Watching City Hall #288, (5-21-04)“You’re a liar who spreads foul garbage.”
(Fan letter from Judge wannabe, Peter Keane)
Well, duh!! Obviously, Peter is a new reader or he’d have realized that such observations are self-evident. I’m a political writer, counselor … 90% of what people tell me is lies and garbage. Mostly, I just repeat the shit. You gotta know what I mean. As a former defender of rapists and murderers, you must have heard and told a few real whoppers in your time, huh boy? I mean, you must have had the courtroom rolling in the floor with laughter when you stood before judges and laid out your most famous one-liner: “Your honor, my client pleads ‘Not Guilty’.” And, … while I’d have preferred we had met under better circumstances, it was nice to hear from the former Dean of the Golden Gate Law School. The quality and number of my bitter enemies is certainly on the rise. Unfortunately, the big old Peter of a guy was lying in his own pearly whites and I may know why.
“Keane’s way to old to get elected.”
That’s what I told Matt Gonzalez when he started getting all excited about Keane running for mayor last year. … I was right, too. That’s about all I could think of that might have pissed Keane off, so I went to Eileen Left to get the inside scoop on the guy. … The leggy blonde was sunbathing on Savannah Blackwell’s balcony, wearing only a pair of thong bikini panties. She was smoking a bowl of killer green bud I’d picked up in a deal with a teenager on what I’m starting to call the ‘Haight Street Mall’. I grabbed a double bourbon on the rocks and went out to talk to her.
h.: (I motioned to her as I sat, moving her bib overalls from the lawn chair across from her – what a view!) “So, did you lie to me? Is this Keane guy right? Did Sing let a killer go or didn’t she?”
Eileen: (Takes a sip from her champagne in the fluted glass and takes another hit from the pipe) “Save your retractions for people who deserve them. She let at least a couple of them go. You hit a raw nerve. There’s lots more in there that they’re hiding.”
h.: “Tell me about her part in the Tempongko case.”
Eileen: “She failed to execute her office with due diligence and as a result, a young girl was brutally murdered.”
h.: “Expand on that.” (I was considering taking notes, but decided to have some more weed and bourbon and trust my memory.)
Eileen: “Ask Ilechuk. She wrote about the case. … Tompongko’s ex-boyfriend had been in Domestic Court a bunch of times for beating the hell out of her and threatening to kill her. He’d violated restraining orders and even done almost a year in jail for pounding on her.”
h.: “Did Sing hear any of the cases?”
Eileen: “She heard the last one.” (takes another long pull on the pipe and a sip of the champagne she’d brought … for a 6’ blonde, she often looks like a little girl … she’d come pedaling up on her new bike, barefoot and wearing only a helmet, the well-worn bib overalls & her standard black thong) “The punk shows up in her court for peeking in windows and she doesn’t review his record. Lets him off and he goes and kills Claire Tempongko. The City paid a half million dollars to Tempongko’s family for their negligence.”
h.: “Sing’s negligence?”
Eileen: “Well, (cocks her head and smiles slightly) … well, you really couldn’t say. … Once the girl was murdered, all the records disappeared. The cops and probation people and the D.A. … no one could figure out what happened to those pesky records.”
h.: “You’re insinuating some pretty serious stuff here. … You’re saying that judges and cops and probation officers and lawyers would lie to protect their own asses?”
Eileen: (Looks down her nose and across the top rim of her gold-rimmed, green-tinted granny sunglasses.) “I think you’re getting what Jens calls ‘Oldtimers’ disease’.”
h.: “You said there was at least one other case?”
Eileen: (lifts the bottle of Lafitte from the ice bucket and refills her glass) “The case numbers and names are on my computer at Patrick Cassidy’s, but basically, she failed to exercise due diligence in yet another case and allowed a convicted killer to be set free.”
h.: “How the hell did she do that?”
Eileen: (sips the champagne and leans down to Savannah’s cat, Madeline, whom I’m cat sitting for a couple of days and who has instantly taken to Eileen) “She forgot to poll the jury! … Do you believe that shit? … Law 101, taught by Peter Keane covers that. When the jury finally got polled, it turned out half of them wanted to fry the guy and the other half wanted him locked in a dark hole somewhere. She screwed up and he was freed.”
h.: “How!?”
Eileen: “Double-jeoprady. You can’t try someone twice for the same crime.”
h.: “Shit!” (looks down and shakes head, lights proffered pipe and takes another hit of bourbon) “What else you got on them?”
Eileen: (shrugs and sips) “What the hell else you need? Keane defends em, she frees em. If you can’t spin that, you don’t deserve your reputation as a total scumbag journalist.”
h.: “Give me something else.”
Eileen: “Hmmmm. How about some anecdotal stuff?”
h.: “Sure, babe … knowledge is power.”
Eileen: “Well, Gonzalez talked Keane into running for mayor and the word around was that Keane tried to trade his candidacy for a judgeship.”
h.: “Can you prove that!?”
Eileen: (looks at him a bit askance) “I’m an imaginary person, dildo. I don’t have to prove anything to anyone.”
h.: (scratches head) “Yeah, I sometimes forget. … Tell me more, though.”
Eileen: “Well, Keane bails out on Matt without telling him. Gives his decision to that lawyer newspaper (The Recorder) instead. I think he made a deal and was ashamed to face Matt.”
h.: “What deal?”
Eileen: “Before he dropped, he was seen dining with Gray Davis’ judicial appointments secretary. Most people who saw, figured he was going to be appointed to the bench after the election. … Then, along came Arnold.”
h.: (chuckles) “If that’s true, it’s funny. … Shit, it’s funny even if it isn’t true. Tell me more.”
Eileen: (continues to pet cat) “Just gossip. … Family stuff.”
h.: “Let’s keep family out of this. … Unless it’s related.”
Eileen: (twists head to and fro as she thinks) … “Well, maybe.”
h.: “What you got? I’ll decide whether to print it.”
Eileen: “Well, there’s the connection of the two secretaries.”
h.: “Enlighten me.”
Eileen: “Well, secretary one worked for a D.A. named Freitas. He lost his job for losing the Dan White case. Another example of letting a killer get away with a slap on the wrist for a double murder. … Apparently the secretary got a bad taste from all of the negative publicity and hate mail and violence that followed the decision.”
h.: “Who was she?”
Eileen: “Peter Keane’s wife.”
h.: “Wow.”
Eileen: “Secretary two worked for Jeff Adachi and refused to back him up when he said that Geoffry Brown had endorsed him verbally. She left him out there twisting in the wind, as Erlichman used to say.”
h.: “How does this relate to Lillian Sing?”
Eileen: “The secretary was Sing’s sister.”
h.: (shakes head in wonder) “Damn, girl!” (thinks and slowly nods) “I’ll print it all.” (turns head toward lithe beauty) “Do you think Sing can beat McGoldrick with this kind of baggage?”
Eileen: (refills her glass – icy drops of water trickle from the bottle and drip upon her ample bosom which responds to the chill with goosebumps and rigid nipples – she leans to smile at Madeline who is purring at her side) … “This cat could beat McGoldrick.”
Cheers:
