TWENTY-THREE
As Harry and I enter the courtroom this afternoon, Templeton is in his special chair that he uses only in court, perched up high at the prosecution-counsel table. He doesn’t need the chair for mobility, but for height. Huddled around him are four other people, one of the homicide detectives, a woman, and two gentlemen with their backs to us. They’re all wearing blue power suits, the men in pinstripes. There is a heavy satchel briefcase on the floor next to one of them. Unless they are carrying this for exercise, it appears to be locked and loaded, ready for action.
“The Dwarf’s brought the entire office,” says Harry. “I thought he said he wasn’t going to oppose this.”
The seats on this side of the railing, for the public, are empty except for two journalists. Arguments over a motion on evidence, even in a notorious murder case, never draw much of an audience. They know the defendant won’t be here. Katia’s presence is not required. I told her I would call her at the jail the moment we’re finished.
Communication with Katia is becoming a problem, especially since eruption of telephone-gate at the county jails. A few weeks ago the sheriff’s department was caught recording lawyer-client conversations on the jailhouse telephone system. Copies of these found their way to the DA’s office on discs. Ordinarily this would be a felony under state law, but to do this you have to prove intent. The sheriff claims the lawyer-client stuff was mixed in with other telephone conversations that the department was allowed to record, a glitch in the computer-operated recording system. Except for lawyer-client communications, jail inmates have no right of privacy. Bugging cells and “accidentally” installing snitches to sleep in the bunk above a target inmate has always been part of the game.
Regardless of what law enforcement does to gloss over this, communicating with Katia is now a problem. Unless Harry or I hop in the car and drive twenty miles, all the way out to Santee, there is no safe method for talking to her.
Harry and I approach, up the center aisle toward the swinging gate at the bar in front of the judge’s bench. The woman at the table turns and suddenly I recognize her. She is Kim Howard, the United States attorney for the Southern District of California.
Harry and I become walking ventriloquists, put on our best smiles and try to suck it up.
“What is she doing here?” whispers Harry.
“I don’t know.”
Apparently one of the reporters is wondering the same thing. Now that she has turned toward him, he’s leaning over the railing trying to engage her in conversation.
She smiles politely and waves him off by shaking her head. If I’m reading her lips correctly, she can’t discuss it right now.
“Maybe it’s the visa,” says Harry.
For weeks now, Harry has been bounced back and forth like a Ping-Pong ball between the State Department and their Consular Services office, trying to get information on Katia’s visa, on how Pike managed to get her into the country so quickly.
With the hushed announcement by Howard that we’ve arrived, the papers spread out on the counsel table in front of them vanish into a manila folder and from there into the single briefcase on the floor. By the time we get inside the bar railing, everything is clean and we are confronted with only smiling faces.
Templeton looks like the bird that swallowed the cat. “I think the judge wants to do this in chambers today.” Having sprung an entire army on us, he does amazingly quick introductions. “I think you know Kim Howard.”
“I do.” We shake hands.
She gives me a smile, then quickly frisks me up and down with her eyes, the kind of appraisal you might expect if you were dead but had somehow misplaced your grave. Templeton has been talking.
He does the honors with the two men. The younger one is the bellboy, a deputy U.S. attorney from Howard’s office in San Diego, brought along to carry the bag.
The older one is gray haired and sober, with heavy-lidded eyes over thin lips, one corner of which turns up the slightest millimeter as he shakes my hand. Templeton introduces him as James Rhytag, deputy assistant attorney general. Howard should take lessons from him. You can’t tell what he’s thinking. Everybody’s dead to him.
“Deputy assistant AG, that’s pretty high up,” I say. “Then I take it you’re not from these parts?”
“ Washington.” The lips barely move as he says it.
“What division?”
“We can talk inside.” He means the judge’s chambers. He gestures with his head toward the two reporters who are now leaning over the railing trying to collect business cards, like trained seals slapping for fish.
It seems no one is carrying cards today, so the reporters open their notepads and shoot for full names and correct spellings. They keep pointing to Rhytag, asking for his title, and what he’s doing here. With all the federal firepower, they know they’ve stumbled into something. The only two people in the room who seem to be less informed are Harry and me.
Templeton climbs down off the wheelchair, gets behind it, and starts pushing. He leads the assemblage past the bench, toward the hallway that leads to the judge’s chambers.
Harry and I fall back to the rear. He leans over and says into my ear, “Why don’t you excuse yourself to the men’s room. Let me go in with the judge and find out what this is about.” Harry is worried.
“If Templeton wanted to arrest me, he wouldn’t need the federal government to do it. Besides, we have the luck of the draw.” I nod toward the plaque on the wall outside the door, the one that says HON. PLATO QUINN.
Once through the door and into the judge’s chambers, Templeton pushes his wheelchair right up to the front lip of Quinn’s desk, climbs aboard, and then invites the U.S. attorney and Rhytag to take the two client chairs on either side of him. This leaves Harry and me to share the couch against the back wall with the federal baggage boy.
Templeton tries to chat him up, but Quinn sits there, imperiously waiting until everybody is inside and seated and the door is closed. The judge is tall and angular. He sits bolt upright in his chair behind the desk, sharp-angled beak nose, narrow face, and bald head. Quinn has always reminded me of the eagle on the great seal.
Templeton edges in with the introductions. He starts with the U.S. attorney, but before he can get her name out, Quinn steps all over it. “Mr. Madriani, Mr. Hinds.” He looks at Harry and me seated on the end of his couch like orphan afterthoughts. “Good to see you both again. I hope everything’s going well.”
“Your Honor, what can I say? We’re back in your courtroom again, so it can’t be too bad.”
He laughs.
A trial judge has not been assigned to Katia’s case as of yet, but criminal pretrial and law-and-motion matters are dished up to only two judges in the courthouse. One of them is Plato Quinn. Harry and I have tried cases before him. Toy with him and Quinn can exhibit the abrasive qualities of a drill sergeant. Do a trial in front of him and survive the experience and a kind of affinity is formed that you see in combat. If, for some reason, the federal government is about to crawl up our back, there is nobody I’d rather hand the scratcher to than Quinn. He is not likely to be pushed around.
Templeton manages to get through the introductions before Quinn cuts him off again. “I guess I’m a little confused. And don’t misunderstand me, it’s not that I’m not happy to see you all, but why are all these people here?” He puts this to the Dwarf. “What I show in the file is a motion to produce under Brady filed by the defendant with no response or opposition, no points and authorities from the prosecutor’s office.”