“We’ll see,” he says.
“Listen, ask for some reasonable amount of bail and we’ll do what we can to raise it.” I’m trying a little sugar now. “Talk to anybody. I’m straight. I’ve had clients who are genuine flight risks. I don’t press for low bail if I think there’s the slightest chance that my client will run. It’s not good for business. Judges tend to have long memories.”
Then from a direction I do not see: “Have you considered the possibility of a plea bargain?” he asks.
“What,” I say, “you’re gonna offer her bail if she cops a plea?”
He laughs a little at this. I’ve broken the ice.
“What are you offering?” I ask him seriously.
“Maybe second degree.” He pauses for an instant. “Maybe less. Depends on what your client has to offer.”
“What can she offer?”
“The name of her accomplice.” He says this without missing a beat. The cops have been pissing up a rope for months trying to get a bead on who helped Talia murder Ben. They haven’t for a moment considered the possibility that there was no accomplice, that whoever murdered him, and it wasn’t Talia, may have acted alone.
I tell Nelson this. He isn’t interested.
We are back to bail. He says, “I’ll see you in court.”
That is where we are at two o’clock in the afternoon. Nelson and I are standing before the Honorable Norton Shakers, judge of the superior court. Talia’s in the box, surrounded by oak railing and acrylic screens, as if in some space-age loading pen, near the door that leads to the courthouse holding cells. She’s wearing a jail jumpsuit, overalls in Day-Glo orange with the word PRISONER emblazoned across the back. On Talia the P and the R of the oversized jumpsuit have wrapped around, under her arms. I lean on the railing outside, close to her, a sheriff’s matron behind us.
Shakers is low on the totem pole, recently appointed to the court and with limited experience. He has drawn magistrate duty. It means he’s roused at all hours of the night to sign search warrants and listen to the ramblings of cops on probable cause. He’s yawning and kneading his eye with two fingers when Nelson makes his motion for three million dollars in bail.
It’s the same sorry song he sang to me on the telephone. The defendant is well-heeled. Bail set at $200,000 is an invitation to take a vacation. He emphasizes the seriousness of the crime, the consequences to my client if she is convicted, the inducement for her to run.
I put on my coat of indignation once more, and I tell the court of Talia’s considerable contacts in the community. I flash her financial statement, copies to Nelson and the court, and beat on the theme that excessive bail is no bail at all. The numbers from Talia’s CPA show that liquidity is not among her financial virtues. Everything she owns is tied up in the law firm, a small business account from her real estate company, and the house, which is heavily mortgaged.
The judge sits impassively as Nelson and I claw at each other.
I make a case for reinstating the $200,000 bond. I argue that the lady has been free to roam for three months, since the grand jury indictment, and she has appeared in court on each and every occasion as ordered. “This is a prominent woman in the community,” I say. “Talia Potter is no flight risk,” I tell the court.
“Mr. Nelson.”
“Your Honor. The woman is accused of a capital crime. She may have had no incentive to run before this. But she does now. I submit to the court that anyone faced with the death penalty must be considered a potential flight risk.” He looks steely-eyed up at the bench. “The state does not believe that the presence of this defendant can be guaranteed without the posting of some considerable surety.”
“Seems more than a little excessive to me,” says Shakers. I can see the figures fading fast in the judge’s eyes.
“Your Honor, I have a declaration here, may I approach the bench?”
Shakers nods.
Nelson makes the rounds delivering a copy of this thing, his declaration to the court and one to me.
I look at it. It’s a lengthy statement, fourteen pages, prepared by one of the DA’s investigators and signed under penalty of perjury by a woman named Sonia Baron. I put it on the rail and point to the name so that Talia can see.
“Sony’s a friend,” she whispers, and shrugs her shoulders, like this is news to her.
“For the convenience of the court I have highlighted the pertinent part of this declaration. I would refer you to page eleven.”
I open it and read, a long, rambling statement in an elegant hand, a history of social friendship, of meetings and discourse between the two women over a period of years. It is standard fare for statements by investigators checking every lead, talking to acquaintances, getting background on a suspect. Entire forests have been slaughtered for such irrelevance, and now lie entombed in police files.
Nelson has highlighted with a yellow marker a portion of this rambling discourse, a meeting for coffee between Talia and Sonia at the club one morning shortly after Talia was indicted.
“She was depressed,” Sonia said of Talia. “She was offended and hurt that anyone could think that she had done such a
thing. She said that life wasn’t worth living. That she had nightmares every night now and that she dreamed of getting away and starting over. She talked about Raul in Rio.”
After the word “Rio,” in the double space above the written line, the cops have scrawled in a heavy hand “(Brazil)”-just in case the reader doesn’t get it. They’ve had Sonia initial this addition.
“They had written to each other recently and he had talked of the weather, and the carefree life there. She had written back and said that she wished she could visit him there.”
The declaration goes on, but Nelson’s yellow overlay comes to an end.
I lean over the railing into Talia’s ear.
“Who’s Raul?”
She gives me a look, like “No big thing.”
“He was the tennis pro at the club. Sonia and I both knew him.”
I can imagine.
Shakers lets the statement drop on the bench and emits a deep sigh, the first sign that this is not going as well as he’d hoped. He will have to play Solomon.
“Your Honor, I think it is clear mat the statements of the defendant made to this witness reveal a deep desire to escape her plight, if necessary to leave the country in order to avoid the situation she now finds herself in.” Nelson is playing the declaration for everything it is worth.
“On the contrary,” I say. “This declaration purports to be exactly what it is. A candid expression of the defendant’s melancholy state as confided to a friend. The fact that she may have dreamed of being free from her current problems is natural, understandable. She told a friend how she felt. That’s all.”
“She wrote to Raul in Rio that she wished she could visit him.” Nelson directs this little reminder more to me than to the court.
I could put Talia on the stand, to explain her comments, to put them in context, but this would seem self-serving to the court, and it would open her to cross-examination by Nelson. He would ask her about Raul, dig for a little dirt, something to go along with a leopard-skin jock strap.
“Yes, but she didn’t go, did she?” I say. “During three months of hammering in the press, when it would have been easy as pie to get a passport and slip off to some far-flung place, my client stayed here and confronted the charges against her. And she’ll do the same now until she’s acquitted.”
Shakers sees that we are making no progress. He looks at Nelson.
“You’ve got to admit, Mr. Nelson”-the judge is holding the declaration up a few inches-“this sounds a lot like coffee-klatch gossip between friends. There are times I wouldn’t mind going to Rio myself,” he says. He makes it sound like this is one of them.
I laugh a little to show my understanding for an overworked judge.
“This,” says Shakers, looking at the declaration, “is not worth three million dollars.”
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“Your Honor, the people believe that this declaration evidences a state of mind, that flight is seen as a definite alternative to trial in the mind of this defendant. That, coupled with the fact that she faces a possible death sentence, we believe, militates toward a significant increase in bail.” Nelson is trying to pump a little gravity back into the proceedings.
“And I’ll bet you’ve combed all of your reports and this is the best you could come up with,” I say. “Raul in Rio.” I roll my eyes toward the ceiling. “This evidences nothing but a woman who has exotic dreams of far-off places. Dreams,” I emphasize, “not present intentions to travel.”
“All right, I’ve heard enough.” Shakers is satisfied that we’re not going to talk ourselves to a compromise, Nelson and I.
“A three-million-dollar bond is out of the question,” he says. “I won’t consider it. I’ve seen the financial statement of the defendant, and while she has considerable holdings, it is unclear whether these could be posted as surety or given as collateral for a bond. The defendant is entitled to reasonable bail.”
Talia is looking at me, smiling. I nudge her with my elbow to drop the grin.
Shakers looks in our direction. “By the same token this is a capital case. While the defendant has no prior record, flight has been known to be perceived as a preferable alternative to death,” he says.
“Bail is set at one million dollars. There will be a two-percent surcharge for any bond by an underwriter.”
Talia’s on my sleeve. “I can’t raise that from the house,” she says.
“This court stands adjourned.” Shakers is off the bench and headed to chambers.
“We can get a bond,” I say. “It takes only ten percent.” This is the premium to be paid to the bondsman who will post the balance in the form of a surety bond.
“The equity in the house is at least $200,000-we know that,” I say. “We should be able to get eighty percent of that amount if we can refinance the second.”
But Talia’s looking at me. She knows the glacierlike speed with which commercial lenders move. She will be in jail for a week, if we’re lucky, and if she can get friends to push the paper along. I don’t even raise the other problems, a guarantor or collateral. The bondsmen don’t give out a million-dollar bond without something held as security-an interest in realty, stocks, your mother, something.
She looks at me. The matron has her by the arm, nudging Talia toward the door. I have, at least for the moment, defaulted on my promise to get her out of jail.
“I’ll get you out,” I say.
“I know you will,” she says.
It is something in her tone, the inflection of her voice. For the first time I think that perhaps this woman has more confidence in me than I have myself.
CHAPTER 21
Harry’s in my office at the bookshelf-lined wall using my codes, too cheap to spring for the subscription to keep his own current. Harry’s library is a forest of repealed statutes and outdated law.
“Where’s Dee?” he asks.
“Given her the afternoon off,” I say. “I need to do a little reading.” I point to the report on my desk and signal that quiet is appreciated.
I open the cover. Under the clear acetate is his letterhead:
SCOTT BOWMAN AND ASSOCIATES LICENSED INVESTIGATORS
Bowman was my own idea; without a word to Cheetam or Skarpellos, over Talia’s muted objections, I have paid him $2,500 of my own money, a retainer. Halfway through the hearing Talia had finally come to realize that freedom was not likely to follow Cheetam’s performance in the prelim.
Bowman does only capital cases. His specialty is penalty phase investigations, the background needed to save Talia from the gas chamber should a jury return a guilty verdict.
While dwelling on the penalty phase may seem macabre at this stage, Bowman has recommended an early start. His advice makes sense. Little things known about Talia’s background now might be woven into our defense, a little preconditioning for mercy if the jury convicts.
Talia had a hard time with this, two lengthy interviews alone with Bowman at his office. Her early life, it seems, is something she would rather forget.
As I read this first preliminary report-Bowman will do a follow-up investigation contacting family and friends for more information-I am struck by just how little I know of Talia’s background. In the first five pages I learn more concerning her life and what motivates her than I gleaned during the months of our relationship.
Talia is part Latina, something she has covered over with Anglicized ways-mastered, it would appear, at some cost to her own identity.
Conscious life for Talia Griggs began during a Monterey Park summer, her first memories coming from age five. She lived with her mother, Carmen, two brothers and a sister in the trackless waste of nondescript duplexes and squalid five-room frame houses that the contractors charitably dubbed “ranch homes.” These structures now litter the east end of Los Angeles County like some sorry architectural bivouac.
As a teenager growing up in the more affluent section of the county, I had seen it-a place where the houses were dominated by dead lawns and broken window screens. Long-abandoned vehicles littered every residential street, resting on bricks or blocks of wood, the fantasy of would-be mechanics caught in the perpetual illusion of one day returning the wrecks to the highway. The houses bake under an oppressive sun that is for months not visible through the perennial brown haze that hovers like some clouded cornea over the inland areas of the county. And always there are the children, in disproportionate numbers scampering about the streets and sidewalks playing with toys that match the houses in their state of disrepair.
It is in such a setting that, from Bowman’s report, I can now visualize Talia, streams of oily brown hair curling at the shoulders, dirty-faced, running to keep up with the boys. For an instant, visions of Sarah flood my mind between the lines of his narrative, for their features and coloring, Talia’s and my daughter’s, are not dissimilar.
Carmen Garcia, Talia’s mother, was never entirely certain of her daughter’s paternal bloodline. Apparently after some calculation and by process of elimination she settled on the putative father. James Griggs, an itinerant truck driver, had followed Carmen home from one of her habitual nightly haunts to share her bed during a cold winter night and had remained a tenant in her home for a week while his truck had undergone repairs. Carmen had Griggs’s name added to Talia’s birth certificate when the little girl reached age two. According to Talia this was more an act of bureaucratic expedience than concern for pedigree. It gave the county authorities someone to pursue for contribution toward the AFDC benefits that Carmen received monthly from the welfare department for support of her daughter.
It appears that this was an idle act, for Mr. Griggs was never seen again, and but for his brief, and questionable, genetic contribution he never entered little Talia’s life.
Through childhood and early adolescence, Talia learned to live with the constant stream of male friends who wandered through her mother’s life like tattooed vagabonds in search of some sexual holy grail.
I sit back in my chair, and in my mind’s eye I can visualize a small child kneeling on the living room floor of that littered house, wide-eyed and precocious, as a procession of strangers wandered through the place in pursuit of her mother.
The household of Talia’s early childhood, it seems, was governed by two unfaltering doctrines. Rule number one, her mother did not suffer from an alcohol problem, and rule number two, the children did not talk to others about their mother’s problem. The seeming lack of logical consistency between these two precepts apparently eluded their young minds, or else the fear of retribution was so great as to render reason impotent. More than anything else was the sense of misplaced loyalty shared by all of the children toward a mother who had shown little sensitivity or love.
By the time Talia reached age twelve, Carmen’s problems with alcohol had reached intolerable proportions. Most of her da
ys were spent in an intoxicated stupor. Talia noticed that the attention of male friends toward her mother had begun to wane. There were fewer such visits and the men were older, and the situation appeared more desperate. Increasingly, if they stayed for more than a single night, their attention turned from Carmen to her daughter.
Given her nearly constant state of inebriation, Carmen did not notice these advances toward Talia until a few months later, when Talia, her body taking on the rounded curves of womanhood, was cornered alone in the house by one of her mother’s male friends. Carmen walked in, unexpected and surprisingly sober, to find Talia half naked, her clothes torn, huddled under the sheets, struggling with one of Carmen’s former bed mates.
According to Talia and as related by Bowman, the mother’s reaction was instantaneous and unbridled, a display of rage that marked the girl’s memory for life-and directed exclusively at young Talia. Lamps were thrown, sheets ripped, nightstands upended. The girl lay frozen in terror on the bed, protecting herself as best she could behind two pillows as her mother flung any object within reach at the child. Talia’s male assailant, completely ignored in this melee, quietly slipped from the room, pulling up and buckling his pants as he hopped down the front drive toward his car.
For weeks after this incident Carmen would speak to her daughter only to remind her of her disloyalty, her sinfulness. She told her of the price paid by wayward children. Carmen carted Talia off to the local Catholic church, a place never darkened by Carmen’s own shadow before that day, and compelled the teenager to confess her sin to an aging priest huddled behind the plastic shield of the confessional. In Talia’s own words, the episode left an indelible scar on her, a sense that all of society’s institutions were flawed by the same hypocrisy demonstrated by her mother.
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