by Steven Gore
“You see me taking notes?”
“That’s not an answer.”
“In my head unless you’re lying to me.”
Rusch stared out into the bar until he got the attention of a biker wearing a black vest and a green T-shirt with a shamrock printed on the front, then he nodded at the stool next to Donnally.
Donnally recognized the shamrock as an Aryan Brotherhood emblem. One of the first homicides he investigated was an execution of a Hell’s Angel named Irish by an Aryan Brotherhood member wearing a similar T-shirt, except with the words “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling” printed below it. He now wondered if this gang connection was the reason Rusch remembered his name and the day he was shot down. Donnally was known throughout the Aryan Brotherhood because he’d chased down scores of members, their wives, girlfriends, hangers-on, and associates and until he’d gathered enough leads to identify the killer.
The biker walked over and slipped onto the stool. He had a windburned, middle-aged face that had seen a lot of sun and grit, and teeth that had met a lot of cigarette smoke.
“You know anything about a stabbing in CMF Vacaville? Guy named Madison.” Rusch looked at Donnally. “When?”
“Little over a month ago.”
The biker rotated his chair toward Donnally and inspected him. “What’s your interest?”
Rusch cut in. “My interest.”
“He looks like a cop,” the biker said, still eyeing Donnally, but not recognizing him due to the passage of time. “Who is he?”
“He was a cop. Now he. .” Without lifting up his hand, Rusch flicked his forefinger at Donnally. “What do you do now?”
Donnally noticed that Rusch had avoided introducing him by name, probably fearing the biker would take a swing at him, with the rest jumping in, because he’d put a gang brother in prison for life.
Looking at bikers reflected in the mirror behind the bar, Donnally imagined that after the police cleared the scene on the day he was shot, some of these same men had returned to celebrate. Laughing, backslapping, high-fiving, and laying bets on whether he’d ever walk out of the hospital.
“I run a restaurant in Mount Shasta.”
“Which one?” The biker asked the question like he’d been through the town enough to catch Donnally in a lie.
“You know it,” Donnally said. “Lot of motorcycle club guys stop in on their way up to Washington and Oregon. Lone Mountain Cafe.”
The biker nodded, spun his stool around, and walked back to his table. Moments after he sat down and whispered a few words to the others at the table, one of them withdrew a cell phone and made a call. It rang a few minutes later and the biker returned.
He looked at Rusch. “Bennie Madison? The guy who-”
Rusch nodded.
The biker turned toward Donnally. “His nickname is Shitty. He refused to pay for some crystal meth he got from somebody.” The biker emphasized the last word, then paused, implying the somebody was the Aryan Brotherhood. “He was supposed to hand over some Oxycontin tablets he got from the doc.” The biker pointed at his own head. “He was milking some kind of brain thing. Scamming the hell out of it. Shitty claimed the meth was bunk-it wasn’t. And somebody couldn’t let that kind of disrespect pass.”
Chapter 12
Donnally dropped into a chair across from Ramon Navarro in the Golden Phoenix, a shotgun Chinese cafe composed of six tables, two fish tanks at the back, and a cook who doubled as the waiter, halfway between the Hall of Justice and the Mission District bar of Rudy Rusch. It was long past sunset and they figured they owed themselves both lunch and dinner. Only one other table was occupied, by an old man hunched over a bowl of soup and watched by a lobster sitting shoulder-level behind the glass.
“A waste of time,” Donnally said. “My guess is Madison knew he was dead on the case and figured he’d be dead for real in a year or two, so he sent Hamlin to threaten Rusch and extort some cash in order to cushion his fall. Maybe they split the money.”
Navarro displayed an I-was-right-about-Hamlin smirk. “So it wasn’t so pro bono after all.”
“Looks that way.”
Donnally reached for the menu standing between the napkin dispenser and the wall.
“You sure it wasn’t Rusch who sent the Aryan Brotherhood after Madison?” Navarro asked. “The rumor years ago was that they backed him in buying the bar.”
“In a credibility contest between Madison and Rusch, I’ll take Rusch. He still calls his wife The Bitch, even though saying it paints crosshairs on his forehead.”
The cook walked up. Donnally ordered chicken chow fun. He’d missed Golden Phoenix’s version of the dish, nutty, dry-fried, and spicy, during the years since he’d moved up to Mount Shasta. Since he was doing cop work, he felt like eating cop food, at least in San Francisco. Long gone were the days when officers limited themselves to a Norman Rockwell diet of burgers and fries and roast beef or turkey plate specials.
Navarro ordered the same.
“You get any prints off the money?” Donnally asked.
“Some.” Navarro reached down and withdrew a file folder from his briefcase and handed it to Donnally, who passed over copies of his cell phone research and Hamlin’s calendar. “We’ve dusted most of the bills and recovered a few prints so far. The techs are still going through them.” He pointed at the folder. “Those are the people we’ve identified so far.”
Donnally spotted Takiyah Jackson’s name, along with Hamlin’s and one he didn’t recognize.
“How’d you happen to have Jackson’s prints on file?” Donnally asked.
“She got arrested in a raid on a Black Prisoners Union hideout in the eighties.”
“Which one?”
“The one in which Bumper was killed.”
Donnally now understood why Jackson had been drawn to Hamlin. It had been one of the most notorious cases of the era. The medical examiner’s autopsy had confirmed witnesses’ testimony that the ideological leader of the Black Prisoners Union had been killed by police officers while lying facedown on his bed. Donnally guessed from then on Jackson’s world was made up of cops and cons, and she saw herself as a con.
“What was she doing there?”
“A runaway from the East Oakland housing projects. Sexually abusive father. Heroin-addicted mother. She’d been in the BPU house for a couple of days. I pulled the file when we got the match. Her real name is Jeanette. They gave her the African name Takiyah. It means righteous.”
Donnally read off the second name. “Who’s Sheldon Galen?”
“Defense lawyer. Been around San Francisco for about eight years. Shares Hamlin’s point of view, but doesn’t have his brains. Hamlin would bring him in on codefendant cases. Hamlin always took the heavy and gave Galen the lightweight and expected Galen to make sure the client didn’t turn snitch and roll on Hamlin’s guy.”
“He have a criminal history, too?”
“No. His prints were in the applicant file from when he tried to get a job in the public defender’s office.”
“If his prints were on the cash,” Donnally said, “that suggests he must’ve been the bagman, collecting the fees and bringing them to Hamlin.” He smiled. “I don’t see Hamlin handing anybody a hundred grand and then telling him to strip off a couple as his cut.”
Donnally leaned back and held the sheet against his chest as the cook delivered their plates of chow fun. The peanut-oiled noodles in brown sauce shimmered under the overhead fluorescent lights. He could tell by the aroma that nothing had changed in the kitchen of the Golden Phoenix since he’d last eaten there.
“Homicides are usually about drugs, sex, or money,” Donnally said after he walked away. “Maybe I should drop in on Galen tomorrow.”
“Let me make a few calls first and see if any of the courthouse gossips know if there was anything going on between them. Maybe a fight over a case or fees or something. Some kind of falling out. Give you something to work with.”
Donnally nodded. “It’s tough to
go after a witness cold, especially a lawyer.”
Navarro grinned. “You mean a professional questioner like yourself has no chance against a professional liar like him?”
“My professional days are long over. Now I’m just a guy who runs a cafe.”
Donnally pointed at Navarro’s plate, then took a bite from his own. They didn’t speak again until they’d gotten a few mouthfuls down.
“What did you turn up from the apartment?” Donnally asked.
“A few latents, but none from the kitchen. Somebody did a helluva clean-up job. The people in the other half of the duplex were out of town, and neighborhood canvass got us nothing at all. Hear no evil, see no evil. But we haven’t given up. We’re looking for some local kids who hang out in the park across the street at night.”
“What’s your thinking about the hairs in the bathroom and the rope left behind?”
“Maybe they got panicky or something made them rush at the end.” Navarro smiled again. “Like you used to say, nobody gets murder right the first time. It takes practice.”
“You sure this was a first time?”
“At least in terms of MO. I’ve never seen anything like it in San Francisco before.” Navarro took a sip of tea. “It’s so bizarre the loonies are all coming out. A couple of them called the tip line. Apparently a conspiracy of Martians and Scientologists did Hamlin in.”
Navarro reached into his briefcase again. Donnally expected him to take out the legitimate leads from the calls. Instead, it was his department-issued iPad. He turned it on, tapped an icon, and handed it to Donnally. It displayed a story about Hamlin’s murder on the home page of the San Francisco Chronicle.
“You’ll love this,” Navarro said, pointing at a second paragraph.
Donnally read it to himself.
“It is a monumental loss to the legal community of San Francisco,” District Attorney Hannah Goldhagen said late this morning. “We’ll miss his intelligence, his aggressive advocacy, and his humor that informed as much as it entertained. I can guarantee the people of San Francisco we will find and prosecute whoever murdered him to the fullest extent of the law.”
Donnally passed it back. “She had to say something other than good riddance. It’s Bay Area politics in its most perfect state.”
Navarro’s fists tightened on the table. “That bitch has never prosecuted anyone to the fullest extent of the law. She’s spent her whole career oiling the hinges on the revolving door.”
“And somehow I get the feeling you’re hoping whoever did Hamlin in is one of those who slipped through.”
“Yeah. With him holding it open.”
Chapter 13
Donnally noticed the letter-sized envelope protruding from under the doormat as he reached into his pocket to dig out his house keys. He bent down and rolled back the corner of the rubber pad, then squeezed the envelope by opposite edges and picked it up. The words printed on the paper inside showed through when he raised it up toward the porch light: “Follow the Money.”
What do you think I’m doing? was his first thought. His second was Who gave you the right to come to my house?
He unlocked the door of the two-story bungalow and followed the distant light through the living room and into the kitchen where Janie was working on her laptop at the table. Handwritten case notes from her psychotherapy sessions at Fort Miley lay next to it. He set the envelope on top of the newspaper lying on his side of the table, then kissed her on the forehead.
“What’s that?” she asked, pointing at the envelope.
“A love letter from somebody who’s one step behind me, but who thinks they’re one step ahead.”
“Better for you than the other way around.”
Donnally made a point of scratching his head. “I’m not sure I understand that one.”
Janie smiled. “Ever since Freud and Jung, shrinks are allowed to be cryptic and nonsensical. It adds to our aura of enlightenment.” She pointed at the chair across from her and closed the laptop lid. “Tell me about your day. All I know is what’s been on TV.” Her smile transformed into a grin. “I kind of like the title special master, especially since in San Francisco it sounds kind of sexual. Dungeons. Dominatrices. And special masters.” She raised her eyebrows. “Did they give you a little whip?”
Donnally smiled back, holding up his empty hands, and then filled her in on what had happened since he’d climbed out of their bed at 4 A.M.
“I’ve got to handle Takiyah Jackson carefully,” Donnally said when he came to the end of the story and began to think about next steps. “I’m convinced that folie a deux really does capture her relationship with Hamlin.”
“Or maybe a folie a plusieurs,” Janie said. “A madness of many. He had lots of people willing to work for him and lots of attorneys willing to work with him, like Sheldon Galen.”
Donnally narrowed his eyes at her. “How do you know about Galen?”
“He was on the news. And not easily forgotten. He has a New York accent and a face like a greyhound.”
Janie paused in thought for a moment, then said, “ ‘Madness’ may be too strong a word, but I see why you’d latch on to it.”
Donnally felt himself stiffen and his stomach tighten. The problem with having a shrink as a girlfriend is the continuing risk of getting shrunk.
Janie stared at him. He knew she was waiting for permission to say what was on her mind. He nodded.
“It’s because you can’t accept that people like Hamlin feel morally justified in what they do.”
He knew she was right.
“I think that’s why you never really understood narcotics officers who planted drugs on gangsters and then committed perjury to make the cases stick. You always believed their motives were more basic, like it was only about power. Cons playing the part of cops. Same with Hamlin, you always thought attorneys like him were motivated by greed alone and they merely disguised their motives in moral language.”
Donnally always thought one of his strengths as a detective was that he never believed either cops’ or crooks’ justifications for their criminal offenses. Rather, he saw the crimes graphically and abstractly, like moves in a game, or as forms of self-deception or as attempts to justify the unjustifiable.
Janie hadn’t known him during those years. He had been referred to her after he was shot. It wasn’t that the department thought he’d gone nuts and needed treatment. It was just a requirement of the general orders that an officer who killed a suspect in the line of duty undergo a psych evaluation. He considered it a sign of his sanity that at the first meeting he decided he’d rather date her than get shrunk by her.
She ended up doing both, starting with the dating.
“I think that’s why you sometimes sound like you operate on a kind of mechanistic and reductionist theory of homicide and view them as motivated only by drugs, sex, or money.”
It was like she’d been sitting at the next table in the Golden Phoenix listening in, but in truth it was that she’d paid close enough attention over the years to be able to tell him how he saw the world, and why he did so.
“But I’m not sure you really believe that. It’s just that thinking in terms of power, of brute causes and effects, seems more honest to you than the way your father thinks about the world.”
Donnally felt himself tense. Every time Janie started down this kind of analytic road, his past washed over him like a flash flood, the storm triggered by the mention of his father. It made him feel like he’d spent too many years circling in an eddy.
He’d become a cop as a form of rebellion, and he recognized it at the time. It had been against his filmmaker father, a man who treated fiction as more real than fact because it made possible the evasion from responsibility he’d sought for most of his life. For his father, justice had been no more than a kind of fictive irony, a subversion of cause and consequence, of effect and responsibility, because real-world justice would’ve meant facing up to what he’d done to his older son. Donnally’s old
er brother had believed the propaganda his father had created as a press officer in Saigon during the Vietnam War. His father had falsely claimed that North Vietnamese regulars had massacred a group of Buddhist monks near the DMZ, and the lie not only provoked worldwide outrage, but persuaded his brother to enlist. He learned the truth-that the killers had been Korean mercenaries working for the U.S.-just days before he was killed in an ambush.
Years later, his father became a movie director, playing out his evasions on film, and liked to say that Hollywood wasn’t a place, but an idea, while Donnally had always thought of it as no more than a patch of concrete and viewed the motives of those who worked there as more base than artistic-and his father was proof of that. After all, what was post-Vietnam Hollywood, the years in which his father first achieved fame, but an escape from reality into drugs, sex, and money.
Donnally pushed aside the memory and worked his way back to where their conversation had started, with Jackson and what had connected her to Mark Hamlin, where it began, how it grew, its character just before his death and whether it might have transformed afterward.
“What you’re saying,” Donnally said, “is that I need to understand Jackson’s transition from victim of a police crime into. .” He spread open his hands on the table. “Into what?”
“Someone whose identity was somehow tied to Hamlin’s ends-justifies-the-means mentality.”
Donnally had the feeling Janie was right. That could be the reason why Jackson could be terrified of being prosecuted for the illegal means Hamlin had chosen, but could still be loyal to him.
“Even though,” Donnally said, “whatever ends were hers over the twenty years she was with him may not have been his anymore when he died.”
“But I suspect that she doesn’t quite see it yet. And if you push her too hard, she’ll never let herself see it. It would be just too terrifying.”
Chapter 14
