MD02 - Incriminating Evidence Read online

“Almost forty years.” His manner is forthright, his deportment professional. You don’t get to work at the Fairmont for as long as he has without being competent—and discreet. I’m certain he has found guests in compromising positions from time to time. The sticky situations have been resolved expeditiously through the payment of modest gratuities.

  “I understand you found Mr. Gates and Mr. Garcia.”

  “Yes.” He explains that he was delivering a continental breakfast at seven o’clock that morning. “Coffee, muffins and fruit,” he says.

  In Joseph Wong’s world, it’s important to get the orders right.

  “I knocked on the door,” he continues, “but there was no answer.”

  I ask him what he is expected to do in such circumstances.

  “Knock again. If there’s still no answer, I’m supposed to open the door with my key and leave the food. I’m supposed to be careful not to wake anybody.”

  “And if you do?”

  “I’m supposed to apologize and leave as soon as possible.”

  Sounds right. I ask him what he saw when he first opened the door.

  “Mr. Gates was asleep in his chair. Mr. Garcia was on the bed.” He’s been trained to refer to guests this way. “I woke Mr. Gates and he called security. I believe security called the police. Mr. Evans came upstairs right away. Then Mr. Gates tried to wake Mr. Garcia.”

  “Did you see Mr. Gates touch Mr. Garcia’s body?”

  He glances at his wife. “He tried to remove the handcuffs. He removed the tape from Mr. Garcia’s face.”

  So far, he’s confirming Skipper’s version of the story. “Did Mr. Gates have a key to the handcuffs?”

  He looks around. “Yes.”

  Bad answer. Skipper said he didn’t. “And did he use the key to open the handcuffs?”

  “He tried. It didn’t work.”

  “Did you see what he did with the key?”

  “No.”

  I decide to change the subject. “Was Mr. Gates helpful when you woke him?”

  “He was confused.”

  “Was he helpful when the police arrived?”

  “Yes.” He tells me about the arrivals of the paramedics and the police. He talks about his interview with Elaine McBride and Roosevelt Johnson. He describes Skipper’s arrest. His delivery is credible.

  I thank him for his time and leave. He’ll be a strong witness.

  It’s going to be a long night. At ten-thirty, Pete and Carolyn are sitting in front of the TV that we keep in the martial arts studio. “What are you guys watching?” I ask.

  “The Giants,” Carolyn says with a grin.

  I glance at the black-and-white footage. “It doesn’t look like a baseball game to me.”

  Pete smiles. “It’s a rain delay, so we decided to look at something a little more interesting.”

  I ask him what that would be.

  “The security tapes from the Fairmont. I’m like a football coach. I can’t tell you what happened until I study the videotapes.”

  I pull up a folding chair and join them. We watch the grainy videos for twenty minutes without saying a word. “We haven’t seen Johnny Garcia,” Pete says. “We’ve been trying. We’ve gone through the tapes a couple of times.”

  We stare at the TV screen for an hour. Then another. We see dozens of unrecognizable faces. We rewind several times when we think we might have spotted Johnny. I hear the clock on the ferry building chime two A.M. An hour later, we are looking at footage from three o’clock in the morning. The Fairmont lobby was quiet but not deserted. The camera flashes to the California Street entrance to the hotel. “There!” Pete says.

  I’m startled. “What?”

  Carolyn rewinds the tape. Pete walks toward the TV “Run it in super slo-mo,” he says. He studies the videotape for a moment and then says, “Stop!” He points to the doorway. A bearded, well-dressed young man is entering the building behind an attractive couple. He heads inside. The white numerals in the lower left corner of the tape indicate that the footage was shot at three-oh-two A.M. Then the tape shifts to an entrance in another part of the hotel. “That’s Andy Holton,” Pete says.

  We rewind the tape three more times and run it in slow motion. “You’re right,” I say. “He’s wearing a baseball cap, but that’s him.”

  “What do you suppose he was doing there at three in the morning?” Carolyn asks.

  “Maybe he came to pick up Johnny Garcia,” Pete suggests.

  “Or maybe he came to kill him,” I say.

  19

  THE JADE WARNER SHOW

  “Today, Jade Warner will interview two women who claim they were forced to have kinky sex with a prominent Bay Area politician.”

  —COMMERCIAL FOR THE JADE WARNER SHOW. FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 24.

  I’m meeting with Skipper early the next morning, Friday. I inform him that a second prostitute has surfaced and I tell him about the Jade Warner show. He reiterates his denial of any contact with the prostitutes. He’s adamant.

  “Skipper,” I say, “the room service waiter at the Fairmont says you had a key to the handcuffs.”

  He begs to differ. “I had a key to my handcuffs,” he insists. “I didn’t have a key to the handcuffs that were on Garcia. My key didn’t work.”

  I find this explanation glib. “And was it your key that ended up in the toilet?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did that happen?”

  “I went into the bathroom to get a drink of water. I must have dropped it.”

  How very convenient. “You’re sure that key didn’t fit the handcuffs they found on Garcia?”

  “I couldn’t get them open.” He pauses. “It was a key for standard-issue SFPD handcuffs. You’d better be careful. They may be able to get somebody to open the handcuffs with my key.”

  That would be bad.

  The Jade Warner show hits the air at four o’clock. The star is a statuesque blonde in her late forties. Her public confessional every afternoon is a combination of Phil Donahue, Oprah, Jerry Springer, Howard Stern and Doctor Laura, with a dash of Judge Judy thrown in. She has a knack for finding people who want to tell their deepest, most sordid secrets to a syndicated audience. Her show is the highest-rated afternoon talk fest in any local market in the country.

  Rosie and I are sitting on the sofa in Natalie’s living room. Ed Molinari is pacing behind us. Ann is standing near the TV Natalie nurses a glass of water. She looks distant. I told her about the Jade Warner show right away—Ann has made it clear that there are to be no surprises. On the other hand, I did suggest to her that she might not want to watch—the embarrassment might be unendurable—but she insisted. I’d have preferred to have watched the show with Skipper, but he was adamant that we be with Natalie to provide support. Turner is here, too, in a chair next to her. He seems to be in a trance.

  Jade Warner’s theme song is a synthesizer-enhanced disco version of “I Am Woman.” The music plays and the announcer intones that Jade will be visiting today with two women who have been involved in destructive relationships with a prominent local politician. Jade never meets with anybody—she visits. And everybody she visits with is involved in a destructive relationship.

  Jade makes her grand entrance from behind the red curtains. She’s at least six feet tall and model lean. She has admitted on the air that she had her hips, breasts, ankles and nose altered in an effort to please her evil ex-husband. It didn’t save her marriage, but she looks terrific. Her radiant smile lights up the studio. She’s dressed in a light beige pantsuit. She claps for her predominantly female audience, and they howl their approval.

  “Who are we?” she shouts.

  “We are individuals!” the audience shouts in unison.

  “How are we?”

  “We are strong!”

  “What are we?”

  “We are independent!”

  Jade pumps her right fist. The audience roars.

  Rosie shakes her head. She thinks Jade Warner portrays all of her guest
s as victims. It doesn’t advance the cause.

  Jade’s set consists of three armchairs placed in front of the curtains. She begins every show with a brief monologue. She sounds a little bit like Joan Rivers but looks like Heather Locklear. “Ladies and gentlemen,” she says, repeating the announcer’s lead-in, “our guests are here to discuss their destructive relationships with a well-known politician.”

  The audience hisses. In Jade Warner’s world, the men are always the bad guys. In all fairness, the men she talks about on her show are usually pretty bad hombres.

  Jade holds up her hand. “I want to remind the women in the audience in particular that you do not have to continue in abusive relationships.”

  Ann nods. “I’ll give her points on that,” she says.

  Ed Molinari harrumphs, “Is this for real?”

  It certainly is, Ed. Every day. Four o’clock. Channel 4.

  Jade introduces the two women who will tell their stories today. They enter the set from behind the curtains and take their seats in the armchairs. The camera zooms in on the first woman. “This is Candy,” Jade intones. “She has been involved in a destructive relationship with the district attorney of the City and County of San Francisco.”

  “How can they do this?” Ann asks. “How can they get on TV and make these wild accusations?”

  “We tried to get the judge to issue an injunction this morning,” Ed replies. “She ruled in favor of free speech.”

  “There are some things that are more important than the First Amendment rights of a couple of publicity-seeking drug addicts and a nutcase like Jade Warner.”

  Natalie closes her eyes. Turner takes her hand reassuringly.

  The camera shifts to the other woman, who has short dark hair. “Roberta,” Jade says, “is only nineteen years old. She’s been involved in a destructive relationship with the same man.”

  Jade is cupping her chin in her hands when she asks Candy to tell the audience what she does for a living.

  Her tone is flat. “I’ve been a prostitute for six years,” she says. She says she’s twenty-three.

  “How did you meet Mr. Gates?”

  “I was working on Post, near the theaters. He asked me if I wanted to have sex with him.”

  “And did you?”

  “Yes.” Candy describes her first six months with Skipper. She says he started out as a gentleman, but then he asked her to do more unusual things. “He liked to handcuff me to the bed,” she says. “I didn’t want to do it at first, but he convinced me.” She adds that for five hundred dollars a night, she was pretty accommodating.

  “So,” Jade says, “you engaged in consensual sex with overtones of bondage for about six months. He paid you for the sex.” Her tone is rather clinical.

  “That’s right.”

  “Then things started to get abusive?”

  I turn to Rosie and shake my head. Does she mean to suggest that six months of paid sex where he handcuffs her to the bed weren’t abusive?

  Candy’s eyes begin to wander. “He started to get rough with me.”

  “Did he hit you?”

  “Not exactly. He used to like to pin me to the bed very hard when he put the handcuffs on me.” She pauses and begins to tear up. “Then he started to cover my eyes and mouth with tape.”

  Natalie’s eyes are closed.

  “One night, things got out of control. We were doing our usual ritual, when he covered my nose with tape, too.” She’s starting to cry. “It turned him on. I couldn’t breathe. I blacked out.”

  Turner rubs his temples.

  Jade asks her what happened next.

  “He became more abusive. He kept making the handcuffs tighter and tighter. He kept my eyes and mouth taped shut for longer periods of time. The highlight seemed to be when he covered my nose with tape and I couldn’t breathe. That’s when he used to come.”

  “You mean he used to penetrate you when you were handcuffed to the bed and your eyes, nose and mouth were covered with tape?”

  “Yes.” She wipes away her tears. “It stimulated him.”

  “When did you finally put an end to this?”

  “He practically killed me one night. I lost consciousness. I thought I was going to die. If the truth be told, Jade, I think I wanted to die.” She’s sobbing now. “That’s when I told him I wouldn’t see him again no matter how much he paid me.”

  Jade pauses to let her get her bearings. “Candy,” she says, “you’re a college graduate. You’re a bright young woman. Why did you let this man take advantage of you?”

  “I’m addicted to heroin. I needed the money. He is an important and powerful man. I couldn’t say no.”

  Jade remains composed as she looks into the camera. “When we come back, we’ll hear the story of another young woman who succumbed to the powers of the same man.”

  Natalie opens her eyes and whispers, “Prentice is going to be furious.”

  It doesn’t get any better after the commercial break. The second prostitute is younger and more vulnerable-looking than Candy. And more articulate. “He made it clear from the beginning,” she says, “that he was interested in me only for a particular kind of sex.” She says Skipper handcuffed her to the bed and taped her eyes and mouth shut. “It was humiliating.”

  Jade asks, “Why did you remain in this abusive relationship for so many months?”

  “I have a drug habit. I have a child to support. I had no choice.”

  I think of Grace.

  “I finally broke things off,” Roberta says, “when he almost killed me.” She says Skipper almost suffocated her one night. And he hit her in the face and broke her cheekbone.

  Add physical abuse to the list.

  After another commercial break, Jade takes her cordless microphone into the audience and asks for questions. An older woman in a blue dress asks whether either of the women was in therapy. They both say yes. Candy says that she’s also in drug rehab and has been suicidal.

  A young man with a buzz cut suggests that Candy and Roberta were willing participants. “After all,” he says, “it takes two people to engage in sex. Even kinky sex.”

  The audience hisses. Rosie explains to us that the man is a regular audience member who is there to stir things up. I have no idea where she gets information like this, unless she’s taping the show and watching it late at night.

  “Ladies,” Jade says, “is there any message you’d like to give Mr. Gates if he’s able to see this program?”

  Candy responds first. “Tell him to get some help.”

  Roberta is blunter. “Tell him he’s an animal.”

  “Time for one more question,” Jade says. She points the microphone.

  “Isn’t it true,” a familiar female voice says, “that both of you are being paid a large amount of money to appear on this program today? And isn’t it also true that you came forward only when you were offered money to tell your story?”

  I’m stunned. It’s Carolyn.

  Jade says, “We don’t pay our guests, young lady.”

  Carolyn doesn’t back off. “I’m not saying you do. But somebody paid these women twenty-five thousand dollars each to tell these lies on your program. You’ve been used.”

  Jade takes the offensive. “Do you have any proof of this?” she asks.

  Carolyn doesn’t flinch. “We’re prepared to provide it to the newspapers. Unless, of course, these women are prepared to issue a full retraction.”

  Jade looks into the camera. Then she turns to Candy and Roberta. “Well,” she says to them, “what do you have to say about that?”

  “She’s lying,” Candy says. Roberta agrees.

  Jade turns back to Carolyn. “What do you have to say, Ms….”

  “O’Malley.” She pulls out a copy of a computer printout. “This is a copy of Candy’s bank account,” she says. “There was a twenty-five-thousand-dollar deposit on Tuesday.” She pulls out another sheet of paper. “A similar deposit was made into Roberta’s account on the same day.
”

  “Who are you?” Jade asks.

  “I’m Mr. Gates’s attorney. It is irresponsible of you to let these two women on your show.”

  The audience is stunned. We see Candy and Roberta consult with each other for a moment. Candy acts as spokesperson. “We have no idea where that money came from,” she says. “We are telling the truth.”

  Molinari is speechless. I see the hint of a smile on Ann’s face. “When did they get the bank records?” she asks.

  Rosie beams. “This morning. Pete’s very resourceful.”

  All hell breaks loose when the Jade Warner show ends. We convene an impromptu press conference in front of Natalie’s house. Ann proclaims her father’s innocence and promises to bring swift legal action against the two women who soiled his name, as well as Jade Warner and her production company. I tell the world that we plan to ask the judge to drop the charges.

  We’re back inside at five-fifteen, when Jade Warner gives Channel 4 an exclusive interview. She’s ready for the onslaught. “We screen our guests,” she insists. She pushes her flowing bangs out of her eyes. “We believe they were telling the truth and we stand by their stories.”

  A cynic might suggest that she is playing this for all the free publicity she can get.

  The media frenzy is fully engaged. Carolyn appears on Channel 4 with her computer printouts. “We felt we had a responsibility to tell Mr. Gates’s side of the story,” she says. “In our media-driven society, we think it is still important that somebody tell the truth.” She is clutching the documents that show the deposits into the two bank accounts.

  “Ms. O’Malley,” the anchorwoman asks, “do you have any idea who paid these women all that money?”

  “We have no idea, Jessica. We’re pretty sure it wasn’t Jade Warner.”

  Right on, Carolyn.

  Carolyn is waiting for us when Rosie and I get back to the office. Rosie gives her a high-five. “Nice work,” she says.

  “I think we’ve done a decent job of discrediting those two women,” Carolyn says, looking pleased.

  “At least good enough for now,” Rosie replies.

  “I don’t want to break up the celebration,” I say, “but we might want to keep this in some perspective. Did it occur to you that they may have been telling the truth? After all, they did find those pictures of Candy in Skipper’s study and in the storage locker.”