Gossip (31 page)

He had told me to bring any correspondence with Bill, but there’d only been my E-mail epistle, which I had trashed after sending. Freeman would’ve called me a fool, but Diaz accepted the loss with a shrug. “Even if they recovered it from your system, computer letters are inadmissible in court. And they only copied it on disk. I don’t understand why they didn’t impound your machine, but it may have given them their lead. A taped phone conversation, however, if it exists, is another story. What did you say?”

I remembered all I could of our last exchange, starting with the fact that Bill was jerking off. Diaz blandly noted it in his legal pad. He asked if Bill was the sort who’d record us as a turn-on for later. Maybe, I said. I didn’t know Bill anymore. I could remember nothing but murder metaphors from that night. My claim that hundreds of gay men couldn’t wait to piss on his grave seemed especially damning now that I’d seen that grave. Worst of all was that I’d told him he was dead.

“Was it a threat?”

“No. I meant only that he was dead to me and I didn’t care what he did. But I—I accidentally cut myself off while I said it. I don’t know if I made myself clear.”

Diaz blandly wrote that down too, nodding as if it were a matter of small importance.

“When will we know if they actually have me on tape?”

“Not until they tell us. I assume they do. Unless there’s something else you’re holding back that makes you a suspect.”

Next we went over the day and night of the crime: what time I caught the train, when I met Nancy, what contact we had with the outside world, if only shows watched on TV. He was sorry to hear the doorman hadn’t seen me and Nancy go up to her apartment. “You didn’t go out all evening? A bar or restaurant where someone may have seen you?” No, we’d only fussed and fumed with each other and didn’t even turn on the news. Diaz lifted his upper lip to suck air through his teeth, his sole display of exasperation.

Finally, he asked for my history with Bill. I told him about Weiss and Miami, the book and
Nightline,
of course, but also odd bits that randomly came to me: an exchange in an East Village restaurant about ambition, Bill’s confession that his greatest fear was to be thought ridiculous, the tale of the paperboy and the hustler. All pieces of Bill became only dry bones when retold in ą search for evidence.

We were there for three hours, the light in the window turning from white to orange to blue, Diaz filling his pad with seismic scratch while I refilled a glass from the water jug on his desk. Then Diaz declared, “That’s enough for tonight, Ralph.” Sometime during the session, I’d become my first name. “We’ll continue this at our next session. Next week?”

But I had my own questions to ask. First, how much would this cost? He was working pro bono, but it could still run from ten to twenty thousand dollars, he explained, depending on whether we went to trial. If we had to hire a private investigator, it could be much more. “But we’ll find a suitable arrangement for payment. Don’t worry about that yet. You have more pressing concerns.”

“So what are the chances that this
will
go to trial?” The chief question.

“Hope for the best, expect the worst. I’ll press for dismissal every step of the way. We need to see if they have enough evidence to get an indictment from a grand jury.” He placed a finger across his lips, thought a moment and said, “I think we should count on going to trial.”

“But I have a solid alibi. My friend Nancy.”

“Which we can use only in court. And it’s not as solid as it looks.” He explained how a determined prosecutor would go after Nancy to prove she had cause to lie for me. “I’ll have to meet with her sometime. For whatever reason, people in D.C. seem hot to pursue this, despite the weakness of their case.”

I was not surprised. I’d grown beyond surprise. “Do you know if any of them are involved with the Christian right?”

He lifted a suspicious eyelid at that. “There’s politics involved. There’s always politics. But the chief political threat here is that this is a nondrug, nonblack, middle-class murder. They get to prove they’re an equal-opportunity prosecutor.”

“Is that why Freeman gave you my case? Your race?”

He ignored the distrust in my tone. “No. He gave it to me because I asked for it. It sounded …
interesting.”
He calmly looked me in the eye. “The politics is for me to worry over, Ralph. You just need to help us build the best defense possible.”

I sighed, nodded and stood up.

He remained seated. “Am I right in assuming that you decided to let your friends publicize your case?”

Neither of us had mentioned it yet. I told him I had.

“Fine. I just need to know. My objections the other night were more instinct than head. Hearing what we have, I don’t think it can harm you. But the public domain can be terribly confusing for anyone new to it. You already have a full plate. In your position, I’d prefer to stay out of the limelight. But then I’m a rather retiring person myself.”

Was there such a thing as a shy defense attorney?

“My advice is talk about your innocence, not other people’s guilt. Complex scenarios involving Christians and Republicans will only make you look paranoid and guilty. Leave the paranoid scenarios to me. If Weiss goes on the witness stand, I intend to suggest that he had reasons to frame you.”

“You
think Weiss was behind the murder?” If one person believed it, my dead belief might come back to life.

“Not at all,” he said flatly. “But a good defense is about casting doubt in all directions. Which I intend to do. I
think
we can win in court.”

He stood up, and I saw his height again—his size enabled him to be uncertain without losing authority. He walked me to the door, but didn’t open it.

“A personal question, Ralph. Do you have any, hopes of settling a score here?”

“No. All I want is an explanation.”

His mouth tightened in the first approximation of a smile I’d seen on his face during the entire meeting. “That’s no good either. I should warn you, you’re going to come out of this more baffled than ever. Police files are full of pointless, unsolved murders. The best we can do is keep you out of jail. We know O’Connor used a hustler at least once. So a hustler or pickup is not impossible. If we go to trial, I’ll use his history, blame a hypothetical trick, then suggest Weiss set you up.”

We fought fiction not with truth but another fiction?

“When will we know when we’re going to trial?”

“That’s for the prosecution to decide. Once they get an indictment in grand jury, I’ll start pressing for a court date. But this could go on for months. A year or longer. You’re always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Except there are a hundred shoes. Good night.”

Only when I was out on the street did I begin to worry about Diaz. Whatever you think of lawyers, you want your own to be a ruthless fire-breather. I missed Freeman’s arrogance and condescension. Diaz treated me as an equal, showing me all his cards, including his doubt. He did not set my mind at ease.

“Is he a cousin?” Peter asked at work the next day.

“I don’t know. Maybe.” He’d seemed awfully knowledgeable and matter-of-fact about gay life. “What difference would it make?”

“None. I just wonder it about everyone I meet.”

“That’s the least of my concerns about him.”

Nancy telephoned to see how I was holding up. I asked
her
about Diaz. “He’s smart,” I said. “Maybe too smart. Too careful and low-key.”

“Jack says he could use more venom in court, but that he’s a very smooth deal maker.”

“He’s smooth all right. If it goes to trial, would Jack step back in?”

“No. Jack feels they’ve done too much already. But it shouldn’t go to trial, Ralph.”

“Diaz thinks it will.” I told her what he’d said. “He needs to meet with you and find out what kind of witness you’ll make.”

“Shit. I thought I was done with this! The whole thing was supposed to be over by now.” She recovered from her alarm. “I’m sorry, Ralph. Of course I’ll come up and meet with him. Whenever he needs to see me.” She spoke with the air of someone making a dental appointment she hoped would prove unnecessary.

When I told her about the fund-raiser and possible article in the
Voice,
she was accusingly silent.

“Look,” I said testily. “I can’t just sit here and do nothing while this goes on. I won’t mention you or Kathleen or the book. She doesn’t own me just because she paid my bail.”

“No. I understand. Do what you have to. You’re certainly going to need the money. Still—” Her tongue clicked her teeth. “Kathleen didn’t help just to shut you up, you know.”

“That’s nice to hear,” I sneered.

I continued to snap at the people I loved and trusted. My crisis gave me the right to say what I pleased without regret.

Nick called to report that he was forming a defense committee. He’d spoken to the reporters whose names I gave him, but all said the story was a one-day fluke, a dead fish. He discussed my upcoming interview with Maura. “She’s going to want you to name names. Don’t. Keep the enemy large and vague. It protects you and gives us a bigger target.”

“I thought you and Maura were in this together.”

“We are. But our agendas don’t always match. For all her tough talk, she’s a pushover for sentimental melodrama. You know, conspiracy and revolution.”

Then
he
brought up Diaz, wondering if I might be happier with another attorney, someone less pin-striped and more media savvy. I declared full faith in Diaz. The thought of losing him made me realize how much I valued his detachment. His uncertainty was contagious, yet I trusted his impersonality. And working with two men who did not fully approve of each other should enable me to retain some control.

Maura came to my apartment Friday afternoon. She circled the room, describing the many books and minimal furniture to a black tape recorder in her hand. Setting the recorder between us on my kitchen table, she began her questions, the same questions I’d been asked by FBI agents, detectives and lawyers. I sat stiffly and answered tersely. She worked at being objective, biting her lip to keep her views to herself, but class and gender politics kept slipping out. Was Bill rich? Had he been to prep school? She was disappointed to hear that he wasn’t blond or handsome.

“What was sex with him like?”

“I won’t talk about that. I’ll say only that he was a better person in bed than in print.”

“Were you in love with him?”

“No.”

“Not even a little?” She had a nasty wink in her voice.

I shook my head. Whatever I’d felt for him, it was too slippery to share with the public.

I expected condescension from Maura. After all, I was white and male and had slept with a known pig. Maura had always treated me as just another superfluous twink. Not even my time in jail impressed her. She pointed out how easy I’d had it, how I’d still be in jail if I were black—she never asked who paid my bail. She was so aggressively blasé that I had to wonder if she envied me for being charged with murder.

“Who do you think killed him?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I really don’t.”

“You’ve lost many friends to AIDS, haven’t you?”

“Yes?” The change of subject threw me.

“You were primary caregiver to Alberto Lowry?”

She must’ve talked to Nick. I refused to use Bert to make myself look good. “I did no more for him than others have done for their friends.”

She frowned. “Well, just visiting friends in the hospital upsets me too much. I give them one visit and that’s it. Not that it does anyone any good,” she added abruptly.

But too late. She’d revealed a flaw in her righteousness, a tender heart or weak stomach, yet something vulnerable.

“It must make you angry,” she continued. “That our country lets so many of your friends die, then calls
you
a murderer.”

“My country? Our government? Something. Maybe fate. I don’t know.” I resisted her effort to turn my It into such an easy They. “But anger is an overrated emotion. What I’m feeling now is too cold and deep to be called anger.”

“Don’t you find it odd? That of the hundreds of thousands of people who’ve died of AIDS, none has committed a political assassination?”

Nick was right. She had a very melodramatic imagination.

“You’re sorry I didn’t kill him?”

“No. Just a question I ask myself. I haven’t assassinated anyone either. But then we’re both healthy, aren’t we?”

A photographer came and took pictures, some in front of the bookcase, others at the window with security bars—the once and future inmate.

The article was scheduled for the first week in June, on the eve of the fund-raiser. It was still the end of April. Nick hoped the two events would create enough critical mass to interest the general media again. The mainstream had dropped me completely. There were belated mentions in the gay press, whose lead times were longer, but only summarizing what was in the wire services. A lull set in. Peter reported that all talk of me in Gayworld had been replaced by new rumors about Marky Mark. The sole indication that the crime’s public life might not be over was that
Regiment of Women
continued to float at the bottom of the best-seller list.

One evening after work, I found a cream-colored envelope with a Maryland postmark in my mailbox. Inside the formal thank-you card, under the printed script expressing gratitude for my sympathy, a delicate hand had scribbled:

Thank you for coming to the service. It must have been difficult. I know my son was very fond of you. When you are next in Baltimore, I would so like to talk. There is much about his life I do not know. Sincerely, Helen O’Connor.

“His mother,” I told Diaz when I showed him the card at our next meeting. “She doesn’t have a clue. Or does she? ‘It must have been difficult’? Is it a trick? Why would she want to talk to her son’s killer?”

When I described her, a small, timid, conventional woman, Diaz decided the card was probably sincere. “She doesn’t sound like someone who’d come after you with a .38. Still, it’s inappropriate for you to see her or respond at this time.”