And then one day the bad thing took over completely. The day they found out Robert would not be coming home. Ever.
His mom told him it wasn’t his fault. And a doctor his mom took him to also said it wasn’t. The doctor, a nice lady, even got Stevie to say out loud that he knew it wasn’t his fault Robert had died in a terrible way.
But Stevie didn’t believe it. He knew better.
Stevie also knew that he was why his dad went away. He never saw his dad again.
When Stevie turned six he found out that his dad was dead.
And learned a new word. Suicide.
He hated the sound of it. It was an evil-sounding word.
A word he couldn’t get out of his head.
PART 1
ONE
“Mr. Conroy?”
Steve heard his name. Like someone calling from the front of a cavern with him deep inside. Inside, where his thoughts were pinging off the walls like a drunk’s haphazard gunshots.
“Yes, Your Honor?”
“I said you may cross-examine.” Nasty voice. Judge O’Hara, ex-prosecutor, ex-cop, did not like screwups in his courtroom. Especially if they themselves were ex-prosecutors now prowling the defense side of the aisle. O’Hara glared at Steve from the bench, his imperious eyebrows seeming to frame the Great Seal of the State of California on the wall behind him.
“Excuse me, Your Honor.” Steve Conroy stood up, feeling the heat from all the eyes in the courtroom.
The eyes of Judge O’Hara, of course.
Everyone on the jury.
His client.
And his client’s extended family, which seemed like the entire population of Guadalajara, all packed into Division 115 of the Van Nuys courthouse.
Officer Charles Siebel was on the stand. The one who’d claimed that Steve’s client, an ex-felon, was packing. An ex-felon with a gun could land in the slam for up to three years, depending on priors. Which his client had a boatload of. The one hope Carlos Mendez had of getting his sorry can back on the street, free of the law’s embrace, lay in Steve’s ability to knock the credibility out of a dedicated veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department.
And doing it with no sleep. Steve had fought the cold sweats all night. Which always made the morning after an adventure in mental gymnastics. His brain would fire off an unending stream of random and contradictory thoughts. He’d have to practically grunt to keep focus. The chemical consequence of recovery.
“Excuse me, Your Honor,” Steve said, grabbing for his yellow pages of notes. He trucked the pages to the podium and buttoned his suit coat. It fell open. He buttoned it again. It fell open again. A yellow sheet slipped from the podium. Steve grabbed it in mid-descent, like a Venus flytrap snatching its prey, and slapped it back on the podium in front of him.
He saw a couple of jurors smiling at the show.
Steve cleared his throat. “According to your report, Officer Siebel, you saw my client standing on the corner of Sepulveda and Vanowen, is that correct?”
“Yes.” Clipped and authoritative, like the prosecutors trained them to be.
“You were in your vehicle, is that right?”
“Yes.”
“Alone?”
“Yes.”
“Driving which way?”
“North.”
“On what street?”
Officer Siebel and Judge O’Hara sighed at the same time.
Just like a comedy team. The whole courtroom was one big sitcom, Steve playing the incompetent sidekick.
“Sepulveda,” Siebel said.
“At what time?”
“Is this cross-examination or skeet shooting?” Judge O’Hara snapped.
Steve clenched his teeth. O’Hara liked to inject himself into the thick of things, showboating for the jury. For some reason, he’d been doing it to Steve throughout the trial.
“If I may, Your Honor, I’m laying a foundation,” Steve said.
“Sounds like you’re just letting the witness repeat direct testimony.”
Why thank you, Judge. I had no idea. How helpful you are! The DA didn’t even have to object!
“I’ll try it this way,” Steve said, turning back to the witness.
“Officer Siebel, you were driving north on Sepulveda at 10:32 p.m., correct?”
“That’s what happened.”
“It’s in your report, isn’t it?”
“Of course.”
Steve went to counsel table and picked up a copy of the police report. As he did, Carlos Mendez, in his jailhouse blues, gave him the look, the one that said, I hope you know what you’re doing.
Ah yes, the confident client. When was the last time he’d had one of those?
Steve held up the report. “The lighting conditions are not mentioned in your report, are they?”
“I didn’t see any need, I was able to see — ”
“I’d like an answer to the question I asked, sir.”
The deputy DA, Moira Hanson, stood. “Objection. The witness should be allowed to answer.”
Steve looked at the DDA, who was about his age, thirty. That’s where the resemblance ended. She was short and blond. He was an even six feet with hair as dark as the marks against him. She was new to the office. He hadn’t met her when he was prosecuting for the county of Los Angeles.
“Your Honor,” he said, “the answer was clearly nonresponsive. As you pointed out so eloquently, this is cross-examination.”
O’Hara was not impressed. “Thank you very much for the endorsement, Mr. Conroy. Now if you’ll let me rule? Ask your question again, and I direct the witness to answer only the question asked.”
A minor victory, Steve knew, but in this trial any bone was welcome.
“Are there any lighting conditions in your report?” Steve asked.
“No,” Siebel said.
“You are aware that the corner you mention has dark patches, aren’t you?”
“Dark patches?”
“What scientists refer to as illumination absences?”
Officer Siebel squinted at Steve.
“You do know what I’m talking about, surely,” Steve said.
Moira Hanson objected again. “No foundation, Your Honor.”
“Sustained. In plain English, Mr. Conroy.”
That was fine with Steve. Because he’d just made up the term illumination absences. All he wanted was the jury to think he had Bill Nye the Science Guy on the defense team. These days, juries were under the spell of the CSI effect. They all thought forensic evidence was abundant and could clinch any case in an hour. Prosecutors hated that, because most cases weren’t so cut, dried, preserved, and plattered. Steve intended to plant the idea that science was against the DA.
“Illumination absences refers to measurable dark spots. There are all sorts of dark spots on that corner, Officer Siebel, where you can’t see a thing, right?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I could see clearly.”
Steve turned to the judge. “Why don’t we take the jury down there tonight, Your Honor, and we can — ”
“Approach the bench,” O’Hara ordered. “With the reporter.”
Putting on a sheepish look, Steve joined Hanson in front of the judge.
“You know better than to make a motion in front of the jury,”
O’Hara said.
“He knows, but does it anyway,” Hanson added. She was like the smarty in school who dumps extra on the kids who get sent to the principal’s office.
“What?” Steve said. “It was just a request.”
“I know what you’re doing,” O’Hara said.
“Representing my client?”
“If this is representation, I’m Britney Spears. You’re taking shortcuts. Well, you’re not going to get away with it. Not here. And you don’t want to tempt me. Another disciplinary strike and you’re out.”
That was true. Steve had been out of rehab for a year after dealing with a coke addiction and losing his job with the DA’
s office. Now that he was trying to establish a private practice, no easy task, he did not need the State Bar on his back again. They wouldn’t be so forgiving this time.
“And what’s that load about this illumination thing?” O’Hara asked. “You better have a foundation for asking that.”
“I can find a scientist to back it up.”
“You can find a scientist to back up anything,” Hanson said.
“I won’t allow it,” O’Hara said. “I think you’re just whistling in the dark, so to speak.”
“Representing my client, Your Honor.”
“Call me Britney. Go on. But watch every step you take, sir.”
Steve didn’t have to. He’d gotten what he could out of the witness. All he needed was one juror to think that maybe this officer didn’t see what he thought he saw. One juror to hang the thing, and then maybe Moira Hanson would call her boss and say it’s not worth a retrial. Let the guy walk.
Sure. And Santa Claus sips Cuba Libres at the North Pole.
TWO
Steve’s cross of Officer Siebel was the last order of business on a hot August Friday. Monday they’d all come back for closing arguments, giving Steve a whole weekend to come up with some verbal gold. Which he knew he had to spin to get Carlos Mendez a fair shake.
It would also give him time, he hoped, to get some sleep.
Steve pointed his Ark toward his Canoga Park office. The Ark was what he called his vintage Cadillac, and by vintage he meant has seen better days. It dated from the Reagan administration and had been overhauled and repainted and taped together many times over. Steve scored it at a police auction five years earlier. The main advantage was it was big. He could sleep in it if he needed to. Even back then, as he was sucking blow up his snout like a Hoover, Steve suspected he might be homeless someday.
Hadn’t happened yet. And with the help of the State Bar’s Lawyer Assistance Program, maybe it wouldn’t. The LAP was supposed to help lawyers with substance-abuse problems. Steve had managed to keep the monkey off his back for a year. Not that he wasn’t close to falling, especially on those nights when he lay in bed staring at the ceiling.
Steve took Sherman Way into Canoga Park, an LA burg in the west end of the San Fernando Valley. It was a venerable town that had hit its stride in 1955, when Rocketdyne, a division of North American Aviation, made its home there. The aerospace industry brought a boomlet of people to the area, and American dreams were born and realized. Rocketdyne engines were used to help put men on the moon in 1969, and sent NASA space shuttles on their appointed rounds.
At its peak during the space race with the Soviets, Rocketdyne employed twenty-two thousand people, and Canoga Park was a great place to live, shop, and open a business. But the realities of economy and urban decline were as inevitable and poisonous as wild oleander.
The aerospace industry dried up. The blocks of apartments that once housed Rocketdyne line workers became homes for Latino immigrants. The Rocketdyne building itself, a dinosaur of 1950s architecture, was used sparingly now, surrounded by fast-food restaurants and big-box electronics stores.
But Canoga Park was going through a rebirth of sorts, with its famous shopping mall on Topanga undergoing a major refurbish. High-end boutiques and a Nordstrom were cornerstones of the new place. Things were looking up, economically speaking.
Steve wanted to see it as a hopeful metaphor of his own career. Once promising, then a descent into the absolute toilet, now ready for a comeback. If he could just land a well-heeled client or two. Maybe a big white-collar CEO type. Right. They always came to the small-time solo operator like him.
The building that housed Steve’s office came into view. A two-story corner job, it wasn’t on the best part of the main drag. Across the street was a notorious strip mall that drew a lot of Steve’s future clients — young thugs. They’d hang out at night in front of the coin laundry, under the red glow of the Chinese restaurant sign. Pick Up or Dine In, the sign said. Steve thought they should add a line — Hang Out. Because that’s all people did over there — mostly unemployed, mostly Latino.
Mostly tired, Steve turned into the outdoor parking lot of his office building.
And almost ran over a chair. What was that all about? True, this wasn’t the toniest address in town, but they didn’t need junk all over the place. Maybe some of the homeless had —
Steve recognized the chair. One of his own. A secretarial chair with rollers that was rarely used, the main reason being he had no secretary.
At the far end of the lot was a collection of more furniture. Piled up in the corner of the gray cinderblock wall. And all of it from his office.
The jerk had evicted him.
Trembling with rage, Steve braked the Ark, jumped out, and stared at his desk, chairs, credenza, filing cabinets, bookcases. It wasn’t everything, but enough for his Serbian landlord to make his point.
He saw himself grabbing a tire iron from the Ark’s trunk and breaking some of the building’s windows. Street justice. Maybe smash a door or two. Then he saw the tatters of his reputation and called Ashley.
His soon-to-be ex-wife — they had a month left on the mandatory wait — was the only one who might help him. She’d been there in the past. But he also knew that the thin thread that held them together was close to snapping.
“What’s wrong, Steve?” That was the first thing out of her mouth.
“Why do you always assume something’s wrong?”
“You only call when something’s wrong.”
“Not so.”
“Then what is it?”
“Something’s wrong,” Steve said.
“Not funny.”
“Not trying to be. He evicted me.”
“Your apartment?”
“Office.”
“Why?”
“Non-payment of rent, of course. But he didn’t have to do it this way. I mean, the stuff is all over the parking lot.”
“Steve, I’m sorry.”
“I was wondering if I could borrow a little.”
The pause on the other end was heavy, like a water-soaked blanket.
“Ashley?”
“I just can’t.”
“Why not?”
“You know why not.”
“Oh what, you’re going to bring up that enablement stuff?”
“It’s not stuff. It’s for your own good. The counselor even — ”
“Don’t bring up the counselor, please. I don’t exactly have feelings for the guy who is the reason you filed.”
“I filed because it was the only thing left for me. For us.”
“I’m clean, Ashley. Over a year.”
“I’m glad.”
“Glad enough to stop this thing and try again?”
Another pause, heavier than the first.
“Ashley?”
“It’s not going to happen, Steve. The sooner you accept that, the better it’s going to be all around.”
“Can’t we at least just talk and — ”
“No. Is there anything else? I’ve got a client I have to see.”
The finality in her voice was like a hook, deep in fish guts, being ripped out. It almost took Steve’s breath away.
He saw a young woman emerge from the back of the office building. She appeared to be looking for someone. He turned his back on her.
“I’m sitting here with half my office out on the street!” Steve said. “I need to get a trailer, get this stuff moved, get some money so I can convince the guy to let me back in. I’m maxed out on the cards, nothing in the bank. Nothing. I haven’t even been paid by my client yet, and I’m almost through with the trial.”
“Steve — ”
“I’m a mess, Ashley, and you’re the only one I ever had in my whole life who could put up with me. Can’t we just — ”
“We’re a mess,” she said. “We’re not good for each other.”
“I’m just asking” — he looked behind and saw the woman staring at him. She was early twent
ies, wore her copper-colored hair tightly back. Her black glasses and gray suit gave off a definite professional air. So why was she looking at him? — “for a loan, basically. And one dinner together. Just to talk. No pressure — ”
“I can’t do it, Steve. I can’t forget what it was like. I tried that once and it bit me.”
The time he stole a hundred dollars from her purse for a fix. He remembered that clearly. Bad, real bad. “Please — ”
“Don’t call me again, Steve. We’ve managed to settle amicably, and I want to keep it that way.”
“Ashley, don’t — ”
She clicked off. Steve dropped his hands to his sides and bowed his head. Eyes closed, he tried to make his brain find a file marked It’ll Be Okay. But it was gone. Snatched and tossed into the fire pit of lost hopes.
The woman in the parking lot said, “You’re not Steve Conroy, are you?”
THREE
He whipped around and faced her. “Who are you?”
“Excuse me?”
“Tell me what you want and why you know my name. And make it fast, because I’ve got — ”
She held up a sheet of paper. “Sienna Ciccone.”
“Ciccone?” It sounded familiar. “Ciccone . . .”
“Like Madonna.”
“Madonna?”
“That was her original last name.”
“You a singer?”
“Law student.”
Steve shook his head.
“You requested a clerk through DeWitt,” she said. “We were supposed to meet?”
Steve held the bridge of his nose. Tried to form a place where all his thoughts could come to rest and keep his head from exploding. “I made a request through DeWitt?”
“It was on the computer. Could have been there from a long time ago.”
It very well could have been a long time, and he very well could have forgotten. His memory was Swiss cheese then.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve got a few things I’m dealing with here.”
She nodded and looked at the corner of the parking lot where his office stuff was.
“Yours?” she said.
“Yeah.”
“Tell you the truth, I was sort of hoping for a cubicle.”
The Whole Truth Page 2