Six O'Clock Silence

by Joanne Pence

  The fireplace had been lit, and George Gershwin’s “Catfish Row” played softly on the stereo. The men were drinking beer—even Shay. Richie poured her a glass of chardonnay.

  As they sat, she removed a copy of Sean Hinkle’s file from her tote bag and handed it to Shay. “I’m sure Richie told you about the situation with the mayor’s chief of staff’s supposed suicide,” she said. At Shay’s nod, she continued. “Interviews with people who knew Hinkle are here, but more importantly, I’ve included papers about the real estate holding company he was once involved in. I believe there’s a lot more to the holding company than we know, but when I look at this, I see a bunch of numbers that mean nothing. I’m hoping you can make sense of them.”

  Shay took the folder and flipped through the papers. He glanced at Richie. “These just might help in the other issue I was looking into.”

  “No need to keep it quiet,” Richie said. “She found out I’m having you investigate Isabella’s bank.”

  Shay looked surprised, but said nothing.

  Richie turned to Rebecca. “Shay has already discovered that the bank wiped Audrey Poole’s API Holdings account from their records. He’s trying to find where it went, and who removed it. He’ll also try, to the extent possible, to reconstruct what it looked like at the time Isabella was working on the real estate loans. We’re wondering if anything might have jumped out at her as proof of wrong-doings, and if that isn’t what caused … well, if that didn’t put her in danger.”

  “I’m not yet sure,” Shay said, “that I’ll have enough data to do it.”

  As she listened to all this, Rebecca couldn’t help but think about Isabella’s laptop. She hated to bring it up, but finally she said, “I suppose at the time of her death, there would have been no reason for Shay to try to get into her computer, but what about now?”

  “It wouldn’t help,” Richie said. “She rarely used it, and definitely not for work. The bank had rules about security. Besides, she never even bothered with a password. I took a look, but it was more of a dust-collector than anything.”

  “That’s surprising,” Rebecca said. “I mean, if it was so unimportant, why did she have it with her at the time of the accident?”

  “She didn’t.” Richie shook his head, as if not wanting to think about such things. “It was at her parents’ house. In her room there.”

  Something didn’t add up, Rebecca thought. “The investigator told me she had a laptop with her when she died. He couldn’t get past the password, but since the accident apparently had no mitigating circumstances, he had no reason to pursue it further.”

  Richie’s brows crossed. “I never heard she had a laptop with her. It wasn’t hers. Are you sure?”

  “I’m just repeating what I was told.”

  “Where is this laptop?” Shay asked.

  “I believe it was returned to her parents. The bank’s manager said it didn’t belong to the bank.”

  “They may still have it,” Richie whispered. He rubbed his jaw, deep in thought. “Damn!”

  Rebecca saw the sadness in his expression and realized how hard it would be for him to face Isabella’s family. “Would you like me to talk to them? If they still have it, I could say something has come up, that the SFPD just needs to borrow the laptop a short while.”

  He shook his head. “No. I should do it. I really should visit them anyway.”

  Rebecca glanced at Shay who gave a slight shake of the head. Then, in a much more optimistic voice than the situation warranted, she said, “I’m sure, if it exists, once Shay has it he’ll be able to get into it and see exactly what was going on.”

  “I agree.” Shay’s voice also had a sudden unnatural lilt, as if he, too, was trying to lift Richie’s spirits. “We’ll find out what’s going on.”

  “That’s right,” Rebecca said enthusiastically.

  “Knock it off, you two,” Richie said, shaking his head. “I can handle it.”

  “Good. I should get going,” Shay said. “Oh, by the way, Rebecca. Any news on that skeleton of yours?”

  She smiled. “Yes. We identified it.”

  Shay’s mouth gaped a moment before he shut it and eased his demeanor back to the casual manner he usually displayed. “Oh?”

  “He was an immigrant—Lebanese. Apparently his mother brought him here when he was young to get him away from the dangers in Lebanon. It’s ironic that he ended up a murder victim.”

  Shay’s coloring seemed to pale a bit. “Yes. What a surprising ending to the discovery.”

  “It’s not quite ended yet,” Rebecca said. “Now we have to figure out who killed him.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  It was early. Shay rarely was awake at seven in the morning, let alone out and about. But after talking to Rebecca the night before, he couldn’t sleep.

  Now, Mrs. Brannigan gawked at him in complete shock as he put on a warm ascot and jacket and headed out the door before having his morning tea, let alone the hard-boiled egg and toast with lemon curd that made up his usual breakfast.

  He headed down to the garage and got into his Maserati.

  He might have told himself he planned to simply drive around, but he knew exactly where he was going—the Oceanview district.

  He was relieved that all appeared to be quiet at the house. He could only hope everyone inside was calm, maybe even happy. The calm before the storm, as the saying went.

  He took a deep breath as he stared at another man’s home, knowing that inside, was another man’s family.

  His thoughts rarely strayed in such a direction. He was usually too much in control to allow that to happen. He again breathed deeply as he focused his mind toward emptiness, as if meditating. After a few moments, he felt settled, almost peaceful.

  Seeing that all was well here, so far at least, he was about to start his car to leave when he saw a little girl and boy emerge from the house, and behind them a tall woman with long black hair pulled back in a barrette. She wore jeans, a pink shirt with long sleeves, and a warm-looking vest. He scarcely needed to look at her face, so etched was it in his memory, but he did.

  She was as beautiful as ever, even in the early morning, even without make-up and still looking a little sleepy.

  She handed the girl a lunch box, and the two turned in the direction in which he was parked. He recognized the boy, Adam, despite how much he’d grown. He would be about eleven or twelve now. Adam ran ahead of them down the block.

  Shay thought about driving off, but that would surely get the woman's attention. Instead, he reached for the baseball cap he kept in the car to cover his blond hair when he was on surveillance. And then, to be extra cautious, he put on sunglasses even though it wasn’t a particularly sunny morning.

  The girl walked along the outer edge of the sidewalk, closest to his car.

  His eyes couldn’t leave the child. Her hair was fine and straight and a light brown color. And as she walked past the car, she looked into it and her eyes met his. He lowered the sunglasses just a bit, enough to be sure of what he was seeing. Her irises were large and pale blue, with a hint of lavender around the edges.

  As quickly as she had faced him, she turned her attention back to the sidewalk and continued on her way, her mother at her side.

  The girl was, if he could be completely objective, a somewhat odd-looking child, with light olive skin in eyes so large and pale they dominated her face—a face that held a curious yet intelligent expression as she gazed back at him.

  But there was nothing objective in his heart as he looked at her. He was too familiar with the countenance he saw before him.

  He hadn’t known how quickly and completely emotion could strike—a bizarre mixture that made him feel both protective and filled with awe. He hadn’t known such a feeling, ever. Not until he looked at that child, and recognized the features he saw in his mirror each day.

  He could scarcely breathe.

  At the corner, a school bus came by and stopped.

  When it pulled
away again, the girl and boy were no more to be seen, and the woman stood still and watched it.

  Before she turned back toward her house, he drove away.

  o0o

  Richie opened the door of his home to find his mother, Carmela, standing before him with a massive, covered casserole in her hand.

  “Richie, I brought you some manicotti, your favorite,” Carmela said. She was a short woman, stout, with copper-colored hair so stiff from hairspray it looked like a helmet.

  “What's this?” Richie asked as he stepped aside to let Carmela enter.

  She faced him, her eyes troubled. “I heard you’ve been looking into what happened to Isabella,” Carmela said. “I’m worried about you, Richie.”

  “Vito talks too much,” Richie mumbled.

  “He’s a good friend! He worries about you so he talks to me.” Carmela shouted the words, raising her arms toward Heaven. “And I worry, too!”

  “Yeah, well, Vito’s got to learn to mind his own business!” Richie shouted right back, in true Italian family style. He walked into the kitchen and Carmela followed. She put the manicotti onto the counter.

  “Is it cooked?” Richie asked, trying to calm down. What was it about mothers? Or was it just the Italian ones, he wondered. “Or do I need to cook it?”

  Carmela harrumphed, hands on hips. “You can’t take my attention away from this. But, you will need to cook it—three-fifty, about ninety minutes. Anyway, I know how horrible it was for you and all of us when we lost Isabella. I don't want you to bring all that back again.” When Richie didn’t respond, she waggled her finger at him, her voice even louder. “You understand what I’m saying to you?!”

  “Yes, Ma,” he said softly, as he made room in his refrigerator for the casserole, then made them both a cup of coffee. Carmela always enjoyed having a cup and sitting down at the kitchen table talking to him. It was the sort of thing they had done over most of his life, usually at her house. Whenever things got bad, Carmela would serve coffee with cookies or other Italian pastry that she might have made or bought, and they’d sit in the kitchen and have a heart-to-heart. It was one of the things that came from Richie having been an only child, and losing his father when he was only five years old.

  “I found out some things about Isabella's death,” Richie said, "and I need to look into it. I can’t let it go, not knowing there’s more information out there. I've asked Shay to help me, but I'm pretty sure it’ll lead nowhere, and everything will be okay. Okay? Don’t worry, Ma.”

  “If you’re sure it’ll lead to nothing, then why, Richie? Why do this? Why now? Maybe…” she pursed her lips, “maybe I've been too hard on your new friend, that cop, that Rebecca. To me, she's no Isabella, but if she makes you happy, maybe I'm just gonna have to live with that.”

  Richie cringed at Carmela saying “she’s no Isabella,” but still, it was a start. “Well, that’s quite a surprise coming from you,” Richie said. “And I'm glad to hear it.”

  “I don't know what else I can do,” Carmela told him, then folded her hands together, and rolled her eyes upward in a Madonna-like pose. “Figlio mio! Poverino!” she cried, blinking hard as if to force out a tear or two.

  Carmela shouting at him was bad enough, but her tears, even fake ones, were beyond his ability to handle. “What you can do, is go home and stop worrying,” Richie said, standing.

  Carmela’s tears and wailing immediately stopped. “What’s this? Go home?”

  He took her arm, picked up her purse and coat, and walked her to the front door. “I’ll be fine. And thank you for the manicotti.”

  With that, he kissed her cheek and gently shuttled her out of the house. Once he shut the door on her, he realized he’d just given his mother the bum’s rush.

  He sighed. He didn’t know how, he didn’t know when, but he knew he would pay for that, no doubt about it.

  o0o

  Rebecca and Sutter went to the San Mateo carpet warehouse where Yussef Najjar once worked. His boss there had reported him missing nine years earlier.

  Chad Lompoc, the owner of the warehouse, was on the premises. “Yes, I remember Yussef,” he said to the two detectives as he led them into his small, utilitarian office. “He was a good worker, and a quiet man. That was why I contacted the police when he didn’t show up.”

  “Was there a reason you didn’t go straight to his family?” Rebecca asked. Lompoc sat behind his desk, and she and Sutter faced him.

  “There sure was! I didn’t know he had one anywhere near. He told us that when he was a boy, he left Lebanon to come to the US to live with his uncle, but that the uncle was now dead. He never mentioned anyone else. He lived alone in a small apartment about a half mile away, close enough to walk to work. We went there, of course, and no one answered the door, or our phone calls. When the neighbors said they hadn’t seen him for days, I called the police.”

  “Did you suspect something had happened to him?”

  “Of course! We were afraid he’d been in an accident somewhere, or dead, or whatever. We were shocked when we heard he’d returned to Lebanon. He’d given no indication that he remembered much about it, and never that he was anything but happy in the US. He even talked about becoming a citizen.”

  Now it was Sutter’s turn to ask questions. “Did Yussef have any problems with any of his fellow workers?”

  “None that came to my attention.”

  “Was there any problem with anyone about him being from the Middle East?”

  Lompoc hesitated, but then said, “A little, but whenever it came up, he said he was a Catholic. That seemed to stop the complaints—at least those that came to me. I don’t know what was going on with Yussef and the others on a personal level. But I will say, everyone seemed to get along just fine.”

  “Did he have any close friends here?” Rebecca chimed in.

  “Hmm. I’ll have to look at my records. I have a lot of turnover. Delivering, unloading, and nailing down wall-to-wall carpeting is back-breaking work, and most guys only do it a few years then find something else.”

  The detectives waited while Lompoc called up lists of employees on his computer, and he gave them a couple of names to look into.

  Sutter took the names and said he would handle them. Rebecca was glad Sutter was willing to do that, and that her afternoon was free.

  She had a plane to catch.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Rebecca was going to be the death of him, that was all there was to it. The day before, after dealing with Carmela, Richie had gotten a call from Vito saying that he had followed Rebecca to a BART train to the San Francisco airport. There, Vito couldn’t follow her past the security gate, but she clearly had a plane ticket to somewhere. When Richie heard this, he tried phoning her. A couple of hours passed before she answered his call. He asked what she was doing, and she lied, saying she was busy in Homicide, that she’d gotten a new case and would have to work most of the night. He was ready to jump into the phone and tell her that he knew she not only was not in homicide, but that she probably wasn’t in the whole damn state.

  It took all the composure he could muster—and that wasn’t much these days—to say nothing. If she wanted to be that way, so be it.

  Still it rankled. What the hell was she doing? It had to be something about one of her cases, or so he guessed. Or so he hoped. The worrywart part of him wondered if it had something to do with the interesting stranger that Vito said she had had lunch with the other day. She hadn’t told him about that guy either.

  Vito hadn’t called him back until after ten o’clock last night, when he reported Rebecca had returned home.

  Richie knew he was acting ridiculously jealous, and Rebecca had never given him any cause to feel that way. It had to do with Isabella, he was sure, with the way everything about Isabella left him feeling unsettled and unsure, as if he didn’t know which way was up and who he should or shouldn’t trust.

  He had always trusted Rebecca. He only wished she hadn’t lied to him about w
here she was.

  He should try calling her again. Ask her point blank where she was, what she was hiding. But instead of picking up the phone, he beat a hasty retreat out of his home. He couldn’t bear sitting alone even one minute longer. He hated the direction his thoughts were going. He got into his car and headed to North Beach where he checked in with Don Giorgio, and then went to Chinatown where he visited the Five Family Association’s Milton Jang. So far, neither had found out anything about Sean Hinkle’s supposed suicide. Richie had been sure that if they could tap into the rumor mill about who was behind Hinkle’s death, it would be a direct line to the person who didn’t like Rebecca’s interference.

  He also realized that, if he was smart, he would use this free time to contact Isabella’s parents about her laptop. But he guessed he wasn’t smart, because that was the last thing he wanted to do.

  Instead he concentrated on others he might know who were close to City Hall. One of his former clients came to mind—a lobbyist for the San Francisco Giants baseball team. San Francisco fans were notoriously fickle. The 49ers had moved out of the city to the Peninsula; many years ago the Warriors basketball team had moved to Oakland, and even the Giants watched their fan base shrink when the team didn’t perform up to expectations.

  The lobbyist, Stu Haynes, knew just about everyone in City Hall, and had worked closely with the mayor over the past few years. Richie had fixed a couple of delicate situations for Haynes over the years, one involving gambling debts, and the other involving a male prostitute. He now met Haynes at the Buena Vista near Fisherman’s Wharf.

  “I’m coming to you for help this time,” Richie said after ordering Haynes a Macallan single malt, neat. He had arrived earlier and was nursing what look like gin-and-tonic, but without the gin.

  “Uh, oh.” Haynes put his hand over the wallet in his back pocket. “What’s this little meeting going to cost me?”

  “Nothing,” Richie said. “You might have the knowledge I need.” He explained about the real estate holding company and how some people in or near City Hall seemed to take an exceptional interest in it.