by Buffa, D. W.
After a short pause, I asked, "You knew all along, didn't you?"
"You had to come back," he said. "Sooner or later. You needed to be away for a while, but you were never ready to quit for good. It's in your blood. You'd miss it too much. It's like war. Everybody grows to hate it, but when there hasn't been one for a while, everybody forgets what it's really like and they start to look for the first excuse to start a new one."
I hoped he was wrong and was almost certain he was right. In trial work the only thing that mattered was whether you won or lost. Now, after everything that had happened, I thought it made a difference whether you deserved to win.
During the next few hectic days I dealt with the prosaic details of beginning for the second time in my life a new practice, limited, at least for the moment, to a single case. How young and naive I had been the first time I looked for office space, certain I was about to embark on a career in which every defendant was innocent and none of them was ever convicted. How quickly it had all passed. Before I knew it, I was staring out the window of my corner office, a senior partner in the fastest growing firm in the city, watching the sun set on Mount Hood, wondering how things might have been had I remained an anonymous lawyer conferring with a clientele of indigent defendants in a dimly lit two-room office with a used desk and a couple of borrowed chairs. It was, I suppose, a form of middle-age self-indulgence, the vague regret at vanished innocence, the knowledge that the prize is never quite what you thought it was going to be.
I had no desire to make my second beginning like the first, however; the days of Spartan simplicity were over. I rented a four-room suite in a modern building several blocks from the courthouse, filled it with oriental rugs and expensive furniture, and then realized I had no idea what to do next. Helen Lundgren, my secretary for more than a dozen years, had always taken care of everything. As I now discovered, my dependence had been so habitual that I had not even thought of her until I needed her.
The telephones had just been hooked up, and the first call I made was to my old firm.
"You could have called before this, you know," she scolded. "You're not drinking again, are you? You haven't done anything stupid, have you? You're not... ?"
"No, I'm fine. Just fine. I'm opening up a law practice."
"The criminals will be glad to hear it," she said sharply, still certain there was no such thing as a false accusation or an honest mistake.
"I was wondering—hoping, actually. Would you be interested in working for me again? I know you've been with the firm a long time, but I could really use the help."
Her voice sank to a conspiratorial whisper. "You know what they have me doing here? I prepare estate planning documents. Trusts, things like that. You have any idea how dull that is?" she asked plaintively. "You have any idea how much I miss murder and rape and all the things we used to do? When can I start?"
"How much notice do you have to give?"
"I'll give them what they deserve. I can start tomorrow."
Helen was waiting for me the next morning, one bony knee crossed over the other, if anything even thinner than she had been before. Her hair had a little more gray in it, and there were a few more lines at the corners of her eyes.
"How's your husband?" I asked, as I sat down behind the desk.
"Still the luckiest man alive," she replied briskly.
"I'd sort of hoped you might have changed a little," I said, leaning back in the chair as I tried to suppress a grin.
"No, you didn't," she retorted. "Shall we get to work?"
By the end of the week it at least looked like a law office. Someone Helen found worked all day and, it seemed, straight through the night, constructing bookshelves on two facing walls in the room that now became both a conference room and a library. Without a word between us, Helen made all the arrangements to bring out of storage the law books I owned, and the morning after the shelves were finished she was standing on a stepladder placing each volume of the Oregon Reporter in its proper chronological place. Though she always treated my offers to help like an invitation to abuse, I made one anyway.
"If you want something done right," she replied, lifting the next volume with both hands, "you have to do it yourself." She could retrieve every known homily at will and recite it as if she had never heard it before.
"When it's convenient," I drawled, as I headed for my office, "would you put a call in to the DA's office?"
The door closed and the buzzer on my console rang. "Who do you want there?"
On the front right corner of my desk, a glass bud vase held a single red rose. Neither the vase nor the flower had been there the day before. "Thank you for the flower."
She ignored me. "Who do you want me to get on the line?"
"Marshall Goodwin."
Goodwin was not in, but two hours later he called back. "Joseph Antonelli!" he exclaimed, with the same exuberance he lavished on perfect strangers. "Did I hear your secretary right? Law offices of Joseph Antonelli! So you're back at it? Great! What can I do for you?"
He seemed surprised when I invited him to lunch, and even, I thought, a little ill at ease. Was it because of the line that was drawn so frequently between prosecutors and defense lawyers, a line that discouraged social contact? Or was it something else?
"There's something I'd really like to talk to you about," I said, when he hesitated.
"Sure, I'd love to," he replied, reverting to his normal enthusiasm.
We met the next day at a fish restaurant a block off Burnside and sat in a wooden booth near the back. Dressed in a paisley tie and a neatly pressed double breasted suit, Goodwin smiled at the waitress as he ordered a drink and kept his eye on her while she walked away.
"Nice," he remarked, turning back to me. "Don't you think?"
"A little young," I replied.
"So, tell me," he said, his eyes full of apparent interest. "What made you decide to come back?"
"I thought it was time," I said, looking back at him.
It was a strange feeling—or, rather, it was strange that I seemed to have no feeling at all. I'm not sure what I expected. I had defended dozens of people charged with murder, most of them guilty, almost all of them acquitted. But a trial, even for murder, is like watching a play, one of Shakespeare's histories, in which all the violence takes place offstage. The victim is dead, and no matter how depraved the manner of the death, it happened far away from the ornate civilities of a courtroom. This seemed different and, in a peculiar way, more real. I was face to face with someone who might be a murderer and did not even know he was a suspect.
"I never had a chance to tell you," I remarked solemnly, "how sorry I was about what happened to your wife."
He looked away, as if he was not sure how he should respond. "It was a long time ago," he said finally. Brightening, he changed the subject. "Now, tell me," he asked earnestly. "What are you going to do? I have a hard time imagining you doing anything as dull as civil work. Or are you back to criminal defense?"
"I'm going to prosecute," I replied evenly.
He had just started to take another drink, and he laughed. "You're going to what?"
"I've been appointed a special prosecutor in a murder case," I explained. "You know the statute."
"Oh, sure, sure," he said. "When a county doesn't have anyone with the right expertise or experience. Well, I never thought I'd see you trying to put someone away," he went on, as he lifted his glass. "Welcome to the club."
The waitress returned and, one at a time, dealt onto the table the dishes we had ordered. Goodwin rattled the ice in his empty glass and ordered another. As he raised his hand, I noticed his watch, a thin crushed gold band and a flat jade stone face with two narrow hands to measure the minute and the hour. It was the simple elegance of understated luxury, and I could not take my eyes off it.
"I bought it for myself," he remarked, pulling his sleeve back until the watch was completely exposed. "Last year, when I turned forty, I had it made."
"I d
idn't realize deputy district attorneys did so well."
"So where is the case you've got?" he asked, pretending to be interested. "Do you have to go out to one of those one-horse counties where they've only got two lawyers in the DA's office?" The smile on his face left no doubt what
he thought of anyone who had to work outside the only city in the state that counted.
"No, the case is right here."
"Here? Portland? That's impossible."
"They've reopened the case, Marshall."
"What case?"
"The case of your wife's murder." I leaned against the hard wooden back of the booth, waiting to see what he would do. He did not react like a husband who had lost his wife but like a lawyer confronted with a technical question of law.
"She was killed in Corvallis. The case would be brought there, not here."
"Your wife was murdered in Corvallis. The conspiracy to have her killed took place right here, in Portland—just a few blocks from here, as a matter of fact."
He studied me through narrowed eyes. "Just a few blocks away? What are you telling me, somebody planned her murder? Why?"
"I thought maybe you could tell me."
He started to shake his head and then stopped. His eyes opened wide. "What do you mean?"
"Travis Quentin confessed. He told the police everything. How you had him brought to your office, how you dropped all the charges against him, how you had an envelope delivered to him the day he got out of the county jail with instructions about where to find her and where to find the money you were paying him."
A look of astonishment spread across his face. "And that's the reason you were appointed a special prosecutor?"
Sliding out of the booth, he threw his napkin down on the table and shook his head. "You've got a major problem on your hands, Antonelli."
"What's that?"
"I didn't do it."
Chapter Six
"What else was he going to say?" I asked, as Horace glowered at me.
"Why did you let him say anything? What was the point?
"I wanted to see his reaction when he heard it for the first time. Before he had time to think about what he was going to say."
I was sprawled on a chair in front of Horace's desk. He was on the other side of the room, pouring a cup of
coffee. "Sure you don't want some?" he asked, as he sank into the leather chair behind the desk. Cautiously, he brought the chipped mug to his mouth. "It's been a long day." He sighed. "The motion calendar was murder. Everybody always has to make their record. Sometimes, I think that's all we do on the bench, read the same canned briefs, listen to the same tired arguments from a bunch of hollow-eyed lawyers too scared of making a mistake to say or write anything original, or even halfway interesting."
He started to take another sip, and then changed his mind, his eyes full of malicious wonder. "You should have seen it," he said. "One of those guys from the public defender's office—you know the type: washed-out white guys with terminal depression—is droning on and on, making an argument on a motion to suppress, repeating almost verbatim what he had written in his brief."
With a merciless talent for mimicry, Horace let his head sag to the side as he dragged his eyes listlessly around the
room, darting them away each time they were about to land on me. " 'This issue was decided three years ago in the case of... ,' " he said, imitating an exhausted voice that spoke only at the end of each labored exhaled breath.
His head snapped up. "I couldn't help myself," he explained. " 'Isn't that the case that was just overruled?' " I asked. For the first time he actually looked at me. Christ, it was like watching a corpse get a transfusion, blood rising into his face. I turned to the deputy DA. He didn't know anything either, but you don't think he was going to admit it, do you? Hell, no!" he roared.
" 'Is that your recollection, Mr. Krueger?' I asked. The little weasel! He answers, 'I'm sure your Honor's memory
is better than my own.' "
Horace shook his large graying head with sad-eyed derision. "I turned back to the public defender. 'And what's your recollection, counselor?' Now, if he had stood his ground, if he had been prepared, if he really knew what he was talking about, he could have said, 'No, your Honor, the case has not been overruled, it's still good law.' Instead, all he can do is fumble around, letting everyone see he thinks the case he's relying on isn't good anymore."
Holding his mug with both hands, Horace quietly sipped some coffee. Under half-closed eyes he stared at something in the distance. "There used to be a few lawyers around who didn't spend all their time worrying about themselves," he said pensively. "Not so many years ago, a DA would have corrected me immediately. That it didn't help his case wouldn't have mattered. We were all supposed to follow the law, and it didn't matter whether correcting someone else's mistake cost you a temporary advantage."
I pulled myself up in the chair. "Things change."
His mouth turned down at the corners as he thought about it a moment. "I haven't seen too many changes that were for the better, have you?"
We were looking at each other, caught in our different memories of the past and the things that had altered our lives forever. "I suppose not," I replied.
Horace turned away, his hands in his lap, his two dead legs spread apart, watching out the window. "It's all an illusion," he said presently. "The whole idea of progress. The important things haven't changed. They never will." His voice was barely audible.
"Do you believe him?" Horace asked suddenly. "Goodwin?" His face turned slightly to the side, away from the outside light. "You still think he might be telling the truth?"
"I'm not sure I'm ready to take this to trial, Horace," I admitted.
Shifting his weight, he pulled the chair closer to the desk and rested both arms on top of it. "When I was DA, there were times when I wasn't absolutely sure. Sometimes there was a question, something that bothered me about it." He studied me for a moment. "You never had that problem, did you? You never had to worry about whether the defendant was really guilty. I worried about it all the time. It's the worst thing there is, that fear that you might convict someone for something they didn't do. Everybody can talk all they want about letting the jury decide. You're the one who gets to lie awake in the middle of the night wondering if you made a mistake. Winning is supposed to be the only thing that matters, but let me tell you something: there were a few cases I didn't mind losing."
Searching his eyes, I asked, "You don't have any doubt about Goodwin?"
"I'm not prosecuting this case. You're the one who has to decide." With both hands, Horace pushed himself out of the chair. "Sure you don't want some?" he asked, as he walked in his rigid stride toward the metal coffeepot on the other side of the room. After refilling his cup, he moved toward a black-and white photograph in a simple black wooden frame hanging on the wall next to where the bookshelves ended.
"That was us," he remarked, tapping his knuckle against it. There were twenty or thirty men and women, each of them wearing an identical T-shirt. "Woolner's Warriors." He laughed. "We were in a softball league. Slow pitch,"
he explained. "I was the manager, I guess because I could yell louder than anybody else. That's Goodwin, right next
to me. He was maybe the best athlete on the team. He could run like a deer." His head moved back and forth like a fighter's. "You know, I liked him. I really did."
I got up and went over to where he stood. "Kristin in it?" I asked, moving closer until the photograph was right in front of me. I found her, second from the left in the back row, about as far away from Goodwin as possible. Everyone in the photograph worked in the district attorney's office, and nearly half of them were women, but there was something in her large dark eyes that drew you toward her and, when you looked away, made you want to look back.
