An Independent Woman (6 page)

“I'll get them.”

She put the bacon in a frying pan, trying not to think, concentrating on the sizzling bacon. Abner returned.

“Match?”

She handed him a match. He lit the cigarette and sucked deeply. “Ah, small blessings,” he said appreciatively.

“Why did Reda leave?” she asked Abner.

“You know why she left. It's been coming on for ten years. I smoke, I eat too much, I'm fat, I'm a pain in the ass. She's still beautiful. She had to leave before it was too late to start all over again. So the other day she picked up and left… The hell with that. Let's talk about you.”

“Yes, about me. Abner, what's going to happen to me?” She put the bacon and eggs on his plate. “Shall I butter the toast?”

“Barbara, for heaven's sake!”

“Yes, yes, of course. But I am so troubled, I'm so troubled, Abner. What's going to happen to me?”

“I won't have the foggiest notion until you tell me what you've done.” He pulled out a chair for her. “Here. Sit down, and then tell me exactly what this crazy thing is about.”

As completely as she could, she told him what had happened during the night.

“Why didn't you call the police?”

She thought about that for a while before she replied. “I guess I couldn't send a man to prison—not that man. I didn't know he was a murderer.”

“We don't know that he's a murderer. Manslaughter is not murder.”

“Then what is it?”

“It could be any number of things. Two men have a fight. One of them dies. It could be self-defense, but not today with a black man. Not here. It could be accidental. Did he intend to kill? Two boxers are in a ring. One of them dies. That's manslaughter, but there won't be any indictment. If they gave him only two years, then there was no intent to kill. I don't know, but I'll find out. Today you lied to the police. Why? You recognized the brooch. Carson gave it to you, didn't he?”

“Yes. But I told you I made a deal with the man—if he gave me Dad's ring, he could keep the rest.”

“That was no deal. He had a gun on you.”

“Yes. But it wasn't the gun.” The gun was not a part of it.

“Was it his college degree, his waiting tables, his cleaning toilets? Is that it? You can't be that naive—not even you, Barbara.” Through a mouthful of eggs and bacon, he demanded, “Then why did you call me? The cops hadn't come yet?”

“I was frightened. I didn't know what would happen to me if I didn't report the robbery. I still don't know.”

“Do you want my best advice as your lawyer and friend?”

“Of course.”

“Then when I finish breakfast, we'll both go downtown, and we'll explain that you were too traumatized by the robbery to respond properly, and then you'll identify the jewels and they'll show you a lineup and you'll pick him out, and that makes their case and it's over. We want to finish it before the media gets hold of it.”

Barbara shook her head. “No, Abner, I can't do that. I will not be witness to sending a man to prison. I've been in prison”—remembering the six months she had served in a federal prison in Long Beach. That was long ago, in the forties, but the memory of what had happened was vivid and ugly. She had been one of the organizing members of a committee that had purchased an old convent in Toulouse and fitted it out as a hospital to help the surviving soldiers of Republican Spain and their families. She had given a great deal of money to that cause, and when she was called before the House Committee on Un-American Activities and told to give the names of people who had supported their work, she refused. The result was a citation for contempt of Congress, and then a trial and a sentence to six months in prison. Those six months were burned in her memory.

“I can't,” she said to Abner. “I have to live with myself—for whatever time I have left. I'm an old woman. I can't wipe out the life that I lived. I can't bear witness against this man, Jones. I made an agreement with him. I gave him the jewels and he gave me my father's ring. I told him I would not bear witness against him.”

“He gave you the ring!” Abner snorted. “Barbara, the ring was yours. He stole your jewelry. How much? A hundred thousand dollars' worth? God almighty—‘he gave you the ring'!”

“Don't argue with me, Abner. Just tell me what I must do and what will happen to me. I'm not brave. I'm more frightened than you can imagine.”

“Well, to begin, you'll be aiding and abetting a felon—which makes you equally guilty.”

“If I gave him the jewelry? Why is that a crime? Can't I give away anything that is mine? How can they prove otherwise?”

“How did he get in the house?”

“He picked the lock,” Barbara said. “It's an old lock, the same lock that Sam Goldberg had on the door. When I rebuilt the house after the fire, I kept as much of the old house as I could. The lock isn't hard to pick.”

“It's still breaking and entering. Even if the door was open, it's breaking and entering with intent to steal.”

“But if I insist that I gave him the jewels?”

“That's perjury. For heaven's sake, Barbara, can you toss away a hundred thousand dollars' worth of jewelry like that? Are you that rich?”

“The jewels meant nothing to me. I kept them in a drawer. There was a linked gold chain I wore, but nothing else. Yes, I wore the pearls once or twice, but nothing else. I wore the brooch only once. If I have to trade it for a man's freedom, fine. Don't try to understand me, Abner. Just be my good friend and my lawyer, and help me get through this.”

“You're serious, aren't you?” Abner said softly, a touch of awe in his voice.

“Deadly serious.”

“And I'm compounding a felony. Reda walks out on me, and her last words are, ‘You ain't worth shit.' That's a hell of a thing to tell a man who can't get it up and who stops trying, and who's too fat for anyone else to look at twice.”

“Abner, Abner,” she said gently, “you're one of the best men I know. Reda was probably in a rage, and she didn't care what she was saying. We'll talk about that another time. Right now you're my lawyer, and I'm your client.”

He nodded.

“Do you want another cup of coffee?”

“Yes.”

She poured coffee, sat across the corner of the table, so that she could reach out and put her hand on his; and he was thinking what a fine figure of a woman she still was, seventy and all, tall and slender, her gray eyes clear and bright; and he wondered why he had never found someone like Barbara, and what his life might have been if he had. He sipped the coffee, and asked her whether another cigarette would trouble her.

“I'll get them.” She brought the box with her. “They're old and dry.”

He lit up and drew deeply. “OK, let's see what we can do. Sometime today, a policeman will be here and ask you to come downtown for a lineup. Go with him. A little irritation on your part, but don't push it. They'll come backed up with a subpoena, but don't make them use it. You're quixotic to begin with, and they probably think you're a nut of some kind. Of course you know what a lineup is?”

“I go to the movies, Abner. I even watch television.”

“You say he wore a mask? Did he ever take it off?”

“No.”

“Then you have the best excuse in the world for not picking him out. Although that may not wash. You don't give a hundred thousand to a masked man. Could you recognize him, in spite of the mask?”

“
I
think so.”

“How old, would you guess?”

“Thirty perhaps. No older.”

“Then recognize him if you can, if you're sure.”

“Wouldn't they have found the mask on him?” Barbara asked.

“Not if he's as smart as you say he is. He'd ditch the mask and the lock pick the moment he got out of here, so I wouldn't even mention the mask. By the way, make the recognition easy. I'll be with you, so you don't have to answer any questions. Of course, there's the possibility that he confessed—”

“No, he wouldn't.”

“You know a lot about a man you never met before. Well, we'll hope. I'll find out who is defending him, and I'll tell the story the way you want. That doesn't implicate his lawyer. He only knows what I tell him.”

“Can you do that?”

“Sure. I can do it without leaving the house. Can you find another telephone cord? I have calls to make.”

“I think so. What happens then?”

“The San Francisco cops are not stupid, and this will piss them off no end. They don't like to be diddled. They press for a grand jury, and then you're under oath. If you stick to your story and they can disprove it—then it's perjury. This is very dangerous, Barbara. God help me, I don't know why you're insisting on this. You have no obligation to this crook. You didn't ask to be robbed. You know, the newspapers will be full of this. You're not nobody; you're Barbara Lavette. It means television and all that goes with it, and everyone in town, everyone who knows you, will be talking about it. If this were simply grand theft, the cops would write it off and let the insurance company take the heat, but this is kinky.”

“I'm not kinky, Abner. I've lived my life this way, and I'm going to continue to live it this way.”

“What else did he take?”

“Some gold bands and a string of pearls—also from Carson. I told Carson that I didn't want jewelry from him, I was not selling my love. What exists of Carson is inside of me, not in some fancy jewelry.”

“What were the pearls worth?”

“I don't know. He bought them in Japan.”

“Do you know what they were insured for?”

She tried to recall it. “I have the policy somewhere—I think it was ten thousand dollars.”

“It gets worse.” He sighed. “All right. We'll take this step by step. You talk about this to no one, no one, do you understand—not your family, not your son, no one. Will you agree?”

“I'll be careful,” she said.

The telephone rang, and Abner moved quickly to answer it, waving her back. “I'll take it,” he said sharply.

She followed him into her study. “This is her attorney,” she heard him say. “Abner Berman.” He listened and then he said, “You don't have to send a car. I'll bring her down—yes, this morning. Yes, she understands the nature of a lineup.” He replaced the phone. “They're being nice. We'll drive down in your car. I don't want to make them wait too long.”

I
T HAD NEVER OCCURRED TO ABNER BERMAN
that he was fat because he desired to be fat, that since childhood he had worn fat as armor, a sort of clown suit that hid a hard-nosed attorney. Barbara knew this, and when he accepted her position and determined to back it up, she felt relieved. On the other hand, Abner had known her for years, had adored her silently, and was less surprised than he pretended to be by her story.

On the drive down to police headquarters Barbara said little, and Abner occupied his mind with how he would handle something he had never handled before and avoid being disbarred in the process. He was not a criminal lawyer. Here was a common robbery that very shortly would be the talk of San Francisco. In spite of his unwillingness to go along with her idealistic and unreasonable nonsense, he had assented to her decision and he would stay with it.

Barbara, reviewing what had happened, had a feeling of sickness. She was digging a hole in the ground from which there might be no escape. Of course Abner found it unreasonable; who would find it reasonable? Blacks were sent to prison every day; it was something she could not influence or change, so why did she persist? If she could not answer that question herself, how could she spell it out to anyone else?

When they arrived at the Hall of Justice, Inspector Meyer was waiting for them, smoking an old black pipe and apparently enjoying the sunlight. He greeted them with a friendly nod. “It's taken some time to put it together and find some look-alikes. If Ms. Lavette will wait in my office, I'll try to make her comfortable. It won't be more than a few minutes.”

“Who's representing your guy?”

“Lefkowitz. Do you know him? The perp didn't ask for a public defender. This is one interesting crook. Lefkowitz doesn't come cheap.”

Barbara was about to say something, but a glance from Abner silenced her. “You're making a mountain out of a molehill,” Abner said. “You know, Inspector, you could drop this and attend to the bad guys. Ms. Lavette makes no complaint. You've got him with a gun, and that should do it—that and the burglar tools. As for my client, you know the Lavette story as well as I do. They're what they are.”

“Crazy? Strange? What am I supposed to say, Mr. Berman? Anyway, I can't put this back in the box. Burglar tools? All he had were his keys and a metal toothpick, and his gun, a Mauser, was put together out of plastic, one of those kid toys.”

“That still comes within the law.”

“With Lefkowitz defending him? Come on. Anyway, it's too late. Some sneak inside whispered it to the
Chronicle.
If the TV crews knew you were here, they'd be all over the place. Let's go inside.”

Barbara's heart sank. She could spell out exactly what her son, Samuel, would say; she could hear the words: not
How you are going to explain this farce, Mother, but How am I going to explain it? You're not a loose gun, you're not Rambo
—would he say Rambo? No, that was unfair.
You're not Albert Schweitzer in the African jungle. You're a woman in your seventies in San Francisco. Do you know what my colleagues will think? That it's genetic. I will tell them it's Joan of Arc—reborn. I am chief surgeon in a normal hospital where they heal sick people
—

Oh, enough
! she told herself.
You don't know what he will say or what anyone will say
.