Steven Gore - Act of Deceit

“No, we argued that he was incompetent-”

“Then how can it be ethical to go through with it?”

“Because it’s the best disposition for him and I’m obligated to do what’s in the interest of my client. And it’s not like a felony conviction will change his life. I don’t see him applying for a job requiring a top-secret clearance.”

Donnally wasn’t sure what he’d had in mind as he’d driven down through the Central Valley toward San Francisco, but he’d expected that it would look a lot more like an argument than the conversation it was turning into. He’d even fantasized that Perkins would come into the reception area gloating like all the rest of the imbeciles in the defense bar who celebrated every murderer going free and couldn’t grasp that it was a tragedy, not a victory, when the criminal justice system failed.

In thinking back to the smile with which she greeted him, it now seemed like the kind that fellow sufferers offer each other in doctors’ offices.

He now wondered whether she’d been swept along by events just as he had been.

“The Albert Hale Foundation mustn’t be too thrilled with their poster boy pleading guilty,” Donnally said. “Makes Brown look a whole lot less of a victim. In fact, it shows he worked the system better than the folks who run it.”

Perkins stopped to take a breath next to one of two potted orange trees bracketing the entrance to a Chinese restaurant.

“The word from on high is that Hale is fine with it,” Perkins said. “And his underlings are finally acknowledging what we told them at the start. It was a mistake to jump into the case without looking into it a little deeper. Charles Brown was the wrong guy to build a cause around.”

Donnally looked at his watch. It was almost 12:45.

“You hungry?” he asked.

Perkins nodded.

He pointed at the framed menu hanging on the green stucco wall next to the front door.

“How adventurous are you?”

Perkins grinned. “I think we’re about to find out.”

“W hat do you call this, again?” Perkins pointed at her almost finished bowl of hand-rolled wheat noodles, beef, pork, scallops, shrimp, mussels, and onions in a spicy red sauce. Her face was pink and sweating.

Donnally smiled at her.

“In Chinese it’s called ma mien. Horse noodles. The Koreans call it jambong. The name of this restaurant is Yantai. It’s a city in China right across the Yellow Sea from Seoul.”

“And you know that because…”

“I had a fascination with maps as a kid.”

She set down her chopsticks and spoon and wiped her lips with her napkin.

“Why was that?”

Donnally felt himself stiffen. He hadn’t come down to San Francisco to talk about himself, but to find a way to torpedo Brown’s deal.

Perkins must have seen something in his eyes. “Come on,” she said, “spill it.”

He pushed his bowl forward, then folded his arms on the edge of the table. While some of his childhood memories came back to him like half-remembered episodes from the storybooks his mother had read to him, this wasn’t one of them. This was real and he knew it was the incident that started his downhill slide from the innocence of childhood.

“I was in the third grade,” Donnally finally said. “It was after my brother was killed in Vietnam. I went outside into our backyard, up in the Hollywood Hills-”

Perkins stopped him with furrowed brows.

“My father is in the entertainment business.”

Donnally pushed on before she could begin the line of who-what-where questions everyone asked.

“Up there, above the city lights, before I could identify constellations, it just looked like a chaos of stars. And that night they all seemed to be moving together, like you could actually see the universe expanding. Looking back, I suspect that it was a thin layer of clouds passing by that made the stars look like they were moving the opposite way.” He paused for a moment, then shook the image from his mind. “In any case, it was unnerving. Ever since that moment I’ve needed to know where I stand.”

“So you’re always triangulating your position.”

“I guess you could say that.”

“And now Charles Brown has been sprung free from the place he was supposed to hold.”

“And where he was supposed to spend the rest of his life.” Donnally paused as a wave of sadness passed through him, followed by anguish and then anger. “Brown tried to rape Anna Keenan and she resisted. That’s not manslaughter. It’s capital murder.”

Perkins closed her eyes and took a breath.

“What am I supposed to do?” she said, looking at him again. “I also have a place in the world where I fit in. And it comes with obligations not of my own choosing.”

Donnally sat in silence for a moment, letting the hollowness of Perkins’s final sentence linger, then said:

“At your age and at mine, with money in the bank and a place to live, everything is of our own choosing.”

“I understand we have a disposition in this matter,” Judge Nanston said, after sitting down behind the bench in the crowded courtroom.

Donnally sensed relief in her voice, and he knew why. Brown’s guilty plea had excused her from the obligation of acting on her legal conclusion that the case had to be dismissed on speedy trial grounds. By accepting the deal, she’d escaped a week of infamy on conservative talk radio, maybe even a recall election.

Charles Brown, no longer chained and handcuffed to the chair next to Margaret Perkins, stared up at Judge Nanston. His hair had been cut and his beard had been shaved, and he looked ten pounds heavier. Donnally guessed it was from lithium or another manic-depressive drug he’d been given in custody. The innocent expression and gray suit Brown wore gave him the appearance of a minister who was stunned and bewildered by his drunk-driving arrest. Only Brown’s eyes betrayed the racing thoughts within.

Perkins rose. “I’m sorry, Your Honor, but I don’t believe we have a disposition.”

Donnally felt his body tense with expectation. Maybe Perkins had found an escape from what seemed like an ethical straitjacket. Maybe justice would be done after all.

Perkins continued, “The defendant’s position is that he’s not guilty of the offense.”

Blaine’s head jerked toward Perkins, his face flushing with fury and betrayal.

Judge Nanston slumped back in her chair.

“Does this mean you want to renew your incompetence motion?” Nanston asked.

“No, Your Honor. We’d like the court to set a trial date.”

Donnally spotted Blaine’s left hand hanging by his side, rubbing his fingers against each other like he was trying to wipe off pine sap. Donnally didn’t expect Blaine to look back. He had avoided Donnally from the moment he’d entered the courtroom ten minutes earlier.

“May we approach, Your Honor?” Blaine asked, his voice taut, suppressing the anger raging within.

Judge Nanston nodded. She rolled her chair to the edge of the platform on which the bench stood, and then leaned over into the huddle of Blaine, Perkins, and the court reporter. Every few seconds, one of them would glance over at Brown, who sat staring down at the defense table.

Donnally glanced up at the courtroom clock, at the silent second hand lurching along against the background of the unintelligible whispers at the front of the courtroom. He scanned the faces of the reporters sitting in the gallery behind him, each one’s head angled toward the bench, as though their ears were parabolic microphones.

The group dispersed.

All eyes followed Perkins as she returned to the defense table and sat down. She and Brown leaned in toward each other. He stared at Perkins as she spoke. Finally he swallowed hard and nodded.