Clutching at Straws

by J. L. Abramo

  CLUTCHING AT STRAWS

  A Jake Diamond Mystery

  J.L. Abramo

  Copyright © 2003 by Joseph L. Abramo, Inc.

  Second eBook Edition: February 2014

  All rights reserved. No part of the book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

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  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Cover design by JT Lindroos

  Photo by tibchris

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Clutching at Straws

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Other Titles from Down & Out Books

  Preview from Back to Brooklyn, the sequel to My Cousin Vinny by Lawrence Kelter

  Preview from A Brutal Bunch of Heartbroken Saps by Nick Kolakowski

  Preview from Gitmo by Shawn Corridan and Gary Waid

  For my sister Linda

  Cast of Characters

  LEFTY “AL” WRIGHT—a well-spoken burglar

  JAKE DIAMOND—a San Francisco private investigator

  DARLENE ROMAN—Diamond’s more than able assistant

  ANGELO VERDI—a talkative specialty foods grocer

  J. ANDREW CHANCELLOR—a deceased judge

  VINNIE “STRINGS” STRADIVARIUS—a compulsive gambler and nuisance

  VIC “VIGS” VIGODA—a small-time hood

  LIEUTENANT LAURA LOPEZ—a homicide detective

  SALLY FRENCH—Diamond’s ex-wife and current lady friend

  JEREMY CASH—a bestselling author

  FREDDIE CASH—Cash’s son, a kidnap victim

  JOEY RUSSO—an Italian American businessman

  SONNY THE CHIN—Russo’s right-hand son-in-law

  BUZZ STANLEY—a college gridiron legend

  JOHN “JOHNNY BOY” CARLUCCI—a San Quentin inmate

  TONY CARLUCCI—Carlucci’s brother, a restaurant operator

  KAY TURNER—public defender

  LOWELL RYDER—an assistant district attorney

  HANK STRODE—a security guard

  SERGEANT JOHNSON—a homicide detective

  BOB GENTRY—an attentive neighbor

  THOMAS KATT—a police officer

  PHIL MOSS—a police officer, Katt’s partner

  BRENDA BIONDA—a person in hiding

  TUG MCGRAW—an adopted domestic pet

  BOBO BIGELOW—a person worth avoiding

  CHANCE FOLSOM—a movie actor

  WILLIAM GUNDERSON—a small-town chief of police

  CHARLES KRUPP—a governor of California

  TROY WASINGER—a theater artist

  CHARLIE “BONES” MANCUSO—born suspect

  DAVEY KING—a ghost

  JENNY SOLOMON—a dilemma

  The Kitchen Window

  Sir, he made a chimney in my father’s house,

  and the bricks are alive at this day to testify it.

  —William Shakespeare

  King Henry VI, Part 2

  One

  Lefty Wright slipped the rusty blade of his trusty paint scraper between the frame and sill of the kitchen window and finessed the latch open. He slowly raised the window, squeezed through, and shimmied like an alligator across the sink. When his palms reached the linoleum he went into a perfect handstand, which he would have held longer if not for the sore rib. He gracefully and silently tumbled into an upright position. Once inside the house he stood motionless for a full minute, infinitely patient, listening.

  Lefty had found the two bundles of cash exactly where he had been promised they would be. Five thousand dollars in twenties and fifties under a flat stone on the ground below the window. A down payment. He had stuffed the cash into his inside coat pockets before entering the house.

  Known as a top-notch second-story man by his peers, and a two-time loser by the courts, Lefty had been relegated to ground-floor entries since falling from a dry-rotted cedar balcony a few weeks earlier. He favored his right side as he moved quietly through the kitchen and into the dining area. Always the pragmatist, he decided to go directly up to the bedroom, knowing that was where he would find what he’d come for. He could quickly inventory the street-level rooms on his way out.

  Lefty had been watching the place on and off since Saturday morning, noting the stuffed mailbox and the newspapers on the lawn. He hadn’t seen a light come on or go off in the residence, and nothing seemed changed when he arrived now, just before ten on Sunday night. He had planned to arrive earlier but consoled himself with the fact that the tree-lined street was deserted at this hour. He had been assured that the sole occupant of the large home was not due back until late Monday evening. Lefty Wright was not one to be overconfident, but he couldn’t help feeling that the odds that he was alone in the house were very good.

  He pulled out his penlight, slid the tiny beam toward his feet, and moved slowly toward the carpeted staircase. Halfway up the stairs, he stopped and stood motionless again, listening.

  After a silent count to sixty he continued up, a broad smile occupying the entire lower half of his face.

  For the next thirty minutes, the house would belong to Lefty Wright.

  At the landing, Lefty slipped off his Doc Martens and introduced his thick wool socks to the plush wool carpet. The bedroom door was open and he slipped into the room. The painting was directly ahead of him on the wall above the chest of drawers, where he had been told it would be.

  The painting, an original by one of the lesser French impressionists, was fairly valuable itself. But artwork was nearly impossible to fence, and Lefty Wright was more interested in what he expected to find behind the painting.

  He removed the painting, leaned it against the foot of the dresser, and looked at the safe. There was nothing safe about it. He had cracked tougher boxes when he was eighteen. He placed his ear close to the tumbler and began rotating the dial.

  Twenty seconds later he was in.

  The safe was unusually bare. A pair of diamond-studded monogrammed cuff links and a small collection of coins, neither of which interested Lefty. A heavy, nondescript gold chain and a Smith and Wesson chrome-plated .38-caliber snub-nose revolver, which he couldn’t resist. They went into the right front pocket of his coat. And the gray metal document box.

  He removed the metal box and placed it lightly on the top of the chest of drawers. It was legal sized and approximately nine inches deep. He pushed the small latch and the box popped open. He quickly went through the papers and found the nine-by-twelve-inch envelope he had been told to look for. He laid the envelope on the dresser top, closed the metal box, and returned it to the safe.

  Lefty had been instructed to leave the envelope on top of the dresser, f
or which he would earn himself an additional ten thousand dollars. As he reached down to his feet to pick up the painting, he made up his mind to improvise, in the event that he would be compelled to bargain for the balance of his payment.

  He pushed the safe door closed, but did not spin the dial to lock it.

  Lefty pulled out his Swiss Army knife and removed two of the staples that held the paper backing to the wooden picture frame. He lifted the envelope off the dresser and slid it between the backing of the painting and the canvas. Then he rehung the painting.

  As he was about to leave the room he caught sight of the Rolex lying on the floor at the opposite side of the bed.

  Lefty had a weakness for fine timepieces.

  He crossed to the far side of the bed, and his foot struck an object on the floor. He glanced down to his feet and gasped.

  Suddenly there were beacons of light streaming into the room from the street, accompanied by a harsh siren. Lefty had stumbled upon the head of a man whose contiguous anatomy lay under the large bed, and the instantaneous commotion from below had Lefty believing for a wild moment that the head had been rigged to some bizarre sort of silent burglar alarm.

  Twenty minutes later Lefty Wright was handcuffed in the back-seat of a San Francisco Police Department cruiser on his way to the Vallejo Street Police Station.

  Two hours later Lefty Wright was booked for murder and locked behind bars.

  He had been stripped of his most prized article of outer clothing, a tan knee-length London Fog slicker, along with its contents, five thousand dollars in legal tender, a chrome-plated pistol, a gold chain, a dime store penlight, a Swiss Army knife, and a rusty paint scraper.

  His shoes had been left at the scene.

  Lefty’s adamant demands for a telephone call and a Pedro’s Burrito Supreme went unheeded. He eventually assumed as comfortable a body position on the jail cell mattress as possible. When he woke to discover that he had actually slept through the night, it was his sole pleasant surprise.

  After which he was rudely subjected to another interview session with two detectives, who differed only in theory from two detectives who had grilled him the night before and paid even less attention to his pleas of innocence. Then Lefty was at last allowed to make his constitutionally guaranteed phone call.

  He called me.

  Two

  Autumn in San Francisco.

  Late September, early October is my favorite time of the year in San Francisco. In terms of weather, September is the mildest month. Most of the tourists are gone and that is a great blessing. In July and August they’re as thick as Buddy Holly’s eyeglasses. The kids are back where they belong, the nine-week challenge of trying to find a single square inch of ground not infested by swarms of loud and reckless adolescents is finally over. Unless you’re insane enough to venture anywhere near a school. I can hardly imagine a better place to be in early fall.

  Though I admit, I’ll take Paris in the springtime.

  I had recently made it past my fortieth birthday fairly intact and I was possibly involved in a budding romance with my ex-wife. As I headed to the office on the first Monday in October, I was feeling pretty cozy.

  I remembered in the nick of time that Darlene wouldn’t be back at her post until the following morning.

  Darlene Roman is my right hand; I can barely tie my shoes without her. She runs the office. Her boyfriend is L. L. Bruno, a defensive lineman for the 49ers. Darlene had taken off to Colorado for the weekend to watch San Francisco lose to the Denver Broncos. She had decided to stay the extra night to help pump up Lawrence Lionel for the upcoming game against Oakland.

  I was fairly certain I could squeak through one day without her, but I wasn’t about to venture into an empty office with no coffee waiting. I stopped at Molinari’s Deli on Columbus Avenue for a couple of large cups to carry up. My office sat two flights above the deli, and on a warm day when the wind was just right I could identify the daily lunch special from my desk chair.

  “Buon giorno, Angelo,” I said, using one of the few acceptable Italian expressions I had learned from my grandfather, “let me have two large black coffees.”

  “How’s the elbow, Jake?”

  I had taken a hard line drive to the elbow while playing first base in a softball game the weekend before. The ball was caught on the fly off my elbow by the second baseman. I was credited with an assist.

  “It only hurts when I do this,” I said, lifting my arm over my head.

  “So, don’t do that,” Angelo said, trying to sound like Henny Youngman.

  He sounded more like Walter Brennan.

  “Did you hear about Judge Chancellor?” Angelo Verdi asked as he poured.

  “He take another bribe on a parking ticket case?” I asked.

  J. Andrew Chancellor was the most noted criminal courts’ justice in northern California, if not in the entire state.

  “He took a six-inch kitchen knife in the chest,” said Angelo.

  “I hope whoever stabbed him wasn’t aiming for the heart, since he doesn’t have one,” I said. “Is he going to live?”

  “Not anymore.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “The story is he had just arrived home from a weekend at his cabin near Mill Valley and bumped into a house thief. Can you believe that, the judge killed without premeditation? That’ll wind up in Ripley’s Believe It or Not!”

  “They catch the thief?” I asked.

  “Right there in Chancellor’s bedroom. The Good Morning San Francisco news guy said that the perp was trying to stuff the judge’s body under the bed when the heat showed up.”

  “How did the cops get there so fast?” I asked. “They must have had a week’s notice.”

  “At least a week,” Angelo said. “Lucky break though. Their list of suspects would have been longer than their log of unsolved cases. You’re probably relieved that you won’t have to tell the police where you were last night.”

  “And how. I’d almost rather take the rap than admit that I took my mother to see a Sandra Bullock movie.”

  “What’s with the coffee, Jake, Darlene get stuck in Denver? I can’t believe that Chancellor bought it that way,” he went on. “It’s like a guy who just negotiated a minefield getting hit by a bus on the other side. I threw in a hard roll.”

  Angelo Verdi was a master of the non sequitur.

  “Darlene said she was staying the extra day to lick Bruno’s wounds. I’ve been trying not to picture it,” I said, grabbing the deli bag and heading for the door. “What do you think about the Giants and the Athletics in the World Series?”

  “I don’t know if I could handle the excitement,” Angelo Verdi said. “The last time they played each other, in the eighty-nine series, an earthquake postponed game three for ten days. I’m making sausage and peppers for lunch.”

  I was halfway down the hall from the stairwell to the office when I heard the phone begin to ring. I had taken to walking up the two flights to the office lately, partly because I understood the benefit to my cardiovascular system and mostly because the elevator had the knack of absorbing the odors of whoever slept in it the night before. For some indefensible reason I decided to try to catch the phone call.

  As I fumbled for my keys the deli bag dropped to the floor, landing neatly in a standing position.

  I managed to get the door unlocked and grabbed the receiver of Darlene’s desk phone in the middle of what may have been the fifth ring.

  I had intended to greet the first caller of the month with the standard salutation, “Diamond Investigation, Jake Diamond speaking,” but he didn’t let me get the words out.

  “Is this Jake Diamond?”

  “Diamond Investigation, Jake Diamond speaking,” I said. Give me a chance to slip it in and I will.

  “This is Lefty Wright. You can call me Al,”

  “What can I do for you, Al?”

  “Find out who really killed Judge Chancellor,” he said.

  The conversation consist
ed of a good amount of incoherent babbling on his side and exhortations to calm down from my end. If Lefty hadn’t mentioned the name Sam Chambers in the midst of his jabber I would have done the smart thing.

  I would have vehemently insisted he locate a good lawyer. And fast.

  Sam Chambers was an old buddy and fellow movie bit-player currently residing at the California Men’s Colony in San Luis Obispo on an armed-robbery conviction. To say that any friend of Sam’s was a friend of mine might be stretching it, but the mention of Sam as a personal reference did warrant my consideration.

  From what I could get out of Lefty on the telephone, he had helped Sam out of a tight spot at the Men’s Colony a few days before Wright was released. Another inmate had provoked Sam into an altercation, which didn’t take much, and the guards were on both of them within seconds. They were about to shackle the two for a trip to solitary when Lefty called one of the guards over and whispered into his ear. The guard let Sam and the other convict off with a warning.

  “What did you say to him?” I asked Lefty.

  “I told him he could have my autographed Mo Vaughn poster when I left.”

  In return for the assist, Sam offered Lefty the only thing he really had to give: the green light to call me if Wright was ever in a jam himself. It didn’t take long.

  I told Al that I would be down to see him at Vallejo Street as soon as I could, since we were getting nowhere on the phone.

  I placed the receiver down, my impression being that Lefty Wright was innocent. The notion wasn’t based on what he had said, most of which was unintelligible, but in the way he had sounded. The kid was clearly frightened to death. One of the things I have learned in this business, and in my personal experience as well, is that it’s a lot scarier being accused of murder when you’re not guilty.