Mr. Wertz turned to her again, this time looked longer. “Why would a pretty girl like you want to talk to me?”
“I’d like you to meet my friend, Wyatt.”
Mr. Wertz turned to Wyatt. “What kind of friend?” he said.
“Boyfriend.”
“Some people have all the luck,” said Mr. Wertz. “Nothing beats luck and don’t let anyone tell you different. If I’d had just the smallest bit of goddamn-” Then came a strange sound in his throat, like a gulp, and he just sat there. Wyatt could hear the hiss of the oxygen.
Greer squatted down beside Mr. Wertz, one hand on the arm of his chair. “Wyatt here’s father is Sonny Racine. Remember him?”
Oxygen hissed. Mr. Wertz closed his eyes for a long moment, then opened them and said, “I’m drowning.”
“You’re drowning?” Greer said.
“That’s what it feels like. Didn’t anybody ever put a pillow over your head, try to suffocate you?”
“No. Never.” Greer shrank back a little.
“I defended guys who did that, got them off, more than one,” Mr. Wertz said. “This was in my former life.”
“You were a lawyer,” Greer said.
“Top-notch,” said Mr. Wertz. “Till the booze got me. Now I’m off it, can’t stomach a drop, literal truth. Haven’t got more than an inch or two of stomach left, if you’re interested in stats.” His eyes darted from Greer to Wyatt and back. The good one looked angry; with the other it was impossible to tell.
“Do you remember defending Sonny Racine?” Greer said.
“Who wants to know?”
“I do.”
“What’s your name?”
“Greer. And this is Wyatt, Sonny Racine’s son.”
“What the hell are you saying?”
“Just who we are,” Greer said.
“There was no son. I don’t remember a son.”
“I–I wasn’t born till later,” Wyatt said.
Mr. Wertz grabbed Wyatt’s wrist, his skin icy cold and papery. “Come here,” he said, “here where I can see you.” Wyatt moved around the front of the chair, closer to Greer, wrenched his hand free. “Only one good eye,” Mr. Wertz said. “Why no one around here can get that straight is beyond me.” He gazed at Wyatt. “You’re just a kid.”
“I’m seventeen.”
“Christ.” Mr. Wertz went silent. The man in the other bed started snoring. “Knock it off, you son of a bitch,” Mr. Wertz yelled, startling Wyatt. The man kept snoring. Mr. Wertz gestured out the window. “And where are all the birds?”
“They’ll be back,” Wyatt said.
Mr. Wertz grew calmer. “Sorry, kid,” he said.
“Nothing to be sorry about,” said Wyatt.
Mr. Wertz gazed out the window. “By then, the period in question, I was on the sauce pretty good,” he said. “Somewhat reduced, if you know what I mean. Fired from North and Mulgrew, if you don’t. Working as a PD.”
“What’s that?” Wyatt said.
“Public defender,” said Mr. Wertz. He looked at Greer. “Doesn’t he know the lingo?” Greer didn’t answer. “I’ll tell you both something, since you’re two nice kids. Fresh faced. When they say the jails are full of innocent people, they’re blowing smoke. Ninety-nine point nine nine nine percent of the guys inside deserve it, hell, deserve much worse. Then there’s that teeny-weeny exception, irrelevant, if you’re interested in stats. Sonny Racine was in that category.”
16
“Are you saying he was innocent?” Greer said.
“Wouldn’t go that far.” A tear rolled out of Morrie Wertz’s droopy eye, but he didn’t look sad, more annoyed, if anything. “No one’s innocent-not even a newborn babe, don’t fool yourselves. I’m talking about-” He made that gulping sound and went silent. His good eye got a faraway look; the bad one closed up even more. Oxygen hissed. Somewhere in Hillside Breeze a beep-beep-beep started up.
Wyatt and Greer crouched in front of Wertz’s chair. “Maybe we should call somebody,” Wyatt said.
Greer shook her head. “They’re like this,” she said.
Wertz gulped again. His bad eye quivered open a bit. “Reasonable doubt-that’s all I’m talking about. Understand the concept of reasonable doubt?” He looked at Greer. “You do, but what about Mister Handsome over here?” He turned his head, glared at Wyatt. “How come my goddamn legs hurt so much if I can’t even use them?”
“I don’t know,” Wyatt said.
“You should be a doctor,” said Wertz. He nodded to himself. “Booze destroys brain cells, but are they still in there, dead and black, or do they get flushed out? Am I pissing brain cells? I ask myself these questions.”
Greer rose, leaned against the wall. “What about reasonable doubt?”
“That’s an easy one,” Wertz said. “Reasonable doubt means inventing some crackpot story and making sure there’s at least one crackpot citizen on the jury to swallow it.”
“So what are you saying?” Greer said. “He wasn’t innocent, but you couldn’t come up with the crackpot story or a crackpot citizen?”
“Finding crackpot citizens is a snap,” Wertz said. His good eye blinked a few times. “Who are we talking about?”
“Christ,” said Greer, her voice sharpening; Wertz flinched. “Sonny Racine.”
“You blame me for losing that one?” Wertz said.
“Is that what happened?” Greer said.
Wertz shook his head. “Sonny Racine lost it himself.”
Wyatt didn’t understand any of this. “So he was guilty?” he said.
“I thought so when I first looked at the file,” Wertz said. “But then he insisted on taking the stand, testifying. Which was how he lost the case-a crazy thing to do, against counsel’s strong advice, although counsel wasn’t at his strongest at the time. The DA was practically salivating, tore him apart on cross. Sonny Racine gave himself a life sentence. See what I’m saying?”
“No,” Wyatt said.
“Nurse! Nurse!” The man in the other bed suddenly cried out. Wyatt jumped up, his heart pounding. The man was still on his back, eyes still closed, looked as though he hadn’t moved.
“Lid on it, you sack of shit,” said Wertz, not turning to look. The man began to snore again.
“I jumped a mile,” said Greer.
“That’s Mr. Coffee,” said Wertz. “Just ignore him.”
“What did that mean,” Wyatt said, crouching down again, “Sonny Racine gave himself a life sentence?”
The good eye was back on him. “You’re not completely stupid, are you?” Wertz said. “Course the girlfriend here’s smart as a whip, nothing could be more obvious. Two of you making big plans?”
They didn’t answer.
“And if you were, why tell me, right?” He made a gravelly sound in his throat that might have been laughter. “Okay, it’s simple. You tell a guilty guy, stay off the goddamn stand or you’re done, and he stays off. You tell an innocent guy the same thing, and he has a tough time buying it. He thinks, hey, I’m innocent, I’ll tell my story and this will all go away. Usually a ticket straight to the pen, but…oh well.”
“Oh well?” Greer said.
