But Juhle only said, “We appreciate your perspective, but as we’ve told you, the investigation is ongoing. We’re just trying to gather information.”
“And to that end,” Russo picked up, “I wonder if you could tell us what you did last Monday night.”
If the question was meant to shake her up, it succeeded almost to the point of panic. Alicia’s mouth turned down, her eyebrows came together over her eyes. She looked to Juhle as if verifying that this was what they wanted to know. “Monday night a week ago?” she asked. “The night before Dominic was killed?”
“No,” Russo answered patiently. “This past Monday night, two nights ago.”
“Two nights ago? Why?”
Juhle had his professional face back on. “If you could just answer the question, Alicia.”
The official tone hit its mark and Alicia sat back meekly, holding her hands together in her lap. “Monday night, Monday night. Tuesday I was at a friend’s for dinner, and then Monday . . . oh, I got it. Monday I slept in my car down by the beach. Ocean Beach. I wanted to go surfing Tuesday morning.”
“And you were alone in your car?” Russo asked.
“Yes.”
“And from what time?”
“I don’t know exactly. I had a pizza with my girlfriend Danielle at Giorgio’s. On Clement? I guess I left at around ten.”
“And drove out to the beach?” Russo asked.
“Right.”
“Did you talk to anybody out there?” Juhle asked. “Were they having bonfires that night?”
Alicia shook her head. “I went to sleep in my car. I’ve got a mattress I throw in and a sleeping bag. I wanted to be up early. What happened Monday night?”
Again ignoring Alicia’s question, Russo threw a sharp glance at Juhle, then reached under her jacket and pulled a color photograph out of her breast pocket. She placed it on the table in front of Alicia. “Do you recognize this?” she asked.
Alicia’s eyes lit up briefly, then closed down as she looked at Russo to answer her. “Yes. That’s my scarf. I lost it a couple of weeks ago. Where did you find it?”
“Her name is Linda Colores.” Tamara had Hunt sit down in the one chair across from her in the reception area as soon as he’d arrived back at the office. “The Hang-Up Lady.”
“I’d forgotten all about her,” Hunt replied. “What’d she have to say?”
“That she was out by the Palace on the night Mr. Como was killed. Like maybe ten or ten-thirty. She was just walking by herself after dinner on the path by the lagoon and two people were having an argument right in front of her.”
“Tell me she saw them.”
“I wish I could, but she didn’t. They were around where the path turns right down there at the end, near where Mickey found the body. But the point is that she heard them, really clearly.”
“Okay.”
“A man and a woman. The man telling the woman he didn’t love her anymore. Then, maybe, the sound of her hitting him. At least this grunt of exertion and then this kind of sickening sound.”
“So what’d she do then? Your witness.”
“She got scared and turned and got out of there as quickly and quietly as she could.”
“While our murderer,” Hunt said, “made sure Como was dead, then got him into the lagoon and tucked him away in the roots.”
“Linda didn’t know anything about that, but I’d say probably.”
“I would too.”
“Anyway,” Tamara said, “I don’t know if that tells us anything we don’t already know, or think we know, but it seemed important to me somehow.”
“It’s damned important,” Hunt said. “If only because that was really the end of it. If that’s when Como was killed.”
“That’s what it sounded like to Linda.”
“And if that’s the case, it’s not part of the money issues, is it? In spite of what Gina would have me believe.”
“And it’s also,” Tamara said, “not a guy.”
“Maybe not. Not unless our woman here hid Como away and then called somebody to finish up.”
“So two of them?”
“Not likely, I admit, but not impossible. Alicia and her brother—”
“No, Wyatt, no.”
“I’m just saying . . .” But then other possibilities sprang into his mind—Ellen Como and Al Carter or Ellen Como and Len Turner; or even Nancy Neshek and an accomplice who’d wound up then killing her. Then back again to Alicia and . . . almost any man who would do anything for her and her favors, which, after only a quick glimpse of her at the memorial service, Hunt figured would include most of the male population of the known world.
22
If Mickey had turned left, which was south, on Potrero, he would have gotten to Cesar Chavez Boulevard after only a couple of blocks, then immediately taken the on-ramp to 101 North and made it back to the Stockton garage at just about the time he figured Wyatt would be returning from the memorial service. They would have grabbed a bite somewhere, compared notes on their respective morning’s adventures, and developed a plan for the rest of the day, or even week.
But as it happened he turned right, got up to Eighteenth Street, which reminded him of the tasty and tender goat he’d bought the day before at Bi-Rite Market, which happened to find itself on Eighteenth as well. So he turned left on Eighteenth, intending to get provisions for the homestead—whatever looked good, and something would—for the next couple of days. His plan was to keep cooking at home for as long as Tamara kept showing her renewed appetite.
The light was solid green for him to go when he got to Mission and so there wasn’t any reason to slow down. He was thinking about special cuts of pork they might have at Bi-Rite and then after that maybe he’d go to his favorite burrito place only a few blocks over to his right on Mission.
He never even began to see the 2009 Volvo going, according to the accident records that were later filed in the incident, approximately thirty miles per hour. The car ran the red light and broadsided him on his passenger-side door.
The initial impact pushed his car sideways for exactly thirty-six feet until its momentum was stopped by a ten-year-old Chevy Suburban that was parked at a meter on the west-side curb of Mission. This second collision, on Mickey’s side of his car just behind his seat, T- boned his Camaro, smashed his head against the side window, concussed him, broke his left arm and three of his ribs, and rendered him unconscious. His cell phone, which he’d thrown onto the passenger seat a few minutes earlier, and which held all of his contact information, got bounced around like a pinball inside the car and hit something hard enough to smash its screen and break it, making it useless.
The parked Suburban, jumping the curb, killed a homeless John Doe everybody called Frankie who’d been a fixture begging at that intersection for the past seventeen months. The driver of the Volvo, who was wearing her seat belt and whose airbag deployed perfectly according to factory specifications, was a bit banged up but basically uninjured.
Hunt came out of his own office in the back and hooked a hip over Tamara’s desk. She was working on a scheduling spreadsheet on her computer and kept tapping the keyboard for a second before, still typing, she turned to face him. “Yes?”
“I’ve been wrestling with it for half an hour driving back here and I’ve got to ask you a question.”
She didn’t miss a beat. “Almost thirty,” she said, “but most people guess closer to twenty-five.”
In mock chagrin, Hunt hung his head. “When am I going to learn?”
Tamara put on an empathetic face. “One day it’ll just happen. You wait.” She broke a smile. “Okay, what’s the real question?”
“The real question is Mick. How serious is he with this Thorpe woman?”
Tamara sat back. “Alicia, Wyatt. Her name’s Alicia.”
“I know what her name is, Tam. I’m a little worried about both of you using it, being on a first- name basis with her. I don’t want you two getting too close to her.”
>
“You said that this morning.”
“I meant it then too. And I noticed it kind of pissed off both of you, Mickey maybe a little more. And that was before I talked to Al Carter and heard the latest from Devin. That’s what I’ve been wrestling with. Whether I should even tell you what they said, either of them, either of you.”
“Of course you should tell us. We’ve got to know what we’re dealing with.”
“That’s true, but I don’t want either of you shutting me out because I’m keeping an open mind on all the possible suspects.”
“Are you?”
“As far as I can tell, Tam. You tell me where I’m not.”
She touched his hand. “You don’t have to get mad.”
“You know, I’m afraid I can’t help that. Six months ago, you’ll remember, we had a little problem with—”
“This isn’t like that.”
“It isn’t? Employee of the Hunt Club gets involved with murder suspect who turns out—”
“Craig was never a suspect.”
“No. That’s true. We both know what Craig was, though, don’t we? An actual murderer, too smart to get himself suspected. And he had everybody fooled. Even me.”
Tamara flared. “Even you? I like to think that if there’s an even there in that equation, it’s even me.”
“All right. I’ll give you that. But that’s not the point either. The point is Mickey and whether he’s being blinded to the truth about somebody he obviously cares about. And if he is, what I’m going to do about it.”
“And are you sure you know that truth?”
“No. Not ultimately. But I do know some truths, or probable truths, and I just learned what might be another couple of ’em. You want to hear them?”
Still pushed back away from her desk, Tamara, her mouth a grim line, folded her arms. “Go ahead.”
“All right. Let’s start with her relationship with Como. She admits they were close. In fact, real close. Mrs. Como says it was more than that—Dominic was in love with her. He admitted it. And even if he didn’t, they got themselves caught doing it in the office.”
“No, they didn’t.”
“Mrs. Como says they did. Lorraine Hess says they did. We call this corroboration. Besides which, I don’t think a guy like Dominic Como gets in love with somebody if something physical isn’t going on. You buy that?”
“I’m listening.”
“All right. We know we’ve got a tire iron, probably from the limo, as the murder weapon. We know Alicia could have gotten to that anytime she wanted. Next, we find out from your witness just today—Hang-up Lady—that two people, a man and a woman, are having a violent fight at about the same time and in the same place where Dominic got hit. Good? Good. So then this morning an hour ago I’m talking to Al Carter and I’m not even asking him any questions about Ms. Thorpe and he volunteers information that exactly corroborates Mrs. Como’s story that Dominic fired her on that Tuesday, the day he got killed. We didn’t know that this morning when we all were talking. We just had Ellen’s word for it. But now with Carter’s—”
“What did she say? Alicia. When Juhle talked to her.”
“What do you think? She denied it.”
“And you think that was a lie?”
“I think that Al Carter and Ellen Como both didn’t independently make up the same story, let’s put it that way. They’re not exactly bosom pals, you know? There’s no indication that they’ve ever even talked to each other.”
Tamara merely shrugged. “What else?”
“Well, since you ask, Devin’s latest, from underneath the limo’s backseat, there’s the whole semen-on-her-scarf thing. And it is her scarf.” Hunt straightened his back, eased himself off the desk and over to the window, letting the gravity of this last revelation work its way into Tamara’s worldview. At the window, he turned around. “I’m not making that last part up, Tam. It’s her scarf. She admitted it. It was stuffed into the limo’s backseat.”
Tamara uncrossed her arms. Her hands went to her belly, which she squeezed a couple of times.
“I don’t mean for this to give you a stomachache, Tam. But I don’t want you and Mick thinking you’ve got to stick up for her because you’ve all become friendly since this investigation started. And also, let’s remember last Monday night. She’s sleeping in her car a quarter mile from Nancy Neshek’s.” He came back over to the desk. “I’m not saying she did it. Not yet. Although Dev and Sarah are getting pretty close to thinking so. But I am saying we’d be foolish—any of us—to just ignore these facts.”
Now Tamara’s hands had settled onto her lap. Her eyes stared before her without focus. “Does Mickey know all this?”
Hunt shook his head. “Not what I’ve found in the past hour or so. Carter and Devin’s information. I tried to call him but his phone’s off. He’s probably still down at Sanctuary House. I left him a message, but just to call. I thought I’d tell him like I’ve told you, in person. See how he takes it.”
Tamara blew out heavily. “So what about all the money stuff? Didn’t you talk to all those people at the memorial too? Do they all have alibis for Monday?”
The clenched muscles in Hunt’s face started to relax. He just barely allowed the corners of his mouth to turn up. “Well, that’s the other reason I’m not a hundred percent with Devin and Sarah about Ms. Thorpe yet. I haven’t eliminated too many other people either. But I’ll tell you one thing—this Len Turner’s a piece of work.”
“Did you talk to him again?”
“Oh, yes. Definitely.”
“Did you ask him about Monday night?”
“As a matter of fact, I did.”
“Well?”
“Well, I asked and he didn’t answer. Not him and not nobody else neither.”
“Why not?”
“Because he clean cut me off.”
“And how about Ellen?”
“How about her?”
“Wyatt? Monday night?”
Hunt met her eyes, shook his head in disappointment. “No.”
“No what?”
“No. Never talked to her. Never even thought of it.”
Tamara pulled herself back up close to her desk. “Do you want me to call her and make an appointment? Maybe if that’s the only thing you’re supposed to do, you’ll remember.”
“Maybe,” Hunt said. “But I don’t know if I’d bet on it.”
Len Turner sat in a leather chair in his other spacious office, the one that housed his law practice on California Street. He was smoking a Cuban cigar and drinking Hennessey VSOP cognac from a cut crystal glass.
Turner didn’t like the storm of bad publicity about the COO money, but he’d weathered worse. The plain fact of the matter, as he would explain to Jeff Elliot as soon as he could arrange an interview with the columnist, was that sometimes you didn’t see tangible results for specific projects because there was just never enough money, period. And as in every other business, you had to advertise, market, put on shows to educate and generate enthusiasm for the cause, hire consultants and public relations experts, pay decent salaries to your executives so that you’d get quality people. This wasn’t just the nonprofit world; it was the big wide world.
The biggest problem with the CityTalk column was that it conveyed the impression that because the COO program’s specific objectives hadn’t been met, Turner had mismanaged these funds. And this, in his honest opinion, was not the case. The simple fact was that the $4.7 million in private foundation money—really a pittance—that supported the COO over the past couple of years needed to be about double that, or maybe triple, if it was going to address the real needs of real people who lived in the impoverished areas of the city.
This was because nothing got done for free in San Francisco. It was a pay-to-play environment, and had been for all of Turner’s lengthy career.
If you wanted to renovate a dump of a house in the Mission and turn it into a marketable or even usable property, first you had to buy it
from the slum landlord who hadn’t put in an improvement, including paint, since 1962. That landlord, of course, got a substantial write-off for the monetary loss entailed in “donating” his property to your charity. Then you needed your plans, and then your redone plans, approved by the Housing Department for a sizable fee each time through. Often, if not always, you’d need a zoning variance by the Board of Supervisors, which tended to be exquisitely sensitive to even the most remote and spurious objection to the project, brought to them by one concerned constituent or another.
A residential unit for drug rehabilitation, for example, because it was used in conjunction with the courts, was considered a public building and as such was subject to the strict enforcement of the Americans with Disabilities Act, so you often needed internal elevators, wheelchair access, and restricted handicapped parking spaces. All buildings in San Francisco, of course, now had to be retrofitted for earthquakes. Asbestos had to be removed.
Every step of this process demanded juice—some kind of payoff to someone, whether it was financial or political or, most commonly, both.
And none of this even included when the real fun began with the awarding of the contract to do the actual work. On a publicly bid job, for example, the contractor better have a woman or two and some gay people and a politically correct mix of Caucasian and African-American and Hispanic and Asian workers on the job. Oh, and some veterans, even better if they’d been wounded or maimed.
But the great thing about the fund-raising environment in San Francisco was that the very idea that somebody was going through the process of trying to get better housing and a better life for poor people, and even using rehabilitated drug addicts to do such meaningful work, tended to open the coffers of philanthropy. Never mind that the houses often didn’t actually get made, the art classes and day care centers didn’t get staffed, the theaters never put on a show because of all the hassles, the payoffs, the uncertainties. Still, the money kept coming in to support the efforts. And it came in at about the same rate that it was going out to advertise, educate, and promote.
Treasure Hunt Page 22
