MD03 - Criminal Intent

by Sheldon Siegel

  “So you didn’t drive him back to the hotel?”

  “No.”

  “Are you pretty sure about those times, Joe?”

  “I remember it clearly.” He smiles. “I was hoping he was going to ask me to wait.”

  “Why?”

  “He gave me a twenty dollar tip on a twelve dollar fare. I was hoping I’d pick up another twenty on the way back.”

  # # #

  We’re back in my office at ten o’clock. Joe Lynch dropped us off a few minutes ago and in a moment of whimsy, I gave him a twenty dollar tip. He gave me his private number. Rosie is stationed in her favorite spot on the corner of my desk. “Listen to this,” I tell her.

  I punch in the buttons to summon my voicemail. After skipping ten messages from TV and newspapers, I get to the one I want. “Michael,” Leslie’s voice says, “call me as soon as you can. I’ll be waiting up for you.” She leaves her cell phone number.

  I look at Rosie and say, “So? What do you think?”

  “Tough to tell. It’s pretty cryptic.”

  “Care to make a prediction?”

  “No way.”

  “I’m not optimistic,” I tell her.

  “You never know,” she says. We sit in silence for a moment. Then she gets back to business. “Okay, Sherlock, why did Ellis go to Little Richard’s house at two in the morning?”

  “I presume they wanted to talk about the China Basin project.”

  “And was it really Eve who took him back to the Ritz?”

  “Probably. Who else would Little Richard have called?”

  “How soon can you get down to Vegas?”

  “Tomorrow or Wednesday.”

  “What are you going to do now?”

  “I need to talk to Carolyn. Then I’m meeting Pete at the Edinburgh Castle.”

  “Isn’t that a little late for a drink?”

  “I’d stay up all night for a chance to meet Kaela Joy Gullion in person.”

  *****

  Chapter 30

  Kaela Joy

  “I didn’t set out to become a private investigator. It just worked out that way.”

  — Kaela Joy Gullion. Profile in San Francisco Chronicle.

  First, I have to deal with Leslie. I punch in her number and wait. The next thing I hear is, “Hello, Michael.”

  Bad vibes. “How did you know it was me?”

  “Intuition.” She hesitates and says, “You know I’ve been assigned to Angelina’s prelim. It’s a conflict of interest.” She pauses for another beat and adds, “We need to talk.”

  “Yes, we do.”

  “I can’t do it tonight and I don’t want to do it by phone.”

  Really bad vibes. “Neither do I.”

  “How about tomorrow night? It might be better if we get together someplace where we aren’t likely to be seen.”

  I suggest her place. She says that isn’t a good idea. I feel like a teenager trying to sneak out of my parents’ house. We settle on a sushi place in the outer Richmond.

  I ask, “Is there anything we should talk about now?”

  “We’ll talk tomorrow, Michael.”

  # # #

  “Thanks for talking to Ben,” Carolyn says to me a few minutes later.

  “Everything will get worked out.”

  “I hope so. I talked to Lisa Yee again. She’s still planning to file felony charges.”

  So much for my impassioned plea for leniency. While Rosie and I have been running around trying to gather information, Carolyn has been doing the real legal work on Angel’s case. She’s spent the last two days preparing subpoenas and document requests. It’s a tedious, but vitally important job. We’re sitting in the Rosie’s office at eleven o’clock.

  “I’ll talk to her again,” I say.

  “The prelim is Thursday.”

  “I talked to Randy Short. He’s up to speed if we need him.”

  She exhales.

  I take her hand and say, “We’re going to fix this, Caro.”

  # # #

  Kaela Joy Gullion could pass for a professional basketball player. The former Niners’ pompon girl’s sculpted, six-foot-two-inch frame reflects a lot of time at the gym. Black jeans hug her endless legs. The onetime model’s face has a creamy complexion, with full lips and high cheekbones. You would have to look closely to figure out she’s in her mid-forties. Her shoulder-length auburn hair is covered by a black stocking cap. She and Pete look like cat burglars. She takes a draw from her Guinness and says, “The late Richard MacArthur was an asshole.”

  That covers it. I catch Pete’s eyes. He smiles and says, “Tell us what you really think.”

  Her face rearranges itself into the smile that graced the covers of glamour magazines twenty years ago. She pulls off her hat and shakes her long locks. If Dominic Petrillo thinks Angel’s smile lights up a room, he ought to see Kaela Joy’s.

  We’re hunkered down near the dart boards in the back of the Edinburgh Castle, an old pub on Geary between Larkin and Polk, in what was a fashionable neighborhood a century ago. Now the area is called the Tenderloin, and the Castle is surrounded by peep shows. It isn’t fancy, but it has, well, ambiance. A long bar runs the length of the narrow room, which smells like Guinness. Although there is no kitchen, they’ll send somebody around the corner to fetch some fish and chips if you’re hungry. In what passes for entertainment in this part of town, they used to bring in a guy who played his bagpipe on Saturday nights. He retired a few years ago and they haven’t found a replacement. It’s just as well. It was noisier than the disco bowling that Grace inflicts upon me every once in awhile.

  “How did you hook up with Millennium Studios?” I ask.

  “The head of security was on the Niners’ practice squad for a few years. I helped him with his divorce. He hired me to do some work in Southern California.”

  I like her already. “What did you find out about Dick MacArthur?”

  “Those horror stories are true.” Her tone is businesslike. She orders a second Guinness and fills us in on the gory details. “He was a creep,” she says. “He had illegitimate children all over the world. He got what he deserved.” She takes a sip of her beer and adds, “Your client was getting royally screwed. He made her sign a one-sided prenup. She’ll never see a penny of his money.” She holds up her hands and says, “She’s just a kid. He was using her. I know what it’s like to be married to an asshole.” The venom in her voice is striking. Although it seemed funny when Kaela Joy dropped her ex-husband with one punch in a Bourbon Street bar after she caught him with another woman, the episode must have been very difficult for her.

  She’s just warming up. “MacArthur’s son is a bigger schmuck than his father,” she says.

  The schmuck genes run in the MacArthur DNA. I ask, “Why are you talking to us?”

  She smiles at Pete and says, “I like your brother. Our jobs will be a lot easier if we help each other. Your client’s a sweetie and somebody’s setting her up to take the fall. It isn’t right.”

  I’d like to believe her.

  “Look,” she says, “I’m not doing this out of the goodness of my heart. You seem like nice enough guys, but I’m also looking out for my client’s interests. Her arrest fouls up the marketing plan for the movie.” She turns dead serious when she says, “Petrillo knows I’m here. He told me to cooperate. I wouldn’t be talking to you if he didn’t say it was okay.”

  I ask, “What can you tell us about Petrillo?”

  “I can’t reveal anything confidential.”

  “What can you tell us that isn’t confidential?”

  She grins. “He’s an asshole, too—a very smart one.”

  “Why did he get in bed with MacArthur?”

  “He’s good at making movies.”

  “There are other good people who are lower maintenance.”

  She gives me a knowing grin. “Have you spent much time in L.A.?”

  “Some.”

  “In the movie business, they expect you to
be an asshole. It’s in the job description. You get slaughtered if you aren’t. MacArthur was no worse than most people in the industry. Petrillo looked at the bottom line. The script worked and he had a director who could do it. So he green-lighted the movie.”

  “And all that stuff about problems on the set?”

  “All true. And completely irrelevant. Movie stars don’t need to get along with their directors. Petrillo wanted to get the movie in the can. Everything else was window dressing. He didn’t give a rat’s ass if Dick and Angelina were screaming at each other every day.”

  Such a delicate way with words. “Is he going to release the movie on time?”

  “Of course.”

  “He told us he might delay because of Big Dick’s death.”

  Her eyes open wide. “Oh, bullshit. They’ll get a lot of free publicity and play it for all it’s worth. They’ll ramp up the marketing budget and issue a press release saying it would be a fitting tribute. They’ll put Richard Junior on the Today Show and take out ads in Daily Variety. Even if the movie is a dog, it will gross fifty million its first weekend.”

  “And the rumors about reworking the script and recasting some roles?”

  “That was never going to happen. The movie was over budget. Do you really think they were going to go back and shoot the damned thing again?”

  Got it. “Is Petrillo still planning to proceed with the studio?”

  “As far as I know.”

  “Were he and MacArthur getting along?”

  “Are you asking me whether my client was pissed off enough at MacArthur to have him murdered?”

  I like her style. “Essentially.”

  “Get real. Petrillo can be as offensive as MacArthur was. They both had huge egos and treated everybody like crap. But there’s a difference between being a jerk and being a murderer. Petrillo is vicious and greedy, but he operates within the law—at least as it applies to the movie business.” She gives me a wink and adds, “Besides, I don’t represent murderers.”

  A pasty-faced bartender who looks as if he just got off the boat from Glasgow comes over and tells us it’s last call. I pay him for the beers. Except for a couple of guys playing darts, we’re the only people here.

  I ask Kaela Joy, “What about MacArthur’s son?”

  “He’s a twit.”

  “I know. What’s his angle?”

  “Money. He’s going through another divorce. He has a lot of overhead. He’s already paying alimony to his first ex-wife, he has a couple of fancy vacation homes and he likes to refurbish classic sports cars. He’s a decent producer, but he fancies himself a movie director. He didn’t want to see his father’s fortune get tied up in what he called the ‘Pipe dream by the Bay.’”

  “He wants to kill the China Basin project?”

  “Absolutely. As they say in the real estate business, the numbers don’t pencil out. He didn’t want to blow his inheritance on a money-losing deal.”

  “He can back out.”

  “It will cost him millions. There is a side letter to the development agreement that makes it very expensive for anybody to pull out. He’ll get back pennies on the money his father put up and have to ante up a five million dollar penalty to the other investors.”

  “He’s stuck.”

  “Maybe not. He won’t have to pay the penalty if the deal isn’t approved.”

  “Are Ellis and Petrillo prepared to buy him out?”

  “They’d do it in a nanosecond, but they’ll have a problem. They won’t be able to find another tenant for two hundred thousand square feet before the hearing on Friday. The redevelopment agency may decide to withhold the approvals. They’re looking for a back-up tenant. In the meantime, they want to get the approvals and move forward.”

  “And if young Richard pulls out after they get the approvals?”

  “They’ll deal with it when the time comes.”

  It’s more complicated than I thought. “What are the chances they’ll get the approvals?”

  “Fifty-fifty.”

  That’s why somebody was paying gratuities to the businesses in the Mission. I ask, “Does Angelina have some say in any of this?”

  “She might. Under the will, she gets half of MacArthur’s assets, including half of the stock of MacArthur Films. They may not be able to rework the deal without her approval.”

  Sounds like Angel may have a lever. “Do you think MacArthur’s son could have killed his father?”

  “He certainly had financial motive, and they didn’t get along.”

  “Is there any evidence?”

  “He was there late and his fingerprints were on the Oscar.”

  I tell her about his visit from Carl Ellis later that night. She says she wasn’t aware of it. I ask her about Kent.

  “He was a very unhappy man. Apparently, he was never the same after his wife died. And he was pissed off about the China Basin project. He thought Ellis and Petrillo got a much better deal than they deserved. He didn’t think MacArthur Films was going to be able to meet its financial commitments. And he had personal assets at risk.”

  “Is it possible something set him off on Friday night?”

  She grins. “You never stop trying, do you? Why don’t you just come right out and ask me whether he was mad enough to have killed Dick MacArthur?”

  I bite. “Okay. I’m asking.”

  “You left out the part where he framed your client and committed suicide.”

  “That, too.”

  She rests her perfect chin on her right hand and leans across the table. She leaves no doubt when she says, “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Why would he have framed Angelina if he was going to kill himself?”

  Why indeed? I pause to regroup. Then I ask, “Was Kent trying to squelch the deal?”

  “No. He wanted to make sure it went forward.”

  This runs against everything we’ve heard so far. I ask why.

  “They had already signed the development agreement. But there was a silver lining in it for him. He had negotiated a success fee for himself. He was promised a three million dollar bonus for obtaining the approvals.”

  “I didn’t see anything about it in the development agreement.”

  “There was nothing in writing. It was a handshake. Evidently, Kent had drained most of his assets on bad investments and experimental treatments for his wife. He needed the money. There were rumors he was paying off local businesses to buy their support.”

  I play dumb. “Are the rumors true?”

  She gives me a coy look. “I don’t know. Jerry Edwards seems to think they are.”

  “And Petrillo and Ellis had nothing to do with this?”

  “Petrillo didn’t. I don’t know about Ellis.”

  It’s unrealistic to think she’d implicate her client. Yet I find it hard to believe Kent was doing this all on his own—especially if he was running low on cash. “Is it possible MacArthur’s son was involved?”

  “Maybe, although if you believe he was against the deal, I don’t think he would have been paying people off to ensure that it moved forward.”

  I’m not sure I accept the premise that Little Richard was working against the deal, although her explanation of his financial situation suggests she may be right. I ask her about Daniel Crown and Cheryl Springer.

  “Springer cares about only one thing: getting the movie released on time. She doesn’t want her husband’s money to be used to fund the China Basin project.”

  “Do you think she had something to do with MacArthur’s death?”

  “They found her fingerprints on the Oscar. She and her airhead husband left the party and drove home. Otherwise, I can’t connect her to MacArthur or to Angelina.”

  Another loose end. She looks at her watch. It’s almost two. She says, “I understand Rod Beckert decided Kent killed himself.”

  “That’s true.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I don’t know.”

 
She says, “Surely you must have a theory.”

  “Not yet. I’d like to think he killed MacArthur, framed Angelina and jumped off the bridge, but I can’t prove any of it. Until we can come up with some evidence, the police and the DA will call it a suicide.” I pause for an instant and then go fishing. “What do you think?”