“What kind of help are those two getting?” he asked the morning after he first showed up on the motorcycle, the week after our meeting with Nina.
I knew that he was referring to Teddy and Tamara. “Debra is there pretty often. Tam’s former mother-in-law. Also Jeanie and me.”
“You ever change a diaper in your life?” he asked. When I shook my head, he went on. “You’re running a law practice. You don’t have time to be checking in on them every day, even if you did know anything about babies.”
“Not every day.”
“Not even every week. Couldn’t those two use more help than they’re getting?”
“We’ve talked about it, but it’s expensive, and Tam’s resisted. She’s tired of being looked after. She wants her own independent life, and who can blame her? So far, at least, the two of them have managed to handle everything life has thrown their way.”
“I’m not saying they haven’t. But this is a baby. You screw up, you don’t get a second chance. If I’ve learned anything in life, I’ve learned that it’s better not to mess up in the first place than regret it the rest of your days.”
He said no more, but I guessed what he was thinking, that he could help them. He was looking for a new sense of purpose in his life after prison, and here it was, staring him in the face.
After the first few days Lawrence didn’t come back after lunch. Instead, Teddy would be there, and I realized without needing to be told that our father was with Tamara and Carly. Most evenings, he remained there for an early dinner, then went home to what, for me, remained an unimaginable domesticity with Dot in San Rafael.
On the Saturday before the hearing, Teddy and Tamara invited everyone to dinner. Around the table were Teddy and Tamara, Dot and Lawrence, and Debra Walker. Dinner was takeout from an Indian place nearby: chicken, lamb, and beef in rich sauces.
Tamara, sitting next to Dot, kept glancing at her shyly. Finally she said, “I don’t want to intrude, but I can’t help wondering how the two of you are holding up. What’s it like to have been engaged all these years, and only now to be living together for the first time?”
Dot seemed momentarily taken aback. Then her face softened. “Imagine waking up every morning and not knowing who the hell this is in the bed next to you, or how he got there. Only you don’t have to imagine that.”
“It gets easier,” Tamara said.
Teddy and our father exchanged a glance, one of Teddy’s eyebrows raised.
“It’s a temptation to think of myself as the one whose life has been overturned, because it has. But this hasn’t been any easier for Lawrence. He may have been used to sharing a cell, but he isn’t used to sharing anything else. Neither am I. I keep threatening to have bunks installed. Stainless steel.”
“So that’s how you think of me, as your cellie,” Lawrence said, turning to face her.
“I’m just trying to find a common frame of reference. Wouldn’t you prefer that I think of myself as your cell mate rather than as your jailer?”
“Sounds a little kinky,” Lawrence said dismissively.
“Well, it doesn’t turn me on,” she told him. “And it’s not doing much for you, either, if recent experience is any guide. I’m waiting for the news of your release to reach your brain, but that doesn’t seem to have happened. Until it does, we’re both still in San Quentin.”
Lawrence frowned, pushed food around on his plate. “Reminds me of something about ten years ago,” he said, seeming to launch into the story as a means of changing the subject. “This young kid, eighteen years old, from right here in Oakland. He’s a churchgoing kid from a decent family, but on the day of his high school graduation, he goes out with the crowd and gets drunk for the first time in his life. He goes to party after party, gets separated from the people he started out with, and ends up in a car with three dudes who promise him a ride. On the way, they pull up to a gas station. The guy in the backseat gets out, goes in. Three gunshots later, the guy comes running out with a pistol in one hand and the cash register drawer in the other. They tear away, but get pulled over two blocks from the scene.
“The kid ends up taking a plea, ten years for felony murder, on the premise that he must have been involved in planning the robbery, even if he hadn’t intended the clerk to get shot. Ten years for a terrible mistake. He’s engaged to a beautiful girl. ‘Marry me before they lock me up,’ he says. They’ve waited, both of them, because their parents wouldn’t let them marry until they finish school, and she won’t sleep with him until they’re married, and he’s had eyes for her as long as he can remember. They have their church wedding and their honeymoon night and then he surrenders to the state. She promises him that she’ll wait, but they’re so young. Neither of them even knows what that means.”
My father took Dot’s hand, and she squeezed his as if she feared that at any moment someone might come through the door and tear him away.
Debra said, “I think I know the child you’re talking about. Or someone just like him.”
My father nodded. “One look at this kid, anyone could tell he wasn’t prison material. I saw him the first day he was processed in, and he stood out like the bull’s-eye on a target. Unlike his three so-called accomplices, he had no record. He wasn’t headed to Stanford, but he’d been planning to enroll at Laney College, and he seemed to have his head on straight. Except for that one night.”
“So what happened?” Tamara asked.
“Not what you’d think.” Lawrence shared a glance with Debra Walker, who nodded again, as if giving him permission to tell it. “What you’d expect, at least what I would have expected if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, is she visits him a few times, then yanks the eject lever. Remember, these kids are just starting their lives. She’s the kind of girl could have any man. You’d expect her visits to grow further and further between. Then one day she tells him she’s met someone else and wants to move on with her life. He takes it as best he can, but he knows that without a good woman waiting on the other side, he doesn’t have a chance of keeping that ember of hope alive. He surrenders to the darkness, and hope dies.”
“There’s no darkness where Jesus is,” Debra admonished him.
“True.” Lawrence gave a little frown. “But I’ll tell you from firsthand experience, ma’am, Jesus is cold comfort for a convicted man during a long prison night.”
Debra made a disapproving face, but her eyes communicated understanding.
“Anyway, that’s not how it went down. For seven years she was there every weekend. I’d see her sometimes, when Teddy came to visit me. In that crowd of poor, angry people, she stood out like a beacon. He didn’t have an easy time, but he survived. He changed from a boy into a man, as much as anyone can call himself a man inside that prison. He gave her a child and he watched the child grow. And when he got out, she was waiting for him. Just like she promised.”
Dot was still gripping his hand. “But what about his feelings? Did he love her? Or had he just come to depend on her? Or to feel that he owed her?”
“I’m not sure what they thought they owed one another. They were still together, last I heard. He’d found a job, was contributing to the family. Devotion’s an interesting word, by the way. You go back to the old French it means sacrifice yourself, take a vow.”
Dot released his hand, gave him a pat on the wrist. “It means a lot of things.”
From the other room I heard the baby begin to cry. Tamara made as if to rise, a look of exhaustion on her face. “I’ll go,” I said, glad to escape the tension between my father and Dot.
The baby’s room had space only for a crib, a dresser, and a rocking chair. The small window was curtained. In the crib, Carly’s arms had come free from her swaddle. I slid my hands between her body and the mattress and picked her up, supporting her head. With the baby on my knees, I tightened the swaddle around her as I’d watched her mother do. Leani
ng back, I held her against me, her face resting on my shoulder, and began to rock.
It was the first time I’d been alone with Carly, and her seeming trust in me was foreign. I was surprised that she settled back to sleep so easily. It was frightening, in a way. If anything ever happened to Tam and Teddy . . . I pushed the thought away, but I realized that I now lived in a world where, should the unimaginable occur, it would fall to me to be a father to my brother’s child. Teddy didn’t and wouldn’t need to tell me that this was so. There was no one else but me.
I closed my eyes and rocked to the sound of the voices in the other room, Carly’s breath hot against my neck.
~ ~ ~
On the Monday morning before the hearing Lawrence rose from his desk every twenty minutes. Several times he went into Teddy’s office and closed the door, and I heard him talking on the phone. Finally, just before lunch, he knocked on my door and came in. “I think I might have that name Nina was looking for,” he said. “The snitch. His name is Russell Bell.”
The name sounded familiar, maybe because I’d once heard it in the news. But if so, the memory was faint. “Who’s he?”
“He got out a few years before I did.” He dropped into the client’s chair across the desk from me. “I wrote the brief that freed him. I figured he owed me everything, but I guess he’s the kind of old buddy who’d rather cancel a debt than pay it.”
A wilderness of secrets seemed to hover behind this revelation. He’d known this for a while, I guessed, possibly even before Nina brought the idea up in our first meeting. “So you got him out, and now he wants to put you back in? Why on earth . . . ?”
He looked away. “He must see me as a liability, now that he’s out. He did the crime he was in for. Not like me. Still, he should never have been convicted. The DA fucked him, and his lawyer was asleep at the wheel. Ineffective assistance of counsel, of course. What he must be thinking is that he’d actually told me how it went down, this kidnapping and rape that landed him in prison. A confession, basically. He thought I’d get a kick out of the lurid details, I guess, or maybe he got a kick out of telling me. And he seemed to think there was some kind of privilege that prevented me from repeating what he was saying. Now he’s learned different, and he must be afraid I’m going to use his confession against him. Call it a preemptive strike.”
He’d mentioned something about having people on the outside who owed him. Russell Bell fit that description. Lately, my father had been on the phone far more than could be accounted for by any of our business, and with Teddy working from home in the mornings, he’d taken the liberty of either making or receiving calls at Teddy’s desk.
“So Bell informs on you to prevent you from doing the same to him?” I was incredulous.
“I guess he thought, hey, easier to screw Lawrence than help him, which is what I was asking. Just a hand up until I got back on my feet. That’s all I wanted.”
I looked at him, trying to figure out what he was telling me.
“Leo, what I’m trying to say is I may have fucked this up.”
I was filled with dread at what he might have done, worried that he might have threatened Bell, tried to manipulate him the way he’d played Teddy and me. He’d tried this little game before: after Teddy’d been shot, Lawrence had gone to the police and told them that Ricky Santorez, one of Teddy’s former clients and an inmate at San Quentin, had confessed to ordering the hit. But it hadn’t been true. Why he’d done this was still a mystery. The uncharitable view was that in the shooting of his oldest son, Lawrence had glimpsed the possibility for personal gain and had sought to exploit it, but even I found that hard to believe.
“You tried to blackmail Russell Bell. Is that what you’re saying?”
“Blackmail’s an ugly word. I was only asking for a favor.”
“What favor would that be?”
“Money.”
“You didn’t confess to him, did you?”
“Hell, no. He confessed to me, like I just said.”
“I’ll get Car on this.” My brother’s go-to investigator now often worked for me. I called him and gave him Bell’s name. It was Car who mentioned Lucy Rivera, reminding me why Bell’s name had sounded familiar. Twelve years ago Bell had been the perp in an infamous abduction and rape of a fourteen-year-old San Francisco girl. I told Car to find out what he could.
~ ~ ~
“Your investigator will just have to catch up with us at the courthouse,” Nina said that Friday morning as she filled a file box with everything she’d need for the hearing. She and I were in her office, while my father, Teddy, and Dot waited in the conference room, all of us dressed for court. “Even if he does find Bell and confirms he’s the snitch, the questions the judge is going to ask are first, how we knew there was one, and next, how we knew it was this guy. And the DA’s going to say, of course, the defendant knows the identity of the person he confessed to. This may have not been the best play.”
“You told me to find the guy Lawrence might have talked to. I was only doing as asked.” I’d taken her request further than she’d anticipated, maybe, but I’d thought that my zeal would earn me recognition for a job well done.
She seemed not to realize she’d changed her view about a hundred and eighty degrees since we’d last discussed the subject. “The problem is I don’t think we can accomplish anything today if what your father says is correct. If the DA has an informer, then it’s going to trial, and there’s nothing we can do to stop it.”
“Let’s see what Car comes up with,” I said.
“If he shows up.”
“Let’s get Bell on the record, then, if he turns out to be the snitch,” I said, pushing the issue even though she no longer seemed to be listening, and even though I knew that what I was urging was foolhardy, pushing the point because I couldn’t stand being dismissed. “They won’t have him prepared today. Surprise will be on our side.”
“It’s a preliminary hearing this morning, not a trial. We’re not calling witnesses.”
I tried to get Car on his cell to tell him not to serve Bell with a subpoena, but he didn’t pick up. Probably he hadn’t found him. At eight fifteen we left for court. We arrived at Judge Liu’s courtroom at the same time as Angela Crowder and a very tall, silver-haired, expensively suited SFPD detective. We all had to wait outside the courtroom for the deputy to unlock the door. The detective, whom Crowder introduced as Neil Shanahan, stood aloof, his hands folded, his chin lowered but his eyes on Lawrence. Nina glanced at him only once.
On the hour, Judge Liu took the bench. His gaze held no amusement as he took in the detective sitting next to Crowder at the prosecutor’s table, the reporters and other spectators half filling the gallery. He knew as well as the rest of us what Shanahan’s presence meant. He’d be here only because Crowder had decided not to dismiss the case, because she intended him to testify and provide evidence that she believed would ultimately support a murder conviction.
“We’re here today in the matter of the people versus Lawrence Maxwell. Counsel and others present at counsel table, state your appearances.”
Crowder rose. “Your Honor, Angela Crowder for the people. Here with me is Detective Shanahan from the San Francisco Police Department.”
“Welcome, Detective Shanahan. And I see we have new counsel for the defendant.” Nina introduced herself, and Liu said, “Ms. Schuyler is no stranger to this court. Anything else we need to take up before we begin?” Hearing no response, the judge went on. “Very well, then. The state may call its first witness.”
Crowder rose. “The state calls Detective Shanahan.”
Crowder stood at the podium while he was sworn. Two weeks ago, arguing against bail, she’d been tentative, almost reluctant. Now she radiated intensity, her stubby hands gripping the edges of the open binder before her. I knew from previous experience that her excitability often tripped her up. At the same ti
me, it gave her a powerful presence in the courtroom, like a flood that overwhelms all obstacles.
Crowder and Shanahan worked through the preliminaries, establishing that he was the lead investigator, that he was trained and qualified, and that he’d reviewed the complete investigative file. The next part of her examination was devoted to establishing that a homicide had in fact been committed on that April morning twenty-one years ago, the day my life shattered. She introduced my mother’s death certificate, the coroner’s report, and finally, the crime scene photos.
One by one Crowder had the pictures marked, then handed them to the clerk, who passed them to Judge Liu. He studied each intently, as if the waste that is violent death was being revealed to him for the first time. Between photos he glanced at my father with new and keener appraisal. Though his sympathies had seemed to rest with Lawrence during the bail hearing, today his mood, like Crowder’s, was somber.
He’d freed Lawrence, and he’d clearly considered the prosecutorial malfeasance that necessitated that freedom as something akin to a personal wrong, a violation of the processes and principles that he administered. However, all that now was behind us. The books were cleared, the slate wiped clean; we were starting over. And Liu, who in two years would be required to run for reelection, could be counted on to treat my father like any defendant accused of a heinous crime.
I’d seen the pictures he was looking at, of course. Since discovering that my brother was working on my father’s case, I’d been through the file from front to back numerous times. It wasn’t their gruesomeness that affected me. After all, I’d seen crime scene photos of dead bodies before. Rather, it was the details of the scene, the deeply familiar patterns of wallpaper and carpets, objects long forgotten that seemed to leap back to vivid life in my mind’s eye.
Watching Liu study the photos, and noticing him glance solemnly at my father, I felt my own doubts return. The DA’s version of events was certainly the most probable story from the perspective of anyone on the outside looking in: that he’d caught her with her lover or come home just after the man had left, then beaten her to death in a jealous rage. Such a scenario was wholly consistent with the semen samples taken from my mother’s body showing that she’d had sex with another man shortly before her death. This evidence had been concealed from the defense by Gary Coles, the DA who’d prosecuted my father, necessitating his retrial now.
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