“What would you do if I said yes?” I ask.
“Nothing,” she says with a smile. “I was just asking.”
I lean over and peck her on the cheek. About a year ago, we agreed that all of our partners’ meetings would be held in her bed. As a result, we tend to dispose of firm issues quickly and then we get down to serious business. I took a fairly substantial bath last year when it was time to decide my compensation. In the vernacular of our daughter, you might say I got “pantsed.” It was worth it. We impose a moratorium on the recreational aspects of our partners’ meetings in the all-too-infrequent circumstances where either of us is involved in a serious relationship with someone
else. At our stage in life, a serious relationship is defined as one that lasts longer than two weeks. We have not been required to call a cease-fire for about a year, since Rosie broke up with her last boyfriend. While we’re both willing to admit that the current state of our domestic situation is somewhat less than optimal, everyone gets lonely. Rosie says that sleeping with your ex-husband beats sleeping alone, but not by much.
“That’s why you’re such an effective managing partner,” I say. “You got us to do exactly what you wanted, and you let us think we were making the decision ourselves.”
“It’s all in my new book,” she says.
“Management by Guilt.”
“It’s going to be a best-seller.”
She brushes her lips against mine. Her warm breath smells like Merlot. I have been kissed by fewer women than your average forty-seven-year-old. In my limited experience, Rosie is still the best. “You seem to have found a hot case,” she says. “How do you do it?”
“Networking. It’s all going into
my
new book on rain-making for lawyers. I think I’ll call it
Networking—A Way of Life.”
Her eyes gleam. “It’s going to be a best-seller, too. Mind if I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“When you were a priest, people used to come to you to make confessions, right?”
“Yes.”
“And you used to do marriage counseling, too, right?”
I see where this is going. “Occasionally.”
“What made you think you were the least bit qualified to dispense advice to married people? You weren’t even allowed to
do it.”
I grin. “I trust this is a rhetorical question.”
“Indeed.”
“That’s good.”
“Now let me ask you one that isn’t rhetorical.”
“Okay.”
“Pretend you’re still a priest. A divorced couple comes to you and says they’re still sleeping together. They still love each other, but they can’t figure out a way to live together. What would you tell them?”
I try to dodge the question. “I would tell them that their situation isn’t ideal.”
“I could tell them that much. Would you tell them to stop?”
“Not necessarily. It depends on the circumstances.”
“That’s still an evasion.”
“Yes it is. I don’t give that kind of advice anymore. I got out of that line of work.”
She won’t let it go. “What if they ask you for a real answer?”
I pause to consider and say, “I would tell them they should take as much time as they need to work out their feelings for each other. I certainly would say they shouldn’t rule out the possibility of a reconciliation.”
“Now, that’s a pretty good answer.”
“I was a pretty good priest.” I was also a very sad priest. I loved it at first. I thought I was helping people and making a difference. Then I became frustrated by church politics. I spent more time by myself. I became lonely. The loneliness led to sadness, the sadness led to depression. I was a wreck. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t provide any guidance or comfort to anyone. I was just going through the motions. Finally, I got some counseling. Luckily, a forward-looking colleague convinced me it was okay to get out before the depression consumed me.
I glance at the TV It shows footage of Skipper making a
campaign speech, followed by a shot of him being led into the Hall. I catch a glimpse of myself proclaiming his innocence. The scene shifts to the front steps of the Hall, where Turner Stanford is making an impassioned plea for justice. “Turner’s spinning,” I observe.
A handsome reporter with windblown hair looks into the camera. He’s standing on the steps of a church. Rosie sits up. “What is he doing at St. Peter’s?” she asks.
I’m puzzled, too. St. Peter’s Catholic Church has been a center of worship at the south end of the crowded Mission District for more than a century. It rises above the modest bungalows and the two-story apartment buildings on Alabama Street, between Twenty-fourth and Twenty-fifth. It isn’t a particularly impressive structure, but it reflects the working-class community it has served for many years. What it has to do with Skipper or a dead body in the Fairmont I can’t fathom. I turn on the sound.
The reporter pretends he’s addressing his remarks directly to the anchorman. “A makeshift memorial has been established in the Mission District for the young man who was found dead earlier today at the Fairmont Hotel.”
The Mission District is one of San Francisco’s oldest and most complex neighborhoods. It sits on a sunny plain just south of downtown. Its main artery is Mission Street, which is home to businesses, residential hotels and restaurants. Like many inner-city neighborhoods, it has undergone several evolutions. Fifty years ago, it was working-class Irish. My mom and dad grew up on opposite sides of Garfield Square and were married at St. Peter’s. We lived in an apartment at Twenty-first and Alabama when I was little. We moved to the Sunset when I was nine and my dad had saved up enough money for a down payment on a house. About the same time, many of the Irish residents moved to other parts of the city and out to the suburbs. When they moved out, the Hispanics moved in. Rosie’s parents were among the new arrivals.
Her mom still lives at Twenty-fourth and Bryant, three blocks from our apartment when I was a kid. Small world.
“The name of the victim is John Paul Garcia,” the reporter says.
At least we now know his name. The camera pans toward the door to the church, where a small pile of flowers sits beneath a hand-lettered sign that says “Justice for Johnny.”
The phone rings and Rosie answers. It’s her older brother, Tony, whose produce market is around the corner from St. Peter’s. “Yes,” I hear her say, “I just saw it.” I watch her face turn ashen. She says “Uh-huh” a couple of times. She says she’ll make some calls and hangs up.
I grab the remote and turn the TV off. Rosie is sitting in stone-cold silence, her right hand covering her mouth, her eyes open wide.
“What is it?” I ask.
“It’s Johnny Garcia,” she whispers in a broken voice.
“Did you know him?”
“He’s from the neighborhood.” She bites her lip. “We knew his mother.”
5
“THE DA IS SUBJECT TO THE SAME LAWS AS EVERYBODY ELSE”
“The district attorney’s office will conduct business as usual during Mr. Gates’s leave of absence.”
—C
HIEF
D
EPUTY
D
ISTRICT
A
TTORNEY
W
ILLIAM
M
CNULTY
. W
EDNESDAY
, S
EPTEMBER
8.
Rosie is on the phone right away. She is pulling on a Cal sweatshirt as she talks in Spanish to her mother. Sylvia Fernandez is always available to her children. She stays with Grace when Rosie is in trial. We couldn’t practice law without her help. After Rosie hangs up, she says, “She’s going to ask around.”
This may help. Sylvia has known everybody who’s lived within a one-mile radius of St. Peter’s for the last forty years.
“How did you know Johnny Garcia’s mother?” I ask.
Rosie is sitting up in bed. “She lived down the street.”
I ask if they were close.
“Pretty close.”
“Do you know how to reach her?”
“Theresa’s dead, Mike,” she says. “She died about five years ago. Johnny and his older brother Carlos were kids. Johnny couldn’t have been much older than twelve when she died.”
“What about the father?”
“That’s a long story.”
“I have plenty of time.”
Rosie stands and says, “Let’s make coffee.”
Rosie has brewed a pot of Peet’s. She explains that Theresa Lopez Garcia was a pretty girl who tried to please. “She was a cheerleader. Very sweet,” Rosie says. “Not very forceful or independent, though. She married her high school sweetheart when she turned eighteen. Her parents weren’t happy about it. They wanted her to go to college. They didn’t like her husband, Roberto, who was a football player at Mission High. He wasn’t interested in school. He thought he was going to get a football scholarship. He didn’t.” She says Theresa worked at one of the produce markets on Mission. She and Roberto had two kids: Carlos and Johnny. Then things went to hell.
“Roberto had a temper,” Rosie goes on. “He couldn’t hold a job. He drove a forklift. He worked at a hardware store. He tried to sell cars. When the money got tight, he’d come home late and drunk. That’s when he used to hit her. You can guess how it ended. When Johnny was little, Theresa told Roberto that she’d leave him if he didn’t stop drinking. A week later, he was gone. We heard he died in an armed robbery in L.A. a few years later. Theresa and the kids moved in with her parents, but they were elderly. When they died, they moved into Valencia Gardens.”
In contrast to the working-class Hispanic enclave near St. Peter’s, much of the north end of the Mission is a blighted crime-and drug-ridden ghetto. There is nothing garden-like about the decaying, low-rise Valencia Gardens housing projects. Likewise, the broken-down residential hotels in the immediate vicinity of the BART station around the corner at Sixteenth and Mission are a depressing cesspool of drugs, prostitution and homelessness.
“She went back to her job at the market,” Rosie says.
“Then she got into drugs. She ended up on welfare. She worked as a prostitute.” She takes a drink of her coffee and glances toward Grace’s room. I know this look. Even during our divorce, Rosie made sure that Grace had everything she needed. It’s hot-wired into Rosie’s psyche—and mine. Your kids don’t ask to be born. You can screw up your own life but not theirs. You can’t send them back.
I ask her how Theresa died.
Rosie swallows hard. “Overdose. She was only thirty-four.”
“And the kids?”
“Carlos died in a gang fight. Johnny moved in with a great-aunt in the projects and I remember hearing it didn’t work out. He was tough to handle. Last I heard, he was out on his own. I’d guess he must have been about seventeen by now. Tony didn’t know what Johnny had been doing for the last couple of years. We lost contact with the family when Theresa died.”
We sit in silence, finishing our coffee. Rosie looks right at me and says, “I want to find out what happened.”
“I do, too.” I pause. “Rosie,” I say, “Skipper is our client.”
“Understood.”
“We can’t personalize this case. Skipper is entitled to a defense.”
“Which we will give him. That’s our job.” She points her finger at me and adds, “I can’t help it that this case is already personal.”
I lean forward and take her hand. “Are you going to be able to deal with this?”
“For one thing, we shouldn’t assume he did anything wrong. For another, we defend evil people every day. We’ve represented murderers, rapists and pornographers.” She draws the line at accused child molesters. She got one off
when she was a PD. He turned around and tortured and killed the girl next door. She vowed she’d never let that happen again. She adds, “We don’t have to love our clients.”
“Even Skipper?” I already know the answer.
“Even Skipper. I want to know the truth. We’d better get down to the Mission first thing in the morning.”
At seven-thirty in the morning, I’m back at Rosie’s, eating a bagel in her small kitchen. Grace is sitting at the counter eating Froot Loops and speculating on when she’ll get her first homework assignment. She explains that third grade is much harder than second.
The TV is turned to the news. Three times a week, an aging criminal defense attorney named Mort Goldberg holds court on Channel 4. “Mort the Sport” was a fixture in the corridors of the Hall for four decades before he found a new career as a TV legal analyst a couple of years ago. His segment is known as “Mort’s Torts.” Although he once taught criminal procedure at Hastings, his TV spot isn’t scholarly. On the other hand, it’s wildly entertaining. He’s sort of a short, bald, Jewish Rush Limbaugh. Theoretically, he is supposed to discuss legal issues, but on a given day, he’ll cover everything from world politics to the state of the Giants’ pitching staff. His producers admit they never know what he is going to say. His ratings are almost as high as those of the attractive young woman who reads the traffic reports and has every male in the nine-county Bay Area sending her marriage proposals.
An anchorman whose blow-dried hair makes him resemble a middle-aged Leonardo DiCaprio lobs the first softball. “Well, Mort,” he says through a wide grin, “what do you think about our district attorney?”
Mort makes a valiant attempt at looking serious. He
stares through thick Coke-bottle-bottom glasses. His puffy face looks a little like the late Harry Caray. He sounds like him, too. “Well, Sam,” he lisps, “District Attorney Gates has a substantial problem.”
There’s insight for you.
Mort squints into the camera. “My sources tell me that the police have evidence placing him at the scene and tying him to the commission of the crime.”
His “sources” are the night custodial staff at the Hall and the bail bondsmen across the street. He takes a drink of coffee from an oversized mug with the Channel 4 logo on it. It took him six months to learn to hold the cup with the logo facing the camera. The blond guy asks him about Skipper’s defense team.