Incriminating Evidence (7 page)

Mort wags his index finger toward the camera. “I know Michael Daley,” he tells us. “He’s a first-rate lawyer.” He nods to reassure himself that he’s still conscious. “Solid reputation.”

It’s great to get a ringing endorsement from a guy who stepped off the curb twenty years ago.

At nine o’clock that morning, Deputy District Attorney William McNulty is sitting behind the mahogany desk in Skipper’s ceremonial office, which was remodeled at his expense when he became DA. The sculptured carpeting, oak paneling and heavy furniture lend an air of authority to the formerly austere chamber. The only hint of tackiness is the picture of Skipper shaking hands with the governor that hangs behind his desk, just between the Stars and Stripes and the California state flag.

Bill McNulty is a grouch. His perpetual frown contrasts with the smiling, silver-haired Skipper in the picture behind him. Skipper wears the accoutrements of power far more elegantly
than Bill does. McNulty is a career prosecutor whose dour manner and combative nature have earned him the not-unwarranted nickname McNasty. He’s fifty now, and two years ago he thought his number had come up for the top spot at the DA’s office. Then he got hit by a freight train. Skipper outspent him by ten to one and clobbered him in the election. It’s too bad. McNulty is a solid guy who plays by the rules and puts away the bad guys. It isn’t his fault he was born without a personality. You don’t get to choose your gene pool.

Rosie sits to my immediate left. Ann Gates is standing next to the credenza. She’s decided we could use a hand this morning. Turner Stanford is here, too. At any moment I expect him to proclaim that we are all participating in a summit conference.

McNulty takes a drink of coffee from a paper cup and scowls. He looks toward a petite woman with stylish red hair and an icy expression who is standing near the windows. Her St. John Knit suit and pearl earrings suggest she has spent some time with one of those personal shoppers at Nordstorm. “I’m sure you’ve met Hillary Payne,” he says. “She’s the ADA assigned to this case.”

Payne glares at me through hostile green eyes but doesn’t say anything.

“Nice to see you again,” I lie. I’ve been on the other side of two contentious crack cases with her. Some people think she hates men on general principles. I disagree. I think she hates everybody.

Her lips form a tight line across her pale face. If she smiled once in a while, she would be pretty. “Likewise,” she snaps through clenched jaws. Like her mentor, McNasty, she is a person of few words, most of which are delivered in a strident tone intended to put you on the defensive. When she gets in front of a jury, however, she’s all sugar and honey.

McNulty’s expression never changes. “The arraignment
is at ten tomorrow before Judge Mandel,” he says. “We’re going first degree.”

I try not to show any emotion. “You can’t be serious,” I say.

McNasty doesn’t blink. “We’re serious.”

Ann decides to add her two cents. “You’ll never get past the arraignment.”

McNasty assures her, “We’ll get past the arraignment.”

“Mind telling us what you’ve found out so far?” Rosie asks.

“You know everything we know,” McNulty replies.

I ask if the chief medical examiner has determined how Johnny Garcia died.

“We don’t know for sure,” he says. “We won’t have the autopsy report for a few days.”

Payne is more forthcoming. “Off the record,” she says, “it’s almost certain it was suffocation.”

Turner casts his vote. “You don’t know it was Skipper. You aren’t even close to probable cause. You’ll never get to the prelim.”

We zoomed past probable cause around seven o’clock yesterday morning.

“It’s a setup,” Turner insists.

Payne’s catlike eyes gleam. “No way,” she says. “It was a crowded hotel. How the hell could somebody get a body up there without anybody seeing it?” She looks at McNulty for an instant and adds, “We’re going to ask for special circumstances.”

I look back toward McNasty and ask, “Do you really intend to make this a death penalty case?”

“You bet.”

Ann says, “This is San Francisco. You don’t get death penalty verdicts in this town.”

“The DA is subject to the same laws as everybody else,” McNulty replies.

I wonder if he already sees his name on campaign posters for the top job at the DA’s office.

Ann, Turner and I are in the consultation room at the Hall with Skipper. Rosie has gone down to the Mission to check in with her brother. Skipper’s confident public facade is showing its first signs of peeling. He is pacing. “The first thing I’m going to do after the charges are dropped is to fire McNulty,” he says.

I’m glad he isn’t vindictive. I try to keep the tone measured. “McNulty assigned Hillary Payne as the ADA on this case,” I say. I tell Skipper about my experiences with her. “What else can you tell me about her?” It helps to know your enemy.

He stops walking and says, “It’s her first big case. She’s inexperienced, but she’s smart. She’s fearless. She relates well to the jury, especially the male jurors. She’s been with our office for about a year and a half. Before that, she worked for a big firm. Then she left, or got fired. She had trouble finding a job. She can be opinionated. She was out of work for about six months. Then she was working at Macy’s for a while. Small leather goods, I think. That’s when her uncle called me and asked if I could help her out.”

“Who is her uncle?”

“The mayor.”

How very San Francisco. Rosie calls it affirmative action for the upper class. “So you decided to help your buddy out?”

“Happens all the time. It’s just politics. I’d help your kid if I could.”

Especially if I donated a couple of hundred thousand to his campaign. “Why do you suppose McNasty chose her to work on your case?”

“They’re soul mates. He likes her. She’s tough. She’s
thorough. She’s on a mission from God.” He pauses and adds, “There’s something else you should know about her.”

Uh-oh. “What’s that?”

He looks at Turner, then he sets his jaw. “She doesn’t like me.”

“Why?”

“She was bucking for a promotion to head of narcotics. I told her she hadn’t been with the office long enough and she got mad.”

“People get passed over for promotions all the time. It shouldn’t be a big deal.”

“It may be in this case,” he says. “She was very upset about it.”

Swell. The prosecuting DA has a personal vendetta against him. “How pissed off is she?”

“Very.”

“We can get her disqualified.”

“On what grounds?”

“Conflict of interest. You don’t want your case tried by somebody who has a personal ax to grind.” More important, she may be unreceptive to a plea bargain if we have to cross that bridge. I see why McNulty chose her. She certainly has motivation. “We’ll get her removed.”

“No, we won’t. You can’t get a prosecutor removed because she’s pissed off at the defendant. There’s nothing on that subject in the California Rules of Professional Conduct.”

“We’ll find another reason.”

He isn’t budging. “You can’t take her off the case. It would look terrible for my campaign.”

“This isn’t about politics.”

“Everything
is about politics. Campaign politics. Office politics. It’s important for you to know about her, but you can’t take her off the case,” he repeats.

“This case has to take priority over your political ambitions,” I say.

“This case better be over by the end of this week. I can’t have my history with Hillary Payne become a matter of public record. End—of—story.”

“I want to think about it,” I say. “We can move to have the attorney general’s office step in.”

Turner answers for him. “There’s nothing to think about.”

Skipper agrees. “I’m calling the shots here,” he says. “I’m the client. I’m in charge.”

Great. Now I’m representing a guy who thinks he’s Alexander Haig. I try to return to the matter at hand. “Skipper,” I say, “do you know anything about Johnny Garcia?”

“Nothing.”

“Never met him?”

His eyes wander in Turner’s direction. “Nope.”

“Do you know where we might find anybody who knew him?”

He’s indignant. “I know nothing about this guy.”

I keep probing. “Skipper,” I say, “are you sure?” In other words, are you telling me the truth or lying through your teeth?

Ann answers for him. “He’s already told you he didn’t know him.”

I lean back in my chair without saying a word. Skipper folds his arms and says, “How many times do I have to say this? I know
nothing
about this guy.”

It’s as far as I can go for the moment. “I’ll see you at the arraignment,” I say.

Noon. Rosie and I are eating turkey sandwiches in her mother’s kitchen. The little wooden bungalow could use a
coat of paint and some new carpet. Rosie’s mom won’t hear of it. She says the next owner of the house will pay for the new paint job. Our repeated suggestions that she treat herself to a few new appliances have gone unheeded. Handmade curtains adorn the small windows that look out upon a paved backyard. I can see the steeple of St. Peter’s. The house has hardly changed since I first met Rosie. I suspect it looked about the same when her parents moved in almost forty years ago, except there’s a small color TV in the corner of the kitchen and an old laptop computer on the dining room table. Sylvia uses the computer to e-mail Grace. The TV is always tuned to CNN. Black-and-white pictures of Rosie and her brother and sister when they were kids hang on the kitchen wall.

Sylvia is a shorter, chunkier, older version of Rosie. She has been widowed for twenty years but has managed to get by. She always seems to have a few extra dollars when Grace wants a special toy. She is cleaning vegetables at the sink. She’s wearing a blue housedress and, in a modest concession to the twenty-first century, Nikes. Her shoulder-length silver hair is pulled into a ball at the nape of her neck. She celebrated her seventieth birthday last year.

Rosie takes in my account of my conversation with Skipper without a word. She reports that Johnny Garcia’s mother had no relatives still living in San Francisco. Sylvia nods.

The doorbell rings. Rosie’s brother, Tony, comes in and gives his mom and Rosie a hug. He carries a large brown paper bag containing tomatoes, mushrooms, onions, strawberries and limes. He’s a good guy. He started working at the produce market that he now owns when he was in high school. About ten years ago, he’d saved up enough money to buy it. He works hard and he knows how to run his business. He’s had to deal with some very tough stuff. About a year after
he bought the market, his wife contracted leukemia. She died a short time later and he’s never been the same. He’s as friendly as always, but there is a profound sadness about him that wasn’t there when Perlita was alive, and he hasn’t shown any real interest in women since then.

“I’m going to talk to the neighbors,” Rosie says. She asks Tony to check with the business owners on Twenty-fourth about Johnny.

I finish my sandwich. “There’s something else we may need to think about,” I say to her. “I think there may have been something going on between Skipper and Hillary Payne.”

Sylvia stops cleaning the vegetables.

Rosie asks, “What did Skipper tell you about her?”

“She’s pissed off at him because he didn’t give her a promotion.”

Rosie smiles. “She’s pissed off about a whole lot more than that. They were sleeping together. Carolyn told me.”

I guess this shouldn’t surprise me. “And?”

“He dumped her.” She pauses and adds, “She hates his guts.”

The Fairmont Hotel sits majestically atop Nob Hill at the corner of California and Mason. It is a grand old hotel that was once used as the setting for a TV series. The old wing was designed by Julia Morgan and built of heavy dark stones after the 1906 earthquake. An ornate array of flags greets visitors who arrive at the elegant circular driveway on Mason. An unimaginative high-rise tower was added about thirty years ago.

I walk through the main entrance later the same afternoon. The crowded lobby is the size of a football field. The old maroon carpet and velvet chairs were replaced a few
years ago by more modern trappings. The marble pillars and the stairway to the Venetian Room add an elegant touch. A group of Japanese businessmen wait by the door, their name tags conspicuous. People are lined up five deep at the check-in desk. A string quartet is playing classical music in the lobby bar. Not much has changed in the last hundred years, except that the hotel is now part of an international chain.

I walk past the concierge desk and head down the corridor on the California Street side. Just past the health club and the sundries shop, I see a plain white door that is marked Private. A man wearing a blue suit opens the door to my knock. He’s expecting me. A wire extends from the walkie-talkie on his belt to his right ear. If he had dark glasses, he could pass for a secret service agent. “Are you Mr. Daley?” he asks.

“Yes.”

“Dave Evans. Director of building security.” His delivery is crisp. He looks like he’s in his early fifties. He invites me into his tidy suite. In one of the inner offices, I can see another man in a dark suit watching an array of television monitors. We go into Evans’s windowless office. He tells me he’s worked at the Fairmont for five years. I was right. He used to work for the FBI.

“How many cameras monitor the building?” I ask.

“A couple of dozen. We have a camera on the main entrances, the parking garage, the loading dock and the lobby. There’s a camera in the corridor leading to the tower.”

“Are all the entrances covered?”

“Yes.”

I ask whether there’s a camera in the tower elevator.

“No. It’s too expensive to rig up cameras in all the elevators. And, frankly, there isn’t much crime in the elevators. It’s too tough to get away.”

“What about the stairways?”

He hesitates and says, “We have cameras in most of them.”

“But not all of them?”

“Correct.” He says there are no cameras in the stairways that are open only to staff.

“Is it possible to get into the building without being detected by a camera?”