“Yes. She said her lawyers would deal with it.”
# # #
“Derek was at home last night,” Julie insists.
“How do you know?” Rosie asks.
“Because he told me.” Julie glares at us from her seat on the sofa in her living room. She’s clearly in no mood to be questioned about the details of her extramarital relationship. “Surely you could be spending your time more productively than harassing Derek.”
“Why didn’t you tell us Dr. Newsom had words with Jack?”
“It’s a non-issue.”
“He took a swing at him.”
“No, he didn’t. Derek was upset when he found Jack’s PI rummaging through his trash. I don’t blame him. He told Jack to knock it off. I made a similar request through my attorney. End of story.”
“We have no way of verifying his whereabouts after you left his house last night,” Rosie observes.
“Are you having trouble hearing me? I told you Derek said he was at home all night.”
“That isn’t good enough.”
“It’s good enough for me.”
21/ THIS GETS A LITTLE WEIRD
Saturday, June 18, 9:45 p.m.
“How long have you been watching Judge Fairchild?” Rosie asks.
Kaela Joy Gullion takes a long draw from her pint of Guinness. Julie’s PI is a striking brunette who flashes the polished smile that used to appear regularly in fashion magazines. “On and off for the past year,” she says. “Julie hired me to find out if Jack was cheating.”
“Was he?”
“Absolutely.”
Pete joins us at the small table in the back of Dunleavy’s, a bluecollar saloon on Judah Street that looks exactly the same as it did when my great-uncle opened it sixty years ago. We used to live around the corner at Twenty-third and Kirkham. My father helped build the long bar that’s still in working order. The current proprietor is my uncle, Big John Dunleavy, a gregarious soul who was married to my mother’s sister for almost a half-century, until she died a few years ago. Big John used to throw darts with my dad in the back room every night to help him unwind after his long days on the beat. He still lives a few blocks from here.
“Why did Julie wait so long to file divorce papers?” Rosie asks.
“Human nature,” Kaela Joy says. “She tried to keep things together for the boys. She tried counseling. Eventually, she ran out of patience.”
“We understand things got quite acrimonious.”
“It was a nightmare.”
“How well do you know her?”
“Pretty well. She isn’t easy to deal with, but she’s a straight shooter. She’s also smart enough to understand the cops will consider her a suspect until they can rule her out. I told her to lawyer up and be cooperative. She’s given her statement to Roosevelt Johnson.”
I ask about Julie’s relationship with Derek Newsom.
Kaela Joy takes another sip of her beer. “I think Julie would acknowledge it wasn’t an inspired choice on her part. Then again, it isn’t the first time this sort of thing has happened.”
“She’s very protective of him.”
“She likes him.”
So it seems. “What do you know about him?”
“He’s a promising surgeon. He’s also clean. No arrests. No bad habits. Nothing.”
“We understand he had words with Jack last week.”
“So I’ve heard. I wasn’t there.”
“Dr. Newsom told us he was at home last night.”
“I have no reason to disbelieve him. He doesn’t get out much.”
“We haven’t been able to find anybody who can corroborate his story.”
“You probably won’t. He lives by himself.”
“What about Jack’s PI?”
“Jack fired him after Newsom caught him snooping around in his trash.”
“You realize we can’t rule Newsom out as a potential suspect.”
Kaela Joy downs the rest of her beer in a single gulp. “Look, I know that it’s your job to try to deflect the blame away from your client. If necessary, you’ll point a finger at Julie’s boyfriend.”
“Only if we have evidence.” Or we’re desperate.
“You might even try to implicate Julie.”
Only if we’re even more desperate. “We have no desire to try to prove our client’s innocence by blaming his mother,” I say. “We’ve talked to several people at the hospital who have confrmed that Julie was there from eleven o’clock last night until three o’clock this morning. That appears to rule her out.”
The worldly PI gives me a knowing look. “Let’s be honest, Mike. You wouldn’t hesitate to throw Julie or her boyfriend under a bus if you had to.”
True enough. “I hope it won’t be necessary. Any chance you were watching Jack last night?”
“As a matter of fact, I was.”
This is good news. “We’ve verifed that he left the Bohemian Club at ten forty-five. We believe he was supposed to see his mistress, Christy Evans. She told us he never got there.”
“He didn’t.”
“Do you know where he went?”
“This gets a little weird.”
“How?”
“In addition to seeing Christy, it seems that Judge Fairchild was into some, uh, more exotic forms of recreation. After he left the Club, he went to the Sunshine Massage Spa in the Tenderloin.”
This is more than weird. It’s bizarre. The Tenderloin is a seedy twenty-block enclave west of Union Square where drugs, prostitution, and homelessness are rampant. “Is the Sunshine an AAMP?” I ask.
“Yes.”
AAMP is the acronym for an Asian Apartment Massage Parlor. Such upstanding establishments are frequently run by sex traffickers. From the outside, they look like run-down apartment buildings. On the inside, they’re staffed by sex workers from Asia—many of them underage. The girls speak limited English and are heavily indebted to their pimps. Their lives are highly regulated, and they’re too scared to admit they’re being held against their will. In a surrealistic twist, many of the AAMPs are licensed by the city. The cops tend to look the other way unless somebody complains—which doesn’t happen very often.
“He was a judge,” I say. “He had a family. He had a mistress. He had plenty of money. Couldn’t he have found a more upscale brothel?”
Kaela Joy shrugs. “Evidently, he had a thing for young Asian girls. He was willing to pay a substantial premium.”
This is beyond weird—it’s sick. “How long has this been going on?”
“At least a couple of months.”
“How often did he go to the Sunshine?”
“A couple of times a week.”
“Does Christy know about it?”
“Probably not.”
“What about Julie?”
“Of course.” She arches an eyebrow. “The next phase in the divorce proceeding was going to be very interesting.”
I’ll bet. I’m reluctant to ask the next question, but I need to know the answer. “Do the boys know about it?”
“As far as I know, Julie hasn’t told them about it—yet.”
Which means, in addition to everything else, they’re about to find out that their father—a hard-line, law-and-order judge—frequented a massage parlor that provided underage girls who were probably brought here illegally. And with the tacit approval of our local government, no less. “How did he pick the Sunshine?” I ask.
Kaela Joy’s tone is business-like. “There are dozens of AAMPs in the City. He probably got a referral from somebody he knew. Or maybe he checked it out on myredbook.com.”
“What the hell is that?”
“A website dedicated to reviewing and ranking sex workers on a one to ten scale. It lets first-time customers—including judges—comparison shop from the comfort of their own homes before they venture out to their local sex parlor. It’s very popular.”
Turns out there’s more to the Bay Area technology industry than Google and Cr
aigslist. “What time did Jack get to the Sunshine?” I ask.
“A few minutes after eleven. He took care of business quickly. He left at a quarter to twelve.”
“I take it you didn’t follow him inside?”
“That’s correct.”
“Do you know the name of his masseuse?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Any chance somebody at the Sunshine was angry at the judge?”
“I wouldn’t know. It seems unlikely he owed them money. It’s strictly a pay-as-you-go operation.”
No doubt. “Where did he go from there?”
“Straight home.”
“Did you follow him?”
“Yes. He got home at midnight.” She says he drove into his garage and closed the garage door behind him with his remote.
“Did you stick around to keep his house under surveillance?”
“Nope. I had everything I needed.”
So it would seem. “Did you see Bobby?”
“Nope.”
“Did you see anybody else?”
“You mean like somebody with a bloody shirt who looked guilty as hell?”
“Preferably.”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Did you notice anything out of the ordinary?”
“There was a gray Crown Vic parked illegally in front of the fire hydrant on the corner of Grattan and Belvedere. I hadn’t seen it before.”
“Was anybody inside?”
“No.”
“Did you happen to pick up a license plate number?”
“There weren’t any plates.”
“Any chance it was an unmarked police car?”
“I don’t think so. There was also a truck from Bayview Towing double-parked on Grattan down near Cole. I could barely squeeze around it when I was driving home.”
“Was anybody inside?”
“No.”
“Have you talked to the cops about this?”
“Of course. I gave them a statement. I have a policy of cooperating with the police.”
The good news is Judge Fairchild was still very much alive at midnight—which means we can cut off the first fifteen minutes of the window of opportunity determined by Rod Beckert. The bad news is we still don’t know what happened at the judge’s house after Kaela Joy left.
# # #
“More coffee, lad?” Big John Dunleavy was born and raised in the Mission, but he can summon a lilting Irish brogue at will.
“No thanks, Big John,” I say.
My uncle has been known as Big John since he was a kid. He topped off at six four and two hundred and forty pounds in the eighth grade. He developed his massive hands by lugging beer kegs up from the basement of his father’s bar. He would have played college football if he hadn’t blown out a knee in the all-city championship game as a senior at St. Ignatius.
“You’re looking pretty grim,” he observes.
“Rough day,” I reply.
“I’ll bet. I saw you on TV. You seem to have your hands full.”
“Yep.”
“That Kaela Joy Gullion is still quite a looker,” he says.
“Yes, she is.”
Big John turns to Rosie and lays on the charm. “Not as beautiful as you, darlin’.”
He gets the smile he was hoping for. “Thanks, Big John.”
“Why the long faces?”
“Well,” Rosie says, “we just found out that our client’s father—a distinguished judge—had a fetish for underage Asian sex slaves.”
“Nice. That would be the father of the boy who has been accused of murder?”
“Yes. Given the fact that his father was a pervert, he seems pretty well adjusted.”
“That’s the same boy who’s been dating my beautiful great-niece?”
“Yes.
“I trust she hasn’t been seeing a boy who has a proclivity for killing people.”
“That’s what we’re trying to prove, Big John. He says he’s innocent.”
“Do you believe him?”
“I think so. It’s our job to be skeptical.”
“I understand.” Big John’s blue eyes twinkle. “Would Grace be interested in meeting some other boys?”
“Possibly.”
“Let me see what I can do.”
I glance at the framed photo of Willie Mays that’s hung on the wall behind the bar since the Giants moved to San Francisco in 1958. “Let me ask you something,” I say to my uncle. “If somebody parks in your loading zone, who do you call?”
“The same people everybody uses: Bayview Towing. They’re very efficient.”
It’s George Savage’s operation. “Who handles Cole Valley?”
“The same guy who takes care of us: Brian Hannah. They call him Thunder.”
“Why?”
“He was quite a football player in high school.”
“Is he a nice guy?”
“No, but he’s very good at his job.”
“Does he have a criminal record?”
“A mile long.”
“Has he ever killed anybody?”
“He’s never been convicted.”
“You’re okay calling this guy when you need him?”
“I call him to tow cars out of my loading zone, Mikey. I don’t invite him inside for a beer.”
Got it. “Any idea where we might find him?”
“He could be anywhere in the neighborhood. When he isn’t towing, he usually parks in the lot of the McDonald’s on Stanyan and works out in the weight room in the basement of Kezar Pavilion.”
“You got a phone number?”
He smiles. “If you run a bar in San Francisco, you memorize two phone numbers: your beer distributor and your towing company.”
I lay two twenties on the table and stand up. “Thanks, Big John.”
He pushes the bills back toward me. “You know your money is no good in here.”
“It isn’t for the drinks,” I say. “I’m paying for information.”
“Forget it, lad. You can buy the next round.”
He hasn’t let me buy a round in thirty years. “Thanks, Big John.”
“Where are you lads off to?”
“To find Thunder.”
There is a look of genuine alarm on his face. “He isn’t a guy you want to mess with.”
“We’ll be careful.”
Rosie shakes her head. “You aren’t going off to play cops-and-robbers tonight, are you?”
“Nope.”
“Then you shouldn’t have a problem if I tag along with you.”
It’s Pete who responds. “I think it might be better if Mike and I did this alone.”
22/ ARE YOU THUNDER?
Saturday, June 18, 10:38 p.m.
“Nice place you have here,” Pete says, his tongue planted firmly in cheek.
The muscular young man’s sleeveless black T-shirt is drenched in sweat. He places two ten-pound dumbbells on the homemade wooden rack in front of him. "Yeah,” he grunts.
“How did you get access to such a fine health club?”
“I have friends.”
We’re standing in a makeshift weight room in the musty basement of Kezar Pavilion, a crumbling barn-like arena that was once the home of the USF Dons basketball team. Over the decades, it’s hosted everything from pro wrestling to the Bay Area Bombers roller derby team. It’s across the parking lot from Kezar Stadium, where the Niners played before they moved to Candlestick in 1970. The old football stadium was torn down in 1989 and replaced by a smaller high school feld. The pavilion, however, looks exactly the same as it did fifty years ago.
“Are you Thunder?” Pete asks.
“Maybe. Who’s asking?”
“Pete. This is Mike.”
Brian "Thunder" Hannah doesn’t extend a hand. “Why should I care?”
I sense hostility.
“We might be able to help each other out,” Pete says.
If he doesn’t kill us first.
Thunder wipes his brow
with a tattoo-covered arm larger than my thigh. “I don’t need your help,” he says.
“I think you might.”
Thunder’s cell phone blasts the earsplitting sound of Jay-Z, interrupting our cheery conversation. He presses the talk button and holds it up to his ear. "Yeah,” he says. “Ashbury and Frederick. Blue Miata. Ten minutes.” He hits the disconnect button. “I gotta run.”
“We need just a second,” Pete says. “I hear you work for George Savage.”
“A lot of people do.”
“I hear you’re one of his best employees.”
“George doesn’t give out awards for employee of the month. Who the hell are you?”
“We represent Judge Fairchild’s son.”
“The kid who popped his dad?”
“He’s a kid, but he didn’t pop his father.”
“Says who?”
“Says me.”
Hannah grabs one of his dumbbells from the rack. He does a rapidfire set of curls, causing his massive biceps to flex. “What the hell does this have to do with me?”
“Your boss didn’t like Judge Fairchild.”
“My boss doesn’t like a lot of people.” He puts the weight down and starts to walk away.
Pete calls out to his back. “The cops have a witness who saw your truck parked down the street from Judge Fairchild’s house last night.”
Hannah stops but doesn’t turn around. “I work in the neighborhood,” he says.
“What were you doing over on Grattan?”
“Towing a car.”
“What kind?”
Hannah finally turns to face us. “A Mercedes.”
“Where was it?”
“Blocking the loading zone of Finnegan’s Wake.”
It’s a bar on Cole. “You’re sure it was a Mercedes?”
“I think so. I tow a lot of cars.”
“Did you go down near Judge Fairchild’s house?”
“Nope.”
“Did you see anybody go into the judge’s house?”
“Nope.”
Pete folds his arms. “I have a friend over at Verizon,” he says. “I had him check the calls to your cell phone last night.”
“That’s illegal.”
“Sue me.”
Hannah takes a drink of water from a plastic bottle. He studies Pete to discern if he’s bluffing—which he isn’t. Pete has sources at every phone company in the Bay Area. “I get a lot of calls,” he says.
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