Incriminating Evidence (26 page)

Ann is triumphant. She looks at Ed, Rosie and then me in turn and says, “There is something else. I want to be kept fully informed of all developments in Father’s case. I don’t want to hear about anything on the news. I don’t want to get phone calls from the press about something I haven’t been told about. Above all, I don’t want to have to explain to Mother that she wasn’t kept fully apprised. Understood?”

We nod in unison.

“I expect you to call on Mother this afternoon to straighten this mess out.”

My turn. “Ann, there’s something we need to ask you about.”

“What?”

I keep my face impassive and I say, “We’ve been keeping a close eye on Dan Morris. While we were watching him, we couldn’t help but notice that you’ve been spending some time together.”

She tenses. “It’s just business.”

“Really? What type of business? Political or personal?”

She’s annoyed. “I’m thinking about running for mayor in the next election. That shouldn’t be a great news flash. I went to ask Dan if he might be interested in helping me with my campaign.”

“You realize that he may be a key witness in your father’s trial and may conceivably be considered a suspect.”

“I suppose that’s possible.”

“Yet you’re thinking of hiring him as your campaign manager?”

Icy stare. “I’m considering it. It’s business,” she repeats. “It’s politics. Father understands.”

“Ann, are you and Dan involved?” I ask.

“Involved?”

“Romantically. Are you and Dan seeing each other socially?”

“I won’t dignify that question with an answer,” she says.

I won’t let it go this time. “If we are going to defend your father, we need to understand
all
the facts surrounding his case. We need to know if you’re involved with Dan Morris. Our private investigator has seen the two of you together at his house.”

She fires back, “And what would that have to do with Father’s case?”

“Maybe nothing. But it is widely known that Dan and your father had a falling-out.”

Her creamy skin reddens. Her lips purse. “I’ve known
Dan for many years,” she says. “We enjoy each other’s company. We’re seeing each other. Are you happy?”

“Thank you, Ann. You might try to be discreet about your relationship until the trial is over.”

She stalks out of the room. Turner follows.

After she’s gone, Fast Eddie unwraps a cigar and holds it like a trophy. “I thought Ann’s reaction to your question about Dan Morris was pretty interesting,” he says. He seems to be enjoying this.

“It’s hard to figure out what game she’s playing,” I say. “I don’t think she’s capable of loyalty to anyone but herself. The only thing that seems to drive her is ambition. You don’t really think she’d set up her own father, do you?”

He gestures with the cigar. “She used to admire him. Now she hates him. She didn’t like the way he handled her divorce. She resents the way he’s cheated on her mother. She thinks he’s a hypocrite and a liar.”

“You seem to know her pretty well,” I say.

“I’ve known her for a long time,” he says. “We were involved for a few months.”

Add yet another notch to Ed’s list of conquests. The fact that he was sleeping with Skipper’s daughter doesn’t seem to faze him.

“It didn’t last very long,” he adds. “No chemistry.”

I can see that. There was a chance for a nuclear meltdown. “Come on, Ed,” I say. “It’s hard to imagine she was involved in Garcia’s death. It would have been impossible for her to orchestrate, and there’s no evidence she returned to the Fairmont that night. And he
is
her father, after all.”

He shrugs. “Maybe you’re right,” he says. He pauses and adds, “Listen, do me a favor. Don’t talk to any more witnesses without telling me first, okay?”

Join the chorus, Ed. “No problem,” I say.

“And while you’re at it, try not to get yourself killed.”

Thanks. That’s very sound advice.

“You don’t look good,” Rosie says to me after Ed leaves.

“I don’t feel good.”

“Does your head hurt?”

“Yeah, along with my ego. I hate the idea of Fast Eddie taking over the lead in this case.”

“Clients change their minds all the time,” Rosie says.

“It’s a mistake to do it so close to the beginning of trial.” Then I add, “It’s a mistake to let Ed Molinari run this case.”

She leans back. “I didn’t think we had any choice if we wanted to stay in the case.”

“We didn’t.”

“You
do
want to stay in the case, don’t you?”

“Absolutely.” I look at the picture of Grace on Rosie’s desk. I’ve taken abuse from our client, his daughter and our co-counsel. I’ve been physically and emotionally attacked. Yet I do accept that when you’re this close to trial, you cannot afford to start second-guessing your decision to accept a case. This isn’t the time for questions like that. Or for others that I find I ask myself more often as I get older. Like why am I doing this at all? When I decided to become a lawyer, I had all the familiar motivations that come with being young and sure you can make an impact. I guess I still carried a lot of the baggage that had brought me to the seminary. I’d wanted to be a good priest and I wanted to be a good lawyer—justice and all that. I know “the system” has become a mocking word, but I believed in it. I suppose I still do, but it’s hard to keep that up when you have to deal every day with all the grief and corruption around you. I want to do a good job, but I’m so tired a lot of the time. I think I’ve forgotten how to have fun. I wish I had more time for Grace. I wish I knew how to fall in love. I wish—hell, I wish I knew
how to be happy. I look at Rosie, beautiful Rosie, and wonder yet again why I—we—couldn’t make it work.

And then I shake myself back to reality. This is not the time to tear myself apart. I’ve got a client who’s relying on me for the outcome. That’s my job. Doing a good job comes with the territory, and I chose the territory. I turn to Rosie and say, “We’re taking this to the finish line.”

“Are you sure?” she asks.

“Yeah. We owe it to Skipper. Anyway, it’s too late to bring in another trial lawyer.”

“It’s never too late,” she points out. “The judge would grant a continuance. This isn’t about our client. This is about you.”

She’s right. But I’ve got my pride and it’s right up front. “If we quit, they’ll win,” I say. “I won’t give them the satisfaction.”

She knows me. “You shouldn’t put your pride above the interests of our client.”

I don’t answer for a moment. “If I didn’t think I was the best person to try this case,” I say, “then I would let them bring in somebody else. I am the right person. I’m going the distance.” Then I add, “And it isn’t only pride, Rosie. I’m stubborn. There’s a difference.”

She smiles at me.

“And when this is all done,” I say, “I think we should take some time off.”

“Agreed.” She always knows where I’ve been.

We return to the matters at hand. “Ann was in full force, wasn’t she?” Rosie says.

“Par for the course,” I reply. “We work our tails off, go chasing all over town trying to find witnesses, get smacked on the head and end up in the hospital. You didn’t expect her to thank us, did you?”

“I noticed you didn’t mention anything about Andy Holton and his Internet porn business,” Rosie says.

“I’ll get in trouble for that, too. Pete’s checking out Donald Martinez. If he finds something, we’ll tell them about it. If he doesn’t, we won’t.”

“You’re protecting Tony, aren’t you?”

“Damn right. He did us a favor by giving us the information. He was there when I went to find Andy Holton. It’s the least I can do.”

“You’re a good man, Michael Daley,” she tells me.

We pay our promised visit to Natalie at two o’clock. Her servant shows us to the living room. She’s becoming more remote as the case moves forward. Today, I see the screen on her laptop is on. She turns around to greet us, saying she monitors the progress of the case on the Internet. I realize this may be less brutal than facing the newspaper stories or the television set every day. She keeps up with her charity work that way, too. This seems to be how she connects with the outside world. Turner has joined us. He’s standing by the windows. To his credit, he has been spending a lot of time at Natalie’s house, giving her moral support. I suspect a lot of her friends have vanished.

“Thank you for coming,” Natalie says, courteous as always. She asks how I am feeling. I tell her I’m on the mend. Truthfully, my head still feels like it is going to split in two.

“Natalie,” I say, “we wanted to assure you that we will keep you fully informed of developments in Skipper’s case.”

“I need to know you will keep your promises,” she answers. “An important witness is dead. I wasn’t informed that you had heard from him until after the fact. I don’t want that to happen again.”

“It won’t.”

She sighs. “It keeps getting worse. They keep reporting these terrible lies about Prentice. Surely, there must be something you can do to stop them.”

I sense this is the real reason she wanted to see us, but the truthful answer is we can’t. “I know how distressing they are,” I say, “but the most urgent priority is to continue to prepare for trial. I wish we could stop them, but that’s beyond our control.”

Rosie decides to push in a different direction. “Natalie,” she says, “is it possible that somebody could have gotten into Skipper’s study?”

She pauses. “The room is at the back of the house. It would have been very difficult for anyone other than the servants to get in.” This jibes with what Skipper’s told us.

“But not impossible, right?” Rosie persists.

“Yes,” she says reluctantly.

Turner is annoyed. “What is this leading to, Rosie?” he asks.

“We may need Natalie to testify that somebody may have had access to the study. It may be the only way to establish a credible argument that somebody planted the photos and the magazines there.”

“Why Natalie?”

“Because she would be a very sympathetic witness,” I interject. I leave out the fact that she would be a much more sympathetic witness than Skipper, the other possible choice. He isn’t going up on the stand unless things are hopeless.

Natalie is not pleased about the prospect. “I have never been a witness at a trial,” she says.

Rosie tries to reassure her. “If it should become necessary, we’ll be there to help you,” she says, but Natalie is not persuaded.

A few minutes later, Turner escorts us out. “Listen,” he says as we’re standing in front of the house, “I would appreciate it if you would take it easy on Natalie. She’s been through a lot.”

I assure him that we’ll do everything we can. Actually, I’m glad to have encountered him. “Turner,” I say, “there is one other issue that has come up.”

His eyes question me.

“We had a chance to look at the records for Skipper’s cell phone. It seems that a phone call was placed to you at about one-twenty.”

He freezes for just a second. “He called me about scheduling.”

“At one-twenty in the morning?”

“I told him I’d be up late. He wanted to be sure we had enough lead time to schedule debates in both Los Angeles and San Francisco.”

Of course. “The police found out about it through the phone records. You never mentioned it until they asked, did you?”

“I don’t recall. I know I told them about it.”

Not a particularly convincing dodge. “Did Skipper sound agitated?”

“He sounded fine. All business. Nothing out of the ordinary.”

“And there was nothing unusual about his tone or manner?”

“It was after one in the morning. He sounded tired. Otherwise, he was just fine.”

“Turner,” I say, “you were seen in the security videos in the lobby of the hotel at three twenty-five A.M. What were you doing there?”

He acts as if he expected the question. “I was concerned. We were told he might be under surveillance. A friend of mine at the
Chronicle
told me he thought Sherman’s people had hired a private eye to try to dig up some dirt. I came back to check things out.”

“What did you find?”

“Nothing. I went upstairs, but there was no sign of a private
eye, and I didn’t see or hear anything at his door. I didn’t knock. I figured he was asleep, so I went back home.”

Right.

“He’s lying through his teeth,” Rosie says. We’re in my car, heading downtown. “What do you think he’s up to?”

Damned if I know; he’s slippery. “Maybe he’s protecting Skipper?” I suggest, though as I say it I realize loyalty has never been a Turner trait.

Rosie is skeptical, too. “No way,” she says. “But I can see him covering for somebody else.”

“Like who?”

“Like himself,” she answers. “Or Ann. Or Natalie.”

My cell phone rings. It’s Pete. “Mama fell down,” he says. “She hit her head.”

Christ. I ask him where he is.

“I’m on my way to San Francisco General.”

“We’ll meet you there,” I say, and drive like hell.

25
“IT DOESN’T LOOK GOOD”

“Please respect the needs of our patients.”

—S
AN
F
RANCISCO
G
ENERAL
H
OSPITAL
.

The drab walls and plastic chairs provide little comfort to those of us who are sitting in the waiting room of the intensive care unit at San Francisco General. A TV is attached to the wall. A local newsmagazine show is playing. The sound is turned down and nobody’s looking at it. We’re waiting for word on my mom. She’s in surgery. She fell down in the kitchen. The broken hip may mend. The blow to her head is much more worrisome. The nurse came by about an hour ago and said Mama’s in a coma. There’s fluid on the brain. They’re going to try to relieve the pressure. My head aches.

Pete’s always been the closest to my mom. He’s talking on his cell phone to our sister in L.A. I can make out the words “It doesn’t look good.”