The Hidden Law (17 page)

“Do you think it’s significant that you left here because someone else needed you?” he asked.

“I’m on call pretty much twenty-four hours a day,” I answered.

“Even the one hour a week you set aside for yourself,” he observed. As always, his tone was mild, inquisitive, like a voice that questioned from within.

“I think I told you that I’m not the contemplative type.”

“No,” he said, “what you told me is that you didn’t think the purpose of life is to sit beneath a tree and wait for enlightenment. It’s a false dichotomy, Henry. It’s not either-or. Just before you left last time, you were telling me how things changed for you after your father died. Is that when you decided to become a lawyer?”

“Not immediately,” I said. “I drifted into it over the course of a couple of years. It was the tail end of the sixties, and I got caught up in the peace movement, or what was left of it.” I thought back to those far-off days, and how, gradually, I had exchanged my books of Yeats and Auden for Herbert Marcuse and Frantz Fanon. “I became very grim, weighed down by the world’s injustices.”

“The world’s injustice, Henry, or your father’s?”

“I didn’t have you around to make that distinction for me,” I replied.

He smiled at my annoyance. “I doubt whether you would have heard it anyway.”

“Well, anyway,” I continued, “I could see that street protest was a dead end, so I looked around for another way to change the world. I came to law. Criminal law. I never considered any other kind of practice.”

“And have you changed the world?”

“You know as well as I do the answer to that,” I said irritably.

Undeterred by my tone, he asked, “So why do you persist?”

I ran through a list of responses in my head, but none of them seemed particularly persuasive. I said, “I feel like I have to justify myself to you.”

“No,” he said, “I don’t care if you practice law or not. I’m just asking you a question about it you’ve never asked yourself.”

“I have asked myself,” I told him. “More in the last couple of weeks since Josh moved out than in the fifteen years that preceded it. The truth is, I don’t know why I practice law anymore. I just can’t imagine not being a lawyer.”

“What do you think your father would think of your life, Henry, if he were alive? Do you think he would approve?”

“My father never approved of anything I did.”

“Then what does it matter what you do?”

“That doesn’t follow,” I said.

“A few minutes ago you described yourself as grim and weighed down. Last time, you said when your father died it was as if the weight of his life had descended on your shoulders. But you also said that between the time you went away to college and his death, you felt free. What do those statements indicate to you?”

“Are you suggesting that I’ve become my father?”

“It’s not so simple,” Reynolds replied. “Just say you’ve become someone other than who you may actually be.”

“I can’t accept that. It would mean the last twenty years have been a waste.”

“You’ve done commendable things in the last twenty years,” he replied. “That’s hardly a waste. They’ve all been for other people. What can you do for yourself?”

“That sounds so self-indulgent.”

“If a man is tired and he rests, you wouldn’t call that self-indulgent,” Reynolds replied.

“Tired,” I repeated. “You’re right about that.”

“
People versus Ruiz
,” the clerk said. I moved forward from the gallery to the counsel’s table, while in the jury box a bailiff nudged Michael who slowly got to his feet. He looked bad today, unshaven and red-eyed. I nodded at him. On the bench, Judge O’Conner turned irritably to his clerk and said, “I don’t have the paperwork on him.”

“It’s here, Your Honor,” she replied, handing him a manila folder.

He grabbed it from her then peered out past me to the television cameras at the back of the court. This was a high-profile case. Judge O’Conner was new to the bench, having last worked as a research attorney to an appellate court judge, and he was not enjoying his moment in the limelight.

He wagged a finger and said, “I want you people in the media to keep the disturbance down back there. This isn’t ‘LA Law.’”

While he busied himself with the file I glanced back at the gallery. Bill and Carolina Ruiz sat toward the back. Edith Rosen was also there, but in another row. Behind the prosecutor’s table was the Peña family; mother, daughter, son. Sitting beside the son was a tightly dressed blond whose bright lipstick gleamed like a headlight. Though she looked at least a decade his senior, she leaned into Peña’s son with a proprietary air, and played with his fingers. Mrs. Peña glanced over, her face reproving. The daughter sat at rigid attention, looking at something in the corner. I followed her glance and saw that she was staring at Michael.

“OK,” Judge O’Conner said. “
People versus Ruiz.
Let the record reflect that the defendant is in court. Is he represented?”

“Yes, Your Honor,” I said. “Henry Rios for the defendant.”

O’Conner smiled briefly at me. We’d been law school classmates and had lunch together whenever my work took me down to the court of appeal.

“Good morning, Mr. Rios,” he said. “The People are also represented by Ms. Castle—”

“No, Your Honor,” a male voice boomed out from behind me. I glanced over my shoulder and saw Deputy District Attorney Anton Pisano stride importantly up the aisle. This was bad news. Tony Pisano was not only smart and tenacious, but an ambitious headline-grabber with political aspirations. Having him in the other corner would mean that everything would be played out in front of the cameras in hand-to-hand combat. I looked up at Alex O’Conner. His face was already turning an anticipatory shade of red.

“Anton Pisano for the People,” Pisano said.

“Duly noted,” O’Conner said sourly.

Pisano said good-naturedly, “You needn’t sound so happy, Your Honor.”

O’Conner replied, “We can dispense with the asides, counsel. Mr. Rios, does your client waive a reading of the information?”

“Yes,” I said, moving away from the podium so that I could stand beside Michael.

“Fine. Michael Andrew Ruiz, you are charged with one count of violation of Penal Code section 187, murder in the first degree. How do you plead?”

“Not guilty,” I whispered to him.

“Not guilty,” he echoed wanly.

“Furthermore, it is alleged that in the commission of this offense you used a firearm within the meaning of Penal Code section 12022. Do you admit or deny this allegation?”

“Deny,” I whispered.

“I deny it,” he said, a little more fervently.

Before I could say another word, Anton Pisano was on his feet, talking. “Your Honor, anticipating a defense request for bail, the People would like to be heard.”

O’Conner said, “Mr. Pisano, if the defense asks for bail, you will get a chance to respond.” He looked at me. “Well, Mr. Rios?”

“The defense does request bail.”

“Any particular amount?” O’Conner asked.

“The defense feels that bail in the amount of $100,000 would be appropriate.”

There was no bail schedule for a capital offense, but $100,000 was the equivalent of offering $10,000 on a Rolls-Royce. While I didn’t expect he would grant it, I thought I could at least pick the ballpark we’d be playing in.

Tony Pisano all but snickered, “That’s ridiculous. Your Honor, this is first-degree murder, not,” he paused to think of some sufficiently caustic comparison, “not expectoration in public.”

I said, “From my experience, the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office is quite capable of inflating spitting on a sidewalk to a capital offense.”

“This defendant spits bullets,” Pisano replied.

“Gentlemen,” O’Conner said, irritably, “I don’t find this exchange as amusing as you do. Moreover, I have a very long calendar this morning, and if this is going to be a dogfight, I’ll never get through it. I’ll set a bail hearing for three o’clock this afternoon. You want your client here, Mr. Rios?”

“Please. And, Your Honor, the defense would like the court to study the police report in this case.”

“OK. The matter is put over until three o’clock. Let me call the next case.”

I whispered to Michael, “I’ll come back to lockup in a bit. Your parents want to see you. You OK?”

“Yeah,” he said unconvincingly as the bailiff clamped his shoulder and said, “Let’s go, Mike.”

“Let’s go outside,” I whispered to the Ruizes. We stepped out of the courtroom, reaching the doors at the same time as Mrs. Peña, her children a step behind. There was a small anteroom between the court and the corridor, where lawyers harangued their clients and cut deals with each other. The seven of us entered it at the same time. Mrs. Peña walked quickly toward the door leading out, but Carolina Ruiz laid a restraining hand on the sleeve of her lilac suit jacket.

“Grace, you know my boy didn’t have anything to do with this,” she said urgently.

Graciela Peña shook off the other woman’s hand. “I can’t talk to you.”

“Tino? Angela?” Carolina wailed as the children brushed by her. “My God, you know my son.”

Tino stopped, the sleek blond hovering behind him, looking put out. “My mother is very upset, Mrs. Ruiz,” he said, taking her hands in his. “I’m very sorry for your misfortune. Now the court must decide.”

“Thank you, Tino,” she whispered. Bill came up behind her and put his arm around her shoulder.

“There’s a small conference room at the end of the hall,” I said. We stepped out to the corridor. Icily coiffed TV reporters descended on us, microphones thrust out like harpoons.

“Do you have a statement?” one of them shouted.

“You’ve already heard our statement,” I said. “‘Not guilty.’” I hurried them down the corridor. The reporters might have pursued had Anton Pisano not also come out of the court, only too willing to have his picture taken.

Carolina Ruiz slumped down in a chair and dug through her purse for a pack of long, thin cigarettes. Her husband lit it for her, then settled back himself, looking miserable in his nice gray suit. I leaned against the wall. This room held some history for me. Once before I had brought the parents of a client accused of murder in here, and almost ended up in a fistfight with the father. I didn’t think I’d have that problem with Bill Ruiz. I had the distinct impression that he was more puzzled than angry with Michael, as he might be with an investment that had inexplicably failed to pay off. Carolina was another story, entirely.

“Why didn’t the judge give Mikey bail?” she demanded.

“He wants time to hear our arguments and think about it,” I said. “We have a problem with the DA. Pisano’s out to make a name for himself on this case which means he’ll go to the mat on every issue. He’ll try to get the court to set a prohibitively high bail. The good news is that the judge is fair.”

Carolina tapped an expensively shod toe. “What does that mean, fair? He’s an Anglo, isn’t he?”

It was interesting to me how deeply embittered Carolina Ruiz remained about the Anglo world, even after all these years of living in it. Her husband, on the other hand, was thoroughly assimilated, even down to the Anglo diminutive he went by, Bill, while she remained defiantly Carolina—not Carol or even Caroline. I wondered what Michael made out of this mixed message about his ethnicity, and if it had contributed to his feeling of being an outsider.

“Technically, the only factors the judge is supposed to consider in setting bail is whether the defendant poses a threat to the community and the likelihood that he may take flight,” I told her. “Unofficially, he may consider the defendant’s past record, the severity of the crime, and so on. The reason I asked him to read the police report is to give him an idea of how weak the evidence is. I’m hoping he’ll see that because this is a highly political case the cops needed to break in a hurry, they pulled Michael in as the first likely suspect. Maybe then he’ll give us a break on bail.” I paused, and considered my words carefully, not wanting to further inflame Carolina’s suspicions. “Of course, he also knows this is the kind of case that people remember. If he releases Michael, and Michael skips, it would look very bad for Alex.”

“Alex?” Bill asked.

“The judge,” I replied. “We went to law school together.”

“Good,” Bill said. Connections was something he understood.

Carolina dropped her cigarette to the floor and crushed it with unladylike intensity. “I can’t believe that bitch wouldn’t talk to me.”

“Mrs. Peña?”

“She should care that the bastard’s dead?” she went on angrily. “He two-timed her with every woman who would have him.”

“Who was the blond with them?”

She shrugged. “Tino’s girlfriend, it looked like.”

“She seemed a little old for him,” I observed.

“Can we see Mikey, now?”

“Sure, but the reporters might still be out there.”

“Screw them,” she said, rising and smoothing her dress.

“Wait,” Bill said, holding out a restraining hand to her. To me he said, “The bail, if it’s more than $100,000…”

“We’ll put up the house,” she snapped at him. “The apartment building. We have it.”

“That’s our retirement,” he told her.

“How much is Mikey’s freedom worth?” she demanded.

The argument was unwinnable, and he let it go. I watched her and wondered at the price of guilt.

“Let’s go,” I said, and opened the door. A pack of reporters headed toward us.

“Are you his parents?” someone shouted.

The Ruizes stopped, and Carolina said, “Yes, we’re his parents, and we know our boy is innocent of this terrible crime.”

I hurried them into lockup before any further questions could be asked.

I hung back against the wall while the Ruizes talked to Michael through a metal screen in one of four small carrels. The other three were occupied by lawyers talking to their clients. One of them glanced over his shoulder at me and winked.

“A hundred thou for first-degree,” he said. “You’re dreaming.”

Michael sat facing his mother, his face expressionless. Once or twice he shook his head angrily. I heard her raise her voice, and Michael looked as if he were about to walk away, but then his father muttered something and Carolina spoke more softly. They looked a lot alike, Michael and his mother. Same coloring, same thin-faced intensity. It was as if they were each looking into a mirror, and not liking what they saw there. I wondered if one of them would learn to simply walk away.