I liked Albert Craven. Bobby had been right about that. Craven was too outrageous, too flamboyant, not to like; but there was something a little too staged about it to make me think I could simply take him at his word. He was too caught up in his need to be thought worldly and sophisticated, too interested in saying something at dinner that would be remembered the next day at lunch, to worry about whether he should have said it at all. I had let him go on, telling me the reasons he wanted me to do this, reasons that would have made anyone with a more conventional sense of shame blush with embarrassment. And then, when he was finished, a satisfied look on his round face, certain of my response, I told him there were two conditions that had to be met before I would even consider taking the case. He nodded affably, as if it were only to be expected, when I told him I had first to talk with the defendant. He looked at me with a blank expression, as if he did not immediately comprehend my meaning, and then nodded seriously and said a check could be cut by the end of the business day tomorrow when I told him the size of my fee.
I had made a great deal of money as a criminal defense lawyer, but I had never asked anyone for anything close to the amount I asked of him. I suppose I did it in part to see how someone would react, someone who could afford it, someone like Albert Craven, who, if you looked at him just the right way, would think that you were used to getting it. The rich will put up with almost anything rather than admit there is something they cannot afford. I should have asked for twice as much.
With a low moaning sound, Jamaal Washington started to turn over, bumped against the metal tray suspended across the bed, and opened his eyes. It took him a moment to realize he was staring at a stranger.
“I'm Joseph Antonelli,”I said. “I'm a lawyer,”I added, to explain why I was there.
He gave me an appraising glance and I was struck by how quickly he had become fully alert. There was about him a clarity of expression, an intelligence that, perhaps because of the circumstances in which I found him, surprised me.
“My mother said she'd find a lawyer. She told me when she was here this morning that she thought someone would be coming by. How did she happen to find you?”he asked in a quiet, civil voice.
“Albert Craven—a friend of your mother's—found me.”
“Why?”he asked, looking at me with candid eyes. There was no edge to his voice, nothing in his manner to suggest doubt, much less suspicion, about the motives of someone who wanted to help. There was certainly no resentment. It was just a question, something he was curious to know. I was not able to give him much of an answer.
“He said because he's known your mother for years.”
There was no reaction, no change of expression, just that same interested look.
“What's he like—Mr. Craven?”
Evading his question, which I was scarcely in a position to answer, I asked one of my own: “What has your mother told you about what he's like?”
“Nothing,”he said with a brief shrug. “She never talks about her work.”
“I don't think she works for him.”
As soon as I said it, I realized that, for all I knew of Albert Craven, she might. The only thing he had told me about her was that he had known her for years.
“What kind of work does your mother do?”
“She works as a maid. She cleans other people's houses,”he said with what I thought was a trace of bitterness.
He started to say something else, but suddenly he winced with pain and sank back down against the pillows.
“What are they giving you?”I asked.
“Morphine,”he replied with an effort.
“Want me to get the nurse?”
“I'm okay,”he said with a feeble smile as I got to my feet.
“You need to rest. Why don't I come back tomorrow? We can talk then.”
He grabbed my wrist. It seemed to take all his strength to hold on to it.
“Don't go. I want to tell you what had happened. I didn't do anything,”he said in a faltering voice.
Pausing frequently to rest, Jamaal Washington described what had happened the night a man he had never met was murdered on a San Francisco street he just happened to pass.
He began by telling me that he had just gotten off work, a little after midnight, and was on his way home.
“You work at the Fairmont Hotel?”I asked, just to be sure I had heard him right.
“Yes—three nights on weekends. I work in the kitchen, washing dishes, cleanup, you know,”he said, dismissing what he did in a fashion similar to the way in which he described what his mother did for a living. “Then, after the event,”he added, explaining why he worked so late into the night, “I'm on the crew that tears everything down and sets up for the next one.”
Small, disconnected pieces of information started to come together in my mind.
“You were working there a week ago Saturday night—the night Senator Fullerton spoke at that dinner?”
I could see it, all the well-dressed people sitting in the shadows of a convention ballroom, their attention concentrated on the man who wanted to be governor and maybe something more besides. Just a few yards away, in the sweat and steam and shouted confusion of a vast commercial kitchen, Jamaal Washington labored over an endless line of pots and pans and heard nothing of the great dreams someone else had for his country.
Long after the last limousines had pulled away from the ornate Nob Hill entrance to the hotel, Jamaal Washington, bundled up against the chill night air, left by a side door and began making his way down one of the steep streets that led to the Civic Center. He had just enough time to make the last bus. The fog had rolled in, thick and heavy, from the ocean, and the farther down the hill he went, the thicker it became, until he could barely see a foot in front.
“I was playing a game with myself: sticking my hand in front, watching it disappear. I've been walking that route every weekend night for a year. I could do it blindfolded, and that night I almost was. I've never seen the fog that thick.”
Then, suddenly, from somewhere that seemed right in front of him, he heard what he thought had to have been a gunshot. With a candor that made me willing to believe he was telling the truth, he admitted that his first instinct was to get away, run as fast as he could, just vanish into the night. Then he heard a car door close and the sound of footsteps—quick, hurried footsteps—fading into the distance. He stood still, trying to decide what he should do. He wanted to get away, but he thought that someone might be hurt, might need help. Finally, after what was probably less than a second, but a second that must have seemed to him like an eternity, he took a deep breath, crouched low, and forced himself to move forward until he was right next to the car. The fog, swirling all around, cleared just a little. He peered through the passenger-side window and saw someone in the driver's seat, his face twisted up against the glass. Blood was oozing out the side of his head.
A moment before, he could not decide whether to stay or run away; now, gazing at that awful scene, he did not hesitate: He opened the door and slid inside. He pressed his fingers against the man's right wrist, searching for a pulse. There was nothing. He moved his hand up to the man's throat to be sure. The man was dead. There was a phone in the car, on the console between the seats. Jamaal started to reach for it, to call for help, but then, on the floor below him, he saw a gun. More than the dead body next to him, the gun made him feel vulnerable and afraid. He picked up the phone and started to dial, but he thought of something he believed might be important, something the authorities would want to know. Reaching inside the dead man's jacket, he found his wallet and fumbled through it, looking for a driver's license, some form of identification, something that would give him a name he could give the police. A light pierced through the fog and lit up the inside of the car. Instinctively, he dropped down below the dashboard, the gun that had already killed one man just inches from his face.
Every fear Jamaal Washington had ever felt raced through his mind, each one building on the other. Imagining only the worst, Jamaal was certain the killer was coming back, perhaps to get the gun he had left behind. To o scared to think, he bolted out the door and ran for his life.
He remembered that: He remembered how he flung open the door, how he bent his head down, how he pumped his arms and raised his knees; he remembered that the only thought he had, the thought on which he concentrated like he had never concentrated before, was that if he could just get three or four fast steps into the fog, he would become invisible and whoever was out there would never find him.
“You didn't see anyone?”I asked. “You didn't hear anything?”
His gaze turned inward as he tried to take himself back to that night more than a week before. “No,”he said presently. “All I remember is I was running, and then everything went black. I woke up here—in the hospital. They told me I'd been shot,”he explained with a puzzled expression on his face, as if he could not quite believe that it had really happened.
“What about the gun?”I asked.
“What gun?”he asked blankly.
“The one you had in your hand when the police shot you.”
“I didn't have a gun,”he insisted.
I watched his eyes, trying to see if he was telling the truth. The police claimed that instead of stopping as he was ordered, Jamaal had turned toward the officer in pursuit and raised his weapon. The officer had no choice but to fire.
“What about the gun in the car?”I asked. “The one on the floor, the one you said was right in front of you when you tried to hide. You didn't pick it up—grab it when you jumped out of the car?”
His eyes were growing heavy with fatigue, his voice little more than a trembling breath.
“What would I do with a gun?”
It seemed a strange thing to lie about. The police said he'd had one and that if he had not been shot in the attempt he would have used it to kill or at least wound a police officer. Moreover, the gun, the one that had almost certainly been used to murder Jeremy Fullerton, had been found on the sidewalk where—again according to the published reports—it had fallen from the hand of Jamaal Washington when a bullet from a police officer's revolver had ripped into his body and nearly taken his life.
He lay on the hospital bed, exhausted, looking at me, someone he had never seen before, wondering whether I believed him. I had seen that look before. It was more somber, and in a way more terrifying, than fear. It was the look of someone cast out, made a permanent exile; someone who knows that nothing will ever make anyone change their mind about what they think he is. I had seen that look in the eyes of men I knew were guilty and on the faces of men I thought were innocent: the knowledge that the world now thought of them as criminals who should be imprisoned and as liars no one should ever trust. The difference was that when you were innocent it was a little like being buried alive.
I got up to go, but I had one more question.
“The footsteps you heard—the footsteps running away from the car. Could you tell if it was a man or a woman?”
“No, I don't know,”he said, surprised. “I guess I didn't really think about it.”
I tried to prod his memory. “High heels sound different, especially if someone is running away.”
His brown eyes narrowed as he concentrated on what he might have heard.
“No,”he said finally, “I don't know. I'm sorry.”
I put my hand on his shoulder and tried to give him some sense of assurance. “Don't be sorry. You've done very well. Last thing: Do you remember what you were wearing?”
“Just my jacket and a pair of dark gray pants. I had a wool hat on my head.”
“What kind of shoes?”
“Running shoes. They were almost new.”
“Then you wouldn't have made any noise coming down the street?”
“You mean like the footsteps I heard? No. No one would have heard me coming. Or seen me, either. The fog was really thick.”
“Were you wearing gloves?”
“Yes. It was cold out.”
I nodded and told him to get some rest, then turned toward the door. Before I had taken the first step, I remembered something he had said.
“You said you worked at the hotel three nights and week-ends,”I reminded him as I turned around. “What do you do the rest of the time?”
“I go to school.”
He looked nineteen or twenty, too old for high school. “Where?”I asked, expecting him to name a local community college or perhaps a trade school of some sort.
“Cal,”he replied without any sign that he thought this in any way remarkable.
He told me that he was a sophomore at Berkeley. I asked him what he was majoring in. A faint, ironic smile crossed his mouth.
“I'm premed,”he explained.
When I left the hospital I knew I was going to take the case.
I might have made the same decision even without the money Albert Craven was willing to pay; but the money, I have to confess, had become almost irresistible. It was like that glow, that sense of well-being, you get when you do something other people admire and perhaps even envy; that feeling that you are the center of attention and that everyone wants to know you and get close to you because they know everyone else wants to as well. It is the feeling that while it lasts defines who you are, or who you think you are: It is what the rich love about money and what the addict loves about his drug. It was stupid, and I knew it, and I could not help myself.
I would like to think that I would have taken the case if Jamaal Washington's mother had asked me herself and offered me nothing more than however little she could afford. Her son was too intelligent and too well educated, with far too much to lose, suddenly to assault someone in his car and murder him for whatever money he might find in his wallet. He was innocent, I was sure of it; which made all the more intriguing how quickly everyone in this city—the city so willing to tolerate anyone and everything—assumed he must be guilty. No one would ever admit it was because he was black, and no one had to. Not yet anyway. The case was open-and-shut. Jamaal Washington was shot fleeing the scene, shot threatening the life of a police officer with the same gun he had just used to execute a member of the United States Senate.