Prosecution: A Legal Thriller

by Buffa, D. W.

  The kitchen door flew open and the maid was suddenly standing before us, clutching the empty tray. "That should just about do it, Gloria," Horace said. "Just this last batch," he added, swinging his eyes around to the chicken still roasting on the grill.

  "The salads, Mr. Woolner," she reminded him.

  Horace rolled his eyes and shook his head. "I'd forget my legs if they weren't strapped on."

  Without a word, she followed him to the double-door stainless steel refrigerator and held up her tray. He put two large ceramic bowls on it and hesitated with a third bowl in his hand.

  "I can take it," she assured him.

  Dropping his chin, he raised an eyebrow.

  "Really." She laughed, struggling to keep the two bowls balanced on the tray.

  Horace looked over her head and caught my eye. I put my drink down on the counter. Horace pulled the bowl he was holding away from her. "Mr. Antonelli here is a librarian and he could use the exercise," he explained, as he placed his hand gently on her shoulder and turned her toward the door. She went on her way. Horace handed me two bowls from the refrigerator and took the last two himself.

  We were an incongruous parade, a short white maid, followed by a fairly tall white man in a dark suit, both of us dwarfed by a black man the size of a tree. The crowd seemed to be larger and more tightly packed together, everyone talking at the same time. We could have walked in naked and no one would have noticed.

  As soon as I found room on the table, Horace's hand grabbed my shirt and pulled me away. I followed him back into the kitchen. "What'd I tell you?" he asked, as he took off the apron and, crumpling it up, tossed it without looking inside the pantry. "Alma's idea of a dinner party.

  "Here, look at this!" he exclaimed as he led me over to the kitchen window. The Woolners' condominium was in a high-rise building at the southern edge of the city, less than six blocks from the courthouse, with a view of downtown Portland and the river that had once marked its boundary and now divided it in half.

  "What do you see down there? You see any people? Of course you don't. Every last son-of-a-bitch in the goddamn city is here tonight. Open house at the Woolners". Three homeless guys showed up about an hour ago. Threw their ass right out. You gotta draw the line somewhere."

  He reached inside the refrigerator, got another bottle of beer, and opened it. He took a long swig, and then he started to relax. "It's a hell of a party, don't you think?" he asked eagerly. "Alma loves this kind of thing," he added, his voice sinking into a husky whisper.

  Slowly, he settled down. His breathing became quieter, more measured. Behind me, through the closed kitchen door, the din raged on. "Let's get out of here," Horace suggested. "I could use some air. You can tell me all about your new life as a prosecutor." We took an elevator down to the lobby. The doorman jumped to his feet and held open the glass front door. Horace nodded as we passed.

  On the side of the building closest to the river, an iron bench faced a small two-tiered fountain that stood on top of a mound of earth covered with flowers. We sat down and watched the broad river below, running north under the steel bridges until it merged with the Columbia and ran with it to the sea. The outline of Mount Hood shimmered in the silver light of the moon. The only sound was a distant hum from the freeway running along the other side of the river.

  My gaze ran from the river to the mountain and back again. I remembered the night I took Alexandra to Leopold Rifkin's home, the night we ended up on the walkway next to the river, not far from where I was now. It was the night I knew I was in love with her, the night I told her I wanted to marry her.

  "You want to know who your judge is going to be?"

  It took me a moment to realize Horace had spoken. "What?" I asked, turning away from the river and all the things it had left behind.

  There were times Horace could read my mind. "You still think about her, don't you?"

  "Not as much as I used to," I said, shrugging.

  He pretended to believe me. "Somebody else will come along." He stopped himself with a short, rueful laugh. "That's a lie. If something happened to Alma? I don't think somebody else would come along. It couldn't happen. There isn't anybody else for me. Without her... " His voice trailed off, and the thought, wrapped up in silence, finished itself.

  "You said something about a judge?"

  His eyes widened and he began to chuckle. "It's your lucky day, counselor. You get a black judge, Irma Holloway, from down in Eugene. You know how many black people there are in this state?"

  "No."

  "I'll tell you how many." Furrowing his forehead, he spread open his left hand and began to count on his fingers. "Let's see. There's me, of course. Then there's Irma, and then there's—oh, hell, what's that guy's name?" He looked across at me. "You know, that guy that always shows up on TV as the obligatory ' "black spokesman' "? Irma must have voted for him, "cause I know I didn't. Now, who else?"

  "What about Alma?"

  He pulled back his closed mouth and narrowed his eyes. "Never been too sure. She's only half. Her father was white. Anyway, my point is that with hardly any minority population at all, you have these black judges. You imagine what it would have been like, not here, but someplace like Mississippi or Alabama, an all-white jury sitting there, and the door swings open and a black judge comes walking in? Twelve heart attacks! But not here. Most every jury I have is all white, and no one ever thinks twice about it. At least I don't think they do. You ever try a case in front of her?"

  "No, I don't think so."

  His eyebrows shot straight up. "You'd remember if you had. You look cross-eyed in her courtroom, she'd just as soon come off the bench and knock you upside the head. Little bitty thing too. Skinny, scrawny, with big bad eyes looking at you like you did something wrong and she's the only one who knows it. I can just see her standing up on her tiptoes, grabbing some jerk-faced kid by the ear, pulling him off somewhere, and just beating the hell out of him. Reminds me of my own mother," he said, laughing. "Just like her."

  "Is she good?"

  His eyebrows shot up again, and he looked at me, sizing me up. "You'll enjoy it. I'm not so sure about Richard Lee Jones." A grin spread across his face. "He's a real piece of work, isn't he?"

  His feet spread to the width of his shoulders, Horace hunched forward, resting his arms on his artificial legs. Reaching down, he picked up a pebble and, flicking his wrist, sent it flashing into the darkness. He reached for another one, raised up, turned his shoulder, and sent this one winging over the top of the fountain. Draping both elbows over the bench behind him, Horace sat back and stared into the night. "Is it working out?" he asked. "Are you able to work during the day and study in the evening?"

  "Let's just say that Aristotle was hard enough when there wasn't anything else I had to think about," I replied, with a rueful laugh.

  He turned to me with a grin. "So tell me, what have you learned from Aristotle that's going to help you with this case?"

  I thought about it for a moment."Nothing from Aristotle, at least not directly, but there is something in Hobbes. You know that famous phrase, life in a state of nature as ' "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short' "? The only thing anyone really cares about is survival—self-preservation—because if you don't look out for yourself no one else will, not if they have to decide between their life and yours. That's what Goodwin's wife, Kristin Maxfield, reminds me of. She came to see me. She doesn't care about anything except saving herself. She admitted she lied to the grand jury. She did deliver the package to Quentin."

  I told Horace everything. When I was finished, he got to his feet and put his hands on the small of his back.

  "You're sure about Goodwin now, aren't you?"

  "After what she told me, there doesn't seem much room for doubt."

  "Did she tell you that Gilliland-O'Rourke put her on administrative leave?"

  "No. Gwendolyn doesn't take any chances, does she?"

  He stared down at the ground, shoving the gravel with his foot
. "Don't think she won't try to get even for all of this. We've embarrassed her. She won't forget it."

  He looked up at me, a troubled look in his eyes. "But forget Gwendolyn. There's something wrong here." Drawing his shoulders back, he glanced over my head at the building where, twelve stories above, the party was still going on. "Kristin is still lying. There's something going on, I can feel it. She didn't have to tell you she had sex with him the night of the murder. And she sure as hell didn't have to tell you she had sex with him the night of the funeral." His eyes came back to mine. "Why do you think she did that?"

  I read the answer in his eyes, a reminder of what was just below the surface of my thoughts. "Because sex is intimacy, and by telling me about it she creates something between us, a kind of trust."

  "Yeah, and remember something else. You can't betray anyone who doesn't trust you first, can you?"

  I stood up, and we began to walk back toward the lobby. "

  Have you talked to her former fiance?"

  "Not yet."

  "Might be a good idea. He probably has a few interesting things to say about her. I wonder if he knew she was never in love with him."

  "She's never been in love with anybody," I remarked, as we approached the awning-covered sidewalk. Inside, the doorman was standing next to the front desk, twirling a silver key chain, lost in a daydream. Horace slapped the glass door with his open hand, and then roared at the startled expression on the doorman's face.

  "There's another line in Hobbes," I said in the elevator, "but I'm not sure if it reminds me more of Kristin or Gilliland-O'Rourke."

  Horace looked at me, waiting.

  "Life is 'a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death.'"

  "Ceaseth," Horace repeated, laughing at the way it sounded.

  "You have to understand," I said, as the elevator door slid open, "in the seventeenth century everyone talked with a lisp."

  Horace opened the door to the condominium, and we were hit by a wall of noise. It was louder than when we left, much louder. Music blared from a set of speakers. Something was going on in the middle of the living room, and the crowd had moved back until a space was clear in the center. Her hair flying behind her, Alma was dancing with one of the young men from the ballet troupe. She executed one turn after another on her bare feet, her hand barely touching his, looking for all the world as if she never touched the ground at all.

  She came close to him and, with a fleeting, sensual glance, spun away and then, in a single effortless motion, came back to him as he bent low, rolled over his shoulders, and landed where she had begun.

  Joining in the applause, Horace watched as Alma pulled back both arms and dropped low into the pose every ballerina strikes when the music finally comes to an end. As the applause died away, a distant look came into his eyes. I had seen it before, on the faces of men watching their daughters graduate from college or giving them away in marriage, the look of someone who knows that most of what they have to look forward to are the memories of things that have already happened. I had seen that look on dozens of fathers; I could not remember ever having seen it on the face of a husband.

  Someone turned down the music, and the crowd surged back toward the center. Reaching out, Horace grabbed my arm and held it. "You can't leave. You have to stay till the end. All right?" he asked, holding my arm fast until I agreed.

  I wanted a drink, but the bar had been set up next to the fireplace on the other side of the living room. It was easier to get something out of the refrigerator. Leaning against the kitchen counter, someone vaguely familiar was smiling into the drink he was holding with both hands, listening politely to the slurred speech of a willowy young woman standing next to him. When he heard the door swing shut, he looked up at me, grateful for the interruption.

  "Joseph Antonelli! That's right, isn't it?" he asked affably. He reached out his hand and stepped forward. The young woman, who had been hanging on his shoulder, struggled to catch her balance.

  "Russell Gray," he reminded me, as we shook hands. His hands were soft, supple, like kid gloves that have never been worn. "We met at the ballet dinner."

  "Of course." I apologized. "We had a little discussion about the difference between lawyers and artists."

  "Did we? I don't remember. Well, it doesn't really matter. I'm sure you got the best of it."

  We stood there for a moment, neither one of us saying anything.

  "Oh, I'm sorry," he said with an embarrassed laugh. "Let me introduce you." He looked at the young woman and waited for her to help.

  It was my turn. "I'm Joseph Antonelli," I said.

  "I'm Susan," she replied, and wandered off.

  "Do you know her?" I asked Gray.

  "Never saw her before in my life."

  An open bottle of wine was on the counter next to the sink. I found a glass in the cupboard. Pouring it half full, I took a drink.

  Gray stared into his own glass, moving the ice with a slight movement of his wrist.

  "It's surprising we hadn't met before. Portland isn't a big place."

  "I think we probably move in different circles," I remarked.

  The circle of my acquaintance had narrowed until there was hardly anyone left in it, and I knew next to nothing about the world of old money, where I imagined everyone did what they wanted and never worried about what it would cost. He accepted the distinction between us as if it was a commonplace. "Yes, but we both know Alma—and Horace too—and they speak very highly of you."

  I had never heard of Russell Gray until a couple of weeks ago. Horace had never even mentioned him to me until the night of the ballet dinner, when we sat together at the same table. "In any event," Gray said, changing the subject, "you seem to have gotten yourself involved in an interesting little business since the last time we met—the affair with Marshall Goodwin, of course."

  "Yes, I'm prosecuting the case." I started to explain, but Gray was not listening.

  "It's really extraordinary," he said. "To think that Kristin left Conrad for a man who murdered his wife!"

  "You know Kristin?" I asked.

  "She was engaged to one of my best friends. I've known Conrad for years. Everyone was shocked when she broke it off."

  "Do you know why she did?"

  He sighed. "I'm not sure. I think she just told him she was in love with somebody else."

  "How did he take it?"

  "Conrad? Oh, he was quite upset. Who wouldn't be? But he got over it." He went back to the case. "Goodwin actually had his wife murdered? That's really quite unbelievable. I don't understand that sort of thing. I've been married twice and divorced twice. These things happen. You don't go around killing someone because you don't want to be with her or she doesn't want to be with you. Nothing lasts forever."

  He looked up at me. "This will sound dreadful, I know. But when Kristin broke off the engagement, I was actually glad for both of them. I had thought she was only after Conrad's money. When she married Goodwin, it seemed to prove that money wasn't really the most important thing for her after all."

  "What was?"

  "Why, love, of course. What else?"

  "Yes," I said. "Exactly. What else?"

  The door swung open and the maid came in, the platter she carried stacked with dirty dishes. I poured what was left of the bottle into my glass, and when I turned back Gray had disappeared. I saw him later, just before he left, standing at the doorway, saying good night to Alma. She kissed his cheek, the way she had kissed me, and then stood there, watching him go.