by Robert Roper
A wraith—the shadow of a shadow—hovered just beyond the edge of the front door. The woman glanced that way, then tried to hide it.
“Is that your son, ma’am? May I speak with him, please?”
“Blue jays get the food. They scare everything else away, the house wrens, the vireos, the finches. They’re bullies, blue jays are. Big bullies.”
“Yes, I agree. Are you a bird-watcher, Mrs. Bamberg?”
“No. I don’t know anything about birds.”
“My mother was. Had a considerable life-list, binoculars, the whole kit. Rarely got out of London, however. Saw a lot of starlings, crows, that sort of thing. One time, a tufted duck.”
“Tufted duck?”
“Yes, in Regent’s Park. But look here, neighbor, Bamberg lady. I have a small bone to pick with your son, a small mild bone. He sent me a note, a very strange note. I would like to have a word with him about it.”
The woman appeared confused.
“‘El Chueco.’ That’s what he called himself. I have no problem with sending notes, mind you, but the sentiments he expressed were, shall we say, nonstandard. But most important, he did not see what he thinks he saw. I did not do what he says to the dead girl.”
The woman nodded. Nodded and nodded. Then she slammed the door.
When Landau showed Raboy the nonstandard note, the lawyer appeared interested, and his ponytailed investigator handled it with plastic tweezers, placing it in a cellophane sleeve. Before handing it on to the authorities Raboy’s crew made photos of it—it was a hoax, no doubt, of no importance, but needful of documentation, even so.
Seventeen days later, on the twenty-fourth of January, he stood beside his lawyer in a wood-paneled courtroom in the austere Rene C. Davidson Superior Court Building, downtown Oakland, dressed in a good new suit. Everyone was wearing a new suit, prosecutor as well as defense attorney: Landau had bought his own at Nordstrom San Francisco, no longer forced to choose from the Big Man’s rack, with its tentlike garments. He was as thin as he’d been in forty years, a forty-three long now, a bit haggard looking. Maybe I’ll write a best seller of my own, he mused: The Indictment Diet: Weight-Loss That Comes Whether You Want It To or Not. Very Rapid and Frightening.
A packed courtroom, just like in the books by Grisham. It was only a bail hearing, but the marble lobby downstairs had bristled with camera crews, with a paparazzi-style energy. And oh, what a lift of hearts when Landau had entered by the Thirteenth Street doors, arm in arm with Masha Dimitriopoulous—you could feel the uptick of expectation, life about to get much more interesting. Katherine of KRON had been calling him the “Suave Monster” on Channel 4 of late—she’d hosted three updates just in the previous week, and this was really putting her over, she was becoming a big hit with this. Suave, never! Landau had yelled at the screen, and a monster only of scientific ambition, and that only for a few short seasons. But on the screen was his indisputable double, his electronic avatar, with his drawn-with-a-ruler wound minimally bandaged now, his intense gaze, and a grim new set to his mouth, the lower lip protruding. Masha had been with him at the arraignment, when the footage was shot—and maybe that wasn’t a good idea, always to show him with a nubile young woman. People get ideas.
Raboy proved impressive in court. Something happened when he put on his own good suit—the long face, the tombstone teeth, the graveyard pallor became elements in a moral impersonation, as if some Russian samizdat poet of the eighties, survivor of the icy mines and of countless gulag beatings, had appeared amongst them, to declare to them the Truth. One thought of liars and sleazeballs when one thought of legal performers, but Raboy went in the teeth of that, seeming not to care how he looked, not to care about anything but the immense responsibility he had shouldered, the responsibility of defending an entirely innocent man. Yes, entirely innocent! In just the last few days Landau had been let in on the secret, that their strategy now was to seek full exoneration, with no more talk of “diminished capacity,” of a diseased mind incapable of telling right from wrong. Landau liked this change, but he was unsettled by the wholesale turnabout: Had they merely been testing him before, seeing if he’d stick to his story? Had he somehow become a better bet now, with his dramatic cheek wound? The weight loss? What, was he more sympathetic now, therefore more likely innocent?
He’d escaped any more nights in police custody, at least—Raboy had secured that, by means of masterful maneuverings to which Landau had not been made privy. And now they awaited the appearance of the judge, Sherman Beane by name, by reputation a prosecutor’s friend, a “liberal Scalia,” as Carl Glebefelder had put it. The judge not appearing for minutes, Landau sat with his hands folded in his lap, admiring the high-ceilinged courtroom, the polished walnut wainscoting, and over on one wall, tall windows, which the bailiff ordered opened. He thought he heard voices down on the street—Oakland, like Metropolis in the Superman comics, was a stage-set of a city, with few pedestrians roaming among the high edifices, many of them handsome ones erected in the 1910s. He heard a single car horn tooting seven stories below—one single jaunty toot.
“Twenty bucks says I walk, counselor,” he whispered to Masha, who was sitting by his side.
“Pardon?”
“Twenty bucks says he grants bail. I’m feeling hopeful, I don’t know why.”
“That would be nice. But it’ll cost you more than twenty bucks I’m afraid, Doctor.”
“Yes, I know.”
She’d told him not to look around. But Landau found himself swiveling until he could see behind him, and there was Deena, with Harold sitting next to her, and Georges, and, surprise, a woman named Lenore Cruikshank, another of his San Francisco project managers, another lesbian if you had to know. When Landau caught her eye, Lenore smiled warmly—she who might as likely have made the sign of the devil. I appreciate your loyalty, Lenore, he said to her in his mind. Thanks for being here.
“Doctor, please. Eyes forward, don’t gawk.”
“I’m not gawking, I’m just rubbernecking a little.”
“No, stop that.”
Jad wasn’t here, but Karin was, and Landau nodded to her. Jad had to work—his patients always came first. But wait—aren’t I more important than they, just this one time? I’m the only father he has. I may be going from this chamber directly to Santa Rita, the county jail, to molder there till the trial proper starts. I may never be a free man again, walking the tootling streets. You should support your father, Jad—support him in his need.
Some other supporters were here: three of his old postdocs, Linda Maturin, Heitor Burgos-Pereira, Emma Chin. Emma lived in Seattle, worked at the University of Washington now, the school of public health. Had she come down just for this? How good of her. And Heitor, good God, Heitor had some big job in Brazil, some public-health appointment, important politically, very onerous. No doubt there was some other reason for him to be in the States at this time, a conference or something, but that he had taken pains, was following his old professor’s embarrassing troubles, that moved Landau. And Linda Maturin: a good egg, Landau had always been fond of her.
Now the judge entered. Landau’s heart began pounding: something unpromising about the man, inimical, a man of about Landau’s own age, bald, stooping, slight list to the right. Was that the Scalia reference? Smiling drily, pretending to be one of the guys, a friend to his courtroom clerks. Landau felt sweat under his arms, and he wished they could open those high windows wider—it was a warm day, the premature California spring ongoing. His lawyers were on their feet, but when Landau also tried to rise Masha pushed him back down.
A clerk made a formal statement, mentioning a case number. The judge now repeated that number, as he took his seat high above them.
“Counselor, I’ve read forty-four letters in support, have I missed any?”
“No, Your Honor, I don’t think so.”
The judge rolled his eyes. Forty-four l
etters: that was a bit much, no? Testaments to the defendant’s character, wonderfulness, all-around harmlessness.
The judge looked over at Landau. “I honor you for your work, sir,” he said unexpectedly, “your groundbreaking scientific work.”
Silence in the court. Landau realized that he was supposed to respond. “Thank you, Your Honor. Thank you very much.”
“Interesting stuff. You made sense of the AIDS epidemic when others were completely confused. Classic studies, eminently logical. Aristotle would’ve been proud. They teach those papers in the med schools now I understand.”
“Thank you, but I was but one of many, sir.”
“No, you came first. I read about it.”
Astonishing. Astonishing. But that was the end of the direct address, and the judge got things rolling, calling on the prosecution to bring a witness.
Description of Elfridia Tojolobal’s ravaged body. This much damage caused by mammalian dentition, this much by tormenting with a knife. As well try to convict one of the raccoons, Raboy had said—nothing tied Landau directly to either process. All right, all right, here was something, an IKEA-brand serrated kitchen knife, five-inch blade, straight cutting edge. Partial prints on handle and blade, belonging to the defendant. Suggestive but not dispositive, to use a word his lawyers liked to throw in. Dispositive evidence was what you hoped they didn’t have.
The prosecution had purchased an identical knife and had conducted tests on a fresh female cadaver. Marks on bone-ends similar to those on victim. But anybody could have taken that knife out of Landau’s kitchen drawer—his fingerprints were all over his knives, because he washed them by hand. Some cooking show had taught him that.
Judge growing impatient, it seemed—the point was not to argue the case, just decide, was defendant a flight risk? A threat to public safety? By subtle movements of his shoulders inside his suit, lawyer Raboy communicated similar impatience; there was a discrepancy in the forensics log, saying “December 21” on one page while on another it said that the knife had been found on the twenty-sixth. Knife found under the house, but the map of the dig showed other discrepancies, too, two locations for the supposed knife discovery, for instance.
Raboy now suggested that the whole excavation had been bungled, and there would be more to say on this at the trial. For now, can we not agree that defendant returned of his own free will from a foreign country, a country with complicated extradition arrangements with the U.S.? A country where he might have remained indefinitely? Furthermore, he had been cooperating mightily with the police, and the radical and unreasoning disregard in which he was held in certain quarters did not in itself argue for incarceration. A community distinguishes itself by the way it treats its pariahs, and just because someone is the object of a dangerous and unreasoning hatred does not mean that he should be denied his rights, etc.
Clumsily, endearingly almost, the prosecution now made its lame case. Defendant had a habit of vanishing abroad—twenty-three trips to Africa, scores more to Asia and Latin America, six to San Diego one single summer. If this man is not a flight risk, no one is. Raboy surged up out of his chair: he was outraged, and Landau could hardly understand what the matter was, why he was in such a high dudgeon. This was not a grand jury, Raboy explained, before which prosecutors might float any kind of bizarre theory; no, this was a simple bail hearing. Hard to tell what he was really up about, was it the mention of San Diego, where the other bodies had been found? Nothing had been said to Landau during the coaching about that—his lawyers liked to talk demeanor, what clothes to wear, that sort of thing, plus what he had revealed in his “incredibly stupid” meeting with the Berkeley detective recently. Raboy and team knew all about the lake meeting—maybe that was why they’d kept him in the dark so long, because they knew they were defending a fool.
An assistant DA, Wendy Waters, now tried to show that where Landau went, deaths to women occurred. But this was “circumstantial,” and if they took this approach at trial, they were going to have a hard time. Raboy remained on his feet: like a venerable stage actor, he occupied space magisterially, his silence eloquent, unsettling. Landau could see that in a certain sense the state had no case, that in eight weeks they’d come up with nothing but a single steak knife—and the steak knife was too good to be true, too much of a smoking gun. A killer who left nothing behind, not a scintilla of DNA, as if he’d performed his monstrous resections clothed in a rubber bodysuit, had somehow dropped his principal tool. It made no sense.
“All right, all right,” said the judge. “The question is, what good is served by detaining defendant pending trial, and what good if we go the other way. This is where I earn my salary, my impressively bounteous salary.” Judge Beane’s eyes sought out Landau’s—it was an oddly personal look, half-amused, the look of someone you know at the gym, perhaps, some guy who holds the door to the sauna open for you. “You on your way in here, old-timer? Let’s hope neither of us conks out. I haven’t had my blood pressure checked lately.”
Moments passed. That he was a traveler, continuously fleeing: well, how did you get around that? And women he knew had turned up dead, three. Someone coughed in the gallery. The judge examined a document. He really is trying to decide, Landau realized—I can see him laboring, in his mind and in his spirit. Landau’s heart began pounding hard again, and he had a moment of excitement, almost a falling-in-love feeling. Followed by more common garden-variety dread, as the judge folded the page in half, mumbling to himself, now saying something a bit louder about having had to read forty-four letters, as if that were a new North American record. Defendant had brought along a whole generation of young health scientists, there was that to be said for him, and some had sent in heartfelt letters—here, he wanted to read one testimonial, from a woman student.
Maddeningly, the judge couldn’t find the letter. He searched here and there, then turned to one of his clerks, who joined his search. Eventually she also threw up her hands.
Now he heard something about bail in the amount of, conditions thereof. Masha was sitting very still, Raboy even stiller—they were all still as statues. “That’s two million,” Masha whispered without leaning closer, “two million, Doctor. Not twenty, and not ten. Two million.”
“Two million?”
“Right. And you only put up ten percent.”
A victory, then; a glorious outcome. Nothing about electronic anklets, nothing like that, either. What was two million dollars to the likes of him, wealthy retired white-collar bastard living in the Berkeley Hills? Two million was nothing.
Raboy, as if from a great height—still cruising on his successful impersonation—whispered that they had witnessed an act of rare courage, the superior court judge pretty much putting an end to his career with this judgment. Try running on that ten months from now in Berkeley or anywhere. Especially if there were more killings.
Masha was glowing—Landau thought of a high school football quarterback after a big game. Clearly they were in disarray over in the DA’s office, and what the heck was going on with them? Wendy Waters wasn’t the brightest bulb, but she had never looked this weak before. Normally her plodding, little-steps manner put male judges on her side.
Deena came over, did not kiss him, only touched his hand. She looked shrunken—it occurred to Landau that she had been suffering on his account, worrying herself sick, losing weight herself. You forgot that you had that kind of friend. But you did.
Harold and Raboy were deep in conversation now, exchanging deep insider-lawyer aperçus. The courtroom did not quickly empty out; people seemed to want to gawk some more. The judge was gone, the prosecutors all gone, the last one now wheeling out a white document box on a dolly. So, the monster had gotten away with it! An old white judge lets another old white guy out on bail—some things never change.
Georges was with his earth scientist, waving from the back of the room. Heather Ming, that was her name, Landau now recal
led. The crowd moving toward the door at last, Georges and she were borne in that direction, relentlessly away.
“Deena, you look like a scarecrow. You must be down to 105, darling.”
“I’m all right. You eat, too, Landau, you look ill.”
“Dad? It’s a good thing, right, Dad?”
It was Karin, looking happy if anxious.
“Yes, I think so, dear. You know Deena, right? This is my very good friend Deena.”
“Of course I know Deena. We’ve met on five Boxing Days.”
“Oh, right.”
Someone else was swimming up—it was Linda Maturin, old-school epidemiologist now, not one of Landau’s sharpest postdocs ever, but solid, invincible. And she was pregnant again. Looked about six months gone.
“Linda! Let me embrace you.”
“With pleasure, Professor.”
After the embrace, “Professor, I wanted to say—as I said in my letter—I am a woman scientist today for one reason only, because I was lucky enough to study with Anthony Landau, who fought for me, who did not give up despite four years on a paper I should’ve written in one, miscarriages, traumas too numerous to mention, during which he stood by me. So don’t say this is a man who harms women, no, that’s exactly what he is not.”
“Hear, hear,” said Landau, feeling a little embarrassed.
“No, I’m serious. It just makes me so mad. You don’t know how rare you are. How special and rare.”
Landau felt emotional again. It was the goodness of hearing how good he was—sainthood, here we come.
And who is this handsome fellow sneaking up, agreeably nodding to everyone, not wanting to interpose himself—ever the gentleman, Heitor Burgos-Pereira, one of Landau’s favorites, this one very bright, Heitor of Argentina. Heitor looked like some supple polo player, fresh from a hard-fought chukker at the La Tarde Club, Buenos Aires, pushing forty now, but ageless, suntanned, chipper. A treat to see him.