Treasure Hunt (19 page)

“What’s that?”

“Apparently sane whack-jobs.”

“No, not what’s the fun new class of people, Mick. What’s the murder weapon?”

“A tire iron, maybe.”

Jim Parr’s face hardened. “Bastard. You getting any closer to who did it?”

“Not that I know of. Maybe there’ll be fingerprints or something on the tire iron, but that would be a long shot. So probably not.”

“Shit. Maybe I should just go out there.”

“Where?”

“Sunset.”

“And do what?”

“I don’t know. Talk to some people. See if they’d talk to me. Find out what was really happening.”

“I’ve got a better idea, Jim. Don’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s a really dumb idea, that’s why not.”

“Well, it’s hard for me to believe that nobody out there knows anything at all. I mean, Dominic just has a regular day of work and then goes home and meets somebody who kills him? Somebody must have known or seen something, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, I do. But we can’t seem to get started down any trail that leads anyplace.”

“All I’m saying is maybe I could.”

“Right. And why is that? Because you’re a trained investigator?”

“Hey, smart-ass, I’m as trained as the next guy. If I heard something important, I know for damn sure I’d recognize it. I know those people out there.”

“But we don’t know it’s one of them.”

“Well, that just goes to show what you know.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means, it’s staring you right in the face and you don’t see it.”

“What is?”

“The plain, simple truth about Dominic, which is that Sunset was his whole life. He lived and breathed it, morning, noon, night, weekends, holidays. His. Whole. Life. Get it? If somebody killed him, and it wasn’t completely random, it had to have something to do with Sunset. Period. Maybe only a little bit. But something. Which means it’s probably right there if you know what to look for.”

This speech, since there was little to refute in it, shut Mickey right up. He took a few deep breaths through his nose, his mouth a tight line. “You might be right about that,” he said finally, “but you going out there is still a dumb idea.”

“Oh. Okay, then. I won’t.”

“Jim.”

“No. You convinced me. I promise I won’t go out there.”

“A promise is a promise, you know.”

“Absolutely. Scout’s honor too. Now listen, I’ve got to get back to kicking some ass in my game, and you’ve got to go buy some goat. I’ll see you tonight, all right?”

“Right.”

 

 

 

 

Once upon a time
, in the early days of the current administration of District Attorney Clarence Jackman, Gina Roake had been an original member of his “kitchen cabinet,” advising him on municipal and legal matters while he grew into the position to which—much to his surprise—he’d been appointed. The cabinet remained in its informal existence, meeting almost every Tuesday for lunch at Lou the Greek’s for about a year, and during that time, its members found that they had formed strong bonds with one another. Defense attorneys like Roake, her partner Dismas Hardy, and her then-fiancé David Freeman somehow managed to find common ground with the likes of Jackman, the city and county’s chief prosecutor, and Abe Glitsky, then deputy chief of inspectors of the San Francisco Police Department.

Also among the members of the cabinet was Jeff Elliot, the writer of the
Chronicle’
s popular CityTalk column. Elliot had contracted multiple sclerosis as a young man and over the years had gradually declined to the point where he now only rarely left his wheelchair or his desk in the basement of the
Chron’
s building at Fifth Street and Mission. Bearded, decidedly heavyset, and with thick graying hair grown well over his ears, he was nevertheless as sharp as ever, a repository of pretty much everything that could be known about the city, its residents, or its institutions, public or not.

Now, unable to allay her concern about her boyfriend Wyatt Hunt’s nonchalance in his attitude toward both his investigation into Como’s death and the presence of Len Turner in the mix, Gina Roake was sitting on a hard wooden chair catercorner to Elliot in his tiny cubbyhole of an office.

It was four-thirty on Tuesday afternoon.

“Actually,” Elliot was telling her, “if I believed in coincidences, I’d say it was quite a coincidence you happening to come by here today with that question.”

“Why is that?”

“Because just today, I . . .” Rummaging around on the surface of his desk, he extracted a sheet of paper from a small pile of them. “Well, here. Troglodyte that I am, I still ask for and get hard- copy galleys. They hate me for it, but what are they going to do? I’m a star. So, anyway, this is tomorrow’s column. You might find it somewhat interesting.”

Roake looked up from the page. “Let me guess,” she said. “Como and his pals were lining their pockets with grant money.”

“Damn,” Elliot said. “You stole my scoop. Who woulda thunk it?”

“Okay, so let me go double or nothing. Just a wild guess. Somehow Len Turner’s in this up to his eyes.”

Elliot sighed. “You’re psychic.”

Gina shrugged. “It’s a small talent.” She went back to the column.

“Exactly.”

“So where did the money go?”

“Read on.”

Gina Roake handed the galley sheet back to Jeff Elliot. “Looks plenty grafty to me,” she said. “Not to mention slightly dangerous, which is exactly the message I’ve been trying to get through to Wyatt.”

“It’s a good one. Isn’t he getting it?”

“Not clearly enough, I don’t believe.” She paused. “So, off the record, what do you think the odds are that these two reports”—here she indicated the article she’d just read—“had nothing whatsoever to do with Como’s death?”

Elliot leaned back and scratched at his beard. “Fifty to one. Maybe a hundred to one. I’d be stunned if they didn’t.”

“I would be too. The timing’s just too perfect. So the question is, why exactly would someone want to kill him over this?”

Elliot broke a smile. “You going for the reward?”

“Not specifically, although if we came up with something really good right here and now, I’d be happy to share with you.”

“Okay. Deal.” Elliot stretched out a hand and they shook. “Now give me a second.” Sitting in his wheelchair, he closed his eyes, head back. “Theory number one takes a bit of a stretch to start out, but ends strong.”

“Let’s hear the stretch part.”

“All right. We assume that Como either didn’t know about or wasn’t hands-on responsible for any of the stuff from tomorrow’s column.” He held up a hand. “I said it was a stretch. But let’s assume . . .”

Roake made a face. “Okay, but only for the sake of argument.”

“Fair enough. Como is a bona fide saint who doesn’t know that scandal is about to blow up all over at Sunset. Somebody else, let’s call him Turner for lack of a better word, has been screwing with the books and playing loose with the rules for three years or more—”

“Try twenty,” Roake said.

“Okay, twenty. Anyway, so last week Como gets wind of let’s say the AmeriCorps problem cutting off his federal grants. So he goes to Turner, his corporate counsel, and realizes that it’s got to have been Turner behind the cooking of the books and the misuse of the funds. So he meets him alone and calls him on it, says he’s going to fire him, get him kicked off the COO program, all of the above. Turner can’t have that happen, and voilá. He whacks him.”

“Yeah, but Turner knows this stuff’s going to come out anyway.”

“Sure, but if the community hangs together, Sunset loses some federal funding for a while, but otherwise nothing happens. Nothing changes. On the other hand, if Como makes a stink, Turner’s in deep shit with the whole nonprofit world, which is his entire income. Not to say life.”

Roake chewed on it for a moment. “Possible,” she said, “if you can buy the premise, which I’m afraid I can’t.”

“Yeah,” Elliot said. “I don’t know if I can either. I mean, it would be hard to argue that Como didn’t know he had some drivers taking him around places, you know?”

“I know. So where’s that leave us?”

“We need a second theory, and I got the first one, so it’s your turn.”

“All right.” Roake closed her own eyes. “Okay, how’s this: One of those private interests that provided the funding, they got pissed that Como was essentially stealing from them, personally.”

“So they killed him?” Elliot was shaking his head. “Doesn’t sing for me at all. And besides, that’s the COO money you’re talking about, and that report—the budget analysis—was coming out right about the time somebody killed him. So if it was about money, the timing says it was about the federal money.”

“And Turner, somehow, don’t you think? All right, how’s this? They both knew about the money problems. Are either of them looking at prison time over this?”

“I don’t know. You’re the lawyer, you should know this, right? Me, I’d say not impossible.”

“Okay, let’s go with that for the moment. Say Turner knows he’s going to jail if it’s him and Como each pointing fingers at each other. Except if Como’s dead, then it’s Turner’s finger and that finger’s only pointing in one direction, at Como. Como stole the money, misappropriated the money, it’s all his fault.”