Project Moses - A Mystery Thriller (Enzo Lee Mystery-Thriller Series) (2 page)

In the two years since 1992 when he moved from New York to San Francisco and joined the News, Lee had successfully revived his journalism career, staking out his turf here as the undisputed King of Fluff. His specialty was the light feature - spitting out pithy one-liners, bad puns and witty opening paragraphs of dubious taste. Like most journalists, Lee had a love-hate relationship with his editors. But, his was a little more complicated. He knew the editors loved his light, well-read feature stories they often outlined in a box and featured on the front page. But, the “story lite” reputation came with a dollop of derision. They questioned whether he had the chops to tackle a tough news story. Lee had no misgivings about that. But, he was happy to skirt controversy and leave any worries behind after he filed his daily feature and exited the downtown News building.

So, Lee was worried. After all, he had spent the previous day interviewing the man who held the unofficial San Francisco record for pierced body parts (72 unnatural holes) and watching the winner of the Egg Producers’ Cool Hand Luke Contest consume 59 hard-boiled eggs. This was a bad time for the creative juices to run dry.

“Hey, Enzo!” yelled City Editor Ray Pilmann from across the room.

“Yeah. What?” replied Lee.

“Come here, willya?”

Lee traversed the newsroom, threading his way through the mismatched desks and the oddly placed aluminum poles carrying computer cables to the ceiling. He dodged the frayed seams in the ash-colored indoor-outdoor carpeting and the mounds of brittle, yellowed newspapers some of his coworkers kept stacked in the newsroom. He finally arrived at the small office with a window onto the newsroom from which Pilmann directed the News’ reporting staff.

“Look, Enzo,” said Pilmann. He was waving a square piece of newsprint in the air. “I need you to cover this.”

Lee was uncomfortable in Pilmann’s office. The city editor was a big man with a bad temper who flapped around the newsroom like a penguin in heat. The modest size of Pilmann’s office left little room to maneuver. When Pilmann jumped to his feet and started waving his arms around – which was his wont in meeting with Lee - the reporter found himself pinned against the flimsy office wall. The four-foot saguaro cactus in the corner – a keepsake from Pilmann’s early editing days in Arizona – just heightened his discomfort.

Lee snatched the paper from the editor’s fingers. It was a story that had appeared that morning in the rival Chronicle about the death the previous night of a prosecutor named Orson Adams in a hit-and-run incident.

It looked suspiciously like a breaking news story and that bothered Lee. He’d worked hard to develop his feature specialty. It had become a comfortable niche in the newsroom, a nest cushioned with daily fluff he could usually churn out at will. One hard news story tends to beget another. Before you know it you’re covering the courts, city hall or, worst of all, education. God, it was depressing just to think about it.

“Jesus, Ray,” said Lee, raising a dubious eyebrow in Pilmann’s direction. “This looks like
news
. I mean real hard news. I don’t know about this. Not my usual thing, you know.”

“You’re a reporter goddamit! Duffy’s out covering a brush fire in San Rafael! What else you got coming?”

Lee thought for a moment. At the rate he had been writing, he’d be lucky to finish the feature stories by the weekend, much less by the first deadline. What the hell.

“Okay, boss. You got it. Let me at ‘em. Where do I go? What do I do? Is there an undercover angle here?”

“Christ, Enzo,” said Pilmann. “All ya gotta do is call the fucking police department. Call McGuire and see if there’s anything new for Christ sake!”

“Oh.” As he walked back to his desk, Lee pulled off his wire-rimmed glasses and polished the clear lenses with a handkerchief. He was grinning. It was great pulling Pilmann’s chain once in a while, instead of the reverse.

•   •   •

LEE HAD MET Jim McGuire, the police flack, when he wrote a profile of a police officer busted for moonlighting as a transvestite hooker: (
“When Officer John Riley said, ‘Put ‘em up!,’ it came with a wink and a pout…”)
McGuire had seemed like a decent guy, not someone who viewed the press as a mortal enemy like some of the cops.

Lee consulted the Chronicle clip closely, typed a few notes into his computer and got McGuire on the line.

“There ain’t much new,” said McGuire. “Your basic hit-and-run. The only new development is that we found the truck this morning, stripped clean, at China Basin. It belonged to some yahoo in Fremont who said it was stolen while he was buying his girl a present at K-Mart. Big spender, huh? Anyway, the grill’s a mess and we’re checking for prints.”

“Okay. What about this eyewitness from the health club?” asked Lee, checking the clip Pilmann had given him to make sure he had it right. “If you can believe the Chronicle, she said the truck swerved to take him out.”

“Yeah. Well, there were some skid marks,” said McGuire. “But, it was probably just a guy who stole the truck, got soused, and was driving all over the road. What else could it be?”

Lee hesitated for a moment.

“Well,” he said. “He’s a black guy, right? Could there be anything there?”

McGuire didn’t say anything for a minute. When he did, it was slow and deliberate like he was explaining to a five-year-old why the kid couldn’t take the family car for a spin.

“Look, Enzo. I know you don’t cover the police beat. I know you specialize in…uh…features. When we find who did it, we’ll find out why. Don’t try to sell papers with bullshit theories.”

Lee sighed. The last thing he needed was to piss off the top S.F.P.D. media guy. And, for a story like this one.

“Yeah. Okay,” Lee said. “Look, man. Thanks for the information…as always.”

“Well…okay,” said McGuire. “Look, I’ve gotta go. Tell Duffy to get down to the Hall of Justice if he wants confirmation on the dead judge. I won’t get the report until this afternoon.”

“A judge?” said Lee.

“Yeah. It just came over the radio five minutes ago,” said McGuire. “Judge…umm…Gilbert. Miriam Gilbert. Municipal Court. They just found her. She croaked during the night in her chambers. Duffy probably picked it up on your scanner.”

“But, Duffy’s in San Rafael,” said Lee as warning sirens screeched in his head. As he glanced up, he watched Ray Pilmann leave his office and begin the long waddle to Lee’s desk.

•   •   •

MORE COPS THAN usual were milling around the dingy, cavernous third-floor corridor of the San Francisco Hall of Justice. Lee knew that behind the courtrooms was a rabbit warren of dark passageways and windowless offices. The area was where the judges and their staffs worked and was off limits to the public. Judge Gilbert’s chambers would be buried there someplace.

Lee pulled out his thin notepad from the back of his waistband. He was wearing faded jeans, a V-neck maroon sweater over a black T-shirt and a beat-up pair of Asics running shoes. He had come to the newsroom planning to sit at his computer all day. As a feature writer, Lee might have to spend one day on a ranch with a horse whisperer and the next following a chimney sweep down a smoke vent. So his dress code was flexible. Lee checked his watch, a Rexall special. He had 15 minutes to the 10 a.m. deadline.

Two patrolmen standing outside a doorway in black uniforms looked particularly forbidding. Lee walked over.

“Enzo Lee of the News,” he said. “May I go in there?”

The cops looked at Lee’s informal attire. They exchanged looks. The bigger one with huge ears, an overdeveloped schnoz and a smug expression smiled insolently and shook his head.

Lee tried again. “Is this where the judge is? The dead one?”

They looked at each other again. The big one shrugged and grinned again, a little more malevolently.

Hell, thought Lee, becoming annoyed. These bastards were going to make it rough and he didn’t have time for it. Pilmann was going to rip him a new one if he didn’t come back with this story.

“What the hell is the problem here?” he said. “I’m the goddamn Press! I wanna talk to somebody!”

Dumbocop looked absolutely gleeful now. He grunted mirthfully as he and his buddy began advancing in a pincer movement. Lee tried to think of something to say or somewhere to move.

“Ah, Christ,” Lee muttered to himself as he slowly gave ground. A slow-motion image flashed into his mind of the two cops flailing away with their sticks while Lee absorbed the punishment. How had the day turned so rotten?

“Atten-SHUN!”

The cops froze. Lee hadn’t heard any footsteps or seen the door open. But, in the doorway behind the pair stood a black woman, wearing an amused smile and with her hands on her hips. Lee guessed she was in her late 30s, about his own age. She wore her hair in a profusion of shoulder-length braids and had on glasses with black rims, a dark gray pants suit and held a radio in her right hand.

“What’s up, boys!” she said, glancing left and then right at the patrolmen in a quick assessment of the situation. She chuckled as she shook her head. The uniformed cops gave her a sour look and grimaced in a poor imitation of a smile.

She walked into the hallway, letting the door close behind her. Lee left the sentinels behind and walked beside her, savoring the protection.

“Allow me to introduce myself,” said Lee when they were out of earshot of the two uniformed watchdogs. “Enzo Lee of the News.”

The woman gave Lee a critical once over. “Where’s Duffy?” she demanded.

“Brush fire,” said Lee. “Somewhere near San Rafael. You know how quickly townhouses can go up. Stuff burns like dry tinder.”

“Hmmm,” she said, looking at the reporter even more closely now, starting with the worn Asics and moving up to his face. She raised both eyebrows approvingly.

Lee had wavy, jet black hair that was beginning to gray at the temples. He was a lean six footer with fine but not delicate features. The Chinese blood from his mother and the European influence of his father had made Lee into something of an ethnic Rorschach. In his travels, natives in such disparate locales as Hong Kong, Istanbul, Guadalajara and Maui would often mistake him for one of their own. A gay friend had once told Lee he looked like the product of a marriage between the actors Sylvester Stallone and B.D. Wong.

“So…ahh…they sent me down to cover the dead judge,” Lee explained. “What’s her name? Is it Gilbert?”

“You asking me to confirm the story, right, Scoop?” said the woman. “Don’t try to bullshit me now.”

Lee glanced at his watch. He was out of time for bullshitting or anything else. His only hope was the direct approach.

“Okay,” he said. “You’ve got it right. I’ve got a deadline in ten minutes. I’m desperate to confirm the story.”

She thought for a minute.

“Okay, Scoop. You’re right. The law clerk of Judge Miriam Gilbert found the judge dead in her chambers when she got to work this morning. We don’t know the cause of death. Stick around, I’ll probably have more in thirty.”

“I’ll be here,” said Lee as he walked toward the nearest pay phone, scribbling on his notepad as he went. “And thanks. Say, what’s your name?”

“Detective Bobbie Connors. Spelled like the tennis player.”

•   •   •

“ENZO!” THE VOICE of Ray Pilmann burst through the telephone and into his head.

“Ray!” Lee replied. From the bank of telephones at one end, the third-floor corridor of the San Francisco Hall of Justice seemed like a massive tunnel. Looking toward the opposite end more than a city block away, Lee could see a cross section of the city’s citizenry, bored jurors, anxious defendants and tired lawyers waiting on the plain wood benches that lined the dungeon-like corridor.

Lee noticed a few heads turn his way. It sounded like Pilmann was at his apoplectic worst. Some of the reporters had actually started a pool, betting on the time of day that Pilmann finally would have a coronary. Lee considered it wishful thinking, like throwing money into a wishing well. He had contributed thirty bucks.

“What kind of bullshit story was that about the judge… whatshername?” said Pilmann

“Gilbert.”

“Yeah. What is this bullshit?”

“It’s called deadline reporting, Ray. You knew the situation. It’s called busting my ass to get any kind of story at all.”

“Yeah. But what did she die from? Was she killed? Did she kill herself? You can’t tell from this story. Was she hacked to death or did she choke on a piece of meat? What’s the story for the next edition?”

Christ, thought Lee. The story was turning into a four-alarm disaster. The next edition?

“Uhh…well…it looks like natural causes,” said Lee. “No obvious signs of violence or trauma. She was at her desk. It looks like she had a heart attack or a stroke or something.”

“Natural causes?” said Pilmann. “What about suicide? She was a widow, right? Was she depressed?”

“Her husband died – I don’t know - years ago,” said Lee. “Her clerk said she seemed fine. There was no note.”

“What about drugs? Did they find any drugs?”

Lee delayed answering for a few seconds. “They found half a bottle of Darvon in her purse,” he finally admitted.

“What?” yelled Pilmann. “They find drugs and you aren’t going to write about it?”

“C’mon, Ray. It’s Darvon, a prescription painkiller. A lot of people use it. Besides, it was more than half full. If she wanted to kill herself, why leave most of the bottle?”

“Half empty, half full! What is this, a goddamn riddle?” Pilmann was shouting now. “It sounds like suicide to me! She’s lonely! On the bench all day! Married to her work! No one to go home to at night! You got to work in the goddamn drugs! Get the suicide angle and have it ready for the next edition!”

“Do you want me to announce the Second Coming, too?” said Lee.

“Yeah! If you got time, yeah! But get this fucking story first!” Pilmann slammed down the phone. Lee sighed, then banged his hand against the faux marble partition harder than he intended. The sound echoed down the dim corridor and more people looked his way. Lee put in a quarter to call back the paper. He still wasn’t sure when the next deadline was.