Later, she and Simon fell asleep in the bedroom while Lam stayed up in the living room, listening to music on his headphones. At approximately one A.M., Ruby awoke and saw that Simon was no longer at her side. She walked down the hall and discovered Lam whipping her son with the cord to his headphones. She pushed Lam away. Simon was moaning, his eyes fluttering, and then he stopped breathing. She called 911. By the time the E.M.T.s arrived, Simon was dead.
From the standpoint of the law, Ruby’s testimony was devastating, but she wasn’t entirely effective as a witness. She spoke in a rehearsed monotone, eyes down, body impassive and contained, and it was hard to fathom a mother not betraying a single hint of emotion as she related the death of her only child. She seemed to be hiding something. She seemed to be lying.
What everyone but the jury knew was that Ruby Liu was a prostitute and a junkie. She mainlined speedballs—a combination of heroin and cocaine—and she had gone to Lam’s apartment that weekend to get high with him. She could have easily been indicted on a slew of negligence charges, so it was no surprise that she had agreed to testify for the prosecution.
“Did Mr. Lam ever hit Simon before?” Hank asked her.
Ruby glanced at the assistant district attorney, John Boudreau, then said no.
“Not once? Maybe an isolated spanking?”
“No.”
“So he never hit Simon, or spanked him, or slapped him. Not once. He never even raised his voice to him, did he?”
“He say Simon noisy. He say he need discipline.”
“You keep repeating that. Did he say this to you in English or Chinese?”
Ruby blinked several times, trying to choose. “English,” she declared.
“How good would you say Mr. Lam’s English is?”
“He speak English.”
“Is he fluent, or is his English somewhat broken, like yours?”
“Same as me, maybe.”
“Can he read and write?”
“Not good.”
“Have you ever heard him use the word ‘discipline’ before?”
She squirmed. “No.”
“Are you sure he said ‘discipline,’ or did someone suggest the word to you?”
“Objection,” Boudreau said.
For the next two hours, Hank had Ruby describe Lam’s escalating drug use over the five years she’d known him, how eventually he would freebase cocaine for up to twenty hours at a time, sometimes going six days without sleep, obsessed with getting and smoking the coke, ignoring all else.
Increasingly, his behavior became more erratic. He saw bugs, tadpoles. On his body, coming out of his skin, on other people. Without warning, he would slap and scratch himself, claw his fingernails into his arms until he bled. Then he began seeing snakes. Diamondbacks, corals, water moccasins, copperheads, black mambas, cobras, tree vipers—he identified fourteen varieties from library books Ruby stole for him. Lam weather-stripped his doors and sealed every window, covered the heating vents with screens. He would often drop to all fours with a flashlight and a propane torch, hunting for the snakes, burning the floor and furniture.
Once, he beat a sofa cushion with a stick, trying to kill the baby cot tonmouths he said were slithering out of it, rending the cushion apart for an hour and a half without pause. He heard voices, he saw ghosts. He thought the government was dumping the snakes into his apartment to kill him, and he drilled peepholes in the walls, bolted a security camera above his front door, and installed listening devices in nearly every room. He would not leave his apartment. Repeatedly, Ruby tried to convince him that the cocaine was making him hallucinate, but he refused to believe her. She was crazy, he said.
“Was he freebasing cocaine the night Simon was killed?”
“Yes.”
“When you discovered him standing over Simon in the living room, did you yell at him to stop?”
“Yes.”
“And did he respond to you in any way?”
“No.”
“So he appeared to be in a trance?” Hank asked.
Ruby frowned. “I don’t know,” she said. “No.”
“Like the time with the sofa cushion?”
“Objection,” Boudreau said. “Asked and answered.”
Hank withdrew the question and said instead, “Where were the headphones?”
“What?”
“He was holding the cord to his headphones, but where were the headphones themselves?”
“I don’t know. His neck, maybe.”
“Mr. Lam often spent all night doing cocaine while he listened to music on the headphones?”
“Yes.”
“Would you say, then, that when Simon walked in, Mr. Lam must have jumped up in a panic, thinking these snakes—”
Boudreau cut him off. “Calls for speculation, Your Honor,” he complained, his face flushing. Boudreau had some form of psoriasis, and whenever he was nervous or rattled—which was all the time—his skin bloomed red. Boudreau asked only one question in his redirect: “Did you ever see Mr. Lam selling drugs?”
“Yeah, he sell drugs.”
Hank stood up. “Did he sell drugs to make a profit,” he asked, “or just to support his own habit?”
Ruby looked dumbly at Hank. She was exhausted. “Habit, okay?” she said.
After a lengthy sidebar at Hank’s request, the judge, Eduardo Gutierrez, instructed the jury that the issue of selling drugs was pertinent only to the defendant’s state of mind, not his character. “The fact that Mr. Lam might have sold drugs does not prove he has an inherent disposition to engage in criminal conduct,” Gutierrez said, remarkably deadpan.
Lam wore a striped button-down shirt, which was one size too large for him, a tie, and pleated pants—nothing too fancy, but neat. His hair was cut above the ears, and he was clean-shaven. Since he was small and thin to begin with, he looked, by design, harmless—a far cry from the ponytailed, hollow-eyed menace to society Hank had met nine months earlier, when Lam had been released from Cabrillo State Hospital.
In a conference room next to the holding pen, Hank gave Lam a cigarette. Smoking wasn’t permitted anymore, but everyone ignored the rule. “You do good,” Lam said. “Better than I think.”
“I covered all the necessary points.”
“No, really. Before, I think you stupid.”
Hank was used to this reaction. No one had any respect for public defenders—not judges, prosecutors, cops, not the public, least of all clients. “Don’t get too smug,” he said. “We’ve got a long way to go.”
Lam blew on the tip of his cigarette, reddening the cherry. “Blondie your girlfriend?” Lam said. He’d seen Molly with Hank during a recess. “Low faan girlfriend, huh? No like Chinese girls?”
Hank flipped through the pages of his notepad. Like everyone, Lam assumed that Hank was Chinese. He had a Chinese-sounding name, but he was actually Korean, born and raised in Haleiwa, on the North Shore of Oahu, where his father was a Presbyterian minister.
Lam helped himself to another cigarette. As he was lighting it, Hank noticed his eyes—glazed and dilated. “You’re stoned,” he said.
“Naw.”
“Bullshit.”
“Just a little pot.”
“You idiot. I told you to stay clean.”
“You see Ruby? I betcha Valium,” Lam said. “Good thing I never marry her. She lie first, you know. Say Simon my baby. But I know. I slap her. My baby? My baby? She cry. Boo hoo. Mistake. Big mistake. I’m not stupid. Right, Hankie?”
Hank looked at Lam, who was grinning, clowning. “When we get back in the courtroom,” he told him, “you don’t smile, you don’t laugh. You don’t act bored or slouch in your chair. Look serious and remorseful. Look like you feel bad about what you’ve done.”
They were stuck in traffic on Highway 71, coming over the hill from San Vicente to Rosarita Bay. During rush hour, it sometimes took two hours to travel the fifteen miles home.
“I don’t think I can make it to the rest of the trial,” Mo
lly said.
“No?” Hank asked. She had only attended two days.
“I’ve got too much work to do.”
This was an equivocation, Hank knew, but he was relieved nonetheless.
“Do you think they assigned this case to you because you’re Asian?” Molly asked.
“That’s rhetorical, right?”
“Because they thought it’d help with the jury?”
“Partly them, mostly the client.”
Molly tugged on her seat belt strap, pulling it away from her chest. “You ever wonder what makes people go in one direction and not another?”
“What do you mean?”
“All the little things that add up. I was thinking about Lam and his girlfriend, the model minorities they turned out to be. Aren’t you curious about that?”
“I used to be. Not anymore.”
“Why not?”
Hank shifted into neutral; they weren’t going anywhere. “There’s this strangely poetic phrase in the California Penal Code. Malice can be implied if circumstances show ‘an abandoned and malignant heart.’ Day in and day out, that’s what I see. Some people are just evil.”
“That’s a charitable view of the world. I thought you were such a liberal.”
“Given enough time, we all become Republicans.”
Before moving to Rosarita Bay, Hank had spent ten years working for a small, progressive law firm in San Francisco, specializing in immigration cases and bias suits. He had always been a true believer—a “left-wing, bleeding-heart pagoda of virtue,” his ex-wife, Allison Pak, used to say. He hadn’t known what he was getting into four years ago, becoming a public defender. He had been fired up about the presumption of innocence and due process, about the racial inequities of the judicial system. Now he represented muggers, drug dealers, wife beaters, carjackers, arsonists, thieves, rapists, and child molesters. They were almost always guilty, they were all junkies, and if by some technicality Hank was able to get them off, they’d go right out and do the same thing, or worse.
He told Molly about one of his first cases in Juvenile Court, a ten-year-old San Vicente kid who, as he was riding down the street on his BMX bicycle, swung a pipe into a man’s face. No reason. Didn’t know him, didn’t rob him. Just felt like it. Hank found out some things about the kid’s background—broken home, physical abuse—and thought he deserved another chance. A month later, the kid participated in a home invasion. He raped and sodomized a six-year-old girl with a broomstick, a beer bottle, and a light bulb, which he busted inside her, and then, for good measure, hammered a few nails into her heels.
“You’re having a crisis of faith,” Molly said.
“Is it that obvious?”
“It’s just this case. You’ll get over it.”
“You’re horrified by it. How can you not be? I’m defending a baby-killer.”
They finally crossed Skyview Ridge and headed downhill to Rosarita Bay. Hank rolled down the window and breathed in the chap arral and the ocean. Rosarita Bay was part of San Vicente County, but this side of the peninsula mountains, the Coastside, was a remote outpost in the tundra compared to the industrial Bayside city of San Vicente. To Hank, it was well worth the commute to be out of the fray.
They stopped by Hank’s cottage to pick up one of his suits, then went to Molly’s loft, which was in a converted cannery next to the harbor. Once inside, Molly said, “I have to pee. It’s incredible how many times I have to pee these days.”
There was a mini-trampoline on the floor, near the foot of her bed, and on the way to the bathroom, Molly nonchalantly hopped onto it and did a forward flip. She grinned back mischievously at Hank.
For a while, the trampoline had been an instrument of ritual. Whenever Molly wanted to make love, she would bounce off the tramp, tumble through the air, and flop onto the bed. “Time to make Molly jolly,” she’d say. Sometimes, growling: “Tiger Lily want her Moo Shi Kwon.”
At first, Molly’s sexual assertion had unnerved him. When they began dating, she had been subdued and uncomfortable, and he had been certain, each time he called her, that she would not see him again. At the end of their fourth date—another disaster, he had thought—he drove her home and lightly kissed her cheek goodnight. She stayed in the car, cracking her knuckles. “That’s it?” she suddenly blurted. “You mean you’re done with me?” Then she had ravished him, taking him inside to the loft and stripping him of his clothes.
With Molly, all roads originated in the body. Her entire life, she had spoken through it—joy found in challenging limits and conquering the elements, being fearless, perfect, indomitable. There were no moral ambiguities in her life. What she did was pure.
When she came out of the bathroom, she joined Hank on the couch, and he massaged her feet, kneading his thumbs into her instep.
“Hank,” she said, “why don’t you want this baby?”
When she had first revealed she was pregnant, he had told her he would support her either way, but it was her decision to make. He wouldn’t say it explicitly, but it was clear he favored an abortion. “I just wish it was something we’d planned,” he said to her now.
“Is it because I’m not Korean?”
“God, no,” Hank said. “Where’d that come from?”
She wiggled her toes, signaling for him to switch feet. “I think I saw your ex-wife today.”
“What?”
“At the courthouse. One floor up. The bathroom across the hall was being cleaned, so I went upstairs.”
“Are you sure it was her?” Hank asked. Molly had seen photographs of Allison, but had never met her.
Molly nodded. “She’s very pretty.”
The photographs hurt. There were five of them—all color eight-by-tens—and they sat on Boudreau’s table for the next two days as he called up the firemen who were first on the scene, the E.M.T.s who tried to revive Simon, and the police officers who arrested Lam. With each witness, Boudreau brought out the photographs and asked, “Do they accurately and fairly depict the condition of the boy as you found him?” And each of these grown men, these veterans of daily, horrific violence, would wince looking at the pictures, then choke out yes.
Each of them confirmed that Lam had pointed to the headphone cord when questioned what he beat Simon with, that he had kept repeating he wasn’t a child beater, and that though he seemed agitated, he was coherent, even asking to change his clothes and put on his shoes before being cuffed. He did not mention any hallucinations. Not a word about snakes.
The county medical examiner testified that he had counted 417 separate and distinct contusions and abrasions, and the cord was consistent with the injuries. At some point, he said, the cord must have been doubled up, which would explain some of the U-shaped marks. The official cause of death was swelling and bleeding of the brain caused by trauma, which forced the brain into its base and cut off breathing functions.
“You also found a large lump on the back of his head?” Hank asked.
“A blunt force injury on the occipital lobe.”
“Was it caused by the cord?”
“No. Most likely he fell backwards to the floor and hit his head.”
“He tripped and fell down.”
“Or he was pushed.”
“Could the fall have rendered Simon unconscious the whole time?”
“That’s impossible to determine.”
“Is it possible, however?”
“I suppose.”
“Could the fall, bumping his head, have been the actual cause of death?”
The M.E., seeing where Hank was going, smirked and said, “Unlikely.”
“But it’s possible?”
Boudreau objected, and Gutierrez had them approach. “You know better than to challenge proximate cause,” he told Hank. “Move it along.”
Hank held up the plastic evidence bag containing the headphones. “It’s been stipulated that this cord is ten feet long, but only one-sixteenth of an inch wide. With the headphones, it weighs less t
han three ounces. Wouldn’t you say it’s pretty ineffective as a weapon?”
“It seemed to do the trick.”
“But considering how light it is, it’s rather awkward to use as a whip, isn’t it? Even doubled up?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Did the injuries indicate a repetitive motor motion?”
“Obviously.”
“The same action, over and over, like a mindless robot?”
“I can’t make that characterization.”
“But you are an expert on injuries resulting from the application of specific weapons?”
“I am that.”
Hank showed the M.E. two photographs of Lam’s living room and passed copies to the jurors, which was decidedly risky, since they would spot the V.C.R.s stacked in Lam’s apartment and might surmise, correctly, that he had been fencing them. “If Mr. Lam really wanted to inflict pain, ‘discipline’ someone, as it were, wouldn’t the baseball bat—right here in the photograph, right next to where they found the deceased—wouldn’t it have been more effective?”
“That depends,” the M.E. said.
“What about this broomstick here? Or this belt?”
The M.E. sighed. “Mr. Kwon, a piece of dental floss, tightened around a tender part of the body, could be more excruciating than many more obvious methods of torture. Its general innocuousness as an implement of hygiene does not remove its lethal potential. What happened to this boy was brutal, and it caused him unimaginable pain, and it killed him.”
“Maybe wrong before,” Lam said in the conference room. “Maybe you really stupid.”
Hank lit a cigarette. Lam, wanting one, motioned to Hank, who ignored him.
“Hey,” Lam said. “C’mon.”
Hank forcefully slid the pack across the table, bouncing it off Lam’s chest.
Lam tsked. “Be nice.”
“Tell me something,” Hank said. “How do you know Simon wasn’t your kid?”
“Huh?”
“What makes you so sure he wasn’t your son?”
“You crazy? Ruby whore. She slam heroin with needle. Always use condom. No want AIDS, you know.”
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