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Nicole Ward’s tone is irritatingly deferential. “I’m so sorry to hear about the fire,” she says. “I hope everything is going to be all right.”
I assure her, too, that we’re fine.
Not a strand of hair is out of place as she leans on the delicate elbows that she’s placed on her broad desk at one o’clock on Friday afternoon. She’s just returned from a fund-raising luncheon at the Fairmont for the governor and she looks relaxed in a chic cream-colored silk blouse with a dark blue scarf. The fact that we’re starting a preliminary hearing in a high-profile murder case three days from now appears to have no substantial bearing on her demeanor. Then again, her office didn’t go up like a bedsheet last night. Her patronizing tone becomes even more grating when she says, “Have they been able to determine the cause of the fire?”
“The fire inspectors are looking into it.”
“We’ll understand if you need to delay Monday’s prelim.”
“We’ll be ready to go.”
So much for the feigned compassion. “I saw you on Mornings on Two,” she says. “Have you found anybody who saw Ms. Concepcion at Mr. Lopez’s restaurant last Monday night?”
“Not yet.”
“You’ll keep us informed?”
“We will.”
Her stylish clothing and confident air are a stark contrast to those of her subordinate, Bill McNulty, who is wearing a rumpled Men’s Wearhouse suit and is sitting in one of the chairs adjacent to her desk. Johnson and Banks are standing behind him. Rosie and I are on the sofa and Quinn and Shanahan have assumed defensive postures directly across from us. You can tell the pecking order from the seating arrangements: the lawyers get to sit, but the cops have to stand.
“You called this meeting,” Ward says. “What did you want to talk about?”
This is not a time for subtlety. “We think you should seriously consider dropping the charges and reopening the investigation.”
Banks and Johnson exchange a quick glance, but they remain silent. McNulty’s eye-roll is more pronounced, but he stays quiet, too. This is Ward’s office and it’s her show. The corner of her mouth turns up slightly and she responds with a sugary, “We think you should seriously consider taking more realistic positions.”
“Hear me out. We’ve found a witness who is prepared to testify that she spoke to Ms. Concepcion at ten-thirty last Monday night. We’ve obtained a written statement from her that proves Ms. Concepcion was still alive after Father Aguirre left her apartment.” Thankfully, the statement was in Rosie’s briefcase and didn’t burn up in the fire.
No reaction. “We’ve talked to Ms. Doe,” she says calmly. “You’re welcome to put her on the stand, but she’s a convicted hooker and druggie who is selling her testimony to the highest bidder. She would have told us anything we wanted to hear if we’d agreed to drop the solicitation charge. We aren’t in the business of trading information for testimony–especially from an unreliable witness.”
They do it all the time.
“Moreover,” she adds, “we’ll crucify her on cross-exam.”
Either she is truly unconcerned about Doe’s testimony or she’s bluffing. You never want to use a heavy hand with a witness who is also a victim. “If I were in your shoes,” I say, “it would bother me that a witness is prepared to testify that the victim was very much alive a half hour after our client was supposed to have murdered her.”
“You aren’t in my shoes and you can’t corroborate her story. We confirmed that a call was placed from Lopez’s restaurant at ten-thirty last Monday night to a payphone at the Mitchell Brothers, but we have no way of proving that Ms. Concepcion initiated it or that Ms. Doe answered. And besides–”
And here she smiles. She only does that when she’s about to pounce. I hate it when she smiles.
“–it doesn’t matter anyway.”
Huh? “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about the fact that we have a witness who can place your client back at the scene, later that night.”
What? “Who?”
“Nick Hanson. He saw your client walking back to Ms. Concepcion’s apartment . . . at a quarter to twelve.”
Chapter 37
“Indeed I Am”
“The longer I do this job, the more I realize there’s no substitute for hard work.”
— Nick Hanson. San Francisco Chronicle.
Fior D’Italia is a crowd-pleasing North Beach classic that opened its doors in 1886 and now caters mostly to tourists. Despite the occasionally-snippy waiters and the brusque service, the food is bountiful and at times, excellent. The aroma of tomato sauce and mozzarella fills the elegant dining room as Nick the Dick Hanson shoots to his feet and greets me with a broad smile and a warm handshake at nine o’clock on Friday night. Ever the man about town, the diminutive octogenarian has a fresh rose on his lapel that’s a perfect match for his red face, and his new charcoal toupee complements his double-breasted Armani.
“How the hell have you been, Mike?” he croaks. It’s his standard greeting, but you manage to suspend disbelief long enough to think he actually means it.
“Just fine, Nick,” I say.
“Sorry to hear about the fire.”
“Thanks.” We took a quick and depressing tour of what’s left of our office earlier this evening. The smoke and water did more damage than the flames, and little is salvageable. We’ll be working out of Rosie’s living room for the foreseeable future.
“You aren’t pulling out of the Aguirre case, are you?”
He’s never backed away from a fight and neither will I. “Of course not.”
“Good man.”
“So,” I say, “I understand you’ve been keeping pretty busy.”
He arches a bushy gray eyebrow and says, “Indeed, I have.”
So have I. Our less-than-satisfactory visit with Nicole Ward was followed by a heated conversation with our client in which he admitted he went for a walk in the vicinity of Concepcion’s building late last Monday night, but he vehemently denied that he re-entered her apartment. He said he had forgotten to drop off some flyers for a church function earlier that evening and he left a stack by her back door. There was no record of any such materials in the police inventory, and his story sounded a bit forced. Then we got another earful from Quinn and Shanahan, who reiterated their displeasure that they’re duty-bound not to reveal the possibility that Ramon may be the father of Concepcion’s unborn child, and who made it abundantly clear that there would be serious repercussions if it turns out that he is. You can’t please everybody. Next, Pete, Rosie and I spent six fruitless hours pounding on doors in the vicinity of Concepcion’s apartment, but not a soul saw her out for a stroll last Monday night. We’d just finished another friendly chat with Preston Fuentes, who’d told us in no uncertain terms that he wouldn’t talk to us again until we show up with a carburetor.
As always, tonight’s festivities begin with appetizers and the ceremonial recitation of the accomplishments of Nick’s children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Nick does all the reciting and the bullshit flows as freely as the Chianti. He reports that the four generations of Hansons who work at his agency are doing well, and that he’s especially proud of his great granddaughter, Dena, who will start law school at USF next fall if she can pry herself away from answering the phones at her great grandpa’s business.
Our salads arrive next, and Nick shoves a plate of tomatoes in front of me. “You need vegetables,” he insists, “and more protein. I’ve been on the Atkins Diet for sixty years. I could have made a mint if I’d started writing diet books instead of mysteries.” He’s still going strong at eighty-eight and he must be doing something right. He says his latest novel has been optioned to Hollywood, although he expresses disappointment that Danny DeVito will not reprise his role in the lead. “Bruce Willis is interested,” he says. “He wants to give it more of an action-adventure feel.”
I can see it now: Nick the Dick Dies Har
d.
Our entrees arrive at ten o’clock, but he’s still warming up. Dinner with Nick is like getting married–it requires a commitment. I nibble at my petrale as he cuts his veal scaloppini in half and passes his plate over to me. “Try it,” he says. “You need to keep your strength up.” He orders a second helping for himself. “I’ve always had fast metabolism,” he explains.
The former welterweight boxer played baseball on the North Beach Playground with his boyhood pal, Joe DiMaggio, and ran the grueling seven-and-a-half mile Bay to Breakers race in May for a record sixty-ninth straight year. He tells me he’s training for the Dipsea Race that starts in Mill Valley and goes over Mount Tam to Stinson Beach. “A ninety-four-year-old guy ran it last year,” he says. “I’m going to beat him.”
I don’t doubt it.
The restaurant is packed and I can hear the clock in the bell tower at St. Peter and Paul’s around the corner chiming eleven times when Nick finally finishes his second helping of veal, drains what’s left of his third glass of wine and orders dessert. He sounds like Edward G. Robinson when he says, “So, did your guy do it?”
It’s taken two hours and a couple of pounds of veal, but we’re finally getting to the good stuff. “No, he didn’t,” I tell him. “I know this guy. He’s clean.”
“Whatever you say.” He motions to the waiter, who brings him a double espresso. Nick doesn’t drink decaf.
“I understand you’re involved in the O’Connell matter.”
“Indeed I am.”
“Was he clean?”
“Indeed he was not.”
It takes all of my self-control not to start mimicking him. “Can they prove it?”
“No way. It’s going to be Doe’s word against his. Doe’s a whore, and he’s dead.”
Ever the consummate professional. “He can’t defend himself,” I say.
“He’s better off. When he was still alive, the trial was going to be about him. Now the trial is going to be about her. The archdiocese paid me a bundle to dig up some dirt about her, and it wasn’t hard. I was able to persuade a couple of vice cops to pick her up a few weeks ago on a solicitation rap. Her credibility is shot.”
Doe was right: her arrest was a set-up.
Nick is still talking. “Father O’Connell had a propensity for offering counseling services to attractive young women who came to mass at St. Boniface. It so happens that a lot of those sessions took place at the Mitchell Brothers.”
“I take it this included illicit sex with his parishioners?”
“Indeed it did.” He washes down his cheesecake with a healthy shot of espresso, then he absent-mindedly adjusts his toupee. “They’ll never be able to prove it. Doe is the only witness and she’s a druggie.”
Nick Hanson has many virtues, but diplomacy isn’t one of them.
“She’s a Catholic girl from the Sunset whose father molested her and beat the crap out of her alcoholic mother,” I say. “It won’t play well if Ward and McNulty try to nail her.”
“She’s a lap dancer. That doesn’t make her a very credible witness in my book.”
Mine either. “Give her a break, Nick. She’s been through a lot.”
“This is just business,” he says. “I’ve been on retainer for the archdiocese for four decades. Shanahan asked me to get some dirt on her and I did. Do you think I got any pleasure spending day after day at the Mitchell Brothers?”
I don’t think he’s really expecting me to answer.
“I feel sorry for her,” he says, “but I’m not a social worker. I hope she gets herself straightened out and finds something more productive to do with her life.”
I ask him if he had anybody watching her last Monday night.
“My son, Rick, was keeping an eye on her at the theater.”
“Did she receive a phone call?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t go backstage.”
I ask if he bugged Doe’s room or her phone.
“No. It’s against archdiocese policy. Jerry Edwards would nail them if they tried it.”
Yes, he would. “Where were you last Monday night?”
“On the roof of the garage across the alley from the back door of Concepcion’s apartment.” Another one of his sons, Nick, Jr., was watching the front door. “For the record,” he adds, “we didn’t bug her apartment or her phone, either.”
I’m inclined to take his word for it. I ask him how long he’d been watching her.
“For about six months. Lopez’s wife hired me to watch her husband, who was seeing Concepcion at the time. She got really pissed off when I told her that her husband was cheating.”
Always a pillar of decorum. “Enough to murder his mistress?”
“No. Just enough to take him to the cleaners in their divorce.”
“Are you still working for her?”
“Yeah. She wants me to keep an eye on him until the divorce is final. He isn’t seeing anybody now, but just wait a few days. You can’t paint new spots on an old dog.”
I ask him about Concepcion’s break-up with Lopez.
“It was one for the ages. She read him the riot act when she found out he was boinking the hostess from the restaurant.”
That would be Mercedes Trujillo. “She broke up with him?”
“Definitely.”
“How do you know?”
“I heard everything.”
“You just said you didn’t bug her apartment.”
“I didn’t. I bugged Lopez’s office.”
I’m confused. “You said that violates archdiocese policy.”
“It does. I was acting on behalf of Mrs. Lopez.”
You can’t tell the players without a scorecard.
“Among other things,” he continues, “she took a swing at him with his Orlando Cepeda autographed bat, and he’s lucky she didn’t connect. She took a chunk out of one of the towers of the Riordan Square model. They didn’t see each other again.”
I tell him that the phone records indicated that Concepcion placed a call to Lopez’s restaurant at nine-fifty-one on the night she died. “Did she talk to him?”
“She didn’t.”
“How do you know?”
“We bugged his phone, too.”
I love it. “Did you bug anybody else’s phone?”
“No.”
“Do you think he was pissed off enough about their break-up to have killed her?”
“He’s a dick, but he’s not a murderer.”
Nick’s a good judge of character. On to a more important question. “Did you see her leave her apartment that night?”
“Yes.”
Yes! “What time was that?”
“About twenty minutes after ten.”
Perfect. “You realize Father Aguirre left her apartment at ten o’clock.”
“I saw him leave.”
Excellent. “Do you know where she went?”
“No, but she returned about twenty minutes later.”
It’s plenty of time for her to have walked over to Lopez’s restaurant and made a phone call to Doe. I ask him why he didn’t follow her.
“I couldn’t get down from the roof without being seen.”
Good enough. “I can understand why you were watching Doe, but why did the archdiocese ask you to keep an eye on her attorney?”
“Belt-and-suspenders lawyering. They wanted to discredit the messenger–especially if she was a depressed, quasi-suicidal loon who had a grudge against the archdiocese.”
“Was she?”
“Not really, but that’s the portrait we’re going to present to the press. We were able to take a look at her file in her shrink’s office. She was unhappy and on medication, but she wasn’t any loopier than the two of us.”
The fact that Nick was able to study Concepcion’s file at her therapist’s office with complete impunity is more than a little disturbing.
He adds, “I’m not prepared to testify about the contents of that file.”
“Understood.” We�
��ll ask the shrink about it.
“She was also becoming a monumental pain in the ass who was hell-bent on tweaking her ex-husband and her old law firm. She filed dozens of suits against the archdiocese. She never beat them in court, but Quinn and Shanahan were getting tired of explaining it to the archbishop. They settled a few cases for a couple of million bucks. In the grand scheme of things, that isn’t a helluva lot of dough when you’re talking about priests who did creepy things.”
MD05 - The Confession Page 21
