Conviction

NINETEEN

TERRI SAT WITH YANCEY JAMES ON A PARK BENCH ACROSS FROM City Hall, its golden dome glistening in the sunlight of a crisp fall afternoon. In the carefully tended park in front of them, homeless men and women, some with shopping carts, patrolled the walkways which crisscrossed the grass. James observed them with what, to Terri, seemed empathy and self-recognition.

"So easy to fall," he murmured, "so hard to get back up. Folks don't often appreciate how little separates them from us."

To Terri, James's manner and appearance had come as a surprise. The man Eula Price and Lou Mauriani had described to her was fleshy and bombastic, with a voice which wafted multisyllabic phrases with the resonance of a church organ. But this Yancey James was quiet and reflective, with the hollowed-out look of a man who had lost weight too quickly, perhaps because of illness. His neck was a loose crepe of skin, his face smoother but close to gaunt. The life in his eyes had vanished.

Terri herself was wary—fearful that James might know some fact that exploded Payton's confession, or pointed to Rennell's guilt; concerned that her need to establish James's incompetence might keep him from talking. "About the Price case," she began, "I wasn't there. I just need to know what you know, for better or worse. And how the case looked to you."

This elicited the wisp of a smile, which briefly touched his eyes. "You don't have to be so kindly, Ms. Paget. The A.G.'s folks already been sniffin' around, sayin' how you gonna be bad-mouthing me in court—them hopin' I'd tell them how great I'd done for Rennell Price." His voice was weary. "Everybody's tiptoein' up to me like I'm mentally ill, like if they say somethin' mean—or even truthful—I might go postal. Or maybe just break down weepin'."

Terri smiled. "Then I'll skip the niceties. If you want to tell me how you screwed up this case, it's okay by me. You're Rennell's last chance of living."

James gave a rueful shake of the head. "Odds are it's the only chance I'll ever give him. Just wish I could remember more—fifteen years was a long time ago, even without a wicked cross-addiction to Jack Daniel's and cocaine." He turned to the park again, gaze distant, speaking softly. "Know what it's like to be sober, and disbarred? It's like wakin' up in your car in your own garage, but the windshield's busted so bad you can't see out and the hood's all bent out of shape. And all you can do is sit there and wonder how it happened and why you're still alive, 'cause you can't remember drivin' home."

"What do you remember?"

James's eyes narrowed. "The grandmother," he said at length, "when I told her the boys were in trouble, and I needed more money to investigate. The fear in her eyes gave me a moment of remorse. Maybe even two."

Terri watched his profile; he seemed to study the park less from interest than from the wish not to look at her. "Did you investigate?" she asked.

"Me? At no time. I hired another cokehead, a so-called investigator named Rufus Cross, who kicked back half his fees to me. Don't imagine he did squat, either." He paused, an ironic resignation seeping into his voice. "You're welcome to look at my files."

For whatever good they would be, Terri thought. "What do you remember about Rennell?"

"Nothing much. Never said nothin', really. Just looked right through me. I remember thinkin', Here he is charged with chokin' a nine-year-old on his own come, and he don't give a damn."

The image of Rennell at eighteen, inexorably headed toward a fate he was too impaired to see, hit Terri hard. "Did you consider that he might be retarded?"

"Retarded?" James spoke the word with bemusement and, it seemed, a touch of self-reproach. "He acted like a guilty man stickin' to his big brother's story, and waitin' for Payton to find him a way out. Maybe if I'd ever met with him alone . . ."

In an even tone, Terri said, "A 'way out' like asking a snitch to kill Eddie Fleet?"

"That's right. Hard to feel like that reflected well on either one of them."

"What about Eddie? Ever take a hard look at him?"

James seemed to study a homeless man at the center of the park, painstakingly folding a raveled blanket to stuff it in the garbage bag he used to carry his possessions. "What I remember," he said vaguely, "is tryin' to figure out his deal with the cops. Never found out that it was anything more than what all of them said it was—he'd testify, and Mauriani would consider that before charging him as an accessory."

"What about Fleet's story itself—that Rennell helped to dispose of the body. Didn't you wonder about that?"

"No," James said flatly.

Something new in his manner gave Terri pause. With some reluctance, she asked, "Why was that?"

James's eyes were suddenly harder. "This part, I do remember. Always will. No amount of drugs or whiskey could make a man forget."

* * *

Even through the glass in the county jail, Payton Price scared him some—the look in his eyes was implacable, that of a killer. "They're sayin' you hired a hit man," James repeated. "Jamal Harrison."

Payton's mouth curled in contempt. "Fleet's the whole case, or pretty damn near. You sayin' you'd miss him?" He paused, then added a perfunctory denial. "Jamal's a snitch, like Fleet. That makes him a liar."

"Maybe so. But him sayin' you wanted him to whack Eddie Fleet gives Eddie credibility." James leaned closer to the glass, speaking in an undertone. "This case is smellin' like death to me, son."

Payton met his eyes. "Then I better figure out where else we was."

James felt tired and flat: the coke was wearing off. "What are you tellin' me, Payton?"

Payton seemed never to blink; even through the glass James found this frightening. "Whatever you need to hear," Payton said.

"Like what?"

Payton angled his head, as though searching for an answer. "Like we was with my girlfriend, man. No way we killed that little girl."

His monotone bore no effort to persuade. "Payton," James said with new urgency, "I'm not puttin' on no perjured testimony. No good for either one of us."

Payton leaned closer, forehead nearly touching the glass. "Don't give me that jive," he hissed. "You look here at me, and listen hard. We was with my girlfriend, Tasha. You don't put her up there, we gonna die, and you gonna wind up floatin' in the bay like that little girl did." Payton looked him up and down, voice soft again. "Current like that, fat man like you float all the way to Oakland."

Softly, James said, "I hear you."

* * *

"Jesus," Carlo said.

"I know." Terri gazed out the window of the Waterfront Restaurant at the gray, white-capped current flowing under the Bay Bridge. "James assumed Payton was a liar. And that 'I didn't do that little girl' was just Rennell's pitiful excuse for an alibi. The fact that Rennell couldn't help, or even remember where he was, was just more proof of guilt—allowing James to rationalize pocketing the money from Grandma and blowing it on cocaine. All without doing any work."

"Pathetic," Carlo agreed. "But good for us."

Terri nodded. "Rennell never got his own defense, in either the guilt or the sentencing phase. James never even met with him alone. And the reason fits in neatly with mental retardation—Rennell's total reliance on Payton." She paused to spear a piece of sashimi. "So let's take stock of where AEDPA leaves us on the guilt phase."

"First," Carlo said promptly, "we need a constitutional error at trial. In this case, ineffective assistance of counsel, at least partly due to the conflict of representing both brothers. In short, that better lawyering might well have gotten Rennell acquitted."

Terri finished her meal. "The A.G. will say that nothing James did or didn't do made any difference. So under AEDPA, Rennell got a constitutionally fair trial. The fact that a jury might not have convicted him if Payton had said what he told me is irrelevant."

Carlo shook his head in wonder. "So where does that leave us?"

"Looking for Eddie Fleet," Terri answered briskly. "If we can dirty him now, maybe someone could have in 1987."