G. Jerry steered the conversation to small talk before the bosomy, braless waitress in thigh-high shorts and a Grateful Dead T-shirt returned with our drink orders and left with our menu selections, carrying on at length about the Lakers’ chances to make it to the play-offs. He was starting on the Dodgers when the food arrived, his steak, my prime rib, and the doctor’s shrimp salad, all three orders drenched in enough garlic to stop a charging rhino. I had feigned attention and Dr. Edwards sat stonefaced and silent, picking at his fingernails until this moment, when G. Jerry announced solemnly it was time to move on to the business at hand.
Max was in desperate need of help, the kind of help outside an attorney’s skills, even one of his stature, but well within my proven expertise at influencing public opinion through media manipulation, he said, or words to that effect, hand to heart, nodding in agreement with himself.
He carried on like that for a few minutes more, softening me up for whatever point he intended to make, until Dr. Edwards signaled him to be quiet with an open palm and urged him please to get specific. He nodded assent and got specific:
Max had applied to the California Board of Medical Examiners for reinstatement of his license to practice and was set to appear at a hearing in two weeks. There was talk in medical circles his application would be denied outright or otherwise stalled for years in an arbitrary tangle of review and regulation, based on the assumption that, although he had been proven innocent, the lingering taint of the original murder accusation and the trials could irreparably stain and damage the entire profession.
Hogwash, he said.
I was the best PR man he knew to scale that wall, he said, so how about it?
Oh, and by the way, Max was currently surviving off the kindness of a few old family friends, including one or two doctors, who had never wavered in their belief in his innocence. My services would have to be pro bono.
G. Jerry had been building to that moment. He looked at me like I’d be committing my own criminal act if I refused him, unleashing the same sanctimonious expression he had often turned on the Edwards trial jurors.
I glanced over at the doctor.
He looked hopeful.
That said more to me than all of G. Jerry’s words and declarations.
I didn’t know if I could help restore his license to him — conjure up an outpouring of sympathy for the doctor that would make it virtually impossible for the Medical Board to deny him reinstatement — but I knew I wanted to give it my best shot.
For the moment that’s all I knew.
Max and I met again two nights later at a Chinese storefront restaurant in Burbank. By now I had pored over published accounts of the murder and wasn’t any closer to having a handle on how to swing public opinion in his favor. I figured, maybe, if I heard his take, it might pop on the little Eureka! cartoon-world light bulb over my head.
He wasn’t forthcoming at first, insisting it was bad enough he had to relive that terrible scene in his memory every day, and every night in his dreams. I persisted. He surrendered only after I said I couldn’t help him if he wasn’t prepared to help me... and himself.
Max finished his last spare rib, shut his eyes, and sank his voice to a near whisper, remembering how he was sleeping downstairs on a sofa after an inconsequential argument with Audrey when her screams woke him. He sprinted upstairs to their bedroom and ran to his wife’s bloody, beaten, and lifeless body. He knew at once Audrey had been raped. Her pajama top was raised up and her breasts exposed. Her pajama bottom had been pulled down past her knees. He heard a noise behind him. Before he could turn, he was knocked out by a sharp blow to the head. Rousing, he hurried to check on their eight-year-old daughter, Barbie. Relieved to discover her sleeping soundly and unharmed, he headed downstairs to call the police. That’s when he spotted a heavyset intruder wearing a ski mask ducking out through the patio door and chased after him. They traded blows until the intruder landed a punch hard enough to send him sailing backward into the pool. He had disappeared by the time Max managed to drag himself out of the water and dial 911.
The evidence against him was nonexistent or circumstantial at best, but that didn’t stop the press from casting him as the guilty husband from the first, to the exclusion of any possible suspects the cops might uncover, he said. The press even gave short shrift to the sworn testimony from friends and medical professionals who spoke to his character and the loving relationship he and Audrey shared.
That raised one of the questions I had, about Barbie. Who better than their daughter to testify about her parents’ loving relationship, but she was never on the witness list and so never was called to the stand. The press made this out as another sign of Max’s guilt — when not even his daughter was willing to come forward to defend her daddy.
It was his decision, Max said. She was only eight and he didn’t want her exposed to the intense glare of public scrutiny. The trauma brought on by the savage death of her mother and the finger-pointing jeers aimed at her by classmates was already too severe for a sensitive child. Enough was enough. After the guilty verdict was handed down and he was shipped off to prison, the state put Barbie in the care of Child Protective Services. She was not permitted to visit him. Their contact was limited to letters, and hers stopped coming after a year. It was as if he’d never had a daughter. Eventually, he learned she had moved from one foster home to another until she turned eighteen and was free to flee the system, change her name, and live life on her own terms.
And there it was—
The light bulb clicked on over my head.
Barbie emerges from anonymity after all these years to publicly reunite with her father, let the world see she never faltered in her love for him or her unyielding belief in his innocence, and to personally urge the Medical Board to grant Daddy the license that allows him to resume the practice taken away from him after he was falsely accused and convicted.
I said those words to him with all the passion I could muster, like I was auditioning for a role in some stage play or movie, but I saw from Max’s somber expression that he was troubled by the concept. He pushed aside his plate, settled an elbow on the table, planted his chin in his palm, and quietly rejected it.
His reasoning was simple.
He had made it a point over all these years to discourage communication or a reunion of any sort and, as much as it pained him, he was not open to reversing himself now and risk causing unwanted scrutiny or harm to the life Barbie had built for herself.
Maybe it was something Barbie was ready to risk, I said. She was no longer that eight-year-old child he so lovingly remembered and cherished. She was a young woman capable of making adult decisions. Maybe she would want with all her heart to end their separation if it would help her dear father get on with his life.
Was I getting through to him?
It was impossible to tell.
I waited him out.
He stared at me for an eternity, quiet as a corpse, frozen in time and space until he stood and dug into a jacket pocket for his sunglasses, his one concession to disguise, and cracked what I read as a condescending smile. Throwing out his palms in a gesture of surrender, he gave me permission to ask her — but it had to be Barbie’s decision without any undue pressure from me — and ambled out of the restaurant.
G. Jerry pulled for me from his trial files the name Barbie had taken, Barbara Jefferson, when she took off on her own, and her location, Owensboro, Kentucky, where she worked as a production coordinator at the RiverPark Center entertainment complex on the southern banks of the Ohio River.