How Town

by Michael Nava

To my surprise, Phelan nodded, but then he said, “Mr. Rios, even if I agree that the press has treated your client unfairly, what makes him different from other defendants the media gets its hands on?”

  I saw my opening. “I’ll tell you, Your Honor. What makes it different is the reason that my client has been tried on the front page of the only newspaper of general circulation in this county. It has nothing to do with his innocence or guilt. The reason is that the paper has a political position to push, banning new development in the city, which can be furthered by embarrassing the Windsor family. I don’t think that the merits of any political controversy should be decided on the back of a criminal defendant. It just isn’t right. And I am truly sorry that the Sentinel, and other members of the media, have made it impossible to give Paul Windsor a fair trial in this town because we would like nothing better. But it is impossible and that’s why we’re asking you to grant our motion.”

  I sat down. “Too much silk?” I whispered to Peter.

  “Just enough,” he whispered back.

  The judge looked over at Rossi. “Counsel?”

  “Your Honor,” Rossi said, getting to his feet. “Paul Windsor is entitled to a jury by his peers but he doesn’t want to face his peers. That’s the only reason for this motion. He knows he’s guilty and he’d rather take his chances somewhere else …”

  “Mr. Rossi,” Phelan rasped, “if the state has the evidence to prove the man’s guilty, it doesn’t matter whether he’s tried here or in Timbuktu. That’s not what we’re about here. We’re talking about whether he can get twelve impartial jurors. Or are you telling me,” he said, eyes narrowing, “that the prosecution’s case is so thin you need a biased jury to convict the man?”

  “Absolutely not,” Rossi yelped. “But look, Judge, there’s a quarter-million people in this county. The defendant can’t tell me every last one of them is prejudiced against him.”

  “He doesn’t have to,” Phelan snapped. “He just has to convince me that the press has fixed it so that there’s a reasonable probability of prejudice. Address that point and maybe we’ll get somewhere.”

  And so it went. Rossi would get in a couple of sentences and then Phelan would interrupt with a question or comment. These got sharper as the DA, who was obviously unprepared for this reception, muddled through defensively. For the first time in this case I felt hopeful. Phelan was clearly not going along and Rossi was panicking. Finally, he concluded his argument and sat down, breathing hard.

  Phelan rubbed his eyes. “Submitted?” he barked.

  “Submitted,” I said.

  Rossi echoed, “Submitted.”

  “This is a complicated motion,” Phelan said. “And I have to tell you both, it’s very close. Very close. I’m taking it under submission until further notice.”

  “Your Honor, the defense has applied for bail,” I began.

  Phelan looked at me sourly. “Denied, for now. You’ll get my ruling within a week. Court will stand in recess.”

  Abruptly, he stood up and got off the bench, leaving us half-rising.

  I sat back down and turned to Peter. “What did you mean when you said Clayton could fuck himself?”

  With studied nonchalance, he said, “That memo I told you, how Clayton said I wasn’t working out? He gave me notice this morning. Three weeks.”

  “I’m sorry, Peter.”

  He shrugged. “It’s the best thing that could’ve happened to me.”

  “Good job, Henry,” Dom Rossi said from the other end of the table.

  “Thanks, you, too.”

  He grimaced and looked away.

  To Peter, I said, “What will you do now?”

  “Hang my shingle, I guess.”

  “Why don’t you come in on this case, officially, I mean.”

  He smiled, “I thought you’d never ask. By the way,” he said, handing me my stack of Sentinels, “the feds have begun their audit of Pioneer. You may have another Windsor client before long.”

  “When did all this happen?”

  “Last week, sometime. Why, you seen Mark?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, but I didn’t talk to him.”

  “Going back to the office?” Peter asked.

  “No, I have to track down a witness,” I replied. “Ruth Soto.

  19

  I STEPPED OUT OF THE courthouse into the mid-September heat. An acrid vapor of smoke hung in the air, the result of the annual burning of rice fields outside the city. Combined with the continuing heat, the sour, sooty air made the city unbearable, as bad as the worst days of smog in LA. But soon, around the beginning of October, the heat would break, the air clear and the temperature drop for the brief season of autumn that preceded the long winter rains. With any luck, I would be long gone by then, trying this case in San Francisco.

  I drove to Paradise Slough, rehearsing yet another little speech about justice and morality to persuade Ruth Soto to testify on Paul’s behalf. I hadn’t called her while I was in LA and I hoped the respite had given her time to do some serious thinking. More and more, I saw that she was Paul’s best chance at acquittal. She wasn’t the typical alibi witness, a friend or family member of the defendant whom a jury could assume had a reason to lie. Nor was her testimony the usual alibi testimony. She wouldn’t claim to have been with Paul when McKay was murdered. Her testimony was far more devastating because it shifted the focus from Paul to the cops, which was exactly where it had to be if I was going to undermine the evidence they’d gathered against him. That might not play so well in Los Robles but in a big city like San Francisco, cops weren’t revered in the same way.

  I pulled up in front of her house and went to the door. I knocked and waited for a couple of minutes, then knocked again. Finally, the door opened and Mrs. Soto frowned at me.

  “Puedo hablar con Ruth?” I asked.

  “Ya se fui,” she said sharply. Her tone suggested that Ruth had gone for more than the afternoon.

  “Adonde?”

  “Para ver su hermana,” she replied.

  “My sister,” I said in English. “When?”

  “Hace tres dias, señor,” she said, closing the door. “Buscala allá.”

  “Thank you,” I mumbled.

  Back at the hotel I called my sister and got an answering machine, again. I asked Elena to call me and hung up, speculating on Ruth’s sudden decision to visit Oakland. Before I could get too far in my speculations the phone rang. I grabbed it.

  Terry Ormes said, “I have some news for you.”

  “About Howard T.?” I asked, reaching for a legal pad.

  “Howard Thurmond,” she replied. “T-h-u-r-m-o-n-d,” she added with typical thoroughness. “He was convicted of PC 288 thirteen years ago here in the city. Sentenced to two years at Folsom, did ten months, came back here and then moved to LA about eight years ago.”

  Penal code section 288 was lewd conduct with a child fourteen years of age or younger, an offense that required the convicted defendant to register with the local department as a sex offender. “Was he registered with LAPD?”

  “Come on, Henry,” she said. “Why do you think he moved in the first place and changed his name?”

  “Point taken. What about a superior court case number?” I asked.

  She rattled off a number while I scribbled. “Wait,” she said. “That’s funny, there’s another one.” She read it to me. “I wonder why that is?”

  I looked at the two numbers. Each had seven digits, but one began with the letter A while the other began with the letter R. “What are you reading from, a rap sheet?”

  “Yeah, a CII printout,” she replied, referring to the statewide criminal computer network.

  “Who was the arresting agency? San Francisco?”

  She grunted. “How could I be so dumb? It’s not us, it’s something listed as WCSO. Look, let me run down abbreviations for police departments statewide and call you back.”

  “It might be faster if I could get a look at the court file. Let me call Kevin. Is h
e in the office or in court?”

  “At the office, I think,” she replied. “In the meantime, I’ll check out that abbreviation.”

  “Henry,” Kevin said when I reached him at his office, “where are you calling from?”

  “Los Robles,” I said.

  “Terry said you had a case up there. What a pit.”

  “It’s my hometown,” I replied.

  “Well wipe the cow shit off your shoes next time you come to visit. What’s going on?”

  “I need a favor.”

  “Yeah, go ahead.”

  “I wonder if you could drop by the superior court clerk’s office and take a look at a case file for me. It’s an ancient 288 conviction. I’d like a copy of the complaint and the police report.”

  “I can’t get to it until morning. That okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s the case number?”

  I read him both numbers.

  “Two numbers,” he said. “So it came from someplace else?”

  I looked at the numbers, feeling a little stupid. “Why didn’t I figure that out?” I said. “Which one is San Francisco, the A-number, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Any guesses on the R-number?” I asked.

  “LA?”

  “No,” I said, “they use G. What about Oakland, the East Bay courts?”

  “F,” he said. “Well, shit, Henry, there are fifty-eight counties in California and we could be here all night trying to figure out which one it is. Let me check it out in the morning and get back to you.”

  “Thanks, Kev.”

  After hanging up, I went to my briefcase, took out the complaint against Paul and looked at the case number. It started with the letter S. Thurmond’s case had not been filed in Los Robles.

  I tried Elena and got the machine again. I left another message and dialed Clayton’s office to check if I’d had any calls there. Someone knocked. Putting the phone down, I shouted, “Come in.”

  Ben Vega pushed the door open slowly and slipped into the room. “Hello, Henry,” he said.

  “Hello, Ben.”

  He closed the door behind him and stood doubtfully at the edge of the room.

  “Have a seat,” I said. “You on your way to work?”

  He shook his head. “It’s my day off.” He walked over to the window. “You got a nice view from here. I can see the river.”

  “You want something to drink?” I asked, picking up the phone to call room service.

  He shook his head quickly. “I don’t want nobody to know I came up here.”

  “Okay,” I said, hanging up. “Why did you come here?”

  He sat down at the bed. “To tell you that you’re wrong about Morrow.”

  “How would you know that?”

  “After what you said about those pictures, I decided to look around.”

  “Look around where?” I asked.

  “His locker, to begin with,” Ben said. “His truck. His apartment. He’s clean.”

  “How did you get into those places?”

  “I told you, Morrow’s my compadre.” His tone became hostile. “There ain’t no other film.”

  “Did you really expect to find it, if it existed? Morrow’s not going to keep something like that lying around.”

  “Goddammit, you don’t know him,” Ben said fiercely. “You’re calling him a thief and a liar and it’s not true.”

  Calmly, I replied, “I have a witness who can testify that Paul Windsor shot a roll of film three days before you found the film in his car.”

  “What witness?” he demanded. “Let me talk to her.”

  “Her? How do you know it’s a her?”

  For a second he was flustered, but then he said. “It’s his wife, huh? That’s your witness.”

  “No,” I said. “It’s not his wife.” I looked at him. “And you didn’t mean his wife, did you?”

  Abruptly, he stood up and took a couple of steps toward me. “Don’t run that bullshit about Morrow at the trial.”

  “Are you threatening me, Ben?”

  He shook his head. “He’s good people, Henry. A hell of a lot better than that rich fucker you’re working for.” He backed off a step. “You grew up here,” he said. “You’re Mexican. What did those people in River Park ever do for you? You’re one of us, Henry. We gotta stick together.”

  “It’s not that simple, Ben.”

  “Don’t be a traitor, man. Don’t be a fucking bolino.”

  I hadn’t heard that expression in years, the Spanish word for coconut, brown on the outside, white on the inside; it was the local equivalent to Oreo, the word that blacks used to describe a brother or sister who’d sold out.

  “I don’t pick my clients by the color of their skin,” I replied, stiffly. “I don’t think Paul Windsor killed McKay. I think someone set him up, and I think it was Morrow. And that’s what I’m going to try to prove.”

  “Man, you’re disgusting,” he said, in a tone of disbelief. “But I shoulda known about you when I saw that kid in here. You’re just like Windsor. A fucking queer.”

  I shook my head. “Paul’s straight.”

  Ben snorted, turned on his heel and strode out of the room, slamming the door behind him. I got up and locked it.

  Lying on the bed later I played the scene with Ben through my head. How much had been planned and how much improvised was hard to tell but it was obvious that the purpose of his visit wasn’t to clear Morrow but to persuade me to ease up on him. That removed the last doubt I had over whether Morrow had switched the film. I’d already figured out how he’d developed the film that Vega took from Paul’s car. The solution had come to me over the weekend, in LA. Josh had sent me on an errand to pick up some pictures he’d taken at a friend’s birthday party. They’d been developed at a place that boasted one-hour service.

  Morrow would’ve had just enough time to find someplace like that in Los Robles, have the film developed, see it consisted of pictures of Ruth and substitute another roll of film, filched from a file in Sex Crimes, his last assignment before Homicide. I was sure that a check among photo labs in the area would uncover someone who remembered Morrow bringing the film in, but I was saving this for trial.

  If there was a trial. Morrow was getting nervous, sending Ben to see me. Nervous enough to do something stupid, maybe. Or maybe he already had. Ben had slipped when he referred to my witness as “her.” I knew, and he knew, that he didn’t mean Sara. The more I thought about it, the clearer it seemed that he and Morrow had figured out that I’d talked to Ruth. It fit with her sudden disappearance. She’d been warned off, or threatened.

  Reaching to the night table I switched on the light and looked at my watch. A little after one. I sat up and pulled the phone over, dialing Elena’s number. I got the same damned answering machine on which I’d already left two unanswered messages. Apparently, Elena was screening her calls. This fit, too. I left another message, telling her that it was urgent that I speak to Ruth.

  A few minutes later, the phone rang. I picked it up, expecting Elena at the other end.

  “Mr. Rios?” It was an unfamiliar male voice.

  “Yeah.”

  “This is Don at the desk downstairs,” he said it on a rising inflection, as if he had some question about his own identity. “I’m sorry to bother you but someone just called you when you were on the phone. He said it was urgent. Mark Windsor?”

  “Did he say what he wanted?” I asked sitting up in bed.

  “Just that it was urgent. He left a number.”

  “What is it?”

  Don, at the desk, enunciated the number slowly. I immediately recognized it as Sara’s.

  “Are you sure it was Mark Windsor?” I asked. “Not Sara?”

  “It was a guy,” Don said, “and that was the number he left. Do you want me to call?”

  “Please.”

  The phone rang twice at the other end before someone picked it up. “Callahan.”

  “I’m so
rry,” I said, in a complete fog, now. “I’m trying to reach Mark Windsor.”

  “Yeah,” he said and I heard a thump as the receiver hit a hard surface. There were a lot of voices in the background. My first thought was that there was some kind of party going on, but that seemed bizarre. More thumps and then someone else, Mark, said, “Hello.”

  “Mark, this is Henry Rios. What the hell’s going on?”

  With preternatural calm he said, “Sara’s dead, Henry. Could you come here, please?”

  20

  I HADN’T REALLY NOTICED the pool before, but then I hadn’t ever ventured much beyond the rose garden and had no idea of how extensive the grounds were behind the house. The pool was east of the roses, where the yard descended. All that was visible from the back of the house was the arched wall that ran along the poolside. Between the arches and the water was a cobblestone terrace furnished with wrought-iron lawn chairs and tables painted white. One of the chairs had been upturned. An almost empty bottle of Sauvignon Blanc, the glass still sweating, stood on a tabletop. The wineglass from which the wine had been drunk lay at the bottom of the pool, not far, Mark was telling me, from where they’d recovered Sara’s body.

  The lights beneath the water illuminated its still depths. The body had been removed and everyone was gone now, or leaving—the cops, the paramedics, the neighbor whose sleep Sara had disturbed for the last time. She, the neighbor, had heard a scream and shouting but had not been able to make out any words. The noise had frightened her into calling the police. When they arrived, they found the doors locked, the house undisturbed and Sara Windsor at the bottom of the pool. They’d come to the unremarkable conclusion that she’d drunkenly fallen into the water, become disoriented and drowned.

  “Why out here?” I asked, standing at the edge of the pool, near where the cobblestones were still drenched.

  Mark tossed the match he’d used to light his cigarette and shrugged. “Who knows. She was drunk. When she was drunk, she wandered.”

  I looked back at him, where he stood between two arches, the moon fading at his back, and noticed he was wearing his high-school letter jacket, blue and white, the big I,-HlrH,-I stitched into one side. For a moment, in the shadowy light, he could have been sixteen again, but then he moved and the illusion was destroyed. He looked a sleepless, puffy thirty-odd, the same as me.