by Michael Nava
“Bail recommendation, People,” Kline said, and when the young D.A. did not immediately respond, continued, “That’s your cue, Mr. Pearsall.”
He cleared his voice nervously. “Um, the defendant has a record and no visible means of support and no ties to the community. The People want her remanded.”
“Well, not all thirty-five million of them Your Honor,” I said.
“At the moment, I’m the only one of them who matters, Mr. Rios, so convince me.”
“I’m not only the defendant’s lawyer, I’m also her uncle. Her mother, my sister, is in court, too, as is the defendant’s ten-year-old son. So, obviously, she does have family who would be responsible for her. I’d ask you to set reasonable bail.”
“Your Honor,” the young D.A. interjected quickly. “The defendant comes from up north, the San Francisco area, and she couldn’t give the police a local address when she was arrested at a transient motel.”
“I think you mean a motel for transients,” Kline said irritably. “Unless the motel moves around from place to place.” Pearsall, however, had scored a point and the judge’s irritability reflected uncertainty. If he was a new judge, he would be very careful about setting an accused murderer loose and risk having her flee the jurisdiction. He looked at me. “How long has your client been in L.A., counsel?”
“Your Honor, about a month. In addition to me, her mother-in-law lives in Garden Grove—”
“Which is out of the jurisdiction,” he said curtly. “And where does her mother live?”
“In Oakland.”
He flipped a page. “Also out of the jurisdiction.”
“Your Honor, she would live with me. I live in the jurisdiction.”
He looked at me. “Has she ever lived with you before, Mr. Rios?”
“Yes, when she first arrived.”
“And for the rest of the time in the crack motel where she shot and killed her husband,” the prosecutor volunteered.
“Please,” I said. “Save that for the jury.”
“No,” Kline said. “He has a point, Mr. Rios. Your client has no fixed place of residence, no job. You are her only tie to L.A. and it doesn’t seem to be a very strong one. Her record indicates she moves back and forth between here and the Bay Area. I smell a flight risk. No bail.”
“Your Honor, I’m an officer of the court,” I said. “And as such I am representing that I will see that she stays in the jurisdiction.”
Kline said, “It’s not you I’m worried about, Mr. Rios. You can renew your bail request at the prelim. For now, she stays in jail. Let’s set this for a prelim.”
“Since you’ve denied bail, I want the prelim as soon as possible.”
“Fine by me,” Kline said. “How about a week?”
“A week is good,” I said. “I would also like the court to order the prosecutor to comply with discovery on that date. I particularly want him to give me a tape of my client’s alleged confession.”
“So ordered,” he said.
“Your Honor,” Pearsall said. “That doesn’t give me much time.”
“You’re not the one with the constitutional right to a speedy trial, are you, Mr. Pearsall? Discovery compliance is ordered for one week from today. That applies to you, too, Mr. Rios.”
“Understood,” I said.
“Next case, please,” Kline said, turning to his clerk.
I waited for Vicky in the interview room, which, like the holding cells, was located behind the court. The interview room was a narrow rectangle bisected by a counter. At each side of the counter were three metal stools with a glass partition between them. On the counter were phones. When Vicky came in, we sat down on opposite sides of the counter and picked up our respective phones.
“You said the judge would let me go home,” she complained.
“The problem is that the judge isn’t sure where your home is,” I said. “He’s afraid if he released you on bail, you’d leave L.A.”
“I would leave,” she said. “I’d take Angel and get the hell out of here.”
“Please don’t say things like that. It makes my job harder.”
“When can I see Angel?”
“He and your mother can visit you when they return you to the jail. Right now there’s something I have to ask you about. Angel showed me the gun that he said he removed from the room the night you shot Pete. Do you remember him doing that?”
I could tell she was about to lie, but then she nodded slightly. “I didn’t tell him, he took it. He was trying to help me.”
“I know that. The problem I’m having is, it wasn’t the gun that killed Pete. What can you tell me about this?”
“I don’t understand,” she said.
“Pete was killed with a three-eighty. The gun Angel showed me is a twenty-two. There was a twenty-two-caliber bullet in the wall. It looks like you both had guns and were shooting at each other.”
She shook her head. “He didn’t shoot at me.”
“There were two guns, Vicky. The one that killed Pete is still missing. The one I have locked in my safe was fired that night, apparently at you. What else am I supposed to think?”
“I don’t understand what you mean,” she equivocated. “Everything happened so fast. I have to think.”
“You might think about telling me the truth, niece.”
The deputy came into her side of the room. “The bus is leaving.”
“Tell Angel I love him,” she said as he led her away. No word for her mother.
Elena and Angel were not in the courtroom when I emerged from lockup. I was on my way out to find them when the D.A., Pearsall, loped over and stopped me at the door.
“Hey, Mr. Rios,” he said pleasantly. “Kim Pearsall. About that discovery? I was wondering if informally you would give me a little more time to get it together—”
I turned on him. “You send my niece back to jail in full view of her ten-year-old son and now you’re asking me for a favor? Let me give you the short answer. Fuck you.”
He looked as if I’d struck him. “Hey, dude, I’m just doing my job.”
“Hey, dude? What do you think this is, a sitcom? If you don’t produce discovery on the day of the prelim, I’ll ask for sanctions. Understand? Dude?”
I left him standing there composing a retort. Out in the hallway, I saw my sister and Angel talking to a short stocky man with jet-black hair. He was wearing an old but carefully pressed dark suit, a once white shirt yellowed with many washings, and an unfashionably skinny tie. On his lapel was pinned a silver crucifix. He had stolid, Indian features and he could have been any age between forty and sixty. When I approached, he looked at me with eyes so black they appeared to be without irises.
“Henry,” Elena said, straining to be polite. “This is Reverend Ortega. He said Vicky went to his church.”
“You mean La Iglesia de—what was it called?” I said.
“La Iglesia de Cristo Triunfante,” he said. “I came to try to help our sister but the bus was late.” He spoke with a heavy accent. “I’m sorry.”
“Help her how?” I asked.
“Maybe for bail—if the judge hears a minister, he says let her go and these people will take care of her.”
“I was explaining that she has family,” Elena said.
“We’re all family, sister,” he said, smiling.
“How did you know about the arraignment?” I asked him.
“Vicky called me from the jail. She asked me to come.”
I could see by the expression on Elena’s face that she wanted me to get rid of him so we could talk.
“Well, thank you for coming, but the judge denied bail.”
“Maybe I can talk to him?”
“Vicky’s already on her way back to jail,” I said. “Look, I’m sorry, but I really need to talk to my sister and nephew now.”
Reverend Ortega smiled at Angel. “You gonna come and see us on Sunday, Angelito?”
“I beg your pardon?” I said.
�
��His mother wants him to worship in our church.” He studied me like a doctor making an off-the-cuff diagnosis. “All are welcome, brother.”
“You know, this isn’t the time or place to discuss this,” I said. I handed him my card. “Call me this afternoon and we can talk then.”
He took my card. His lips moved slightly as he read it. “It makes me proud to see a Latino be a lawyer. It’s a good thing to know man’s law, but don’t forget there’s God’s law, too.” His glance fell back on Angel. “This boy’s mother, she sacrifice everything. All she wants is her boy raised Christian.”
“Reverend, please, we really have to go.”
He laid a hand on my shoulder. It was a strong hand, a laborer’s hand. “God bless you, brother. I know you’re doing your best. Good-bye, sister. Angelito, you come and see me, okay?”
Angel responded with a surprisingly warm, “Okay, Reverend.”
After he left, the three of us sat on a bench worn to the wood by all the fidgeting bottoms that had occupied it before us.
“What happened with bail?” Elena said.
“You heard the judge. He was afraid she’d take off if he released her. Look, I’ll ask for bail next week at the prelim. That preacher might actually be helpful.” I looked at Angel. “How do you know him?”
“He came to see us,” he said. “He’s nice.”
“Came to see you where?”
“The motel,” he said. “He came and prayed with my mom and then he took me for ice cream. Is my mom coming home?”
“Not today. She sends her love,” I added, not making it specific to Angel, but I saw from her face that Elena was not fooled.
“Can we see her?” Elena asked.
I nodded. “Let me just check my phone messages and we’ll go down to the jail.”
“I’d like some coffee,” Elena said. “There was a cafeteria downstairs. Come on, Angel, let’s leave your uncle to make his call.”
“Bring me a cup, too,” I called after them. “Black.”
I dialed my machine on my cell phone and listened twice to the message, then called the return number. I was still speaking to the woman who had left the message when Angel and Elena returned. I took the cup my sister offered me without looking at her, ended my phone conversation and slipped the phone into my pocket.
“I can’t go to the jail with you,” I said. “I’ll drop you off and you can take a cab to my house. Angel has house keys.”
“What happened?” Elena asked.
“Client emergency,” I said. “I’m sorry. Shall we go?”
I let Angel get a couple of steps ahead of us and, in a low voice, said to Elena. “That was Jesusita Trujillo’s daughter, Socorro. Mrs. Trujillo’s in the hospital.”
“Why?”
“Someone broke into her house. The cops think it was a robbery.”
“Was she seriously hurt?”
Angel had stopped and glanced back at us suspiciously. I smiled at him and then told Elena, “She’s in a coma.”
I pulled into the parking lot of Saint Francis Hospital, a rambling pink stucco building with a white cross above the entrance. Two women in dowdy clothes and the blue veils of nuns passed in front of me on the sidewalk, deep in conversation. In flower beds beneath the first-floor windows, rose bushes were in profuse bloom. On the lawn was a life-sized statue of Saint Francis preaching to stone birds perched on his sleeves and at his feet, while a live pigeon roosted on his tonsure. The day had turned into a scorcher, withering the grass. I had time to make these detailed observations because I seemed unable to get myself out of my car and across the threshold of the hospital. I could hear Hayward’s voice telling me, “Everyone dies of something, Henry, and what you now know is that the probabilities are that you’ll die of heart disease.” The equation that kept me sweating in my closed car was: heart attack, hospital, death. I knew my anxiety was completely irrational and my sense of foreboding misplaced, that the benign glass doors of the little Catholic hospital were not the maws of death, but a good five minutes passed before I was able to peel myself from the seat and get myself through them.
I paused at the doorway of Jesusita Trujillo’s room. In the corner on a table was a makeshift altar where, among flowers and candles, there were prayer cards, family pictures and handwritten petitions to the saints on her behalf. A heavy woman in a flowered blouse and stretch pants sat vigil beside the bed.
“Mrs. Cerda?” I said, stepping into the room.
The woman turned her head. She resembled her mother mostly in the lines of weary kindness etched into her face.
“I’m Henry Rios,” I said.
She got up from her chair. “Call me Socorro.”
I approached her and got a good look at Jesusita Trujillo. Bandages swathed her head, covering her right eye. The part of her face that was visible looked like it had gone through a meat grinder.
“My God,” I said, remembering the gentle, frightened woman who, only a week earlier, had served me lemonade and told me lies. “How did this happen?”
“She had this glass coffee table. He pushed her through it, face first.” I remembered the table. The glass had been very thick “They got most of the glass out, but some of it went through her skull into her brain. Even if she wakes up, she’ll have brain damage.”
“The police say it was a robbery?”
She looked at her mother, then said in a low voice. “The doctors say she can’t hear nothing, but if she can, I don’t want to upset her. Maybe we can talk outside.” We went out into the hall. “A robbery, yeah, that’s the what the police say. A home invasion.”
“You sound skeptical.”
“I believe someone was trying to rob her,” she said, “but it wasn’t no invasion. The police said there was no break-in. It was someone Mom knew. The neighbors know, too, but they ain’t talking.”
“Why?”
“They’re afraid of the gangs,” she said.
“That’s who did it? A gangbanger?”
She rested her bulk against the wall and regarded me with exhausted eyes. “My mom knew them when they were kids, she babysat some of them. I used to warn her they were malos, but she said, no, hija, they got good hearts, it’s just the drugs. She said that because of Pete, because she blamed drugs for his problems.”
“Mothers have to assume the best.”
She nodded. “Maybe she was right about Pete, but not those kids he ran around with. They were just plain evil. She never got your messages about Pete, Mr. Rios. They found her the night before you called. I’m sorry I didn’t call before, but—”
“She was attacked the same night Pete was killed?”
“Pete was always breaking her heart. At least she didn’t have to hear about the way he died.”
“Were you close to Pete?”
She ran a hand across her weary eyes. “I changed his diapers when he was a baby, but I’m a lot older and I was married when he was still a niño. He was okay while my dad was alive, but after he died, Pete ran wild and Mom couldn’t control him. His cousin Butch got Pete into drugs.” She paused. “That Butch, he’s a bad one. Even Mom saw it. When Pete brought Vicky home, she was happy because she thought he would settle down. Pretty soon he was running around with Butch again, and the next thing I hear from Mom, Pete was back in prison again. I can’t believe Vicky killed him. She’s good people.”
“There’s not much question about it,” I said.
“I guess he finally drove her crazy with the drugs, then,” she said. “I’m sorry about Pete, but putting up with him must have been real hard on her because she’s a good girl. Smart, too. Where’s their little boy? Angelito?”
“Staying with me,” I said. “You know I’m not just Vicky’s lawyer, I’m her uncle. My sister, Elena, is her mother.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Mom said something about how Vicky found her family. So you’re her uncle. I guess that makes us some kind of in-laws. Can I give you something for her?”
“Sure,” I said.
“What is it?”
“The motel where I guess they were staying, they left a message for Mom, too, and said to come and get Pete and Vicky’s stuff or they would throw it away. I sent my son down to Hollywood. There’s just a suitcase, some boxes. They’re in the trunk of my car. I figured there might be things in there that Vicky would want.”
“Is your car here?”
“In the parking lot.”
With Socorro Cerda’s help, I loaded two suitcases and four boxes into the trunk of my car. Afterward, there seemed no reason to return to the hospital.
“If there’s anything else I can do for you, Socorro, let me know.”
“Well,” she said. “My sister, Mary, and me, we want to bury Pete, but we don’t know where his body is.”
“The police didn’t tell you?”
She shook her head. “I tried to find out, but I got the runaround.”
“I can take care of that for you,” I said. “Where do you want the coroner to release his body?”
She gave me the name of a funeral home.
“Gutierrez and Sola,” I repeated, jotting it in my notebook. “I’ll call you as soon as the body is released. Would it be all right if I brought Angel to his dad’s funeral?”
“Of course,” she said; “We’re family. I’ve got to get back to my mom. Thank you for coming, Mr. Rios.”
“I’m very sorry about your mother. I only met her once, but she seemed like a very kind person.”
“That’s why I don’t understand why someone would do this to her.” She gave me a damp hug. “Give my love to Vicky and Angel. Tell Vicky I’ll try to get up and see her.”
“I will. I’ll bring Angel to visit you if you want.”
She smiled. “You do that. I think he likes his old Aunt Soakie.”
I had handled enough homicides over the years to have become friendly with a couple of the deputies in the medical examiner’s office. One of them was a young lesbian who had come to me for advice when she was considering a lawsuit against the county for what she perceived to be discrimination against women in the office’s promotion practices. I had helped her find an employment discrimination lawyer who had negotiated a handsome settlement. I phoned her from my car and asked for help with Pete’s body. She agreed to personally supervise the release of Pete’s body to the funeral home the following day. I left a message for Socorro Cerda. Traffic on the 405 came to a complete halt around the airport, a situation that usually raised my blood pressure, but I was the bearer of bad tidings, so for once I didn’t mind.
