by D. W. Buffa
“The trial ended a few minutes after five; pretty much the same time it ended every day. She had promised the jury, promised us,” he added, exchanging a glance with me, “that she would try to keep to that schedule. But she did not go home. In addition to the trial, there were other cases—motions, judgments—the usual business of the court. And you know how she was. She would work all night before she would allow herself to fall behind.”
St. John threw his hand away from his face and turned up the palms of his hands in a gesture of helpless despair.
“We should have seen it coming. The crowds around the courthouse, the picket signs—‘Death to Fitzgerald,’ ‘The Case is Fixed,’ ‘Judges are the Real Criminals.’ And then, on the other side, ‘Fitzgerald Saved Us All,’ ‘Bridges was a Traitor,’ ‘Bridges Deserved to Die.’ Since the trial started, there have been nearly a hundred arrests—disorderly conduct, assault, three for attempted arson when some self-proclaimed militia types decided to throw a molotov cocktail at a police cruiser. People are pouring in by the busload, coming from all over. Every bar in town has the television on, everyone watching and drinking at the same time; people parading in the streets, motorcycle gangs, gays and lesbians, anyone who thinks themselves the member of some group seems to think they have to show the world which side they’re on.”
Silverman had listened, patient and sympathetic.
“And then, last night…” he reminded St. John.
“And then, last night,” said St. John, picking up the thread. “Evelyn was leaving. There was still a crowd. Not as large as it had been earlier in the day, but now, because they had been together so long, feelings were more intense, emotions less under control. The moment she came out of the building, the moment they realized who she was, someone shouted out her name, that she was the judge, the one who had given Michael Donahue, who was the closest man to Bridges, such a hard time. Then, suddenly, without any warning, there were gunshots; three, maybe four, and the man who shot her was standing over her, ready to put another bullet in her head, when he was shot and killed. The police, who had been worried about the mood of the crowd, those who had stayed that late, almost all of whom were there to protest against bothering with a trial for someone who should be taken out and lynched, had not noticed Evelyn when she first started down the steps. They heard the shots before they knew who they were shooting at. When they heard the shot, when they saw the gun, they started shooting. It was over in a matter of seconds. Two people dead on the courthouse steps. We should have seen it coming. But despite all the threats, all the shouting, you never think it is going to happen to a trial judge.”
Slowly and methodically, holding his left arm across his chest, Silverman stroked the side of his face with the fingers of his right hand. His attention had been intense and complete. He had one, unanswerable, question.
“Do you think this would have happened if the trial were not being televised?”
“Everyone wanted…” Then he remembered, and he looked at me, an apology in his eyes. “You didn’t.”
“It wasn’t because I thought anyone would get hurt. I certainly didn’t think anything like this would happen,” I explained as Silverman’s curious gaze moved from St. John to me.
“I’m rescinding the order. The trial will not be televised. No cameras of any kind will be allowed in the courtroom or anywhere in the courthouse.” He looked at St. John. “The district attorney’s office can announce that I’ve made this decision to protect the integrity of the proceedings, that I…” He was thumbing through the court file and saw something that made him stop. “We’ll have to have a hearing on this. Evelyn’s decision was in response to a motion.”
He picked up the telephone and informed his clerk what had to be done. Then he checked his watch.
“Two o’clock this afternoon. The lawyers representing the media will have the chance to tell me why I should not do what I am going to do.”
I had four hours. I went first to the jail to tell Fitzgerald that the trial would be delayed only until tomorrow and that Leonard Silverman would be presiding. He was much more interested in what Silverman was going to do about television.
“He can’t do that, can he?”
“He can, and he will. Evelyn Patterson was murdered because there was a mob waiting outside the courthouse, because some maniac had been watching on television and decided she should die because of how she handled Donahue when he was on the stand. There aren’t going to be any cameras anywhere near the courthouse, not while the trial is going on. The only audience is whoever happens to get there early enough to get a seat inside.”
Leaning against the white painted concrete wall, Fitzgerald shoved his hands in his pants pockets and stared down at the floor. He was disappointed, discouraged, but he had the decency to try not to show it. A woman had been murdered. That was more than an inconvenience, but everything depended on the appeal he could make to the country, the story that would explain that he had acted to save the country from a threat it had not known it faced, and now, because of what seemed certain to be one judge’s ruling, he would lose the chance to talk to the country directly. He forced himself to agree that the judge was right.
“I suppose he doesn’t really have any choice. There will still be reporters there to cover the trial.” His eyes brightened. He started to look from one side of the cell to the other. “It might be better that way. What gets written lasts longer; what people read, they remember.”
I left him feeling slightly better, and more determined to give the performance of his life when he took the stand in his own defense. It was there, right behind his eyes, the politician’s certainty that he could talk his way out of, or into, anything.
There were still all the hours of remaining work that had been left unfinished after I had learned of Patterson’s murder. I went straight to my office, or tried to, because when I got there the street was full of television trucks and the sidewalk full of cameras and reporters. They wanted to see what the lawyer for Kevin Fitzgerald might have to say. I was trapped; I could not turn and run away.
“One at a time,” I insisted amid a storm of shouted questions.
“What’s your reaction to the murder of Judge Patterson?”
I could not tell who among the throng of eager, desperate faces had asked what a high school freshman of no discernible intelligence would have been too embarrassed to ask. I ignored it.
“Is the trial going to be delayed, and, if it is, can you tell us when it might start again?”
“Mr. St. John and I met with Judge Silverman this morning. The trial will resume tomorrow at ten a.m.”
The question, and the answer, changed the tone, put a definition on what was acceptable and what was not.
“It’s true, then, that Judge Silverman, Leonard Silverman, will take over for Judge Patterson, that he’ll preside over the Fitzgerald trial?”
“Yes. We have all suffered a great loss. Judge Patterson was as fair-minded, as able, a trial court judge as there is.”
Someone started to shout another question, but I was not finished.
“If this were any other activity, any other line of endeavor, we would all observe a period of mourning. But Evelyn Patterson was a judge presiding over a public trial. She was gunned down by some coward who, though completely ignorant of the law himself, apparently did not like the way she dealt with a witness for the side he wanted to win. We go back to trial tomorrow because it is the best way possible to honor the memory of a woman who devoted her life to our system of justice. We don’t decide guilt or innocence in this country by violence. We let juries make that decision.”
With a gift for the superficial, a talent for finding the inconsistency that did not exist, a reporter for one of the cable news networks asked what he was certain everyone would want to know and he was the first to discover.
“You can say that representing someone who murdered a president because he did not like what that president was doing?”
&nbs
p; “Killed the president, caused his death, because it was the only way to keep that president from doing something that would have been catastrophic for the nation. That is what Senator Fitzgerald will testify tomorrow. It is called, in the law, the defense of others, in this case, defense of the country. The law of necessity, the need, the imperative need, to act, to sacrifice one life when it is the only way to save more than one.” Then I added, “You might want to learn something about those distinctions before you accuse someone who might quite possibly know them already of the kind of hypocrisy with which you have just charged me.”
I should have added, “you stupid son of a bitch,” but there were standards that even a lawyer should try to uphold.
“There is a rumor—more than rumor, a story—going around that Judge Silverman has scheduled a hearing this afternoon. He is considering whether to ban television coverage of the trial. Do you know if this is true, and, if it is, does the defense oppose or support having televised proceedings?”
The reporter who asked this question, short, balding, and aggressive, was being pushed by a dozen others from behind. He shoved a microphone so close to my face, I shoved it back. I was near the door. The pressure from the crowd kept growing until, finally, I managed to get inside and, with the help of the security guards posted in the lobby, got to an elevator and safely to my office. Albert Craven was waiting for me.
“Terrible, just terrible,” he kept repeating. “What’s happened to us? How can something like this happen? The whole city—the whole country—has gone crazy. Somebody has to get control of this.”
He was pacing back and forth. I sat down at my desk and started going through the thick file folder I had abandoned halfway through the night before. Craven was too absorbed in his own distress to notice that I was not paying attention. There was too much to do, and too little time to do it.
“The trial is still on? You go back when? Tomorrow?”
I nodded without looking up.
“Good. Don’t let those bastards think they can get away with something like this. Don’t let them!”
“Albert, settle down!” I shoved the folder off to the side. “It’s all right. Everything is under control.”
“Evelyn Patterson is—”
“Dead. Murdered on the courthouse steps. The guy who killed her is dead as well. There is nothing anyone can do about it now. The only thing we can do is to take this case, and everything connected with it, as seriously as everyone should have done at the beginning. This isn’t some goddamn television spectacular! A trial—a murder trial—isn’t entertainment! This is serious business. Everyone seems to forget that. They seem to think that if it doesn’t happen on television, it isn’t real, that it isn’t important. If this trial doesn’t do anything else, maybe it will remind us of what a trial is supposed to be!”
I was lecturing, the last thing I wanted to do, the last thing Albert Craven deserved to hear. I was the one who needed to settle down.
“Sorry, Albert. I shouldn’t have gone off like that.”
“Why be sorry? I agree with everything you said. Now,” he said as he sat down in the wingback chair the other side of my desk, “we need to work out the logistics.”
“Logistics?”
“What happened just now outside, that crush of cameras and reporters. It’s only going to get worse after Leonard Silverman stops the television coverage of the trial.”
“How did you know that? Never mind. You know. What were you going to say?”
“If they can’t have cameras in the courtroom, they’ll have them everywhere else. You didn’t go back to your place last night, did you? Reporters were camped out, waiting to be the first to get your response, have you say something they could use as part of the story they were trying to tell about the murder. They are going to be everywhere you go, wherever they think they can find you. But don’t worry. I’ve got it all arranged.”
There was something slightly ludicrous in the idea that Albert Craven, the most socially involved person I had ever known, someone who knew almost as many people as who thought they knew him, would take charge of some clandestine plan to move me undetected and unobserved through the streets of San Francisco filled with half the reporters in the world.
“It’s all arranged,” he said quite seriously, eager to dispel any doubt I might have. “I’ve worked it all out with Tangerine.”
Folding my arms across my chest, I watched with undisguised amusement as he disclosed the secret of his own small conspiracy. I was in the middle of a trial, an assassination that, in the judgement of some, threatened the downfall of the nation, and we were, both of us, feeling the effects of the horrific murder of a judge, a woman, we both knew. But for a few brief moments we managed to forget everything except a grown-up game of cat and mouse.
“You stay at her place in Sausalito; there are only a few people who know about the two of you. Take what you need from the office there with you. You’ll be able to work better there than here. Then, in the morning, when you go to court, she’ll drive you. Not to the courthouse—someone could see the two of you together and figure the rest out for themselves. She’s going to take you to the hospital, UCSF, up on Parnassus. It’s not that far from the bridge. She’ll drive you into the underground parking structure. No one will notice. You take the elevator to the street and take a cab from there.”
“And at the end of the day, when the trial is over?”
“Same thing, only backwards. She’ll pick you up in the garage. It’s always full of cars, patients and visitors who are only thinking about the reason they’re there. No one is going to notice you. And even if someone does, so what? Maybe you’re there to see your doctor. It doesn’t matter. There won’t be any reporters. There won’t be any cameras.”
“You worked all this out with Tangerine this morning?”
“Yes,” he said rather proudly. “Are you jealous? You should be. That story I told you—that woman in ancient times?”
“Suicide the price of one night with her. I remember.”
“Well, in the case of Tangerine,” he remarked with the kind of cheerful self-effacement I had not seen in a while, “it might have been a price worth paying. And remember, if you think that some kind of flagrant exaggeration,” he said as he got up to leave, “you’re apparently willing to pay a price even higher— marriage!”
As soon as he left, I picked up the phone and called her.
“Are you sure you wouldn’t mind? Albert just told me—”
“This is the first rule of cross-examination, isn’t it? I remember what you taught me: never ask a question unless you know how the witness is going to answer.”
I could hear the noise of traffic in the background.
“Where are you?”
“On the bridge. I’m coming to get you. You aren’t in court today.”
I explained that I was, or that I would be in an hour.
“Shall I come meet you at the…no, I suppose I shouldn’t, should I? All right, I have to run a few errands. Call me when you’re finished. Then, like Albert said, take a cab to UCSF, and I’ll pick you up there. And don’t worry, I promise to leave you alone when you’re working.”
It was a promise I hoped she would break. I did not tell her that. I did not have to. She knew.
“I probably won’t keep that promise, but I’ll try.”
I pulled together the various things I would need—the case file, the sheaf of notes I had made from the surveillance transcripts Reynaud had let me read through, two thick legal pads and my fountain pen and ink—stuffed them into my briefcase and went down to Craven’s office. His desk, the ugliest piece of furniture I had ever seen, was gone, replaced by a chrome and glass table of some minimalist’s arid imagination. For a moment, I thought I had come to the wrong office. Craven seemed to agree.
“Isabel,” he explained with a mournful glance. “There is nothing sacred anymore. I always wanted to get rid of the damn thing, and now that it’s gone I wish I h
ad it back.” His eyes brightened briefly at a fugitive thought. “At least it’s in storage, so one day, maybe…” He noticed the briefcase in my hand. “You’ve got everything? Good. If you need anything, anything you want me to bring you…and if you need to be here, it should be safe late at night, especially after everyone realizes you’re never here.”
I left the building by a side entrance and walked down the alley to the street behind the building where I had no difficulty catching a cab. I was back at the courthouse a few minutes before two.
The crowd had grown larger. Television trucks filled the streets. Reporters hung about, waiting to see what would happen next. The mood, though still tense, was more subdued than what it had been before. There were still signs and placards, but the more provocative messages had disappeared. No one jeered at me, nor did anyone shout words of encouragement as I made my way to the checkpoint at the courthouse entrance.
The trial, and all the proceedings connected with it, was now under the supervision of Leonard Silverman. Perhaps to honor her memory, he did not change courtrooms to his own. We would continue in the same place we had started, the courtroom that had for years been Evelyn Patterson’s undisputed kingdom.
At precisely two o’clock, the door from chambers opened and Silverman walked quickly to the bench which now belonged to him. Because this was a hearing on a motion, or, rather, a hearing in which the judge was effectively asking the proponents of the original motion to show cause as to why it should not be rescinded, I sat alone at the counsel table. The defendant, Kevin Fitzgerald, was not part of the proceedings. Raymond St. John sat alone at the other table. A half-dozen well-dressed lawyers sat in the first row of the otherwise empty courtroom, the legal team there to represent the joint interests of the networks.
I always liked watching lawyers who never tried criminal cases work in court, the bland efficiency with which they went about compiling every conceivable relevant detail that could even remotely contribute to the completely thorough discussion of whatever issue might be raised. It was the reason there were always so many of them. You knew what you were dealing with the moment they walked into court, pulling behind them wheeled cases of essential documents, too heavy, too cumbersome, too organized, to be carried in a briefcase in their hand. They pulled them like the suitcases with which they had rolled through whatever airport they had just landed, as uniform as the dark, neatly pressed, business suits they wore. They were corporate lawyers on whose tombstones would be recorded not the dates of their birth and death, but the total number of their lifelong billable hours.