School Days - By Robert B. Parker Page 0,62

me. Her suit fit very well in the front, too.

"Aren't they all," she said. "So, he connects with the school badass, who hooks them up with a gangbanger, who gets them guns and teaches them how to shoot, and they go into the school like two commandos, only the president isn't there that day, perhaps out tapping the school shrink against her wishes? So the kids start shooting the place up, except that our kid, Jared, says he didn't shoot. Any way to prove that?"

"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