"Probably not."
"And the school badass says he did?"
"Wendell Grant, yes."
"You don't suppose the cops told him that if he ratted out his pal, he'd get a break?"
"Cops do that?" I said.
"He's not going to get a break," Rita said. "Not for shooting up a school. He'd lose nothing by saying Jared didn't shoot."
"He might just enjoy taking Jared down with him," I said.
"Not easy," she said.
Her mouth was open. She was tapping her bottom teeth with a ballpoint pen. Her thick, red hair came to her shoulders. She was something to see.
"You have a functionally retarded underaged boy whose parents really want to get rid of him," I said. "Who was sexually exploited by an older woman. You oughtta be able to do something with that."
"Jared's going away somewhere," Rita said.
"And probably should," I said. "But maybe he shouldn't spend the rest of his life somewhere, and maybe it should be a kinder somewhere."
"If such a place exists," Rita said. "Will Beth Ann Blair stick to her story?"
"I don't know," I said.
"And Jared?"
"I don't know," I said.
"I love a nice, solid case," Rita said.
I shrugged.
"The kid deserves better than he's getting," I said.
She looked at me and smiled, which was something to see in itself, and walked to her desk and sat in her big leather partner's chair and put her feet up and tapped her teeth some more.
"Tell me something," Rita said. "You have stuck by this kid, whom you barely know, like he was your own. But you don't seem interested at all in the other one."
"Grant?"
"Yes. Don't you suppose he might have serious problems that weren't addressed? Doesn't he need help? Isn't he a kid, too? Should he spend the rest of his life in jail?"
"Nobody hired me to stick with Grant," I said.
"That's it?" Rita said.
"Yes."
"That's all?" Rita said.
"That's all there is," I said.
"No right or wrong, nothing like that?"
"Right or wrong?" I said. "Rita, you're a lawyer."
"I know, never tell that I said that."
We were quiet for a moment.
"There's thousands of people need saving," I said. "I can't save them all. Hell, I can't save half the ones I try to save."
"So you let chance decide?" Rita said. "Someone hires you?"
"Chance and choice," I said. "I don't take every case."
"How do you decide?" Rita said.
"I'm not sure," I said. "I usually know it when I see it."
"You can't save everybody," Rita said.
"And if I try, I end up saving nobody," I said.
"And saving one is better than saving none," Rita said.
l nodded. Rita looked at me silently before she spoke.
"Do you know what I bill an hour?" she said.
"I believe I do."
"How you going to pay me?"
"I'll give you every cent I earn on this case from here on," I said.
She looked at me some more and smiled wider.
"They fired you," she said. "Didn't they?"
"Well," I said. "Yuh."
"And you're offering me half of that."
"Yuh."
Rita laughed softly and flipped the ballpoint pen onto her desk.
"I'll take it," she said.
Chapter 63
I WAS IN MY OFFICE. Pearl was asleep on the couch. It was raining outside, and the colorful umbrellas over boots and fashionable raincoats were flowering once more on Berkeley Street. The office door opened. Pearl's head went up. Royce Garner came in and closed the door behind him and pointed a gun at me.
"I'm going to kill you," he said.
With his orotund voice, he sounded like Richard Nixon. Pearl growled.
He turned toward her with the gun, and I shot him at an angle in the backside, so that the bullet passed through and lodged in the far wall. Confined by the small room, the gunshot hurt my ears. Garner fell over. Pearl jumped from the couch and scuttled behind my desk. Still holding the gun, I patted her as I went past her to Garner.
"Should have kept the gun on me," I said. "I'm a lot more dangerous than Pearl."
"You shot me," he gasped. "You shot me."
I picked up his gun carefully and went back to my desk and put it in a large plastic Baggie. I put my gun back in the holster. Then I called 911 and ordered up an ambulance.
"Help me," he said. "I'll die if you don't help me."
"No you won't," I said. "You got shot in the ass. You're not even bleeding that bad."
I went to the sink and got a hand towel and folded it up tightly and walked to Garner and squatted down beside him.
"Oh, God," he said. "This hurts. I'm bleeding."
I pressed the towel against his wound.
"Roll over so you're lying on the towel," I said. "It'll be like a pressure bandage."
"I can't move," he said.
"Oh," I said. "Well, maybe you will bleed to death."
He groaned and struggled over onto his side and groaned again, but his weight was on the wound and the towel. I stood and leaned my butt against the front edge of my desk. Pearl peered bravely around the edge of the desk at Garner.
"Ow," he said. "It's, like, burning."
"Ambulance is coming," I said.
"I wasn't ... going to ... shoot you," Garner said. "I just wanted to talk."
"Which is why you brought a gun and pointed it at me and said. . ." I dropped my voice, imitating him: "I'm going to kill you."
"I wasn't going ... to."
"Sure you were," I said. "I'm the only one that knew about the pictures and all. With me dead, you'd have everything back under control. You would be president of a nice junior college. The kid would be away for life. Beth Ann would be hauling your ashes again, and you'd have a nice alternative to the alcoholic oinker you married."
"No," Garner said. "No, I was just going to talk. I can give you some money, maybe. I'm an educator. We don't have a lot."
I shook my head.
"Pal, you don't have anything at all," I said.
I could hear the siren sound in the distance. Pearl crept out from behind the desk and went to Garner and sniffed at him. She was interested in the blood.
"Don't let her hurt me," he said.
I said, "Pearl."
And she came.
I said, "Sit."
And she sat.
I knew it wouldn't last, but it was pretty impressive.
Two uniforms came into my office first, then two EMTs, then Belson. When Pearl saw Belson, she stood and wagged her tail and walked over to him. The EMTs got busy with Garner.
"I saw the call and recognized the address," Belson said. "I didn't want to miss out on anything."
"Too bad it's not a happier occasion," I said.
I went to my desk and got Garner's gun and handed it in its bag to Belson. He took it and handed it on to one of the uniforms.
"This might be evidence," Belson said. "Try not to lose it."
"He tried to kill me, officer," Garner said as importantly as he could.
The EMTs had pulled his pants down to put a pressure bandage on the wound, so that sounding important wasn't easy. Belson looked down at him for a moment or two, scratching Pearl's ear absently.
"Goddamn," he said to me. "You got another one."
Chapter 64
THE MEETING was in the big, flossy conference room next to Rita's office on the thirty-ninth floor at Cone, Oakes, which was much too big for our small group. Finger sandwiches were served, and fresh fruit, and coffee, and bottled water. The coffee and the water were about the same temperature. Cleary was there; and Richard Leeland, theoretically representing Jared Clark; and Alex Taglio, Grant's lawyer; and me. The Clarks had declined Rita's invitation, as had Wendell Grant's mother. Probably heard about the coffee.
"I've taken the liberty of providing each of you with an outline of the situation in which we find ourselves," Rita said, "which could be described as a mess."