Suicide King (The Jake Samson & Rosie Vicente Detective Series)

by Shelley Singer

  “And now?” Rosie asked. “What are you going to do now? Your candidate’s dead.”

  He shrugged. “It’s a sad situation. He was a very…” he paused, looking for the right word. “Principled man. I felt he was the strongest candidate, too. But there are others who can be strong. I’m throwing my support to another candidate.”

  “Rebecca Gelber?” Rosie guessed.

  He shook his head, and offered Rosie more brandy. She declined. She still had some, anyway.

  “No, not Rebecca Gelber. Don’t misunderstand, I think she’s a very capable woman. But—” I could feel Rosie tensing beside me. She guessed what was coming. “Well, it doesn’t seem to me to be politically smart to back a woman as our first candidate for governor. Running as an independent on an untried platform— it would simply be another strike against her. I’m sure you can understand that?” He was playing to Rosie, who was not a friendly audience.

  “I understand it very well,” she said.

  “Who then?” I asked.

  “Philip Werner is the only viable candidate.”

  I guess my face went blank.

  “You look surprised, Jake,” Maddux said.

  “I think maybe you could do better,” I said diplomatically. He laughed, almost silently. A smile with heavy breathing.

  I decided to get off the subject of how he used his money for the time being. It was depressing me. “We heard that you didn’t think an investigation into Richmond’s death was a good idea. Why’s that?”

  He looked surprised. “Where did you hear that?”

  “Pam. She said Noel Chandler told her that you didn’t think much of the idea of hiring us.”

  He looked enlightened. “Yes, I suppose I did say that.”

  “Well, why?” Rosie wanted to know. “Did you think he killed himself?”

  “Yes. It certainly looked like suicide to me.”

  “You thought Joe Richmond would actually have killed himself? Why?”

  “I don’t know why. Possibly the pressure of the campaign got to him. He wasn’t handling it all as well as I hoped he would.”

  “Could you elaborate on that?” I asked.

  “No, I don’t think so. It’s just that he was seeming stressed. Apparently his marriage wasn’t good, so perhaps he didn’t have the kind of emotional support a man needs to see him through. I don’t know. I didn’t know that much about the man personally. That’s really all I can say about it.”

  “What’s your connection with Noel?” Rosie asked. “Why would he speak for you?”

  “My connection, as you put it, was only that he was one of Joe’s campaign managers. We talked from time to time. I suppose he asked me what I thought about hiring investigators and I told him. I don’t remember. Would you like more?” He gestured toward the decanter. Rosie said no, thanks.

  I hit him from still another side. “The morning Joe died, there was a meeting of your PAC in San Francisco. You weren’t there. Why was that?”

  He smiled slightly, but he was annoyed. “I don’t attend every meeting. I was busy elsewhere.”

  “I see. Where?”

  “Actually, as I recall, I started that morning with a strategy talk with Chandler. He had been talking to Ron Lewis and wanted to run some ideas past me. We must have met for at least two hours.”

  “From when to when?”

  “I can’t be exact, but I would say from ten to noon or shortly thereafter.”

  Pam had left her house at ten to go to her meeting. Richmond had not been there at the time. When she’d come back at 12:30, she had found him dead. He had not been dead for more than a couple of hours, according to Hal’s connections at the DA’s office.

  “And what did you do at noon or shortly thereafter?”

  “I had a lunch meeting with a financial adviser. I suppose you want to check that?” I didn’t, particularly, because the timing was too tight. But I took down the guy’s name and number anyway.

  “What about Tuesday the fourteenth? Evening?”

  He went stiffly to his desk, thumbed through a desk calendar, and gave us the name of a business associate.

  “There’s one more thing we wanted to ask you about,” Rosie said.

  He sighed patiently and smiled at her.

  “We got a strange phone call last night. A tipster. Someone who said there was a plot within the party to blow up a chemical plant. Right before the election. A faked accident, a disaster, to win votes, to give more power to the Vivo candidate, more support to Vivo as a party.”

  He had turned even paler than normal for just a second as she spoke. He looked truly horrified.

  “That’s impossible. A tipster? A maniac. Someone out to destroy… you’re fabricating it.”

  “No. But don’t you think a disaster like that, a Bhopal right here at home, would do a lot for the Vivo cause? A smallish disaster, justified by the end it would result in— enough power to save the whole planet?”

  He stared at her. “I do not. And I think anyone who does think so is very dangerous. In fact, I think anyone who even mentions such a thing is dangerous.”

  “I’m not dangerous,” she said. “I’m a detective.”

  “And I suppose you said that to watch my reaction? Am I some kind of suspect? Or are you just trying to stir things up? I thought you were a supporter of Vivo.”

  “I am,” she said. “But at this point, we really don’t have any idea why someone killed Joe Richmond.”

  “Yes. I understand that. But I don’t think wild flights of imagination are going to solve that problem.”

  I decided to step in on the argument. “Does Werner know yet that you’re going to back his campaign?”

  “I talked to him this morning. Why?” He was not as friendly as he’d been at the beginning of our conversation. Now he was wanting to know why we were asking him things. I didn’t answer him.

  “Just wondering.”

  “I hope that’s all,” he said, looking at his watch. “I’m expecting some business calls.”

  “That’s all for now,” I said amiably. Rosie and I stood. He stood. We each shook his hand. We told him we would find our own way to the door. He escorted us anyway.

  – 24 –

  AS we drove to the central Berkeley address Rosie had gotten for Noel Chandler, I was remembering my earlier impressions of him, first at the speech and later at the benefit. I remembered him hopping up on the stage to introduce Richmond. A graduate student, I’d thought. Then, at the benefit, when he’d bitched at Pam about the band, I’d thought of him as a slightly over-the-hill graduate student, probably in his thirties. Maybe even a professional student. I hadn’t liked the way he’d talked to Pam. I hadn’t liked his attitude. I reflected that, considering how much I liked the idea of this group, some of its members could be downright irritating.

  Chandler lived near the UC Berkeley campus, a few blocks west of Telegraph near Dwight. The building was an old shingled duplex, painted brown, with a ratty-looking climbing rose clawing at the gutters and some soggy impatiens clumped on either side of the walk. A poster stuck in a downstairs window demanded that I support the struggle in— somewhere or other. The second I see the word struggle I tend to stop reading. I like fight. I don’t mind revolution, although I prefer rebellion. But struggle. Jesus. It’s a word used by the kind of jerk who can say People’s Tribunal without laughing and who puts an exclamation mark, like an upraised fist, after every sentence he writes.

  I checked my watch. We were a few minutes late.

  Chandler’s name was neatly printed beside one of the buttons. I pressed it. I heard nothing, but a second later a buzzer invited us to push open the downstairs door. We did that, and then we paused in the entry hall, waiting to get further encouragement and maybe some directions.

  “Cassandra?” A voice called from above.

  “No. Rosie Vicente and Jake Samson.” I led the way up the stairs. Chandler’s face appeared above me, hanging over a railing.

  “I w
as expecting Cassandra,” he complained. “You’re late.”

  “But she’s not here yet, so you can talk to us alone anyway.” By the time I’d finished the clever stuff, I was up on the second floor, face to face with him. Rosie drew even with me. I smiled. His mouth twitched in a poor imitation. He gestured toward an open door and marched in ahead of us.

  “I’ve got a dinner date, so I don’t have a lot of time. What do you two need?”

  “A beer would be nice,” I said. “If you have one.” I was still a little weary from our confrontation with Carl Maddux.

  He laughed tentatively, shrugged, shook his head. I waited to see what else he would do. He left the room.

  We sat down and waited. I looked around. A very tidy place. Unlike his downstairs neighbor, Chandler didn’t have any posters in his windows. A few inoffensive nature prints— and one very nice poster-photo of some desolate spot in Wyoming— on one pristine white wall over a low bookcase that held what looked like pretty good stereo equipment, a couple dozen records, a box of tapes, and a lot of hardcover books. Textbooks. I could make out a few of the titles from across the room. History. There was another bookcase on the wall beside the entry door, with more hardcovers, a lot of paperbacks, and a trendy ceramic lamp on the top shelf. The floor was fir, sanded and finished and without dust bunnies. One large ficus stood on a square table— a black plastic box that also held a black phone— and there was a black leather couch, the brown corduroy chair I was sitting in, and a director’s chair with red canvas. Except for the white shaggy rug this furniture surrounded, that was all there was. A door in the wall opposite the one through which my host had gone led, I guessed, to a bedroom. The telephone rang.

  Chandler reappeared, handing us each a cheap beer. He had one for himself, too. He put his down and dashed into the bedroom. The phone stopped ringing. I heard the muffled sound of his voice, an “Okay, bye.” Then he returned and sat down in the director’s chair.

  “Nice print,” I said, nodding toward “Wyoming.”

  “Thanks. My home state.”

  “And now,” I said cordially, “you’re a graduate student at Berkeley. History?” I gestured toward the shelf of textbooks.

  “Where did you get the idea I was a graduate student?” He looked puzzled.

  That stopped me for a minute. Hadn’t someone told me that? Maybe not. “I thought I heard that you were.” I glanced questioningly at Rosie, who looked amused.

  “Not from me,” she said.

  Chandler, too, smiled at my silliness. “Not for years. I’m a social worker. City of Berkeley.”

  Well, it was almost the same thing. And I couldn’t help it if he looked like a graduate student. That was his fault. “Fun,” I said. “But actually, that’s not what we came to talk to you about.”

  He tried to keep smiling, but it didn’t work. “Right. What’s on your mind?”

  “Joe Richmond’s death. How to get at what really happened. You’re one of the people who knew him best. What do you think?”

  He shrugged. “Does anyone really know anyone else?”

  “You knew him better than I did, better than Rosie did.”

  “Not better than Pam.”

  I let that go. “Why would someone kill him? Who would want him out of the way? Who had something to gain? Or did he kill himself?”

  He folded his hands neatly in his lap. “Why are you asking me that? How could I know? Sometimes I think I don’t know anything.”

  I glanced toward the bookshelf with all the textbooks. Sure enough, I spotted, in among the histories, several philosophy books. We were going to have to be more concrete in our questioning.

  “You didn’t think we should investigate,” Rosie said. “Why’s that?”

  “I suppose Pam told you that?” He looked annoyed. Neither of us answered him. He shrugged, his hands still folded in his lap. “I was concerned about the party. Adverse publicity. Private eyes running around…” He raised his eyebrows in a semi-apologetic fashion.

  “We heard,” Rosie persisted, “that you said Maddux didn’t want an investigation.”

  “He mentioned it to me.” There was sweat on Chandler’s forehead. He didn’t wipe it off.

  “You and Maddux seem pretty close,” Rosie said.

  “I don’t know what you mean by that, Rosie. We’ve talked fund-raising a few times. He was important to the campaign.” Chandler unfolded his hands, reached for his beer can on the coffee table, took a swallow, and continued to hold the can in both hands.

  “Maddux is supporting Werner now,” Rosie said. “What do you think of that?”

  He frowned, but he looked more relaxed. Safer ground?

  “That seems like a reasonable next step. For the sake of the party.”

  “You haven’t really been with the party very long, have you Noel?”

  He looked at her resentfully. “There hasn’t been a party for very long, but if you mean did I move over to Vivo from the Greens recently, that’s true. Just before Joe decided to run for governor, I was thinking about making the move. It was a hard decision. Some of us never made it at all. Some of us made it halfway, like Carney.” He looked disgusted.

  “Why was it so hard?” I asked. “Vivo stands for the same things the Greens stand for— peace, justice, ecology—”

  “Feminism,” Rosie added.

  “I don’t know how much you understand about our party, Jake. Certainly, our roots are in the Greens. And like the Greens, our people come from a number of different groups…”

  I nodded. “I’ve got that part.”

  He frowned again. Something about my attitude, I guessed. “But Vivo was started by people who were sure they wanted to move faster— Rebecca, Joe, Phil Werner, lots of people. And it took me a while to decide that was okay, was even a good idea. I was still clinging to the idea that we should stay at a grassroots level, keep a low political profile.”

  “Greens have been winning parliamentary seats in Europe for years now,” I said. “How is that keeping a low profile?”

  “It’s different there. The system is different. Parliamentary government means proportional representation. If you get 10 percent of the vote, you get 10 percent of the seats. Not like here. Here, 10 percent of the votes, 20, means nothing. You get nothing. You can’t get anywhere without a broad base of support. You either win or you lose. Maybe that’s what finally convinced me. The Greens were using a European model, and that can’t work in the United States. If we want to change things— we have to change them. Now.” He wasn’t sweating anymore. He looked much happier, just talking politics. I thought I’d keep him happy for a while longer, before going back to some hard questions. Relax, then attack.

  “Yeah, but didn’t I read a while ago that the Greens had a national conference somewhere back East, and then wasn’t there some kind of regional thing, here, just last spring? Looks to me like they’re trying to get bigger, more national.”

  He nodded. “They are. They’re even planning a platform conference, and maybe by 1990, a founding convention.”

  “So, there you are,” I said, spreading my hands.

  “I said 1990! Maybe! Before they even have a convention. Not enough drive, not enough unity or certainty. They have dances to raise money.” He shook his head.

  “You had a benefit,” I said.

  “That was to get people involved. It wasn’t serious fund-raising.” So much for my hundred bucks, I thought. “We’ve paid more attention to the practical aspects of politics. And we’re having a convention next month. With Joe, we had a strong candidate. That was important, too.”

  “And you think Werner can take his place?” Rosie sounded disdainful.

  “Yes.”

  “Didn’t Joe ever tell you he suspected Werner of making plans to bolt the party, take his influence and his supporters and go for more power in a bigger pond? So to speak?”

  “Joe didn’t tell me,” Noel said smugly, “because I told him. I told him that I had heard Werner
was hoping to get endorsed and then defect, taking everything with him, convincing people we would be able to get real power within the Democratic party. That’s what I heard, and that’s what I told Joe.”

  “Where did you hear it?” I wanted to know.

  “Carney. James X. Carney. He told me Werner tried to get him to go along with the idea. And I believed him. But it was a lie.”

  “How do you know that?” I asked.

  “Carney was just spreading confusion. Trying to get the legitimate candidates squabbling over nonsense, wasting their resources.”

  “How do you know that?” I asked again.

  “Maddux looked into it.”

  He said the words with great finality and conviction.

  “I got a funny kind of phone call last night.” I took a long, easy drink of that crummy beer, watching his face. It was blank. He finished his beer and set the can carefully down on the coffee table. “Someone warning us about a plan to create an ecological disaster.”

  His eyes clamped onto mine. He was sweating again.

  “What? What did they say?”

  “They— actually, I think it was a woman— said that someone in the party is planning to create a disaster, like Bhopal, only in California somewhere. Sabotage of a chemical plant, made to look like an accident. To win votes. Maybe bad enough to scare people into electing a Vivo for governor.”

  “That’s ridiculous. Ridiculous. No one would do that.” His hands were grasping the skinny little wooden arms of his chair. He was still looking hard at me, horrified, defiant, angry. “It must have been the killer, trying to deflect you from himself. It’s a lie. Maybe you’ve forgotten that James X. Carney doesn’t want us to back a candidate. Maybe you ought to ask him some questions.”

  “We plan to, but we have a couple more for you,” Rosie said. “Like where were you the morning Joe Richmond was killed?”

  “I was meeting with Carl Maddux from ten to just after noon.” He said it quickly. He had been ready.

  “And where were you the night of Joe’s funeral?”