A caravan of golf carts chugged by: tourists taking the tour. Families packed in like they were on a coal train, gawking at the phony streets, at the bungalows, at the lots, which were nothing more than oversize warehouses with green roofs and big garage doors. But movies had been shot here, movies they had probably seen. One chunky tourist mom raised her phone to snap a picture, and Ebbers raised one hand slowly and waved, gave a magnanimous thumbs-up, as if he were a movie star. The people on the caravan looked closer, trying to figure out who he was.
“What would be helpful”—Ruben cleared his throat—“is if you have particular recollections of Richard in recent months. I’m trying to piece together if he was acting unusually, or—or seeming to be, I guess—odd.”
“Odd?”
“Yeah. Odd.”
“Why?”
“Last November was ten years since Wesley’s accident. And I understand that Richard was—or might have been—somewhat affected by that?”
“You’re wanting to know if the man was out of his damn mind.”
“Well—not exactly that.”
“Yeah, but not not that either, right?” said Ebbers, smiling, and Ruben smiled, and then he waited, and Ebbers didn’t say anything else. He looked past Ruben, at the studio road, as if waiting for another tour-group convoy to come chugging by.
“So? Mr. Ebbers?”
“Yeah?”
“Was he acting oddly recently?”
“Oh man,” said Ebbers, and blew air out between his lips. “Word like that. Oddly. Who the hell knows, right?”
“Right,” said Ruben.
But it was a simple question. Was he acting oddly or not? A simple question, he had asked it twice, and twice Ebbers in his friendly funny way had danced backward, away from actually answering. Ruben studied the man. There was something familiar in all of this, in the play of his sentences, how they skirted just around the edges of having a definite meaning. It reminded Ruben of something, of somebody, and of course it was Shenk—it was always Shenk. Jay Shenk and his ways and means, hiding in everyone and everywhere he went.
“Mr. Ebbers.” A thought had arrived in Ruben’s mind, tiny and fragile, like a drifting snowflake. “Mr. Ebbers, had you seen Rich since November of last year?”
Ebbers cocked his head and thought about this for a second, although Ruben could not help but feel he was pretending; not thinking but making a show of thinking. Then he said, “No, no, I guess not. Not until that night, the night it happened. I went right up to the precinct house, when he called me.”
“But why?”
“Why what?”
The big people-pleasing smile was gone from Ebbers’s face. He looked at Ruben with a crisp coolness that reminded him of the gun he’d seen at the man’s waist.
But Ruben pressed on. He had an idea, and it was probably stupid, but he had to ask.
“Doesn’t seem like you guys are all that close. Why did he call you?”
“Well,” Ebbers said, eyeing him evenly. “Not sure I can say.”
“Rich has got a wife. He’s got this daughter he’s crazy about, and I think actually they’re pretty close. He gets arrested, he’s got his one call to make, and he calls his friend Bart Ebbers. But you’re telling me you’re not even really friends.”
“I never said that, did I? I just said we’re a certain type of friends.”
Ruben nodded, sure, OK, but before he could say more a shrill whistle blew from inside the soundstage, and Ebbers turned to it. “I gotta get back to work,” he said. “Good meeting you, Mr. Shenk.”
“Yeah, no, for sure, it’s just—why? You hadn’t seen the guy in a long time, it sounds like. Why did he call you?”
“Oh, you know. You know.” Ebbers’s big smile made one last appearance. He opened his hands. “Not everybody has a lot of experience with stuff like this. Cops and crime scenes and so on. Most people don’t.”
It wasn’t an answer, not really. But it was all Ruben was going to get. Ebbers patted Ruben firmly on the shoulder and went back inside the giant door.
“You have a great day, now, son.”
December 9, 2009
1.
The call caught Shenk in the hallway just outside Cates’s courtroom, and Shenk should have known better than to answer; not a call from a number he didn’t recognize; not with two minutes before gavel.
“Mr. Shenk?”
“Yeah?”
“It’s Dr. Pileggi.”
“I’m sorry—it’s who?” For one confused second, Shenk thought it was a physician he’d gone to see, calling to give him test results. “Am I all right?”
“It’s Dr. Theresa Pileggi. The neuroscientist. The expert witness.”
“Oh. Oh, right, sure. How are you?” He saw Riggs coming off the elevator. He threw him a cheery and unrequited wave.
“I wonder, Mr. Shenk, if you had thought any further about my potential use to you.”
“Uh, yeah. No. I mean, sure.”
In point of fact, it had occurred to him a couple of times over the summer that he might need to call her. If this thing went to trial, he would need an expert witness after all, and no one else even halfway credible was even claiming to know what was wrong with Wesley.
But lately Shenk’s mind had been on Paola Garza and the mystery of the missing radiologist; his mind had been on Paul Newman in The Verdict.
“Your trial opens on April fifth, I believe.”
Shenk grimaced. He did not need that particular reminder at this moment, and besides, had he told her that? Had Liptack? Was she tracking his case?
“As it happens,” he informed her, “there’s not going to be a trial. We’re moving closer to settlement.”
He believed it; he was back to believing it. After today, after he got Dr. Allyn on the record, he would be back on track.
“Are you working with another expert witness?” asked Dr. Pileggi coolly.
“I told you, I don’t think I’ll need one.”
“So, no, then?”
He couldn’t help it. He laughed. “Listen. Dr. Pileggi. Your keen interest is noted, and I will let you know if I need you. OK?”
Jackie Benson, Cates’s clerk and Shenk’s pal, came bustling past, on her way into courtroom 5—she looked at Shenk and then meaningfully at her watch, and he mouthed, I’m coming, I’m coming.
“You do, Mr. Shenk,” said Pileggi.
“I do what?”
“You need—”
Shenk hung up before she could complete the thought, but he knew what she was going to say, she was going to say, You need me, and even though it was now past time to be inside, taking his place at the plaintiff’s table, he stood looking at his phone for a good ten seconds before he put it away and headed in.
Even with the sly intercession of Ms. Benson, Shenk had had to wait nearly three weeks after his assignation with Paolo Garza before he could get a slot on Cates’s calendar.
Shenk could hardly wait—he was bursting at the seams.
Garza had given in, told him exactly where he could find Dr. Allyn, the radiologist who had abruptly and suspiciously left Valley Village in the wake of the Keener surgery. In a perfect world, Shenk would have gone up there directly, shown up on Dr. Allyn’s devious doorstep with no warning to squeeze out her secrets like juice from fruit, but he knew that whatever it was—whatever Riggs and the hospital and the hospital insurer were hiding from him—it was better to get it the right way. Get the judge’s stamp of approval. Make sure there was no way the testimony could subsequently be disallowed. Once he’d chased this thing down, it would only be a matter of waiting for the phone to ring; only a question of whether they would return to the classy seafood joint for the second round of settlement talks or try somewhere new. Maybe this time, he would write down the number on a napkin.
Cates gaveled in the motion conference and then held it in suspension as he silently read the briefs, humming the famous overture from Figaro and gently tapping his forehead with the eraser e
nd of a pencil. Long minutes of respectful but agonized silence, Shenk going berserk in his seat, casting pugilistic glances at Riggs, who was settled and docile as always at the opposing table. Riggs would have sat there all day admiring Cates’s performance of judgeship, Riggs no doubt perfectly satisfied to stare into the middle distance and calculate how much, at his hourly rate, he was earning just sitting here.
At last Cates finished reading, looked carefully at Shenk and then carefully at Riggs, as if putting faces to names, and then tugged at his chin. “OK,” he said. “Mr. Shenk.”
“We need to be permitted to depose this witness, Your Honor,” Shenk said as he jumped up. “It is absolutely imperative to my case.”
“Yes, yes.” A slow nod. Holding up the brief by its corner. “I gathered that. The question is, Mr. Shenk, why have you not done so already? This witness submitted her sworn statement many moons ago. If you found that insufficient, and wanted her testimony compelled, you’ve had plenty of time to petition the court.”
Riggs was over at his table, nodding along, solemnly confirming the judge in his wisdom.
“There has been a shell game played, Your Honor,” said Shenk, striding out from behind the defense table. There was no jury present, no one to be impressed by the Atticus Finch routine, but Shenk wasn’t entirely performing—his passion was real. This morning he had run three and a quarter miles at nine miles an hour, the treadmill set to a 5 percent incline, and he still had a sheen of sweat all down his back. “Plaintiffs were told that Dr. Allyn had retired and left Los Angeles County. Given that the CT scan findings were available and not in dispute, I allowed—I graciously allowed—for her to respond via statement.”
He paused, took a breath. “What we were not told, but which we subsequently discovered, was that Dr. Allyn’s retirement, first of all, occurred a remarkably coincidental three days after Wesley was brought in to Valley Village. And secondly that she didn’t really retire, but rather immediately took a new position, in another part of the state. Have you seen The Verdict, sir? With Paul Newman?”
“Relevance?” said Riggs tiredly, while Judge Cates narrowed his eyes.
“Let’s proceed from the premise,” said the judge acidly, “that I have not.”
Shenk counseled himself to pull back, to chill out, but it was hard, it was really hard, especially with Riggs now rising to his feet, puffing out his cheeks and neck like a bullfrog.
“Your Honor,” Shenk said. “My job as counsel is to try and find out everything of relevance, including interviewing anyone in possession of critical information, whether or not they have been conveniently removed from the line of sight.”
“Dr. Allyn, as has been noted,” said Riggs, “is no longer an employee of Valley Village. I have consulted with the hospital, and they do not know where she is.”
“Well, I do know,” Shenk said. “As a matter of fact. I do.”
Riggs turned to him. “And how did you find that information?”
“Oh, it’s just this fun method I have, called I’m a better lawyer than you.”
Jackie Benson, at her clerk’s desk, chortled and then covered her mouth. Judge Cates spared her a quick displeased look before he said, “Easy, Mr. Shenk.”
“I’m sorry, Your Honor. I am worked up. I confess I am worked up by what’s happened here. What is happening.”
“Your Honor, if I may?” said Riggs to Judge Cates, with a mild and forbearing expression, as if appealing to a parent when a sibling is being an asshole. “Dr. Allyn, as opposing counsel acknowledges, now resides outside LA County. And, as has also been acknowledged, she’s already submitted a sworn statement. We urge the court not to allow Mr. Shenk to inconvenience this woman any further, and certainly not to delay this trial in order to do so.”
“And the plaintiff urges the court,” said Shenk, snatching away the thread of Riggs’s argument and turning it into his own, “not to let important information go by the wayside in the name of arbitrary urgency.”
Cates tilted back his chair. He laced his fingers behind his neck and let his gaze turn to the high ceiling of the court, to think carefully and to allow the court to contemplate his thoughtfulness.
“I’m going to allow it,” said Cates finally, letting the chair tip back forward and lightly tapping his gavel. Shenk felt a sluice of good, giddy joy pour from heaven right down into his heart. This was it. He was going to find this lady, and he was going to win this thing.
“The court will issue notice to Dr. Allyn to make herself available, at a location convenient to her, not to us.” He leveled his gavel at Jay. “But there will be no delay. The case remains where it is on our calendar, which means you have—” He turned to Ms. Benson, who was ready.
“Twelve days, Your Honor.”
“Yes. Twelve days. Discovery closes on December eighteenth.”
“December twenty-first, Judge,” said Ms. Benson, and Cates gave her the evil eye. “Fine.” Cates turned his scowl back to Shenk. “And this is on your dime, sir.”
“Obviously,” said Shenk, his chest tightening for the moment in dire recollection of how few dimes he had left. Never mind—he would figure that out. He risked a Riggsward glance, beaming, eyebrows dancing. Riggs merely shrugged, and Jay kept smiling, affable and gracious and beaming a silent message at full volume: Try to Verdict me, asshole.
2.
Wrestling? Jesus, what had he been thinking? He hadn’t been thinking.
Ruben had been rushing out the front door of the school as usual to make sure he caught his bus. Wednesdays and Fridays he took city transit home after school, the Big Blue Bus from Santa Monica: Olympic to Centinela and then down Palms. He let himself in with the key, did his homework, and waited for his dad. But today he had stopped at the side door of the school, drawn by the squeaks and grunts coming from the small gym by the main entrance, and had wandered over to peer inside. Ruben, whose impressions of wrestling had heretofore come entirely from the World Wrestling Federation, big hair and metal chairs and gouts of blood, was struck by the precision and control on display: place this arm here, this leg there; bend this knee and then the other. Strength made into tension; tension put to purpose. There. Now. Flip.
Coach Marsden saw Ruben watching and lumbered over. He was a thick-bellied man with a handlebar mustache, always in a polo shirt with the school logo stretched across his massive chest and stomach. Ruben was surprised by the sweet quality of his voice when it emerged: gentle, slow, so low you almost couldn’t hear him.
“So? What do you think?” Coach Marsden said, and then before Ruben could answer he took his arm with his hand, measuring it between two big fingers like they were calipers. “I think you might be a fit, young man. I think you might be a fit.”
Now, look, Ruben was no dummy. If ever there was a kid to second-guess his own motivations and torture himself over decisions, it was Ruben Shenk. Of course he knew that Wesley Keener wrestled—Evelyn had told him her brother was a wrestler. Is. Was. Was. Is. But he let himself, in that moment in the doorway of the gym, simply go for it. It felt right, so he did it. He signed up. And that was OK. He was not stealing something from Evelyn’s brother, he thought, crossing Sepulveda at Palms, carrying a plastic bag full of wrestling gear. It was a tribute. An homage.
The plastic bag bopped happily against his leg, filled with the curious artifacts of the unfamiliar avocation. A singlet. A piece of sturdy polycarbonate headgear. Mouthpiece and elbow guards. A new world.
Ruben whistled slightly as he trudged up the hill toward home, feeling unaccustomed flickers of anticipation and enthusiasm; nervous silverfish feelings darting between his ribs.
At the top of Tabor Street, the night man was waiting.
He was sitting in a chair in the center of their lawn. It was one of the heavy upholstered outdoor chairs they kept in the backyard, which were arranged in a large semicircle around the glass patio table. The night man had dragged the big chair from the backyard around to the front, and now he was sitting in
it, legs spread, in long shorts and sunglasses and sandals, casual and cool, just hanging out, killing time in a stranger’s front yard.
The night man turned his head slowly at Ruben’s approach and smiled. He raised one hand and made two fingers into a V of greeting.
“What are you doing here?” said Ruben. He didn’t come any closer to his house. He stayed in the street.
“There he is,” said the stranger, peeking out over the top of his sunglasses. “There’s our boy. How ya doing, Ruben?” His voice was fake sweet, coddling, like a guidance counselor or a youth-group leader.
“My dad isn’t here,” said Ruben immediately, and then just as immediately regretted it. He was old enough to recognize the childish foolishness of telling a stranger that you were by yourself. He knew what happened when you confessed your isolation: the arm around your neck, the poisoned candy, the predatory van.
Or this. Just this man, waiting in his yard, alone. This is what people should be scared of. The man, Dennis, or whatever his name was supposed to be, slowly unfolded his legs and rose from the chair. Then he walked forward to stand by the mailbox, at the edge of the property, a few feet from Ruben out in the street. He dug a loose cigarette from his pocket.
“That’s all right,” he said. He clicked the lighter, lit the cigarette, let the fire dance. “I’m here to see you, my man.”
Ruben felt tremors in his legs. His hand sweated on the handle of the plastic bag. He had been trying to forget him, but the night man was impossible to forget—this man, this cult leader or hippie or whatever he was, who had come into their life along with all the other flotsam and nonsense of the Keener case, and who somehow was also the same man who had been in his mother’s room when she died.
A man who Ruben had thought for all of his life was a nightmare but who now stood outside his house, blowing smoke at the sky.
“We’ve been looking for him,” the night man said, his smile mischievous, his eyes twinkling. “My friends and me. We’ve been looking for the Keener boy. And we keep on getting close, but you know what? They keep on moving him. They’re paranoid, these fucking people. Treating this kid like he’s the fucking Pope. Like he’s the crown jewels, you know?”
The Quiet Boy Page 18