“Seems a fair question, and I think I deserve an answer. You see, there’s a difference between a man like Jack Sims and me. His kind of job is easy. Slip into some people’s house at night, shoot the inhabitants in their sleep, slip back out. Doesn’t take much thought—just do as you’re told.”
“You could learn a thing or two from that point of view.”
My pulse throbbed inside my ears. I was astounded that this man could speak to me this way after, for all I knew, having ordered the murder of my father and his wife. We were all expendable—and one day I, too, would be disposed of. The worst thing was that Bo must have understood I knew this, but figured I’d never have the guts to grab the wheel and try to swerve from this slow-motion ride to hell. I didn’t pretend to know what justice meant. I’d been a defense lawyer far too long to have any definite ideas in that regard. My relationship with my father had been immensely complicated in life, but now my father was dead, and those complications had ceased.
Revenge was all I wanted now.
“I gather you knew the victim. Randolph Edwards.”
“That’s not much to his credit,” Bo answered. “Or mine.”
“Or hers. How’d a kid get tangled up with your crew?”
“Edwards wasn’t part of my ‘crew,’ whatever that means.”
I reminded myself that Wilder wasn’t aware of Sims’s having been on the scene before the crime. Or if he knew Sims had been there, he didn’t realize I knew it.
“You wouldn’t be paying me to defend her if you didn’t have some sort of interest. Let’s cut through the bullshit.”
“I’ve never been a fan of bullshit,” Bo said, his voice thick with warning.
I was now playing the part I needed to play to learn what I needed to know. At the same time, however, I was aware of crossing a line I’d never crossed before, speaking words that would mean my bar card, and possibly worse, if there was a wiretap on this phone.
“I’m supposed to defend her, but I don’t know what my marching orders are. If there’s one thing no lawyer has the stomach for, it’s guessing. She won’t talk to me, won’t even tell me her name. You won’t talk to me. And yet it’s been made clear to me in no uncertain terms that I’m to do the right thing, or else. So how the hell am I supposed to know what the right thing is?”
“You read too much into the situation. The first thing you got to remember is maybe the girl doesn’t have nothing to do with me. Maybe it’s like—what do you call it? Pro bono.”
“You said Edwards wasn’t part of your crew. But he did time with you, and I’m guessing when I get the autopsy report I’m going to see some AB tattoos. If I were the government, the way I’d see the case is Edwards got out of prison and decided he wanted to walk away, start a new life for himself. But the only way you leave the Aryan Brotherhood is in a box.”
“Right as far as it goes. But I never heard of the Brotherhood using a girl to do a man’s job. Especially a black girl.”
This was the essential paradox of the situation, as I’d realized from the beginning, that an African-American teenager should have murdered a white member of the Aryan Brotherhood and then have her defense paid for by that organization.
Bo went on. “Now you listen to me. And I’m only going to say this once. You told me she hasn’t been talking to you. The way you said that, you almost made it sound like a bad thing. But in my mind, the right to remain silent is one of the most sacred rights we have in this beautiful justice system.”
I wanted to respond with any number of comments, the first being that no one tells me to muzzle my clients. But I held my tongue. As Wilder had boasted, he had little to lose. The thought of the misery this man could bring down on my family was almost enough to make me reconsider my as-yet-inchoate plan for revenge.
That he didn’t have much to lose didn’t mean he had no weaknesses, however.
“I hear you,” I told him. “I’ve always believed in the right of silence myself. It’s not easy working in the dark, but on the other hand, there’s something to be said for liberating a lawyer from bad facts. There’s no dispute she shot the man. It’s not as though she could tell me anything that would get her off the hook. I’m more concerned about finding out who gunned my father down.”
“I told you, I’m working on that,” he said impatiently. “Justice will be done.”
“Will it?” I remembered the hypothesis I’d shared with my father about the structure of Wilder’s business, with one trusted lieutenant on the outside and another whose job it would be to make sure the first lieutenant stayed within his scope of power. “With my father gone, I’m wondering who’s left on the outside that you can trust. Maybe you’re wondering the same thing. Maybe that’s why you called.”
“I don’t ‘wonder,’” Bo said. “When you’re on the wrong side, you’ll be the last to know.”
My blood was pounding. Before I could muster a reply, the phone beeped in my ear.
Wilder’s voice was gone.
CHAPTER 9
In the aftermath of the murders, I had little appetite for legal work. Even on a busy street at the height of the midday rush, the world seemed to have receded behind an invisible screen, muffling sound, slowing everything to the dulled pace of my thoughts, weary and overburdened from constant fear and lack of sleep. More than anything else, I wanted to be with my family, with Teddy, Tamara, and Carly, preferably far from Wilder’s reach. But there was nowhere for us to go. I had to earn a living, and so did Teddy. We’d been ridden by men like Wilder all our lives. Maybe we should have been used to it, but I couldn’t resign myself.
My feelings for my father were too complicated to produce an emotion with a simple name. Not that I was so naïve as to think grief was ever simple for anyone. However, it’s hard to believe that many sons, looking back, would be able to find the multitude of reasons for self-blame that I did in those weeks after Lawrence’s death.
This was in no small part because his demise was something I’d actively desired most of my life—during those twenty-one years when, like the rest of the world, I’d blamed him for my mother’s murder. I’d spent so long wishing to be fatherless that it was difficult not to regard what had happened as delayed gratification. There were moments, even, when I caught myself feeling a sense of relief. I now saw that our reconciliation had been an eyeblink compared with the length of our estrangement.
I owed a visit to my client, Jane Doe. In preparation for this visit I printed out color copies of the picture I’d taken of Jack Sims with Carly. I’d intended to crop my niece out of the photo, yet some instinct told me to leave her in.
My client was still on the jail ward at the hospital. I rode the elevator up to 7D, showed my bar card and driver’s license, submitted to the usual search, and was admitted to the room where she remained on suicide watch, the self-inflicted wound on her neck still heavily bandaged.
“I broke my promise,” I said. “I told you that next time I came here I’d call you by your name.”
Her eyes narrowed, showing a mixture of belligerence and boredom. This told me she’d resigned herself to being alive, at least. Her voice was as flat as her affect. “I’m going to fire you, I decided. Go with the public defender.”
This struck me as a promising sign. “That would make my life much simpler. But let me show you something first.” At first she made no move to take the photograph of Sims and Carly from my hand, as if nothing I could show her could possibly be of interest. Then her eyes locked on Sims’s face, and her hand jerked toward the picture. She arrested the motion, however, a door seeming to slam closed on the fear that in that unguarded moment had filled her eyes.
“Who’s that supposed to be?” she asked, turning her face away.
“A man named Jack Sims. He was an associate of Bo Wilder’s in prison.”
A silence followed, filled with the tension of unspoken things. I sensed her wanting to make some retort, but none came.
She swallowed—painfully, it
seemed, because the action brought tears to her eyes, and her hand went to the bandage at her throat. “What happened to her?” she finally asked in a voice very different from her voice of a moment ago.
I managed to keep the fear out of my voice. “I’m not sure. I only wanted to see if you recognized the man.”
I held out my hand for the picture, wanting it back, but she wasn’t ready for me to take it yet. She folded the page down the middle, making a crease between Carly and her abductor, leaving only Carly visible, on her shoulder Sims’s disembodied hand.
I wondered what she saw there. She wouldn’t identify Carly as my niece, my niece’s skin being dark enough that no outsider would guess we were related. No, Jane was more likely to glimpse herself in that photo, or, rather, the child she must’ve been before evil entered her life.
What’d he do to you? I wanted to ask, but knew I’d get no answer. If I was going to learn anything, I’d have to let the questions come from her.
“She’s in danger, isn’t she?” she said. “Did someone stop him?”
Not understanding what she meant, I shook my head. “I’m afraid you’re the only one who can do that.” I spoke gently, then paused. “I know Sims was there the night of Edwards’s shooting. How he’s connected to you, I can’t guess. The police don’t know about this, though. At least not yet. And I don’t intend to point out to them the witness my investigator found. Still, if one person saw you with him, others probably did.”
She stared at me. “You ought to be telling me to keep my mouth shut.”
“Keeping your mouth shut’s guaranteed to get you life in prison.”
“Not keeping my mouth shut will probably get me killed.”
I could only shrug. “It’s possible you’re not as easy to kill as you think. And judging by recent events, it seems death’s a risk you’re willing to take.”
“That was a mistake. I’m not going out that way.” Her voice was emphatic.
“I’m very glad to hear it.” Mine was emphatic, too.
Shifting gears, she asked, “Where’d you get that picture?”
“It’s my niece in the photo. And she’s why Wilder thinks he can count on me to help you keep your mouth shut.”
“You’re saying they threatened your family.”
It made her angry, I saw. She wasn’t cynical or indifferent about my troubles. The picture of Carly, I intuited, had brought my situation into alignment with hers.
“I’m no more interested in furthering the plans of these men than you are,” I assured her. “It wasn’t your idea to shoot that man, was it? Just tell me that.”
Quickly, her anger reverted back to wariness, and I saw I’d made a mistake trying to steer the conversation back to what she’d done. I waited for her to speak—if she was going to speak—but her jaw remained set. Her eyes sought the corner of the room.
I stayed a few more minutes, waiting to see if she’d relent and tell me what I needed to know to save her life, but she said no more.
Returning to the office, I shut it up for the day and drove across the Bay to my brother’s house, arriving just after 4 P.M. Tamara and Carly were out. I found Teddy sitting on a lawn chair in the backyard, a half-dozen beer bottles scattered around him.
Hearing my greeting, he turned his head. Then he nodded and gestured toward the house—an invitation, I took it, to fetch myself a beer from the fridge. “Tam and Carly went to her mother’s this morning,” he said when I came back out. “Tam hasn’t let me tell Carly yet about Dad and Dot. I’m not sure how long she intends to keep it from her. Maybe the rest of her life.”
“I don’t know how you can make a child understand death. Let alone murder. I can’t understand it. It might be better if she doesn’t know—if she just thinks they simply went away.”
“You’re probably right,” Teddy said. He sounded unconvinced.
For a moment neither of us spoke. At last I put the question to him as gently as I could. “Are they staying at Debra’s tonight?”
“Tam just said they were going there. I didn’t ask her when they were coming back. But she had stuff packed, so I’m guessing it won’t be tonight. I didn’t argue with her. I’d have done the same if I were her. Oh, Leo. What have I gotten my family into?”
“I’d say the better question is who and what Dad got himself mixed up with. If you know anything about it, now’s the time to tell me. There must have been things he didn’t want me to know.”
Teddy shrugged, seemingly torn. “There was something,” he finally said. He regarded the empty bottle in his hand. “How about you get me another beer.”
I fetched two more. When I came back out he was sitting lower in his chair and seemed to have resolved something.
“Did it surprise you that none of Bo’s crew showed up at the funeral?” he asked.
“Not really. I never thought of Dad as part of that crew. I mean, Bo protected Dad inside prison, but Dad never spilled blood for them. From what I understand, a person’s not part of the Brotherhood unless he’s killed someone to get in.”
“It’s not always an either-or thing,” Teddy said. “Need has a way of changing old fixed ideas. You were right about our cover story—it was a bunch of bullshit we told you about running Bo’s rental properties. I mean, I was doing that, but it’s not what Bo needed us for. He wanted someone he could trust to keep an eye on the guys who were supposed to be keeping their eyes on his business.”
“That’s not good,” I said. It was, in fact, horrible, exactly what I’d feared. “I can imagine those guys wouldn’t like the idea of an outsider looking over their shoulders, assuming they ever found out.”
“I don’t see how anyone could keep it a secret, or that Bo even wanted to. In fact, I think the point was them knowing he was checking up. Bo would give Dad little errands, people he was supposed to talk to, projects he needed to verify. Dad was his eyes on the outside, so to speak. But you know what I think now? I think Dad’s real purpose was to be like the canary in the coal mine. Because, as you say, it was an obvious provocation, sending a guy like him to look over the shoulders of these big badass white supremacist ex-cons. Everyone knew Dad was protected. So as long as he stayed alive, Bo could be sure his protection was still good, and that his organization was still under control. But the minute something happened to Dad …”
“He’d know the game was on.”
Teddy shook his head slowly. “There are only two possibilities. Either Bo withdrew his protection, or the forces arraying themselves against him didn’t give a shit.”
“So, basically, you’re telling me we may have inserted ourselves into a war.”
“Could be killing Dad was just a way of sending a message. To Wilder. There might not have been anything personal about it, in connection with us.”
“It was pretty fucking personal to me,” I retorted.
“To me, too, obviously,” he quickly assured me. “I’m just trying to say this could be the end of it as far as we’re concerned. As you said, Dad wasn’t really part of Bo’s crew, and neither are we. We’re on the sidelines now.”
“I don’t intend to remain on the sidelines. Because if it’s not Bo, it’s going to be some other asshole breathing down our necks. I’m tired of it, and I’d think you should be, too.”
“What’s that mean?”
“I’m wondering if, between the two of us, we might be able to put together a case.”
“What do you mean?”
Instead of answering his question directly I said, “How long have you been working for Bo—a year and a half?”
“Around that.” Teddy still seemed uncertain.
“Even though you’ve been on the periphery, during that time you must have gained some knowledge of how his organization works. Who the players are, how the money moves.”
Teddy made a helpless gesture. “Dad probably could have laid it all out for you, but I mostly minded my own business. I stayed at the rental office, took payments, sent out maintenanc
e calls. That was really the extent of it, as far as my involvement goes.”
“The rental office.” I let a measured skepticism tinge my voice.
“Yeah, the rental office.” Teddy’s annoyance was clear. “Is it so unbelievable that a guy like Wilder would maintain a legitimate business?”
“No. Those guys almost always have something that looks straight enough on the surface. It’s called a front. Money comes in dirty and it goes out clean. I could see how a rental business might be just the thing for laundering moderate amounts of cash. Tell me this: Do you have access to the leases?”
“Sure.”
“Does every tenant pay the amount that’s written in the lease?”
“No.” Teddy spoke as if this were nothing unusual. “We advertise one rate, but then we give the tenant a discount. It builds goodwill. The long-term tenants, especially, we send them increase notices every year. But most are still paying the rents they paid when they first moved in. Way below market. Sometimes a fraction of what’s listed. We came in thinking we were going to fix all that, but Bo told us don’t rock the boat right away. And he’s right. If we tripled their rent, these people would have nowhere to go.”
I felt a near-crushing disappointment at my brother’s evident lack of acuity. It was hard to believe anyone could be so obtusely innocent. No prosecutor who retained any memory of Teddy’s brilliant courtroom performances could possibly accept this current show of naïveté as genuine.
Nor did I believe it. “Don’t play dumb,” I told him. “You were keeping the books, accounting for the cash money Bo’s men brought in by crediting it across the rental accounts of tenants who were getting a discount. Right?”
Teddy looked both devastated and guilty. Tears welled for a moment before he mastered them with the aid of a long pull of beer. “Dad was so cocky, he couldn’t see that Bo was using him. He thought he could write his own ticket. But I saw what Bo was doing, and I kept my mouth shut. Not that Dad would’ve listened. I wanted so much for it to be legit. I wanted to be able to support Carly and Tam….”
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