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  “There is no secret weapon,” Sharon said. “At least in regards to whether he did it. But, as to why he did it… “ She let the sentence trail off.

  “I understand,” the judge said.

  We were at a delicate point. Since Judge Ryan would be presiding at the trial there was a limit to what Sharon Hart could disclose to her about the defense without laying the judge open to a charge of being less than completely impartial.

  “Anyway,” Sharon continued, “I feel very strongly that I cannot continue to represent Mr. Pears and I think he feels just as strongly that he can’t work with me, either.”

  The judge turned to me. “Mr. Rios.”

  “I’m willing to try the case on terms set by my client.”

  The judge arched an eyebrow. “Have you read the transcript of the preliminary hearing?”

  “Yes. However, Judge, whatever the state of the evidence, there comes a point when you have to do what your client wants

  — if, in good conscience, you can.”

  The judge frowned but said nothing.

  “He’s right, Judge,” Sharon said, coming to my rescue. “It’s Jim who’s on trial here.”

  The judge looked at the reporter and said, “This is off the record.” The reporter stopped typing and the judge said, “Do you really think Jim Pears has the wherewithal to call the shots in this case?”

  Sharon and I exchanged surprised looks.

  “Now I know I’m speaking out of turn,” the judge continued, “but when I look at Jim Pears all I see is fear. I’m going to grant your motion, Sharon, and I’ll give you some time to prepare for trial, Mr. Rios, but I want you to know that I feel very strongly that this is not a case that should be coming to trial. There should be a disposition.”

  “The D.A.’s not giving an inch from murder one,” Sharon said sourly.

  Judge Ryan set her mouth into a grim smile. “The D.A.,” she said, “can be persuaded. All right. You think about what I’ve said, Mr. Rios. Now let’s go out and do this on the record.” “Yes, Judge,” we both chimed.

  We preceded her into the court. I asked Sharon what that was all about.

  “It sounds to me like she doesn’t want a jury to get their hands on Jim. If I were you, I’d consider waiving a jury and having a court trial.”

  I stopped at the table where Jim was sitting and leaned over. “Jim, my name is Henry,” I whispered.

  He looked up at me and said, “I didn’t do it.”

  5

  Sharon Hart’s motion was granted and I was substituted in as Jim Pears’s attorney of record. The trial date was continued to December first to give me time to prepare. After the ruling was made the D.A. stood up.

  “Yes, Mr. Pisano,” the judge said.

  “The People wish to move to amend the complaint.”

  The judge looked annoyed. “This isn’t exactly timely notice, counsel.”

  “The Penal Code says the People can move to amend at any time,” Pisano replied blandly.

  “There’s a difference between what’s permissible and what’s fair,” she snapped. “What’s your amendment?”

  Sharon Hart moved to the edge of her seat. Pisano took out a stack of papers and passed a set of them to me. The other set he handed to the bailiff who took them to the judge. I glanced at the caption. It was a motion to amend the complaint and allege special circumstances to the murder charge.

  “You’re seeking the death penalty?” the judge asked. Behind us, the gallery murmured. The bailiff called the courtroom into order.

  “Yes, Your Honor,” Pisano replied.

  Sharon Hart said, audibly, “Bastard.”

  “At the preliminary hearing you said this wasn’t a special circumstances case,” Judge Ryan said.

  Contritely, Pisano replied, “I was wrong. We have reviewed the transcripts of the prelim and looked at our evidence. We now think we can show special circumstances.”

  I got to my feet. “Your Honor, I’m not prepared to respond to this motion at this time. I’d ask that it be put over for a couple of weeks to give me time to file an opposition.”

  “Fine,” she said. “File your papers within twenty-one days. I will hear arguments a month from today. Court is adjourned.”

  The judge left the bench and the bailiff cleared the courtroom of reporters. The deputies who had been standing beside Jim got him to his feet.

  “When can I talk to my client?” I asked one of them.

  “He’ll be back at county this afternoon.”

  “Jim, I’ll be there later.”

  He stared past me and nodded. They led him off.

  The courtroom cleared out quickly, until only Sharon Hart and I were left.

  “You coming?” I asked her.

  “Not through that door,” she said, indicating the front entrance. I remembered the reporters and the tv cameras. “You?” she asked.

  “If I don’t,” I said, “Pisano will have the boy convicted and sentenced by the six o’clock news.”

  “See you,” she said, and slipped out the back.

  “Mr. Rios, can you answer a few questions?” I stood in a semicircle of reporters, the tv cameras running behind us in the busy corridor outside the courtroom. Pisano — to his chagrin, I imagined — commanded a smaller group down the hall.

  “Sure,” I said. I heard the clicking of cameras as a couple of photographers circled.

  “What do you think about the D.A. seeking the death penalty?”

  “It’s an obvious attempt to extort a guilty plea from my client,” I replied.

  “Why did the Public Defender withdraw from the case?”

  “Irreconcilable conflicts,” I said.

  “What were they?”

  “That’s information protected by the attorney-client privilege,” I replied.

  “What’s your defense going to be?”

  “Not guilty.”

  “What about the evidence?”

  “What about it?”

  “It’s pretty strong.”

  “Strong is not good enough,” I said. “It has to be,” and I repeated the ancient charge to the jury, “beyond a reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty. I expect to show that it’s not.”

  “How?”

  Good question, I thought. To my interrogator, though, I said, “I’m not free to disclose the details of our investigation.”

  “What about the political pressure by gays that the D.A. talked about? Is that true?”

  “As counsel for the People conceded, he was speaking out of turn.”

  “Then it’s not true?”

  “Of course not.”

  “But you are gay aren’t you?”

  I turned to face the person who had asked the question. It was Brian Fox’s mother. She was trembling with anger.

  “Yes, I am, Mrs. Fox, for what that’s worth.”

  “You’re all thick as thieves,” she said while the cameras turned on her. “All of you — faggots. What about my boy? He’s dead.”

  “Yes, I know,” I said, and stopped myself from expressing condolences. It would only give her another opportunity to attack. “I expect the facts surrounding his death will come out at trial. All of them, Mrs. Fox.”

  We glared at each other. Her face was rigid. She pulled her head back, drew in her cheeks and spat, hitting my neck. The TV cameras recorded the incident. I wiped my neck with my handkerchief. She turned away and clicked down the hall.

  “There’s your lead,” I told the reporters.

  From the courthouse I drove to Larry Ross’s house. Though he worked in Beverly Hills he lived on the west side of the city. Silver Lake was a reservoir named in honor of a tum-of-the-century water commissioner, but the fortuitous name aptly described the metallic sheen of the water which was not quite a color but a quality of light.

  There were hills on both the east and west sides of the lake. Larry lived in the west hills on a street where the architecture ran the gamut from English Tudor to Japanese ecclesiastical
Stucco was the great equalizer. Larry’s house was sort of generic Mediterranean. From the street it appeared as a two-story white wall with an overhanging tile roof, small square windows on the upper floor and a big, dark door set into an arched doorway on the lower. I parked in the driveway and let myself in.

  From the small entrance hall, stairs led up to the guest rooms on the second floor. The kitchen was off to the right. To the left there was an immense boxy room that terminated in a glass wall overlooking a garden composed of three descending terraces and the reservoir at the bottom of the hill. The room was furnished with austere New England antiques but its austerity was lightened by elegant pieces of Chinese pottery, Oriental carpets, and wall-hangings like the parlor of a nineteenth- century Boston sea captain made prosperous by the China trade. It was a room designed for entertaining but its stillness indicated that it had not been used for that purpose for a long time, since Ned’s suicide.

  After Ned’s death, Larry had built another wing onto the house, where he now lived. It consisted of a loft bedroom that looked out over his study and the garden.

  I went upstairs where I would be staying while I was in town. In a study on the second floor I read rapidly through the files that Sharon Hart had given me. I noted the name of her investigator, Freeman Vidor. I also found the name of the psychiatrist, Sidney Townsend, who had examined Jim. There was no report from the psychiatrist. I called him, reaching him just as he was about to begin a session. He told me to come by in an hour. Freeman Vidor was out, but I left a message on his machine. Finally, I called Catherine McKinley, who had spent the morning in court attempting to continue my cases and then in my office fending off clients.

  “What happened in court?” I asked her.

  “I got three continuances and disposed of two other cases.

  That frees you up for at least a couple of weeks. How are you?”

  “Trial’s set in six weeks. My client wants a straight not guilty defense.”

  “On the facts you told me?”

  “That’s right.”

  “The kid has a death wish.”

  “Then he may get it,” I replied. “The D.A. wants to amend and add special circumstances.”

  “That just occurred to him?” she asked, incredulously.

  “He’s playing to the press,” I replied. “I don’t know how serious he actually is about amending.”

  “Any chance the kid’s not guilty?”

  “I asked the very same question of the P.D. who was handling the case. She rolled her eyes.”

  “That must mean no,” Catherine said. “What are you going to do, Henry?”

  “Larry Ross sees Jim as a victim of bigotry against gays,” I said. “That’s what he wants to put on trial.”

  “I don’t see how that changes the evidence.”

  “Agreed. But it might change the way the jury looks at the evidence.”

  “I don’t know, Henry,” she said. “I think people are tired of being told they have to take the rap when someone else breaks the law.”

  “Larry’s point is that in this society it’s easier to kill than to come out. That’s not so far-fetched.”

  “Not if you’re gay,” she replied. “Most people aren’t.”

  “Would you buy it, Catherine?”

  “Yes,” she said after a moment’s pause. “And I’d still vote to convict.”

  “You’re a hard-hearted woman,” I joked.

  “That’s right,” she said seriously. “And I’m not even a bigot.”

  We said our goodbyes and I sat at the desk in the study looking out the window to the lake below.

  Sidney Townsend looked exactly like what I imagined someone named Sidney Townsend would look like. He concealed the shapelessness of his body in an expensive suit but his face was big, florid, and jowly. His hair was swept back against his head and held fixedly in place by hairspray. Small, incurious eyes assessed me as he smiled and shook my hand.

  He led me into his office, a tastefully furnished room that was nearly as dark as a confessional. Perhaps he specialized in lapsed Catholics, I thought, or maybe the dimness was evocative of a bedroom in keeping with psychiatry’s obsession with sex. I sat down on a leather sofa while he got Jim’s file. He joined me, sitting a little too close and facing toward me, his jacket unbuttoned and his arm draped across the back of the sofa, leaning toward me. The perfect picture of candor. I drew back into my corner.

  “So,” he said, “you’re taking Jim’s case to trial.”

  “So it appears. Do you get many appointments from the court?”

  “It’s probably a quarter of my practice,” he said. “Does that bother you?”

  “I just like to know,” I said. “I wouldn’t want the D.A. to be able to call you a professional witness.”

  “I have a whole response worked out for that,” he said with a confident smile.

  I bet you do, I thought. Aloud I said, “I’d like to know something about Jim Pears.”

  “Oh,” Townsend said, offhandedly, “a typical self-hating homosexual.”

  “Typical?”

  He shrugged. “I know that the A.P.A. doesn’t consider homosexuality to be a mental disease,” he said, “but let’s face it, Mr. Rios, many if not most homosexuals have terrible problems of self-esteem. I see a lot of instability among them.”

  “You think being gay is a mental disorder per se?” I asked, keeping my voice neutral.

  “That’s not what I said,” he replied tightly, then added, “You’re gay yourself, aren’t you?”

  “Is that relevant?”

  He smiled and shrugged. “To whether you retain me, probably.” He studied me. “I’m not the enemy, Mr. Rios.”

  I looked back at him warily. “Okay, you’re not the enemy. Why don’t we talk about Jim.”

  He picked up a folder and opened it. “Jim says he’s known about his homosexuality from the time he reached puberty,” Townsend said. “He’s had sexual relations with men for the last couple of years. Typical bathroom pickups, parks, that sort of thing. The incident in the restaurant was consistent with his pattern of sexual behavior.”

  “Which incident?”

  “The man he was discovered with,” Townsend said, “was a customer in the restaurant who picked him up and took him out to his car for sex. That’s where this other boy — Fox? — found them.”

  “These sexual encounters sound risky,” I said.

  “They are. Maximally so, but then, Jim wanted to get caught.”

  “Is that what he says?”

  “No, but it’s obvious, isn’t it?”

  “What seems obvious to me,” I said, “is that the reason a gay teenage boy has sex in public places is because he has nowhere else to go.”

  Townsend looked as if the thought had not occurred to him. “Possibly,” he said.

  “I was told that Jim doesn’t remember anything about the actual killing,” I said.

  “That’s right,” Townsend replied. “It’s a kind of amnesia induced by the trauma of the incident. It’s fairly common among people who were in serious accidents.”

  “Not physiological at all?”

  “He was given a medical examination,” Townsend said. “Nothing wrong there. It’s psychological.”

  “Aren’t there ways to unlock his memory?” I asked.

  “As a matter of fact,” Townsend said, “I tried hypnosis.”

  “Did it work?”

  “No. People have different susceptibilities,” he explained. He thought a bit. “There are drugs, of course. Truth serums. I doubt they would work, though. He’s really built a wall up there.”

  “Are you treating him at all?”

  “That’s not really my function, is it? My examination was entirely for forensic purposes.”

  “What about his parents? Have you talked to them?”

  “They wouldn’t talk to me. They’re strict Catholics who don’t trust psychiatry.”

  “They’d rather believe their son is
possessed by the devil,” I observed, bitterly.

  “Which is simply an unschooled way of describing schizoid behavior,” Townsend explained.

  “Who’s schizoid?”

  “Jim, of course. He’s completely disassociated himself from his homosexuality.”

  “Can you blame him?”

  “I’ve given you my views on homosexuality,” Townsend replied tartly.

  “No doubt you shared them with Jim as well.”

  His small eyes narrowed. “I said I wasn’t the enemy.” “Because you’re not actually malicious?”

  “Do you want me to testify or not?” he snapped.

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  He looked at me, then shrugged. “I still have to bill you for this time.”

  “Sure.” I got up to leave.

  “Mr. Rios,” he said, as I reached the door. “You’re making a mistake, you know. I’m the best there is.”

  “So,” I said, “am I.”

  6

  The sheriffs brought Jim into the conference room and seated him across from me at a table divided by a low partition. The walls were painted a grimy pastel blue that made the room look like a soiled Easter egg. The lights were turned up to interrogation intensity and I got my first good look at Jim Pears.

  His fingernails were bitten down to ragged stubs. His face was white to the point of transparency and a blue vein pounded at his temple as if trying to tear through the skin. Splotches of yellow stubble spotted his chin and cheek. His hair, unwashed and bad-smelling, was matted to his head. The whites of his eyes were streaked with red but the irises were vivid blue — the only part of his face that showed life.

  His eyes were judging me. It was as if I was the last of a long line of grown-ups who would fail him. It annoyed me. His glance slipped away.

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to talk to you this morning,” I said. “Do you understand what happened in court?’’

  In a soft voice he answered, “You’re my lawyer now.”

  “That’s right. We have to be ready to go to trial in six weeks.”

  He shrugged and stared at the partition between us. After a moment his silence became hostile.