Past Tense

by Stephen Greenleaf

  I smiled. “You talk to Charley yourself, Gil?”

  “I tried.”

  “What’d he say?”

  “Not much.”

  “How’s his head?”

  “Seemed real calm. I’ve seen lifers more on edge than he is.”

  I waited for elaboration but didn’t get any. “Can you go back and tell him I’m here?”

  Harrison shrugged. “I can tell him, but it won’t do no good.”

  “Why not?”

  “He ain’t talking about what he did, he ain’t seeing no one he don’t have to, and he don’t want nothing from the outside. All he’s doing is staring at the walls and popping his knuckles.”

  “You sure he hasn’t flipped out?”

  “Sounds sane as Santa to me. Made a joke about the Simpson trial. Talked about the swill that passes for food down at Bruno. Talked about a guy we both know ate his piece last week, worked with Charley out in Ingleside way back when. But he wouldn’t talk about the shooting and he wouldn’t let me get anything for him—no candy, no smokes, no nothing. He’s hurting a bit—kind of bent over and he limps some. Must have strained something when the civilian fought him for the gun.”

  I rubbed my eyes and looked around, as though help might materialize like Casper, as though an explanation might be written on the jailhouse walls, but all I saw was glass and steel.

  “Anyone in the department have any idea why this went down?” I asked.

  Gil shook his head. “No one I talked to.”

  I sighed and gave up. “Okay, Gil. Tell Charley I’m here, will you? Ask if he’ll see me. If he won’t, ask if he wants me to get anything for him. And ask him what lawyer he wants me to talk to. And if he wants me to call anyone else.”

  Gil shrugged. “I’ll tell him, but it won’t matter. It’s like he’s in a daze or something. Like his brain shut down and he don’t know where he is or what he done to get him here. Only other guys I seen like that was the ones on death row back when I was a ranger in Texas, guys who’d been there so long their appeals was up and their lawyers had quit and they was about to be strapped in the chair. Scared half to death already, was what it looked like. Only Charley ain’t scared, he’s just … sluggish. I got a bird dog gets that way come spring. Vet says it’s allergies, but I figure with Sleet it’s something else.”

  With that bit of insight, Gil left me in the waiting room and disappeared down the hall beyond the doors that separated the good guys from the bad guys and their keepers. In the driveway outside, a row of prisoners filed out of the bus from San Bruno, herded by a silent sheriff, linked by a shiny chain. From the expressions on their faces, the system hadn’t bought whatever they were selling it. One of them glanced my way. His cloudy expression said he wanted to kill me just for being alive: I was white and he wasn’t; I was in civvies and he was in county coveralls; I could leave and he couldn’t—plenty of grounds for murder right there. I wondered what could have put Charley Sleet in the same frame of mind.

  When Gil came back, he was shaking his head. “No dice, Marsh. Says he’s fine; says he don’t need nothing; says for you not to bother coming back, to let things lay till they work themselves out.”

  “But—”

  Gil held up a hand. “I know. You’re his best buddy; you been through some shit together; you want to help him shed this. But he don’t have to see anyone except the police or the DA and not even them if he lawyers up.” Gil shrugged. “Sorry, Marsh, but he stays put till I get an order to let him go or bus him down to Bruno.”

  I got back to the office as ignorant as when I’d left it.

  My first call was to Clay Oerter. “Ready to make a move into derivatives, Marsh?” Clay teased as he came on the line.

  I usually plead poverty at this point, and say something about widows and orphans, but not this time. “Charley’s in trouble,” I said instead.

  “What kind of trouble?”

  I told him as much as I knew.

  “That’s nuts,” he said when I was through.

  “I know.”

  “But you’re going to straighten it out, right?”

  “I’m going to try. But I’m not sure there’s much straightening to be done.”

  “Why not?”

  “For one thing, there doesn’t seem much doubt that he did it.”

  “What can I do to help?” Clay asked after he told his receptionist to hold his calls. Clay’s a stockbroker; holding calls means missing commissions. It didn’t seem to bother him.

  “We’re going to need money,” I told him. “Bail money and lawyer money.”

  “What’s bail likely to be?”

  “Hard to say. The guy’s dead, so they can’t release Charley on recog. On the other hand, he’s a cop, so that should cut him some slack. I’d say between a hundred and five hundred thousand, with bond at ten percent.”

  “How much for the lawyer?”

  “If I can’t convince Jake Hattie to consider his time as a tithe, it’ll be fifty for a retainer at least. And that’s just a down payment.”

  “So we’re talking a hundred grand up front, maybe.”

  “Probably. Call the rest of the poker group. See how tough it’s going to be to raise that much.”

  “It’s not going to be tough at all. I can put up the whole thing if I have to.”

  My grip on the phone relaxed—I’d been more worried about the cash than I realized. “That’s good to know, Clay, but there’s no reason for you to front it all.”

  “No, but I can. And I will.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I can do something else, too.”

  “What?”

  “Hire you to find out what the hell happened in there.”

  “I’m going to do that anyway.”

  “But now you don’t have to do it for free.”

  I laughed. “I hope someone’s recording this—we’d both be up for sainthood. Let’s wait to talk money till we get to the bottom of things.”

  “Fine. But there’s no reason for you to be the only one investing your capital in this.”

  “Or you either.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll do what finance guys always do when they need to spread the risk.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’ll form a consortium.”

  We exchanged speculation on what Charley could have been thinking, then hung up. I took a minute to wonder if people would rally to me in time of need the way they were rallying to Charley. I decided that’s something you never know until it happens.

  My next call was to the office around the corner. “Hi, Lois. Marsh Tanner. Jake in?”

  “He is but he’s got someone with him.”

  “I’ll be there in ten minutes. I’ll need about that much of his time, as soon as he can fit me in.”

  “I’m sure he’ll see you as soon as he’s free.”

  “I’m sure that will be soon enough.”

  CHAPTER

  3

  SAN FRANCISCO HAS SPAWNED LOTS OF LEGENDARY CRIMINAL lawyers over the years—Ehrlich, Hallinan, MacInnis, and Belli, to name a few—but king of them all is Jake Hattie. Jake is sixty-seven and still going strong, both personally and professionally. He’s been a trial lawyer for forty years. Although he used to pride himself on being a lone wolf, nowadays he comes to court with half a dozen young turks and turkettes in tow, all ready to charge forth at Jake’s command to dispatch the forces of evil in the person of whichever state or federal prosecutor has the misfortune to be deployed against him. A criminal trial is a war of words and no one goes to war better armed than Jake Hattie.

  On the personal side, Jake goes to dinner every night with a different blonde on his arm and usually goes home with yet another one; the gossip columns dutifully report each escapade and despite his age there are plenty of young women who still vie for the privilege of sharing his bed and his breakfast. Jake drives a Rolls, lives in a marble mansion in Pacific Heights, weekends on a horse ranch in Sonoma County, and vacati
ons in a villa in Tuscany, all in unapologetic excess. He makes Herb Caen’s column once a week and the news pages almost that often. He’s courted by socialites and bar committees and local politicians, all of whom want him to lend his name and his money to their various efforts, but since he has equal disdain for everyone but his clients, Jake declines most of the invitations.

  Everybody knows Jake but not many admit to liking him, which seems to be the way he wants it. “The only friends I need are veniremen” is how he usually puts it. How his adversaries put it is “Jake’s a world-class asshole, but if I fell in the shit myself, he’d be the one I’d call to fish me out.”

  Jake and I get along. I’ve worked for him from time to time over the years, mostly tracking down witnesses before trial, and I’ve done it well enough so he trusts me. I’ve worked against him a couple of times as well, usually in personal injury matters, with enough success that he respects me. But I was about to ask for far more than he owed me, so I was nervous and sweaty as I trotted down the stairs in my building and headed down the alley toward his sumptuous lair on Montgomery Street, in the shadow cast by the pyramid.

  Jake’s law office is on the ground floor of a historic brick building that once housed a Barbary Coast bordello. It’s plastered with evidentiary souvenirs of his courtroom triumphs, festooned with gifts from his many admirers, and laden with antiques with impressive pedigrees, including a desk once owned by the junior Holmes. Locals and tourists stand in packs outside Jake’s windows to watch him work—the windows are floor-to-ceiling and Jake never draws the drapes. I’m told they’re about to do a movie based on Jake’s life; I hear he wants Dustin Hoffman to star and Michelle Pfeiffer to play his first wife.

  It was twenty minutes before he broke free. I spent the interim ogling Lois, his receptionist du jour. Jake’s requirement for receptionists approximates Trump’s requirements for wives. Although we engaged in some double entendre and mildly racy repartee, I took it as a sign of infirmity that I couldn’t summon the optimism to ask her out.

  Ten minutes later, Jake opened the door and beckoned. I waved good-bye to Lois, a gesture she acknowledged with a wink and a blown kiss, then joined Jake in his sanctum sanctorum.

  He was dressed as usual—black suit and black boots and black hairpiece, all of which seemed derived from patent leather. Also as usual, the basic ensemble was brightened by a scarlet vest that seemed derived from a hurdy-gurdy man. Jake’s the only person I know who’s getting taller with age. I credit his boot maker with that miracle of measurement, but I don’t give any credit at all to the guy who made the hairpiece.

  When I got seated in a leather chair that seemed capable of reading my pulse and picking my pocket, I looked around. The amount of paraphernalia seemed to have trebled since the last time I was there but the clutter of paperwork had definitely diminished. Jake used to have legal documents heaped on the floor like stalagmites—pleadings and discovery motions and the fruits of subpoenas duces tecum—but now the office was neat as a pin. I gave credit for that improvement to the computers on the credenza behind him, their antic screen savers serving as a form of hyperactive art.

  When Jake saw me looking, he smiled. “You on-line yet, Marsh?”

  I shook my head. “Sounds too much like talk radio to interest me much. I can only take fanaticism in small doses.”

  He nodded. “There’s a lot of zealots out there, sure enough, and the more fanatical, the less informed seems to be the rule. But if you pick your spots, the Internet can change your life.”

  “How so?”

  “You know about the WELL?”

  “The local bulletin board, or whatever you call it?”

  Jake nodded. “Hell of a thing. I mean, you can get into anything under the sun on there. Met some horse people who’ve got me running a completely new feeding program with my two-year-olds. Met some other guy runs a shop called Meyer Boswell who’s got me into investing in antiquarian law books. Plus, I’m here to tell you that sex on-line is better than the real thing. I’ve got three different WELL personas working for me—some cutie over in Emeryville thinks I’m a forty-year-old boxer with a cauliflower ear, an eight-figure bank account, and a pecker that can fire and reload six times a night.”

  I laughed. “That’s what they call fraud in the inducement, isn’t it, Jake?”

  His grin was elfin. “Only if I can’t perform as advertised. I really do have a bad ear.”

  “To say nothing of a big bank account.”

  Jake cackled happily, looking closer to twenty than seventy. “It’s a brave new world, Marsh; that science fiction bullshit is finally coming true. I hate like hell that I’m not going to be around to see it all happen.”

  It was the first time I’d heard Jake hint of his mortality. I decided it was something I could use to my advantage. “I need a favor, Jake.”

  He sobered fast. “Do I owe you?”

  “No.”

  “Just checking. Are we talking subsidy? Your balance sheet a little thin this month?”

  I shook my head. “What I need is pro bono work.”

  “Get caught tapping a phone?”

  “It’s not for me, it’s for a friend of mine.”

  Jake turned and flipped on a computer menu; I figured I had another ten seconds.

  “The only pro bono work I do is for bookies and call girls,” he said idly, as he scrolled some sort of text through his Compaq.

  “This isn’t a call girl, this is a cop.”

  “What the hell do you care about some … oh.” He turned back toward me. “Sleet. Right?”

  I nodded.

  “He really do what they say?”

  “Apparently.”

  “You happen to know why?”

  I shook my head. “He won’t talk to me.”

  “Where they holding him?”

  “Hall of Justice. I tried to see him but he wouldn’t give the okay.”

  “He tell you to come to me?”

  I shook my head.

  Jake thought it over. “He shoots square. Gave me some stand-up testimony in a brutality case I had awhile back. Made the uniform look bad enough so my man settled with the city for half a million.” He glanced out the window at a corpulent young man who was pressing his nose to the glass and looking as though he’d seen God or at least Garth Brooks. The tourist waved but Jake ignored him.

  “Any chance of me getting a book out of this thing?” Jake asked idly.

  I shrugged. “No idea.”

  “You think he’d go for it?”

  “Charley? A book deal? I doubt it.”

  “Not that his cooperation is essential.”

  I smiled. “You’d know more about that than I would.”

  “So how much of me can he afford?”

  “Only your belt buckle, if you’re talking your usual rates. That’s why I mentioned pro bono.”

  “He got any rich friends?”

  “A few.”

  “Can they cover my expenses?”

  “How high are they likely to run?”

  “Could be five; could be fifty times that. Depends on the defense. If we decide to go with insanity, experts can cost a fortune. And if we get into DNA, well …”

  “I don’t think Charley’s insane, Jake.”

  “Sounds like it to me, given the stunt he pulled. And that’s not the issue anyway. The issue is not what you say he is, the issue is what the jury says he is. And if they say he couldn’t tell right from wrong when he pulled that trigger, he lacks an essential element for a conviction.”

  The idea that I might be contributing to such a rendition of the state of mind of Charley Sleet made me half nauseous.

  “For whatever it’s worth, Charley may not cooperate in his defense,” I said. “I think he may be planning to plead guilty.”

  “Does that make any sense at all?”

  “No.”

  “Then we’ve got a competency issue.”

  “A stubbornness issue, more likely.”

>   Jake leaned back and crossed his arms above the bowling ball that champagne and caviar had made of his belly. “Remind me why I have a dime’s worth of interest in this thing.”

  “Because when you get to the pearly gates, they’re not going to ask about your girlfriends’ bra size or the money in your stock portfolio or the time posted by your filly in the eighth at Bay Meadows last fall. They’re going to want to know what you did for the good of the world or at least of San Francisco.”

  Jake laughed. “You think I believe in that hereafter shit, Tanner?”

  I looked at the rosary that was looped over the framed picture of the pope that hung near the door. “I don’t know. But I do think you’re old enough to keep your options open.”

  Jake tried to shrug it off by lighting a lengthy cigar. “So this Sleet is some kind of saint, is that it?”

  “He’s not a saint but he’s a good man. And for some reason, he did something completely out of character. I thought you might want to be the one who finds out why.”

  “You willing to handle the investigation?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Gratis?”

  “Of course.”

  “When’s the arraignment?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “How much bail can he make?”

  “We can post a bond of fifty if we have to.”

  “You probably will. If we get bail at all, that is.” Jake climbed out of his chair and offered a hand when I did the same. “I’ll stand for him at the arraignment, then we’ll see what’s what.”

  “Thanks, Jake.”

  “Your appreciation is premature.”

  When I got back to the office, there were a dozen messages on the answering machine, each one asking about Charley, none from people who knew why he’d done it. The only one I returned right away was Ruthie Spring’s.

  Ruthie’s husband, Harry, was my mentor in the PI business until he was murdered out in the valley almost twenty years ago. Ruthie had taken over his agency and in the process of managing our grief and pursuing our profession, we became close friends. Although we’ve had some friction from time to time, she’s as close to me as anyone but Charley now that Peggy, my former secretary, is married and merry in Seattle.