Lion Plays Rough (8 page)

Chapter 14

On Monday morning Scarsdale's case was the first called in master calendar, and we were sent to Judge Conroy's courtroom for trial forthwith.

I'd tried several previous cases with Conroy. He struck me as fair in the sense that he seemed to relish peeling the skin from an erring lawyer on either side of the bar, but old-fashioned in his seeming belief that perjury simply could not occur in his courtroom, except perhaps from a criminal defendant. The idea that an officer of the law would take the oath and lie was so repugnant to him that he refused to consider it.

Conroy was quick to speak when he disliked a line of questioning, and his impatience was so caustic that inexperienced lawyers usually moved on. Those who'd been around longer knew that his bark was worse than his bite, and that he would rarely go so far as to forbid a legally relevant, admissible line of questions. The crucial calculation had to do with whether it was worth proceeding under a hail of abuse.

The case was being prosecuted by a career DA named Chris Mooney, with none other than Cassidy Akida in the second chair. For about half a second I considered objecting, then decided to ignore her presence.

Mooney and I spent all of Monday and half of
Tuesday questioning prospective jurors, finally whittling the field to the standard twelve with two alternates. All through jury selection Scarsdale sat quietly beside me, shaved and presentable but wholly immobile and remote, showing only fleeting interest in the people who would decide his fate.

On Tuesday afternoon the judge sent the jury home, heard argument, and granted my motion to exclude the videotapes. My victory was hollow, like a cheap run against the Yankees in the top of the first. After other preliminary matters he told us to be ready with opening statements the next morning at 9:30
am
.

Jeanie congratulated me as we headed back to the office. She'd sat at the defense table all morning, helping me with jury selection but letting me run the show. “Want to go over your opening before I take of
f
?”

“I have all the pieces, but I need to figure out how I'm going to stitch them together.” I hadn't told her about Scarsdale's confession. I'd been trying not to think about it, because whenever I did, a cloud of anger and depression fell on me, blotting out all the landmarks on the path I'd charted to acquittal.

“You going to hit the uncle hard or soft?”

“I think hard,” I said reluctantly. “Both barrels. The more I think about it, the more I realize that we can't tiptoe around. If we're going to smear him, we've got to smear him good.”

She drove in silence. “You may be right,” she finally said. “The risk being that they don't trust you yet, that you don't have the authority to make that kind of an accusation. But innuendo isn't exactly going to get the job done.”

I kicked the underside of the dash, and she shot me a surprised glance. “But we know the uncle didn't do it, and what I say may ruin his life, especially if the papers pick it up. Yet I'm not supposed to let that bother me. Because it's my job, right? I survey the available strategies, look at what's permitted by law, and choose the best. ‘Best' meaning most likely to result in acquittal.”

“Sounds like you're starting to wish we hadn't taken the case.”

“Too late for that.” I thought bitterly how she'd handed this one off to me. An opportunity, she'd called it. A test. Well, I was learning my lesson now. I was learning what happened to eager young criminal lawyers who bite hard without tasting first.

“We weren't thinking about the uncle when we agreed to represent him,” Jeanie said. “Maybe it happened just the way you said. The uncle did it and psychologically she couldn't handle the truth. So in her subconscious mind, in her memory, she changed the identity of the molester. It's reasonable doubt. Hell, it's more than reasonable.”

“It's a disaster. Why don't we just go all the way and frame him?”

“This is the work, Leo. The system hurts people. Is that supposed to be a news flash? Of course it does. It's designed to hurt anyone who gets caught up in it, because everyone's story has to be tested. Witnesses, victims. Into the fire. And if we don't bring the fire, no one will.”

I didn't say anything. I knew she was right. The revulsion I was feeling was something I'd experienced time and again, and in the heat of battle it would pass. It was just that I'd never been in quite this position before—the position of accusing an innocent man to defend a client I knew was guilty as hell.

Jeanie wasn't my mother, wasn't my sister, wasn't my lover—though I'd spent a number of years wishing her into these roles. She was my boss, and no matter how many clichés she invoked, the fact remained that Scarsdale was my responsibility and my problem.

I ought to have told her about his confession. But, as usual, when professionalism and dispassionate judgment should have guided me in my relationship with her, old resentments resurfaced. I stared out the window and kept my mouth shut.

“If you don't want to practice what you've got so far for the opening, I won't come in.” She pulled to the curb by our building and turned to gaze at me in that way she had of seeming to strain for a glimpse through a crevice in my facade—a look that used to split me open but now just made me want to chink up the cracks.

“I'll be here in the morning by six thirty,” I said. “Let's do a run-through then.”

“Fine.”

I slammed the door and she drove off.

~ ~ ~

I worked until 1:00
am
, hashing out a rough, unsatisfactory outline of my opening, then walked home for a few hours' sleep. The kitchen light was on, the apartment reasonably neat; from Teddy's bedroom came deep snores. I opened a can of beer and drank it standing at the sink, feeling that what had happened to Teddy had happened primarily to me.

I couldn't help thinking that if Jeanie hadn't divorced him before the shooting, she would have been the one stuck with him. What about her vows, I wanted to ask. In sickness and in health.

With another beer these thoughts crumbled and fell away, and I was left alone with the fact of myself, standing in the kitchen in the middle of the night, feeling haggard and unprepared. In the past, my trial strategy had always crystallized during the final week before trial; this time, the opposite had happened. Everything had shattered. Easy, I told myself. Time to sleep. Exhausted as I was, I knew from experience that the only thing to do was close my eyes and trust that things would seem easier in the morning.

I must have slept for at least an hour, but when the phone rang it seemed that I'd just closed my eyes. It was Lavinia Perry, but she didn't give her name. “It's me,” she said.

“Do you know what time it is?”

“Campbell's not where he claims to be. He tells the dispatcher he's down at the Coliseum but the GPS puts him almost in San Leandro, near Oak Knoll.”

“What do you want me to do about it? I can't take pictures in the dark.”

“I don't
want
you to do anything. I told you I'd call and I called. This might be your big chance, or maybe he's just getting a blow job. Take it or leave it. Go back to sleep for all I care.”

I hesitated, but I suddenly felt wide awake. “Give me the coordinates.”

I plugged what she told me into Google. It spit back a spot on the map in the hills above San Leandro.

What the hell do you think you're doing? I asked myself. You've got to give an opening statement in four hours; you've got to find a way to win this shitty case. Already, though, I was out of bed, pulling on my pants and a sweatshirt, thinking of Sgt. Perry when I'd first seen her driving that convertible, of Jamil in his cell. I was accustomed to sleep deprivation. I told myself that a mere three or four hours would only dull the edges.

Teddy's voice stopped me at the front door. “Leo, you going out?”

“Yeah.” My hand on the knob. “I got a tip. It's about that case.”

“Wait a second. I'm coming with you. I can't seem to sleep tonight.”

He often suffered from insomnia. I should have told him to stay, but I didn't. He was out in a minute, having dressed faster than usual, dark jeans and a sweatshirt. It felt good to have him with me, not thinking about his debilities, just the two of us. As we drove I remembered in a vivid flash being six and Teddy taking me on the bus to school. Back then I'd still believed he could hold back all the harms of the world. Now I was supposed to keep him from harm.

We drove south on the broadly curving 580 Freeway beneath the brow of the hills, the lights of the flatlands beneath us, the more distant ones of the cities across the bay rising occasionally into view. We crossed into San Leandro and I exited. Soon the headlights picked out a sign that read
naval medical center oakland
but there were no lights anywhere beyond the locked gate. According to the directions I'd printed out, the coordinates I'd been given were behind it. I continued past the entrance, then turned left on a road paralleling a fence topped with razor wire. The moon was full, showing strips of eucalyptus bark caught in the chain link. The shedding trees' medicinal tang came through the window.

We passed a parked Crown Vic, unmarked but with a bank of lights in the back. I froze, gripping the wheel, but it was empty. Following the directions, I turned left, keeping to the fence line of the abandoned hospital. It had been closed after the 1989 earthquake; last I heard they'd been planning to turn it into a housing development. There was a driveway, then an open gate. I parked on the side of the road fifty feet farther along on an upscale residential street.

I didn't know what I thought we were going to do. I hadn't even brought the camera. But I was here.

“So I guess we'll just go take a look around,” I said as we got out of the car.

“If I had a jury case in the morning I would be at the office.”

“That where you think I should be?”

“I don't give a fuck, Leo. I'm so indifference, I might just cease to exist.”

Indifference, indifferent. It wasn't worth correcting. Hearing him actually put in words the attitude I'd been observing for months scared me, as if we'd reached a new and more dangerous stage.

“I care,” I said. “That's why I can't figure out what the fuck I'm doing here, except that Campbell must have a good reason for being here, and I'm hoping we'll get lucky and learn something that'll help us figure out where he stands.”

“Thanks for bringing me, anyway. Makes me feel almost alive.”

We went down the drive and through the gate, where the padlock and chain hung from the hasp, and down into a parking lot with weeds growing up through the cracks. Nearby was a once-grand stucco building with a bell tower, built in the mission style. Mats of vegetation grew from its tiled roof, and mold streaked the walls. Spindly trees grew from the foundation. There was a courtyard with a large oak visible inside it. Above the entrance a sign—half-obscured by a bay laurel—read
club knoll
.

We walked beneath it into the overgrown courtyard, where rainwater that had collected in a stone-and-mortar fountain reflected the moon.

I smelled marijuana smoke a moment before I heard the voices. They were above me, I realized, then went still. I grabbed Teddy's arm, heard a metallic sound, then the fountain seemed to explode beside me, spraying my face with sharp bits of stone.

Teddy hit me hard, and we ducked behind the fountain. I lay listening to my heart beat, the shots ringing. Teddy was breathing hard. “Up on the balcony,” he said, and I heard the sound of running feet on stairs, then a final slam. A powerful light blinded me. Two men stood above us. “Let's get those hands where we can see them,” one of them said.

I rolled onto my back, showing my hands, blinking against the halogen beam. “Now get up real slow,” he said. I rose, telling myself that if they'd meant to kill us we would be dead.

The one with the shotgun was middle-aged and bulky, in a black hoodie and baggy jeans. The other was younger, wiry, wearing a dark shirt, cargo pants, and work boots. He carried a handgun in addition to the light. “Pull your wallets out of your pockets and toss them on the ground,” the older one said, and the younger one came forward with the light to scoop them up. Then he patted us down and took our cell phones and keys.

Our captors conferred. The older one got out a radio and walked off into the darkness. I made out Teddy's name and mine, then caught the phrase, “those fucking pictures.”

“Going for a little ride,” he said, coming back.

“I'm an attorney. I'll be missed if I'm not in court in the morning.”

“Don't worry. It ain't far. Better than being blown away. Maybe we ought to have blown you away, you and that pervert you represent. Mr. Leo Maxwell. Esquire.”

“Alleged pervert,” I told him as I rose to my feet.

He touched the shotgun barrel very gently to the side of my head, and in the grip of terror I couldn't shut up. “So you boys must be Damon's muscle. Where are you bringing us? To meet the man?”

“Boys? Who you calling boys?” the younger one said, and slashed me behind the ear. I doubled over, feeling a hot flood in my scalp, seeing the flashlight beam again. But my hand came away dry when I touched the spot.

They led us past the fountain and inside the building.

“Have to bring you back afterward, drink us some fine Cabernet up there on the balcony,” the man with the shotgun said.

“Why you always have to be joking?” his companion asked. “You know these two ain't coming back.”

From there we proceeded down the back stairs to where a Lincoln Navigator waited with two more men sitting in the front. Once we'd been shoved into the middle seat, the original pair got in on either side of us. I pressed against the warmth of
Teddy beside me, inhaling the funk of his body and middle-of-the-night breath.