. Let’s go, Walter.” She tugged at his sleeve.
Pears seethed and stalked out of the room ahead of his wife. She stopped at the door and said to me, “There’s a special place in hell for people like you.”
After she left, the bailiff looked at me. “What was that all about?”
“Theology,” I replied.
13
As I approached the door to Larry’s house I heard the unmistakable noise of gunfire. I let myself in and called his name.
“In here,” he shouted back.
I followed his voice to the study where I found him in his bathrobe, sitting on the sofa, watching a cassette on the tv. The cassette was frozen on the image of a man in a cop’s uniform holding a gun.
“That sounded like the real thing.”
“Stereo,” Larry replied. He reached for a glass containing about a half-inch of brown fluid. Brandy. It disturbed me that he had taken up drinking again. He looked much the same as he had in October and insisted that his disease was still in remission. But he went into his office less and less often. My impression was that he now seldom left his house. It was even more difficult to talk to him about being sick, because he seemed to have reached a stage more of indifference than denial.
He had asked me to spend a few days with him. Since we were entering the holiday season and prosecutors were unwilling to face Christmas juries, it was a good time for me to get away.
“How did it go in court?” he asked.
I sat down beside him. “The charges were dismissed.”
“Free at last,” he muttered bitterly.
“When are you going to forgive Jim, Larry?”
