Book Case Page 6

  The second section of the novel—more compelling than the first in some ways—was the account of Worthy’s life in jail: the solitude, the boredom, the longing, the pervasive and persuasive dangers, the danse macabre of prisoners, guards, and visitors was made as familiar to me as my own unremarkable routine. By the time I finished reading, I felt as though I’d served the time myself.

  I am as despised in this place as I became at St. Stephen’s, despised by men whose crimes are as reprehensible as the one they assume to be my own, despised because to them my victim was the child they are certain they had been once upon a time themselves, before fate or family corrupted them.

  But was she? It is a large part of my misery that Amanda Keefer—young, uncomplicated, to my knowledge previously unsoiled either in body or in spirit—must nevertheless be lying.

  But why? She was found to have been assaulted; presumably the finding is indisputable, so she has reason to be outraged. But at whom? Who could have raped her, then convinced her to accuse not him but me? What kind of power was that, what kind of spell over poor Amanda, what kind of fume at me?

  It is to my shame that at this point in my analysis—an analysis I have pursued each day for nine years but for the time I spend eating, sleeping, and baptizing the dinner dishes in a steam-clean washer—that I begin the smear. Back in my cell, amid the vulgar clamor of the early evening, I remember Amanda’s enticingly molded hair, her artificially exotic jewelry, her carelessly fastened blouses, her appallingly brief skirts, her provocatively phrased lapel pins (e.g., I Earn Money the Old-fashioned Way—I’m a Whore) and I allow these recollections to convince me that she was a tart and got what tarts deserve. There was no crime, the condemned man’s logic goes; therefore, why must I serve the sentence of a criminal?

  But of course my crime—thankfully it remains my only crime—is to allow myself to sink so low as to blame Amanda Keefer for my plight.

  The manuscript ends as Worthy is released from prison, vowing to learn what really happened almost a decade before, swearing to wreak vengeance on those responsible for his decline and fall, hoping to resurrect the relationship with Sharon, who divorced him a year into his incarceration. The vow is chillingly real—as with most convicts, confinement made Worthy far more murderous than repentant. It was testimony to the author’s skill that a part of me wanted to become a companion vigilante and join his quest for justice.

  As Hammurabi’s final phrase receded into memory, I put aside the pile of pages and looked out the window at the slopes of Russian Hill, brightening in the morning sun. Images from the book kept occupying my mind as I drifted back and forth between my world and the world of the novel. Instincts and emotions urged me to action—Dennis Worthy remained so tangible to me I felt he must be present in the room, must have been telling me his story face-to-face, must have been a friend.

  I assembled the pages, tied them back together with the ragged lengths of twine and replaced them on the desk. As I lay back in my bed and tried to decide how to find out where this new friend was, I was thinking all the while how ennobling it would be to have a valid claim to have written the words I’d just been reading.

  Because I already stood guilty of a lifetime of venial sin, it was difficult for me to urge my innocence of anything, despite the implication of my silence. I suppose I expected others to take up my sullied banner, but in that as in so many things that transpired that November at St. Stephen’s, I was disappointed. It was only after my confinement that I came to realize that humans are inherently insatiable, which makes disappointment the necessary fate of all relationships.

  I tried to explain this in a letter to my wife.

  She responded with a suit for dissolution.

  Homage to Hammurabi, p. 92

  6

  Had I been versed in the deductive wizardry of psychoanalytic criticism, I could have constructed an intimate biography of Homage to Hammurabi’s author without even knowing his name. Lacking such skills, I nevertheless made the following conclusions: He knew how to write, which probably though not conclusively meant that he was an educated man. More specifically, both the labyrinth of secondary school procedures and the emotional accordion of family life were so precisely evoked it suggested the author must be both a teacher and a spouse. And he knew San Francisco—although the city was never mentioned by name, its hallmarks were tellingly portrayed: the hills, the views, the bridges, the incessant jingoism, the luxuriant summer fog. But there were few hints beyond such nonspecific indicators, which didn’t leave me much to go on unless my early-morning suspicion proved right—that the entire story was a clue to its creator.

  I’d come to that conclusion about halfway through the manuscript, when Dennis Worthy’s life became almost as baffling and authentic to me as my own. The jolt of the claim of misconduct seemed too vivid, the shame loosed by his colleagues’ suspicions too credible, the terror of his incarceration too immediate for Hammurabi not to have had its source in a real life. But although it would make my task easier if what I had read was not fiction but fact, it occurred to me that Bryce Chatterton’s job might become more difficult. When it was close enough to noon to call him, I did.

  Bryce still pursued a single track. “Have you gotten to Hammurabi yet?”

  “I just finished it.”

  “Really? You must have been up all night.”

  “Close enough.”

  His enthusiasm made raw noises in the wire. “I told you it was special, didn’t I?”

  “You did, indeed.”

  “So what’s the plan? How do we go about learning who wrote it?”

  Though I was reluctant to dampen his mood, I edged toward the warning I had called to issue. “The easiest way to find out who wrote it is to assume it isn’t a novel.”

  “You mean to assume the story’s true.”

  “Exactly.”

  He paused to reflect, then seconded my conclusion. “It almost has to be, doesn’t it? I mean, no one could make up all that agony.”

  “And even if they could, why would they?”

  “Right. So we find out where this frame-up happened—what town, what school, etcetera—and go on from there.”

  “Something like that.”

  “Well? Are you free? Can you do it?”

  I hesitated. “If you still want me to.”

  “Why wouldn’t I?”

  “If Homage to Hammurabi is fact, it changes things a little, doesn’t it? From your perspective, I mean?”

  “How so? Nonfiction crime books sell a ton—Joe MacGinnis, Ann Rule, Shana Alexander …”

  “Truman Capote.”

  “Right. Right. In fact, that’s what Hammurabi sort of reminds me of—In Cold Blood. A nonfiction novel: the art of literature grafted onto the resonance of journalism.” His voice swelled with pride. “It really is a great story, isn’t it?”

  “Not yet, it isn’t.”

  “It can use some editing, sure—he overwrites in spots, but—”

  “That’s not what I mean. It’ll only be a great story when you get the rest of the manuscript—when Worthy tells us who framed him, and why. That’s really why you hired me, right?—to track the author down so you can get him to finish it.”

  “Sure.”

  “So what’s the limit on your libel insurance policy?”

  Bryce reacted as any publisher would at the mention of the word. “Libel? Hammurabi is fiction. There’s nothing even remotely libelous about … Oh. I get it. If we publish it as true crime, then we could have libel problems if the author accuses the wrong person of the frame.” Bryce hesitated, then spoke with obvious relief. “Well, hell. We’ll just call it a novel no matter what it is. Complete with the usual disclaimer about any resemblance to persons living or dead being coincidental. That’ll get us off the hook.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Why not?”

  “I seem to remember some recent court cases, including at least one in California, that say a book can be libel
ous even though its author and publisher call it fiction.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope. Have you got a lawyer?”

  “I use Andy Potter once in a while. But only when I have to.”

  “Maybe you’d better have Andy put one of his associates on this—give you a memo on the latest law in that area.”

  “Andy Potter’s associates charge two hundred bucks an hour; I can’t afford that much advice right now.”

  “It’s your decision, Bryce, but if I were you I wouldn’t go too far down this road without knowing all the potholes.”

  “I think that’s pitfalls.”

  Bryce paused once again, grasping at straws. As I feared, it turned out I was one of them. “Your rate’s still forty, right?”

  “Yep.”

  “How come you’ve never raised it?”

  “Because my life-style makes me immune to inflation.”

  “How do you manage that?”

  “I never buy anything.”

  Bryce laughed. “Well, hell. You remember how to do legal research, don’t you? I mean, it’s not the kind of thing you forget, is it? Just bury yourself in those books till you find the right one.”

  “No way, Bryce,” I countered quickly. “They use computer networks and data banks and electronic mail and all kinds of high-tech stuff in law libraries these days. I haven’t kept up and I don’t want to catch up, even at your expense.”

  “Why not?”

  “Too much law nauseates me; I think I’m allergic to it.”

  “Come on, Marsh. How long could it take, a couple of hours? Where’s the nearest law library?”

  “The nearest good one is at the Petit office in the Pyramid. The nearest good one I can get into is over at Hastings. But Jesus, Bryce. Back when I was practicing law, the case reporter system took up three rooms in the library. Now they’ve got that same amount of material on CD-ROMs and you can carry it all in your briefcase. And you know what?”

  “What?”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea how to use a CD-ROM, or even what one is, and I’m going to try like hell to make it to my grave without having to learn. Plus I gave away my briefcase.”

  “Come on. All the libraries can’t afford the fancy stuff. Go down to City Hall—I’ll bet they’re still doing it the old way. Take a cab, on me. Check this thing out. Nothing elaborate, just the nuts and bolts of the thing, you know? For your old buddy Bryce.”

  “I don’t have any buddies old enough to get me back to practicing law.”

  “I’m not talking about that, I’m just saying I need to know what my exposure is on this.” He paused. “I’m not sure I have any libel insurance,” he added nervously.

  In keeping with my surprisingly stiff resistance, my voice hardened. “Listen, Bryce. It would be stupid of me to give you advice about your exposure to a lawsuit, and it would be even stupider for you to take it.”

  “I think it’s ‘more stupid.’”

  “I think you’re wrong.”

  “Come on, Marsh. How hard can it be? You were in the top ten percent of your class, weren’t you?”

  “No.”

  “Didn’t you write an article for the law review?”

  “I wrote it; they didn’t publish it.”

  “Well, you can still … can’t you?”

  That’s the trouble with friends, they know more than is good for you sometimes, and Bryce’s resurrection of my most egregious failure had made me churlish. “Call Andy Potter, Bryce. Have him put his newest man on it. Maybe he’ll give you a rate.”

  “Lawyers don’t know the meaning of the word. Come on, Marsh. What’s a couple of hours?”

  It was a lot more time than I wanted to spend surrounded by musty law books and scowling law librarians and indecipherable computer terminals, but I sympathized with Bryce’s plight the way I sympathize with anyone who has to pay a professional person a fee. Like the businessmen who constitute their meal tickets, most lawyers feel the need to live like kings these days, so the price of advice has become as outrageous as the price of neckties and stealth bombers.

  “It is kind of an interesting question,” I yielded finally, my aversion to legal research overcome by my interest in the origins of Hammurabi. “I guess I could check it out for you. But not as a lawyer, just as an interested party. And only for a few minutes. If it looks like it’s going to get complicated, I’m going to quit.”

  Bryce was plainly cheered. “Sure. No problem. When do you think you can let me know?”

  “Later this afternoon.”

  “Great.”

  “You want this manuscript back?”

  “Keep it. Somewhere safe, it’s the only copy. And don’t let anyone in the business get a look at it.”

  “No problem. I’ll put it in the drawer that locks, just in case Joyce Carol Oates drops by for some tips on the pathetic fallacy.”

  “Do you believe I’m guilty?” I asked a colleague, a young woman, next to my wife my closest friend on the St. Stephen’s faculty.

  “No,” she said. “Never.”

  “Even though I have admitted it myself?”

  “Even then.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because if you needed sex that much you could have gotten it from me. And you’ve known it since the day we met.” She started to cry. “And because you’re the only man in this whole damned building who’s read Little Women.

  Homage to Hammurabi, p. 134

  7

  When I reached Charley Sleet at the Central Station in North Beach, he was about to go out on another gang shooting. Gang activity has taken the city fathers by surprise, apparently because they think San Francisco is immune to antisocial behavior, at least on such a systematic basis. I guess that means they think we’re immune to racism, poverty, envy, and despair, though they are conferred on certain elements in society on an equally systematic basis. But despite the easy delusions of its leaders, the city isn’t immune to anything.

  “I suppose it’s too early to ask if you checked the pages for prints yet,” I asked after Charley’s opening grumble.

  “It’s too early to ask if I’ve had breakfast.”

  “Let’s try this. Suppose someone committed a crime in this city some nine years ago.”

  “Suppose you remember how much I hate playing games.”

  “Come on, Charley. A guy does a number back in 1980.”

  “The guy have a name?”

  “No.”

  “What kind of offense?”

  “Sexual assault. Maybe statutory rape.”

  “They don’t call it that anymore, they call it unlawful sexual intercourse. Which you’d know if you ever bothered to read the penal code.”

  Charley thinks he knows more law than I do, and he’s right. “Also suppose he pleaded guilty to aggravated assault as the result of a plea bargain, and served his time in Folsom. You with me so far?”

  “Suppose you hurry it along a little; if you don’t get on top of these gang bangs right away, the witnesses have a tendency to get nervous about their prospects.”

  “What I want to know is, how could I find out who this guy was?”

  “If he was a sex offender he’d have to register.”

  “I know. That’s probably the reason he bargained to agg assault.”

  “Is he on parole?”

  “Did the full term. Refused to appear before the board, said he wanted to leave a free man or not leave at all.”

  “Tough guy.”

  “Or an innocent one.”

  “Says who?”

  “Says him.”

  Charley laughed. “Along with every other con who ever lived.”

  “Sometimes they are though, right, Charley?”

  “Just because they’re not guilty, doesn’t mean they’re innocent.”

  “Thirty people in this state have been convicted of murders they didn’t commit. That’s murders, Charley, not just felonies. When Mario Cuomo vetoes the death penalty
bill the legislature sends him every year, he reads off the names of eight people who were executed in New York before the authorities learned they were innocent.”

  “Which is why the death penalty is shit,” Charley said, a statement I’d heard him make many times before, one that surprised other people when they heard it but didn’t surprise me at all. “But if you called a meeting of all the Folsom cons who had never committed a major felony, you could hold it in the trunk of your car.”

  “Which is apropos of nothing,” I said as Charley muttered an aside to someone.

  When he came back on the line his attitude was peremptory. “I got to go, Marsh; there’s another turf war warming up in Sunnyside. Look, I could ask the computer to kick out a bunch of names with the MO of the guy you want, but it would be a long list and someone would have to check it out and I can’t put the department on it unless it’s part of an active file. If I were you I’d find out where the crime was committed and go out there and nose around till you get a name. In other words, make like a cop and put in a little legwork. Once you’ve got a name, I can probably get a line on him. Or you can sit back and wait. If it went down the way you say, he must have a real mad on for somebody. One way or another, his name’s going to pop up again.”

  Charley hung up before I could remark on the subject of legwork in general and police work in particular. I scribbled a note to my secretary, then grabbed a cab to the Hastings College of Law—I decided to take a chance that there was still something to read down there that didn’t come packaged within the rays of a VDT.

  Hastings is an urban school, part of the University of California’s system but not attached to any of its campuses. Its chief claim to fame is that its faculty is made up of eminent professors who have retired from other institutions and gravitated to Hastings to keep active in an environment in which they’re cherished rather than regarded as dead wood. As I entered the library I felt the usual press of claustrophobia, the usual wheeze from the mold, the usual compression inside my skull from anticipating the drudgery that lay ahead of me, and the usual prayer of thanks that I didn’t have to do this for a living anymore.