This was the name my father had spoken on the train, the guy in San Quentin who’d protected him when Ricky Santorez, my brother’s former client, wanted Lawrence dead. The guy he’d wanted me to work for now. “I’ve never heard that name,” I said.
Glancing now at the visitors’ book, I saw that only two other mourners had left their names. My blood boiled when the first signature turned out to be Lawrence Maxwell’s. The second was Detective Neil Shanahan’s. Suddenly in a hurry to leave there, I pressed my card into my companion’s hand. “Tell your brother I want to talk to him.”
Jackson Gainer started to protest, clearly resenting my tone. But then I said, “Just say it’s for old times’ sake.”
I left, hoping to catch my father. After driving around for ten minutes, I spotted Lawrence just about to descend into the BART station at Sixteenth and Mission. Pulling to the curb, I blew my horn, rolled down the window, and called to him. He turned from the escalator and came over to the curb. “What are you doing? Following me?”
“Save yourself the fare and get in.”
He came around and climbed into my ride.
“You and Shanahan have a nice chat?”
“So you were at the funeral home.”
“And I saw the guest book, with your name and his.”
My tone gave him his cue. “Was it stupid of me to go there? Probably. I won’t tell you that I’m not glad the man is dead. Of course I am.”
“You didn’t say anything to Shanahan, did you?”
“Don’t worry. I didn’t go running my mouth.”
“Shanahan say anything to you?”
“‘Dead Henry’s wounds bleed afresh.’ Thinks he’s a smart cop, that one. He told me, ‘That’s Shakespeare, case you’re curious. Richard III.’ Fuck him.”
“He’s going to know some things,” I said. “He’s going to have a warrant for our phone records soon if he doesn’t have them already.”
After a pause Lawrence said, “So what?”
“All those calls to Bell up to the day of the hearing. He’s going to see those.”
“Let him. I helped Russell and I thought he’d want to help me. Can’t I ask for help from a pal?”
“There’s asking and there’s asking.”
“Want to learn who your real friends are? Go to prison and then get out.”
I pulled over into an empty space. There wasn’t another car parked on the block. “Look, it’s time for you to be straight with me. I can’t help you if I don’t know what’s going on. You told me Russell raped a girl and liked it. That’s what you said the other night, that he admitted the crime he was in for.”
“I got him off because his lawyer, in his opening statement, stood up in front of the jury and promised an alibi witness he couldn’t deliver. The lawyer hadn’t interviewed any witnesses and he didn’t have them under subpoena. After the reversal, from what I understand, the state didn’t retry Russell because they couldn’t get certain witnesses to testify the same way again. It’s a miracle they prosecuted him in the first place. Any competent lawyer should have been able to turn that case inside out. But the bottom line is Russell raped her. He’s guilty.”
“And he confessed to you, right? That’s why he had to go and invent a confession from you, because in real life he was the one who’d confessed. That’s what you said.”
“He might as well have confessed. He was dumb enough. He told me plenty.” Seeing the disappointment in my face, he went on. “You know everybody in prison is innocent, Leo. None of those guys doesn’t dream of one day getting out, and as soon as Russell fell in with me, he realized he had a chance. So he knew better than to confess. But I’m a good judge of character. Innocent men don’t get convicted and locked up. It doesn’t happen, popular myths aside.” His looked away, as if realizing that his cynicism was self-indicting.
“Might as well have confessed. So they let you out and he won’t help you, won’t pay you for your services rendered. In return, you decide to threaten him with this confession he might have made but didn’t.”
“What I know is that Russell kidnapped and raped that girl, and he didn’t have to confess for me to know it. I didn’t kill him. What I think is maybe someone did the world a favor, shot the son of a bitch as revenge for what happened all those years ago.”
“Jackson mentioned Bo Wilder to me. It sounds like the cops have a theory that Bo was behind the hit. That he did it on your behalf.”
“Well, if he did, he didn’t tell me about it. And it’s not like I’ve got anything to offer the man.”
His quick dismissal of the idea only aroused my suspicion. “The main thing in our favor is that the cops still don’t have the shooter or the gun. Still, Bell was murdered in broad daylight. It’s hard to believe there weren’t witnesses.” My tone sounded harsher than I intended.
“Don’t get too used to picking out my own clothes is what you’re telling me. Or rather, to having Dot pick them out.” He stared a thousand yards down the road. “Tell me this. Friendship aside, how much would it have cost him to hire a lawyer, and how many lawyers would have done as good a job as I did? Don’t you expect to get paid?”
“It’s called a retainer, and I collect it in advance. Why are you so worried about money?”
“Why aren’t you? Why is anyone? It’s self-respect. If you’d been inside, you’d understand the code. I had a right to name my price when I got out. It was a fair price, but that doesn’t matter now. Bell’s dead, and I won’t pretend I’m not glad for that, when it’s just you and me talking.”
His eyes went to the rearview.
An unmarked Crown Vic rounded the block and veered to the curb, leaving one parking spot between his bumper and mine.
“He’s been with us the whole way,” Lawrence went on. “He picked me up as soon as I left the funeral home. Let’s sightsee a little. Take him for a ride. You know where I want to go. It’s about time I saw the old place again.” He glanced again at the mirror.
With Shanahan following, I drove slowly up into Potrero Hill, to the apartment building where it had all begun. A light showed in the second-floor window. It was possible the people who lived here now had no clue what had happened years ago. Probably there were few people left in the neighborhood who did. “It’s almost like I could walk right back through the door, go back in time,” Lawrence said. “Although I wouldn’t want to walk back into that.”
He glanced at me as if checking whether I was okay with him talking this way about our shared past. I stared up at the building. I’d been down the street plenty of times, of course, but never like this—never with him.
“Even if you didn’t kill her, you came pretty damn close a number of times,” I said. “I remember one time you were hitting her, and she was screaming at you. Teddy finally called the police, but only because I begged him to.” Not for the first time I wondered what had been wrong with my brother that he didn’t intervene more forcefully, knock my father down the way the older brother is supposed to do in the movies. In any case, he never had.
“I don’t expect you to forget that. There’s no excuse for a man to use his fists on a woman. The mother of his children. But I did my time for that, and I’m not the same man I was. No matter how much we may want to, neither one of us can undo the past.
“Go ahead,” he went on, seemingly oblivious to the terrible thoughts that filled my head. “Ask me anything.”
“I know Russell was lying. I don’t need to ask you that again.”
He seemed to avoid answering the question I hadn’t asked. “I can’t imagine how that must have been for you, finding her. For years I felt it was my responsibility, to try to understand. But the mind just breaks down. Plus, I never saw you again after that day. You were a little kid. You didn’t have any reason not to believe people who told you I did it. There was a trial. None of it came out right. And j
ust when you needed me the most, I wasn’t there. They wouldn’t let me see you. For years, it ate me alive. I wanted to reach out, try to make you see I was innocent, but Teddy thought it best to let you alone. I’m not so sure.”
“It’s my whole life,” I told him. “It doesn’t turn on a dime. Certainly not on this one.”
“I know it, Leo, and I don’t blame you for it. If you can learn to trust me . . .”
“No more surprises,” I said. “You need to trust me. And you need to trust Nina.” I realized the question I should have asked, which was where he’d been the morning of Russell Bell’s murder, but somehow the moment for asking such questions had passed.
Lawrence nodded. “No more surprises.” He rolled down his window, stuck out an arm, and waved the Crown Vic forward. The unmarked car flashed its lights and drew up alongside, and the driver’s side window slid down.
Lawrence leaned to the window and shouted, “‘They do me wrong and I will not endure it!’”
Chapter 9
On Monday Nina filed a motion under Penal Code Section 995 seeking to have the case dismissed. Her reason was that the state’s only witness was dead and thus no longer available to testify against my father. Seemingly in response, Crowder moved to revoke Lawrence’s bail. Both motions were heard the following Friday in Judge Liu’s court.
Liu heard bail arguments first. At the podium, Crowder said, “Two weeks ago, the state’s confidential informant was murdered. For nearly six hours, investigating officers from Oakland, San Francisco, and numerous other jurisdictions tried but were unable to locate the defendant. He was finally taken into custody in San Rafael, where he’s been living out of the court’s jurisdiction. The state asks the court to revoke bail.”
Lawrence sat stone still, not reacting after the lecture Nina’d given him following his outburst last time. She now turned in her chair to stare at Crowder with disbelief.
“You’re not contending that he violated any bail condition?” the judge asked.
“His only alibi is a story from his girlfriend that they were out riding motorcycles together a hundred miles from here. This is a defendant out on bail. The whereabouts of Mr. Maxwell’s sons are also unknown at the time of the crime.”
A murmur ran through the courtroom, and I sat bolt upright as if I’d received an electric shock. I could tell by the anger on Judge Liu’s face that Crowder had miscalculated. I felt Dot lay a hand on my arm. Her eyes were cold, and she gave me a nod. Let’s get them, her gaze seemed to say.
“It’s not my place to question her story, at least not now. You don’t have the murder weapon, or any evidence of his involvement. So far, all you have is motive. Am I right?”
“I’m told that phone records reveal numerous instances of contact between the defendant and the victim beginning the very day the defendant was released by this court.”
“That’s pretty thin. As I understand it, they were friends in prison. Anything more?”
Crowder glanced at Shanahan, who shook his head. “The state can’t reveal any more details. Especially not with the subject of the investigation sitting right here.”
“Then I’m going to deny your motion to revoke bail,” Judge Liu said. “If you’d charged him, it would be a different story. I will, however, add a no-travel condition. The defendant shall restrict his movements to San Francisco, Alameda, and Marin Counties unless he first gives notice to the prosecution and obtains permission to travel from me.”
Crowder sat down. Now it was Nina’s turn. She took the podium with quiet anger but said nothing.
“I’ve read your motion to dismiss,” Judge Liu said. “You correctly point out that the state’s case is based entirely on Detective Shanahan’s testimony. You also note that with Russell Bell dead any statements Bell made to the detective or anyone else can only be introduced as hearsay. The Constitution says that criminal defendants have the right to confront their accusers. This means no hearsay. However, if it’s the defendant’s fault that the witness is unavailable—for instance because the defendant had him murdered—there’s an exception to the no hearsay rule.”
“Your Honor is referring to the forfeiture by wrongdoing exception.”
“You’ll agree with me that if Maxwell arranged for Bell to be murdered, it follows he can’t reap the benefit of that act and keep Bell’s hearsay statements from coming into evidence.”
“The forfeiture doctrine doesn’t apply until he’s proven guilty of murdering the witness,” Nina said. “As you’ve just noted, my client has an alibi. In addition, there would have to be a specific finding that Bell was murdered for the purpose of keeping him from testifying in this case. Not some other reason. The prosecution hasn’t even come close to making that showing.”
“Thank you,” Liu said. With Crowder back at the podium, Liu probed her with questions regarding our backup argument: that the potential harmful effect of the confession might still require it to be kept out, even if the state met the low bar of producing “evidence sufficient to support a finding” that Lawrence was involved in the hit. As the judge pointed out to Crowder in a question she couldn’t satisfactorily answer, he could always instruct them to ignore the confession after they’d heard it, but the jurors were human beings, and unlikely to forget it.
Seeing the battle slipping away from her, Crowder at last said, “Russell Bell’s body is hardly cold. The state ought to at least be given the opportunity to develop proof that Maxwell was involved and that his alibi was a sham.”
Liu agreed, and scheduled an evidentiary hearing prior to trial. “The bar is going to be higher than just sufficient to support a finding, Ms. Crowder, given the devastating effect of Maxwell’s alleged confession to Bell, and the likelihood that the jurors would be unable to put it out of their minds even if I instructed them in the strongest terms to do so. To get that confession into evidence without Bell as a witness, you’re going to have to prove to me that it’s at least more likely than not that Maxwell was behind Bell’s murder—and you’ve got five weeks to do it.”
~ ~ ~
“I’m incensed,” Nina said after the hearing. The others had gone home. I’d accompanied her to her office to take stock. She went on. “It’s one thing to accuse your father, but now they’re trying to drag you and Teddy in. The implication of what she said is that you and your brother are suspects in Bell’s murder. A family vendetta is what it’s starting to look like.”
“You think they’re going after Teddy and me.” I was struck again by how she’d reversed positions. Just last week, she’d all but accused Teddy of being involved.
“It’s what they’d like to do.” Seeming to become aware that she’d changed viewpoints, she said, “With every case, every client, there’s an initial holding back. You want to maintain that distance, that objectivity, as long as you can. But for me, when it comes to certain cases, there’s a tipping point. Starting today, I’ve reached it.”
“You seem different. Maybe more relaxed.”
“I’m angry. It’s a good anger. Invigorating.” She looked at me for a moment across the desk, and I felt a spark pass between us before her focus snapped back. “Now what’s this about calls from your office to Bell?”
I told her what I’d found in the phone records, information I should have given her before. I had no good explanation for having held back, so I offered no excuse.
The spark was extinguished now. “Anything else I ought to know?”
“I went to the funeral home. Dad was there. So was Jackson Gainer. Like he was standing guard. Shanahan, the detective, also turned up.” I thought of my father’s admission that he’d tried to get money from Bell. No point in sharing that with her now.
“Jackson Gainer. Standing guard over what? What else?”
“He told me that the DA thinks that a man named Bo Wilder may have been behind Bell’s murder. Bo’s in San Quentin, but he
has people on the outside. He protected my father when there was a price on his head.”
She studied me skeptically, processing this new information. “I don’t want to lose this case because you end up stumbling on something best kept under wraps.”
“Don’t worry, I’ve got plenty of my own cases to work.”
“Good. I’m glad to hear it.”
Chapter 10
My practice was in the doldrums, and little money was coming in. Ever since Lawrence’s release, I’d more or less stopped meeting with new clients. This was foolish, yet his case seemed to loom over everything, eclipsing more lucrative bids for my attention. Teddy’s phone, on the other hand, was ringing off the hook.
Despite my doubts, our father seemed to be living up to his end of the bargain he’d made with him. Every week it seemed another incarcerated client or family member called wanting Teddy to write an appeal or a habeas petition, and his tiny office was suddenly cluttered with boxes of transcripts. I had depositions to take in my civil cases, discovery to review, motions to file, but whenever I turned to this real work I had to fight through dread.
The next Saturday, the sky was gray outside my office window, and around two a misting rain began to fall, dashing my plans for a ride. I’d been up late at my desk going through transcripts of my father’s first trial, adding to the collection of empty beer cans in my wastebasket. After three hours of desultory effort, I moved to the wing chair in the corner and closed my eyes, a transcript open on my lap.
The phone rang. When I answered it, I heard, “This is Eric Gainer. How are you, Leo?”
Hearing his voice instantly conjured up those old pot-smoking, punk-rock-listening days. Even back then, when he was a teenager, Eric could be irresistible. His attention, when he turned it on anyone, was like a beam of warmth. His voice was familiar to me in recent years only from the news. We hadn’t spoken directly to one another since high school.
“It’s been a while,” I replied. “I don’t get over to the city much these days.” There was nothing much else to say.
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