by Larry Hill
Klein thought he’d be first to be called because he was such a pillar – clearly he had more to do outside than his fellow inmates. Such was not the case as his name was not announced until nine others had been, occasionally through interpreters, assigned bail, told that they would not be bailed, or released on their own recognizance. “Frederick Klein,” intoned the bailiff. Klein and his lawyer bounced to their feet and approached the bench. “You are charged with vehicular manslaughter, a felony. How do you plead?”
He was not prepared for the question, Greenberg having not told him that this was likely to happen. The lawyer leaned over with whispered instructions. “Not guilty, your honor.”
“The court understands that you have no previous record and are active in community affairs. Therefore, I see no concern that you’d be a flight risk and therefore are eligible for release on bail. The standard bail for the offense with which you are charged is three hundred thousand dollars.”
“Your honor,” said Greenberg before his client had a chance to respond. “My client is, as you say, a well-respected person in San Francisco, a highly regarded philanthropist for many local causes, owns a fine home, and is happily married. There is no risk whatever that he will not return for further appearances. We would ask that bail be waived or at least that it be diminished to a considerably lower sum, say fifty thousand dollars.”
“Mr. Greenberg, you are aware that the event for which these charges are levied resulted in the death of a young mother. There is no way that I could approve release without bail. I, on the other hand, am not opposed to a somewhat lower bail and set the figure at two hundred thousand dollars.
“Thank you, your honor.”
They were taken to the clerk’s office and met by a bail bondsman, a fiftyish male, looking the part in his too-tight black T-shirt, too-gaudy pinstriped pants, and penny loafers. He was the owner and only representative of his company, Houdini Bail Bonds. “So you need two hundred large, huh? You give me a check for twenty grand and I write a guarantee for the rest.”
“How much of the twenty do I get back when I show up?”
“Zero, zip, nada. I’m taking the gamble, you pay to get out.”
“Screw that. I can come up with two hundred grand, can’t I Jen?” he asked his wife as she entered the room.
“Yes, dear, we can get the money. We don’t have the cash – remember you just had me buy more Google stock. We’ll have to sell most of it to raise that much.”
“Fred, that’s going to take a couple of days at least,” said Greenberg. “Do you want to spend another two nights in the holding cell?”
“Houdini – can’t you do it any cheaper? Just look in the paper – I’m a solid citizen – your chance of a default is zero, zip, nada.”
“Sorry buddy. It’s ten percent whether you’re OJ or the King of England.”
“OK, goddamit. Jen – write this son-of-a-bitch a check for twenty thousand. And sell some of those shares tomorrow.”
He was out of jail in less than 24 hours. It seemed like 24 weeks.
“All the kids are waiting for you at home, Freddy.”
There were no yellow ribbons hanging from the trees when Jennifer drove up in her BMW SUV with her now-indicted septuagenarian husband. His clothes, having been placed in a sack during his short incarceration, were embarrassingly wrinkled. The embarrassment resulted from the modest crowd of neighbors and press people on his lawn and sidewalk. Under more propitious circumstances, he would have probably asked those treading on the grass to move back, but his legal status made that a poor idea. He walked in the door, Jennifer taking a step back to allow him to enter first. There were no “Welcome Back Grandpa” posters or cake. A return from jail, with guilt or innocence not yet determined, was different from coming back from Viet Nam or Iraq. While there was no food, there was a large turnout of family – all three boys, and their wives, plus the three grandchildren from the Bay Area and one of Jason and Emily’s two kids. Their older child, the eleven-year-old, stayed back in Los Angeles to prepare for an upcoming lacrosse tournament. Art Schofield was the sole non-family member of the gathering.
The twins, Phillip and Robert, as children were impossible to distinguish. As adults, it was still difficult, although Robert appeared to have grayed faster than his brother. Their personalities were nearly identical although their vocabularies differed some, presumably based on the Yale and UCLA educations. Neither was anxious to open the discussion when Dad entered the room, wrinkled and droopy-eyed from unsuccessfully trying to sleep on a linoleum jail floor. “Hey Dad.” Fred didn’t know or much care which of the boys spoke.
“Grampa, Gramps, Poppa,” three grandchildren shouted out. Mickey, the Down’s child, was silent.
Not a lot of touching went on in the Klein household – never had. Each of the twins tendered a low-pressure hug to their father; he accepted with some hesitation. A shake of the hands was exchanged by Jason and his dad. The twins’ spouses each hugged the returnee with more gusto than their husbands while Emily did not make a move toward her father-in-law. She looked in his direction and smiled coolly while her husband ducked into the kitchen to get a beer as his father came through the door. Their seven-year-old was hunched over thumbing a video game.
“Welcome home, Amigo,” Schofield muttered. He offered the only heart-felt physical greeting, tightly wrapping his arms around his companion of more than sixty years.
Fred plopped into his lounge chair. Initially, no relative sat down on either the leather sofa or the stuffed chairs a couple of feet away. An anxiety filled the space. After too many long seconds, Phillip gently lowered himself on to the sofa. “Dad, I hate to do this, but you‘ve got to look at the paper.”
Beneath the fold on the front page of the day’s San Francisco Chronicle appeared the headline:
LOCAL PHILANTHROPIST ARRESTED IN DEATH OF MOTHER, 28
The paper rarely featured anything but local news on its front page, having given way on distant matters to internet editions of the Times, Post and Journal. Above the fold was an article on bus drivers’ pensions and below an expose on restaurant cleanliness. A recent photo of the hit and run victim, with baby in hand, graced the left side of the lower front page. Fred Klein did not read the article in which he was one of two main characters. He refolded the paper and handed it back, burying the relevant newsprint and saying nothing to his son. He had not felt such grief since the oncologist told him that further chemotherapy would be of no value to Barbara.
Less than half an hour after his father’s arrival Jason finished his beer and said, “We’ve got to go, Dad. We’ve got an early plane in the morning – gotta find a hotel room. Let us know how we can help.” He, Emily and the 7-year-old left, having offered no advice or uttered anything of sympathy or love. Their premium rental pulled away silently.
“What next Honey?” inquired Jennifer.
Her husband responded only with his eyes. A tear rose and fell through the crevasses of his cheek and chin.
Humor was the standard basis of communication between Kleins; none was to be heard, although Phillip and his brother tried to lift the gray cloud. Eventually Robert chimed in, “Come on, Pop. We’ve got to know what’s happening so that we can help. For sure, our kids are going to be asked questions when they go to school tomorrow. It could get pretty ugly unless they’re ready.”
“OK – here’s what I understand. Irv Greenberg is supposed to be the best criminal attorney in the City. He tells me that the Grand Jury will meet in three or four weeks and decide whether to take me to trial. Not much chance that I won’t be charged. Right, Art?”
“Yeah, right. It doesn’t look promising for you.”
“What if he pleads guilty, Art,” asked Robert.
“He could do that, but there’s no way the DA’s office won’t demand some jail time. Only way we avoid that is convincing the judge, or the DA that you aren’t healthy enough.”
“Did your stepmother tell you about my visit to the do
ctor yesterday?” Fred asked the twins.
“Yeah, she said you went for a physical and everything was fine – you were well.”
“Hell no, I wasn’t well. The bitch told me that I had to change everything I ate because I had a cholesterol problem. That’s what was pissing me off so much when I did what they said I did…I did. I killed that woman. She got out of the car on the wrong side and I didn’t even see her. Even after the collision, I didn’t think I did anything but brush her back.”
“So, why did you leave the scene?”
“I was afraid that they’d find I had been drinking. I only had a whiskey and a couple of glasses of wine and I was perfectly capable of driving, but those blood tests and line-walking ones are not always right. They could have accused me of drunk driving. And, goddamit, I wasn’t drunk!”
“I’m sure you weren’t Dad, but the problem you have now is a whole lot worse. How are we going to solve it? There’s no way we convince the judge that you can’t go to jail with a high cholesterol, is there?”
“Afraid not,” answered Schofield.
“It’s up to Greenberg, said Fred. And it’s going to cost me a shitload of money. I already had to shell out twenty grand to that asshole bail bondsman.”
Robert continued, “Dad, you have a shitload of money – please don’t worry about that. So, bottom line is that you are home until a trial or ’til you cop a plea. You prepared to spend some time in prison?”
“Hell, no. I’m 75 – there’s no way I could survive. I’d be raped before the first day was over.”
“Come on – you’re not exactly the sort of dude that those rapists have any interest in.
“Yeah, maybe you’re right, but I still couldn’t live through a sentence. The stress would get me in a week. Shit, I had chest pain in the holding cell and the courtroom.”
“Holding cells are a whole lot worse than prison cells, Pop,” said Phillip.
“So, you guys think that I will end up behind bars, don’t you?”
“Hopefully not, but you gotta be ready for it.”
The doorbell announced the arrival of the pizza delivery guy that Jennifer had arranged before getting home. What with the unexpectedly rapid departure of Jason, et. al, there was more than enough.
That same night marked the monthly meeting of the Mayor’s Cultural Committee. Klein was Immediate Past President, a position of some continuing importance. Do I go? Of course not; they just let me out on bail for killing somebody. But then again, why shouldn’t I? Especially if I’m pleading not guilty. I’ll go and show the bastards.
Robert, Phillip, and families, knowing that he was going to attend the meeting, went to a movie. Jennifer, as expected, supported her husband in his decision to go. She offered to drive him and return to take him home. She figured that driving was the last thing he’d want to do considering the newspaper headlines, the TV coverage, and the detailed and nuanced report on the local NPR affiliate. “Fuck ‘em. I can drive just fine.” Eschewing his usual whiskey and wine, he ate left-over sausage and mushroom pizza, cold, drove the Lexus with its dented right fender and found a space on the street three blocks from City Hall. To spare himself the embarrassment of coming in when most of the others had already seated themselves, he arrived twenty minutes before the 7 PM starting time, with only the two-member staff in the ornate conference room. He had worked closely with both of the young staffers during his recently concluded presidency, considering them friends. They simultaneously smiled on his entry. “Good evening, Mr. Klein.” “Hello, Sir.” Klein knew that both were well aware of recent events and was not surprised by the fact that neither mentioned it nor inquired about his health. Over the next quarter hour, those members who usually came, came; those who accepted membership on the reasonably prestigious committee but usually found more important obligations on meeting nights, didn’t. All acknowledged Klein with either a nod of the head or a simple hello. “How Are You?” was not part of the evening’s vocabulary; nobody shook his hands although some did with other members. It occurred to him, before the gavel fell, that the incumbent committee chair, a retired prima ballerina with whom Klein had a mutual lack of admiration, might ask for a moment of silence in honor of Teresa Spencer. She didn’t; she was not that nasty.
The agenda was not particularly controversial or burdensome in its length. The City’s support for opera, ballet, and symphony was, as always, on the month’s agenda; the amount of money from the public coffers to each continued to drop, now to essentially zero. The committee held sway over the public cultural events in Golden Gate Park, so the Park people were represented. Klein despised the fact that almost all such events were now rock or bluegrass and that Shakespeare and classical and big band music had nearly disappeared from the annual schedule. In the past, he would have made a mini-ruckus, extolling the value of real culture; tonight he’d remain mute. The community attendance for these meetings generally did not exceed the number of people who had requested time on the agenda. At this meeting, there was what could gently be called a crowd – maybe 25 people in all. Klein assumed that several were there only to see the alleged killer. He convinced himself that most eyes were focused toward him as he sat silently in the seat next to his successor, the Board President. He voted with the unanimous majority on the several occasions when a vote was called. Voting required only a raise of the hand; normally voluble, he said not a word for the entire two hours. By custom, the members and the staffers retired to a nearby pub at the conclusion of the meeting; Klein was looking forward to the camaraderie that always followed the bickering, but to a man, the others pled reasons of fatigue, other social obligations, or the common cold for not joining. He braved the foggy walk to his car and, noticing the dent, kept walking.
Jennifer was not worried when her husband had not arrived at home by ten. She was aware of the gatherings at the pub and knew he was smart enough not to drink and drive under the circumstances of the day. She had been buoyed by the presence of the twins and the grandchildren after all returned from the movie, and took advantage of the kids’ bedtime and early departure of the daughters-in-law to discuss Fred’s situation with her sons-in-law. She was glad that Jason wasn’t there, even though he, as a lawyer, might have been able to offer concrete legal information, of which she and the doctors were ignorant. She did not have the same problems with Jason, Emily, and the two achievers as did her spouse, but she and they had never established any great warmth.
“So, how do you see all this playing out?” said one twin. “Do you think he’ll end up with a jail term?” queried the other. They both saw their young stepmother as bright, reasonable and, while no Barbara, not a bad looking woman.
“I’m really worried about your father.” She relayed the overreaction to the news of his hypercholesterolemia and need for dietary manipulation that immediately preceded the episode. “I’m afraid that this will kill him. He’s never had anything bad happen to him.”
“Uhm, Jen, he did lose our mother, horribly.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry – of course that’s true. I guess what I mean to say is that nothing’s happened since we’ve known each other.” The twins were assuaged.
“I don’t know if you ever heard the story, but he beat himself up pretty bad when she died,” said Phillip.
Barbara was the perfect philanthropist’s wife – smart, energetic and willing to do anything, anytime as long as she thought she was helping the underprivileged or undiscovered artists and musicians. She was on twice as many non-profit boards as Fred, spending at least two nights per week away from home. She loved charity balls and banquets; she usually was the one who bought out a table for ten and found other couples, gay or straight, to occupy the other eight seats. She was perfectly happy with the title of Mrs. Frederick Klein.
Her father, the society cardiologist, made sure that she did everything she could to prevent coronary artery disease. She did not rebel, running frequent 10-kilometer races, avoiding trans-fats and checking her serum lipid
s at least annually; she prided herself on her sub-200 cholesterol level. Her radiologist-son offered her free mammograms which she gladly accepted every year as a birthday present. Her gastroenterologist-son, on the other hand, never discussed esophagi, anuses, and rectums with his mother. She had been bothered with hemorrhoids since her first pregnancy and attributed the intermittent bleeding to them – she never mentioned the blood to the twin. She’d read about colonoscopies but justified her ignoring published advice by pointing out to herself that there was no family history of any cancer, let alone colon cancer. She, on a few occasions, told her husband about the blood; he accepted, without questioning, her hemorrhoidal explanation. He had not had a colonoscopy, fearing the discomfort, and was buoyed by her emphasis on the importance of family history. He had learned that he could not get away with advising his wife on health issues. “You take care of your body and I’ll take care of mine!”
On her 59th birthday, Barbara opened her annual present by having her yearly breast X-ray. Her radiologist-son was perceptive enough, recognizing the folly of doctoring a loved-one, to have the films read by one of his office mates. The mate, also named Barbara, saw a thickening that concerned her just a bit. An ultrasound was ordered and done immediately, a response that only another doctor or the radiologist’s mother would receive. Barbara was called into Barbara’s office to be told that the thickening was of no significance. No biopsy was indicated. “Let me ask you a question,” said Barbara Klein. “My hemorrhoids have been bleeding a lot – more than they ever have. Do you think I should have them operated on?”