The
walls of the office were bare. The curtains were drawn against the afternoon
light and the only source of light was her desk lamp. She worked at an elegant
writing table whose spindly legs hardly seemed able to bear the weight of the
books piled on top. At length, she looked up at me from beneath half-glasses
evidently surprised to find that I was still there.
I
introduced myself, to her obvious pleasure, as an admirer of her work. She
accepted the volume of her collected poems and signed it for me.
“How
were you introduced to my poetry?” she asked. Her voice was a low, whisky
rumble.
“Your
son, Hugh,” I replied and, at once, the pleasure vanished. Her eyes narrowed.
“I
see. Tell me, Mr. Rios, which of my poems is your favorite? Or have you
actually opened this — brand new book?”
“In
fact I have, Mrs. Paris, but you’re right, I didn’t come here to discuss them.
I’m a lawyer.”
“Is
that a threat?”
“Mrs.
Paris, I was Hugh’s friend—
“Hugh
was rather generous in that regard. He had altogether too many friends. Were
you one of his — special friends?” she asked archly.
“I
cared for Hugh,” I said.
“Mr.
Rios,” she said, mockingly, “spare me the homosexual sentimentality. What is it
you want from me?”
“I
believe Hugh was murdered. I’m not sure by whom but the
first
thing to do is determine the exact cause of death. The body was moved before an
autopsy—”
“That’s
enough,” she said. “You walk in from nowhere, tell me someone killed my son and
ask permission to cut open his body?” These last words were delivered in a tone
of rising incredulousness. “Just who the hell are you? One of his boyfriends?
Do you think there’s money for you in this?”
Unable
to suppress my hostility, I said, “Mrs. Paris, I sympathize with your deep
grief, however, I’m talking about a crime.”
“My
deep grief? Getting himself killed was the most unselfish thing Hugh ever did.
As for the body, it was cremated yesterday. As for crimes, Mr. Rios, you’re now
trespassing and in one minute I’m going to call campus security and have you
thrown out.” She picked up the phone.
“Why
was he cremated?” I asked, rising.
“That
is not your business,” she said, “now get out.”
“Thank
you for your time, Mrs. Paris.” She put the phone down and went back to her
writing.
*
* * * *
Sitting
on my patio an hour later, I finished a gin-and-tonic, watched clouds move in
from the ocean and counted up my leads. They amounted to about nothing. There
were Hugh’s allegations against his grandfather and the coincidence of his
death under odd circumstances. Gold knew more than he was saying, but either he
could not say any more or really believed that our interests were sufficiently
different for him not to confide in me. Katherine Paris was a dead end. I
needed something tangible. It seemed to me that Hugh Paris moved through life
like a nomad, using life up as he lived it, and leaving very little behind.
And
then I remembered the letters. They were still in the pocket of the coat I had
worn three days earlier. I finished my drink and went to the closet to retrieve
them. Even as I spread them out on my desk a voice within begged me not to read
them. I was afraid of what they might contain. I made myself another drink and circled
my desk, vaguely, looking at them — thirteen in all, arranged from the
earliest, in June, to the most recent, only a couple of weeks earlier. Finally,
I sat down and started reading.
They
were not exactly the rantings of a lunatic. On the other hand, there was little
in them that could be called civilized discourse. Mostly, they were
excruciatingly detailed invective of a psycho-sexual nature — literate but
profoundly disturbed. I refolded the last letter and tucked it back into its
envelope. It seemed impossible these could come from Hugh, but the details
told. I said to myself that I was now his advocate, not his lover, and an
advocate accepts revelations about his client that would send the lover running
from the room. It’s part of the masochism of being a criminal defense lawyer
to want to know the worst, in theory so the worst can be incorporated into the
defense, but in actuality to confirm a blighted view of humanity. If I
believed that people are basically good, I would have gone into plastics.
People are basically screwed-up and often the best you can do for them is
listen, hear the worst and then tell them it’s not so bad.
It
wasn’t so bad, Hugh, I said, silently. I’ve seen worse. And the letters
contained solid information. Hugh believed his grandfather was responsible for
the deaths of his grandmother and his uncle, Jeremy. He also accused the judge
of imprisoning his father, Nicholas, in an asylum. Finally, he accused the
judge of depriving him of his lawful inheritance. There wasn’t much elaboration
since, obviously, Hugh expected his grandfather to understand the allusions. It
wasn’t evidence but it was something. A lead. A theory. Hugh’s death was part
of a cover-up of earlier murders. All right, so it was melodramatic. Most crime
is.
I
collected my thoughts and called Terry Ormes. Her crisp, friendly voice was a
relief after the dark muttering voice of the letters. I told her, briefly,
editing out the lurid details, what the letters contained.
“That’s
still not much,” she said.
“Well,
it’s something. Apparently, Hugh’s grandmother and his uncle were killed up
near Donner Pass on interstate 80 about twenty years ago. Can you contact the
local police agency in the nearest town up there with a hospital?”
“Sure,”
she said, “but if it happened on 80, it was probably a CHP case. What am I
asking for?”
“Everything
you can find out about the circumstances of their deaths. Any reports, death
certificates, anything. And find out anything you can about Hugh’s life the
last six months. Rap sheets, DMV records, any kind of paper.”
“Call
me in two days,” she said. “What will you do?”
“I
have one other card to play,” I said. “I’ll be in touch.”
The
line went dead. I gathered up the letters and buried them beneath a pile of
papers in the bottom drawer of my desk. I closed and locked it. For a long time
I sat, nursing my drink, thinking about the hole where my heart had been.
The
next morning I sat down to dial a number I’d not called in four years. The
receptionist I reached announced the name of the law firm in the hushed tones
appropriate to old money. I gave her the name I wanted and waited the couple of
minutes it took to work through the various intermediaries until a deep
unhurried male voice spoke.
“Grant
Hancock here.”
“Grant,
this is Henry Rios.”
There
was the slightest pause before breeding won out and he said, “Henry, it’s been
a long time.”
“Four
years, at least.”
“Are
you in the city?”
“No,
I’m calling from my apartment. Grant, I need your advice.”
“Surely
you don’t need the services of a tax lawyer on what you make with the public
defender.”
“I’m
not a P.D. anymore,” I replied, “and what I want to talk about is death, not
taxes.”
“Anyone’s
in particular?”
“Yes,
Hugh Paris. I thought since you’re both — well, old San Francisco stock — that
you might have known him.”
“Indeed
I did,” Grant said slowly. “How well did you know him?”
“Well
enough to think that he was murdered.” The line buzzed vacantly. “Grant? Are
you still there?”
“Yes,”
he said. “I don’t want to discuss this over the phone. Can you come up here
tonight?”
“About
nine?”
“Fine.
I’m still at the same place. You know the way.” I agreed that I did.
“Henry,
did Hugh mention me? Is that why you called?” His voice was, for Grant,
agitated.
“No,
he never said anything about you. It was my own idea to call. I know how thick
the old families are with each other.”
“I
knew him a long time ago,” Grant said in a far-off voice, and then stopped
himself short. “I’ll talk to you tonight.” The line went dead.
Grant
Hancock, along with Aaron Gold, had been one of my two closest friends at law
school. His name was the amalgamation of two eminent San Francisco families
and he grew up in a mansion in Pacific Heights. He was one of those San Francisco
aristocrats who, for all their culture and worldliness, never move a
psychological inch from the tops of their hills. Among those families that gave
the city its reputation for insularity, “provincial” was a compliment.
In
the normal course of existence, I would never have met someone like Grant since
his world was far removed from mine and hardly visible to the untrained eye.
Its tribesmen recognized each other by certain signs and signals meaningless to
the outsider. However, Linden University was an extension of that world and
the law school was a kind of finishing school from which he entered a law
practice so leisurely and refined that it would have befitted one of Henry
Fames’ languid heroes.
Grant
cultivated a certain languor and part of it was real, growing out of a sense of
belonging that was deep and unshakable. Part of it was an act, a way of
masking real passion and a strong if confused decency. His decency was as
simple as the desire to treat everyone fairly and civilly but it was undercut
by his knowledge that, from his position of privilege, he could afford to act
decently at no cost to himself. He wondered how he would treat others had he
not been so privileged, and, I think, he assumed the worst about himself.
The
fact that he was gay added to his confusion because acknowledging his
homosexuality was an opportunity to take a moral risk and he passed it up. He
rigidly separated his personal and professional lives and spent great amounts
of energy policing the border between them. And for all that, I had once loved
him and he had loved me. There had even been a time when it appeared that we
might live together, openly, but that time came and passed, and he could not
bring himself to do it. We drifted apart, he back to his hill and I back to
real life.
I
was thinking about all this as I finished dressing and made a pot of coffee.
There was something of Grant in Hugh Paris as if Hugh had been a version of
Grant more comfortable with himself and more distant from that insular world
of old money and unchanging attitudes. I let the comparison lie. There was work
to be done.
The
weather was beautiful, almost cruelly so, I thought as I walked across the
parking lot to the courthouse. The deep and broad blue sky and the dazzling
morning sun which should have looked down upon an innocent landscape instead
shone above cramped suburban cities and cramped suburban lives. The sunlight
brushed the back of my neck as if it were fingers wanting me only to stop for a
moment and do nothing but breathe and be grateful that I was alive. Another time,
I thought as I pushed open the glass door to the courthouse.
I
walked up the stairs to the clerk’s office on the second floor. Telephones
screeched and voices rose in frustration at the service counter. This was the
place where court records relating to criminal cases were kept. By the time I
got a sullen clerk’s attention, I had forgotten the weather and gratitude was
the farthest thing from my mind. Having already located the case number on a
master index, I ordered the court docket on Hugh’s case to see what had
happened to it. Fifteen minutes later, the docket was regurgitated from the
bowels of the bureaucracy by the same clerk, who warned me three times not to
remove the file from the room.
I
went over to the reading counter and flipped through the pages of the docket.
The criminal charges filed against Hugh the day after his arrest were
possession of PCP, being under the influence of PCP and resisting arrest — all
misdemeanors. His arraignment had been set for a week after his release from
jail. On that day, he appeared through his attorney, Stephan Abrams, and the
D.A. moved to dismiss all charges against him. The court granted the motion and
that was the end of the case. I made a mental note of the D.A.’s name: Sonny
Patterson, an old courtroom adversary. I had the docket copied and went down
the hall to the office of the District Attorney.
Sonny
Patterson rattled the docket sheet and dropped it on his desk. He took a drag
from his cigarette, scattering ashes on his pale green shirt and bright orange
tie. Hick was written all over his puffy potato face, but it was an act, like
his carefully mismatched clothes. He got juries to like him by letting them
think that they were smarter than he. But Sonny had a mind for detail and one
that made connections. A good mind. Evasive when circumstances required
evasion. He was being evasive now.
“Come
on Henry, I handle twenty cases a day in the arraignment court. You’re talking
a thousand cases ago.”
“It’s
not every day that you dismiss a three-count complaint involving drugs and
resisting arrest.”
“Misdemeanors,”
he replied disdainfully.
“Being
under the influence carries a mandatory thirty day jail sentence.”
“So?”
he said, shrugging. “With good time/work time figured in you’re out in twenty.”
“That’s
still twenty days longer in county than I’d care to spend.”
“I
know your position on determinate sentencing, counsel,” he said stiffly.
I
held up my palms. “Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t come here to debate the point. I
just want to know why you dumped the case.”
“What
was the defendant’s name again?” he drawled in a vaguely Southern accent.
Another affectation. The furthest south Sonny had ever been was Castroville.
“Hugh
Paris,” I replied.
“Isn’t
he the guy they pulled out of the creek about a week back?”
“The
same.”
“You
know him pretty well?”
“Yes,”
I said.
“The
papers say it was an accident.”
“So
do the cops.”
“I
know,” he said, “I had Torres up here to tell me about it. He mentioned — in
passing — that you identified the body.” He leaned forward on his desk. “Do you
know anything about this man’s death that the police don’t know?”
Police,
I thought. Did he mean the cops? Any moment now he’ll be calling them peace
officers. Aloud I said, carefully, “I don’t know anything about Hugh’s death
the cops don’t know. I just added up the information differently.”
“So
did I,” he said, picking up the phone and pushing a button. He reeled off a
string of numbers into the receiver. A couple of minutes later there was a
knock on the door and his secretary entered with a thick file. Hugh’s name was
written across the outside of the manila folder. She put the file on the desk
and Sonny flipped through the arrest report to the three sheets of yellow paper
on which the complaint appeared. He turned the last sheet over to some writing.
This was the alibi, so-called because every time a D.A. dismissed a case he was
required to set out his reasons on the back of the complaint in the event
someone — like a cop or irate citizen — took exception to the dismissal down
the road.
“Insufficiency
of the evidence,” Sonny said, lifting his face from the sheet.
“That’s
meaningless. What was the problem?”
“The
alleged PCP cigarette was analyzed by the crime lab and came back as creatively
rolled oregano, dipped in ether to give it the right smell. Mr. Paris’s pusher
misled him. Street justice, I guess.”
“And
the other charges?”
“We
won’t pursue the under the influence charge unless the defendant was examined
by a doctor at the time of his arrest. The cops didn’t do that.”
“What
about the resisting arrest count?”
“That
was plain, old-fashioned contempt of cop. A little chickenshit charge. Not
worth the paper it was written on.” He glanced at the complaint with an
expression almost of distaste. I wasn’t surprised by his reaction. The D.A.’s
know better than anyone what cops can be like — touchy, hostile,
self-righteous.
“Have
you ever heard of that lawyer, Abrams, before?”
“Nope.
He’s not a local. He’s got himself a fancy address up in the city. You want it?”
I
nodded.
He
scrawled an address on a sheet of legal paper and pushed it across the desk.
“Thanks,”
I said, rising to go. “You don’t think Hugh’s death was an accident, either, do
you?”
“If
I did,” he said, suddenly grim, “I wouldn’t have given you the time of day.”
“Then
why are you?”
“The
cops botched this one,” he said. “I know it, but I can’t prove it. I’ve already
beefed Torres but even if they reopen the investigation now, the trail’s cold.
You seem to know something about this case. Better you than no one. Good luck
and remember,” he said, as I opened the door, “you’re an officer of the court.”
“Meaning?”
“If
you find out who did it, let me know the bastard’s name. He won’t get away with
it.”
But
so often criminals do, I nearly said, but I kept the thought to myself.
At
the end of the day I drove to San Francisco on highway 280, the serpentine road
that wound through the foothills behind the posh peninsula suburbs and within
view of the hidden houses of the rich. The twisted eucalyptus trees stood high
and elegantly on those hills and the air was moist with the fragrance of their
leaves. Deer grazed those hills and now and then a jeep went flying along the
dirt roads with no apparent destination. A line of horses appeared on the
horizon and then disappeared behind a clump of oak.
I
was passing through some of the wealthiest communities in the country, and the
only sign of money was its absence. The developer’s hand was stayed from these
hills and woods to perpetuate a view of California as it had existed a hundred
years earlier. Even the Southern Pacific commuter train, whose whistle I heard
in the distance, was a subsidized prop, reminding listeners of the pristine age
before Henry Ford gave wheels to the masses. A hundred years earlier, Grover
Linden raised monuments to his wealth, but his heirs bought privacy, the
ultimate luxury. Judge Paris lived somewhere in those hills, as safe as money
could make him. Like God, he moved a finger and the sparrow fell. To him, a
little death. But not to me. I floored the accelerator as if physical speed
could make time move faster. I would bring this death home to him, whatever it
took.
I
followed a curve in the road and when I looked up, the darkened skyline burst
across the rose-colored sky of dusk, vaguely Oriental in shape and pattern and
decidedly sinister. This was the first time I had returned to San Francisco
since Hugh’s death. Those untroubled summery days seemed far more remote than a
mere ten days ago. I exited near the Civic Center and came up Market, now nearly
deserted as downtown emptied, toward the bay. For all its magnificence the
city seemed shabby to me as little gusts of winds kicked up scraps of newspaper
and blew them across the street and the bag ladies stood shapelessly in front
of dark windows muttering invectives. It would be cold later. I had not
thought to bring a coat.