Beyond Blame

by Stephen Greenleaf

  The walkway to the entrance was lined with bicycles and mopeds and students recumbent in the courtyard. The first-floor halls were dark and hollow, the offices opening off of them busy but exclusive, a warren of special interests: the Black American Law Students Association, the Asian Law Caucus, the La Raza Law Students League, the Berkeley Law School Lesbian and Gay Alliance, Christians at Berkeley Law and the National Lawyers Guild.

  The bulletin boards bore announcements for the Women’s Law Journal, the International Tax and Business Lawyer and the Ecology Law Quarterly. Hand-lettered notices advertised upcoming speeches by Gary Hart and Barbara Jordan, an address by an anonymous someone entitled “Animals and the Law,” and the opening of the Bay Area Sexual Harassment Clinic. A tiny note on the door of a phone booth requested a ride to Reno. A formal document proclaimed that all seniors must be fingerprinted before they would be allowed to take the bar examination. Next to the phone booth at the end of the hall the wheels of a dozen bicycles were chained into concrete envelopes.

  I went up two flights of stairs and found the administrative and faculty offices. The directory listed Lawrence Usser’s office in room 328. I was looking for a clue to where that was when I noticed a small table next to the door to the dean’s office, just below a shadowy oil portrait of some robed and ancient personage the school evidently had reason to be proud of. The man looked much too mean to do anything but teach. I bet myself his specialty was tax.

  The sign dangling from the edge of the table read LAWRENCE USSER DEFENSE FUND. The young man sitting behind it looked young enough to be in grade school and mischievous enough to be doing something illegal with the money he collected. His shaggy blond hair was the brightest object I’d seen inside the building.

  When I walked over to him, he looked up at me with an evangelist’s fervor. “Faculty contributions are welcome, sir,” he said.

  “I’m just a visitor.”

  “Do you know Professor Usser?”

  “A little. How about you?”

  “I’m his junior research assistant.” He announced the title with a nicely controlled pride that still managed to let me know that the position was something special.

  “Then you must know him pretty well.”

  He shrugged. “Not really. Mostly I take my orders from Krista. Krista Hellgren, she’s his senior assistant. Krista likes to keep the professor to herself.” He knew the remark was catty, and he was a bit embarrassed by it, but all the same he left it dangling beside a boyish grin that denied his capacity for guile. I asked him his name.

  “Danny Wilken. You go to school here, sir?”

  I shook my head, flattered by being mistaken for someone who was pursuing knowledge rather than miscreants.

  “Are you a lawyer?”

  “Used to be,” I said. “Not anymore.”

  “What do you do now? Business?”

  “Sort of,” I said, suddenly suspecting that Danny was setting me up for a plea for a summer job. “How are collections going?” I asked quickly.

  His grin turned appropriately rueful, but I guessed he was not totally immobilized by his mentor’s predicament. “Sort of slow, I guess. The thing is, no one around here can believe they arrested the professor. I think they all assume it’s just a big mistake, cops hassling him because of the work he does and stuff, and that he’ll be released any day. But Krista thinks we’d better be safe than sorry. So far we’ve got a hundred and fifty bucks. From what I hear, that’ll buy Jake Hattie for thirty minutes.”

  The kid’s expression indicated that his life’s ambition was to get where Jake Hattie was. I couldn’t blame him. If I’d been as good as Jake, I’d still be practicing law myself.

  “Who are Usser’s friends on the faculty?” I asked. “Maybe you should make a personal pitch to them.”

  “Well, he and Grunig were tight for a while, but I heard they had some kind of fight. The only other one I know of is Ms. Howson, but she, I don’t know, I wouldn’t want to be the one to hit her up for bread. She eats guys like me alive. And I got her for Advanced Alimony next term.” Danny wriggled inside his numbered jersey, as though the gesture would dislodge her from his course schedule.

  “What course is that?” I asked.

  “Family Law 102.”

  I smiled. “Surely Usser has friends other than Ms. Howson around here.”

  “Well, if you go by what you hear, he has a lot of them, at least after dark.” He gave me a crooked leer that italicized his meaning. “But I just work for the guy. He’s not a god to me like he is to some of them. To me he’s just another line on the résumé. That and an 84 average will get me to Wall Street.”

  Another student walked past the table and Danny waved at him, then glanced at his watch. “I got to get to class. So what do you say, sir? If what Krista thinks is true, the professor’s going to run up legal fees the size of the federal deficit. How about making a contribution?”

  Danny could have raised money for seal slaughterers. And would have if the pay was right. I wondered what tall tale he had told Usser to get himself hired to assist him.

  I reached into my wallet and pulled out a twenty and gave it to the kid, more for my own sake than for Usser’s. Danny Wilken’s ersatz aspect might be of use to me somewhere down the line. Certainly it would be of use to him, masking as it did the skills that much lawyering demands—craft, cunning and a duplicity that comes as naturally as breath.

  Danny thanked me and stuck the bill into the metal box on the table in front of him. I asked him how to get to Usser’s office. He pointed the way, then looked at me and winked. “You won’t find him in, though. Old Larry’s new office has bars on it.”

  I left Danny Wilken chuckling at his own black wit and followed his directions to Usser’s office. It was down a long narrow corridor, its walls an egg-yolk yellow, its floor an underwater green. Shelves of legal reporters and law reviews lined the path—the professors’ private stock.

  I read numbers until I read the one I wanted. The name on the door said simply USSER. The bulletin board next to it was posted with the grades to Criminal Procedure 201. Someone had gotten a 96. Someone else had gotten a 52. Below the grade list were a political cartoon that maligned the U.S. Supreme Court and a glowing review of Usser’s latest book, excerpted from The California Lawyer. Below the review, someone had altered a snapshot of Usser so that it mimicked a mug shot.

  I knocked on the door and listened for an answer. Surprisingly, I heard one. It told me to come in.

  I opened the door and entered a small anteroom that was reminiscent of the one at my own office. A plain, somewhat startled woman sat behind the desk that protruded from a wall. She eyed me with what looked like trepidation. A dishwater blonde, she was simply and inexpensively dressed, the light in her eyes a few watts short of adequate. “May I help you?” she asked in a voice that aped a sigh, a voice I’d heard over the telephone five days before.

  I suddenly realized I didn’t know what I’d come for. Usser wasn’t there, and whomever I questioned about him would want some sort of reason to talk with me. As my mind spun toward a gambit, the woman across the desk seemed to shiver, my uncertainty augmenting her own.

  “I was wondering,” I began, “who is looking after Mr. Usser’s academic affairs while he is, ah, away?”

  She bit a lip and hesitated, so I prattled on. “There’s a faculty meeting tomorrow, and I need to know if Professor Usser planned any input.” I tried to assume an avuncular aspect, but it’s not one of my best disguises.

  She responded bravely. “I believe Ms. Howson has taken over Professor Usser’s classes, with the help of Dr. Lonborg, and will give the final exam. Ms. Hellgren is in charge of his research projects, I think. I don’t know of anything he prepared for the faculty.” She closed her eyes as though she feared her response would provoke a scolding.

  “How about the matters he consults in? Lawsuits and the like?”

  “I believe you should speak with Dr. Lonborg about that.” />
  “Is he here today?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Then …” I shrugged.

  “Well, perhaps Mr. Grunig would know, though I’m not sure he …”

  I nodded. “Yes, there was some trouble there, wasn’t there? Silly business.”

  She nodded in return, apprehension still rising off her in almost visible clouds. She was probably attractive when she wasn’t frightened, but I guessed she wasn’t attractive often enough for her to count on it. I asked if she knew where I could find Ms. Hellgren, Usser’s research assistant.

  She frowned and glanced at the clock on the wall. “I believe she’s in class till noon. She usually spends the rest of the day in the library. She has a carrel. Let’s see.” She looked at a sheet of paper that was taped to the top corner of her desk. “It’s number 209.”

  I thanked her for the information. “Have you worked here long?” I asked, eyeing the nameplate on her desk, the one that read LAURA NIFTON. “I don’t remember seeing you around the school before, but your name is familiar.”

  “Not too long,” she murmured. “I … my brother … that is …”

  She was about to get it straight and I was about to remember where I’d heard the name when the door behind me opened. The woman looking in at us was the opposite of the one behind the desk. Composed, coiffed, suited and svelte, she was an accomplished aggressor in every inch of her being and she was issuing orders before she got into the room. “Laura, I need—”

  When she noticed me she stopped short. “What is this?”

  Laura was frightened again, as though someone had thrown a switch. “A teacher, Ms. Howson. He—”

  “He’s not a teacher. At least not here. Who is he?”

  The question wasn’t aimed at me but I let it hit me anyway. “The name’s Tanner. I’m a private investigator looking into the death of Dianne Renzel. I—”

  “Grilling Laura won’t tell you anything about that at all,” the woman interrupted.

  I smiled easily. “Then what will?”

  She eyed me as though I sported sores. “I’m Elmira Howson. Come with me,” she ordered, then turned her stare to Laura. “Professor Usser is under arrest, as you know. Thus a legal privilege may well attach to all of his affairs. Discuss them with no one, Laura. No one. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, Ms. Howson.”

  “If someone persists in questioning you, call me immediately or send someone to find me. That Wilken boy or someone. By no means leave visitors alone in these offices. Understand?”

  “Yes, Ms. Howson.”

  “It’s possible the police will show up with a warrant. Thanks to those fascists on the court, the Fifth Amendment has been written out of the Constitution. Still, one must hold out for brighter days. If the police do appear, do not show them anything until you locate me. Or Dean Randolph. You know from your own experience how the police can be. Right, Laura?”

  Laura nodded dumbly.

  “Very well. Let’s be sure they don’t do it to Professor Usser, okay?”

  “Yes, Ms. Howson. Ms. Howson?”

  “Yes, Laura?”

  “Dr. Lonborg has been calling to ask what the faculty is doing about Professor Usser. What should I tell him?”

  “Tell him that as usual the faculty is doing nothing constructive. Tell him, in fact, that the faculty finally has Lawrence Usser exactly where they want him. But I’m sure he knows that already. Just tell Adam to talk to me. Is that all?”

  “Yes, Ms. Howson.”

  The woman nodded curtly, pivoted like a sergeant major and marched out of the room without another word. I followed along as best I could, making a silent vow to try to talk with Laura Nifton once again, in a place less cowing than the bowels of the Berkeley Law School and the umbra of Elmira Howson’s heavy stare.

  TWELVE

  Professor Howson was tall and trim, with a square jaw, a high cheek, a thin lip and an aquiline nose that hinted of royal genes. Her hair was short, with a slight wave that sent auburn streaks across her forehead in the style of a current vice-presidential candidate. Her eyes gleamed with a glint of purpose that I suspected was both perpetual and grandiose.

  Her martinet’s stride led me back to the main hallway, then to a narrow staircase, then to a small, militantly tidy office on the floor above. There were no windows, no skylights, no hint of the often lawless world that festered outside the book-lined walls. I guessed that was exactly the way she wanted it.

  She sat behind her desk and pointed to my assigned seat. As I was getting comfortable her phone rang. She picked it up and spoke in short, sharp phrases, her side of the conversation an impatient rattle.

  The subject seemed to be the spring graduation exercises. The speaker chosen by the senior class was not a lawyer or a judge but a comedian, best known for his late-night television appearances and his bawdy, manic chatter. He was not acceptable to the faculty. A student protest march was threatened, even a strike. Ms. Howson made it clear that she thought the faculty should reverse its stand. The person on the other end of the line disagreed, vehemently enough for me to hear the muffled moans. The conversation surged and waned, then surged again. I looked around the office.

  The books were mostly about domestic relations matters. The diplomas were from Oberlin and Michigan Law. The certificates of admission were to the bar of the U.S. Supreme Court and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. She was a member of the American Bar Association and the Association of Woman Law Professors. Her interest in art was nonexistent, and was any evidence that she had a personal life that included a spouse or a child. Which made her like a priest, a specialist in matters of the family who had no family of her own. The telephone debate raged onward, until Professor Howson hung up the phone as though she was trying to stun it into a permanent silence.

  “This place is a zoo,” she muttered. “A bureaucratic joke. It’s so reactionary it makes Ed Meese look like Karl Marx.” She shook her head with disgust. “Bees arrange themselves more sensibly than this. I’m Elmira Howson. I teach Family Law and related obsolescences.”

  “Marsh Tanner.”

  She nodded crisply. “In what capacity are you looking into the Usser case?”

  It was a question I’d been dodging for what seemed like a year. I tried to dodge again. “I can’t name my client at this time. All I can tell you is I’m trying to learn what happened and why.”

  She nodded and thought about it. “Since Larry’s already in jail, it doesn’t make sense that you’d be working against his interests. I mean, the police already have that side taken care of. My guess is it’s the parents. Right?”

  I gave off no more than a knowing smile, or so I hoped.

  “Okay,” she went on. “So the Ussers hired you to try to get Larry off. I don’t have any problem with that. Or maybe you’re working for Jake Hattie. It doesn’t matter. What do you want to know? What have you found out? And what did Laura tell you back there?”

  No one asks questions more expertly than law professors, and these were assembly-line products—precise, relentless, slick. I found myself sweating the way I had sweated a quarter century before, when the questions involved the requisites of a binding contract or the nuances of proximate cause, and seemed far beyond an answer. “Laura told me nothing,” I began. “You got to her before I had a chance to pump her.”

  Ms. Howson frowned dubiously. “Are you sure? Laura’s unfit for that job, of course. Larry hired her out of pity—she’s the sister of one of his causes. He defended her brother in a murder case and got him acquitted on insanity grounds. When he got out of Napa he stopped by his sister’s place to get his clothes and rip off all her money before he hit the streets. Larry gave her a job because he mistakenly feels responsible for his client’s heartlessness. Laura’s a harmless little waif, I suppose. But I should probably get her out of Larry’s office before she gives away the store to the first cop who shows up.”

  “You mean you’re afraid there’s something incrimin
ating in Usser’s office?”

  The professor groused as though I’d cited an irrelevant code section. “I’m not saying that at all. I’m just saying as a matter of principle the police shouldn’t be allowed to walk into a law professor’s office and ransack his private papers.”

  “Even a law professor who killed his wife?”

  I thought it might get a rise out of her but all it got was a mild irritation. “Don’t be ridiculous. Why would Larry do that?”

  “I don’t know. You tell me.”

  “Any problems Larry was having with Dianne could be resolved in a divorce court. There’s no reason on earth why it should have led to more than that.”

  “Even if she was sleeping around on him? Even if she’d found a lover?”

  She eyed me levelly and made me squirm. “I have reason to believe that whether Dianne did or did not have a lover was of no interest at all to Larry.”

  “Why? Because he had one of his own?”

  She smiled lazily, incomprehensibly flirtatious, though only for an instant. “What makes you think that?”

  “Hints. His sexuality seems to float over like a blimp every time his name is mentioned.”

  Elmira Howson touched her forefinger to her lips and considered me and my mission. “Do you really think the murder has something to do with Larry’s sex life?” she asked after a moment. “Or Dianne’s, for that matter?”

  I shrugged. “She was nude, she was ready for seduction or appeared to be, her sexual organs were mutilated. It seems as good a line of inquiry as any.”

  She nodded twice, then shrugged. “I know nothing at all about his wife’s behavior, carnal or otherwise.”

  “Okay. Let’s stick to the professor. Was he sexually active outside the marriage?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know that for certain?”