by Wick Downing
According to my grandfather, lots of people actually do that. He doesn’t think people are nearly as bad as the public thinks they are.
Mike waited while I changed into bike shorts. He’s useful as an escort to ride home with, even though he could use a poke with a sharp stick. He dawdles around when he rides, like a dog, kind of stopping along the way to sniff things. I had to let him set the pace because he had the light.
But it wasn’t awful, even at two miles an hour. It was beautiful out. A huge moon hung over Denver like a big snowball, bright enough to toss shadows. We rode east on Twelfth Avenue from Broadway to Hale Parkway, which is less than four miles when you measure it in distance. But it can also be measured in time, beginning in the last century and stretching all the way into this one. We traveled past the old mansions and huge brick homes near the center of town, then rode through newer neighborhoods with smaller brick houses but bigger lawns. Mom had written an article for the Post about the architectural rings around the city, like rings around a tree. If you know how to read them, she’d said in her story, you can walk through history.
We lived near Crestmoor Park. The mountains west of us were on the horizon, and the moon was so bright we could see them clearly, even the patches of snow. The lawns in our neighborhood were landscaped with flowers, shrubs, and leafy trees, and all the gutters were swept clean of debris. No one parked their cars outside at night because the houses had two-car garages with garage-door openers. Usually I feel good about living in such a nice neighborhood, but not tonight. After dealing with some of our clients, I came dangerously close to feeling guilty.
We rolled by Mike’s house first, but he had to do his little-old-lady routine by riding with me all the way up my driveway. “G’night, Mike,” I said, clicking open the garage door. “You can go now.”
I parked my bike, lifted off the saddlebags, and opened the door into the kitchen. “You’re late,” Mom said, her face one big scold. “It’s almost nine.”
“Hello, Mother.” I dropped the saddlebags on the floor. “How was your day at the office?”
Chapter Nine
MY HEART SANK when I glanced around the reception room at the office the next morning. The place was already packed with clients, and I didn’t need another day of dealing with them and all their miserable problems. Some had horrible breath and rotting teeth, and most wore clothes from the Salvation Army, and all of them needed a lawyer. Their fears and anxieties vibrated in my stomach like a jackhammer. I wondered how Grandfather had lasted for eighty-seven years. “Hi, Mrs. Roulette,” I said as the telephone rang.
She waved at me, then snatched the phone out of its cradle. “Good morning,” she said. “This is Hope and Hope, Attorneys. Can I help you?”
And then I heard the tapping of a blind man’s cane. The screen door banged shut and my grandfather teetered there, wearing his brown suit and an old-fashioned string tie. Silver threads were woven into the braids of his tie, which hung down from a polished turquoise rock that he’d cinched to his throat. I was so glad to see him that I could have cried. He glowered around the room like Moses staring down at all the sinners from the mountaintop. “Judge!” “Here’s the Judge, praise the Lord!” He’d shaved, but missed patches of whiskers here and there, and a droplet of tobacco juice hung in the stubble on his chin. “My, how nice, we got the Judge back!”
“Kate darlin’. Are you here?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did you get that Alvarez motion filed on time?”
“Of course.”
“I knew I could count on you.” He glared into the lobby. “Reuben, is that your voice I hear? Did your wife toss you out again?”
“I just don’t know what gets into her,” a scruffy-looking older man said.
The Judge adjusted his stance and faced him. “It’s what gets into you. Stop the drinking. Miss Terrell, Mrs. Johnson, you ladies just be comfortable. Mrs. Roulette, hang up the dang phone!”
“It’s Judge Tooley, and it’s for you, and I am not going to hang up on him.”
“I certainly hope not. I’ll take it in the office. Kate, will you join me?”
“I’d love to.” I didn’t try to help him, because even though he needs it, he hates it. But when I brushed against him, he put a hand on my shoulder and followed along beside me. Once in his office, he found his desk with one hand and guided himself around it to his chair. I made sure he was standing over the seat and not a patch of air, then sat down across from him. “Is my spittoon where it belongs?” he asked me.
I hate that spittoon with a passion, because when he misses, guess who has to clean up the mess. But if he was well enough to chew that evil stuff without throwing up, he had to be okay. “Can’t you just swallow it or something?” I asked him.
“That’d make me sick. Is it where it belongs?”
“Yes,” I said, then added, “Please, God, bless him with perfect aim?” I pretended that I was asking for a miracle, which was a game we played. His head twitched in the direction of the spittoon, and a stream of tobacco juice flew through the air, ducking into the brass bowl without touching the sides. “Thank you, God,” I said, and he looked satisfied.
Then one of his gnarly old hands found the telephone, and he talked into it. After a good laugh, he hung up. “Judge Tooley heard I was sick and wanted to know if there was anything he could do,” he said. “I told him it would help if he’d always rule in my favor. Now, young woman, tell me what I need to know.”
I talked for ten minutes without stopping while he sat there like a statue, listening to every word and occasionally chucking a load of tobacco juice into the cuspidor. It’s so much nicer on everyone when he smokes his pipe, but he says pipes are for when a man can relax at his home. They don’t travel well. A plug of tobacco can fit in a man’s hip pocket.
“Did you tell Cartwright to come back with that certificate so his signature can be notarized?” he asked when I stopped talking.
“Won’t he know to do that?”
“The man’s one of them talking dolls, Kate. He don’t know how to think. Better have Mrs. Roulette call him up.” He frowned. “Now. What did you tell Mrs. Shumaker to do?”
Mrs. Shumaker had three daughters, but her husband had left her and she couldn’t pay the rent. “To leave. She doesn’t have a choice.”
“You didn’t tell her how to get an extra ten days?”
“The statute doesn’t say anything about that. It gives three days.”
“She can go to court!” From his tone of voice I knew I’d made a mistake. “Didn’t you explain that to her?”
“No. She doesn’t have a defense. I told her to move.”
“Kate, she can’t pack up her house and find a new place to live in three days! She needs more time than that.”
“But Grandfather, it’s the law!”
“It may be the law, but that don’t make it good legal advice.” He scowled at me. “She can go to court and demand a jury trial. That would give her an extra ten days to find a place to live.”
“What about legal ethics?” I asked him. “Is it right to advise a client to ask for a trial when you know they don’t have a defense?”
“Who cares about that!” he yelled. “Your duty is to your client, the woman with children some rotten landlord is tossing into the street! You do what you can for her, and that’s what’s right!”
He yelled at me about some other mistakes I’d made, in a voice loud enough to be heard across the street. I wanted to scream at him, except that it was so wonderful to have him back. So some tears and stuff came out of me instead.
His ears lifted. “Are you snuffling?”
“No!” I said, wiping my nose.
“That’s good. The law ain’t for whiners.” He glared at me with his blind eyes. “Except for them very few mistakes, you did fine and I’m proud of you. Judge Steinbrunner called me up to tell me how you handled yourself in his courtroom. He thinks you’ll be a fine lawyer.” He snorted. “I ain’
t so sure, of course, but it’s possible.”
“Please, God,” I said as tears ran down my cheeks, “let me find a Kleenex?”
He frowned and smiled and waited while I put myself together, and then he issued my marching orders for the day. He and Mrs. Roulette would take care of the river of clients, and I’d work on the two cases that were set for trials. The Alvarez case would be tried next Tuesday, and Herman’s would be two days later. “I’m the trial lawyer for the firm, so I’ll do the courtroom work. But you’ll have to get them ready because I can’t see. Any questions?”
I had a ton of them, like how long does it take to really be a lawyer? I didn’t know how to get a case ready for trial! What if I actually had to try one? “No,” I said, smiling, because of all the confidence genes Mom had passed on to me. She trots them out, too, when the news editor at the Denver Post gives her an assignment she doesn’t have a clue about. Grandfather couldn’t see my smile, but he could hear the eagerness in my voice.
“Get on with you then, young lady. And send Mrs. Roulette back so we can set this parade in motion.”
I’d cranked, riding to work that morning, and could feel dried sweat on my skin. A pit bath wouldn’t be enough. I needed a shower.
The shower in the bathroom was state-of-the-art in the 1880s, but there was a problem with it in 1973: it didn’t have a hot-water heater. The beautiful porcelain-lined bathtub on ornate brass legs came with an overhead nozzle that sprayed ice water. A wraparound curtain zipped the victim in so the only place to stand was directly under the nozzle. I turned on the water and got stabbed by millions of ice jets, soaped my body, and rinsed it all away, then toweled off. No wonder people in the old days were so tough.
Five minutes later, in my office with the door closed, I shook the wrinkles out of my lavender dress-suit and put it on; then I opened the window, turned on the fan, and got to work. The Alvarez case was set for trial in exactly one week, so I opened that file first. The criminal complaint was on top. I skipped to the juicy part:
. . . on or about December 23, 1972, Manuel Alvarez did knowingly commit the crime of theft by unlawfully taking a thing of value, to wit: a power drill, a power saw, and an extension cord, with the combined value of fifty dollars or more but less than five hundred dollars, from Glenn Able.
The poor man had been arrested on Saturday, December 23, and put in jail. His wife, who could hardly speak English, came to see Grandfather on Tuesday, the day after Christmas, because the office was closed over the weekend and on Christmas Day. Grandfather had understood enough of what she told him to be in court when they brought Mr. Alvarez before a judge. He was marched in with a string of prisoners, all dressed in orange jumpsuits and manacled to one another with leg irons. I’d steered my grandfather to the courthouse that day and watched the whole thing.
“My client pleads not guilty and demands a jury trial,” he’d said to the judge, then put up fifty dollars to bail him out of jail. “This man should never have spent Christmas Day behind bars,” he’d announced to the world when Mr. Alvarez was released.
The next page in the file was the police report.
On December 23, 1972, at 13:17, I, Reporting Officer Mike Bosse, was on routine patrol with my partner, Dave Cannon. Dispatch sent us to the Able Office Building, 2002 South Bannock, regarding a possible theft of tools by a disgruntled employee.
I’d read enough police reports to understand most of the terms. “Dispatch” meant the radio operator, who talked to all the officers when they were in their cars on “routine patrol.”
On arrival, we contacted Gladys Able, WF, dob 7/7/28. “WF” meant “white female,” and “dob” stood for “date of birth.” Gladys Able was a year younger than my mom.
She stated that her husband, Glenn Able, had found their maintenance man, Manuel Alvarez, drunk and asleep in the maintenance garage earlier that day. He fired Alvarez on the spot. Alvarez cursed her husband loudly, she said, then left in his truck.
“Cursed her husband loudly”? That didn’t sound like the Mr. Alvarez I knew, whom I’d met and talked to in the office a few times. He had thick shoulders and no hips, like a boxer, and black hair, soft brown eyes, and a quiet expression. Some men come across as creeps, especially to fourteen-year-old girls. But Mr. Alvarez was the kind of man I knew I could trust.
Yet who knows what happens to men when they drink too much?
Mrs. Able then told the officers that her husband drove to town to attend to some business, and a little after one o’clock Alvarez came back in his truck. The truck was described as a 1959 Chevy pickup with a broken tailgate. As Mrs. Able watched through the office window, Alvarez drove to the maintenance garage and got out.
She observed the glint of a bottle being tipped. Suspect then took an extension cord, and some power tools, out of the garage. He put these items in his truck. As she was terrified of the man, she did nothing to stop him, but as soon as he was gone, she called the Police Department to report the incident.
This was awful, I thought. Mrs. Able was an eyewitness to the crime. She gave the officers Manuel Alvarez’s address, which she knew because he worked for them. They drove to his unit in the Santa Fe Housing Projects. His wife told them he was asleep, and refused to let them inside. So they drove through the parking lot and found his truck.
The passenger door was not locked and, due to exigent circumstances, we searched the truck without a warrant.
“Exigent circumstances” was legalese for an emergency situation. It gave the police the right to search without a warrant.
The stolen items were wedged in behind the seat on the passenger side. We photographed them in place: a Black and Decker electric power drill, a power saw, and a 50' coil of extension cord. We secured these items in bags and returned with them to the Able Office Building, where we contacted Glenn Able, WM, 47, dob 1/3/25.
The officers found the stolen items in his truck? Why did my grandfather think he was innocent? I didn’t understand the case at all. What did he expect me to do?
We showed Mr. Able the items taken from the Alvarez truck, which he identified as his. He stated that the approximate value of the items was $350. He also informed the reporting officers that Mr. Alvarez was a legal alien from Mexico, living in Colorado with a work permit.
This was making me sick. But I kept reading. The officers then called Immigration and talked to an agent. They informed the agent of the allegations against Mr. Alvarez, then drove back to the projects, arrested Mr. Alvarez, and took him to jail.
A big pit opened in my stomach like a cave. Mr. and Mrs. Able would be at the trial to testify for the prosecution, as well as the police officers who had arrested him. Was Mr. Alvarez really guilty of theft? He’d always seemed so decent and honest. But how could he be?
The next page in the file was a note in my grandfather’s hand, dated February 9, 1973. He could write notes, even if he couldn’t read them.
The Ables are liars. Manuel and Juan Lucero worked that morning for Able, tiling an outdoor patio at the building. When they finished, Able said let’s celebrate, and poured Christmas drinks for them. Manuel doesn’t drink, and it didn’t take much to get him drunk. He doesn’t know how the tools got in his truck, but he knows he didn’t put them there. Manuel also told me that Able owes him over a thousand dollars for work he’s done and hasn’t been paid for. I told Manuel to bring records to prove it, and we’d sue. Manuel will also find Lucero and bring him in for an interview.
Next was a note of the interview with Juan Lucero.
Lucero remembers the job on December 23rd! Able even paid him for it! Very interesting, because he hasn’t paid Manuel a cent. He also remembers the drinks Able poured afterward, like a toast for finishing the job, and a toast to Christmas. But Lucero doesn’t want to testify. Afraid he’ll get in trouble. Better have him subpoenaed for the trial.
Under that was a note typed by Mrs. Roulette dated March 17. It said Able had been sued, and had filed an answer denying that he owed
Mr. Alvarez any money. That case hadn’t been set for trial.
Next was a list of witnesses. The prosecution had listed all the people in the police report; our side had named Manuel, his wife, and Juan Lucero. But there was also a subpoena for Lucero in the file, with a note that said, “Two-Fingers can’t find him.” Then, on May 7: “Can’t get Lucero under a subpoena! He didn’t have a work permit and has been deported back to Mexico as an illegal alien!”
I felt sorry for Mr. Alvarez, and his family, and my grandfather too. Could this be happening? Wasn’t the law supposed to protect the innocent? But without Juan Lucero as a witness, we had no case.
The last page in the file was a checklist of things to do. “Notify client of trial date,” and that box had been checked off by Mrs. Roulette. “Contact DA for further discovery,” with no check mark in the box. “Contact investigator,” also not done. The last thing on the list was “Prepare instructions.”
I’d worry about the instructions later, which I could work on anytime. Right away, I’d go to the DA’s office for the discovery, then talk to our investigator, Two-Fingers Brock.
He was not like the high-priced investigators who worked for the other lawyers. He didn’t have an office, never wore a suit or a tie, and didn’t work for anyone except us. Two-Fingers had been a brakeman for the railroad until he lost part of his hand in an accident. Grandfather would lend him money when he needed it, and Two-Fingers would work off what he owed, by finding things out. He was all that Hope and Hope could afford.
And he wouldn’t be hard to find. One of the clients I’d talked to the day before had told me where Two-Fingers was.
In jail.
