The Legacy (12 page)

“It's going to take a couple of months.”

“It's not going to take a day more than three weeks,”Thompson told him.

“It can't be done,”the district attorney protested. “It's going to take that long to pick a jury.”

Still studying his calendar, Thompson did not look up. “No,”he said simply, a stern smile on his lips, “it will not.”He closed the leather-bound book and announced the trial date. “Anyone object?”

We went back to the courtroom and took our places. The two of them had done nothing to disguise their contempt for each other in private, but now that they were once again in the public eye they treated each other with elaborate courtesy.

Judge Thompson asked, “Does the prosecution have something it wishes to take up at this time?”

“Yes, your honor,”Haliburton replied, flashing a candidate's smile as he turned just enough so that the reporters crushed together on the benches behind him could glimpse his profile. “After a full and thorough discussion in chambers,”he announced, “the matter raised by Mr. Antonelli has been resolved. I would therefore, for the record, indicate that the People do not oppose the motion—”

I was not about to let the prosecution appear more reasonable than the defense.

“Your honor,”I interrupted, “Mr. Haliburton is entirely correct, and for that reason I would ask leave of the court to withdraw the motion to compel.”

Almost drowning in goodwill, Judge Thompson turned to Haliburton.

“I assume this is acceptable? With the understanding, of course, that the discovery arrangements discussed in chambers will remain binding on the parties.”

“Of course, your honor,”Haliburton replied.

He waited until Thompson turned away.

“That leaves only the matter of the trial date, your honor.”

He said it as if the judge might have forgotten it, and then, as if he were only trying to be helpful, reminded him of the date.

Grumbling beneath his breath, Thompson turned to me. “Do you have anything you wish to add, Mr. Antonelli?”

“No, your honor. I think Mr. Haliburton has covered it all.”

Thompson rose from the bench. “Court stands adjourned,”he announced as he slouched away.

The courtroom began to clear. A deputy sheriff began to wheel Jamaal away from the counsel table. I barely had time to whisper a few words of encouragement and promise to see him in the next day or so.

“Don't forget,”he called to me over his shoulder.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Haliburton coming around behind me on his way out of the courtroom. I began to put my copy of the document charging my client with murder into my briefcase when I felt his hand on my arm.

“You handled yourself well in there,”he said, nodding toward the door behind which Judge Thompson had just vanished. He bent his head toward me so none of the reporters who were crowding the aisle, waiting to ask their questions, could overhear. “You haven't tried a case here before, have you? Things work a little differently in San Francisco.”He leaned closer. “Forget what I said to Thompson. I'm willing to discuss a plea.”

I turned toward him, but as I did, he slipped away, smiling at the reporters as he opened the gate in the wooden railing. Bantering with them, he made his way toward the double doors in the back. I waited until they were gone and then followed. In the hallway outside, under a glaring white light, a battery of television cameras were trained on the district attorney. Staying close to the wall, I moved to the back of the crowd and watched.

Haliburton was used to this. In an instant he made himself into someone new. The sullen, lazy look on his face was replaced with an eager, energetic expression. He could hardly wait to answer any question anyone might want to ask. He stood as straight as a soldier on parade. He looked younger, more alert; there was a sparkle to his eyes that had not been there before. His voice, dull, caustic, and at times almost inaudible—an instrument of ridicule and derision except when in open court he had to say something on the record—was now warm, vibrant, insistent. It was the voice of someone who had convinced himself that if he could only talk long enough he could convince anyone of anything.

Surrounded by the media, Haliburton became something that was more their creation even than his own. With the unerring instinct of the successful democratic politician, he moved deftly from one frantic inquiry to the next, repeating as he went all the stock phrases, all the trivial expressions that were expected of him but managing somehow to make it sound as if they had never been said by anyone else before. He had even brought with him the requisite prepared statement.

“After a complete and thorough investigation, we have assembled enough evidence …”

He looked up from the text to stare directly into the black lens of the nearest television camera.

“More than enough evidence to obtain a conviction in the murder of United States Senator Jeremy Fullerton.”

The hand that held the written statement dropped to his side.

“There will be no plea bargain, no deal, nothing to prevent justice from being done. Jeremy Fullerton was killed in a senseless act of slaughter, murdered for nothing more than the contents of his wallet. This case will go to trial.”

Folding up the single sheet of white paper, Haliburton glanced at the sea of faces in front of him.

“At the end of that trial, the defendant, Jamaal Washington, will be convicted, and the People will ask that the death penalty be imposed.”

I was certain that Haliburton had meant it when he told me that despite what he had said in front of the judge, he was open to a plea agreement; and as I watched his performance in front of the cameras, I was certain that he meant it when he told the world the case would go to trial. He was not the first politician, or the first lawyer, to care more for the immediate effect of what he said than the inconvenient question of whether it was entirely consistent with what he had said before. I had to admit, however, that I had never seen anyone change position so quickly or so often. I walked outside into the warm afternoon sun, laughing silently to myself as I suddenly remembered the childhood game, pulling the petals off a clover, repeating with a gambler's reliance on fate, 'She loves me, she loves me not.' It seemed to mimic perfectly the workings of Clarence Haliburton's mind.

A block away from the courthouse, people were moving up and down the sidewalks, intent on their own affairs, caught up in their own random thoughts, some perhaps as strange as my own. I waited for the light to change at the intersection and then stepped into the crosswalk. A car came hurtling around the corner, honking at me to get out of the way. My heart racing, I jumped back on the curb. Embarrassed by the way I had almost daydreamed my way into death, I tried to appear unshaken while I struggled to catch my breath. I started to step out again, but someone's hand held me back.

“It's red. Better wait for it to change.”

The voice was like the echo from the bottom of a well, and it seemed strangely familiar. I looked around and found myself staring at someone I was certain I knew.

“Andrei Bogdonovitch,”he reminded me.

The light turned green. He took me by the elbow as we began to cross the street. Besides the fact that it was so utterly unexpected, I had not recognized him because of the way he was dressed. At Albert Craven's dinner party, he had worn an expensive suit and Italian shoes. Now he was wearing a rather drab, loose-fitting brown sports jacket, dark gray slacks, and a pair of dusty brown loafers. He was not wearing a tie, and his white dress shirt, which looked as if he had worn it several days in a row, was open at the collar. At Craven's he had made an immediate impression; today he blended in with the crowd, just another face no one would notice.

“I was wondering, Mr. Antonelli, whether you might be free for lunch? I've been wanting to talk to you.”

He still had hold of my elbow when we reached the other side of the street. There was something a little uncomfortable about the way he held on to me, as if I were being guided somewhere without being told the destination. Something in the tone of his voice told me that our meeting had not after all been a matter of chance.

“Were you at the courthouse?”I asked as I turned toward him, disengaging my arm.

“Yes. It's quite a madhouse over there, isn't it?”He paused and nodded thoughtfully. “Yes. I followed you out of the courthouse. It was too crowded in there to talk.”His eyes, sunk into his broad face, started to shine. “You move faster than I do. I couldn't catch up until you had to stop for the light. By the way,”he added, a caution in his voice, “you could have been killed.”

His tone seemed genuine, and I regretted that a moment before I had felt uncomfortable having his hand on my arm.

“I'd be delighted to have lunch with you,”I replied apologetically to his invitation, “but I'm afraid I already have an engagement. As a matter of fact,”I added, glancing up the street, “I'm on my way there now.”

Bogdonovitch smiled politely, but disappointment, and perhaps something more, passed over his eyes. He took hold of my arm again, not on the elbow, but around the wrist, and with surprising strength held it tight.

“I have to talk to you, Mr. Antonelli. It's very important.”

With a curt nod, he let go of my wrist and, without waiting for a reply, turned on his heel and disappeared into the crowd.

I stared after him, stunned both by his sudden insistence that he had to see me and by his abrupt and apparently angry departure. I began to walk up the street, wondering what could possibly be so important. That night at Albert Craven's he had given me such a strange look, as if there were things he wanted me to know, things he did not want to take up in front of the others. But if that was it, why had he waited for two weeks, and why had he thought it necessary to wait for me after court instead of just picking up the telephone? Andrei Bogdonovitch was one of the more interesting men I had met, but I was beginning to wonder if there was something not quite right about him.

Seven

W
hen he had invited me, Albert Craven apologized for not having asked me sooner. It was not because he was not interested in the case and what I was doing, he insisted. He simply had not had the time to do anything except concentrate on a particularly complicated civil matter that had, he was glad to report, finally come to an end. As I headed toward the entrance to his building, he signaled from the open window of a limousine parked in front.

“I thought we might have lunch at my country club,”he said amiably as I climbed in. He tapped the driver on the shoulder. “Lake Merced.”

Sinking back against the corner of the plush leather seat, he started to say something, then shook his head and began to search through his pockets.

“Yes, here it is,”he said as he extracted a small piece of paper from his left suit coat pocket. Fumbling for his glasses, he studied what someone else had written.

“This came in just before I left,”he explained. “The district attorney called and left a message that he was serious about what he said and that if you wanted to discuss it further to please call him as soon as possible.”

Craven was not sure what to make of my reaction. “It strikes you as funny?”

“We go into chambers and he tells the judge—Thompson— that there isn't going to be any plea bargain. As we're leaving court, he tells me to forget what he said to the judge. Then, two minutes later, he's out in the hallway promising the world that there's going to be a trial, but only because you have to have one before you can have an execution. And now, apparently the moment he gets back to his office, he calls to let me know I should not take seriously anything he says to anyone else.”

Craven formed his small mouth into a knowing smile. “ 'Haliburton the halfhearted.' He's always like that. He says things for effect, not because he means them. He wants to use this case for everything he can get out of it. That doesn't mean he wants to spend the next several months slugging it out in a trial.”

I corrected him. “Three weeks.”

“Three weeks for a murder trial?”He was astonished but then, a moment later, certain he knew the reason. “Haliburton said it would take more time, and Thompson told him he couldn't have it. Am I right?”he asked, eager to know.

When I told him that he was, he beamed.

“They really hate each other,”he explained, without any apparent regret that they did.

I asked him why they hated each other.

He leaned toward me, a shrewd grin on his face. “They've hated each other so long they don't know why themselves. But I know why. They started out together, years ago, in the district attorney's office, both of them just out of law school. Like any other new assistant D.A.s, they started with misdemeanor cases. After a few months, Haliburton got promoted to felony cases. Thompson had to wait more than a year.”

Craven gazed out the window as the limousine maneuvered through traffic on its way out of the city. I waited for him to look back and go on with the story of why Haliburton and Thompson had such contempt for each other. But when he did finally turn around, it was only to comment on the weather.

“What happened between them?”I asked, still waiting. “Why do they hate each other so much?”

“I just told you,”he said with a shrug. “Haliburton was promoted first.”

“That's it?”I asked. “That's all there was?”

There was a sort of benevolence in the way he looked at me, a kind of sad resignation to the follies, the stupidities, and perhaps even the crimes of human beings.

“When you think about it, that's really quite a lot,”he suggested. “Thompson and Haliburton were two ambitious young men, and at the very beginning of their careers—the beginning of their lives, really—one of them is judged better than the other.”

Craven moved closer, his eyes searching mine. “How do you imagine Thompson felt—how would you have felt? Don't you think you would have resented it—thought it was unfair, and maybe even worse than that: an object lesson in favoritism? But now turn it around. How do you imagine Haliburton felt? Do you think it did anything to make him more modest, less ambitious, less certain that he was always going to be a success? You've met him. Do you think it had no effect on what he thought about Thompson or on the way he treated him? It seems to me that for anyone watching at the time it would not have been too difficult to guess that those two were going to be enemies for life.”