Steve almost called her Monday morning. But that would have been a little too obvious.
Carlos Mendez never had a chance of getting a reduced sentence. He did collect some credit for time served in custody. But his home for the next five years was going to be the California Men’s Colony north of San Luis Obispo.
News which was not greeted with good cheer by the extended Mendez family.
Mrs. Mendez started in just outside the courtroom doors. “You lying son of a — ”
“Excuse me, Mrs. Mendez — ”
“Lie, lie, lie!”
“Ma’am, I never lied — ”
“You say Carlos come home!”
“Ma’am, I — ”
“You say it!”
“No, ma’am, I said there would be an appeal — ”
“I no talk to you no more!”
“Ma’am, there’s a little matter of the bill. I — ”
“Liar!”
She turned her back and walked toward the elevators. The gaggle grumbled and cursed in low tones, words in Spanish that Steve didn’t have to understand to know.
Which left him with a dicey proposition. He could try to squeeze the Mendez family for the fee, but that would be a long and probably uncollectible prospect. Or he could just let it rest. He hadn’t been officially fired from prepping the appeal, but he wasn’t going to do an ounce of work until he got something in the coffers. He guessed she’d cool off and come back for more.
The very picture of wishful thinking.
All he had now was Johnny LaSalle, who had retained him for he didn’t know what.
Steve learned in recovery that idleness is opportunity. And his experience a few nights before alerted him to how close he was to a fall. If he was going to continue practicing law, he knew he had to do everything to keep from falling into the powder again.
In his car he had a booklet and looked up a meeting. When he’d been forced into recovery by the State Bar, he at first refused to go to a traditional twelve-step program. They were all based on the “higher power” idea, and he didn’t buy that. But that was all he could find in the Valley, so it started as a matter of convenience. What saved him was a good sponsor, and that, he decided, mattered more than what people believed about powers, higher or lower or nonexistent.
The Ark had been repaired by his genius mechanic, Thomas Charles, who could make tin foil run. He drove to the meeting, which was in the fellowship hall of a Methodist church on Winnetka. At the meeting, ten of them sat in the traditional circle. People could share their tales. Steve passed. Just listened. Get through another day, that’s the ticket.
His cell vibrated near the end of the meeting. He walked quickly outside and took the call.
“Steve?”
He knew immediately who it was. “LaSalle?”
“Hey, I’m out early,” LaSalle said. “How do you like that? Three days off for good behavior.”
“Where are you?”
“Reseda. The Wendy’s right on the boulevard. You know how long it’s been since I’ve had a really good burger?”
“Wendy’s?”
“Hey, compared to where I was. How long ’til you can get here?”
Johnny LaSalle was dressed in jeans and a blue Hawaiian shirt with pineapples and sunsets and swaying palms. He looked rested. Or relieved. He smiled broadly and when Steve got to his table, Johnny threw his arms around him. It was the strangest feeling Steve could ever remember. Being hugged by a corpse, embraced by a nightmare that had broken into a waking dream.
“We have a lot of catching up to do,” Johnny said.
“You’re right.”
“Can I order you something? It’s on me.”
Steve shook his head.
“You mind if I finish these?” Johnny LaSalle had some french fries spread out on a wrapper, covered with ketchup. “The fries in the joint are terrible. I think they get them from McDonald’s Dumpsters all over the state and microwave them for the inmates.”
It was hard for Steve not to smile at the relish with which Johnny consumed the fatty slivers. And it was hard to deny the magnetic rays that came from his presence. He thought of that character Alec Baldwin played in that movie about the real estate salesmen, the one with Jack Lemmon. Baldwin had one scene but practically stole the whole picture.
Steve reminded himself that Baldwin was something like the devil in that scene. Tread carefully.
“What should I call you?” Steve said.
“Johnny’s fine. I’ve been Johnny longer than Robert.”
“This is so strange.”
“I know, Brother. I know.” Johnny picked up three fries at once, downed them, spoke around them. “How about I just tell you what happened?”
“Please,” Steve said, noticing how jittery he was. His past was about to come flying in on all cylinders. Could he handle it?
“First,” Johnny said, “some of the good things. Remember me teaching you how to throw a baseball?”
Steve thought a moment. “I’m not sure.”
“We were at the park near the house. I remember that park. It had two baseball diamonds.”
“Right. Raintree Park. It’s still there as far as I know.”
“And I told you, this I remember, that you had to reach all the way back with the ball. Do you remember me telling you that?”
Steve had no recollection. “I’m sorry. I was just five.”
“How about this. Do you remember the Sesame Street character you were afraid of?”
“Sesame Street. Now that I do remember.”
“Let me tell you,” Johnny said. “It was the two-headed monster. With the horns. You used to hide your face when you saw them.”
That was right. That was exactly what Steve did. He never forgot the two-headed monster. You don’t forget the things that scare you as a kid. Or the losses you suffer when you’re five years old.
Johnny LaSalle had to be Robert. Had to be, or else he was the coolest liar on earth. Steve had seen some pretty cool ones before, but not like this. The echo of doubt was fading, but Steve wasn’t ready to stop listening. Still, Johnny’s face had changed. A moment before, Steve thought it potentially menacing. Now it seemed soft and open. Even vulnerable.
Quite unexpectedly, tears pushed at Steve’s eyes. He bit down and fought them back.
“Hey,” Johnny said. He put his hand on Steve’s arm.
“Sorry. You just don’t know . . .”
“I think I do. Listen, Bro, just listen. Life is a veil of tears, as they say. We’re part of that. But there’s a way out. Let me talk a minute.”
I want you to talk, Steve thought. I want you to talk your way back into my life and talk out all the pain. And talk fast so I don’t just burst the dam here.
“Here’s what happened,” Johnny said. “The guy who took me was named Cole.”
“Clinton Cole,” Steve said. “I looked up the story when I was a teenager.”
“Then you know a lot of it.”
“Not really.”
Johnny said, “Here’s how it went down. Cole was a guy who thought he was a demon. A chief demon of Satan. And it was his job to raise up apprentice demons. That meant little boys. Like me. He found me because he knew our father, did some construction with him. He decided I was going to be one of his boys.”
“Why didn’t he take both of us?”
Johnny shrugged. “I never got to ask. He wrapped me up and the next thing I knew I was in this place in the mountains, a real dive of a shack. Terrible.”
Steve swallowed hard. “Did he . . .”
Closing his eyes, Johnny nodded. “Yeah. Thank the good Lord above it never happened to you, Steve. It didn’t, did it?”
“No.”
“Well, somewhere along in there, I got rescued. By some guys who knew about Cole, knew what a bad guy he was. Some people might have called these guys a gang of some sort, but they were like family to me. A man named Eldon LaSalle took me in. Do you know that name?”
“I don’t think so.”
“All right. I’ll tell you more about him later. One step at a time.”
“Why didn’t this man bring you back to us?”
“It’s complicated. I don’t remember a lot from that time. I just know Cole had done a real number on me. Steve, I was really screwed up. Eldon LaSalle treated me like his own son. But he could only do so much. I got into trouble. No excuses. That’s just the way it was.”
As he spoke, Steve noticed him looking this way and that, never keeping his eyes locked on Steve for any length of time. Steve knew that’s how long-term prisoners act. In the slam they have to constantly be looking around in order to survive.
He could scarcely imagine what Johnny — Robert — had been through to this point in his life.
“I remembered you,” Johnny said. “But by the time I was fifteen, sixteen, I was into my own deal and I didn’t think about the past. But then things changed.”
Steve said, “Whose body was that in the fire? And how did they make it an ID on you? I have the autopsy report and it says — ”
“You have the autopsy report? How’d you get that?”
“I asked. The deputy coroner faxed it to me. It used dental records to make a positive ID on Robert Conroy.”
Johnny frowned. “I’ve never seen that. I don’t even know who it was in that shack. The kid I mean. The man was Cole. And good riddance.”
He looked down and was silent for a long moment. Then he looked at Steve. “I’ve paid my debt to society. At least that’s what they tell me. But this time I’m not going back. I want to turn my life completely around. It started inside when I found the Lord. How much do you know about my record?”
“Some.”
“I was into an Aryan thing. Thugs. That’s what we were. Pretty heavy into it. But Jesus broke through all that.”
Steve said nothing.
Johnny said, “Do you know the story of Paul and the road to Damascus?”
“Some kind of light, right?”
“Blinded him. Got his attention. That’s what happened to me in that prison infirmary. Only I didn’t go blind. For the first time in my life, I could see. Saw all the bad stuff I’d done, saw that I was going to die soon if I didn’t get my life together. No, that’s not what I mean. I mean I couldn’t get my own life together so it had to be from God. From Jesus. And I got on my knees and prayed. And I got saved, man. I got saved.”
“That’s great, ” Steve said.
“You’re not a believer then.”
“It shows?”
“I can hear it in your voice. Or not hear it, as the case may be. Well, let me tell you, you’ve got to come to the Lord, Brother. It’s the only way.”
“Let’s keep it on you for now. What are your plans?”
“That’s where you come in. I want you to be my lawyer.”
“Hopefully you won’t need a lawyer anymore.”
Johnny shook his head. “They won’t give up. The feds. They hate us. And the lawyer I had before this was a lying sack of” — he grimaced — “was just no good. I landed in prison because of him. I have never had a lawyer I could really trust. Who would bleed for me if he had to, and who I would bleed for. Until I got saved, I never would have thought this way. But now I do. That’s why I came to you after all these years, Steve. Family. That’s what it’s all about.”
Steve took a breath, trying to process the whole thing. For a moment he felt like Jimmy Stewart in that Christmas movie, getting a chance to go back after jumping off a bridge. But that was a movie and this was a Wendy’s in Reseda.
“Rob — Johnny, I’d like to help, but federal’s a major deal — ”
“Say you will. Just say it.”
“You need somebody who specializes — ”
“There’s more to it. I don’t just want you to be my lawyer. I want somebody who can guide me on the outside, help me get on the right track. But most of all . . .” He paused, then took a deep breath. “Most of all I want you to be my brother again. For the rest of our lives.”
Steve couldn’t speak for a long moment. It was like the moment was frozen in time, yet rushing by like a bullet train. And he had to grab on now. If he didn’t, it would pass, and with it the last chance to make everything right again.
“Of course I’ll help you, Johnny.”
With a relieved grin, Johnny said, “I was hoping for that. Knowing I have you to count on will make all the difference in the world.”
He put his hand out. Steve shook it. A sealed deal.
And then Steve couldn’t hold back any longer. The tears came. His body shook and he put his head in his hands.
He felt Johnny’s hand on his back. “Hey, it’s all okay,” Johnny said. “It’s all okay.”
Dear God, he wanted that. He wanted it to be more than that.
He wanted his brother back, and now here he was and the tears would not stop.