The Most Dangerous Animal of All (28 page)

“Is he all right?” Butler asked Judy one evening as they sat at the dining room table. “He looks worn out.”

“He’s been tired lately,” Judy admitted. “I don’t know what’s wrong. He says it’s nothing.”

“He should see a doctor,” Butler said.

Judy tried, but Rotea insisted that everything was okay. “It’s my blood sugar,” he said, his standard excuse when anything was wrong.

Rotea served his city throughout the Feinstein administration, but he withdrew from public office soon after Art Agnos became mayor, in 1988. When Willie Brown, who had served in the California State Assembly for fifteen years, became the first black mayor in San Francisco’s history, in 1996, Rotea was drawn back into politics. Brown appointed him to the Recreation and Park Commission.

Every morning, promptly at 6:00 a.m., Rotea called Brown. “Good morning, Mayor,” he always said, his way of acknowledging Brown’s accomplishment. The two men had spent decades building a friendship that encompassed not only genuine affection for each other but also a shared fight for racial equality.

Harold Butler was excited to be a part of Rotea’s inner circle. He and his wife were frequent guests at the Gilford home, and he enjoyed strategizing with his mentor about meetings Rotea was having with the mayor to discuss new projects—which was unnecessary, really, because Brown backed Rotea’s ideas one hundred percent. Rotea knew how much it meant to the young officer to be a part of the politics, so he invited him over regularly. Butler often consulted Rotea about difficult cases he was working, taking advantage of the detective’s experience and wisdom. He was in awe of the great man who had become such a legend on the force, but he worried about Rotea’s health.

So did Judy. Throughout the last years of their marriage, she lost her husband to diabetes one limb at a time. It started with a discolored toe when Rotea was in his early sixties, and then gangrene set in. Judy had promised to care for Rotea, but sometimes she wondered how she would cope. “When he came home from the hospital, a visiting nurse came over to show me how to change the dressings,” she would later write when documenting her memories of Rotea. “When she removed the bandages and I saw the gaping hole where his toe had formerly fit, I almost fainted. I got through the lesson, went upstairs and out onto the front deck, and gasped for air. How in the world was I going to do this?”

Later, after part of Rotea’s left foot was amputated, Judy had to soak the remaining part in bleach every four hours, for weeks. The treatments she administered saved the rest of the foot, and Rotea was able to hobble around with a prosthetic shoe.

Then he lost the other foot.

By the time Brown appointed Rotea to the commission, his diabetes had forced him into renal failure. Every morning, Mitch Salazar, director of community-based programs and one of Rotea’s success stories, came by to bring his mentor to the dialysis center. Once a street hustler and low-level drug dealer in the Mission District, the young man had turned his life around with Rotea’s help. Salazar, a high school dropout, worked his way into city politics through volunteer work, in which he helped others who had the odds stacked against them.

Rudy Smith, another childhood friend of Rotea’s, had also been appointed to the commission by the mayor. He was given the go-ahead by Brown to provide Rotea with whatever assistance he needed. Loyal to a fault, Smith picked Rotea up from dialysis around noon each day, got him food from his favorite restaurants, and discussed the city’s business over lunch in Rotea’s kitchen.

Throughout the ordeal, Judy and Rotea became closer than ever. When the gangrene spread to his fingers, they were amputated one by one. Judy, fearful of losing the man she loved so dearly, tried to express the love she had for him in words:

I didn’t want to marry. I didn’t share his vision of what or how it could be. But once I said yes, he went on to show me, really train me, just as he counseled so many others he took to his heart before and since. He taught me love of every sort, that between two people, that within our families, that for our community, state, and nation.

In holding me so close, he set me free. In being my first and best teacher, he set the standard so I could surround myself with teachers and guides to help me when he no longer could.

He was my radiant warrior hero and I am so very grateful.

He had a willing heart.

When Judy shared her words with Rotea, he said, “I want that to be my obituary.”

In expressing her love, she had captured the essence of the man who had helped so many.

On March 13, 1998, Rotea and Judy made the decision that there would be no more surgeries, no more dialysis. The next day, Rotea called the mayor and asked him to come over, informing Brown that he simply did not want to fight anymore. “I’m going to die,” he said. The mayor arrived around noon.

So did Earl Sanders. Rotea’s former partner had spent most of the past week at Rotea’s house, encouraging his friend, helping to care for him. Harold Butler, along with the others, recognizing that the end was near, hurried to the Gilford home to comfort his friend.

Rotea sat on the edge of the bed, doing what he had always done—telling exaggerated stories about his escapades that made everyone laugh. In the midst of great sadness, no one in the room shed a tear. Rotea wasn’t going to let that happen.

After his friends said their good-byes, Rotea went to sleep. Judy and Rotea’s ex-wife, Patricia, sat with him, quietly observing as his breathing became more labored. Other family members soon joined them, praying aloud for the man who had touched their lives so deeply. When they were finished, Rotea took his final breath.

And then he was gone.

“It was a beautiful and peaceful passage on the wings of love in two days’ time,” Judy would later write.

43

With Rotea gone, Judy didn’t quite know what to do with herself. She had spent four years nursing him through his illness, and suddenly there was nothing left to do. By that time, Chance and Terry were grown and pursuing their own lives. Sometimes when she walked through her home, she stopped by the bedrooms of her boys and cried softly as she reminisced. The house that had once been so full of life, so noisy, was now empty, and the silence overwhelmed her. Friends and family visited and tried to keep her busy, but it wasn’t the same. When they left, the silence returned to wrap around her as she stared longingly at old pictures of the man who had changed her life and the boys whose antics had filled her home with laughter. She filled her days with work and volunteering, but nothing could alter the fact that when she returned home each night, there were three empty chairs at the dinner table. For the first time in twenty-five years, Judy was alone.

With so much time to think, the memories that she had so carefully tucked away began to drift into her dreams. Years into their marriage, she had finally confessed to Rotea, revealing to her husband that she had a son he didn’t know about.

“Do you want to find him?” Rotea had asked.

“I don’t know if I should,” she replied. “All I know is that he grew up in the South. I don’t know how he would feel about learning he has a half-black brother. What if he rejects us when he finds out? They think differently there.”

Rotea agreed that was a concern and said that he would support her in whatever decision she made.

Judy let it drop, fearful of what might happen if she found me, afraid of the questions I might ask.

Afraid of what Rotea might find out.

She was not yet ready to relive that terrible time in her life.

With Rotea gone, things were different. The curiosity about what had happened to me began to override her fears. About a year after Rotea died, Judy made her decision. She would try to find me, and she’d deal with the consequences later.

In a way, Rotea helped her. All those nights she had sat at the dining room table and listened to her husband and Earl Sanders discuss their cases and the investigatory techniques they used would now pay off. She eventually discovered the names of twenty-seven men who had been born in Louisiana on February 12, 1963, and she began calling and writing letters to them, hoping one of them might be her son.

It took three years, the help of an adoption search group, and a state worker in Louisiana, but my mother, relentless now in her desire to find me, finally learned my adopted name.

And thirty-nine years after my aunt Margie had pulled me from her arms, we were finally reunited.

The morning after I arrived in San Francisco, I woke my son, Zach, and headed to the Unity Christ Church on Ocean Avenue, where Judy and her boyfriend, Frank, were already waiting for us in a quaint chapel surrounded by clusters of colorful flowers. I held Zach’s hand as we crossed the street and walked into the church. Judy had arranged for me to meet my grandmother, Verda, and my brother Chance there. Excited and nervous, I wasn’t quite sure what I would say to these strangers who were suddenly my family.

Verda had left Sacramento early that morning, around 7:00. As she dressed, she wondered what would happen when she met me, how she could explain why she had made the decision to force Judy to relinquish her son. There had been no time to prepare for the phone call she had received in 1963 in which she learned Judy had given birth to a baby boy, and that the man who had kidnapped and raped her was the father. Verda had cried when the social worker from Louisiana described me—“Reddish blond hair, blue eyes, looks just like his mama. He’s so sweet and innocent.”

But she already had several children of her own, one only eight months old. She couldn’t take on Judy’s baby, too. She knew that’s what would have happened. Judy had already shown that she could not be counted on to be responsible or listen to any kind of reason. Besides, there had been no way her husband, Vic, would have let her bring the baby into their home. She had done what was best for everyone.

But would the baby turned grown man understand? With a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach, she got in her car and drove to San Francisco.

When Zach and I walked into the church, Verda was already there, sitting alone on a pew with her hands folded across her purse, as if she had been praying. I noticed her immediately, somehow recognizing that the elderly lady was my grandmother.

I walked to the pew and stood there for a moment, not knowing what to say. I could see the uncertainty in her eyes.

“Well, I guess I ought to know you,” Verda said in a high, sweet voice. She pushed herself off the bench and wrapped her arms around me.

The hug was enough. I could not hate this woman whose actions had given me parents like Loyd and Leona.

“Don’t worry,” I reassured her. “You have no reason for regret or guilt. Thank you for the decision you made. I love you, Grandma.”

A few minutes later, Chance, his wife, Jasmine, and his daughter, Mia, found us in the church.

Everyone’s eyes filled with tears as I hugged my brother for the first time. Judy’s fear that my being raised in the South would be a problem had been unfounded. I could not have cared less that my brother was half-black. I had a brother, and that was all that mattered.

I spent much of 2002 getting to know my new family through phone calls and e-mails, and I was able to visit my mother four times that year. That Christmas, I went to California for a company meeting and our annual holiday party, excited because it would be my first Christmas with my mother. Frank recommended that Judy and I drive to Tahoe and Reno for a mini-vacation, to spend some time alone together.

It was in Reno, where Judy and Van had married so many years before, that the urge to know more about my father resurfaced. I had refrained from asking too many questions over the past six months, because I didn’t want to do anything to upset my mother and risk damaging our new relationship. By now, I knew she didn’t want to talk about my father.

But I had to know.

We spent the last day of our vacation in Tahoe, and as we drank coffee and watched the morning dawn over the snowcapped mountains, I made a confession. “I know I told you I didn’t want to know about my father, but I think I want to know who he was. I want to try to find him.”

Judy didn’t hesitate. “Well, honey. If that’s what your heart wants, then I will do everything I can to help you with your search.”

“Thank you, Mom,” I said, hugging her. “I just want to meet him.”

I realized that it was the last thing Judy wanted to do, but she gave me her word. After I returned to Baton Rouge, she started making calls. The first number she dialed was Earl Sanders.

“Earl, I need your help,” she said to San Francisco’s chief of police. Years before, Mayor Moscone had vowed that one day Rotea would make history by becoming San Francisco’s first black chief of police. The assassination of the mayor had prevented that from happening. Instead, Rotea’s partner Earl Sanders had broken that barrier in 2002.

But there had been problems.

Sanders and two of his chief deputies had recently been indicted by a grand jury on charges of obstruction of justice. Rookie officer Alex Fagan Jr., the son of Sanders’s top aide, had been involved in a bar brawl along with two other off-duty policemen. The incident, named “Fajitagate” by the media, began when the bartender refused to give the officers a doggie bag of steak fajitas as he was leaving work. A fight ensued, during which the bartender was injured. Sanders and Fagan’s father ran the department side by side, and when the offending officers were not arrested, District Attorney Terence Hallinan came for blood.