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.”