Finnegan's Week (1993)

by Wambaugh, Joseph

  "Yeah? What?"

  "Tomorrow is another day."

  "That one'll have me slapping my forehead for hours," the detective said, standing up to leave. "Why didn't I think of that? Now let's see if I can accomplish something real hard, like getting past your secretary without getting spit at."

  Orson said, "If I can get them to let you read, please wear a decent outfit. That sport coat's older than Hugh Hefner and even more tacky. Don't pick your teeth with a match-book, and try to remember, Fin, tomorrow's another day."

  Before the detective exited, he said: "Fuck you, Orson, and fuck Scarlett O'Hara."

  Chapter 2

  The father of Jules Temple had always worried a great deal about Jules's emotional development, especially as his son neared adulthood. Jules's father had become conversant with certain clinical designations after Jules had been expelled from two private schools, and later when, as a college sophomore, Jules had been accused of what came to be called "date rape."

  Jules's father, Harold Temple, was a corporate lawyer whose own father had been a San Diego superior court judge, so Jules's disgrace had been particularly hard to bear, but Jules's mother had been able to compartmentalize her feelings when it came to their only child. Harold Temple had been told by more than one of his son's therapists that Jules's mother lived in a world of denial, and it continued until her death in 1977.

  Still, Jules Temple had managed to reach his twenty-fifth birthday in 1978 without having been convicted of a crime, thus satisfying the terms of his grandfather's trust. Jules then inherited $350,000 and had invested it and lived well as a real estate developer until after the Reagan years when the bottom dropped out of California's real estate-driven economy. Jules Temple then found himself broke, divorced, and back home living with his father in the Point Loma hilltop home overlooking the bay of San Diego.

  Upon the approach of his thirty-fifth birthday, Jules had had a very significant conversation with his father. It took place in the study where Harold Temple spent most of his days. The floral chintz sofa in the study had been selected by his late wife, along with a nineteenth-century walnut bench decorated with elaborate needlepoint. Harold Temple hated all of his furniture except for the ugly old mahogany desk he'd inherited from his father, the judge.

  Jules poured himself a double Scotch that evening, sensing he'd need it, and he sat down across the desk in a client chair. Jules thought it highly appropriate and very lawyerlike of the old boy to separate them with a desk. Jules couldn't remember ever having sat on his father's lap, even as a tot.

  His father was dressed in pajamas, slippers and a silk robe. The old man's hair was wispy by then, and his back was bent from arthritis. His skin had thinned and grown transparent, and in the semi-darkness Harold Temple was as vivid as a Rembrandt. The older man had suffered a stroke that left him with paralyzed facial muscles and made his speech hard to understand.

  "Son," his father had said to him on that fateful evening, "I'm extremely worried about you."

  "Really?" Jules said with his trademark wry smile. "I wonder why."

  For a moment, the father silently studied the son. Jules was blond like the Temples, tall and good-looking. Harold Temple was certain that his son was quite intelligent though he hadn't had decent grades since he'd been a seventh grader. Jules was a good golfer and sometimes played in tournaments at the La Jolla Country Club where Harold Temple had been a longtime member, and Jules frequently sailed at the San Diego Yacht Club. In short, Harold Temple believed that Jules had everything needed for success, but his son was a failure by any measure whatsoever.

  "I've been reading a lot," Harold Temple began awkwardly.

  "Hot novels, Dad?" Jules took a large swallow of Scotch and grinned wryly.

  "This thing . . . this stroke that I've suffered, it's made me think a lot about you, about your . . . personality. In case ... if something should happen to me I'd like to know that you'll be all right."

  Then Harold Temple stared into his son's eyes, dreading that he'd see a flicker of anticipation. Fearing that Jules would say, "Is there any danger, Dad?" with mock concern.

  But Jules said nothing. Jules was, as usual, noncommittal, uninvolved.

  His father continued: "I've had a certain worry for a long time, long before your marriage. Before your business went sour. About your personality and character."

  "What about it?"

  "You're clever and charming, but manipulative, Jules. You've always been like that. You were always the coolest one in the house every time you got into trouble, when your mother and I were yelling our heads off."

  "A young man sowing wild oats," Jules said, finishing the Scotch and standing to refill his glass.

  "Not always," his father said, thinking of the coed upon whom Jules had forced himself. That one had cost Harold Temple $50,000 through an intermediary, until the girl and her family agreed not to prosecute. "I think you've never had enough self-doubt to yell or get emotional about anything."

  "What are you getting at?" Jules asked.

  "It's that I've never sensed a feeling of . . . shame in you."

  "Shame?"

  "Or guilt or remorse. I must say, not ever."

  "Shame about what? Guilt about what? About the fact that my development company went broke? Should I feel shame about hard economic times? I tried, didn't I? I risked my capital. What do you want from me?"

  "I wasn't talking about that, son," Harold Temple said, and then his left leg started to shake. This had been happening a lot, a trembling of his limbs that he couldn't control.

  "What then?"

  "There are . . . terms for people who don't have empathy, who don't understand how their actions can hurt other people."

  "Other people? What other people?"

  "Your wife. Your child."

  With a trace of a sneer: "Ex-wife, the bitch."

  "She's the mother of your child."

  "I see my child. I see Sally every chance I get," Jules said. "I'd send checks if I had any money!"

  Harold Temple knew it was a he, but he continued: "I worry that there's not a complete person inside you. You haven't outgrown a certain . . . incompleteness."

  "I see," Jules said, looking past his father at the portrait of his grandfather on the wall. "What crimes am I guilty of? What have I done that's so terrible?"

  "Call it a certain . . . moral insensitivity," the older man said, in great distress. "You haven't been involved in criminal activity, thank god, but ..."

  "You think I'm capable of it. That I'll disgrace you."

  "Jules, I've heard stories about the investors in your development company. Your actions bordered on criminal fraud."

  "They lost, I lost, we all lost. Sour grapes, hard times. What else, Dad? Let's get all my faults out on your desk so we don't miss anything."

  "This isn't easy for me, son."

  "For me this is a picnic, right? All this psychobabble. "

  "This isn't getting us anywhere, Jules," his father said, "so I might as well tell you that I've had my will rewritten. When I die you're getting an allowance of two thousand dollars a month for five years. And that's it."

  "And the house?"

  "No house, no property of any kind, no insurance. No more than two thousand a month for five years. You won't starve, but you'll have to get off your butt and make something of yourself."

  "And where does the balance of your estate go?"

  "To various charities."

  Jules put the glass on his father's desk, then turned and headed for the door of the study. But he paused and said, "Thanks, Dad. Thanks for giving me everything, and then taking it away. You've been swell. And please don't tell me it's for my own good."

  "I wouldn't tell you that, Jules," Harold Temple said. "Not anymore."

  "Maybe I should just move out now," Jules said, and was shocked when his father replied, "That might be a good idea. Get out on your own and start scratching like everyone else has to do."

  That e
vening Harold Temple wrote his son a check for $5,000. He called it "seed money." And that was that.

  Jules packed his things and left the next morning, moving in with Margie, a divorced cocktail waitress he'd been dating. She said he could stay until he got on his feet. It was while living with her, after he'd grown desperate,, that Jules Temple again became an entrepreneur.

  The idea came to him when he was babysitting for Margie, who had the late shift at a nightclub in downtown San Diego's Gaslamp Quarter. He'd spent night after miserable night in front of the TV, drinking the cheap Scotch that Margie bought at discount outlets. Margie's seven-year-old daughter, Cynthia, had been begging him to play dolls with her when it happened: the idea!

  He'd heard of the pedophile's motto: "Eight is too late." Cynthia was only seven, but she looked even younger. She was very pretty, but not a terribly bright child, not nearly as bright as Jules's own daughter had been at that age. Cynthia was a lot like her mother, he thought.

  The next day Jules was in several adult magazine and book shops in downtown San Diego looking for chickenhawk and pedophile publications. When he got back to the apartment, he studied many photos of naked children in provocative poses. Then he homed in on the ads in those publications to learn how they were set up.

  Later that evening when Margie was at work, Jules suggested to Cynthia that they play "movie star."

  "You have to promise me that you won't tell Mommy," he said. "Cross your heart. It's our secret."

  "Okay," the child said, and obeyed her director's instruction to the letter.

  Jules did her makeup as best he could, using Margie's cosmetics. He believed that scant clothing would be more titillating than nudity, so he posed her in panties and ballet slippers, trying to imitate the young models. Essentially, he wanted a seven-year-old Madonna.

  Jules knew that he didn't dare have more than one photo session because Cynthia might accidentally spill the beans. By the time that Cynthia had informed her mother of Jules's "movie star" game, Margie had already kicked him out for making long-distance calls, lots of long-distance calls all over the country that he said were "just business." Margie never understood that his business intimately concerned her daughter.

  Jules had bought ad space in three pedophile publications. His ad included a photo of the child and listed a post office box in downtown San Diego. Within two weeks, more than sixty pedophiles had responded in letters directed to "Samantha's Uncle."

  Almost all the pedophiles used post office boxes of their own, or general delivery, and within days each would receive glossy photos of the little girl. Along with the photos was a typed letter:

  Dear Sir, My name is Samantha. I am six years old and have been taught many things that will please you. If you would like to meet me and learn what I can do3 please call my Uncle Desmond any time between 10:00 A. M. and 2:00 P. M. PST.

  Love, Samantha

  Jules Temple went to the trouble of switching his answering service every two months during a year in which letters were exchanged with pedophiles as far away as Alaska. He ultimately received more than two hundred phone calls, and decided that nearly half of them were worth tape-recording surreptitiously.

  During the pedophile's recorded conversations with "Uncle Desmond," Jules would usually manage to solicit a callback number, and surprisingly, the caller often gave his true name and address when asking for more photos, this after long and lascivious conversations with Uncle Desmond about Samantha.

  Shortly thereafter, selected "Friends of Samantha" would receive a small parcel from Uncle Desmond which they would excitedly open, only to find an audiotape rather than more photos. On the audiotape would be the caller's own voice recorded during his lewd conversation with Uncle Desmond wherein he'd negotiated terms for the use of Samantha. The conversations included specific questions and answers about all the things Uncle Desmond had taught the little girl. There wasn't a caller who wasn't stunned to hear how explicit his own excited phone call had been.

  At the end of the tape would be a message from Uncle Desmond that varied slightly, depending upon how much Jules had been able to learn during his conversation and correspondence with the pedophile, and how much Jules sensed the pedophile was worth. The message was:

  Hi (using the caller's name). I have several more copies of this tape which I am considering sending to your local police department, as well as to the FBI and to your local newspaper. I might even include a copy to your closest relative. I think you know who I mean, don't you? I shudder to think what your family and friends will say when they hear your own voice telling me what you want Samantha to do to you and how much you are willing to pay for it.

  You are very lucky that I happen to need money at the moment. If you will immediately send cash in the amount of (this would vary), I will send you the duplicate audiotapes of your phone conversation telling Uncle Desmond what you intend to do to this helpless little six-year-old. I'd better hear from you by next week.

  Jules Temple would often go so far as to hire a street person to pick up envelopes from his post office box and carry them to his car parked a safe distance away. But finally, Jules decided that he needn't have gone to such lengths. He was always overestimating people, and in this case he'd overestimated the authorities. About half a dozen pedophiles summoned up the nerve to go to the police and admit to being extortion victims, but the police and postal authorities had never got to a post office box that hadn't already been closed.

  In that one year, Jules made $123,000 (tax free, of course) before the pedophile publications began printing warnings about Uncle Desmond. Cynthia's photos ended up in the files of several law enforcement agencies, but never were traced back to her or to her mother.

  During that same year Jules Temple's father died after his second stroke, having kept his word to leave his son a stipend only. Jules did not visit his comatose father in the hospital, claiming he was too busy expanding his capital base. Having acted upon a hot tip from a country club acquaintance, Jules had invested the money in a mismanaged waste hauling company, a business field that was opening up with unlimited possibilities for someone like himself. Jules called his company Green Earth Hauling and Disposal.

  One of Jules's first moves as a waste hauler was to form a corporation with a bogus president, in this case a former real estate agent of Mexican descent who'd worked for Jules in land development. Raul Medina drew a salary of $1,500 a month for doing nothing more than signing documents from time to time. Raul Medina never set foot in Green Earth Hauling and Disposal, spending most of his time at home nursing a chronic back problem.

  Jules owned forty-nine percent of the stock in the Green Earth corporation and the other fifty-one percent was "owned" by Raul Medina. All of the trucks, equipment, and material assets were transferred to the company by Jules, who took back a note from Raul Medina for twice the assets' value. Jules subleased the property to the company for twice what he paid to his landlord, and siphoned off all profits except for the $1,500 a month that Raul Medina received.

  Because of Raul Medina's Hispanic surname, Jules had been able to secure government contracts that non-minority haulers could not get. And Jules was often contracted to haul hazardous material from military bases, some of which came from military facilities halfway around the world.

  The generator of hazardous waste would list in the Environmental Protection Agency's "cradle to grave" numbered documents what the contents of the waste consisted of. The waste could then theoretically be easily traced from the generator of the waste, through the transporter, and finally to the disposal facility. Ultimately, the disposal facility was supposed to inform the EPA when the waste was incinerated or otherwise destroyed.

  Four years later, after Jules found a promising buyer for his business, he and Raul Medina signed documents wherein the major stockholder paid off all notes and commissions to the minor stockholder, receiving nothing from the sale. But Raul Medina had no complaints. The $1,500 a month had been nice while it las
ted, and Jules promised him that if his next commercial endeavor could benefit by minority preference, Jules and Raul Medina could make a similar arrangement.

  Green Earth Hauling and Disposal had prospered because Jules Temple was a businessman who quickly discovered ways to cut corners in order to avoid the red tape inherent in this industry. Some of the ways in which he did that were exotic, some were quite simple, but Jules seldom tried to cut corners with military waste, not unless it could be ascertained that it could be safely mixed with other waste he was hauling. Safely for Jules only meant that it would be untraceable to him.

  Sometimes, Jules just couldn't resist saving time and money with the waste generated by civilian companies, such as one called South-bay Agricultural Supply. The owner of the company was an ex-farmer named Burl Ralston who was making a lot more money selling supplies than he'd ever made on his sorry hundred-acre farm in the Imperial Valley. Burl Ralston was not a man for unnecessary paperwork and he was not one to ask a lot of questions, not when Jules Temple was consistently able to undercut the competition with his hauling bids, thus saving money for Burl Ralston.

  Southbay Agricultural Supply and Green Earth Hauling and Disposal had just struck a deal whereby Jules Temple's employees would pick up a fifty-five-gallon drum full of something very toxic: Guthion. The pesticide had been consigned to a customer in Arizona, but had got mixed inadvertently with a small amount of weed oil, so it had to be disposed of ASAP. Jules Temple's low bid was for $500 to haul the Guthion, but as frequently happened with Jules, he wanted cash from Burl, to be given in an envelope to the driver. Green Earth's truckers were accustomed to receiving cash, and after successful transactions, Jules often would slip a $20 bill to the trucker as a "bonus" for good work.

  From Jules's point of view, he could not afford to haul extremely hazardous waste if he had to transport it to a Texas incinerator for legal disposal, so he decided that item #11 on the manifest should list the Guthion as "waste flammable liquid." That way it could be hauled to a disposal site at a Los Angeles oil refinery when Jules had another load heading that way.