David Ellis - Eye of the Beholder

Talk to the lady. Test her.

He tries. He doesn’t do so well with words. Doesn’t say them right. I like your baby, is what he wants to say.

The woman turns and smiles at him “Thank you.” Looks at him like she feels sorry for him. “This one kept me up all night.”

He tries to smile. Long night.

At night, I think about dark things.

Try again: How old is she? He does okay with that.

The woman answers-“She’s ten months”-and Leo breaks eye contact, but he can see her reaction, she picks up her child and holds her close.

Leo winces at the stabbing in his stomach. The woman gets up quickly and walks toward the counter. He looks out the window just in time to see Paul Riley’s car in the alley, his car backing out into the alley, behind his house.

The woman is looking in his direction, he pretends not to notice, but he’s smarter than her. He can watch her without letting her know he’s watching her.

I know you’re staring at me, you little bitch. I could rip your eyes out without breaking a sweat.

Leo puts on his baseball cap and leaves the café. He looks back. The woman is staring at him through the window, caressing the baby’s head. Bad baby. Fake baby.

Leo jogs to his car. He drives miles away and then turns back toward Riley’s street, entering from a different direction. He keeps north of Riley’s house for a long while, parked by a curb, watching the rearview and driver‘s-side mirrors. Nothing. No vehicle traffic. Nothing. Nobody.

He drives to the next block over and parks. This street is like Riley‘s, expensive houses, high gates and small, elaborate landscapes, fancy lawns, perfect houses, perfect people, shiny and happy. He removes his gym bag from the trunk and walks to the corner, turning in the direction of Riley’s street, stops midblock and turns down the alley.

He finds Riley’s detached garage and the gate into his backyard. He uses Riley’s house keys from last night. First one doesn’t work, second one fails, third time, he’s in.

There’s a sliding glass door on his patio, but it’s not opened by a key. No. Down a stairwell is a door under lock and key that leads to the basement. He stands at the foot of the stairwell, five feet below ground. One of the panes to the basement door window has been shattered and replaced with a piece of cardboard.

Leo slips another key into the door, the first one doesn’t take, second one does, he heads inside with his bag. Good. Good.

Twenty minutes later, he emerges from the house and locks the door behind him, walks back up the stairs and looks up into a vibrant sun. He admits it, yes, it feels good, feels good, but it’s a weapon they use, the weather, turning everyone into smiling, shiny, happy people. Happy, smiling, shiny, ignorant robots.

I can live in your world. I can live in yours and mine at the same time. That’s the difference between me and you. That’s the difference between me and Terry.

He calmly marches back to the gate. Once back in the alley, he picks up his pace, eyes darting about because this would be a time, when it’s nice and shiny and warm, not a care in the world, right, not a care in the world and I’ll be whistling to myself and then you’ll come, then you’ll come when I don’t expect it-

But then he’s on the sidewalk, back to the car, safe, start the car. Calm now, heartbeat normalizes, breathing exercises, blast the air-conditioning, breathe in, breathe out, cold against his wet shirt, try to smile. He passes by the coffee shop, his hat pulled low, and looks through the window, to where he was sitting not a half hour ago.

The woman with the baby is gone.

He looks in the rearview mirror at the cars behind him. He quickly pulls over, forcing the other vehicles to pass him by, the drivers to show themselves, but none of the drivers are thin, blond-haired women with a baby in the back, but then, they wouldn’t be that obvious. He waits, one-two, one-two-three, a break in the traffic, and he pulls the car into a quick U-turn. Turns left at the first street, then another left, then another, driving in a square, eyes on the rearview mirror at all times. Looks okay. But, to be sure, he repeats the process twice more. He’s gotten this far. No reason to let up now.

Tonight, he will know for sure.

JEREMY LARRABEE crosses his leg after completing a brief summation of the facts of his case to Judge Landis. His client, Josefina Enriques, was an administrative assistant in one of the suburban plants of Bentley Bearings. She’s a fifty-two-year-old Latino woman who filed a workers’ comp claim for carpal tunnel syndrome a year earlier. Three months later, she was fired by my client, Bentley Bearings. The lawsuit Jeremy Larrabee filed on her behalf included claims for discrimination based on race, gender, age, and workers’ comp retaliation. He’s given notice to the court that he will seek to certify a class of all employees who fall within these categories.

Judge Landis turns his tired eyes to me. “Mr. Riley?”

I’m annoyed for two reasons. First, my head is still killing me from being jumped last night. Second, I shouldn’t have to be here. I supervise all litigation involving Harland Bentley’s companies, but I don’t oversee the day-to-day work on these cases. That job belongs to the partners who work under me at my firm. But whenever trial judges call a settlement conference, as Judge Landis has today, they want the “trial attorneys” present, meaning the lead lawyers on each side. So here I am.

Make it three reasons I’m annoyed, because the wound to my pride is almost as bad as the one to my skull. I still can’t believe I got snookered by that lady last night. She batted her eyes at me and my defenses evaporated.

“Oh, I’d be very interested in how Mr. Riley spins this,” says Jeremy Larrabee. Jeremy and I have history, not a particularly amicable one, but I always get a kick out of him. Always wearing his emotions on his sleeve, still with the sixties-era ponytail, the acne scarred skin and deep-set eyes, the bright wardrobe. Today, it’s a lemon yellow shirt, wild purple tie, and chocolate sport coat.

“She was fired because she took two-hour lunches,” I say. “And because she only showered about once a week. We’re not offering a dime.”

Larrabee’s jaw clenches. A vein shows itself above his bushy eyebrows. He’s past sixty now, and, from what I hear, has all but abandoned criminal defense. In fact, I don’t think it was long after he lost the Burgos case that he gave up the practice. Now he’s a plaintiff’s lawyer, working on some civil rights stuff that suits him, and, these days, spending much of his time suing Bentley Bearings, one of the subsidiaries for Harland Bentley’s holding company, BentleyCo. He has no fewer than eleven suits filed against us currently. So far, we haven’t offered anything on any of the cases. He is building up fees and expenses on these cases and looking for seed money-a settlement of at least one of these claims to pay for the prosecution of the other ones.

“I think it might be helpful if I spoke to each of you separately,” says the judge. “Starting with Mr. Riley.”

A common tactic in a pretrial conference-the judge talks to each side separately, trying to scare each party into thinking their case is garbage and they better settle but quick. Judges always try to settle cases to clear their dockets. The last thing Judge Landis wants to hear is a motion for class certification on a bullshit case like this.

Jeremy stands tentatively and looks at me. “Mr. Riley,” he says, and walks out.

I put my head in my hands as the door closes, and it’s me and the judge.

“I noticed a nasty bruise on the back of your head,” the judge says. “Your hand has seen better days, too.”