“My head hurts,” he
whimpered. “I want to go back to my cell.”
“All right. We’re
not getting off to a very good start but I’ll be back tomorrow. I’ll be back
every day until you remember what happened that night.”
“I’ll try,” he
said.
I sat in my car in
the parking lot beneath the jail surprised at the violence of my dislike of Jim
Pears. I didn’t usually speak to a client the way I had spoken to Jim. Part of
my anger was a response to his childish insult which would have been comical
except for what it revealed about the state of his self-awareness. He told me
he wasn’t gay with the desperation of someone who could not allow himself to
believe anything else. His panic had calcified and become brittle. He was on
the verge of shattering. But instead of sympathy for him I felt impatience. With
his life at stake there was no time to waste while he sorted himself out.
Then I thought of
how he had been unable to even look at me, and my impatience thawed a little.
He had been alone in the dark for a long time and now, abruptly, he’d been
yanked into the light. All he wanted was to cover his face as if he could make
the harsh world disappear simply by closing his eyes to it. Perhaps he could be
reached by a simplicity equal to his own. But simplicity was not among my bag
of tricks.
*****
Larry’s Jaguar was
already in the garage when I pulled in. I found him in the kitchen watching a
portable
tv
as he chopped
boiled potatoes into cubes.
“You’re a star,” he
said.
I watched myself on
the tv
.
A reporter
explained that Jim’s trial had been continued because he changed lawyers. Larry
washed lettuce in the sink, drowning out the set. I turned it up.
“...
accused of the brutal slaying of Brian Fox. Today,
prosecutors moved to seek the death penalty.’’
Larry shut off the
water. “The death penalty?”
“Wait. I want to
hear this.”
“The D.A. also
questioned the motives behind the change of attorneys. Pears’s new lawyer is
Henry Rios, a prominent Bay Area attorney who is also openly gay. The D.A.
suggested that pressure from the gay community to have a gay lawyer try the
case led to today’s hearing.’’
“Asshole,” Larry
said.
“Meanwhile,” the
reporter continued, “there was a dramatic confrontation outside the courtroom
between Rios and the victim’s mother, Lillian Fox.”
We watched Mrs. Fox
spit at me. I shut the television off.
“You’ve had quite a
day,” Larry said, arranging lettuce leaves in a big wooden bowl.
“I’m thinking that
it was a mistake for me to have taken the case,” I said.
He opened a can of
tuna fish, drained and chopped it and added it to the salad. “Because the D.A.
called you a carpetbagger?”
“No,” I said. “It’s
the client. I talked to him this afternoon.”
“And?” He quartered
tomatoes, sliced green beans.
“He says he’s not
gay.”
Larry looked over
at me. “The kid killed someone rather than come out of the closet. What did you
expect him to say?’’
“He also says he
didn’t do it. That’s why the P.D. got out of the case. He won’t plead to
anything.”
Larry added the
finishing touches to the salad and put a couple of rolls into the microwave.
“You of all people
should know that there are ways of bringing clients around,” Larry said.
“I don’t like him.”
“Oh.” He wiped his
hands on a towel and poured himself a glass of water. “Why?”
“He makes me feel
like a faggot,” I replied.
“Well,” Larry
smiled. “Aren’t you?”
“Come on, Larry.
You know what I mean. His self-loathing is catching.”
“Let’s eat,” Larry
said. “Then we’ll talk.”
After dinner we sat
on the patio. The wind moved through the branches of the eucalyptus trees that
lined the lake. A yellow moon rose in the sky. A string of Japanese lanterns
cast their light from behind us. Larry lit a cigarette.
“Those can’t be
good for you, now,” I said.
“They never were,”
he replied. “Did I tell you about the cocktail party tomorrow?”
“If you did I don’t
remember.”
“It’s a fundraiser
for Jim’s defense.”
“I suppose I have
to go,” I said, unhappily.
“I’m afraid so,” he
replied. He shrugged. “These people want to help Jim.”
“He’s not much
interested in helping himself.”
“What’s bothering
you about this case?”
“I told you.”
“You don’t have to
like him.”
“He tells me he
didn’t do it,” I said. “Which means he’s either not guilty or he can’t bring
himself to admit his guilt. The first possibility is remote.”
“Maybe he thinks he
was justified,” Larry offered.
I shook my head. “No,
I believe he thinks he didn’t do it. This amnesia—”
“That’s deliberate?”
“It certainly
allows him to deny knowledge of the only evidence that could resolve this case
one way or the other.”
The smoke from
Larry’s cigarette climbed into the air. A faint wind carried the scent of
eucalyptus to us from the lake.
“What bothers me,”
I said, “is that he insists he’s innocent when he so clearly isn’t.”
“It must be a
pretty horrible thing to admit you killed someone,” Larry said quietly.
“Not someone like
Fox,” I said, “who made Jim suffer and who he must hate.”
“Then maybe it was
death,” Larry said. “Being in that room with a man he had killed. Once you’ve
seen death unleashed, it pursues you.” He sat forward, his face a mask m the
flickering light of the lanterns. “Maybe that’s what he’s running from, Henry.”
*****
The next morning I
went to see Freeman Vidor, who had been investigating Jim’s case for the Public
Defender. His office was in an old brownstone on Grand Avenue which, amid L.A.’s
construction frenzy, seemed like a survivor from antiquity. The foyer had a
marble floor and the elevator was run by a uniformed operator who might have
been a bit player when Valentino was making movies.
Freeman Vidor was a
thin black man. He sat at a big, shabby desk strewn with papers and styrofoam
hamburger boxes. A couple of framed certificates on the walls attested to the
legitimacy of his operation. I also noticed a framed photograph
—
the
only one on the wall — that showed a younger Vidor with two other men, all
wearing the uniforms of the L.A.P.D. He now wore a wrinkled gold suit and a
heavy Rolex. He had very short, gray hair. His face was unlined, though youth
was the last thing it conveyed. Rather, it was the face of a man for whom there
were no surprises left. I doubted, in fact, whether Freeman Vidor had ever been
young.
We got past
introductions. He lifted the Times at the edge of his desk and said, “I see you
made the front page of the Metro section.”
“I haven’t read the
article,” I replied arid glanced at it. There was my picture beneath a headline
that read: “S.F. Lawyer to Defend Accused Teen Killer.”
“Teen killer,” I
read aloud.
“Sort of jumps out
on you, doesn’t it?” he replied. “Listen, you want some coffee? I got a thermos
here.”
“No, thanks.”
He poured coffee into
a dirty mug, added a packet of Sweet‘n’Low and stirred it with a pencil.
“I read the report
you prepared for Sharon Hart,” I said.
“That’s one tough
woman,” he replied.
“She jumped at the
chance to dump Jim’s case.”
“I said tough, not
stupid.” He sipped the coffee and grimaced.
“Is there an insult
in there for me?”
He smiled. “Only if
you’re in the market for one. All I meant is, that boy’s only hope is to get a
jury to feel sorry for him because this Fox kid was harassing him about being a
homosexual.” He finished the coffee. “But first you got to convince them it ain’t
a sin to be gay.”
“This is Los
Angeles, not Pocatello.”
He lit a cigarette.
“Yeah, last election a million people in this state voted to lock you guys up.”
“That was AIDS.”
“You tell someone
you’re gay,” he replied, “and the first thing they do after they shake your
hand is get a blood test.”
“Including you?”
“It’s not on the
list of my biases,” he said. “You want to tell me about yours?”
“Some of my
favorite clients are black.”
He thought about
this, then laughed. “You want me in the case?”
I nodded.
“A
hundred-and-fifty a day plus expenses.”
“That’s acceptable.”
He blew a stream of
smoke toward a wan-looking fern on a pedestal near the window. “Who’s paying?”
“There are some
people who would like to see Jim Pears get off on this one.”
He smiled. “Your
kind of people?”
“That’s right.”
“If my mama only
knew.” He opened a notebook and extracted a black Cross pen from the inner
pocket of his jacket. “What do you want me to do?”
“I want background
on Brian Fox.”
He raised a thin
eyebrow. “Background?”
“Whatever you can
find that I can use to smear him,” I explained.
He nodded
knowingly. “Oh, background. What else?”
“I read in the
prelim transcript that there’s a back entrance to the restaurant.”
“The delivery door.
It was locked.”
“Lock implies key,
or keys. Find out who had them and what they were doing that night.”
“You’re fishing,”
he said.
“I want to know.”
He made a note and
shrugged. “It’s your dime.”
He looked up at me
and smiled. “You sure you don’t mind this?”
“What, the party?”
He nodded and
tossed a bundle of mail on a coffee table. He looked tired.
“Are you feeling
okay?” I asked as he dropped into a chair.
“No, not really,”
he replied. He rubbed his temples and shut his eyes. His breath was shallow and
strained. I switched on a lamp and sat down on the sofa across from him.
“I could go alone,”
I said.
Without opening his
eyes, he smiled. “It’s asking a bit much for the lamb to lead itself to
slaughter,” he replied.
“It can’t be that
bad. Who’s going to be there?”
He opened his eyes.
“Just the L.A. chapter of Homlntern.”
“Homlntern?”
“Homosexual
International,” he replied and yawned. “I told a few of my friends about Jim’s
case and a couple of them volunteered to kick in money to help pay the legal
costs. One thing led to another and the next I knew Elliot Fein was calling and
offering his house for a fundraiser.”
“Elliot Fein, the
ex-judge?” I asked, impressed. Fein was a retired court of appeals judge and a
member of a wealthy family whose patriarch had made his money in movies.
“The same,” Larry
said, kicking off his huge penny-loafers. He put his long, narrow feet on the
table. “I could hardly refuse. Really all they want to do is get a look at you,”
he added. “See what they’re getting for their money.”
“You think they’ll
be satisfied?”
He gave me the
once-over. “I guarantee it. How was your day?”
I told him about my
meeting with Freeman Vidor. “You know what’s beginning to bother me?” I said. “The
fact that everybody — including his ex-lawyer, his shrink, and now Vidor
—
is so
quick to write Jim’s chances off.”
Larry’s smile was
fat with satisfaction. “I knew I’d hired the right man for this job.”
“Well,” I said
defensively, “the presumption of innocence has to mean something.”
The smile faded. “Oh,
he’s an innocent, all right,” Larry said, and drew out a cigarette from his
pocket.
“I wish you wouldn’t
smoke so much.”
“Please.” He lit
the cigarette with his gold lighter.
“Obviously he
killed Brian,” I said, picking up the thread of my earlier thought, “but
killing is not necessarily murder.”
Larry put his shoes
on. “And that’s what you’re here to prove. We better get going.”
“You’re sure you
want to go?”
“I’ll be fine.”
The sun had already
set but, as we headed west on Sunset, there was still a dreamy light at the
edge of the horizon and above it the first faint stars. We passed UCLA. Larry
signaled a turn and we entered the west gate of Bel Air, up Bellagio. We passed
tall white walls as we ascended the narrow, twisting road. From my window I
watched the widening landscape of the city below and the breathless glitter of
its lights. As with most cities, Los Angeles was at its most elegant when seen
from the aeries of the rich.
At the top of the
hill, Larry began a left turn past immense wrought iron gates opened to reveal
a driveway paved with cobblestones. A moment later a house came into view. It
seemed to
consist
of a single towering box though, as we slowed, I could see there were two small
wings, one on either side. A boy in black slacks, a white shirt and a lavender
tie directed us to stop. Another boy, similarly dressed, opened my door.
“Good evening, sir,
how are you?” he asked as I stepped out of the Jaguar.
“Fine, thanks, and
you?”
“Oh, fine, sir.” He
seemed startled that I’d bothered to reply.
Larry came around
to me and said, “Ready, counsel?”
“Let’s go.”
The first thing I
noticed when we stepped into the house was the size of the room we had entered.
Its walls were roughly the dimensions of football fields and to say that the space
they enclosed was vast exhausted the possibilities of the word. The second
thing I noticed was that the far wall, except for a fireplace that could easily
have accommodated the burghers of Calais, was glass. The city trembled below.
“Where do the airplanes
land?” I whispered to Larry as we entered the room. Little clumps of people,
mostly men, were scattered amid the white furnishings.
“None of that,” he
replied. “Here comes our host.”
I expected the
owner of the house to be dwarfed by it, but Elliot Fein didn’t even put up a
fight. He was a shade over five feet and his most distinctive feature was his
glasses. They were perfectly round and bright red. His skin was the color of
dark wood, his hair was glossy black and his face was conspicuously unlined. I
guessed, from his effort to conceal it, he must be nearing seventy.
“Larry,” he said in
a wheezy voice. They exchanged polite kisses.
“This is Henry
Rios,” Larry said.
“Why haven’t I met
you before?” Fein asked by way of greeting.
I couldn’t think of
any reason except the absence of twenty or thirty million dollars on my part.
This didn’t seem to be the tactful answer so I said, “I don’t know, but it’s a
pleasure, Justice Fein.”
He took my extended
hand and held it. “Elliot to my friends. We’re all so glad you agreed to take
the boy’s case.”
“Thank you.” I
attempted to regain possession of my hand but he wasn’t through with it yet.
“You know,” he said
confidentially, “I sat in the criminal division of superior court for years
before I was elevated. From what I know about Jim Pears’s case, it’s going to
be rough sledding.”
“An unusual
metaphor for Los Angeles,” I observed.
He looked puzzled,
then dropped my hand. “Comments like that go right over a jury’s head,” he said
with a faked smile.
I made a noise that
could be interpreted as assent.
“Who’s the judge?”
he asked.
“Patricia Ryan.”
“Good. Very good,”
he replied judiciously. “I’ll call her for lunch next week.” He beamed at us. “I’m
neglecting my duties. Let me get you a drink.”
“Thanks, but I don’t
drink,” I said.
His eyes narrowed
and he nodded. “Oh, that’s right. Perrier, then?”
“Nothing, thank
you,” I replied. I felt a flash of irritation at Larry who had obviously told
Fein I was an alcoholic.
“What about you,
Larry?” Fein asked.
“Not just yet. I
think I should take Henry around.”
“Of course,” Fein
said, and stepped aside. “I’ll talk to you later.”
We started across
the hall and Larry said, in a low voice, “I know what you’re thinking but I
didn’t tell him.”
“Then how did he
know?”
“He’s like God, only
richer. So I’d watch the wisecracks if I were you.”
For the next hour
we worked the room. The crowd consisted of well-dressed, expensively scented
men and a few women all of whom, like Fein, had found ways to slow time’s
passage. Larry and I fell into a routine. He would introduce me. Someone would
inevitably ask what I thought of Jim’s chances. I would launch into a lengthy
explanation of the concept of presumption of innocence. At some point — before
a member of the audience actually fell asleep — Larry would break in to make a
pitch for money. As we moved away from one group, I heard a man stage whisper, “She’s
pretty but someone should tell her to lighten up.”
I turned to Larry,
who had also heard, and said, “I need a break.”
“I’ll come and find
you.”
When he left I
found myself near the center of the room. A short, stocky man stood a few feet
away staring up at the ceiling. I followed his gaze to the chandelier. It was a
sleek metallic thing lit with dozens of silvery candles. The man and I
exchanged looks. He smiled.
“At first,” he
said, “I wondered why Elliot couldn’t afford electricity. Then I realized the
candles must be much more expensive.”
There were faint
traces of an English accent in his voice. His face was square and fleshy and
showed its age. His was the first truly human visage I’d seen all night.
“It’s less
conspicuous than burning hundred-dollar bills, I guess.”
He laughed. “I
heard you introduced, Mr. Rios. My name is Harvey Miller.”
“Henry to my
friends,” I replied, shaking his hand. “Are you part of this crowd?”
“Am I rich? No. I
work at the Gay and Lesbian Center on Highland. Elliot’s on the board. Do you
know about the Center?”
“Sure,” I said. “You
do good work.”
“So do you, I hear.”
He accepted a glass of champagne from a passing waiter.
I shrugged. “It’s
my Catholic upbringing. The world’s troubles weigh on my heart. Mea culpa.”
He sipped from the
glass and lowered it. “You seem a bit brittle, Henry.”
“This isn’t my
natural habitat. I was going outside for some air. Join me?”
“I’d like that.”
We made our way
through the clumps of oversized furnishings and past the squadrons of rented
waiters carrying trays of food and drink, to a door that let us out onto an
immense patio. We walked to its edge and looked out over the city. Streams of light
marked the major boulevards which were crammed with the tail end of rush-hour
traffic. The spires of downtown probed the ashen sky. Lights of every color —
red, blue, silver, gold — twinkled in the darkness as if the city were an
enormous Christmas tree.
I made this
comparison to Harvey.
“It is like a
Christmas tree,” he replied, “but most of the boxes beneath it are empty. For a
lot of gay people, anyway.”
I looked at him as
he finished off the contents of his glass. “What exactly do you do at the Center?”
“I’m a
psychologist,” he replied, smiling at the city.
“Well,” I said, “for
a few gay people some boxes, like this house, are crammed full.”
“No, not really.”
He set the glass down on the ledge of the wall. “It’s not easy for anyone in
this society to be gay.”
“I wouldn’t waste
much sympathy on the rich,” I said. “Even compassion has its limits.”
He moved a step
nearer. “Are you always the life of the party?”
I smiled. “Sorry.
Yesterday I was sitting in a filthy little room trying to pry some truth out of
Jim Pears and tonight I’m at Valhalla meeting the gay junior league. When the
altitude changes this fast I get motion sick.”
“Why do you have
such a low opinion of us?”
“I don’t. It’s just
that it’s not my profession.”
“What?”
“Homosexuality.”
“No,” he said,
feigning a smile. “You’re a lawyer, right? Never mind that the law oppresses
us.”
“I thought we were
going to be friends, Harvey.”
“You can’t isolate
yourself in your work.”
“I’m not trying to,”
I said. “But Jim Pears is a client, not a cause. If I can save his life, I’ve
done my job.”
“And if not?” he
asked, leaning against the wall. “Have you still done your job?”
“By my lights,” I
replied.
He picked up his
glass. “I’m disappointed that your lights have such a narrow focus.”
I shrugged. ‘‘In my
work, someone is usually disappointed.”
‘‘Good luck,” he
said and went back inside.
When I went back
in, the party was breaking up. I spotted Larry standing with a fat man in a
shiny suit. Not an old suit. A shiny one. Larry signaled me to join them. The
fat man’s face shone like a waxed apple. A fringe of dyed hair was combed low
over his forehead. He fidgeted a smile, revealing perfect teeth.