Michael Nava - Goldenboy

Ah, Spencer Since words are crude and only stand between Heart and heart, and understanding fails us There’s nothing left amid such deafness but bodily Contact between men. And even that is very Little. All is vanity.

The Life of Edward the Second of England — Bertolt Brecht

“You have a call.”

I looked up from the police report I had been reading and spoke into the phone intercom. “Who?”

“Mr. Ross from Los Angeles.”

“Put him through.” I picked up the phone thinking it had been at least a year since I’d last talked to Larry Ross.

“Henry?” It was less a question than a demand.

“Hello, Larry. This is a surprise.”

“Are you free to come down here and handle a case?”

I leaned back into my chair and smiled. Born and bred in Vermont, Larry retained a New England asperity even after twenty years in Beverly Hills where he practiced entertainment law. His looks fit his manner: he was tall and thin and beneath the pink, nude dome of his head he had the face of a crafty infant.

Rejecting a sarcastic response — Larry was impervious to sarcasm — I said, “Why don’t you tell me about it.”

“It’s the Jim Pears case. Have the papers up there carried anything about it?”

I thought back for a minute. “That’s the teenager who killed one of his classmates.”

“Allegedly killed,” Larry replied, punctiliously.

“Whatever,” I said. “I forget the details.”

“Jim Pears was working as a busboy in a restaurant called the Yellowtail. One of the other busboys named Brian Fox caught Jim having sex with a man. Brian threatened to tell Jim’s parents. A couple of weeks later they found the boys in the cellar of the restaurant. Brian had been stabbed to death and Jim had the knife.”

“Airtight,” I commented.

“No one actually saw Jim do it,” he insisted.

I turned in my chair until I faced the window. The rain fell on the green hills that rose behind the red-tiled roofs of Linden University. That last weekend of September, winter was arriving early in the San Francisco Bay.

“That’s his defense — that no one actually saw him do it? Come on, Larry.”

“Hey,” he snapped, “whatever happened to the presumption of innocence?”

“Okay, okay. Let’s presume him innocent. What stage is he at?”

“The Public Defender has been handling the case. Jim pled not guilty. There was a prelim. He was held to answer.”

“On what charge?”

“First-degree murder.”

“Is the D.A. seeking the death penalty?”

“No,” Larry replied, uncertainly, “I don’t think so. But isn’t that automatic if you’re charged with first-degree murder?”

“No.” I reflected that, after all, criminal law was not Larry’s field. “The D.A. has to allege and prove that there were special circumstances surrounding the murder which warrant the death penalty.”

“Like what?” Larry asked, interested.

“There are a lot of them, all listed in the Penal Code. Lying in wait, for instance. There’s also one called exceptional depravity.”

“Not just your garden-variety depravity,” Larry commented acidly. “Only a lawyer could have written that phrase.”

“Well, figuring out what it means keeps a lot of us in business,” I replied, glancing at my calendar. “When does Pears’s trial begin?”

“Monday.”

“As in two days from today?”

“That’s right,” he said.

“I’m missing something here,” I said. “The trial begins in two days and the boy is represented by the P.D. Am I with you so far?”

“Yes, but — “ he began, defensively.

“We’ll get to the buts in a minute. Isn’t it a little late to be calling me?”

“The P.D.’s office wants to withdraw.”

“That’s interesting. Why?”

“Some kind of conflict. I don’t know the details.”

Almost automatically I began to take notes, writing ‘People v. Pears’ across the top of a sheet of paper. Then I wrote ‘conflict.’ To Larry I said, “You seem to know a lot for someone who isn’t involved in the case.”

“Isn’t the reason for my interest obvious?”

I penned a question mark. “No,” I said, “better explain.” “Everyone’s abandoned him, Henry. His parents and now his lawyer. Someone has to step in — “

“I agree it’s a sad situation. But why me, Larry? I can name half a dozen excellent criminal defense lawyers down there.” “Any of them gay?”

“Aren’t we beyond that?”

“You can’t expect a straight lawyer to understand the pressures of being in the closet that would drive someone to kill,” he said.

I put my pen down. “What makes you think I understand?” I replied. “We’ve all been in the closet at one time or another. Not many of us commit murders on our way out.”

There was silent disappointment at his end of the line and a little guilt at mine.

“Look,” I said, relenting, “how does Jim feel about me taking the case?”

“I haven’t spoken to him.”

“Recently?”

“Ever.”

“Customarily,” I said, “it’s the client who hires the lawyer.” “His P.D. says he’ll go along with it.”

“Go along with it? I think I’ll pass.”

“Jim needs you, Henry,” Larry insisted.

“Sounds to me that what he needs is a decent defense. I’m not about to take a case two days before it’s supposed to go to trial even if Jim himself asked me. I’m busy enough up here.’’

“Henry,” Larry said softly, “you owe me.”

In the silence that followed I calculated my debt. “That’s true,” I replied.

“And I’m desperate,” he continued. Something in Larry’s voice troubled me — not for Jim Pears, but for Larry Ross.

“Are you telling me everything?” I asked after a moment.

“I need to see you, Henry,” he said. “I’ll fly up tonight and we’ll have dinner. All right? I’ll be there on the five-fifteen PSA flight.”

“That’ll be fine, Larry.” I said goodbye.

After I hung up, I went across the hall to Catherine McKinley’s office. She and I had both worked as public defenders and had remained friends after leaving the P.D. Now and then we referred clients to each other, though this happened less often as she took fewer and fewer criminal defense matters, preferring the greener pastures of civil law. I had remained in the trenches.

Her secretary, a thin young man named Derek, was taping a child’s drawing to the side of his file cabinet. The drawing depicted a green house with a lot of blue windows, a red roof, a yellow door and what appeared to be an elephant in the foreground.

“Is your daughter the artist?” I asked.

He turned to me and smiled. “It’s our house,” he replied.

“And your pet elephant?”

“That’s the dog. You want to see her?” he asked, gesturing toward Catherine’s closed door.

“If she’s not busy.”

He glanced at the phone console. “Go ahead,” he said, and handed me a bulky file. “Would you give this to her?”

“Sure.”

I knocked at the door. Catherine said, “Come in.”

In contrast to my own office which could charitably be described as furnished, Catherine’s office was decorated. The color green predominated. Dark green wallpaper. Wing chairs upholstered in the same shade. All the green, she told me, was to provide subliminal encouragement to her clients to pay their bills. It must have worked because she looked sleeker by the day.

She glanced up at me with dark, ironic eyes. Catherine was a small, fine-boned woman, not quite pretty but beside whom merely pretty women looked overblown. I set the file at the edge of her desk.