Book by Buffa, Dudley W.

The Legacy

By Dudley W. Buffa

Thorndike Press

Copyright © 2002 Dudley W. Buffa
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780786246557

Chapter One

When they finally divorced, my mother told me that she had marriedmy father only because she had been pregnant with me. My mother madethis remark as if it were something she was sure I knew already. Sheseemed to have assumed that I must have understood-from thebeginning, as it were-that she had never loved him and had livedwith him all those years only so that I could be raised in theproper way. I was not nearly so intelligent, and nothing asinsightful, as she wanted to imagine. It had never occurred to methat there was anything wrong, anything unusual in the way we lived.If my mother and I went away every summer, it was only because myfather was a doctor who had to stay close to his patients.

Every year, a few days after the school year ended, he would see usoff at the station when we started the overnight train trip to TheCity. That is what my mother always called it, the place where shehad been born and raised, the place where she had met my father whenhe was still a student. The City. Everyone who ever lived there,everyone who lives there now, calls it that and looks at you likethere is something a little wrong with you if you do not immediatelyunderstand they are talking about San Francisco.

We went there every summer. We stayed with my aunt-my mother'ssister, made a widow by the war-and, without anyplace to playoutside, I spent most of my time indoors. The only fun I had waswhen my cousin Bobby, three years older, took pity on me and let mego somewhere with him. Sometimes, after my mother, all dressed up,tucked me in and said good night and then went somewhere with myaunt, Bobby and I would sneak down the back stairs and wander aroundthe streets, watching through windows at what went on in theneighborhood bars. Once we followed two sailors and the two womenthey had picked up to their car and waited until the windows startedto steam up. That's when we were supposed to bang on the car doorand then run as fast as we could. We crouched down, just below thepassenger-side window. Bobby raised his head just enough to seeinside. He turned away, an angry, frightened look on his face,grabbed me by the shoulder, and, pulling me behind him, ran up thestreet. He never told me what he had seen, and he thought I wasstill too young to guess.

We kept going there, to the city, my mother and I, summer aftersummer, and sometimes Christmas as well, until I started highschool. My mother still visited her sister, but for only a few weeksat a time, whether because she missed me or was afraid of what otherpeople might think, I'm not sure even she could have said. Nottruthfully, anyway. My mother was never one to flaunt convention,not when she was so good at deception. It is one of the things Iinherited from her, this talent for appearances, this need tobelieve that all my transgressions are forgivable because they aresomehow always the fault of someone else.

She had done what she had to and had done it as long as she could. Iwas finished with school and had become a lawyer. She would havepreferred that I had become a doctor, but if I could not do that forher, at least I could have joined a Wall Street firm. Night schoollawyers became sole practitioners willing to take any criminal casethey could get, but not graduates of Harvard Law School.

She was telling me all this while she packed her things, gettingready to leave for the last time, measuring her martyrdom by thealmost willful defiance with which I had disappointed herexpectations. Without the advantages of a Harvard education, shereminded me with no little irritation, my cousin had become a juniorpartner in one of the most prestigious firms in San Francisco. Itwas the last thing I wanted to talk about and the only thing she hadon her mind. Everything was Bobby, and how well he had done, and howshe had always known I could do even better. It was only because ofthe example of my father, she insisted, that I had never developedthe right kind of ambition.

She was talking out loud, and I was standing right there in front ofher, but she was really talking to herself, and the more she did,the more worked up she became. She had told me without any apparentregret she had married my father because she was pregnant with me;now, wondering why she had done it at all, she told me she shouldhave waited until my real father was divorced and married himinstead.

It seems strange when I think about it now, but at the moment shesaid it, I did not care if it was true or not; I only cared that myfather, the only father I had ever known, did not know. When shesaid that she had not told him and never would, I was almostgrateful that she had chosen to tell me instead.

We never spoke again about what had been said the day she left. Ifshe made some passing reference to my father in the years thatfollowed, I never detected even a hint of irony in the way she usedthe word. It would have been like her to have forgotten that she hadever said anything to me about my own illegitimacy. She had aremarkable capacity for putting out of mind things she foundunpleasant.

If she had any purpose in what she said to me the day she left, Isuppose it might have been to convince me that my lack of ambitionwas not an inherited trait beyond my power to change. It wasastonishing how little she knew me: I had more ambition than sheimagined, though not for the kind of things she prized. I certainlyhad no desire to end up like my cousin, a lawyer who made his livingadvising the wealthy how to take advantage of every legal loopholein the tax code, a lawyer who had never tried a case and neverwould. Yet I could not blame her for thinking what she did. When wewere growing up, he was everything I thought I wanted to be and wasafraid I could never become. Bobby was an all-league running back onone of the best high school football teams in California; I was laststring on the freshman team at a high school no one outside Portlandhad ever heard of. The year he became an All-American at theUniversity of California, I finally made the high school varsity.Bobby was always surrounded by people who wanted to be his friendand girls who wanted to go out with him; I was uncomfortable aroundpeople I did not know very well and even at that age far toointense, and far too secretive, to devote any time to making anyfriends of my own.

We seldom saw each other after my mother stopped taking me to SanFrancisco for the summer, but from a distance I followed at leastthe major events of his life. He invited me to his wedding when hegot married his senior year at Cal, but I was still a freshman atthe University of Michigan and it was much too far to go. I had notseen him for almost twenty years when his wife died of cancer and Iflew down for the funeral. A few weeks later, he sent me ahandwritten note thanking me for coming and expressing the hope thatwe would see each other more often. A year later we had dinnertogether in San Francisco while I was in the city trying a case infederal district court. That was nearly two years ago. I did nothear from him again until he called and asked me if I might bewilling to talk to his partner about taking a case. It was a casethat every defense attorney in the country would have given anythingto get.

Since the night it happened, the murder of Jeremy Fullerton in aparked car on a San Francisco street had been the only case anyonecould talk about. The murder of a United States senator was bound tobe news, but Fullerton had also been the Democratic candidate forgovernor of California. What made it even more interesting,Fullerton, according to all the stories now being written, had onlybeen running for governor because he thought it was his best chanceto become president.

Bobby explained to me that the police had made an arrest but thathis partner, Albert Craven, seemed convinced they must have made amistake. Even if they were not mistaken, Craven had known the motherof the suspect for a long time. He had promised to do everything hecould to find a lawyer who could help.

"That shouldn't be difficult," I remarked. "This is the kind of casethat can make a career. It's once-in-a-lifetime. Lawyers will belining up to take this case, begging to take it."

"Nobody in the city will touch it," replied Bobby. It made no sense.Whoever took this case would be famous. Something was not right.

"Albert promised her he'd get her son one of the best."

I remembered the way I had looked up to him when we were kids, andhow I had wanted to be just like him. I wondered if he had thoughtabout that when he called and if he knew that just by saying hethought I was one of the best I would like him even more. I listenedto him tell me that there were probably half a dozen lawyers in thecity who could do it but that they were all afraid of the possiblerepercussions.

"Repercussions?" I asked automatically when he paused. It did notmatter to me what they might be.

The following Monday morning I watched out the window as the planefrom Portland began its descent into San Francisco. They were rightto call it The City. It had always drawn everything toward it.Before the bridges were built, before the Golden Gate connected thenorth shore and the Bay Bridge connected the east, millions ofpeople were ferried back and forth every year. After the bridgeswere built, millions more came by car and by bus and by train.Everyone wanted to be here, but the city, rising up at the end ofthe narrow peninsula that jutted out between the ocean and the bay,could never become larger than it was. The great light-blockingbuildings of Manhattan could never be built where at any moment aslight shift in the fault that ran miles below the surface could laythe whole city in ruins, the way it had once before. Thatearthquake, the one that happened in l906, the one that seemed todestroy everything, had saved it from a more permanent form ofdestruction.

Other cities kept growing, outward, upward, each new monotonousglass building crushing out everything that was individual andunique in a relentless march toward an amorphous gray efficiency.San Francisco, no matter how long you had been away, no matter howmuch you might have changed, was still the place you had alwaysdreamed about, still the place that was just the way it had been thelast time you were here, even if you had never been here before inyour life. But the city, at least the part you saw with your eyes,had begun to change. With the same unstoppable ingenuity that threwbridges over miles of open, treacherous water, skyscrapers werebrought to the city, built on enormous steel coils to absorb theshocks that would otherwise bring them down. When the next bigearthquake hit, the skyscrapers swayed from side to side, but thebuildings that were destroyed were the old ones built of wood andcement. Searching the skyline, down the hillside to the water'sedge, buried behind blocks of glass and steel, I caught a glimpse ofthe clock tower on the Ferry Building. It did not seem that long agothat it was the tallest building in town.

Bobby was there when I landed, an eager smile stretched across hismouth as he waited off to the side of the crowd. There was somethingabout the way he held himself, the way his shoulders hunchedslightly forward, the way he kept his feet spread apart, the way hisblue eyes were in constant movement, seeing everything around him,alert, ready for whatever came next, that made him seem like he wasalready in motion before he had taken a step. It was only when hewas in motion that he did not seem to be moving at all.

He insisted on carrying my bag. When we stepped outside the terminalinto the balmy California air, he raised his head, looked around fora moment, then waved his hand. I thought he was signaling for a cab;instead, a limousine, which had been waiting a half block away,pulled up to the curb.

I settled into the back seat, across from Bobby. He looked differentnow, older, with the first touch of gray in his hair and the firsttelltale lines at the corners of his eyes. The smile still flashed,quick and alert, but it was a little dimmer, like a light thatalmost imperceptibly had begun to fade.

"It was good of you to come," he remarked as he turned away from thedriver, to whom he had just given instructions. "I know it's animposition, and I appreciate it."

His voice was as clear as ever, but he spoke a little more slowlythan the way I had remembered.

"It's not an imposition at all," I told him. "Whether or not I takethe case, I'm glad you thought of me."

He shook his head emphatically, as if it were for some reasonimportant that I understand I was wrong about that.

"No, this wasn't my idea. Albert Craven asked me to call you. He'sdone a lot for me, and he never asks me for anything. That's theonly reason I did it: because I couldn't think of a decent way tosay no. But I made it clear to him that while I was willing to askyou to talk to him, I wouldn't ask you to take the case. It's up toyou whether you do it or not. And if you decide not to, that's allright. You don't owe Albert anything; and you don't me anything,either. Okay?"

Suddenly it was right there in front of us, gleaming in the goldenlight, sweeping down across the hills toward the bay. The City.

Bobby saw the look in my eye. "Ever think about living here?"

I shook my head. "I think I'd miss the rain," I said with a lyingsmile.

Leaving the freeway, the limousine began to crawl through the citystreets.

"You said something on the phone about repercussions. You said noneof the lawyers here were willing to take the case. And now you'vejust finished telling me in no uncertain terms that you're notasking me to take the case. What's the reason no one wants to beinvolved in this? Is it because Fullerton was a United Statessenator who wanted to be president, and, from what I hear, had apretty good chance of doing it?"

It was not the reaction I expected. Bobby laughed, and then hesighed.

"It doesn't have anything to do with Fullerton-not directly, anyway.You won't find many people-people who actually knew him-who are allthat upset that he's dead." We pulled up in front of a dark graystone facade in the heart of the financial district, where the firmof Craven, Morris and Hall had established their offices long beforeany of the new skyscrapers had been built. The firm had grown withthe city. Many of the small banks and businesses that had retainedits services in the beginning had become major financialinstitutions and international corporations. Fees, which had beenbarely large enough to cover the monthly overhead, had graduallybecome enormous, and the original three partners, nearly destitutewhen they first started, had become wealthier than they had everdared dream.



Continues...

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