John Lescroart - A Certain Justice

And now Mohandas was on him like yellow on a lemon. 'Poor Art,' Wes was saying. 'He's done.'

'You know him?'

'Everybody knows him. He's about the fairest man in the Hall of Justice.'

'But-'

'You watch. He's gone.'

They stared at the picture for another few seconds until one of those 'why-ask-why?' commercials made Wes mute the screen. He liked all kinds of beer, but he'd asked why too many times about too many things to have any idea of what the damn ad was about.

He sat, then, his bare feet flat on the floor, his elbows resting on his knees. 'Want a beer?' Although he didn't move to get one. Finally he sat back, patted the sofa, and Bart jumped into the space between him and Melanie, settling again with his head on Wes's lap. 'What did your parents say?' he asked her.

Hers was an unpractised moue. 'About what you'd expect.' Then: 'What happened to you, Wes?'

The abrupt segue wasn't clear, and he supposed he could have finessed it for a round or two, but of course he knew exactly what she meant. He had talked Kevin – both of them – into staying a while, into thinking through their strategy a little more carefully. At least get some rest.

And why had he done that? Why hadn't he just let them go? Maybe it was time to find out what he was made of, what he was going to do. Maybe open his battered soul's door a crack and take a peek inside, see if there was anybody there he wanted to get to know.

He wasn't very optimistic about it, but Melanie was here, listening – once again she reminded him of his daughter Michelle. All right, he could at least start, see where it went.

'Mark Dooher. I met him in seventh grade. One of those guys the light always shines on, you know? Great-looking kid, he smiled at you and everything was possible. A little like our friend Kevin in fact. In that way.

'And, lucky me, there's a chemistry. I'm not really in his shadow because I'm nothing like him – I've got to work at things, for example, and I swear to God Mark had it all without any show of effort. He once told me, said he didn't understand life – people working so hard to get someplace. To him, it just came. He told me if he had to work he'd probably fail at everything, but it just wasn't that tough for him – you believe that? And there was no arrogance about it, that was just who he was, some guy that everything broke for the right way.

'And I mean everything . Brains, looks, personality, talent, even luck – everything. I should have hated his guts. But a guy like that thinks you're his best friend, thinks you're cool, and that's the way it stays your whole life? Guess what? You figure in this one way maybe you've grabbed a little of his luck – for some reason, the gods like you too. You take it – figure it doesn't have anything really to do with you. Greater forces are at work.

'So we go through life, Mark and Wes. We play ball together – he's shortstop and I'm second base. We go to the Babe Ruth World Series together and damn if he doesn't win the thing with a home run in the bottom of the seventh… and who's on base in front of him? Moi . A sweet moment.'

He paused, scratching Bart absently. One of his feet was curled under him and Melanie thought that, in spite of the gray field of stubble, the long unkempt hair, he suddenly looked younger. He smiled, embarrassed. Perhaps there was something in Kevin choosing him as his friend.

'Anyway,' he went on, 'Mark went to Stanford and I went to Cal, but we stayed close. He met Sheila, and Lydia and I got together – thank God we didn't go for the same type of women, never did – and we both started law school in the same boat down in LA – pregnant wives, living if you can believe it on the same street in Westwood. It was a good life in spite of no money… LA in the seventies.

He did the first few bars of 'I Am, I Said,' got to the laid-back feeling point, and raised his eyebrows.

'Naturally, Mark doesn't crack a book and somehow is law review and clerking with the majors and I'm living at the library pulling Bs. This story too long?'

'No.'

'So after law school he gets on the partner track here in the city starting in the high thirties. This is '75 or so, remember, and that was a ton of money then. I hang up a shingle and start hauling it in in the large hundreds doing low-rung criminal stuff. But that's okay. It's Mark and me, it's who we are. No sweat. We're still best friends. We've got kids the same age – baseball and soccer – we play bridge with our wives and the families do stuff together all the time. It's like we're all one family. My kids call him Uncle Mark and I'm Uncle Wes. It was nice, it was perfect, like everything with Mark. We both eventually wind up back here in the city, and even if he's in St. Francis Wood and we're up the Richmond – so what? We're all happy, what's the problem?'

'So what happened?'

'Well, wait, there's one other thing.' Wes stood, stretched, went to the salon's small refrigerator and took out two bottles. He twisted the top off a Mickey's Big Mouth and gave it to Melanie, who took it without thought. She couldn't remember any time she'd had beer in the afternoon. Well, first time for everything…

Wes was back down, half-turned to her, one bare foot curled under him. 'There was the law. I don't think it's the law as you or Kevin think of it. Or too many other people. Maybe only me.'

'And Mark?'

He chuckled, and it seemed to her both brittle and bitter. 'And Mark, of course. You work in it long enough and I suppose it gets like anything else. You burn out, get cynical. But Mark and I… and this goes back to early high school, maybe before that… I don't know what started it, but we got into this, this attitude . It was like a deal between us.' He sipped his beer, taking a minute, then added, 'No, that's not nearly it. It was more a sacred pact.'

'What was it?'

'It was that we wouldn't lose faith. That sounds stupid-'

'No, it doesn't.'

'Yes, it does, believe me. We saw it happening with everybody around us in the law – how the hours would eat you up, the clients who lied or who were just plain guilty, the crap you had to put up with to survive.

'But Mark and I stuck to our pact. He had this… this vision … don't laugh… that life had to mean something. That that's what made people successful – not what they did but how they did it, how they felt about it, that they didn't stop trying. And we're not just talking monetary success here – no, this was Mark Dooher, this was Life Success, What It Was All About, The Big Picture. So twice, three times a year, I don't know, one of us would get down on the whole thing and we'd take this retreat – go fishing, whatever – reaffirm, get back to What Counted…'

Melanie was sitting forward, entranced. 'Everybody should do that.'

'You're right. It was great. It worked.'

'So?'

Wes let out a long breath. 'So one night three years ago – both of our youngest kids had just moved out – a burglar breaks into Mark's house, rapes his wife and stabs her to death.'

Melanie's beer stopped halfway to her open mouth.

'And after about four months, Mark is charged with the murder.'

The bottle, untouched, was back in her lap. She was tempted to ask if Wes was kidding her. It seemed the only thing possible. But she knew he was not. This had happened, and as the truth and portent of it began to sink in, she muttered, 'Oh my God.'

'No kidding.'

'He didn't do it, did he?'

'Get real. This is Mark Dooher, senior partner in his law firm, major philanthropist, dedicated family man. Give me a break. But he got charged. It was, I thought, an extremely weak case, all circumstantial. His fingerprints were on the knife – but he was the cook in the family, of course his fingerprints are on the knife. Could be his blood type from the sperm samples – right, him and a thousand other guys. But no solid alibi – he'd been out late driving golf balls at Lincoln. Mark and Sheila had just raised their insurance, stuff like that. And he asked me to defend him. And of course I did.'