by D. W. Buffa
“Are you going to tell me everything that happened? That is the other thing you promised.”
“At dinner. Where do you want to go?”
“Some place quiet; some place we can be alone.”
She pulled off the highway at the last exit to Sausalito, the one farthest from her house, the other side of the village. There was a restaurant at the north end of the yacht harbor.
“Here, I brought you a few things,” she informed me after parking the car in the lot in front. She handed me a tan canvas hat, the kind beachcombers wore, and my dark glasses. “Put them on before we go in,” she said as she fastened a silk scarf around her hair and, watching herself in the rearview mirror, adjusted her own dark glasses delicately on her nose.
I looked at her, dumbfounded.
“We’re maybe forty feet away, why would—”
She became quite serious.
“There probably isn’t a place in America with a higher percentage of liberals, probably nowhere where more people think you should win, that Kevin should not be prosecuted for it—whether or not they agree with what he did. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t people who think the death penalty would be too good for him, and—more importantly, as far as I’m concerned—that his lawyer should get the same kind of treatment. Think me crazy if you like, but crazy people aren’t always wrong.”
There was no way I could say no. I pulled the hat on and put on the glasses, and with my arm around her shoulder we crossed the parking lot and up the steps to the entrance. There was a long three-sided bar in the middle of a very large room, with tables scattered all around. Floor-to-ceiling glass doors and windows let in the outside light and a view across the floating wooden walkways and boats of every size and description moored next to them. Tangerine had been here before and led me to a table on the far end of the deck outside.
It was the last table left, and as luck would have it, the two couples at the table next to ours were talking about the trial. Smiling to herself, Tangerine raised an eyebrow in knowing triumph. She had taken the chair facing the restaurant and, coincidentally, all the other tables outside on the deck. I was sitting facing the water, my back to everything. The conversation had stopped, the way it always seemed to stop whenever Tangerine suddenly made an appearance. There was the same breathless pause there had been the night she had come to meet me at the top of the Mark Hopkins when she walked across the room to the bar. She removed the silk scarf and let her hair fall free, and then, taking off her sunglasses, she smiled briefly at the four faces that had turned to her. Looking up at the waiter who had come running the moment he saw her, she ordered two drinks. I looked at Tangerine with a smile of my own. The silence at the table behind me was broken by four voices now talking all at once.
“It’s terrible, what happened to that judge,” one of them, a woman of middle years, was saying. “Just awful. But they should have known something like this would happen. These people who thought Bridges was so great…why? Because he was always talking about violence himself.”
“Listen, I know I’m the only one around her who voted for Bridges,” replied the husband of the other woman at the table. “But none of this would have happened, that judge would not have been killed, if Fitzgerald had not started it. He killed Bridges. Bridges never killed anyone, and you seem to think Fitzgerald is some kind of hero. I don’t understand people like you. I don’t understand what is going on.”
The waiter brought our drinks, and for a while, occasionally lifting a glass, we just looked at each other as we listened to what the rest of the world was thinking.
“There’s a poll just out,” reported the other man, a little older than the first one, and, from the brief glimpse I had of him when we first arrived, more distinguished looking. I guessed he might be a physician, or, because he dressed with understated elegance, someone in finance. “If Spencer runs for president, he wins. He isn’t as far ahead as Bridges was behind. Fitzgerald would have beaten him by twenty points or more, but he has more than fifty percent.”
“That’s just because, through no fault of his own, he’s just become president,” insisted the second woman at the table. “After Bridges was killed, everyone wants the new president to succeed. The only surprising thing is that his level of support isn’t higher.”
“That wasn’t what the poll said. It gets interesting. They asked how they would feel about Fitzgerald if he gets acquitted, if he proves he had to do what he did, if—”
“The murdering son of a bitch! He murdered the president. Who gives a damn what—”
“If you’ll just let me finish, Charlie, I’ll explain. The question was if it turns out that Bridges was about to do something that was a clear and present danger to the country, and Fitzgerald acted to stop him, do you think Fitzgerald should run for president and would you support him if he does? Almost sixty percent said yes.”
“Wait a minute, you just said that Spencer gets more than fifty percent.”
“Separate questions. They did not ask what would happen between Spencer and Fitzgerald, just what did they think of each of them.”
The first woman thought everyone was making a mistake.
“The way the question was asked. If Bridges was about to destroy the country. If Fitzgerald stopped him from doing it. If Fitzgerald saved the country. A lot of ifs.”
“We’ll know soon enough. Fitzgerald started testifying today.”
“In the trial no one can watch.”
“You know what I don’t get,” said the only one of them to have voted for Bridges. “A guy like Antonelli. How the hell do you justify doing what he does, defending someone like Fitzgerald who already confessed to what he did? Far as I’m concerned, the guy who shot the judge shot the wrong person.”
Staring down into my glass, I raised my eyes just high enough to see Tangerine start to say something. I reached across the table and held her wrist.
“Tell me about your day,” I said quietly, shaking my head to let her know that I had heard it all before and that nothing was going to change his mind. She nodded what I assumed was her agreement, and then signaled the waiter. He was there almost immediately.
“Would you…” she whispered in his ear. Then, while he stood there waiting, she reached into her purse for a pen and a sheet of note paper. Her eyes sparkled with a truant’s excitement as she scribbled a brief note and then gave it to the waiter, who practically fluttered with delight at carrying out her order. A few minutes later he returned with a bottle of the restaurant’s most expensive wine. Nodding in our direction, he presented it to the table behind me, along with the note that, she explained to me, read simply, ‘With the compliments of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Antonelli.’”
“You wrote that? Mr. and Mrs…”
“Sure, why not? They don’t know you haven’t married me yet.”
There was one thing I now had to do. Turning around, I moved my chair close to the other table and looked at the Bridges voter who thought I should probably be killed. He was red-faced with embarrassment, but he believed what he believed, and that was not going to change. I told him he was in good company.
“You know your Shakespeare. One of his most memorable lines, in the mouth of someone at the beginning of a rebellion, ‘The first thing we’ll do, let’s kill all the lawyers.’ But before that happens, if you ever find yourself in trouble, if you are ever accused of a crime you didn’t commit, I hope you’ll call me. I’ll do what I can for you.”
He could not help himself. He smiled, and the grin on his face growing larger, he said that if he ever killed anyone, I would be the first call he would make.
“In that case, I hope I never hear from you.”
I liked him. That was the simple truth of it. But I was proud of Tangerine for the classy thing she had done, and she was proud of me, and we sat there so pleased with ourselves you would have thought us two teenagers who had just discovered what it meant to be invincible. Nothing could touch us, not now, not ever.
/> “Keep your promise,” she reminded me after we had ordered dinner, and our friends at the other table had grown content with us and with each other.
“Promise?”
“To tell me everything that happened today in the trial.”
But before I could start, she began telling me.
“I watched what they were saying on television. They can’t have cameras in the courtroom anymore, so they have reporters who watch for a while and then come out and tell what they saw. So, you see, I know a little. I know that Kevin was your first witness, and that you spent most of the day asking about what he knows about what the Russians had done with Bridges, and some of his people, in the days before he first became involved in politics. That doesn’t tell me anything about what really happened, though, does it? What was it like, what did it feel like, how did the jury react? Could you tell?
She started poking at the crab louie she had ordered. I took another drink, trying to remember what had happened and the best way to describe it.
“The first thing that—”
“No, first tell me about the judge, the new one, Leonard Silverman. How different is he? Or is he different from Evelyn Patterson?”
“He’s older, quicker—quicker than maybe any other judge on the bench—and gentler than any man I know.”
“Gentle? In what way?” she asked, her musical eyes glittering with anticipation. “He doesn’t raise his voice, doesn’t get angry, never says a harsh word, even when someone has spoken that way to him. Gentler, because he’s wise; because he knows people better than they know themselves; because, knowing their failings, he is always able to forgive their sins. Gentle, like that?”
I listened, I heard every word, and then I listened again to what she had said, and knew that if I tried for a hundred years, I would never be able to describe Leonard Silverman any better. And she had never met him.
“Something like that,” I replied, tilting my head to the side in baffled surrender to the strange, enigmatic power she had to see into the heart of things of which she had not known the surface.
“There aren’t many like that, are there? I don’t mean just judges, butr people altogether. If you meet two or three in your whole lifetime, you’ve done better than most, haven’t you?”
She picked again at her food, but she was too interested in what I could tell her to think about eating.
“What is the jury thinking, how did they react when Kevin was testifying? You get a feeling about things. Tell me what it was.”
“There were two sets of motion at once: Fitzgerald moving toward the witness stand as if he could not wait to get there, and twelve jurors moving forward in their chairs to get as close to him as they could, close enough to hear every word, close enough to see even the smallest change of expression. And they didn’t stop, they didn’t get tired of it, they didn’t lose interest. Some of his testimony was riveting, compelling—he has that gift, that way of speaking that makes you want to listen, that makes you want to hear more. But he could have been dull and listless, the worst speaker you have ever heard, and you still would have been mesmerized by some of the things he talked about: the way the Russians handled Bridges, the way they took their time, building relationships, friendships, establishing a sense of trust. They were only businessmen, bankers, men with connections who knew how to get things done, investors with more money than they knew what to do with who only wanted the kind of safe investments they knew he could offer. The Russians were brilliant; Bridges could only see what was right in front of him: the next deal, the next opportunity, the next way to make money.
“Everything Fitzgerald said today was believable because he didn’t say anything that has not been talked about, and rumored, before. The last two years, it’s about all anyone has talked about. The jury believed him, but we had to have more than what everyone had been told. We had to have proof. There were dozens of documents, most of them the kind that will cause your eyes to glaze over in less time than it takes to read the title on the top of the page. This jury treated it all like twelve rabid accountants, getting more excited with every number they heard cited. It was extraordinary, the way they seemed to hang on every word. Part of it was Fitzgerald. He has this trick he uses. I’ve seen him do it before. He’s tried it with me. He’ll stumble over a word, correct a figure he has just quoted or read, and flash that bashful smile that makes everyone want to believe him, and apologize for the mistake. He wants you to believe that he thinks you must know more about this—understand better what these dull reports he is reading mean—than he ever could. And it works. They think they do, or that they should, or at least ought to try.”
A smile started onto her mouth, the cynical nostalgia about what she had once considered the innocent fraud of a rising star.
“When he was mayor, he would go to some dinner, say, in Chinatown. He would have a few words of greeting in Chinese and would always make sure to pronounce them with an awkward self-consciousness that seemed to show how important he thought it to try. And you’re right, it worked. They loved him more than they would have if he had spoken Chinese perfectly. It proved the effort, and the effort proved his goodwill. But,” she continued, tossing her head in a way that expressed a doubt, “is that enough to work with a jury? He isn’t running for office, he’s on trial.”
“I’m not sure,” I admitted, “that he thinks there is a difference.”
The people at the next table left, but not before thanking us for the bottle of wine. My new friend, the Bridges voter, shook my hand and wished me well. I thought he might almost have meant it.
“It’s what happens when you’re famous,” said Tangerine with a laugh after they were gone. “He can think Joseph Antonelli should be shot dead, until he meets Joseph Antonelli, and then he can’t imagine there is any nicer man in the world—just like other people. I’ll bet you anything that is what he’ll tell his friends tomorrow.”
“That isn’t what he’ll tell his friends tomorrow. He’ll tell them with wide-eyed wonder that that son of a bitch Antonelli is married to the greatest-looking broad he’s ever seen!”
“You think he’ll say ‘broad?’”
“Only if he’s on his best behavior.”
“So he won’t hate Joseph Antonelli anymore, he’ll envy him—is that what you are saying?”
“That is exactly what I’m saying—as if you needed to hear it. Now, what do you want to know about the trial?”
“The photographs. Everyone is talking about them.”
“That’s another good reason not to televise a trial.”
“That bad?”
“Worse.” I realized now the reason they were so utterly appalling. In a way, it was almost funny, especially when I was sitting across from her. “Do you ever…? No, of course you wouldn’t, wonder how stupid we look. most of us, I mean, when we’re naked? Especially men, and especially when we’re aroused. There we are, slumped shoulders, arms and legs too skinny or too fat, stomachs, some of them, like beachballs that haven’t been sufficiently inflated, or inflated to the point of bursting, with hairy chests, or chests with no hair at all, with any number of scars and other disfigurements on our faces which, even without that, are usually grotesque enough, with sagging mouths and sagging eyes, crooked noses and missing teeth. And then, if we weren’t ugly enough, an erection that makes us look like a broken down door with a misshaped handle dangling upside down from somewhere near the middle. There is a reason we invented clothes. And now, to our great discomfort, we discover that our president looked even more grotesque, naked and aroused, than almost anyone we could imagine outside a circus freak show. When those pictures were passed around the jury box, they could not wait to get them out of their hands.”
“Then why…?”
“The same reason that the prosecution introduces photographs of the victim in a murder trial, the same reason St. John introduced the pictures of Bridges lying dead on the floor of Air Force One—to prove that something really happened
, and, though no one will ever admit it, to make the jury as angry, as repulsed, as you can. Although, in this case, I did it less for that reason than to prove that Bridges had something to fear from the Russians.”
It was getting dark. A few lights flickered on the hillside across, what at this end of the bay was perhaps less than half a mile away. A short man with a short beard and a round face got into a rowboat and headed for his sailboat anchored a hundred yards offshore. Three seagulls alighted on the railing of the deck a few feet from where we sat, waiting with imperious impatience for what someone at a table might be willing to share. Tangerine tossed them a broken piece of French breach. They ate it, and seemed offended when they were not offered more.
“The deserving rich,” she observed. “What will happen tomorrow? How long does Kevin testify?”
I threw my arm over the back of the chair and crossed one leg over the other. The seagulls thought it meant something for them and hopped closer. Tangerine laughed, and handed them the bread she had left.
“Go away, you greedy birds. Find someone else to show your ingratitude!”
They ignored her.
“I didn’t want you there today,” I began to explain.
“I know, you weren’t sure it would be safe. But it’s safe, isn’t it? What if I come tomorrow?”
“Then I wouldn’t have anything to tell you tomorrow night.”
“You can tell me the meaning of everything I see. It will be easy,” she added quickly, to forestall my objection. “We’ll do the same thing we’ve started to do. I’ll bring you in, in the morning, drop you at the hospital, like today. Then I’ll park near the courthouse, watch the trial, then drive back and wait for you. You’ll be able to avoid all the reporters, and I’ll get to watch you work.”
I thought about it. I had liked it when she was in court, I liked knowing she was there, that close. But there was something I had not told her.
“It’s better if you don’t. When I got there this morning, there was a mob scene outside. It wasn’t like before. No one was shouting obscenities, no one was picking fights. The murder of Judge Patterson has had at least that much effect, but the tension is still there. You can feel it. Something is going to happen. Someone is going to start something, do something, and people will start shoving, pushing, and when that happens, punches will start being thrown. There are cops all over the place, but there is a point at which that becomes a provocation, an invitation to show your rage and defiance. Don’t come. If you did, I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on what I’m doing.”