“Mr. Antonelli, would you mind explaining what it is you think you're doing?”
“Your honor, this is a murder trial. The defendant,”I said, glancing down at Jamaal Washington, who was sitting impassively in the chair next to mine, “entered a plea of not guilty.”
Thompson gave me a blank look. “Yes, and … ?”
“And, your honor, we know that a crime has in fact been committed. The victim, Jeremy Fullerton, a United States senator, was murdered. The defendant insists he did not do it. Obviously, then, someone else did.”
Thompson tried to follow, but the harder he tried, the more befuddled he became. He squinted his eyes and twisted his mouth until it was almost entirely on the left side of his face.
“What possible connection is there between the defendant's contention that someone else killed Senator Fullerton and the assassination of John F. Kennedy? To say nothing else about it, the two events are separated by almost forty years.”
“Quite right, your honor,”I replied while the district attorney shook his head. “And we still don't know for sure who was really responsible. But leaving that aside, the point I was trying to explore with Mr. DeWitt here is whether, in a case like this, where a member of the United States senate, a candidate for governor of California—a man considered a serious future candidate for the presidency—it really makes sense simply to assume that his murder was nothing more than just another random act of violence.”
Haliburton was beside himself. His face was red; his eyes were practically bulging out of their sockets.
“Your honor,”he said with so much anger he could barely get the words out, “first he asks a question that has no conceivable relevance to the case, and now he starts to argue his case to the jury!”
Thompson saw it as a minor victory. He bent toward Hal-iburton and formed his mouth into the illusion of a sympathetic smile.
“Try to keep yourself under control, counselor,”he said in a calm, soothing voice that, in Haliburton's present state, was almost an invitation to violence.
“May I see counsel in chambers?”asked Thompson before Haliburton, still speechless, could catch his breath.
When we sat down in front of Thompson's desk, the color in the district attorney's face had returned to normal, his anger hidden behind a mask of studied indifference. Now that we were out of the courtroom and out of public view, Thompson changed as well. Without the same incentive to make life difficult for his old nemesis, he turned on me with a vengeance.
“Listen, Antonelli, I've been on the bench a long goddamn time, but that's got to be the strangest goddamn question I've ever heard anyone ask. 'Who do you think killed John F. Kennedy?' ”he said in a singsong voice, mimicking what I had done. “Maybe you don't know this,”he went on, squinting at me like a physician examining a patient, “maybe they do it differently up there in Oregon, but down here the insanity defense only works when the defendant is nuts—not when his lawyer is crazy!”
If Haliburton took a certain satisfaction in what Thompson said about me, he was not given any time to enjoy it.
“And as for you!”the judge sneered. “All you had to do was stand up and say you had a matter for the court. But no—you had to show everyone all your righteous indignation. And what do you get out of it? Antonelli gets to make his little speech in full view of the jury. You better understand something, Mr. District Attorney: I'm not going to do your job for you. If you don't care if the jury hears a speech about how the defendant must be innocent because—if I follow what Antonelli was trying to insinuate—this must have been some kind of political assassination, that's all right with me!”
The color drained out of Haliburton's face. Tight-lipped, his hands trembling, he struggled not to say what he felt.
“I'll keep that in mind, your honor,”he said finally, taking refuge in the formalities of courtroom behavior.
“All right,”said Thompson with a quick, decisive nod. “Enough of this. We have to get down to business. Now that we've finally finished with jury selection—”
“I haven't examined the last juror,”Haliburton reminded him.
“Don't worry, you'll have your chance,”said Thompson impatiently. “But it shouldn't take long, unless,”he added with a look of disgust, “you follow Antonelli's lead and start asking questions about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.”
Pausing, Thompson stared grimly at the floor. Shifting around in his chair, he raised his eyes and looked at me. Shaking his head, he muttered, “ 'Who do you think killed John F. Kennedy?' And I thought I had heard it all.”
We returned to the courtroom and acted as if well-mannered civility were the only way we knew how to behave. I had no more questions to ask of the last juror, and the district attorney asked only three or four. The jury was sworn. In friendly, conversational tones, Judge Thompson informed them that their first order of business was to take the rest of the day off. With the usual enjoinder against discussing the case, he dismissed the five men and seven women until Monday morning, when the trial would begin in which they, and no one else, would decide if Jamaal Washington would live or die.
When the jury had filed out of the room, Jamaal asked, “How are we doing, Mr. Antonelli?”
It was the same question I had been asked a thousand times before, asked in every case I had ever taken to a jury, asked by defendants desperate to find some meaning in the arcane procedures that were dull as dust to the lawyers who spent half their lives in a courtroom but a strange, incomprehensible mystery to the poor unfortunates who found themselves put on trial. They always asked, and I always gave them the same answer, the answer that gave them the assurance they were so eager to have. They wanted me to tell them that things were going well, that everything was fine, that there was nothing to worry about. That was really what they wanted: to believe that they did not have to worry; that though they might have to worry tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after that, right now—today—they could relax and feel almost normal again, if only for a little while longer.
“How are we doing?”asked Jamaal again, a hopeful look in his large, guileless brown eyes.
I started to say, “We're doing fine,”but only the two first words came out. I smiled. “Actually, we're getting killed,”I said instead.
For a second he was not sure what to make of it; then he knew—or thought he knew—that I was kidding. He laughed, and I could see how relieved he felt. Everyone wants to hope.
I could not leave it like that. I patted him on the shoulder.
“I think it's a pretty good jury. They seem fair-minded, and they seem interested. Sometimes that's the most important thing. It means they're curious: They want to know. They haven't already made up their minds.”
The deputy was waiting to take him back to jail.
“Will I see you before we come back to court?”asked Jamaal.
Before I could answer, his eyes looked past me, the expression on his face changing in a way I had not seen before. Jamaal was always polite and never—with me, at least—unfriendly, but there was also a certain reserve, a kind of intelligent formality that preserved a slight, but definite, distance. In an instant, all that had vanished, and he had the look of someone who has just found his way back home.
I turned around, following his eyes, and found myself staring at one of the most remarkable-looking women I had ever seen. It must have been the way she was looking at Jamaal that told me she was his mother. They did not look that much alike, or perhaps it was that they seemed so different that I did not at first see the resemblance that was surely there. They were almost a different color. Jamaal had light brown skin, his mother dark black. Her face practically glowed. Her skin, stretched taut across high cheekbones, glistened like polished ebony; her coal-dark eyes smoldered and shone. Her hair, raven-black, was pulled back from her temples and tied behind her head. She had broad thin shoulders, long graceful arms, and long tapered fingers. She was as stunning as any woman I had ever seen, and I could hardly take my eyes off her.
Mary Washington had made her way through the crowd and was standing patiently behind the bar, a few feet from her son. I caught the eye of the deputy.
“Give her a minute with him, will you?”
Jamaal's mother leaned across the low railing and wrapped her arms around him. The deputy looked away and waited until they had had a chance to exchange a few private words. Then he cleared his throat, stepped forward, and put his hand on Jamaal's shoulder. It was time to go.
I introduced myself and told Jamaal's mother I was sorry we had not met before.
“I've been trying to get in touch with you for weeks. I've left messages. I've asked Jamaal to tell you that I wanted to see you, but perhaps …”
Suddenly I felt like a fool. I was running on about the way we had finally met as if we were two people discussing at a party how much we had heard about each other from our mutual friends, when she was a mother whose son was on trial for murder. With her head held high, she waited until I stopped talking.
“Thank you for helping Jamaal, Mr. Antonelli,”she said in a low clear voice.
“Perhaps we could go somewhere and talk,”I suggested as I turned back to the counsel table and started to put my things in my briefcase.
“I really can't,”she said.
I looked over my shoulder, ready to ask when we could get together, but she was already moving past the last few stragglers on their way out of the courtroom.
Through the open door I heard the voice of Clarence Hal-iburton calmly answering the questions shouted at him from the pack of journalists jammed tightly together in the corridor. I decided to leave through the side door that led to the clerk's office. Before I had taken two steps, the reporters outside surged forward, the harsh, strident lights of the television cameras close on their heels. The cameras were not allowed inside the courtroom, but with the judge gone there was nothing to hold them back. I glanced at the closed door to the clerk's office. It was still tanta-lizingly close, just a few quick steps away; but if I made a dash for it, the only picture that would be seen in the papers or shown on the local television news was the back of the defense attorney, running away as if he had something to hide. I turned around and walked right at them and kept moving until we were out in the corridor and the doors to the courtroom were shut behind me. Everyone had a question, all of them variations on the same theme.
“Do you really believe that the murder of Jeremy Fullerton was a political assassination?”
I tried to be careful, but I had the feeling that things were already slipping out of my control.
“You seemed to suggest that it was more than just a possibility,”another reporter insisted skeptically.
“In a murder case,”I replied, staring back at him, “you always ask who had anything to gain by the victim's death. There are a number of people who had a great deal to gain by the death of Senator Fullerton.”
The same reporter looked up from the note he was jotting. “As in the governor or the president?”
I was already on dangerous ground. I could not afford to get drawn into that kind of speculation. I started to take another reporter's question, but it was too late.
“Is that why you've subpoenaed Governor Marshall to testify at trial—because you think he had something to do with Fullerton's death?”
There was a dead silence. Everyone waited to hear how I was going to reply. The reporter, whoever he was, had remarkable sources of information. The subpoena had been issued only the day before, and I did not know until this moment that it had yet been served. I tried not to show my surprise, but the reporter, a small, wiry man with a crooked mouth, sniffed the air with satisfaction. We had never met, but I could tell he did not like me; he did not like me one bit.
“The governor has been subpoenaed because the defense believes he has evidence relevant to the case,”I said quickly, hoping no one would notice that I had not said anything at all. It did not work.
“What evidence is that?”shouted someone from the back.
“Do you think the governor had Fullerton murdered?”yelled another reporter.
“Is that the only way Marshall thought he could get reelected?”added another voice.
“What about the president?”
I held up my hands and refused to answer anything until they stopped.
“I know the following things: The defendant, Jamaal Washington, did not kill Senator Fullerton. That means someone else did. I also know that Jeremy Fullerton was a very ambitious man who threatened the political careers of a number of other important, very powerful people. The defense intends to offer evidence about who those people were and what they had to lose so long as Jeremy Fullerton was left alive.”
Before any of them could ask another question, I held up my hands again and shook my head. “That's all I can say at this time.”
I turned and, as quickly as I could, walked away.
I grew angrier with each step I took, quickening my pace as if I could outrun the way I felt. I was so caught up in my own emotions that I did not notice until I reached the courthouse doors that Bobby was right behind me.
“I came over to watch. You were terrific,”said Bobby with an encouraging grin. “Why are you so upset?”
“Because I shouldn't have put myself in a position where I had to answer questions from reporters.”
“Isn't that why you asked that question about the Kennedy assassination—to get everyone to think that this had to be an assassination, too? You didn't say anything back there that wasn't implicit in what you asked that juror.”
He was right, of course; and I realized I was not angry because of what I had been asked, but because I did not have an answer to the only two questions that counted: Who murdered Jeremy Fullerton and why?
In the sunlit air outside, my mood began to change and the burden of what I was doing, or trying to do, did not seem quite so intolerable. A few blocks from the courthouse we found a small restaurant and, though neither of us was particularly hungry, went inside. Pencil in hand, the waitress flashed a vapid smile, which vanished immediately when we told her we only wanted something to drink.