by Michael Nava
He’d left me a letter to open after he died. It contained the combination to a safe he had installed in his home office where I found a quarter-million dollars in cash. The letter provided detailed instructions about to whom and in what amounts I was to deliver the money. I visited a half-dozen cities across the country delivering bundles of cash to various people. I asked few questions, and they volunteered little information. Had I broken the law? Not as far as I knew. It was Larry’s money, and he could give it to whomever he wanted. I was simply the courier. What they did with the funds was not my concern. Nonetheless, the appearance of the FBI agents had me rattled. I’d been a defense lawyer a long time and I knew that insulating myself through ignorance of possibly illegal activity went only so far.
I started up my car and headed off to court.
••••
The Santa Monica courthouse was one of those ubiquitous institutional, International Style buildings of the 1960s— straight lines, square corners, glass fenestration, a gleaming white façade— that could have been a bank, a school, or for that matter a church; all the architect would have had to do was add a cross. The hearing in People v. Woods, et al., however, was not being conducted in one of the building’s austere courtrooms but in a trailer behind the courthouse pressed into service to handle the court’s overflow.
I was not an attorney of record in Woods. A friend had asked me to stand in for him because he was in trial elsewhere. Woods involved the arrests of some UCLA students at an anti-apartheid demonstration at the federal building for trespassing. A few of the demonstrators had scuffled with the cops and were then also charged with resisting arrest and with battery on a police officer. The kids said the cops started the fracas. I and the lawyers representing the other defendants were here on a Pitchess motion. Pitchess was a defense request to examine a cop’s personnel records for prior citizen complaints of misconduct that could be used against the cop at trial. We wanted to know if any of the officers in this case had been subjects of prior complaints of excessive force to buttress the kids’ claim that the cops started the fight and the protestors acted in self-defense.
••••
Despite attempts to invest the trailer with some kind of judicial dignity— there were wooden benches in the gallery and an elevated dais for the judge— it was unmistakably a trailer, windowless, cramped, and poorly ventilated. My fellow defense counsel— six of us in all, for each of the six defendants, Lewis Woods being the lead defendant— were huddled around one of two counsel tables at the front of the room. As was typical of pretrial hearings, the defendants themselves were not present. At the other table sat the solitary DA assigned to the case, and in the gallery was another lawyer I recognized but was surprised to see here, Marc Unger.
Marc was an Assistant Los Angeles City Attorney. He ran the division of the office that represented the police departments in civil suits, defending cops from lawsuits that charged them with misconduct up to and including the wrongful death of suspects in their custody. He had a cop’s beefy build himself— three quarters muscle, one-quarter fat— and an easy but authoritative baritone. He exuded such unapologetic, traditional masculinity few people would have guessed he was gay. But he was gay, uncloseted, and comfortable in his skin.
I knew Marc from meetings of the gay and lesbian lawyers association where he flirted with me relentlessly. Not that I was special in that regard— he flirted with any attractive gay man who crossed his path. He saw me and smiled his charming, crooked smile. He was, as always, elegantly turned out in a bespoke suit, his handsome face smooth and glowing as if he’d just been shaved by his own personal barber who had also clipped and styled his hair to camera-ready, movie star perfection.
“Marc?” I queried, approaching him. “What are you doing here?”
“Hello, Henry,” he said, shaking my hand. “You represent one of the defendants?”
I shook my head. “I’m standing in for Mitch Prynne. He’s in trial. You didn’t answer my question.”
He smiled sunnily. “Just observing.”
That was, as we both knew, a lie. Marc was far too busy and was too much of a big shot to waste a morning observing a pretrial motion in a misdemeanor prosecution in a trailer courtroom on the far end of town from his posh office in City Hall East.
“Bullshit,” I said.
Still smiling, he leered and rumbled, “You kiss with that mouth?”
When it was clear that was all I was going to get from him, I headed back to the counsel table and asked the same question of Ellen Lefkowitz, a tough, smart defense lawyer representing the lead defendant Woods.
“I don’t know,” she said, “but something’s up. I saw him out in the parking lot arguing with the DA. Don’t worry, I’ll get to the bottom of it.”
At that moment, the bailiff stood up and said, “All rise. Department 5 of the Santa Monica Superior Court is now in session, the Honorable Pauline Masanque-Brown presiding.”
The judge came in unceremoniously through a door behind the clerk’s desk and took her seat. She was a small, dark-skinned woman— the superior court’s only Filipina— with graying hair, a frosty demeanor, and a stern, no-nonsense reputation. If you were prepared, she was an exemplary judge, efficient and fair, but if you weren’t, God help you.
“Be seated,” she said. “We’re here on People v. Woods, et al. Counsel, state your appearances for the record and then we’ll move on to the motion.”
When I stated my appearance and explained that Mitch was in trial, she glared. I braced myself for an interrogation about why he hadn’t moved heaven and earth to make his appearance, but instead she turned to her clerk and asked, sharply, “Did he call?”
“Yes, Your Honor. He called on Friday. The trial is in Lancaster and the judge denied his request for a continuance so he could be here today. He apologizes.”
I’s dotted and t’s crossed, she said, “Fine. Welcome, Mr. Rios.”
I smiled. “Always a pleasure, Your Honor.”
“Now,” she said, “I’ve read the motion and the opposition. I will allow each side five minutes if they wish to say anything further before I—”
“Your Honor,” the DA said.
“What is it, Mr. Robinson?” she asked, displeased at the interruption.
“Your Honor, the People move to dismiss all charges against all defendants in the interests of justice.”
At the defense table we exchanged baffled looks.
“Did you file a 1382 motion?”
“No, Your Honor. I’m making it verbally now.”
This was exactly the kind of surprise she did not like. “Tell me, counsel, what are the interests of justice that would be served by dismissing a case against these defendants after two months of taking up this court’s time and resources?”
Robinson visibly paled but plunged on. “We have new information.”
“What information?”
He took a deep breath. “I can’t say in open court.”
Before she could respond Marc Unger was on his feet. “Your Honor, Marc Unger, Assistant City Attorney. If I may approach.”
“What’s your interest in this case, Mr. Unger?” she asked, sharply.
“If Mr. Robinson and I could approach and speak to you privately, I will explain everything,” he said suavely.
Ellen was on her feet. “The defense objects.”
Unger glanced over at us and in the same dulcet tone said, “If Her Honor agrees, the case against your clients will be dismissed. How could you possibly object to that, Miss Lefkowitz?”
“Because,” Ellen replied, “if she doesn’t agree, we want to know why you asked for a dismissal.”
Manasque-Brown said, “Counsel, talk to me, not each other.” She scowled. “Mr. Unger, Mr. Robinson, I don’t know what you’re up to but this is no way to proceed. If you wanted to dismiss this case, you should have filed the appropriate motion.”
“Your Honor,” Unger said. “This is a matter of the utmost sensiti
vity.”
After a tense moment of silence, she said, “Approach.”
Unger and Robinson stepped to the bench, and for the next five minutes they and the judge conducted a conversation in fierce whispers. At the end of it, she said, “Step back.”
Ellen said, “Your Honor, the defense—”
“Objects, I know,” she said. “Your objection is noted, but it’s also irrelevant because I’m granting the People’s motion and dismissing all charges against all defendants. With prejudice.”
“Why?” I blurted out.
“Ask Mr. Unger,” she said. “We’re adjourned.”
••••
I caught up with Marc in the parking lot.
“Hey,” I said. “What was that all about?”
He blasted me with his smile. “You been working out, Henry? Because you are looking good. You know, if I weren’t already taken—”
“Answer my question.”
He shrugged. “Your guy got off. Take the win.”
I thought for a moment. “You represent the police department. We were asking for personnel records. There was something in them you didn’t want us to see. Something worse than excessive force complaints. Something so bad you forced Robinson to drop the charges to keep those records private.”
“You’re wasted in the defense bar. You really should come and work for me.”
“But what,” I asked, “could be more damaging to a cop’s reputation than excessive force complaints?”
He responded with a Cheshire cat grin.
“Come on, Marc, the case is over. Who am I going to tell?”
“You promise to keep this between us?”
“I swear on my gay card.”
He smirked. “Fine. The department had an undercover cop in the anti-apartheid group the defendants belonged to. When the defense filed the Pitchess motion, some idiot police clerk included his name and records with the response. The DA had no idea who he was and called the department and they called me. We couldn’t have the judge turn his name over to you guys and blow his cover. We need to protect our people.”
“Even if it means dismissing the case?”
“What case? Misdemeanor trespass for a bunch of kids protesting apartheid? Hell, I agree with them.”
“Is the undercover cop still in the group?”
“Nah, he’s been reassigned.”
“Why did the department plant an undercover cop there in the first place?”
“Objection. Beyond the scope of cross-examination. I’ve got to run, Henry. Call me for lunch sometime.”
He got into his Beemer— the higher-ups in the city attorney’s office were notoriously well paid— and drove off, leaving my question unanswered.
But I didn’t have time to worry about it. I had a full day of court appearances ahead of me and a meeting at the end of it with a group of gay activists fighting Proposition 54, a ballot initiative to quarantine people infected with the HIV virus.
••••
Proposition 54 was spawned by an alliance between a right-wing Congressman named Schultz and an evangelical preacher named Shelby who led an outfit he called the Alliance for Traditional Family Values. Both had long and ignominious records as gay-bashers. Even their fellow bigots— the politer ones anyway— found their views too extreme, but then AIDS emerged, and Schultz and Shelby were no longer voices crying in the wilderness. The theoretical threat posed by men having sex with each other had now, in the mind of many straights, become the actual threat of a lethal disease, no matter how often they were told the virus could not be casually transmitted. People still believed AIDS could be contracted through casual touch or even breathing the same air as an infected person. Schultz and Shelby, riding these waves of ignorance and fear, had put together Proposition 54 for the November ballot. If passed, it would allow county health officials to identify and round up people who were HIV positive and force them into quarantine camps. At the moment, seven months before the election, the polls showed Proposition 54 winning by twelve points.
••••
I turned off Highland into the parking lot of the Gay and Lesbian Community Center and nosed my car into a narrow space. I always suspected, from its long L-shape, that in a previous life the center had been a hot sheet motel. Painted industrial gray, it was an unimposing building that, nonetheless, was constantly being vandalized with graffiti like the phrase I saw now in red spray-paint: “AIDS = Anally Inserted Death Serum.” It looked pretty fresh, so I guessed the center’s employees hadn’t yet had a chance to paint over it. A couple of dozen people were milling around the entrance, smoking, laughing and, as usual wherever there are more than two gay men together, discreetly cruising. Though mostly a male and white crowd, there was also a sprinkling of women and of Black and brown faces. There wasn’t much mixing among the groups, though, and that was a problem. Defeating Proposition 54 would require the community to unite but the community consisted of people whose difficult, private struggles to come out had left them mistrustful of all authority and strongly averse to being told what to do.
Fortunately, I didn’t have to herd the cats. My job was to talk to would-be demonstrators about their legal rights and how to respond to the cops. I made my way into the community room, pausing in front of racks of pamphlets and brochures from the city’s various AIDS organizations pushing safe sex and offering counseling and medical and social services. It never ceased to amaze me how quickly gay men and lesbians, aided by straight friends, had shaken off their terror of AIDS and organized themselves to take care of their own. The despair I had witnessed in San Francisco in 1984 had only two years later ripened into resistance.
In the main community room, a pudgy, white-haired man in black-rimmed glasses and a herringbone sports coat banged a gavel on the table at the front where he and a half-dozen other men and women were sitting. All the folding chairs that had been set out in the big space were occupied, and dozens of other people were standing against the walls or sitting on the floor. It was a pretty young crowd: there were a lot of black leather jackets, wallet chains, and hemmed jean shorts— the activists’ wardrobe. T-shirts were emblazoned with the names of AIDS activist groups or slogans like, “How dare you presume I’m straight!” A dozen or so of the crowd, men and women, wore black T-shirts with a single word written across their chests: QUEER. I knew one of them— Laura Acosta. She taught a gay studies course at Los Angeles Community College. At her invitation I had spoken to a couple of her classes about the developments in the law regarding gay rights. Not much to report there.
Laura was a self-described butch dyke, her stockiness a product of power weight lifting, her hair cut and gelled into a flat-top, invariably dressed in men’s khakis and a guayabera shirt. She was brash and loud and formidably smart. An anthropologist by training, with a PhD from the University of Arizona, she was overqualified to be teaching at a community college, but her efforts to find a tenure-track job at a four-year institution had been unsuccessful because, as she once told me, “I go in with three strikes against me. Woman, Chicana, dyke.” I told her if she ever wanted to sue, I’d find her the best gay rights lawyer I could but, as it turned out, she liked teaching at LACC where her students were like herself, brown and Black kids who were the first in their families to go to any kind of college and who found in her a warm and generous mentor and an aggressive advocate.
I caught her eye as the meeting started and nodded. She grinned and mouthed, “Talk later.”
The white-haired man at the front of the room, an old-school activist, pounded his gavel again and declared, “I call this meeting to order.”
A tall, thin boy in a QUEER T-shirt jumped to his feet and shouted, “Who the fuck are you to be up there running things? Who put you in charge? We didn’t elect you.”
The old veteran replied calmly, “I’m not in charge of anything. No decisions are going to be made here this afternoon. This is purely an informational meeting. The people up here have been tracking Prop
osition 54 and they want to share what they’ve learned. How the community responds to 54 is up to everyone in this room.”
“But you set up the room like you’re the head honcho,” the boy shouted back. “Like you got authority.”
There was a hurried, hushed deliberation among the people at the head table, and then the older man said, “Point taken. Why don’t we get rid of the table and form a circle? That way, no one’s at the head of the room.”
I groaned. This was precisely the kind of bickering that wasted time and energy better spent in organizing against the quarantine. But like everyone else I helped rearrange the room, shuffling chairs and bodies until we had achieved a semblance of a circle.
The older man, who introduced himself as Madison Knight, again called us to order and introduced the first speaker, a young lawyer named Wendell Thorne. Thorne gave us the background of the initiative, its potential effect— quarantine camps to which people with HIV would be forcibly removed— and the worrying poll numbers and concluded: “We have seven months to put together a statewide coalition to defeat the proposition, and I got to tell you, right now it looks like an uphill fight.”
“That’s impossible!” some shouted in disbelief.
“We have to make it happen,” Thorne replied.
Another panelist, also a lawyer, a flame-haired woman who introduced herself as Kate Cassells from the Lesbian and Gay Legal Defense Fund, broke in. “We’re also taking the fight to the courts. The LGLDF is about to file a lawsuit in the state supreme court trying to knock 54 off the ballot because it violates the state constitutional right to privacy by forcing people to disclose their HIV status.”
It was a decent argument, but the state supreme court had an entrenched conservative majority. There was no way those ancient white men were going to side with people they doubtless considered deviants. Proposition 54 would have to be defeated at the ballot, or not at all.