“Your timing is perfect, sweet thing,” Luke says to Riva, apropos the imminent sunset. He eases his sinewy frame into a companion chair of his guest’s.
“I try.” Topping up her drink, she goes back into the house, leaving the two men alone on the porch.
De La Guerra contemplates this utterly relaxed person. He’s never known Luke to be so cool. What, he wonders, besides appearance and a relaxed personality, makes him different from the man he knew three years ago, back home, when he was the golden boy who had the world by the balls.
Luke knows what the old judge is thinking. And it gets him thinking, too, back to the way it was at the beginning.
Growing up, he wanted to be a cop. A professional ballplayer too, of course, all boys dream about that. As he got into his teens and read adventure books, he envisioned being either an architect or an archeologist, where he could travel to exciting places and have wonderful experiences. But the cop thing, that hung in.
His neighborhood shaped his desires. East end of the San Fernando Valley in L.A., Latino/blue-collar-anglo mix. Mother and two sisters, father longtime flown the coop, whereabouts forever unknown. A lot of kids he ran with got into trouble, but he stayed clean, because of sports, mostly; he was a good athlete as a young boy, he played the usual seasonal sports, football being his best. All over his neighborhood he’d see the drugs, the crime, he didn’t want any part of that. He wanted to help stop it, if he could. Which is what cops did, so the idea of being one was natural. And he was smart, he worked hard at school—he wanted out.
His hard work got him a scholarship to UC Santa Barbara. Dean’s List, All-American in water polo, big man on campus. He loved Santa Barbara, it was heaven on earth. Adios San Fernando Valley, forever.
With a college education, his aspirations were raised. The dream of police work was too limiting; you don’t climb ladders this high so you can pound the streets for twenty years. He went to Stanford Law School, graduated in the top ten percent of his class, made Law Review. He still believed in order, and had come, as he made his way through the same law school that had produced so many great jurists, to love and revere the law.
He clerked for a federal judge in San Francisco for a year, a plum job. Then he moved back to his adopted home, Santa Barbara, and joined the county prosecutor’s office.
He was an assistant D.A. for six years, rapidly working his way up to being the number-one trial lawyer. Along the way he was offered partnerships in several of the big law firms in town, all of which he turned down.
He liked his job. He liked being in the vortex. He especially liked putting bad people in prison. He wanted to make a difference. He felt he did.
The incumbent D.A. retired, Luke ran for the job, he won. It was a slam dunk—everyone in the community, left, right, and center, supported him. He was thirty-one years old.
Over the next decade, despite living in a county with a population of less than 320,000 (as opposed to L.A. County, for instance, population 9,000,000), he developed a statewide reputation. He was the prosecutor who almost always won the big cases: the murders, huge drug deals, headline-grabbing trials involving famous celebrities and their assorted perversions. He attracted great young lawyers—his staff of forty assistant prosecutors was one of the best in the state. Even some young people graduating at the top of their classes from quality law schools all over the West—Stanford, USC, UCLA, Whittier—would forgo offers at major private firms to come to the central California coast and work in the Santa Barbara D.A.’s office.
By the time Luke was forty he was a local legend, and his name recognition in the state was shooting up the charts. The powers that be were talking of him as a possible attorney general, congressman, even governor someday. Earl Warren had gone that route, why not Luke Garrison? He was the complete package—good-looking, charismatic, smart, and tops at his job.
And he was married to a terrific woman whom he’d known since their undergraduate days at UCSB. Polly McBride was beautiful, charming, very smart. A pediatrician at one of the large clinics (she’d gone to Stanford Medical School so they could be together), she had her own career independent of his. They were a smashing couple. Everyone assumed they were devoted to each other.
They didn’t have kids. They were planning on it, though not yet—right now there wasn’t room for kids in their busy careers. But they were going to, that was a given.
Like many couples where both parties have successful careers, they didn’t actually spend much private, intimate time together. Luke was a demanding boss; he asked a lot of his staff, and gave back more. Seventy-hour workweeks were the norm in his office. Entire weeks would go by when the only time he and Polly would see each other was over a hurried cup of coffee in the morning, or in bed at night, falling asleep exhausted, together physically but not emotionally, in their souls.
She turned forty three months after he did. The ticking sound of her biological clock was becoming deafening in her ears. It was now or never for getting pregnant. But Luke wasn’t ready, which meant it would be too late for her, she’d be shut out.
Luke went up to Sacramento for a week-long conference. When he came home, she had moved out and filed for divorce. She had been seeing another man for a year. Someone who had time for her.
He was blindsided.
Right behind that crushing blow, there was more to come. A man who was awaiting trial on a gang-related murder charge confessed to another murder that had happened a dozen years before.
Luke knew the old murder case well. Several years earlier, when he had been the chief litigator in the office, he had convicted another man, Ralph Tucker for that murder. It was a vicious crime, with aggravated circumstances, which meant it was a capital offense.
The case had been open-and-shut as far as Luke was concerned. It didn’t matter to him that the defendant steadfastly maintained his innocence—they all do. The case went through all the appeals, up to the Supreme Court. After almost a decade of sitting on death row in San Quentin, Tucker was executed, one of only four in California since the death penalty had been reinstated.
At first Luke was sure the confession was phony. It had to be. The confessor, with nothing to lose, since he had a rap sheet several pages long and was going away forever anyway, was looking for a kind of perverse notoriety. Luke would blow a hole in his story you could drive an eighteen-wheeler through.
Except it turned out this confession was genuine. Luke had convicted and executed an innocent man. No one blamed him but himself, the guilt and remorse kept him up, night after night.
Santa Barbara’s a small city. You can’t escape your past. His wife was gone, his reputation was blistered. He felt trapped. He had to get out, find a new life.
He quit his job in the middle of the term. Everyone tried to talk him out of it, but he didn’t pay attention to them. He sold his beautiful Craftsman house near the Mission and moved to northern California, where he promptly dropped out. As far as he was concerned, his lawyering days were over.
But that didn’t last, because he couldn’t make a living doing anything else. He tried farming a piece of land he bought, but it didn’t work out. Though he liked working the land, he wasn’t a good enough farmer to pay the bills, especially in an area where the major and only viable cash crop is marijuana.
Reluctantly he started practicing law again, but far differently from what he’d done in Santa Barbara. A one-man practice, he doesn’t need help and he doesn’t want it. He attracts clients straight-arrow lawyers don’t care for, because they’re hard to defend—obvious criminals with no redeeming features, drug dealers, outlaw bikers, perverts of various stripes. Mostly he works on contract for the county, taking public defender overflow or helping out in cases where the expertise of a top legal mind is needed. He makes enough money doing this work to survive okay. Money and status aren’t important to him anymore.
His former friends in the legal profession who have kept up with what he’s doing can’t figure him out. Not on
ly did he throw away an incredible career, but he’s on the wrong side now. Of course every accused deserves a good defense—the system would break down otherwise. But Luke had been a hell-bent-for-leather prosecutor, super-gung-ho in pursuit of protecting society from the scumbags. Now he’s fighting to keep the worst of those people out of jail.
Dinner is fabulous. Along with the rabbit stew there are homemade biscuits and a salad from the garden. Luke opens a bottle of a reserve Napa cabernet from the wine cellar. “Nice vino, eh?” he asks the judge.
“It’s wonderful. I didn’t know you were a connoisseur.”
“I like the good stuff, but I didn’t buy it. It came with the property,” Luke says enigmatically.
They finish the meal off with fresh strawberry pie. “This was wonderful,” the old man compliments Riva. “Thank you very much.”
“Luke appreciates a good meal. I like to keep him happy.”
“Which you do,” Luke tells her. He begins to clear the table.
“I’m going over to Mabel’s,” Riva says. She knows the men need to talk privately. “I’ll be back in a couple hours. Have a pleasant evening,” she says to De La Guerra. “I’ve made up the guest room.”
“Thank you. Again.”
“Mañana.” She pecks Luke on the cheek and is out the door. A moment later they hear the low rumble of a truck with glasspacks start up and drive away.
“Very nice woman,” De La Guerra comments as he follows Luke into the long living room. There’s a fire going in the massive stone fireplace, even though it isn’t that cold out. “How did you find her?”
“I defended her significant other on a murder charge.”
The judge cocks an inquisitive eyebrow.
“A dope dealer’s dustoff. One scumbag offing another. Territorial. I got it knocked down to second-degree.” He hands the older man a glass of port, sits in a leather easy chair with one of his own. “He pulled eight to twelve over in Soledad. With his record it should’ve been life without parole, so he was grateful.”
He sweeps the large room with his arm. “He was a real cutie. Before he was nailed, he signed everything over to her, so the ATF and IRS assholes couldn’t grab it, and it would be here for him when he got out. It was hers in spirit anyway, she’d done all the work putting it together, all the paintings and books, the good-taste stuff. She’s kind of a backwoods intellectual, you might say.” He sips from the ’85 Taylor’s port he’s poured for them. “She’d known he wasn’t one hundred percent legitimate, but not dirty to the extent he really was—he told her he was in the jewelry import-export business, she wanted to believe him, life was nice, so she bought into it. I’m not saying she’s an angel or anything, but she wasn’t part of his deal. I know that for a fact,” he says, a trifle defensively.
He continues. “They’d been drifting apart for a while, before he offed the other guy. She and I had made a connection during the trial, I’m not going to kid you about that, we were hot for each other, but nothing came of it, you don’t mess with the old lady of someone in the joint. It’s also unethical, he was my client. But I’d see her, we’d have coffee, I’d commiserate with her.”
“So how …?” The judge indicates his surroundings.
“Like I said, he was a cutie, pushed the envelope hard. He’d screwed over various other bad people in his day, it’s an occupational hazard. One of them took advantage of my guy’s vulnerable position and put out a jail contract on him. Razorblade to the jugular, clean as a kosher butcher. No one knows who did it, sad to say. I don’t know how hard they actually investigated the killing. Prisoner bites it, saves the state money.”
He stretches out in his soft leather chair. “So now Riva’s a grass widow, in a manner of speaking, and this is legally hers, and then comes the inevitable—we got together. Not the cleanest love affair in the world, but I didn’t do anything I’m ashamed of. If he was still alive I’d be living down in the flatlands and we’d have had our dinner at Taco Bell. Anyway, that’s the story of my being here.”
He knocks back some port, leans back, contemplates De La Guerra over the rim of his glass.
“You’ve changed, Luke,” his guest says gravely.
“Yeah, Fred. I have.” He sips his port, rolling the sensuous liquid around in his mouth. “So now let’s hear your spiel. You haven’t come all the way up here to eat rabbit stew and drink wine with me.”
“I need to buy a lawyer.”
Luke stares at him, then laughs, a good belly guffaw. “You know a thousand lawyers. You had to haul ass five hundred miles to say this to me?”
De La Guerra leans forward in his chair. “You’re aware of this kidnapping and murder case back home last year?”
“We’re talking about the Lancaster girl?” He gets a nod from the judge. “I know a bit about it. I didn’t follow the case all that much. I don’t watch too much TV and I don’t read the papers. I live a different life up here than I did back home.” He sips his port. “They caught the guy who did it on a fluke, right?” he says to De La Guerra. “Some close friend of the family?”
“Yes. His name is Joe Allison. They have an open-and-shut case.”
Luke’s laugh is mirthless. “We’ve both heard that one before, Freddie. Why do you think I’m hanging my hat up here?” He pauses. “Besides Polly.”
Hearing Luke name his former wife, the old man feels acutely uncomfortable. “I know, Luke.” Now it’s he who pauses—a long, uncomfortable silence.
Luke pours himself another drink. “So what do you want from me, anyway?”
De La Guerra sinks into the deep leather. “I came up here to ask you to take Joe Allison on as a client.”
Luke puts his glass aside, comes over to his mentor, puts a hand on his shoulder. “You know I’d never go back, especially for a pathetic case like this one. C’mon, Freddie, you know that’s a no-win situation.”
“That’s how everyone feels. But I had to come up here and ask you.”
Luke stares at the old judge. “I must be getting dense in my incipient middle age. Why are you coming to me? There are good criminal defense lawyers in Santa Barbara. I’m out of that loop,” he reminds him.
“None of the good ones want the case.”
Luke nods sagely. “Because it’s a stone-cold loser and not one lawyer worth a damn in Santa Barbara will take it. No one wants to have his name associated with a case that smells as bad as this one sounds like it does.”
De La Guerra shakes his head. “That’s not why. Doug Lancaster has asked every lawyer in the region not to take Allison as a client.”
“That’s a father at work,” Luke says. “A father with a lot of clout.”
“Yes.”
“So why pick on me?” Luke says again. He feels a chill coming upon him. This is terrible, the last thing in the world he would have wanted to hear. He crosses the room and throws open the French doors that open out onto the porch. It’s dark now. Far below he can see the lights of the small town of Bartstown, above his head at least a thousand stars. “Because I’m not in the loop anymore,” he says. “I don’t count. Therefore I can be bought. Is that what you mean here, Fred?”
De La Guerra comes out onto the porch and stands alongside the younger man, bracing against the wood railing with his arthritic hip. He couldn’t live up here—the air is too cold, too wet. He’d freeze up like an engine that had run out of oil. “You’ve got it wrong. Nobody thinks Allison is innocent. But he says he is, he’s adamant about it.”
“So what?” He’s getting mad now; they want to haul him back into the tar pit, suck him in. It’s been three years, and he’s still recovering. “They’re all innocent,” he says contemptuously. He may be on the other side now, but that doesn’t make criminals any less guilty, certainly not the ones he’s been defending.
“If Joe Allison goes to trial with a run-of-the-mill lawyer, and gets convicted, there will always be a doubt,” De La Guerra explains. “The appeals process will drag on interminably. If he’s
convicted—”
“You mean ‘when’?”
“—it might be overturned on a technicality. And there will be those who will say he was railroaded.” He puts a hand on Luke’s forearm, as a father would a son. “We can’t have that. It could be Ralph Tucker all over again.”
Ferdinand De La Guerra was the judge in that case. He, too, was scarred.
Luke jerks his arm away. “We? The great omnipotent ‘we’?”
De La Guerra knows Luke has to vent; he keeps his silence.
“And why should I do this?” Jesus Christ, you old bastard, how dare you do this to me? “Whoever takes this case is going to be vilified.”
“Because you’re the only lawyer I know who doesn’t care about his standing in the community. And because you know what can happen. And because you’re as good as they come. Are those good enough reasons?”
Luke doesn’t answer.
“There’s money,” De La Guerra offers. “You can use money, can’t you?”
“Don’t I look like I’m doing okay?” Luke asks in anger.
The old judge knows he’s angered Luke, but he has to speak his mind. “Luke Garrison living with the girlfriend of a drug dealer who’s in prison for murder? That isn’t you. You may have gone native, Luke, but that isn’t you.”
“It is now.”
“No. I don’t think so. I think this is a facade, this Luke Garrison. The real Luke Garrison loves justice. Finessing a murder charge for a drug dealer …” He lets the rest go unsaid.
Luke leans against the railing, staring up at the stars. He loves the way you can see so many stars up here. Some nights he mans his telescope for hours, getting lost in these stars. “Just out of idle curiosity,” he asks. “Not that I want to get involved in this crap.” He turns to De La Guerra. “Who’s going to be prosecuting this?”
“Ray Logan. Personally.”
Luke grimaces. “His ticket to ride.”
De La Guerra nods.
“But of course.” He bites at a piece of cuticle on his thumb. “Who’s going to pay for this defense? Capital murder case, that’s big money.”
The Disappearance Page 8