The Whole Truth

by James Scott Bell

“Black, Liv. They don’t like to be called colored.”

  “I always forget.” Red shook her head.

  Steve said, “I’m trying to locate a certain doctor — ”

  “We don’t do referrals here,” Curls said. “But if you — ”

  Red jumped in. “We have a medical building just down the block if you’ll — ”

  “He didn’t ask for a medical building,” Curls snapped.

  “I know that, but if he’s looking for a doctor that would be the place to start.”

  “Not any doctor,” Steve said. “A specific doctor, named Walker C. Phillips.”

  A silence fell upon the volunteers. Neither seemed eager to tackle that one.

  “Is he still practicing?” Steve said.

  Red leaned forward and whispered, “Lost his license to practice.”

  “Terrible tragedy,” Curls said, shaking her head.

  “He drank,” Red added, and gave a tippling motion with her hand.

  “When was this?” Steve asked.

  “Oh, it’s been, what, ten years, at least,” Curls said. “His wife left him, you know.”

  “Ah, no, I did not know that.”

  The two women nodded.

  “Can you tell me, is he still around?”

  “Oh, he moved,” Red said. “To Tehachapi.”

  “I thought it was Temecula,” Curls said.

  “No, Tehachapi.”

  “He moved where the prison is.”

  “That’s Tehachapi.”

  “No, it’s Temecula.”

  “Oh, no. I have a granddaughter in Temecula.”

  “That doesn’t mean — ”

  “I would have remembered.”

  “Excuse me,” Steve said. “Maybe there’s someone here at the hospital who would know for sure?”

  That seemed like a delightful suggestion to the ladies, who fought over the phone. Curls won and punched in a number and took about five minutes to formulate the question, and finally listened. She started to frown. Then seemed almost angry.

  She replaced the phone. “Apparently he moved to Tehachapi.”

  Red smiled without saying a word.

  Curls quickly added, “But he may have moved from Temecula.”

  “Thank you, ladies,” Steve said. “You’ve been very helpful.”

  “That’s our job,” Curls said.

  “It’s not really a job,” Red said.

  Steve walked quickly for the doors, hearing Curls as he did. “I think you’d do much better if you did consider it a job.”

  As he was driving back to LA, Steve got a call from Ashley.

  “This is a surprise,” he said. He noted, with consternation, that his heart was kicking up. With longing. He wanted to be over that reaction. Now.

  “I’ve been meaning to call you,” she said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. I’m driving and everything.”

  “Steve — ”

  “Sorry.”

  She paused. “You have some things in the garage. I was just wondering what you planned to do with all of it.”

  “Is it in the way?”

  “Well, sort of.”

  “Is it a health hazard?”

  “Steve, I’m not a storage service.”

  “No, you’re the one who filed for divorce and forced me out of the — ”

  “I didn’t force anything.”

  “And now you’re ragging my face about a few things in the garage? Come on, I live in an apartment.”

  “We can’t just leave it like this. I own the house now — ”

  “You will, when I get my share.”

  “ — and I can’t have a portion of my garage filled with your things.”

  “At least give me a chance to get a house of my own.”

  “How likely is that?”

  “Thank you.”

  “I mean, are you going to rent?”

  “No, I had my eye on the Getty Villa overlooking the ocean.”

  “Steve, I’m serious. I’m going to be working at home tomorrow, so if you’d like — ”

  “What great timing you have.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I don’t know, today was a great day. I haven’t told you, have I?”

  “Told me what?”

  Steve started and stopped a couple of times. His eyes felt hot.

  “Steve?”

  “I’m here. Listen. Robert. He’s not dead.”

  There was a long pause. “Your brother?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How could it be?”

  “I can’t go into the whole thing. But it was a whole scheme, and the boy who died was misidentified as Robert. He’s alive. He’s been in prison, but he contacted me. I’ve just been out to see him. It’s — ” He fought back tears. “I don’t know, it’s been a lot.”

  “I’m sorry, Steve. I didn’t know.”

  “I know you didn’t.”

  “That’s just so . . . unbelievable. How did he find you?”

  “I don’t really want to talk about it right now. I’ll move my stuff. Just give me time.”

  “Sure, sure. I’m really — ”

  He snapped the phone shut. It was almost dark now and the city was still an hour away. Move his stuff. It reminded him of that scene in Moonstruck when the college professor gets water thrown at him by one of his young female students. He tells the waiter to clear the table and remove all evidence of her and bring him a tall glass of vodka.

  Ashley sure wanted all evidence of Steve removed. He knew they were finished, but as long as he had some things in the garage, well, maybe he had a shot. Yeah, and maybe there were barbequed ribs on the moon.

  But then there was Sienna. Why had she come into his life at this particular time? Maybe getting his brother back and a new woman in his life was a twist of the old wheel of fortune. Coming up his way for a change.

  That was something to cling to. They call that hope , he guessed. Or maybe delusion.

  He stopped at The Cue and ran a couple of racks. Drank a pitcher but kept it to one and got back to the apartment without incident.

  That would be a fine thing to show his new clients, a DUI charge. What an idiot, what a stupid idiot he was.

  As he approached the apartment building he saw the telltale flash of red light and spotty gatherings of people on the street. The urban distress code. And the ambulance was right in front of his place.

  Which kept him from getting into the driveway. So he double-parked and got out, blinking to try to clear his beer goggles.

  He was sufficiently successful to spot the manager, Mr. Jong Choi, standing on the front grass with his arms across his chest and a cigarette smoldering in one hand.

  “Who?” Steve asked.

  “Six,” he said.

  Six was Mrs. Stanky. “What happened?”

  Choi shrugged. He was slight of build and smoked incessantly. “She trouble, alway trouble.”

  “You’re a fount of information.”

  “Huh?”

  Steve turned away and looked to the ambulance. It was clear the paramedics were inside the complex. He made a beeline for number six.

  The door was open. The white gangsta wannabe kid from number seven was standing outside with a couple of his wannabe friends. A little something happening in their pointless world.

  Two paramedics were standing over Mrs. Stanky, who was on the sofa.

  “She okay?” Steve said.

  One of the medics turned around. “You are?”

  “Neighbor. Upstairs.”

  “Who is that?” Mrs. Stanky’s voice chimed.

  “It’s me, Mrs. Stanky. Steve from upstairs.”

  “Steve?”

  “Right here.”

  “Don’t go.”

  To the medic he said, “Can you tell me what happened here?”

  “We think she kinked her hose,” he said. “No oxygen. Passed out.”

  “How’
d you get the call?”

  The medic shrugged. “I think somebody called it in.”

  “I did.” Mr. Wannabe was in the doorway. “She wasn’t complaining about the music. I looked in and saw her on the floor.”

  So Mrs. Stanky’s disposition had saved her, by its very absence.

  Steve thought there was a certain poeticism in that.

  “Good work, dude,” Steve said.

  Wannabe looked disgusted at being called dude. But a little proud too.

  The medics finished their business and decided Mrs. Stanky could stay as is, provided someone sat with her for a while.

  So Steve watched another episode of Law & Order, this time all the way through. By the time the jury got the case handed to them, Mrs. Stanky seemed her old self. Which meant lodging some complaints with Steve.

  Satisfied she was good as new — or at least as good as she’d been — Steve went outside, where he was met by Nick Nolte, looking for a dish.

  The routine seemed like a good thing. Verner, California, was starting to feel a bit strange.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Steve went to see Ashley the next day.

  They’d bought a house together in Altadena, a nice little town about twenty minutes from downtown LA. It was community property, and as part of the divorce settlement Ashley kept the place. That just about covered the debts Steve had left on the marriage.

  Maybe his friends and drug connections wouldn’t have believed it, but Steve really wanted the marriage to work out. Even though he probably married Ashley for the wrong reasons. He wanted an emotional savior, and nobody was up for that job.

  They met first year of law school. Steve was still managing to get pretty good grades even while toking and drinking at night. One day Ashley sat next to him in contracts and said, “You’re such a jerk.”

  He looked at her through sore eyes. “Good morning to you too.”

  “You’re one of the smartest guys in here,” she said, “and you’re wasted all the time.”

  He started to throw some attitude. She batted it back like Mike Piazza. So they compromised and went for coffee, where he found out she was the daughter of a judge, a champion high school swimmer, and a birdwatcher. When he asked if she’d ever seen a blue-footed booby she laughed. That got him a dinner.

  By the end of the term they were in love. To celebrate the end of finals, Steve took Ashley to a carnival near the school. Just for laughs. They’d been studying hard for so long they almost forgot what laughs were like.

  But that night the laughs came in buckets, and on the Ferris wheel he asked her to marry him. She answered with an immediate yes and a kiss that jumped to the top of the all-time-best-kiss list.

  Her dad was less than thrilled with Steve, who could tell the old man sensed something a little off about him. Ashley protested, chalking up Steve’s lesser qualities to boyish eccentricity. Because of her, Steve stopped with the weed. Built up enough trust that she married him after graduation.

  She went to a firm in Beverly Hills, Steve to the DA’s office downtown. For two years it was a pretty good marriage. Everything was cool until Steve defended a drug dealer from the west side, a middle-class kid whose parents got him out on bail.

  He’d managed to keep the guilt over Robert hidden from Ashley and his employer, the county of Los Angeles. But the deep things eventually bubble up, like the hot stuff in the La Brea Tar Pits. Instead of admitting it to Ashley and getting help, he took an 8-ball of coke from his young client, free of charge. Not the cheap stuff, either.

  Which is what started the downfall. Ashley hung in there. Steve knew she lasted longer than most women would have. But damage was done to the foundation, the cornerstones of trust and loyalty. He lied to her and put his habit above everything else.

  And so he couldn’t blame her for finally calling it quits. She was better off without him. Most people were, even his clients.

  Ashley met him at the front door, looking great. Brown hair and emerald eyes. Lean and athletic as always.

  He wanted to hug her but she preferred a handshake.

  “I’m sorry about yesterday,” she said.

  “Me too.”

  “That’s just amazing news, finding your brother.”

  “Yeah. Can I come in?”

  “If you wouldn’t mind just going on into the garage, I have some work to do in the study,” she said.

  “You don’t have to worry about me. I’m not going to lose it.” The last time he was actually inside this house, he broke some furniture and threw a bookend through a window.

  “I think it would just be better,” Ashley said.

  Steve went around the side of the house, the once familiar now alien and shadowed, and into the garage. It was obvious where his stuff was. The disordered pile in the back corner. The rest of the place was Ashley all over. Rows of color-coded boxes, perfectly stacked like LEGOs, with her notations on the side in a neat, even hand.

  His things, what had remained when he moved out, were in brown boxes, a couple of garbage bags with twist ties, and his mom’s old trunk. It was the one thing his dad made for her, his mom told Steve once. And it was where she kept the old family photos.

  Steve hadn’t looked at those in years. When he’d gone into foster care, the trunk was the one thing he insisted on dragging along with him, as if it were his last link to normalcy. There were pictures of Robert and Steve in that trunk, a photographic lifeline. Paper-thin slices of the past, linked like a fragile chain, one that might be able to pull him out of a dark hole someday.

  When Ashley and he got the house, he put the trunk out here in the garage but had not looked inside it since.

  Now he did.

  There were three photo albums, some envelopes, and several loose pictures scattered around. Also, his mom’s old high school yearbooks. He opened one. All those black-and-white pictures of faculty and kids. His mom was a sophomore, Carla Rigney. She had her head turned slightly, wore glasses, and half smiled. She seemed uncertain about her future but trying to put a brave look on things. She wasn’t one of the babes. You could tell the babes, with their eye makeup and blond hair and I-dated-the-quarterback expressions.

  His mom’s picture also showed up in a couple of the clubs. Something called Knowledge Bowl, which looked like all the geeky smart kids. She was one of two girls among ten boys. She was also in Ecology Club and Student Store Workers. In that last picture her dark hair framed a round face and came to rest in flip curls below her shoulders. She was looking straight into the camera, as if ready to sell you a notebook.

  The inside front cover didn’t have a lot of signatures. One said, Carla, we haven’t known each other real well but you are a real sincere person and I wish you a lot of luck. Have a great summer and a beautiful life. Patty.

  Steve guessed Patty didn’t wish hard enough.

  He put the yearbook back on top of the other two, then picked up a handful of the loose photos. A lot of baby pictures of Robert. There was one of Robert in a Superman suit, maybe when he was four. Steve was on his lap smiling, the little brother, and Robert had his arm around him, as if holding him up. But Robert’s look was uncertain, like he was afraid he might drop the little one. Steve could see Johnny in Robert’s face. A definite resemblance.

  Another one showed them a little older. Robert a full head taller than Steve, with his arm over Steve’s shoulder. They were out in the backyard covered with dirt. Steve remembered the moment. They’d just built a fort. Used wood and cardboard and leafy branches for camouflage. Steve could still see the inside of that fort, the sunlight streaming through the gaps, the smell of the dirt.

  The feeling of security, inside with his brother.

  Steve went through about two dozen more of the loose pictures. One of the last reached out and gripped his throat. It was Robert in his train pjs. The ones he’d been wearing the night he was taken. He was eating a bowl of cereal. Looking up at the camera like he’d been disturbed, as if their mother, taking the pictur
e, was interrupting his life. A life that would soon become a nightmare.

  Closing his eyes, Steve fought back tears.

  “Is everything all right?”

  He didn’t turn to face Ashley. “No,” he said. “I mean, I’ll be okay. Would you mind” — he tossed the photos in the trunk and closed it — “if I took this with me today and came back for the rest?”

  “The trunk?”

  “Yeah. I can fit it in the backseat. I’ll take a couple of the bags too. Maybe I can borrow a truck for the other stuff.”

  “Sure, Steve. Just as long as you get it taken care of.”

  “I said I would.”

  Ashley said nothing. The feeling was familiar. Many times in their marriage he’d lose it over some small thing. She wouldn’t dignify him with a response. He’d put her down for saying nothing, and she’d ask him why he always wanted to fight. He wouldn’t say anything at that point. How could he explain that fighting was just another way to distract him from the void? He couldn’t because he didn’t have the words then. Most of the time he was high anyway.

  Ashley helped him get the trunk in his car. He drove back to his office and got a dolly from the storage room and wheeled the trunk into his office.

  And then sat there. Looking at it. Wishing the contents would fly out on their own and spread before him, showing him what his life was supposed to look like now and forever.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  On Thursday Steve took Sienna to his favorite rib shack in Los Angeles. He offered to drive, but she wanted to meet him there. Still keeping a professional distance. Well, Steve thought, nothing like Willie’s ribs to break that down. We’ll see just how long she lasts.

  Willie A’s Kansas City Barbeque was the proverbial hole-in-the-wall on Sepulveda. Its meat melted off the bone, drawing a clientele from all over the city. The proprietor always piled on the extras for Steve, because he once got Willie’s son off on a robbery charge. Willie Anderson’s kid was in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people. But he was no gangbanger, and Steve actually convinced a jury of that fact. It may have been his greatest performance as a criminal defense lawyer, and Willie A did not forget.

  So he, all three hundred pounds of him, would come out in his sauce-stained whites to say hi whenever Steve dropped by for a meal. Today was no different. Steve introduced Willie to Sienna.