1
THE “HORNY TEENAGER DEFENSE”

The Honorable Robert J. Stumpf, Jr. arched a bushy gray eyebrow over the top of his aviator-style glasses, flashed a charismatic smile, and spoke to me in a commanding baritone leaving no doubt that he was in charge of his stuffy courtroom on the second floor of San Francisco’s crumbling Hall of Justice. “What a pleasant surprise, Mr. Daley. I didn’t expect to see the co-head of the Felony Division of the Public Defender’s Office at an arraignment this morning.”

I returned his smile. “I didn’t expect to see the Presiding Judge of the San Francisco Superior Court, Your Honor.”

“One of my colleagues is ill today,” he said.

“One of mine is, too.”

“I guess we’re even.”

It was ten a.m. on Monday, February twenty-fourth, 2020. I had first appeared before Bob Stumpf in this very courtroom when I was a rookie Deputy Public Defender after he had just been promoted to Presiding Judge. Almost thirty years later, the Hall of Justice had been condemned because of earthquake safety issues, asbestos-laden walls, faulty plumbing, and an overwhelmed electrical system. The courts and the D.A.’s Office were still open, but the Public Defender’s Office, the Southern Police Station, the Medical Examiner’s Office, and most of the administrative staff had moved to more hospitable quarters elsewhere in town. The old jail on the sixth and seventh floors had been mothballed and replaced by a newer building next door, and the cafeteria in the basement had long-since closed.

Judge Stumpf remained one of the few constants at the Hall. At seventy-five, the lanky native of Southern Indiana and one-time backup center on the USF basketball team was appointed to the bench by Jerry Brown during his first stint as governor, and he showed no signs of slowing down. His gregarious manner and incisive wit made an appearance in his courtroom more pleasant than an audience before some of his more taciturn colleagues, but he became impatient if you weren’t prepared.

He looked at the prosecution table. “I didn’t expect to see you either, Mr. Erickson.”

“We had a scheduling conflict. I am also pinch-hitting for one of my colleagues.”

“It’s always good to see you, too.”

“Thank you, Your Honor.

Andy Erickson had just turned forty, and he was also overqualified for this morning’s proceedings. The Chief Assistant to the D.A. was a St. Ignatius High School alum (also my alma mater) and a University of San Francisco and USF Law graduate. Over the last fifteen years, the deft political operator had patiently climbed the ladder to his current slot one step from the D.A.’s spacious office. If anyone asked, Andy always insisted that he had no plans to run for his boss’s job, which meant that he was, in fact, planning to do so. I didn’t always get what I wanted from him, but he was fundamentally honest, and he didn’t play games in court the way that he did in the D.A.’s Office.

Judge Stumpf inhaled the eighty-five-degree air and glanced at the gallery, which was filled with A.D.A.s, Deputy P.D.s, and a smattering of private defense lawyers who were trying to maintain a little space between themselves because of a recent uptick in cases of a novel Coronavirus that had found its way to the U.S. from a place called Wuhan Province. He turned to his long-time bailiff. “Please call our next case.”

“The People versus Brian Chan. Arraignment. The defendant is present.”

My client was standing next to me at the defense table, eyes down, manner sullen. In his ill-fitting orange jumpsuit, the baby-faced eighteen-year-old native of the Sunset District looked like a middle schooler. His mother, Gladys, sat behind me in the gallery. She and Brian and Brian’s younger sister lived in a cramped apartment at Forty-seventh and Irving, two blocks from the ocean. Gladys made ends meet by cleaning houses—including the one at Twenty-third and Kirkham where I had grown up and where my mom had lived until she passed away almost two decades earlier. I had known Gladys for years.

I whispered into Brian’s ear. “Remember what we talked about. I want you to be respectful and look the judge in the eye. When he asks you for your plea, I need you to say, ‘Not guilty’ in a clear and polite voice.”

He responded with a nod as his eyes remained locked on the floor.

I turned around and gave Gladys a reassuring wave. Her eyes were filled with the unmistakable look of fear.

Judge Stumpf pointed at Brian. “You understand why we’re here, Mr. Chan?”

He spoke a little too loudly. “Yes, Your Honor.”

The judge turned to Erickson. “Charge?”

“Misdemeanor indecent exposure under California Penal Code Section 314.”

“How do you wish to plead, Mr. Chan?”

Brian cleared his throat. “Not guilty, Your Honor.”

“Thank you.” The judge typed a few strokes on his computer, then he turned to me. “I presume that you would like to schedule a preliminary hearing?”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

The next step would be a perfunctory proceeding where the prosecution would be required to present just enough evidence to convince the judge that there was a reasonable chance that Brian had committed a crime.

“Your Honor,” I said, “this is my client’s first offense. Before we get to scheduling, I was hoping that we could discuss a couple of issues.”

Erickson spoke up before the judge could reply. “Your Honor, if Mr. Daley wishes to talk about pre-trial release, I think we can work something out as long as the defendant is willing to stay with his mother and wear an electronic monitoring device.”

“That’s acceptable to us,” I said, “but I wanted to talk about a few other items.”

The judge’s curiosity was piqued. “I’m listening.”

Here goes. “Your Honor, the facts do not support the charge against my client.”

“Facts are facts, Mr. Daley.”

“Yes, they are.” Well, sometimes. “In the circumstances, however, the facts simply do not support charges under Section 314.”

The judge gave Erickson a quizzical look. “Perhaps you could enlighten us?”

“Of course, Your Honor.”

Erickson rifled through a stack of papers on the table in front of him and speed-read some handwritten notes. If my guess was correct, he had volunteered to cover this arraignment at the last minute, and he knew almost nothing about the case.

He looked up at the judge. “Your Honor, the defendant exposed himself on the 45.”

“The 45?”

“The 45 Union Stockton.”

Judge Stumpf’s blank expression suggested that Erickson was speaking a foreign language. It also delineated the fundamental difference between judges and public defenders and, by extension, the unwashed masses that we typically represent. Everybody in court other than the judge knew that Erickson was referring to the 45 Union Stockton MUNI line, the heavily trafficked bus route between Chinatown, Union Square, and the Cal Train Station down by the ballpark.

Erickson continued in a deferential voice. “It’s a MUNI bus, Your Honor.”

“I see.”

“The defendant boarded at Union and Stockton at approximately eleven-ten last night. At the end of the line, the driver and two other passengers noticed that the defendant was, uh, gratifying himself.”

Very deftly described, Andy.

The corner of Judge Stumpf’s mouth turned up almost imperceptibly, but he didn’t reply.

Erickson pointed at Brian. “The defendant became belligerent. The driver summoned her supervisor and a nearby police officer who placed the defendant under arrest.”

The judge’s voice filled with resignation. “And here we are.”

“And here we are,” Erickson repeated.

And here we are.

Judge Stumpf turned to me. “Does your client dispute any of these facts?”

Not really. “With respect, I would like to add a little context, Your Honor.”

“You have thirty seconds.”

“Brian just turned eighteen. His mother is a single parent who cleans houses in the Sunset to support Brian and his younger sister. Brian is taking classes at City College while working two jobs to help his mother make ends meet. This is the first time that he’s ever been arrested. In fact, it’s the first time he’s gotten into trouble.”

“What does he do, Mr. Daley?”

“He’s a handyman.”

The judge’s eyes twinkled. “In more ways than one, it seems.”

So, it seems. I gave the judge a conspiratorial nod to acknowledge his little double entendre. “Brian was heading home from an eight-hour shift at his second job in Chinatown after he had completed an eight-hour shift at the Botanical Garden at Golden Gate Park.”

“Commendable industriousness. He must have been very tired.”

“He was. He got on the 45 and was going to transfer to the N-Judah streetcar at Market Street, but he fell asleep and missed his stop.”

Judge Stumpf rested his chin in his palm. “This is all very interesting, Mr. Daley, but I fail to see how it changes anything regarding your client’s case.”

“I was just getting to that.” I picked up a volume of the California Statutes, flipped to a page that I had marked with a Post-It, cleared my throat, and read aloud. “Section 314 of the Penal Code says that it is illegal for anyone to ‘willfully and lewdly expose his person or the private parts thereof, in any public place, or in any place where there are present other persons to be offended or annoyed thereby.’”

Judge Stumpf held up a hand. “A MUNI bus is a public place, Mr. Daley. And other people were present. It’s hardly a stretch to think that they were offended or annoyed.”

“Agreed, but my client did not expose his person or his private parts.”

The judge turned his gaze to Erickson. “Is this true?”

Erickson frantically scanned his notes. “It seems that the defendant was, uh, fingering the area around his, uh, genitals.”

“In other words, he was grabbing his crotch?”

“Yes.”

“His pants were still on?”

I answered for him. “Yes, Your Honor.”

Erickson tried again. “It was still lewd behavior.”

I shook my head. “I think we can all agree that Brian’s behavior was inappropriate, but under the exact language of the statute, it wasn’t illegal because he didn’t expose himself.”

The judge gave Erickson a wry smile. “I find Mr. Daley’s statutory interpretation pretty convincing.”

So do I. “Your Honor, I would also note that Section 314 specifically states that the accused must have acted willfully, which requires conscious intent.”

Judge Stumpf’s bemused grin turned into a full-blown smile. “You’re arguing that he grabbed his crotch by accident?”

Yup. “I’m saying that he did so without conscious intent.”

“How do you figure?”

“He was asleep when the bus got to the end of the line.” I looked over at Brian, then I turned back to the judge. “When the driver woke him up, she noticed that Brian was, uh, holding his private parts. He couldn’t have been doing so intentionally because he was asleep. Since he didn’t act with conscious intent, he didn’t act ‘willfully,’ as the statute requires. As a result, there is no basis to charge him under Section 314, and the charges should be dropped.”

“That’s a novel argument, Mr. Daley.”

Yes, it is. “It’s a straightforward reading of the actual words of the statute, Your Honor.”

“I’m not sure that I’m buying what you’re selling, Mr. Daley.”

Neither am I. “Your Honor, I have a teenage son. I recall that you have three grown sons, all of whom are lawyers, and several teenage grandsons. We did some things when we were their age that were careless, foolish, or even flat-out stupid. It was usually without malicious intent, and, given a chance, we wouldn’t have done it. This is one of those cases.”

“You’re saying that I should dismiss the charges because this was little more than a teenage indiscretion?”

Exactly. “Yes, Your Honor. Nobody was hurt.”

The experienced jurist took a moment to gather his thoughts before he spoke to Brian. “Are you sorry about what happened, Mr. Chan?”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

“Are you willing to apologize to the bus driver?”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

He looked over at Erickson. “You and Mr. Daley might be able to work something out, right, Mr. Erickson?”

“Possibly.” He looked over at me. “Did you have something in mind, Mr. Daley?”

“Yes, Mr. Erickson. Brian will deliver a written apology to the bus driver and do ten hours of community service at the Lady Shaw Senior Housing Center in Chinatown. Upon completion of those tasks and assuming there are no additional, uh, indiscretions, you will drop the charges and issue a finding that Brian is innocent.”

“He’ll agree not to ride MUNI for a month?”

“Fine.”

The judge held up his hands in triumph. “Gentlemen, I think we have a resolution.” He turned to his bailiff. “Please call our next case.

My shirt was sticking to my back as I walked down the sauna-like corridor of the P.D.’s Office at eleven-fifteen the same morning. The fluorescent lights flickered as I unbuttoned my overcoat and approached the back of the shaved head of my secretary, executive assistant, process server, occasional bodyguard, and friend, Terrence “The Terminator” Love, who was sitting in his cubicle outside my office.

“Morning, T,” I said.

He spun around to look at me and responded in a high-pitched voice. “Morning, Mike.”

Now approaching sixty, Terrence was a former heavyweight boxer whose career ended after a handful of fights because he was too good-hearted to hit anybody too hard. At six-six and a muscular three hundred pounds, the recovering alcoholic was my very first client when I was a baby P.D., and he became a reliable customer. A decade ago, I hired him as the receptionist at the two-person law firm that my ex-wife and I were running at the time. It was part of a probation agreement that I had brokered with one of Judge Stumpf’s more understanding colleagues. To his credit, Terrence hadn’t touched a drop of booze ever since. He became indispensable to our practice, and we brought him with us to the P.D.’s Office when we moved back here.

“Can we turn the heat down a little?” I asked.

“Afraid not, Mike.” He smiled broadly, exposing his signature gold front tooth that he received from the on-site dentist during one of his stays in jail. “We tried adjusting the thermostat. Leo did his usual dance with the furnace. Nothing.”

“Can he turn it off?”

“With a sledgehammer.”

Probably not an ideal solution. “Did you call City Hall?”

“Yes. They’re going to send somebody over next week. It’s the best that we can do unless you can find us some extra money in the budget to replace it.”

“Unlikely, T.”

“I figured, Mike.”

Twenty years ago, the P.D.’s Office had moved into a repurposed auto repair shop on Seventh Street, a half block south of the Hall of Justice. At the time, it was a substantial upgrade from our ratty old digs where the heater worked sporadically, the asbestos-laden walls were covered in lead-based paint, and the plumbing worked when it was in the mood. Two decades of deferred maintenance later, our no-longer-state-of-the-art facility needed a tune-up.

“How did it go in court?” he asked.

“I got Brian off with community service and a promise not to take MUNI for a month.”

“Not bad. How is he going to get to work?”

“The P.D.’s Office bought him an Uber gift card.” I winked. “I charged it to ‘office supplies.’”

He smiled. “Judge Stumpf actually bought the ‘horny teenager defense,’ eh? That’s one of your more imaginative efforts, Mike.”

“Thanks, T. It’s nice to know that the magic tricks are still working.” I pointed at the closed door behind him. “Is the boss here?”

“She’s in her office.”

Rosita Carmela Fernandez had just won re-election for her second term as the Public Defender of the City and County of San Francisco. In addition to being my former law partner, and current boss, she happened to be my ex-wife and the mother of our two children.

“Is she by herself?” I asked.

“She’s on a conference call with the Mayor’s Office and some department heads about the Coronavirus thing.”

“They’re saying it’s no worse than the flu.”

“Evidently, it could be worse.”

“You okay?” I asked.

“I’ve had a little sniffle for a few days, but otherwise fine. You?”

“I’m okay. Anybody else looking for me?”

“Nady.”

Nadezhda “Nady” Nikonova was one of our best young attorneys.

“Did she mention what it’s about?” I asked.

His expression turned serious. “No, but I think it’s important. She seemed upset.”

I pointed at my office. “Could you please ask her to come see me?”

“You okay?” I asked.

“I’m fine.” Nady sat in the chair opposite my desk, her intense blue eyes locked onto mine. “Max and I need to go down to L.A. right away. I think my mom has the virus.”

Oh crap.

Nady was a brilliant, creative, and driven woman of thirty-five. When she was a kid, she had accompanied her single mother to the U.S. from Uzbekistan. They found their way to cousins in L.A., where Nady picked up English on the fly, became an excellent student, and graduated at the top her class at UCLA and, later, Berkeley Law, also my alma mater. She began her career working for a downtown megafirm where she spent countless hours poring over endless documents for mind-numbing real estate deals. I had liberated her three years earlier, and she quickly found representing criminals more to her liking. Her husband, Max, was a partner in the antitrust group of the megafirm of Story, Short & Thompson in Embarcadero Center.

“How bad is your mom?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I talked to her a few minutes ago. She didn’t sound good. My cousin is driving her to the emergency room.”

I pointed at the door. “Go now. You can pick up Max on the way.”

She tugged at her shoulder-length blonde hair. “I have a bunch of active cases.”

“That’s why we have cell phones. Call me from the road. I’ll deal with everything. Do you have somebody to look after Luna?”

“We’ll bring her with us.”

“Good.”

Luna was a fourteen-year-old Keeshond mix who spent most days sleeping under Nady’s desk since I had declared the P.D.’s Office a pet-friendly workplace, much to the chagrin of my bureaucratic masters at City Hall.

“You sure that you have time?” she asked.

“I’ll make time. I’ll get continuances on everything.”

“Lenny Garcia’s murder trial starts a week from today.”

Garcia was a homeless army vet who lived in the sprawling tent encampment at U.N. Plaza near City Hall. He was accused of giving OxyContin pills to a young runaway named Annie Parker, who lived on the plaza. The pills were laced with fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that’s fifty times more potent than morphine. For the last decade, the cheap and deadly drug has become widely available in San Francisco and other big cities. In certain instances—especially among those with little experience with the drug—an overdose can be fatal.

“I’ll get a continuance,” I said.

“Judge Powell won’t allow it. He’s already extended us twice.”

Gordon Powell was a smart but cantankerous jurist from a prominent Gold Rush family. He lived in an Earthquake-era mansion down the street from the Gettys on Broadway’s Gold Coast.

“There are extenuating circumstances,” I said.

“Lenny has been in jail for over a year. We won’t be able to get another trial date for at least nine months.”

“I’ll figure something out.” At least I’ll try.

“There’s something else, Mike. Lenny is being held down in County Jail #5.”

It was the warehouse-like facility in the hills of San Bruno about halfway between SFO and the ocean.

She added, “They aren’t taking precautions for the Coronavirus. A couple of people have already been infected and one died. Lenny is scared to death that he’s going to catch it.”

“How complicated is the trial?”

“Not very. Jury selection will take longer than the presentation of the evidence. There will be just a few witnesses.”

“What’s the narrative?”

“Lenny didn’t give the decedent the tainted pills.”

“Why do they think he did?”

“He gave her some of his real Oxy pills that he got from the V.A. to help her with pain. His name was on the pill bottle. So were his prints.”

“If he didn’t give her the tainted pills, who did?”

“I don’t know. Lenny claims that she must have gotten them from somebody else and put them in the bottle that he had given her. There were a half dozen fentanyl-laced pills in the bottle when the police found it.”

Not good. “Any other prints?”

“The decedent’s. And a couple of unidentified prints.”

“DNA?”

“Nothing identifiable except for Lenny and the decedent.”

“Any evidence that somebody else provided the pills?”

“We have some possibilities.” She frowned. “No slam-dunk winners, however.”

There never are. “Anything else?”

“The decedent had a heart condition. Our expert will testify that she could have died of a heart attack unrelated to the fentanyl. He’s already prepped.”

“Good. You can get me up to speed while you’re driving to L.A.”

“I will.” She stood up, headed toward the door, and stopped abruptly. “Mike?”

“Yes?”

“Thanks.”

2
“ASK FOR A CONTINUANCE”

The Public Defender of the City and County of San Francisco knocked on the open door to my office. “I heard you got Brian Chan off.”

“He has to write a sorry letter, do community service, and stay off MUNI for a few weeks.”

“Well done.” Rosita Carmela Fernandez flashed the perfect smile that I still found irresistible more than a quarter of a century after we’d met in the file room of the old P.D.’s Office and twenty-three years after we’d gotten divorced. “Judge Stumpf bought your ‘boys will be boys’ argument?”

“Judges will be judges, Rosie.”

Her grin broadened as she tugged at the sleeve of her Dior blouse—an upgrade from the days when she wore jeans and denim work shirts to the office. “It’s one of the more creative legal theories that you’ve cooked up over the years.”

“Justice was served.”

At fifty-four, Rosie’s jet-black hair no longer fell to her waist. Nowadays, it was cut into a stylish bob and flecked with a few strands of gray. Her smoky voice was a little raspier than it was when we were young P.D.’s. A regimen of Pilates, spin classes, and aerobics kept her fit.

“I’ll have Terrence issue a press release to announce your great victory,” she deadpanned.

“That won’t be necessary.”

At seven-forty-five on Monday night, the P.D.’s Office was buzzing as our colleagues were catching up on matters that they didn’t have time to address during the day. The heater was still going full blast, so my workmanlike office was sweltering. I was tempted to toss my stapler through my dirt-encrusted window to improve the ventilation, but that wouldn’t have been especially enlightened solution.

“You’re here late,” I observed.

“I’ve been on conference calls all day. The Mayor’s Office asked the department heads to make contingency plans for everybody to work from home for the next few weeks.”

“This Coronavirus thing is more serious than I thought.”

Her smile disappeared. “Yes, it is.”

Rosie and I had met at the old P.D.’s Office when I was a rookie P.D., and she had just been promoted to the Felony Division. I had decided to go to law school after a difficult three-year tenure as a priest—much to the chagrin of my dad, a San Francisco cop. Rosie had just spun out of a brief and unsatisfying marriage to a law school classmate who drank too much and cheated on her. Our daughter, Grace, was born a year later. The demands of a baby and our jobs collided, and we called things off when Grace was two. Nowadays, Grace was a USC film school alum and a production assistant at Pixar. Our son, Tommy (named after my dad), was a freshman at Cal, my undergrad and law school alma mater. He came along a few years after Rosie and I split up. Old habits.

After the divorce, I spent five years working at a big firm at the top of the Bank of America Building to pay the bills, alimony, and child support. Rosie started her own criminal defense practice and took me in after I got fired for not bringing in enough clients. We’d been working together ever since—first at our two-person firm on Mission Street, and, more recently, back here at the P.D.’s Office. We were co-heads of the Felony Division for a few years before Rosie ran for her first term as P.D.

She took a seat in the creaky wooden chair opposite my metal desk across the room from my IKEA bookcases and second-hand worktable. The only item of Twenty-first Century vintage was the laptop on my credenza desk next to Grace’s graduation photo from USC and Tommy’s graduation photo from Redwood High School in Larkspur.

“Kids okay?” I asked.

“Fine.” She reported that Grace was finishing production on a new film, and Tommy was trying to decide whether he wanted to spend fall semester in Prague. “It’s good being our kids.”

“It is. And your mom?”

“Also fine, but she’s worried about the virus, so she’s being extra careful.”

We were firmly in the sandwich years where every conversation began with a check-in on our kids and our aging relatives. Rosie’s eighty-five-old mother, Sylvia, still lived in the two-bedroom bungalow in the Mission around the corner from the apartments where my mom and dad had grown up. My parents, two brothers, baby sister, and I squeezed into a two-bedroom apartment on Garfield Square Park before we moved to a three-bedroom house in the foggy Sunset.

“Is she staying home?” I asked.

“Yes. She’s ordering food online. My brother is bringing her fresh fruit and vegetables.”

Rosie’s older brother, Tony, ran a produce market on Twenty-fourth Street, a couple of blocks from Sylvia’s house and down the block from St. Peter’s Catholic Church.

“Do you really think that’s necessary?” I asked.

“It’s better to be careful, Mike. According to the Mayor’s Office, it’s likely to get worse before it gets better. At the very least, they’re going to recommend that people wear masks.”

I took a moment to process her answer. “Are you okay?”

“Fine, but worried. I don’t want you or Mama or the kids to get sick. And I’d feel terrible if somebody from the office catches the virus. How are you feeling?”

“Fine.”

She pointed at her heart. “Your ticker good?”

“Like new.”

A year earlier, my doctor discovered that I had developed an extra heartbeat called a ventricular bigeminy. It’s fairly common even among people like me who aren’t overweight, have low cholesterol, exercise pretty regularly, and don’t smoke. My cardiologist did a high-tech procedure called an ablation where she sent a little probe into my heart, did a detailed map, and zapped the spot causing the extra beat. I was in and out of the hospital the same day, and I didn’t feel a thing. Thankfully, the procedure was successful, and my heart was back to a normal.

Rosie gave me a skeptical look. “Dr. Dey told you not to overdo it.”

“I’m fine, Rosie. It was just a routine little procedure.”

“It wasn’t open-heart surgery, but there is no such thing as a ‘little’ heart procedure.” She invoked the “don’t even think about disagreeing with me” tone that I had learned to obey. “I want you to be careful, Mike.” Her voice softened. “Why are you here so late?”

“Nady had to go down to L.A. Her mother is in the hospital. Nady thinks she may have the virus.”

Rosie frowned. “Thanks for jumping in on short notice.”

“It’s what we do.”

“Anything big?”

“Lenny Garcia’s murder trial starts Monday.”

“Ask for a continuance.”

“I was on the phone with Nady for the past three hours. She had everything ready to go. It’s going to be a short trial. Just a couple of days and a few witnesses.”

“Ask for a continuance,” she repeated. “Going to trial is not in our client’s best interests.”

“He’s been in jail for over a year. If we ask for a continuance, he won’t get his day in court for at least nine months, maybe longer. He’s down in San Bruno. They’re already seeing virus cases. One inmate died.”

“It’s better than going to trial with an attorney who hasn’t had adequate time to prepare.”

“The longer he’s in jail, the better the chance that he won’t make it out alive.”

“Who’s the judge?”

“Gordon Powell.”

Her voice filled with sarcasm. “Wonderful.”

“He isn’t bad Rosie.”

“He isn’t great, Mike. Ask him for a continuance.”

“I will, but he may not grant it. We’ve already been extended twice.”

“He can be reasonable, and you can be very persuasive.”

I folded my arms. “It’s the ultimate case of double jeopardy, Rosie. There’s the trial and the virus.”

“We can’t help that, Mike.”

“Yes, we can. I’ll take it to trial.”

“Who’s the investigator?”

I lowered my voice. “It was Tom Eisenmann.”

She scowled. Eisenmann was one of our best investigators. Unfortunately, he had passed away six months earlier from pancreatic cancer.

“I can’t spare anybody,” she said. She lowered her voice. “I don’t want you looking for witnesses in the Tenderloin until we get a handle on this virus.”

“I’ll get Pete to help.”

My younger brother, Pete, was a former cop who was now a private investigator..

She shook her head. “I don’t want him to get sick, either.”

“I won’t make him do anything he doesn’t want to do. We’ll be extra careful.”

“You and your brother always say that. Then you play cops-and-robbers in the worst neighborhoods. I want you to ask for a continuance.”

“I will, but if Judge Powell won’t agree to it, I’m going to have to take this to trial.”

“Understood. Have you talked to our client?”

“I’m going to see him in the morning.”

“I want you to try to talk him into asking for a continuance.”

“I will.”

Her expression softened. “You want a ride home?”

“I’ll take an Uber later. I want to look at Nady’s files before I meet with our client.”