Grave Error

by Stephen Greenleaf

  “I understand.”

  “There’s one other thing. I’ve deflected the city cops off the case for a while. But if the sheriff out in Oxtail is on the ball he’ll have someone go through Harry’s files, and when he does he’ll find what I did and he’ll be on the Nelsons’ doorstep an hour later. I can’t keep that from happening. The best I can do is get whatever information Claire has and try to find the killer before the Nelsons get dragged into it.”

  She thought it over some more and then made a decision. “Should I tell Claire about Mr. Spring’s death?” she asked.

  “She’ll read about it in the papers tomorrow anyway.”

  “How about Rodman and that Bollo person?”

  “There’s no need to tell her any more about Rodman than she already knows.”

  “Do you know if your friend was able to learn anything at all? Claire will probably ask.”

  “No.”

  “And you want to know everything she told Mr. Spring.”

  “And everything he told her.”

  “Okay. I’ll make the call,” she said. “On one condition.”

  “What?”

  “That you tell me why you didn’t practice law again after the Supreme Court lifted your suspension.”

  “So you know that little saga.”

  “I was in school when it happened. You were quite a hero to a lot of law students, as I recall.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “Will you tell me about it?”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m interested in the law and in lawyers. And a little bit in you.”

  I told her we’d discuss it after she’d talked to Claire. Sara took a sip of wine and got up to go to the telephone. She walked away and then turned back. “You want to know something funny?” she said.

  “Sure.”

  “I grew up in Oxtail, too. Al Rodman was in my high school class.”

  TWELVE

  Sara went off and I watched her until she disappeared around a corner. For some reason I looked down at my hand, the one that had held hers, and pinched the flesh over a knuckle. When I let go a tent of skin remained pitifully upright, the pale meringue of an aging chef. If you only counted years, Sara and I weren’t that far apart. If you counted anything else, anything that made a difference, then she was young and I was not.

  I flagged the waiter for another drink. Old memories floated through my mind like dead fish in a polluted stream. For a moment I glimpsed the hollow dread of the aged and the insane.

  The people in the booth behind me were arguing about San Francisco. The one I could hear best was saying that the theater, the ballet, and the opera were all second-rate and the symphony and the museum of modern art weren’t even that. His conclusion was that if you took Minneapolis out of the snow and put it in place of Oakland, San Francisco would be a ghost town in three weeks.

  I had heard it all before. You loved the city or you hated it, and facts didn’t have much to do with it. There used to be a lot more of the former than the latter, but lately I wasn’t sure. I stayed around mostly because I didn’t have any place to go or anyone to go there with.

  Sara slid back into the booth and I asked her if she had reached Claire Nelson. She told me she had.

  “Can you talk?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Shoot.”

  “Not yet,” she answered with a grin. “Not until you fulfill your part of the bargain.”

  “What bargain?”

  “The bargain to tell me why you’re not practicing law.”

  “It’s a dreary story,” I said and finished off my drink.

  “Come on.”

  “Okay, okay. I swore I would never practice law as long as Judge Charles Gooley was on the bench. Since the old cretin is still over there drooling all over his robes, I’m not playing lawyer.”

  “What did he do to you?”

  “Nothing. But he killed my client.”

  “I don’t believe it. Tell me.”

  “I’d rather not,” I said. The waiter was back and I ordered another drink.

  “Please? What was it about?”

  I usually didn’t go into it, but Sara was Sara and I was drunk and Harry was dead and what the hell difference did it make. Luther was dead, too. And I was on the way. Who cared?

  “Luther Fry was a retired seaman,” I began. “A cook with a little pension that paid the rent on a room in the old Mystic Hotel. He also had fourteen thousand dollars—his life savings from forty years of sailing on every ocean on the planet. It was all in the bank, compounding interest every day. Luther lived for one thing—for his money to build up to twenty-five thousand dollars, and then he was going to give the whole pile to his great-nephew, a kid named Frankie, to pay Frankie’s way through college and medical school.”

  “Nice,” Sara murmured.

  “Unfortunately, Luther got anxious. He was worried about inflation and afraid he might get sick and have to spend the money on doctors and hospitals, so he decided to hurry things along.”

  “Oh, no.”

  I nodded. “Somehow Luther found out about a meeting at the Palace Hotel. It was sponsored by a big brokerage house and the suede shoe boys swooped in to tell the nice folks all about the wonders of commodities futures. Luther went to the meeting and decided to invest in silver futures and double his money in a few weeks, like the man said, so he could give it to Frankie right away and have peace of mind. Luther went to see a broker and he told Luther the situation looked highly favorable, trading was active, the whole pitch. He took Luther’s dough and bought some contracts and the market started to drop and trades dried up and Luther ended up losing the original fourteen thousand plus owing the house three thousand more on his margin account.”

  “How terrible.”

  “But not unusual. People get screwed in the market every day. I think Luther would have survived if it had ended there. But Luther Fry came to me. He wanted to sue somebody, and so did I after I heard his story. So we filed against everyone in sight: the promoter, the broker, the brokerage house, the exchange. The case was assigned to Judge Gooley.

  “The other side hired the best attorneys in town, not because our case was so big, but because if they lost to Luther a lot of other people who had gone to those meetings might decide to sue. The big boys did what they always do. First they stalled. Then they took Luther’s deposition for twenty-two days. The old guy had hardly been north of Market in his life and they got him in a little room on the forty-eighth floor of the Bank of America building and threw questions at him about everything from his sex life to his recipe for clam chowder. They got hold of his tax returns and found some mistakes and they found out Luther had lied about his age when he joined the merchant marine and by the time it was over Luther was convinced he was going to lose his pension and be arrested for tax evasion.

  “It went on for four years. They hired detectives to trail Luther day and night, and they got court orders to search his room. They questioned his relatives and his friends until I’m sure they all thought Luther had committed a crime instead of the other way around. I tried to stop it, several times, but Judge Gooley never heard a word I said. Poor old Luther would sit there at the hearings and ask me why the judge wouldn’t let him tell his story and I tried to answer him in some way that made sense but finally I gave up because there wasn’t any way that made any sense. What made sense was that Judge Gooley and the senior partner of the firm that represented the broker played dominoes together every Friday night at the Pacific Union Club.”

  “So what happened?”

  “The day after I lost a motion to set the case for trial the defendants offered to settle for three thousand dollars. Nuisance value. I told Luther about it and advised him to refuse the deal. But he was afraid he was going to die, or that he’d lose the case and get nothing at all, so he made me accept the offer. Two days after I sent him the check they found Luther Fry dead in his little room in the Mystic Hotel, hanging
from the light fixture. The next day Frankie’s mother received a letter with the check for three grand and a note from Luther saying he was sorry it wasn’t more and telling Frankie to please use the money to study to become a doctor.”

  “That’s so sad, Marsh,” Sara whispered. I finished off my drink.

  “So I sued Judge Gooley. I accused him of causing the wrongful death of Luther Fry and asked for enough money so Frankie would get a full twenty-five thousand.

  “It was over quickly, of course. Gooley hired his domino partner to defend him and they moved to dismiss the case. The new judge, an old buddy of Gooley’s, granted the motion. Gooley was at the hearing, and when he suggested that maybe Luther shouldn’t have asked for his money back in the first place, I got a little crazy. I called Gooley unfit and senile and a disgrace to the law. I even called him a murderer once, they claimed. They cited me for contempt and tossed me in jail and suspended me from practice. When I wouldn’t apologize they kept me at San Bruno for six months. When I got out they lifted my suspension, but I’ve never practiced law since then and I never will.”

  Sara shook her head. I took her hand and squeezed it. She squeezed back.

  “Thank you for telling me,” she said. “I’m sorry for Luther and I’m sorry for you. You both deserved better.”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. It all seemed important at the time, one of those insignificant events that reveals a greater truth, and all that, but I’m not sure anymore. I know that if I had any guts I’d have stayed and fought the system from within, instead of bailing out the way I did. There’s not much of Roland Nelson’s perseverance in me, I guess.”

  “So you’ve heard that one, too?”

  I nodded. “But let’s talk about something that isn’t warmed-over mush. What did Claire have to say?”

  “Okay. I can tell you everything she knows, but you have to agree not to tell anyone else. Especially not Roland and Jackie.”

  “Promise.”

  “First of all, what she hired Mr. Spring to do didn’t have anything to do with Al Rodman.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Positive.”

  “Then what did it have to do with?”

  “Well, you know Claire is adopted, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “She was adopted when she was ten years old. Very late. Jackie and Roland got her from an orphanage up in Sacramento.”

  “So?”

  “So Claire hired Harry Spring to find out who her real parents are.”

  “You’re kidding. That’s it?”

  “That’s it. Really. Claire talked it all over with me before she did it. She felt very strongly that she needed to know who and where she came from. To gain some sense of personal identity.”

  “So all Harry was doing was tracking down her natural parents?”

  “Right. She hired a detective because it’s hard for her to get around and because she didn’t want Jackie or Roland to know what she was doing. She was afraid they’d be hurt if they knew. Especially Roland. She didn’t want to have him think she didn’t love him or wasn’t happy or anything. It’s a psychological thing. A lot of adoptees are making that kind of search these days.”

  “What leads did she have?”

  “Not much. The only thing she knew was the name of the orphanage in Sacramento.”

  “What is it?”

  “The Sister Mary Elizabeth Home for Orphans.”

  “Orphanage. Maybe that means her natural parents are dead.”

  “I don’t think so. Claire said she asked that one time and was told she was there because they had special facilities for crippled children.”

  “Had Harry found out anything?”

  “He never got back to Claire after their first meeting.”

  “Anything else to go on?”

  “No,” Sara said. She looked at me intently. “I don’t see how this could have anything to do with Mr. Spring’s death, do you?”

  “I don’t know; maybe he was mugged after all. I’m going to Oxtail tomorrow. Maybe I can find out something more.”

  “Can I go?”

  “Where?”

  “To Oxtail. Maybe I can help somehow. I used to know a lot of people there. Maybe I can learn something just by asking around.”

  “Maybe.”

  “What I want most is to be sure nothing’s going on that might harm Claire. I’m very attached to her, maybe because I don’t have children of my own. I’m old enough to be her mother and sometimes I feel like I am. It’s silly, I know,” she added.

  “I don’t think so,” I said.

  “I’m even getting a little nostalgic about old Oxtail.”

  “That’s probably a first.”

  “Probably. Can I go?”

  “I’ll check with Ruthie. If you don’t hear from me later tonight be ready to go by eight thirty. I’ll pick you up.”

  “Do you know where I live?”

  “Yes.” I didn’t tell her how.

  “Marsh, do you think Claire could be in danger?”

  “Possibly.”

  “It’s so hard to believe. All this violence. Mr. Spring’s death and those threats from that man Bollo. Things like that don’t happen in the real world. At least I thought they didn’t.”

  “Well, they do. Lots of times. And when they do we’re never ready,” I said.

  “There’s one thing I don’t understand,” Sara went on.

  “What?”

  “If Mr. Spring wasn’t checking up on Al Rodman, what was he doing in Oxtail?”

  I didn’t understand it either.

  THIRTEEN

  We had an early lunch in Modesto, then headed south down the San Joaquin Valley on Highway 99, through Turlock, Merced, Madera, and Fresno. A long trip and a dull one, unless you were interested in seeing how this country avoids scurvy.

  The road east out of Fresno eventually takes you to the Kings Canyon National Park. It crosses some of the most abundant soil on the planet, and just before it winds into the foothills of the Sierra Nevada and the Sequoia National Forest it splits the city of Oxtail like a cleaver.

  By the time Oxtail was in sight the temperature was nudging one hundred degrees and I could have cooked an omelette on the dashboard. The steering wheel was hot and greasy under my palms. Someone had started playing darts on the back of my right eyeball.

  Ruthie and Sara didn’t notice the heat. They spent the whole trip chatting away about their childhood adventures. Ruthie had raised a raccoon and collected paper dolls and Sara had lived across the street from a lunatic and played the saxophone. Neither of them seemed interested in my pets or my neighbors.

  We passed a sign that said Oxtail was a great place to grow. It didn’t say what. Then the table-flat fields gave way to squat, dingy buildings which floated like a wino’s nightmare out of the shimmering waves of heat.

  It was a typical valley town. The cars in the used car lots were painted like ten-dollar whores and the dirt in the schoolyards was baked harder than an airport runway. Neon beer signs in the tavern windows twinkled dimly, struggling to be seen through grease as thick as frosting. The only people on the streets had skins darker than my ancestors had ever seen.

  Oxtail existed for only one purpose—to collect the produce grown on the surrounding farms and ship it on to someplace else as rapidly as possible. As a consequence, the city seemed built more for trucks than for people. Brightly painted and polished like gems, bearing provocative names like Peterbilt, Kenworth, and Mack, the giant semis rolled in and out of town from all directions, hauling everything from carrots to onions, from lettuce to strawberries, stopping only to feed at mammoth truck stops or nest near loading sheds as long as football fields.

  There was nothing pretty about the Oxtail link in the chain of commerce. Foods that would look delicate and tasty in a fine restaurant were ugly and misshapen and seemed vaguely carnivorous while lying in giant storage bins or open truck trailers. The streets were littered with rotting vegetables f
allen from careening trucks and the air was sharp with the smell of overripe fruit, the smell of things well past their prime. Things like me.

  I wondered how a girl like Sara Brooke had endured her years in Oxtail. She would have been tracked like a bobcat by pimpled boys with hair as slick as seaweed, tracked until she was treed or was too exhausted to resist. The school hall would have been as private as a burlesque runway. She would have heard a hundred obscenities whispered behind unwashed hands and felt those hands paw her body like an addled child during endless, floating hours in parked cars and dark parlors, where desire would escalate the participants toward adult sex with the inevitability of a sunrise. It was a complex existence, peculiar to attractive young girls in forlorn towns, a life of awesome power and awesome vulnerability, and it scarred many women for life.

  I looked over at Sara. She was staring out the window, her hands clasped in her lap. I couldn’t see her face. “Memories?” I asked.

  “A few.”

  “Good ones?”

  “A few.”

  We drove several more blocks and I asked Sara how to get to the sheriff’s office. She told me it was at the other end of town. As we passed a large brick building that sat behind a sign that read Oxtail Community Hospital an idea bobbed up like a cork. I asked Ruthie if she remembered telling me that Harry had come here to check some hospital records. She said she thought that was what he’d said. I asked Sara if she knew anyone who worked in the hospital.

  “I used to know the head nurse,” she said, “and a couple of the doctors.”

  “Would you mind talking to them and seeing if Harry got there and if so what he was looking for?”

  “Sure. Why don’t you let me out right here?”

  I pulled to the side of the road and Sara got out. Down the street I saw a sign advertising the Deadeye Cafe. I told Sara we would meet her there at three. She gave me directions to the sheriff’s office and I drove on through town. It didn’t take long.