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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...