Prosecution: A Legal Thriller (15 page)

"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?"