Lies With Man

by Michael Nava

  “What happened to you?” I asked.

  “Oh, you mean what was my moment of clarity?”

  “If you want to call it that.”

  “My mother was an alcoholic who spent the last few years of her life in bed while I took care of her— that meant, mostly, supplying her with vodka and taking out the empties. She was quite pathetic. I told myself, I will never be like her. One morning, four months ago, I came to in my bed in a puddle of urine, clutching an empty bottle of vodka. I realized I had become my mother, but with one difference: I had no one to take care of me. No one to change the sheets, get me into the shower, make excuses, listen to my ranting. I felt utterly alone. I considered killing myself because why not, what did I have to live for? But something stronger than self-pity and self-loathing and despair rose up inside of me and said, ‘No.’ That’s all, Henry, a voice cut through the fog and said, ‘No. No, you will not die.’ It spoke with such authority, such certainty, I knew better than to argue with it. So, I had to figure out a way to stay alive. And here I am. Will your friends let me help them?”

  “I’ll talk to them, tell them about you, and give them your phone number. I’m sure they’ll be in touch.”

  “Thank you,” she replied. “But you didn’t come here to talk about any of this. You said something about a lawsuit.”

  “I hope to persuade you to file a wrongful death action on Daniel’s behalf.”

  “I don’t understand. Wasn’t your client responsible for Dan’s death? You want me to sue him? What would be the point of that? He’s dead, too.”

  “You wouldn’t be suing Theo. You’d be going in with his mother in suing the Los Angeles Police Department.”

  “What?” She was shocked. “The police? Why?”

  For the next half hour I told her about Alfredo Sumaya a.k.a. Freddy Saavedra and how he had infiltrated QUEER and engineered the bombing of the church. I explained that, because Sumaya had been working in his capacity as an undercover police officer, the department was civilly liable for his actions up to and including Daniel’s death.

  “Wait a minute,” she said, stopping me. “Are you saying the police department told this Freddy to blow up Ekklesia?”

  “I don’t know what its exact instructions were to him. That’s something we’d have to find out in discovery. I do know he was working in his capacity as a police officer. The department’s not only responsible for the consequences of the actions it told him to take, but also the consequences of any actions that were a foreseeable result of those instructions. Maybe his supervisors didn’t say, ‘Talk these gay people into blowing up a church.’ Maybe all they said was, ‘Implicate this gay organization in some kind of violent crime to discredit it.’ That would be enough to put the department on the hook for any criminal activity Sumaya encouraged and participated in.”

  “All right, I think I understand, but why me? Why do I need to sue?”

  “You’re Daniel’s surviving spouse. Spouses and children are the people authorized by the law to sue for wrongful death.”

  “Why do you want to do this now?”

  “There’s a statute of limitations on these actions. Not for a while yet, but it’s better to strike now before the case gets stale.” She looked dubious, so I added, “Don’t you want the people responsible for Daniel’s death to be held accountable?”

  “I don’t know, Henry. I’m making a new life for myself. I’m not sure I want to be dragged back into the old one.”

  “You seemed pretty adamant the first time you came to see me,” I said. “You believed people in the church were involved in Daniel’s death. Do you still?”

  With a slight shake of her head, she said, “I was a different person then. Bitter, resentful, and drunk.”

  “Okay, but that doesn’t answer my question. Do you still believe that?”

  She spoke slowly, thoughtfully. “There were people in the leadership of the church who would have liked to get rid of Daniel. Those same people benefited from his death. After he died, I had my suspicions but no proof, and after I got sober the suspicions seemed like part of the insanity of alcoholism.”

  “Do your suspicions seem any crazier to you than the fact that a police officer planned the bombing of Ekklesia?”

  She thought about that for a couple of minutes. “Dan and I didn’t have a good marriage,” she began, crisply. “Or maybe what I mean is we didn’t have an honest marriage. Too many things left unsaid on both sides. When I discovered he had a child with another woman, I wanted revenge. I told someone about Dan’s affair and the child, and this man told me he’d take care of it. He was one of the people who had wanted to get rid of Dan. After Dan was killed, I wondered if Bob had had anything to do with it. When Bob turned me out of my home for the new pastor, I was furious. I convinced myself he was responsible, but when I got sober, I realized I’d simply been lashing out, at him, at other people. Blaming them for what I’d done to myself.”

  “Who is Bob?”

  “Bob Metzger. He was my father’s best friend. He’s very prominent in the church’s lay leadership.”

  “I see.”

  “But what you’ve just explained to me proves Bob had nothing to do with Dan’s death,” she said. “It was the police trying to discredit this gay group.”

  “Even if the church isn’t implicated, the police department has to be held to account. Are you willing to join the lawsuit?”

  “That kind of lawsuit would attract a lot of attention from the press, wouldn’t it?”

  “Probably.”

  “I’m not sure my sobriety could survive the stress of being put under a spotlight,” she said. “I have a lot of good days, but I have shaky ones, too, and AA is still pretty new to me. You understand that, don’t you, Henry?”

  “Of course.”

  “Let me think about it.”

  I stood up. “Certainly.”

  She must have read the disappointment in my tone.

  “Give me ’til the end of the week.”

  I nodded. “If you have any questions before then, call me.”

  She stood up. “You know, I’m not the only person who could bring the lawsuit.”

  “You’re not?”

  “You said spouses and children. Dan has a son. Wyatt.”

  “The boy in the picture on the credenza? The boy with HIV?”

  “The last time I talked to Gwen, his mother, she said his condition was stable. But yes, that boy.”

  “I’d like to talk to him.”

  “Let me do that first. I’ll tell him and Gwen everything you told me and ask if they want to talk to you.”

  “Of course,” I said. “Thank you. I hope to hear from you soon.”

  “You will, but I can’t promise I’ll tell you what you want to hear.”

  ••••

  She was at my office on Friday morning and, from the regretful expression with which she greeted me, I guessed her decision. She confirmed it when we sat down in my office.

  “I’m sorry, Henry, but, as I said, I don’t want to be dragged back into the life I’m trying to leave behind in sobriety.”

  “Don’t you feel some responsibility for nailing your husband’s murderers?”

  “Was he murdered or was he simply in the wrong place at the wrong time? I mean, do you have proof he was the target of the bombing or was it the church itself? I know that must sound like hair-splitting to you, but it makes a difference to me.”

  “I can’t say for sure Dan was the target,” I replied. “That’s a question we’d try to answer as we proceeded to trial. I can tell you the bomb planted near his office was twice as powerful as the bomb planted at the entrance.”

  “That doesn’t prove it was intended for him,” she said, reasonably.

  “No, it doesn’t.”

  “I’m sorry, Henry. My answer is still no.”

  “Did you have a chance to talk to Daniel’s son and his son’s mother?”

  She nodded. “We talked for a long t
ime, but once I explained why I didn’t want to proceed, Gwen said she didn’t want Wyatt to have to face the controversy alone. It will be controversial.”

  “Yes, it will. Would it do any good for me to talk to them?”

  “I can ask her.”

  “Thanks.” I reached for the folder of photographs that her private investigator had given me. “Before you go, I wondered if you could help me with something.”

  “Of course. What is it?

  I told her Theo’s story about how, the week before the bombing, he and Sumaya had cased the church, and had been detained by a security guard and an older man with whom Sumaya had spoken after he sent Theo to wait in their car.

  “With Theo gone,” I continued, “the only witnesses we have placing Sumaya at the church are the security guard— who we haven’t been able to track down yet— and the older man who was with him. Theo identified him in one of the photographs you gave me.” I shuffled through the photos. “Could you take a look and tell me if you know who he is, so we can depose him?”

  I showed her the photo of Daniel Herron and the man Theo had identified as the older man Sumaya had talked to.

  “Do you know this man?” I asked.

  She examined it for a long moment, then asked, “This is the man the undercover officer talked to the Sunday before the bombing?”

  “That’s what Theo told me.”

  Returning the photograph, she said, “It’s Bob Metzger.”

  “Metzger? The man you suspected of being involved in Dan’s death?”

  “Yes,” she said. She looked at me. “Do you think it’s a coincidence that Bob talked to the man who bombed the church five days before it happened?”

  “The question, Jess, is whether you do.”

  “No,” she said. “I don’t.” She took a breath. “I’ve changed my mind. I’ll sue the police department if you’ll also include the church.”

  SIXTEEN

  Over the entrance of the civil courthouse muscled male figures carved in a marble frieze held tablets inscribed with the words Lux et Veritas and Lex: Light, Truth, and the Law. On the steps below, a gaggle of TV, radio, and print reporters had gathered for the press conference where Susanna Vane was announcing the wrongful death actions filed on behalf of the heirs of Theodore Latour and Daniel Herron.

  The defendants in Theo’s case included the City and County of Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Police Department, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, the mayor, the chief of police, the County Board of Supervisors, and Alfredo Sumaya, as well as unnamed defendants John Does 1 through 10. Named as defendants in the Herron suit were the city, the police department, the mayor, the police chief, Sumaya, and the Church of Ekklesia, its board of directors a.k.a. Council of Overseers, and Does 1 through 20.

  The Doe allegations were placeholders for defendants whose identities had not yet been ascertained or for whom there was as yet insufficient evidence to identify them by name. They allowed Susanna to make the broadest discovery requests she could think of to implicate other people and add them as defendants, including Robert Metzger and whoever he had conspired with in the police department to kill Dan Herron. We knew the conspiracy had to involve a much higher-ranking officer than lowly undercover cop Alfredo Sumaya, but we just didn’t know who it was yet.

  Theo’s complaint alleged causes of action for negligent and intentional wrongful death. Meaning: his death was due either to the negligence of the sheriffs to properly monitor him for any signs he was suicidal, assuming it was suicide, or that he had been intentionally killed, presumably by the sheriffs. Daniel’s complaint was a single allegation of intentional wrongful death claiming all the defendants, or some combination of them, had murdered him.

  The claims were sensational, and the media were out in full force.

  Susanna stood before the mics and cameras. Behind her were Kim Phillips and Jessica Herron. Behind them were Gwen and Wyatt Baker; I watched from a little off to the side. Susanna was an old hand at staging these dog and pony shows for the press and adept at squeezing the maximum amount of drama from them. She’d placed the wife of the murdered man and the mother of the man accused of murdering him side by side to show that the families were unified in their belief that the cops were the real culprits in the deaths of Daniel Herron and Theo Latour. Adding to the drama and the mystery were the two figures behind the women— the striking African-American mother and her handsome, teenaged, biracial son. The reporters glanced at them inquisitively— nothing the press liked more than a mystery.

  ••••

  The previous evening we’d all met at Susanna’s Carthay Circle home for dinner so she could brief the families on what to expect at the press conference. I’d pulled up to an ivy-covered Craftsman bungalow surrounded by a high stone wall topped with what at first appeared to be some kind of decorative metal work. On closer inspection it was a tight row of razor-sharp, steel spikes. The gate was solid steel and could only be opened from within the house; cameras were mounted at the corners of the house, just below the roof. Apparently, representing victims of police violence was risky business.

  A maid admitted me into the house and politely pointed to the pile of shoes in the entry hall next to a row of black canvas slippers. I changed shoes and followed voices into the living room where people were assembled. It was a big room, all chintz and Arts and Crafts furniture, comfortably worn Oriental carpets, and bookshelves where plastic-covered Modern Library editions of great American writers were crammed next to paperback thrillers. Susanna greeted me; introduced me to her husband Rodger, an attorney at the ACLU; put a glass of sparkling water in my hand, and left me to mingle.

  I introduced myself to Gwen Baker who was admiring the tiled fireplace at the far end of the room. We’d spoken on the phone but this was our first meeting.

  “I wanted to thank you again for joining the lawsuit,” I said.

  “If the police killed Dan, they have to be held responsible,” she replied. “It’s funny, though; when I worried about the police and my family, it was Wyatt I feared for.” She sipped from her glass of wine. “As a defense lawyer, you must know how the police treat Black boys.”

  I followed her eyes across the room to the couch where Wyatt was sitting with another young Black man. They were holding hands.

  “I do,” I said. “Who is that with your son?”

  “Gregory,” she replied. “His boyfriend. He came down for moral support.”

  “How is Wyatt doing?” I asked.

  “He’s on a cocktail of ribavirin and Isoprinosine that’s helped stabilize his T-cell count. Once AZT is approved, we’ll move him over to it. Dan told me about the ribavirin and Isoprinosine and where I could get them. He said he heard about them from a gay lawyer here in LA. Jess told me you were that lawyer.”

  I nodded. “Yes, I put him in touch with a friend who’s been bringing the drugs up from Mexico.”

  “Thank you,” she said warmly, then added, “Wyatt’s going to survive this, you know. He absolutely is.”

  I looked at the two boys, fingers entwined and sharing a youthful smirk at all the old people around them, and hoped she was right.

  ••••

  “. . . and these families are united in their grief at the deaths of their loved ones,” Susanna was saying, “and by their determination that the people responsible for those deaths be held to account no matter who they are. In the complaints filed today, we allege that these tragedies were put into motion when the anti-terrorism unit of the Los Angeles Police Department illegally infiltrated a gay civil rights organization dedicated to peaceful advocacy for gay rights and the rights of people with AIDS. The police department, which has a long history of this kind of misconduct, sent in an undercover officer named Alfredo Sumaya as an agent provocateur with the express purpose of implicating the organization and its members in violent criminal activity. Sumaya, who had military experience of explosives, recruited Theo Latour— a vulnerable and troubled young man— to
plant bombs that Sumaya had constructed at a local church called Ekklesia. We allege further that some members of that church were also involved in this bombing conspiracy because it served their purpose of promoting the so-called quarantine initiative that would quarantine people with AIDS by painting gay and lesbian people as violent radicals . . .”

  At this last statement, the reporters, who had barely contained themselves, now began shouting questions at her. She held up her hand and said, “I’ll take questions when I’m done.”

  We’d gone back and forth on whether to name the church as a defendant. I argued the evidence of conspiracy was still too weak and if we included the church now, we’d be showing our hand prematurely. She pointed out that unless we named the church, we’d have no basis to seek discovery from it to find evidence of the conspiracy. Eventually, she won me over. We needed admissible evidence connecting the church to cops because Theo’s statement to me that Sumaya and Metzger had talked the week before the bombing was hearsay. Without this evidence, the church would be dismissed from the suit. If that evidence existed, we could only get it by suing the church now and going after its records and leaders in discovery.

  She finished her statement, and the questions began: “Are you claiming the sheriffs killed Latour in his jail cell?” “You’re saying the church bombed itself?” “You mean this whole conspiracy was to help pass the quarantine initiative?” The tone of the questioning was incredulous but excited. If the story seemed unbelievable to the press, the reporters also knew it was an attention-grabber that would sell papers and generate TV viewership. Scandal and sensation were the raw meat of the media, and Susanna was throwing them big, bloody chunks of it. Before nightfall it would be a national story, and our version would be the one the public heard first.

  “Where is this Officer Sumaya?” a reporter shouted.

  Susanna, looking into the cameras, said, “We don’t know, but we challenge the Los Angeles Police Department to produce him and let us hear what Officer Sumaya has to say.”

  ••••

  When it was over, I drove back with her to her Westwood office, where we’d met that morning, to pick up my car. I’d been amused to discover she drove a black Lincoln Town Car, not the more modest vehicle I would have expected of a leftie lawyer.