“I’m surprised. She used to be a prosecutor.”
“She’s fair,” I say.
“And Catholic. Savor the victory. It won’t happen again.”
True enough.
He orders a second beer and asks, “Has my nephew started sleeping through the night?”
“Almost.”
He gives me a half-smile that represents a show of great enthusiasm for him. “You don’t make the concept of having children especially attractive,” he says.
“Since when did you start thinking about having kids?”
“Donna and I talk about it.”
Donna Andrews has been Pete’s on-again, off-again girlfriend for the last two years. She works in the accounting department of one of the big law firms and provides a modicum of order in Pete’s unpredictable schedule. They’ve talked about getting married, but they’ve both been divorced and they’re cautious. She’s turning forty this year and Pete better get busy pretty soon.
“Conceptually,” he says, “I like the idea.”
“What about down here in the real world where you have to change diapers?”
“That’s where I have a few minor problems.”
I try to avoid giving him advice on his love life. My track record is terrible and he’s never forgiven me for introducing him to his ex-wife. Nevertheless, I decide to violate my policy and offer some low-key brotherly counseling. “The benefits outweigh the sleepless nights,” I say. “Don’t wait too long.”
“I won’t.” That’s as much as he cares to hear and he returns to the matters at hand. “So,” he says, “I take it you called me down here to ask if I’d help you with Ramon’s case?”
“I did. Do you have time?”
“I can make time. Am I going to get paid?”
He’s as practical as Rosie and I play it straight. “Probably not. Our client is a priest.”
“I’d be retired if I hadn’t given away so much free time to your clients over the years.”
“I’ll put in a good word with the archbishop on your behalf.”
“Cold, hard cash would be preferable.”
“If it makes you feel better, we aren’t getting paid, either.”
“Maybe we could pass the hat around over at St. Peter’s. There was quite a crowd over there when I walked by earlier tonight.”
“They’re trying to show support for Ramon, but they don’t have a lot of money, either.”
“If I’m not going to get paid, what’s in it for me?”
“You’d be helping Ramon.”
He acknowledges that this has some merit. “What else?”
“You can dig up as much dirt as you can on the archdiocese. Think of it as your chance for payback for all of those long, miserable hours you spent in Catholic school.”
My brother never had the same affection for the Church that I did and his eyes light up. “Are you serious?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“What’s the point?”
“Concepcion was about to start a huge case against the archdiocese. I want to know who was pissed off at her.”
“You can start with the archbishop and F.X. Quinn, but I don’t think you’re going to be able to nail either of them with murder.”
“I need to cover all the bases.” And I have few other viable options at the moment.
My perceptive younger sibling offers me some solid advice. “You shouldn’t turn this into a vendetta against the Church.”
“I won’t.” I realize my tone is too emphatic when I say it.
“Come on, Mick. It’s a bad idea to let a case get personal. Are you really going after Archbishop Keane?”
“Only if it helps Ramon.”
“Okay,” he says, “I’m in. What do you know?”
He keeps a close ear on the police scanner and I throw it back. “What have you heard?”
“Concepcion was a small-time attorney who worked out of an apartment in the Mission and made a living suing the archdiocese. Her body was found in her bathtub last Tuesday morning. Her wrists had been slashed and it looked like a suicide–or a fake. They found Ramon’s fingerprints on the knife. She used to be married to the guy who is representing the archdiocese in the O’Connell case. That’s all I know.”
His information is always solid. He maintains a detached professionalism as I fill in the details and his expression turns troubled when I tell him the police found Ramon’s fingerprints on the back of Concepcion’s neck and on the handles to her bathtub faucet. The mustache starts to twitch furiously when I tell him about their relationship twenty years ago.
He takes the items in order. “How did Ramon’s prints get onto her neck?”
“He gave her a back rub.”
“Bad idea. How did his prints get onto the bathtub faucets?”
“I don’t know.”
“They don’t belong there. Was there any hanky-panky?”
“No.”
“Says who?”
“Says Ramon.”
“What about their history? Some guys never give up.”
“He did.”
He isn’t convinced. “What does Rosie think?”
“What difference does it make?”
“She has better instincts than you do.”
Thanks. “She didn’t know. She’s the lawyer in the family. Her brother is the gossip.”
“We need to nail that one down. It will look terrible if they were getting it on.”
Yes, it will. I ask him to canvas the area around Concepcion’s apartment for witnesses. “I want to know if anybody went to her apartment on the night she died. And I want you to check out her ex-husband.” He smiles when I mention Nick Hanson’s name and I tell him that I’ve already left him a message. I finish my beer and say, “I think somebody may have been following me earlier today.” I tell him about the phantom green Impala.
He frowns and says, “You want me to have somebody watch your backside?”
“That might be a good idea.”
He nods. “You may see a black Ford Explorer in your rear-view mirror starting tomorrow morning. The driver’s name is Vince and it’s the sort of thing that generally works better if you pretend he isn’t there.”
“Got it.” My brother has access to a small army of operatives who seem to materialize on short notice. I explain that Concepcion recently broke up with Eduardo Lopez. “It so happens that he’s the owner of this fine establishment.”
“Maybe we should have a little talk with him.” He summons our waitress with a big smile and asks, “Is Mr. Lopez in the building? We’re old friends.”
I love to watch my brother work. She returns the smile and says, “I’m afraid he’s at a planning commission meeting.”
Pete is undeterred. “Do you expect him back later?”
“He said he’d be in around eleven-thirty. Did you want to leave a message for him?”
“That’s okay.” Pete winks at her and says, “We may drop in to see him.”
Chapter 16
“It Became Increasingly Difficult to Deal With Her on a Rational Basis”
“The archdiocese is our largest client, but we are a full-service firm that provides the highest quality legal services to a sophisticated and diversified client base.”
— John Shanahan. San Francisco Chronicle.
John Shanahan is eyeing me with a mixture of suspicion and contempt, but his voice is pure velvet. “We appreciate everything you’re doing for Father Aguirre,” he says. “It must be very difficult for you to represent a friend and classmate.”
“It is.” And you’re completely full of shit.
Everything about the founding partner of Shanahan, Gallagher and O’Rourke is in muted tones of gray: the hair, the eyebrows, the suit and even the carpet. He’s addressing me from behind a hand-carved rosewood desk in a museum-quality corner office on the twentieth floor of the historic Russ Building, a thirty-story neo-Gothic classic at 235 Montgomery Street that was the tallest building west of
the Mississippi when it was completed in 1927, but is now dwarfed by its unsightly modern neighbors. He hasn’t slept in a day and a half as we’re meeting at seven-thirty on Wednesday night, but his appearance is still immaculate.
I try to keep my voice deferential when I say, “We’d like your help.”
He leans back in his deep leather chair and says, “We’ll make all of our resources available to you, Michael.”
Sure you will. “I understand Ms. Concepcion used to work here.”
“She did.”
“Was she a good lawyer?”
He gets a faraway look in his eyes and says, “As I recall, her reviews were quite good, but she had difficulties managing the stresses of a full workload and she elected to be taken off the partnership track.”
And she was a woman who didn’t have a big book of business who was working in a male-dominated, old-line firm. I ask him why she left.
“She was married to another attorney in the firm and things became uncomfortable after they separated.” He assures me that her departure was voluntary. “She developed an unhealthy anger toward the archdiocese that manifested itself in several unsuccessful lawsuits.”
Nice try. I point out that the papers said she’d negotiated settlements that ran well into eight figures.
“They exaggerate. None of the cases went to trial. A few were settled for modest sums.”
“How modest?”
“That’s confidential.”
We’ll see. “Father Quinn told me that you hired a private investigator named Nick Hanson to watch her.”
“He’s on retainer and it’s part of our standard procedure.”
He isn’t hiding the ball. “Did he provide any useful information about Ms. Concepcion?”
“Nothing that we didn’t already know.”
Now he’s hiding the ball.
“We wanted to see who she was talking to in preparation for the O’Connell case,” he explains. “Quite honestly, there weren’t any surprises.”
I never trust people who toss around phrases like “Quite honestly” in casual conversation. I ask him if Nick the Dick prepared a dossier about her.
He hesitates for just a beat before he decides, “Yes, he did.”
“We’d like to see it.”
Another pause. “Of course.” He buzzes his night secretary and asks her to bring a photocopy of the materials that Nick prepared. His apparent willingness to provide the information probably means there is nothing in the report that may help us. “It will serve no useful purpose to withhold information in a murder investigation,” he says.
“I appreciate your cooperation.” And I’d feel better if I actually thought you meant it. I ask him if he provided a copy to the police.
“We will if they ask us for it,” he says. “Quite honestly, we have researched the issue and we believe a private investigator’s report will be discoverable.”
I didn’t think he’d give it to them out of the pure goodness of his heart. “I trust you have no problem if we want to talk to Mr. Hanson?”
“Of course not.” He arches a gray eyebrow and adds, “After all, we’re on the same side.”
At least for the time being. “Do you happen to know what kind of car Mr. Hanson drives?”
“I’m afraid not. Why do you ask?”
“We have reason to believe that somebody may be watching us.”
The corner of his mouth turns up slightly when he says, “I can assure you that we didn’t hire a private investigator to conduct surveillance on our co-counsel.”
I’m not entirely sure that I believe him. “I wasn’t suggesting that you did. Do you have any idea who might have an interest in watching us?”
“Quite honestly,” he says, “I can’t imagine why anybody would be interested in following you. Perhaps you should ask the police.”
“I will.” We’ll see if Pete’s guy finds anybody on my tail.
When I ask him about the status of the civil case against Father O’Connell and the archdiocese, he says it’s on hold until the plaintiff can hire a new lawyer. “I’m hopeful that we may be able to settle it in the interim. I’m an optimist by nature.”
I disagree. I think you’re an asshole by nature.
“With Ms. Concepcion’s untimely death,” he says, “it may be easier to persuade the plaintiff to listen to reason. We usually take a hard line to discourage people from bringing frivolous lawsuits, but we made an exception in the O’Connell case because of the seriousness of the charges and the notoriety of the defendant. The judge ordered us into mediation, but Ms. Concepcion was unwilling to compromise. Regrettably, it became increasingly difficult to deal with her on a rational basis as we got closer to the trial date It was a disturbing case and she was an unhappy person with an axe to grind. For better or worse, civil litigation is generally driven by pure economics. If somebody thinks they’ve been wronged, they go to court and ask for money. A jury can’t fix your broken leg, but they can compensate you for it. Litigation is very risky, however, because juries are notoriously unpredictable. Most cases settle out of court because the parties know they can’t control what happens inside the jury room.”
He isn’t telling me anything I don’t already know, but it’s interesting to hear his take on the process. The cold, calculating tenor of his lecture is disturbing and dead-on accurate.
“The system collapses when one of the parties tries to use civil litigation for a purpose other than a redistribution of wealth,” he says. “Juries aren’t equipped to fix social problems.”
“And you think Ms. Concepcion was using the system for her own reasons?”
“Precisely. She refused to recognize the system’s limitations or engage in meaningful settlement discussions. She wanted juries to hand out damage awards based on raw emotion.”
And it appears she was effective. “Put yourself in her shoes,” I say. “If you were representing somebody who had been sexually assaulted by a priest, wouldn’t you use everything at your disposal?”
“Of course, but I wouldn’t allow my ego or my emotions cloud my judgment. The archdiocese cannot possibly restore the dignity of the people who have been wronged by their priests, but they can compensate them for their pain. In my view, she was attempting to generate publicity to serve her own ends.”
I point out that she donated her legal fees to charity.
“That’s all very well and good, but it wasn’t in her client’s best interests to dismiss our generous settlement offer out of hand.”
“How much?” I ask.
“That’s confidential.”
“Ballpark?”
He thinks about it for a moment before he says, “Mid-six figures.”
In the context of big-time civil litigation, a half a million bucks is chump change. “She thought she could do better in court?”
“She wanted to go to court.” His tone fills with self-righteousness. “I know it’s fashionable to bash the Church,” he says, “but the fact remains that our religious institutions hold together the moral fabric of our society. The overwhelming majority of priests do excellent work and are untainted by scandal. People like Ms. Concepcion want to bring down the institution because of the bad acts by a handful of priests.”
I ask him when he last saw her.
“We had a settlement conference last Monday afternoon. The judge tried to persuade us to increase our offer, but Father Quinn was unwilling to do so. Her opening bid was fifty million dollars, which was out of the question. It wasn’t the first time she had put forth an absurd settlement offer and we told her that we’d see her in court.”
“Did you speak to her again?”
“I talked to her around seven o’clock that evening.”
Interesting. “Where were you?”
“Here.”
“Why did she call you?”
“Actually,” he says, “I called her. I had persuaded Father Quinn to raise our settlement offer by a modest sum, but she turned us down. That w
as the last time I spoke to her.”
I ask if she seemed agitated or distraught.
“Both. It was a big case and she had difficult cards. We believe the plaintiff was getting cold feet.”
“What’s the plaintiff’s name?”
“Jane Doe.”
MD05 - The Confession Page 8
