Words Kill

By David Myles Robinson

Famed reporter Russell Blaze is dead. It appears to be an accident, but after Russ’s funeral, his son, Cody, finds a letter in which his father explains that the death may have been murder. It directs Cody to Russ’s unfinished memoir for clues as to what may have happened. The opening words are: On the night of October 16, 1968, I uttered a sentence that would haunt me for the rest of my life. The sentence was, “Someone should kill that motherfucker.”

As Cody delves into the memoir, a window opens into a tragic past and thrusts the still-burning embers of another time’s radical violence into the political reality of the present. History that once seemed far away becomes a deeply personal immersion for Cody into the storied heyday of the Haight: drugs, sex, war protesters, right-wing militias, ground-breaking journalism—and the mysterious Gloria, who wanders into his father’s pad one day to just “crash here for a while until things calm down.”

Cody discovers aspects of his father’s life he never knew, and slowly begins to understand the significance of those words his father spoke in 1968.

Words Kill is a story of loss, violence, and racism; love, hate, and discovery. It is a story of then . . . and now.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Terra Nova Books
• Release date: Jun 15, 2021
• ISBN: 9781948749794

David Myles Robinson

David Myles Robinson was born in Los Angeles and attended college in California and Hawaii, obtaining his J.D. in 1975 from the University of San Francisco School of Law, where he met his wife, Marcia Waldorf. After moving to Hawaii, he became a trial attorney, specializing in personal injury and workers’ compensation law, and Waldorf joined the Public Defender’s Office before being appointed as a judge. She retired from the bench in 2006, and Robinson retired from private practice in 2010. He completed his first novel, a precursor to Tropical Lies, about twenty years ago but says it was so s

Book preview

* One *

As Russell Blaze emerged from the public parking garage on Montgomery, the famous San Francisco fog enveloped him and sent a chill through his body. He pulled his brown houndstooth sport coat around his chest, crossed his arms, and stuck his hands in his armpits. Despite the biting, wet cold, Russ smiled to himself. It was his first time in the city since the great pandemic of 2020, and it was good to see people out on the streets again.

As he turned onto Columbus, the wind coming off the bay hit him. He lowered his head and strode forward. He didn’t have far to go. He was meeting his son, Cody, at the historic Tadich Grill, which Russ was pleased to see had survived the shutdowns. He looked up and saw the sign not far ahead. Then his attention was drawn to a striking woman who was walking toward him. Her stride seemed purposeful as her high heels clicked on the pavement. She looked to be around Russ’s age, 70-ish, and wore a gray wool pantsuit with a white blouse. Her gray hair was cut short. As they passed, Russ studied her face. Her green eyes darted his way for a brief moment, and Russ imagined some past familiarity. Was she someone he knew? Someone he should have acknowledged? She hadn’t seemed to recognize him.

Russ saw Cody standing at the entrance to the restaurant and put the woman out of his mind. Cody, in his early 30s, stood a little over six feet tall, about two inches taller than Russ. He had inherited his father’s rugged good looks but wore his hair short while Russ had spent his life sporting long hair, one of the enduring holdovers from his hippie days in the Haight-Ashbury. A moment later, father and son hugged before they entered the restaurant.

They were seated in a dark wood-paneled booth. Russ ordered a vodka martini. Cody ordered a Coke. He was on his lunch break and was due in federal court in a few hours.

Cody watched his father studying the menu and smiled. Why are you even looking at the menu? he asked. We both know you’re going to have the Cioppino and a glass of Pinot Grigio.

Russ looked up and grinned. Oh, we know that, do we? Mister smarty pants lawyer. The grin disappeared as fast as it had appeared as he looked back down at the menu. Cody said nothing but continued to watch his father stare at a menu he knew by heart. Russ had aged well, Cody thought, although his chiseled face was well-lined and his brown eyes, usually intense and piercing, would sometimes drift into a faraway look.

After a moment, Cody was struck by the thought that Russ wasn’t really looking at the menu at all. He was thinking about something else. That, in and of itself, wasn’t surprising. Although Russ had been an exemplary father, never missing a soccer game or a debate club tournament or any of the myriad events parents were expected to attend, Cody had noticed from a young age that Russ would sometimes space out as if his internal attention became focused on something else. It would start with that faraway look, and at times Cody thought he saw a kind of sadness in Russ’s expression. But it was always fleeting, and more often than not, Cody assumed he’d imagined it.

Russ must have felt his son watching him; he looked up again, smiled, and put the menu down. A moment later, as an ancient waiter asked to take their order, Russ said he’d like the Cioppino and a glass of Pinot Grigio.

When the waiter left, Cody asked, Something on your mind, Dad? You seem distracted.

Russ gave a small shake of his head. No, not really. Just before I arrived, I passed a woman on the street I thought I recognized, but I can’t reel it in. It bugs me when that happens.

Give yourself a break, Cody said. You’ve interviewed thousands of people in your career. You can’t expect to remember every one of them.

Russ shrugged and drank the last of his martini. Especially at my advanced age, he said. Tell me what’s happening in your world. Anything new?

Cody smiled. I thought you’d never ask. I’m in the process of settling a major discrimination case.

Nice. Can you tell me about it?

Not too much. I’m sure the defendant will insist on a confidentiality clause. Cody paused and took a sip of his Coke. Let’s just say it’s a big tech firm that allowed and, at times, even nurtured an environment of sexual harassment. Cody paused again and then let out a small snort of a laugh. With a dash of racism. We got our hands on a bunch of internal emails. One of my favorites was from the CFO that referred to a Black woman in accounting. The email said he’d like to get some of that ‘brown sugar,’ Cody said, making air quotes.

Oh, my.

That’s what we said. Anyway, I’ve been lead counsel on it and have worked my ass off, so it’s very rewarding. He grinned again. Not to mention it will be a big payday.

The two men were silent while the waiter served their food and poured Russ’s wine. When he left, Russ raised his glass in a toast. I’m proud of you, Son.

What Russ didn’t say was how bittersweet it made him feel that Cody had become a civil rights attorney. That was a story he’d save for another day.

But Cody never saw his father again.

* Two *

Two and a half weeks later, Cody Blaze pulled his Prius into the driveway of his parents’ Berkeley home and turned off the ignition. He stared at the lone oak tree, now leafless, looking like a naked, arthritic old man. It didn’t seem much larger than it had when he was growing up. The front yard surrounding the tree was still mostly barren dirt. Large, old eucalyptus trees lined both sides of the yard. There had always been too much shade to grow a healthy, lush lawn.

You okay, Cody? His mom’s voice from the passenger seat interrupted his thoughts. Her voice sounded thin, tired. Or maybe just sad. She had, after all, just come from the interment ceremony for her husband, Russell Blaze.

I’m fine, Mom. I was just thinking about that old tree and how it watched over our family for all those years. Without waiting for a reply, Cody got out of the car and walked around to help his mother. She was already halfway out by the time he got there. She was still young, barely sixty, and didn’t need his help, but he thought it was the right thing to do under the circumstances.

Mary Blaze didn’t object when he took her by the elbow and walked her up the gravel path to the wood plank porch, which needed paint. The house itself was a dark wood shingle with a shake roof, a fairly typical house for the old neighborhoods around the university.

It’s too bad Uncle James and Aunt Jennie couldn’t be here, Cody said. James wasn’t an actual uncle, but he and Russell had been best friends since high school. He and his partner, Yvette, were traveling in Vietnam when Russell died three days earlier. They wouldn’t get back for several more days.

Aunt Jennie was Russell’s younger sister. She was a successful fashion designer and had a show scheduled in Milan. Mary assured her there was no point in coming to Berkeley just to watch an urn being placed into a hole in a wall.

Yeah, but none of us are big on ceremony, Mary answered. We’ll all get together soon. Are you driving back to the city or staying the night? Mary asked as they walked into the entry hall. The house was in dark shadows in the late afternoon. Mary walked around turning on lights.

Most of the heavy walnut furniture in the living room and connected dining room was the same as when Cody left home almost ten years ago after graduating from Boalt Hall, Cal Berkeley’s law school at the time.

I thought I’d stay, Cody said. Unless you have people coming over and don’t want me around.

Mary turned and gave him a grim smile. No, I thought it would be in bad taste to have my lover show up so soon after Russ passed.

Cody shook his head from side to side. His mom’s dark sense of humor matched his dad’s almost perfectly.

Are you hungry? Mary asked. The Carters left us a casserole of some kind. I’ll stick it in the oven.

Cody grunted an affirmation as he wandered around the living room. He hadn’t been home in almost a month. He’d been working fourteen-hour days on the discrimination case he’d told Russ about at their last lunch. That lunch now seemed a lifetime ago.

A couple of new watercolors hung on the wall next to a huge bookcase filled with well-used books, images of Black women in traditional African garb. Cody figured his parents had brought them back from their trip to Namibia last year. They’d probably just gotten around to having them framed.

He heard his mother puttering around in the kitchen as he walked down the short hall and approached the closed door to his dad’s office, the only room in the house that had been off-limits to Cody except on rare occasions when his dad invited him in. He glanced around almost guiltily before turning the knob and pushing the door open. The room had been built as a small bedroom, perhaps a guest room, but had served as Russ’s office for as long as Cody could remember. The master bedroom and Cody’s bedroom were upstairs.

Cody took in the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves lining three walls. On some shelves, books were stacked two deep. Behind the large, old-fashioned walnut desk with ornately carved stout, short legs, the only wall without bookshelves was adorned with certificates and photos. Center stage was a large mock-up of the first issue of Lumina, the glossy, hip magazine his dad had helped found with James Cordell. Among the various photos were Russ with the likes of Bobby Seale, Dianne Feinstein, Jerry Brown, Bill Clinton, and Barack and Michelle Obama.

Cody ran a hand along the top of the large desk as if he would glean some residual presence of his father. He stopped when he reached the old cracked brown leather chair his dad had used during his years at Lumina. On the uncluttered desk fronting the chair was an envelope marked For Cody.

Cody’s brow wrinkled in confusion. His dad didn’t die of a chronic disease. He didn’t know he was going to die three days ago. He’d gone away to do some research on a freelance project. At least that’s what he’d told Mary. He hadn’t said where, exactly, he was going. Just south. He’d died in a car accident on Highway 99 just north of Merced, California. The Highway Patrol conjectured that he’d fallen asleep at the wheel and driven off the road.

Cody turned on the green-shaded desk lamp. Then he picked up the envelope. He held it for several moments, still confused. Perhaps his father had a premonition of some kind. After all, Cody wouldn’t even be in this house, let alone in his dad’s sanctum sanctorum, if something horrible hadn’t happened. So why would he have left an envelope addressed to Cody?

Slowly, almost reluctantly, he tore open the envelope and pulled out the handwritten single-page letter.

Dear Cody,

If you’re reading this, I’m probably dead. I say probably because I suppose I could be in a coma and thus powerless to prevent you from snooping around in my office. Sorry. Just a little gallows humor. If I’m dead, there are some things you never knew about me, but which I see no particular reason to hide from you after my death. Besides, knowing your mother, she’d probably tell you before long anyway.

I won’t lay out the particulars here. Instead I will direct you to my unfinished memoir that is based on journals I began keeping in 1967 while still in high school. Your mother is aware of almost everything in general, although she lacks many of the details. I will tell you that she saved my life, and that you and she and James are my most cherished treasures.

I assume my death will appear to be an accident. Who knows, perhaps it really will be. But it is more likely that if I am killed on this trip, it will be because I have been murdered, which means I probably got careless. That is why I am writing this letter and why you need to read my memoir. By the time you reach the end, my paranoia should be explicable. I added a short addendum letter to explain this research trip and why it may turn out to be dangerous.

I should point out that my memoir was intended to be just that. It was not written with the intention of being a guide to the motive for my death and the probable identity of my murderer. I suppose I could have condensed all the relevant parts into a separate letter, but frankly I don’t want to take the time to do that. Besides, there’s so much about my life you never knew about, much of which leads up to this moment of my demise, so you may as well read it all, which will lay bare my life while accomplishing the purpose of elucidating the cause of my death.

I love you and your mother dearly. I hope I have been a good father and friend to you. I’ve written a lot of stuff in my life, but never something meant to be read posthumously, so forgive me if I’m not appropriately maudlin. You’ll find the manuscript in the bottom right drawer.

Love,

Dad

Cody dropped the letter onto the desk and sat in his dad’s old chair, which made a comforting squeaking sound. He bent to open the lower right drawer when his mother appeared in the doorway.

What are you doing?

Cody sat up, picked up the letter, and placed it on the far edge of the desk. Read this, he said.

Cody bent down and opened the drawer. A thick manuscript was tied with heavy string. The front page read "Russell Blaze Memoir." He pulled it out, set it on the desk, and looked up at his mother. A moment later she began to cry.

I thought I was all cried out, she said.

Did you know about this? Cody asked, nodding to the manuscript.

Mary wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and nodded. Sure. He’s been working on it for years. I think it was mostly therapeutic.

Did you know he might have been in some kind of danger?

Mary shook her head. No. I had no idea. She hesitated before adding, I thought all the danger was behind him.

Cody looked inquisitively at his mother, but she didn’t seem inclined to add anything further. Tears streaked with mascara streamed down her face. They sat in silence. The house was still, almost eerily still, thought Cody, after reading his father’s letter from the grave. A few minutes later, the beeping of the microwave oven broke the silence.

Come on, let’s get something to eat, Mary said, wiping her eyes again. Then, if you want, you can start on the manuscript and maybe we’ll find out what really happened to to your dad.

A little over an hour later, Cody kissed his mother good night and retreated to his old bedroom with his father’s memoir in hand. He had redecorated the room when he’d accepted his parents’ invitation to live there through college and law school. Down came the adolescent posters and up went inexpensively framed prints of art, mostly impressionist. Out went the single bed and in went a more comfortable queen-sized bed covered in an Indian print bedcover from Cost Plus. The old, small pine desk was replaced with a modern teak desk from IKEA, complete with a matching stand-alone bookshelf. Some of his old law school texts were still there. His well-used Restatement (Second) of Contracts had fallen onto its side.

Cody kicked off his shoes, plopped onto the bed, propped himself up with two pillows, and untied the manuscript. The first page was the first chapter and was only one short paragraph.

Blaze Memoir Chapter 1

On the night of October 16, 1968, I uttered a sentence that would haunt me for the rest of my life. The sentence was, Someone should kill that motherfucker.

* Three *

Cody frowned, his interest piqued. That certainly didn’t sound like something the father he’d known would say.

Blaze Memoir Chapter 2

I was twelve years old when my dad died a long, slow painful death from lung cancer. I know this may sound awful, but I sometimes wished he had died when I was much younger, before I’d gotten to know him and idolize him and think of him as my hero. Watching my hero die like that forever marred my memories of him. I once likened it to watching a wonderful, entrancing movie that suddenly stopped partway through and cut to an obscenely horrible finale for which no one was prepared. For the rest of my life, whenever I thought of Daddy Arthur (for although at twelve I was on the cusp of transitioning from calling him Daddy to Dad, he had become forever stuck in my mind as Daddy) I might bring to mind a wonderful day or event we’d had together, like the time I helped him knock down the wall between the dining room and living room. I remember laughing uproariously as I banged away at the dry wall with a hammer. Or when we took summer road trips to Uncle Tommy’s place on the Platte River in Nebraska. But those memories were inevitably cut short, interrupted by a flash of Daddy Arthur’s withered body with its gray pallor, struggling to breathe, lying on his sickbed in the new bedroom addition he built for his young daughter, my sister, whose move to her own room had been delayed by his sickness.

If only I had no memory of Daddy Arthur other than loving stories Mom might tell us three kids about him. Perhaps she would have regaled us with a story about how when he learned I was going to have a younger brother, he built a solid, two-room treehouse in a big walnut tree in the backyard. Or how he built an amazing train set with two trains, papier-mâché mountains, a painted glass lake, and a Main Street populated with small cars and people. My brother, Leo, and I would learn of these things only when we were old enough to climb to the treehouse or run the perfect replica train set. Those stories told by Mom would be our memories of Daddy Arthur. Perfectly crafted memories unsullied by a brutal, prolonged death.

Daddy Arthur was as courageous in dying as any hero of mine could have been. On his last night, in a darkened hospital room in a small community hospital not far from our house in Sherman Oaks, California, he took my hand in his. His hand was thin and cold, although it was very warm in the room and he had multiple blankets covering him. He told me I was the man of the house now, and I should take care of Mom and Leo and Jennie. He smiled at me then, and I could no longer hold back my tears. I couldn’t say anything. To their credit neither tried to talk to me. They let me quietly weep for several minutes until I felt Mom’s hand on my shoulder and I realized Daddy Arthur’s eyes were closed. I thought he had fallen asleep until I realized the machine beeping out his heartbeats was no longer beeping, and the plump young nurse named Sylvia, whom we had all gotten to know well, was silently, efficiently turning off the machines.

It was not surprising that Daddy Arthur’s death changed me. How could it not? It was almost as if someone had opened a little hatch into my brain and pushed a reset button. My imperfect recollection of who I’d been before his death was that I was outgoing and carefree, eager to make jokes and laugh and play with my siblings and school friends. After Daddy Arthur’s death, I became solemn and introverted. I tended to internalize and intellectualize things. I questioned almost everything, from the meaning of life to the reason why I was being forced to take a stupid math class since I had no intention of being either a mathematician or an accountant.

My brother, Leo, on the other hand, who was a little more than two years younger than me, became a sullen kid who slowly withdrew from the family both physically and psychologically. We no longer played with the train set together, and when he was in the backyard treehouse, it was his domain; I was not allowed in at the same time. His grades were average or below, but no one seemed to care. Mom was too busy trying to survive. I was too busy being solemn. Jennie was too young to be affected.

Jennie seemed to have come through Daddy Arthur’s death relatively unscathed. But I will admit that given our age difference, almost five years, I was simply not as attuned to her personality and any changes thereto. She continued to seem content playing with her Barbie dolls; she would dress and undress them and mix outfits and beg for the latest Barbie fashions. When she wasn’t playing with Barbie, she would peruse the photos in fashion magazines, cutting out outfits she liked and pasting them onto a huge poster board collage in the room Daddy Arthur had built and into which she had moved after his death.

Our mother, Ellen, was a beautiful woman. She was a shapely five-foot-seven with brunette hair worn shoulder length. Her eyes were a bright hazel green, like two expensive gemstones. There was a hint of brown to her skin, as if she’d inherited some exotic genes, although her family steadfastly maintained they were of French and English stock. She was only thirty-four when Daddy Arthur died. She was still beautiful, but it was obvious to everyone who knew her that there was a loss of luminosity and the contagious joy that had once infected everyone who met her. Like me, she had become solemn, albeit on a more practical level. Suddenly she needed to support a family of four. The life insurance and savings, despite the Social Security death benefits, were not enough to last more than a few years. She’d met Daddy Arthur while at the community college in Santa Monica where she’d done some freelance modeling, which included print ads. He was a professional photographer on assignment at a photo shoot. Their story was that it was love at first sight, and they married less than three months after meeting.

Mom dropped out of college to marry Daddy Arthur, became a housewife, and eventually a mother. So when Daddy Arthur died, she was faced with the cruel reckoning of how to support her family. She took a job as a clerk in a drugstore and spent her days on her feet, stocking shelves, ringing up sales, and making small talk with customers. There was a sadness about her that even her beauty could not hide.

A few years later, when I was fifteen and Mom was about to marry Mark Maverick, I happened to glance into her bedroom and saw her sitting up in bed. It was late afternoon and there were no lights on in the room, but her face was illuminated by the television. It was the lack of sound that caught my attention. As I stuck my head in the room and looked at the TV, I saw the familiar face of Allen Ludden, the host of Password. The sound was on, but so low that the words being spoken were indecipherable. I looked at Mom. Tears streamed down her face as she stared blankly at the screen.

I walked over to the side of her bed. Only then did she notice me. She wiped at her tears with the fingers of her left hand. I sat on the edge of the bed and gently prodded her to make room for me. Then I sat next to her, and in what may have been my first act as the actual man of the house, I put my arm around her.

What’s wrong? I asked.

She sighed heavily and let her head fall to my left shoulder. I’m all right. I guess I’m just a little scared.

About getting married? I asked.

She sniffed as she nodded. The changing scenes on the television made ever-changing lights and shadows on her tearstreaked face. Yeah. That. I don’t know, everything.

If you’re unsure about it, don’t marry him, I said. I was, perhaps, too young and too shy to actually ask her if she loved Mark.

Oh, Russ, Mom said, sighing again as she did so. It’s more complicated than that. I’m worn out and I’m worried sick. I need to make sure you kids are okay. Mark’s a good man. He’ll take care of us.

I didn’t answer. I turned her words over in my mind. I knew what she was saying. I knew what the words meant. Yet I knew there were things unspoken but possibly implied. It only occurred to me while sitting there on her bed with my arm around her that Mom was probably marrying Mark Maverick for practical rather than romantic reasons. Still, I didn’t ask if she loved him.

You’re sure it’s the right thing to do? I finally said. I was thinking of getting a job as a bag boy at that market on Ventura. I can work every day after school and on weekends.

Mom sat up. She wiped her eyes again. For a few minutes we both stared at Allen Ludden and his celebrity guests giving clues to the contestants. We saw what the password was, but we couldn’t hear the clues.

You don’t need to do that, Russ, Mom said. We’ll be fine. If you want to get a job during the summer, that’s okay. You can keep what you earn. Mark will take care of us, she repeated. It’s just been so hard.

I know, I said. "I didn’t want