by Michael Nava
Now, as we waited for our food, he was saying, “Run into anyone I know at the jail?”
“You don’t go to county jail for SEC violations,” I replied. “They put you in some country club federal prison.”
“Actually,” he said, “that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”
“Your rich, scofflaw clients?”
“No, your future. My firm wants to bring on an associate with a criminal law background. I’ve circulated your name. People are impressed.”
“Why would your firm dirty its hands with criminal practice?”
Gold put his coffee cup down and said, “You were joking about SEC violations, but you’re right, Henry. A lot of these regulatory statutes come with criminal penalties and right now we have to farm out that work. That’s lost revenue for the firm. It makes sense to have a small criminal law department. We’d start you as a fifth-year associate, at sixty thousand a year.”
“Not interested.”
Gold said, “Look, if it’s the money, that’s just starting pay. In two years, if everything works out, you’ll make partner and be pulling down six figures.”
“It’s not the money, Gold, it’s your client pool.” I said, reflecting that the sum he named was double my present wage.
“What’s wrong with my clients?” he asked sharply.
“I didn’t go to law school so I could represent rich people.”
“What, you don’t think rich people are entitled to the same defense as poor people?”
“Yeah, but strangely, you never hear much public outcry over the quality of legal representation of the rich.”
“Goddamn, Henry, what do you want?” he asked, his voice rising. “The rosy warm glow that comes from doing good? It’s not like you’re representing Nelson Mandela now. Your clients are street trash.”
“I’d rather work for them than the country club clones you represent.”
“Oh, it’s that gay thing again, isn’t it?” he said, flatly, dropping his voice. “You like to think of yourself as Mister Outsider. Give me your poor, your deviant, your huddled psychos. Is that really who you identify with?”
“I identify with people who can’t catch a break. Your people write the breaks, and always in their favor.”
“You know what your problem is, Henry? You have a persecution complex.”
“No, I’m actually persecuted. And, by the way, this from a Jew?”
“Fuck you, it’s not the same.”
“You know who Hitler sent off to the camps with the Jews? Homosexuals.”
“Shut up, Henry,” he said, “before we get into a real fight.”
I set my fork down and glanced out the window at the luminous summer light. Gold and I had a variation of this conversation nearly every time we talked and the only thing it accomplished was to get us angry at each other.
“Ah, forget it, Gold. My choices are my choices. What do you care?”
“Because, lately, you don’t seem very happy with them.”
“And you’re so happy with your twelve-hour days and your six-day weeks?”
“Sure, life’s a cabaret, old chum.” He held up his empty coffee cup. After the waitress left, he said, “Right now, it’s all about billable hours. I’ll worry about happy after I make partner.”
Our food came and we ate in silence.
“Forget about the job offer,” he muttered through a mouthful of Denver omelet. “You’re right, you and the firm wouldn’t be a good fit. How was your morning in the dungeon?”
I found myself telling him about Hugh Paris, leaving out the part where we came out to each other and held hands like teenage sweethearts.
“Hugh Paris,” he said. “That’s a pretty fancy name for jail scum.”
“He wasn’t jail scum,” I said. “He had self-confidence, good manners, and a lot of expensive orthodontics.”
Without looking up, Gold said, “So, nu, he was cute.”
“I can’t believe you said that.”
“Hey, I’m mellowing. You wanna be careful about hitting on clients, Henry. Do the words conflict of interest mean ring a bell?”
“Screw you,” I said, glad we were back on teasing terms. “I’m not representing or dating him. I just, I don’t know. I see a lot of people in trouble. Now and then, one of them really gets to me.”
“You are such a fucking bleeding heart,” he said as he reached for the check.
It was just before nine when I got to the PD’s office on the fourth floor of city hall. The reception room was already crammed with clients and their families holding the thick packets of court papers criminal defendants generate as they go through the system. Our receptionist was late again, so they swarmed me when I walked in. I answered as many questions as I could. Finally, I made it past them and through the door that separated attorneys from clients into a narrow corridor, made narrower by file cabinets pushed up against the walls. There was nowhere else for them in our overcrowded offices. I walked past my office to the lounge for a final coffee fix.
Frances Kelly, the supervising attorney, sat at a table with the daily legal journal spread out in front of her. A cigarette burned between her fingers. She lifted it to her lipsticked lips just as the ash fell, sprinkling the lapel of her navy jacket. I almost turned around and walked out before she saw me. She’d been after me for days for a heart-to-heart talk that I figured could only bring bad news. Too late, she saw me.
“Did you know Roger Chaney?” she asked me.
“Not well,” I answered, filling a Styrofoam cup. “He was leaving the office just as I was coming in.”
“Excellent lawyer,” she said. “He and I trained together, shared an office. He helped me prepare for my first trial.”
“Is there something about him in the journal?” I asked, sitting at the table across from her. She crushed her cigarette into a cheap glass ashtray and lit another.
“Yes. He’s being arraigned today in federal court in San Francisco,” she said. “Charged with conspiracy to distribute cocaine.”
“What?” I asked, incredulously. “I thought you were going to tell me he’d been appointed to the bench.”
“With Roger, it could’ve gone either way.” She put the paper down and looked at me. “He was brilliant but reckless. I walked in on him doing a line of coke on his desk one morning, just before he was going to start a multi-defendant murder trial. Do you know what he told me?”
“No idea.”
“Lock the door.”
She rose heavily, an elegant fat woman in a linen suit with black hair and beautiful, clear eyes, and ambled to the coffee maker. She poured herself a cup and asked, “You have a minute to talk, Henry?”
It wasn’t so much a question as an order.
“Sure,” I said.
I followed her into her office, the only one with a window. Outside, a thin layer of smog rose in the direction of San Jose, but the view to the brown hills surrounding the university was clear as they rolled beyond the palm trees and red tile roofs.
Frances was saying, “You know, what we do is very tough work. If you can’t find a way of leaving it in the office at the end of the day, it can eat away at you. Now, me, I have a husband, a daughter, and a rose garden. Not much but I wouldn’t risk any of it. Those things keep me grounded. They give me something to go home to.”
I stirred uncomfortably in my chair. “Why are you telling me this?”
“I can smell the booze on your breath some mornings when you come in,” she said. “I worry about one of my lawyers who has nothing better to go home to than a bottle.”
I felt myself flush with anger and shame. “I’ve never come to work drunk.”
“That’s a pretty low bar,” she said. “Wouldn’t you agree?”
“Are you trying to fire me, because if you are, I want my union rep.”
“Fire you?” she said, shaking her head. “You’re one of my best lawyers. I’m trying to figure out how to help you. I think you should consider takin
g some time off and going into treatment.”
“Treatment? For what?”
“For your drinking,” she said. “I talked to Mike and he agrees. Your health insurance will cover—”
“You talked to Mike about my drinking?” I said angrily. “You had no right to do that. If it doesn’t affect my job, it’s none of your goddamn business. And, by the way, I’m not an alcoholic if that’s what you’re implying.”
She sighed. “Listen to me, Henry, do you think you’re the first lawyer I’ve supervised with a drinking problem? I can see the signs. I know the pattern. Right now, it’s just hangovers. Pretty soon, you’ll be calling in sick. Eventually, you will start showing up under the influence. Here and in the courtroom. I’m offering you a chance to nip it in the bud before you get into serious trouble.”
“And if I don’t? Then what?”
“Then I’ll watch you self-destruct and at some point in the process, you’ll give me cause to fire you.”
I stood up. “I’m not a drunk,” I said and walked out of her office, slamming the door behind me.
I went into my office, shut the door, and sat down at my desk. There was a pile of cases to review for arraignment and a list of clients to call and advise about the status of their cases. I had a half-dozen motions to draft and as many discovery requests to complete. Oh, and a trial set to start on Friday. I opened the first file but I was too enraged at Frances to focus on the words. I couldn’t believe she thought I was an alcoholic. Of course I wasn’t. I defended alcoholics and I wasn’t anything like them. I got up and went into the bathroom and splashed cold water on my face to take the edge off my anger.
Drinking was not the problem, life was the problem. I had graduated from college when I was twenty, from law school when I was twenty-three, and I was handling death penalty cases before I was thirty. The forward momentum that had propelled me from one achievement to the next had stalled and left me treading water and doubting myself. Left me holding a bag of bad feelings, dissatisfaction, agitation, and depression. Was it any wonder I needed a fucking drink now and then? I went back to my office. Outside in the corridor, I heard the babble of voices as my colleagues interviewed clients and witnesses or hurried off to court shouting last-minute questions about a legal issue or a particular judge’s temperament. I felt the excitement but did not share it. My law school professors said law was a temple. What it had been for me, though, was a religion. The religion of righteousness where the voiceless were heard and sometimes answered. I was their voice. But, as with all religions, belief was entirely a matter of faith. Faith that what I was doing mattered. Faith that it was right. I had lost my faith when the jury came back and convicted Eloy Garza of a murder he had not committed. I was like a priest who held the host and saw only a piece of dry bread, who lifted the chalice and smelled only cheap wine.
I rolled a piece of paper into my typewriter and started typing.
“Henry? Why aren’t you in court?” Frances asked when I slipped into her office. “You have arraignments.”
“Beth’s covering for me,” I said. “I had to talk to you. I’m sorry about earlier. I know you meant well.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Okay,” she said. “Apology accepted. Is there something else?”
“Yes,” I said. I handed her the letter I had written.
“What is this?” she asked, then started reading. She looked up, shocked. “You’re resigning?”
“Effective immediately,” I said. “I already called San Jose and told Mike.”
She shook her head and puffed disapprovingly. “This is ridiculous, Henry. You’re going to walk away from your clients, from your career. For what?”
“For something else.”
“This is bad, Henry,” she said. “Very bad. You really need help.”
I stood up. “Thank you for everything, Frances. Good-bye.”
I went back to my office and cleaned out my desk. Some of the other lawyers drifted in, stood around nervously, and said a few well-intended words. By three o’clock I’d done nearly everything I needed to do to extricate myself from my job. Just before I left I called down to the jail to find out about Hugh Paris. The deputy told me the DA had called earlier and said he wasn’t going to file any charges. Hugh had been released. I gathered up my personal papers, threw them into a box, and went home.
TWO
A movement in the shrubs outside my bedroom window woke me. I glanced at the alarm clock: 3:18. The soft shuffle of footsteps on the sidewalk was followed by a quick rap at the front door. I pulled on a pair of pants and felt my way through the darkness to the living room. I stood at the door and listened. There was another knock, louder, and more urgent. I looked through the peephole. Hugh Paris stood shivering in the dark. I was startled but not surprised. Maybe because I’d thought of him so often in the past few weeks, it was as if I’d finally conjured him up. A breeze blew his hair across his forehead. I opened the door.
“Hugh?”
“Don’t turn on the porch light,” he said. “I think I’m being followed.”
“Come in.” He slipped through the door and I closed it softly behind him.
Followed? Was he high? I guided him to my desk and switched on the reading lamp to get a good look at him. His eyes were clear and alert. He was wearing jeans and a black T-shirt; I scanned his arms for signs of track marks. The ones I saw were old and healed.
“I’m not high,” he said, watching me. “But I could use a drink.”
“Sure thing,” I said.
I went into the kitchen and poured a couple of shots of Jack Daniel’s. When I returned to the living room he was poking around the stack of orange crates that held my books and music. The last time I’d seen him, the oversized jail jumpsuit had concealed his body. The form fitting jeans and T-shirt revealed a slender but muscled frame; a gymnast’s physique. I was appropriately appreciative.
“Here you go,” I said.
He turned and took a glass from me. “Prost,” he said, touching his glass to mine. Smiling slightly, he openly appraised my body. “Not that I’m complaining, but when I pictured you naked, I saw a hairy chest.”
“It’s the Indian blood,” I said. “What are you doing here, Hugh?”
“You gave me your card, remember, told me to call you day or night, for whatever I needed.”
He set his glass down on the coffee table, took mine from me, and set it beside his. He stepped forward into my arms, tipped his face upward, and we kissed. His tongue slid lazily into my mouth and I savored his taste and the warmth of his hard, little body against mine. I licked that elegant neck and cupped his hard little butt. His fingers worked the buttons of my 501s and grazed the tip of my cock. With a last, lewd kiss, he dropped to his knees. I reached down, hooked my arms around his armpits, and lifted him to his feet.
“Stop,” I said.
“You want me to stop? I’m famous for my blow jobs, baby.”
“Sit down,” I said, directing him to the couch. I buttoned up my jeans and sat down beside him. “I gave you my card weeks ago. If all you wanted was sex, you could’ve called me anytime. I would have come running. Instead, you show up at my apartment in the dead of night telling me you’re being followed. You’re not obviously high, so what’s up?”
When he picked up his drink, I caught the glint of his watch. It was very thin and silvery but not silver. Platinum. Watches like that went along with trust funds, prep schools, and names ending with Roman numerals.
“I’m sorry I didn’t call. I really wanted to. I felt, you know, that we connected.”
“Me, too,” I said. “I tried to find you. Looked you up in the phone book, had a friend at DMV run your name. I even went to The Office a couple of times thinking maybe you’d show up.”
“I’m not easy to find,” he said. “Precautions.”
“Against what?”
“I told you I came back from New York to deal with some family things and they’ve been getting pretty heavy. I got
a scare tonight. I needed to find a safe place. I thought of you.”
“You need to fill in some blanks for me.”
“I don’t want to mix you up in my drama.”
“You already have. So let’s hear it.”
He picked up his glass and took a slug. “I come from money.”
“I guessed that from the watch.”
He glanced at the watch. “Good eye,” he said. “Vintage Patek Philippe. It was my dad’s. I managed to hang on to it through—everything.”
“Everything meaning junk.”
“Everything,” he said empathically. “Including junk. But like I told you at the jail, I’m clean now.”
“I’m glad you kicked, Hugh. Go on.”
“My family has a lot of money. My grandfather controls most of it through a family trust. While I was out there using, the only thing I cared about was that he give me enough to maintain. Eventually, he cut me off. I had to find other ways to take care of myself. After I got clean, I began to look into the trust. All I wanted to know was what was mine, but I discovered some things about how my grandfather got control of the money. Criminal things.”
“Like what, diverting funds? Embezzlement?”
“Murder,” he said.
“What?”
“He had people killed. That’s how he got control of the money.”
I had heard enough incredible stories from interviewing clients that I knew to keep a game face, ask leading questions and wait until they tripped themselves up.
“Who do you think he had killed?” I asked.
“My grandmother and my uncle,” he replied.
“Why them?”
“It was my grandmother’s money. She was going to divorce him. He killed them to prevent it.”
“What does this have to do with you being followed?”
“He knows I’m on to him,” Hugh said. “I felt like someone was following me tonight. I freaked out. The city didn’t feel safe, so I came here.”
“What do you think your grandfather’s going to do to you?”
“If he can’t scare me off, he’ll kill me, too, Henry.”
