Lion Plays Rough (7 page)

Chapter 12

Reading the story in the
Tribune
in the morning, I felt a helpless rage. I had Jeanie tear up my resignation letter, but neither of us really believed it was over, that I was finished with it. There were too many loose ends. For now, though, I sought to lose myself in the Scarsdale case.

I spent Wednesday working on a motion to exclude the video­taped interviews of the child victim at the trial. Defending an innocent man is like walking a tightrope; you fear the tiniest slip. When you know the client is guilty, on the other hand, you're an acrobat a foot above the ground.

It was an interesting, complex motion, and putting it together absorbed me entirely, in the way that only legal writing does. Wednesday night I was at the office until 1:00
am
. Thursday morning's breakfast was cold pizza from the night before.

I shouldn't have spent so much time on it, but I needed to keep from thinking about Jamil hanging there in his cell, needed to keep from wondering what his last moments had been like. Whether the videos came into evidence or not, the girl herself still had to testify, and it was her live testimony that I was afraid of. I couldn't very well keep her from taking the stand.

I could, however, keep my client from testifying, and I was faced with the task of finding a viable defense without him telling the jury he didn't do it. Though we hadn't definitely decided that Marty would testify, we'd proceeded under that assumption. Jeanie hated putting clients on the stand; she believed that it was at best a roll of the dice, and that most of them would, in the end, lack the composure to do anything but hurt themselves. Trust yourself, trust your evidence, trust the Constitution: that was her mantra.

And yet there's no substitute for the horse's mouth. No matter how relentlessly we attacked the police interviews, no matter how many motives we could give Erica for making up the story of Scarsdale molesting her, it was a child sex-abuse case. The law says it's the prosecutor's burden to prove the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt; still, none but the greenest attorney believes the jury in a child sex-abuse case will follow that instruction. Given the revulsion such cases arouse, a defendant is effectively charged with proving himself innocent.

On the bright side, I wouldn't have to babysit Scarsdale all week, wouldn't have to spend those hours I'd dreaded rehearsing his testimony, wouldn't have to hold his hand, coach him, warn him, reassure him. Now we wouldn't have to go through the whole sticky pageant of rehearsal and cooperation. I was free to forget him, there in his hotel room, until the day of trial, free to set aside the human element and distill the case to a series of rhetorical formulations.

The trouble was the human element never stays down for long. Yet it wasn't Scarsdale; it was me. I couldn't stop thinking about Jamil—and about Lavinia.

“I know who she is,” I said to Teddy when I got home after filing my motion Wednesday night. “Or who she must be, at least.”

Teddy was parked in front of the TV watching
SportsCenter
with a beer, eating a bowl of cereal.

“She had inside information, which makes her connected either to Damon or to Campbell. She knew about their relationship and about their meetings. She didn't seem like a gangster girlfriend, so I figure she's got to be a cop.”

Of course the people who'd hired me, who'd set me up, were cops. I figured that the two of them must have wanted to expose Campbell but didn't want to take on the career-ending alienation and contempt that comes with the code of silence, the thin blue line. Whatever was going on here, it was identical to the code of the streets.

That gun in Lavinia's purse hadn't been a cop gun, though. I just couldn't imagine an off-duty officer carrying it. Nor was a Pontiac convertible a cop car. So maybe she'd been a cop but now was paid better. In any case, she had the inside scoop and wanted to do the right thing, wanted to see a crooked detective exposed.

In the morning I called two friends from law school who worked for the Alameda County public defender's office. Neither of them could recall an officer who matched the description I gave. The hesitant quality of their voices told me it wasn't much of a description
.
The only part of her I could picture clearly was her legs.

There was no official, public directory of Oakland police officers, certainly none with photos, but I knew that group portraits of every graduating academy class for the last fifty years hung in the public hallway of the headquarters building on Frank Ogawa Plaza.

It's strange for someone like me, an attorney, to enter police headquarters without official business. I told myself that I was on public property, that as a citizen I had the right, but I still felt as if I were walking into enemy territory when I arrived just after eleven.

Lavinia was probably young enough to have become a cop during the last ten years. Two academy classes per year, about two dozen portraits to check, each showing between thirty and fifty new cops all dressed in identical uniforms. My job was made easier by the fact that there weren't many women, and few of them were as tall as Lavinia.

I was contemplating the portrait of the second academy class of 1994 when a voice close to my ear whispered, “Lost?”

I turned, bumping into someone, stepped back, and met Campbell's stare. He was dressed in a patrol uniform with his uniform hat under his arm. It looked wrong on him, clownish, making me wonder how long it had been since he'd worn anything but a suit. He seemed perfectly calm until I noticed the vein at his throat pulsing. Then his gaze shifted from my face to the picture I'd been studying. The caption beneath the photo listed her name as Lavinia Perry. She'd told me her real first name.

Campbell studied it for several moments, then with a kindly smile turned his gaze on me. But the smile didn't reach his eyes. They were like pieces of glass underwater. “You know me,” he said, not a question but a statement of fact. “I know you, too,” he continued. “The dude with the camera. Leo.” His eyes moved to the class portrait. “Nineteen ninety-four. Seems like yesterday, doesn't it?”

He began to whistle as he walked off, his hat still under his arm.

~ ~ ~

Back at the office, I was aware something was coming to a boil inside me. There was no question in Campbell's mind that Lavinia Perry had been the one to hire me, and he knew where to find her, too.

She owed me an explanation, and perhaps she deserved a warning. Maybe while Campbell remained under the microscope of a departmental investigation he'd try to keep her out of it. She obviously knew more than she'd told me. No doubt her career would be hurt if it came out that she'd blown the whistle on her fellow officer. But if she were forced to tell everything she knew, Campbell would be the one hurt more.

A second call to the public defender's office produced better results. When I mentioned the name, my friend Henry put the phone down and came back ten minutes later with a full report
gathered from his colleagues, several of whom knew her as one of the most prolific earners of overtime for the Oakland
Vice Squad. Another thing: she was an officer with a reputation for stretching the truth.

At 10:00
pm
that evening I was sitting in my car down on International Boulevard, keeping an eye on Lavinia Perry. I'd followed her as she left the station garage in an undercover vehicle. She was dressed in high heels, fishnets, a short skirt, and a flimsy top, undoubtedly wearing a wire as she set off to work the corners of East Oakland. Her partners in the unmarked car were never far away. I'd watched them snag three johns in the last hour. At the moment of agreement, the lights and siren would swoop down.

According to Henry, during the last twelve months, Lavinia Perry had earned something close to seventy grand in overtime with her hooker act. One of the misdemeanor attorneys in the office had gotten the number out of her when he was grilling her on the stand, trying to make her look like someone who'd say anything for money. She was a good actress. I knew that. And she looked the part. In the streetlight, her halter top sliding down, her hair pulled back, she was the very ideal of what a lonely guy might be dreaming of, too good to pass up even if somewhere deep down a voice he didn't want to listen to were telling him a real whore on these streets would never look so fine.

There were girls every block or so, most of them alone. Occasionally there'd be two or three standing together on a corner, punctuating the landscape of bodegas and auto parts stores. I'd been trailing them—Lavinia and her backup—from corner to corner, watching from a careful distance as they worked their routine. When after the three arrests they took up a new position at International and Thirty-Eighth, I got out. I didn't know what I was going to say. Mostly I just wanted her to see my face.

I weaved and stumbled, stopping to kick an imaginary bit of debris out of my way. I didn't look up until I was close, about ten paces.

She spoke first. “Hey baby, want a date?”

I stopped. I looked at her. I took two more steps, then stopped again. “Vinnie. Lavinia Martin. Wow, I haven't seen you since school.”

“For fifty dollars I'll be whoever you want, but I don't know any Lavinia Martin.”

I moved into the glow of the streetlight. I tried to sound uncertain. “You're right. You couldn't be Vinnie—not dressed like that, not in this neighborhood. No, Vinnie's dad was a preacher . . .”

Her mouth parted in a silent oh, but she hid her surprise behind a screen of impatience. A car slowed, veering toward the curb, then cut back out into the lane, engine revving. Lavinia—Sgt. Perry—swiveled her head, tapping her foot and thrusting out her elbow, for all the world like a hooker trying to reel in lost business.

“But wait a minute. Maybe I'm right after all. Come on. We used to sit in the cafeteria and share a bowl of soup. Campbell's soup.”

I was aware that every word I spoke was being overheard by her partners in the squad car. No doubt she was thinking of them, too. “If you don't want a date, then beat it. I don't know you, man.”

“I heard what happened to your brother. That they got him in his cell, strung him up, made it look like suicide. Not a nice story.”

“Get out of here!” she hissed. “We don't know each other.”

“Are you going to make me pay fifty bucks just to have a conversation with an old friend?”

“Look, I'm a cop. You want to sleep in Santa Rita tonight, be my guest.”

I broke character. “You're going to have to turn off that wire first.
You've got nothing on me. But I've had a talk with our mutual friend. Mr. Soup.”

From my left I heard a low warning whoop from a siren, then blue and red lights began flashing. The unmarked car pulled to the curb and two cops got out. One shone a flashlight in my face. Blinded, I felt a tick of fear.

“Officers, this woman solicited me for prostitution,” I explained.

The stockier of the two patted me down. Ignoring me, he asked, “What was going on here?”

“I thought I recognized her. That's all. But I didn't know she was a cop.”

“You knew enough to call her by her first name,” the other noted.

The one with the flashlight told me to turn and put my hands on the brick wall. I felt my wallet being fished out of my back pocket.

I glanced over my shoulder at Lavinia. The second cop now had his handcuffs out and was gripping my wrist behind my back. The stocky cop was going through my wallet, studying the ID in the beam of his Maglite. Finally Lavinia said, “Screw it, Danny. Let this one go, won't you?”

The one holding me gave me a shove. “Lucky break. Beat it.”

My wallet landed on the pavement at my feet. I grabbed it.

Later I realized it was lighter by forty bucks.

Chapter 13

The next morning, Friday, I looked out the window and saw a Bronco idling on the curb. From my balcony I could see a figure sitting in it, but not who. Since Jamil's death I didn't leave the house anymore without first scanning the street. I'd also started varying my route. At night the slightest of sounds awakened me.

Nonetheless, I had to prepare for trial in the Scarsdale case. And I also had to shop for Teddy and me. More than anything, though, I needed to escape the near-ceaseless blare of the television and my brother's hulking stupor before it. He was slipping downhill, no doubt about it. He'd been out of rehab three months, and each day was putting in more and more TV time.

When I finally sucked up my nerve to walk downstairs, the Bronco pulled from the curb and shadowed me. Sgt. Perry, rolling down her window, ordered, “Get in. We need to talk.”

“You want to talk, you park and we'll go have coffee like civilized people.”

“We can't be seen together.”

“You probably want your ten thousand bucks. Where'd it come from—the evidence locker?”

We both knew I was only putting on an act. I'd sought her out.

“I can't leave my dog in the car,” she said. “If you don't want to ride with me, you can follow me to the Berkeley Pier.”

Her back windows were tinted. Until then I hadn't noticed the animal in the rear cargo area, an enormous beast that seemed to have to crouch to fit back there. “Okay,” I said. “I'll go get my car.”

She waited until I pulled onto the street in the Rabbit, but it was all the allowance she made. At the top of our street she turned hard right toward MacArthur and the freeway. Changing lanes down the hill, she sped through the yellow light.

I waited, took the interstate to Berkeley and exited at University Avenue. She was already out on the pier with the dog when I parked.

It was a chilly morning. The heat wave had passed, and the weather had returned to its summer pattern of morning fog. Lavinia wore a black Raiders sweatshirt and no makeup, her hair pulled back in a ponytail. It didn't matter. She was as attractive as ever. The dog walked beside her on its leash. It was like a husky but huge, with a massive head and ears like the scoops in the bulk-food bins, one eye blue and the other milky white. Its head rose higher than my waist and it ignored me utterly. One leg was sheathed in a purple cast, forcing it to walk on three legs.

“It comes off in a week and a half,” Lavinia said, noticing my attention.

“He seems to be coping pretty well.”

“He'll cope with anything if I tell him to.”

“I guess he heard what they do to horses.”

“You wouldn't believe his bills. No workman's comp for
Trigger.”

The fog was starting to lift. The tops of the East Bay hills had come into focus, but across the water the buildings of San Francisco remained draped in clouds. Not for the first time, I found myself wishing that Teddy and I had never left the city for Oakland.

“You spoke to Campbell,” she said.

“I was at police headquarters, looking at pictures of graduating academy classes. He came up behind me when I was looking at the picture of your class. He must have had an idea who set him up.”

“Damn, damn, damn.” She stopped. A trio of kite surfers carved and bounced across the waves, their colorful parachutes sawing the air. Finally she turned to me. “Look, you've got to keep quiet about this. If you use my name I won't back you up. I'll deny everything.”

“I almost lost my job.”

“I'll lose my job for sure if they find out I gave you the dirt on Campbell. Then what? I spend the rest of my life nabbing shoplifters?”

“Why should I protect you? You set me up.”

“Meeting you like that, knowing who your brother was, it was too good a chance. You've got to understand. I was desperate. You learn to let a lot of things slide, working in this city. But for me, there comes a point where you have to say
enough.
Only I didn't have proof that Campbell was protecting Damon.”

“You still don't have it. The pictures don't prove anything.”

“That's why it had to be you rather than me.” Her lips tightened. “A defense attorney doesn't need proof to make accusations of police corruption.”

“Without proof, a month from now Campbell's right back where he started.”

“Unless . . .” she said, the word hanging in the air.

“Unless what?”

“Unless something more turns up.”

“Meaning what? Jamil became my client after you scammed me. Nikki Matson cut him off like a moldy piece of cheese, and now he's dead. And that means there's nothing to keep me on the case. I'm a defense attorney. I work for living clients. They're the ones who pay.”

“What was it you said to me last night? It stuck in my mind. You said they got him in his cell, strung him up, made it look like suicide? Who did you mean, they?”

Those were my words, all right. Yet I knew, as she did, that it's no easy task to have a man murdered in jail. I thought of how despondent Jamil had sounded when I talked to him, of how little help I'd been. Could he—could anyone—have reacted that way? Preferring suicide to execution? I realized I wasn't sure. “You think he was murdered?”

“I'm just repeating what you said. Jamil apparently hires you to take some pictures, and
they
, whoever they are, they see all of a sudden he's not going to plead guilty the way he was supposed to. So
they
arrange for a little accident.”

“They meaning Damon Watson.”

“I didn't want this to happen. Neither of us did. But it happened, and now the question is what are we going to do about it?”

She had me. Whether Jamil had been killed or had committed suicide, his death was the direct result of our meeting, of Lavinia's meddling and my ensnarement in her trap. I sighed and leaned my elbows on the railing. “If you expect me to trust you, you're going to have to give me some answers. You could start with how you knew about that meeting in the hills.”

“I thought you had it all figured out. Call it intuition.”

“Campbell knows you. That's pretty clear.”

“He ought to. I'm married to him.”

I felt a shock, as if the pier had without warning tilted beneath me.

“I thought you were an idealist. I thought you wanted to expose a dirty cop because it was the right thing to do. This sounds like a vendetta.”

“Believe me. I wouldn't go out of my way to hurt him if it weren't the right thing. That's what makes it so hard. That's why it can't come out that I was the one who hired you. How could I ever explain to my baby that I was the one who brought his daddy down?” She patted Trigger's head and he glanced up at her appreciatively. Her baby.

“You haven't answered the question. How did you know about the meetings?”

Her voice came fast and low. “I thought he had a regular girl he was cheating with Sunday afternoons. He always gave this bullshit story about going to meet an informant. Anyway, I had a tracking device installed on his car.” Her face was intent, her eyes taking on an obsessive gleam. I stiffened, but she didn't notice. The dog licked at her ankle. “He was cheating, but not on Sundays.” She looked away. “We're separated now.”

“Is there any way he can argue Damon was a legitimate informant?”

“That's what he'll say, I'm sure. I'm sure that's what he told himself. They grew up together. I'm sure he thought better the devil you know. But he didn't have control. Any time you start framing people to protect even a legitimate informant, well, it's clear you've crossed the line.”

“You make it sound like a given that Jamil was framed, a given that Campbell planted the gun. But so far I haven't seen any proof. Maybe Damon put the gun in the car and told Campbell. Maybe Jamil was the lone killer and he was dumb enough to hang on to it, like I said the first time we talked. And Damon tipped Campbell off. Either way, Campbell's in the clear if he can explain those photographs. Unless you're holding something back.”

“Even if Jamil pulled the trigger, he didn't act on his own. Someone ordered him to do it. The logical person is Damon, and Campbell has clearly been protecting him. It could be he thinks he's playing a deeper game. But I doubt it.”

I doubted it, too. I'd seen the look on Campbell's face when Damon pulled the gun. I remembered Damon's twitching anger, my sense that the finger and not his brain would decide whether to shoot. No one in his right mind would play games with such a man.

“We're going to work it up front this time,” I said. “No lies, no games.”

“No games,” she promised. “It's only a matter of time before they expose themselves. Campbell's in too deep. Damon owns him. I've got a transponder on Campbell's car. When he trips up, when he says he's one place and he's really somewhere else, I'll know it, and I'll call you.”

“And I can do what—take more pictures?”

“I'm just a source of information, Leo. What you do with that information is up to you.”

“Bullshit. You want something or we wouldn't be here. What makes you think I'll take the information you give me and run the way you want me to?”

“Because you're a good man, I can tell that about you. The point isn't to bring Campbell down. The point is to stop Damon Watson, to see him prosecuted for Jamil and all the others, the ones we don't know about yet.”

I thought of Scarsdale's trial starting Monday, his hotel-room confession. I wanted to believe what she'd said about my moral courage, but I knew it was a scam. I wondered how much she knew about her husband's friendship with Damon Watson. “Who or what is Jamil Robinson to you?” I asked.

Trigger lay down with a sigh, and Lavinia leaned against the railing, watching the sea gulls swirl and cry. She seemed like she might answer, but she just shook her head as if I couldn't possibly understand.

I was back on the freeway before I realized I hadn't asked her who her partner was, the man who'd impersonated Jamil on the telephone.