a carpetbagger?”
“No,” I said. “It’s the client. I talked to him this afternoon.”
“And?” He quartered tomatoes, sliced green beans.
“He says he’s not gay.”
Larry looked over at me. “The kid killed someone rather than come out of the closet. What did you expect him to say?’’
“He also says he didn’t do it. That’s why the P.D. got out of the case. He won’t plead to anything.”
Larry added the finishing touches to the salad and put a couple of rolls into the microwave.
“You of all people should know that there are ways of bringing clients around,” Larry said.
“I don’t like him.”
“Oh.” He wiped his hands on a towel and poured himself a glass of water. “Why?”
“He makes me feel like a faggot,” I replied.
“Well,” Larry smiled. “Aren’t you?”
“Come on, Larry. You know what I mean. His self-loathing is catching.”
“Let’s eat,” Larry said. “Then we’ll talk.”
After dinner we sat on the patio. The wind moved through the branches of the eucalyptus trees that lined the lake. A yellow moon rose in the sky. A string of Japanese lanterns cast their light from behind us. Larry lit a cigarette.
“Those can’t be good for you, now,” I said.
“They never were,” he replied. “Did I tell you about the cocktail party tomorrow?”
“If you did I don’t remember.”
“It’s a fundraiser for Jim’s defense.”
“I suppose I have to go,” I said, unhappily.
“I’m afraid so,” he replied. He shrugged. “These people want to help Jim.”
“He’s not much interested in helping himself.”
“What’s bothering you about this case?”
“I told you.”
“You don’t have to like him.”
“He tells me he didn’t do it,” I said. “Which means he’s either not guilty or he can’t bring himself to admit his guilt. The first possibility is remote.”
“Maybe he thinks he was justified,” Larry offered.
I shook my head. “No, I believe he thinks he didn’t do it. This amnesia-”
“That’s deliberate?”
“It certainly allows him to deny knowledge of the only evidence that could resolve this case one way or the other.”
The smoke from Larry’s cigarette climbed into the air. A faint wind carried the scent of eucalyptus to us from the lake.
“What bothers me,” I said, “is that he insists he’s innocent when he so clearly isn’t.”
“It must be a pretty horrible thing to admit you killed someone,” Larry said quietly.
“Not someone like Fox,” I said, “who made Jim suffer and who he must hate.”
“Then maybe it was death,” Larry said. “Being in that room with a man he had killed. Once you’ve seen death unleashed, it pursues you.” He sat forward, his face a mask m the flickering light of the lanterns. “Maybe that’s what he’s running from, Henry.”
The next morning I went to see Freeman Vidor, who had been investigating Jim’s case for the Public Defender. His office was in an old brownstone on Grand Avenue which, amid L.A.’s construction frenzy, seemed like a survivor from antiquity. The foyer had a marble floor and the elevator was run by a uniformed operator who might have been a bit player when Valentino was making movies.
Freeman Vidor was a thin black man. He sat at a big, shabby desk strewn with papers and styrofoam hamburger boxes. A couple of framed certificates on the walls attested to the legitimacy of his operation. I also noticed a framed photograph
— the only one on the wall — that showed a younger Vidor with two other men, all wearing the uniforms of the L.A.P.D. He now wore a wrinkled gold suit and a heavy Rolex. He had very short, gray hair. His face was unlined, though youth was the last thing it conveyed. Rather, it was the face of a man for whom there were no surprises left. I doubted, in fact, whether Freeman Vidor had ever been young.
We got past introductions. He lifted the Times at the edge of his desk and said, “I see you made the front page of the Metro section.”
“I haven’t read the article,” I replied arid glanced at it. There was my picture beneath a headline that read: “S.F. Lawyer to Defend Accused Teen Killer.”
“Teen killer,” I read aloud.
“Sort of jumps out on you, doesn’t it?” he replied. “Listen, you want some coffee? I got a thermos here.”
“No, thanks.”
He poured coffee into a dirty mug, added a packet of Sweet‘n’Low and stirred it with a pencil.
“I read the report you prepared for Sharon Hart,” I said.
“That’s one tough woman,” he replied.
“She jumped at the chance to dump Jim’s case.”
“I said tough, not stupid.” He sipped the coffee and grimaced.
“Is there an insult in there for me?”
He smiled. “Only if you’re in the market for one. All I meant is, that boy’s only hope is to get a jury to feel sorry for him because this Fox kid was harassing him about being a homosexual.” He finished the coffee. “But first you got to convince them it ain’t a sin to be gay.”
“This is Los Angeles, not Pocatello.”
He lit a cigarette. “Yeah, last election a million people in this state voted to lock you guys up.”
“That was AIDS.”
“You tell someone you’re gay,” he replied, “and the first thing they do after they shake your hand is get a blood test.”
“Including you?”
“It’s not on the list of my biases,” he said. “You want to tell me about yours?”
“Some of my favorite clients are black.”
He thought about this, then laughed. “You want me in the case?”
I nodded.
“A hundred-and-fifty a day plus expenses.”
“That’s acceptable.”
He blew a stream of smoke toward a wan-looking fern on a pedestal near the window. “Who’s paying?”
“There are some people who would like to see Jim Pears get off on this one.”
He smiled. “Your kind of people?”
“That’s right.”
“If my mama only knew.” He opened a notebook and extracted a black Cross pen from the inner pocket of his jacket. “What do you want me to do?”
“I want background on Brian Fox.”
He raised a thin eyebrow. “Background?”
“Whatever you can find that I can use to smear him,” I explained.
He nodded knowingly. “Oh, background. What else?”
“I read in the prelim transcript that there’s a back entrance to the restaurant.”
“The delivery door. It was locked.”
“Lock implies key, or keys. Find out who had them and what they were doing that night.”
“You’re fishing,” he said.
“I want to know.”
He made a note and shrugged. “It’s your dime.”
