MD02 - Incriminating Evidence Read online

  I glance at the TV It shows footage of Skipper making a campaign speech, followed by a shot of him being led into the Hall. I catch a glimpse of myself proclaiming his innocence. The scene shifts to the front steps of the Hall, where Turner Stanford is making an impassioned plea for justice. “Turner’s spinning,” I observe.

  A handsome reporter with windblown hair looks into the camera. He’s standing on the steps of a church. Rosie sits up. “What is he doing at St. Peter’s?” she asks.

  I’m puzzled, too. St. Peter’s Catholic Church has been a center of worship at the south end of the crowded Mission District for more than a century. It rises above the modest bungalows and the two-story apartment buildings on Alabama Street, between Twenty-fourth and Twenty-fifth. It isn’t a particularly impressive structure, but it reflects the working-class community it has served for many years. What it has to do with Skipper or a dead body in the Fairmont I can’t fathom. I turn on the sound.

  The reporter pretends he’s addressing his remarks directly to the anchorman. “A makeshift memorial has been established in the Mission District for the young man who was found dead earlier today at the Fairmont Hotel.”

  The Mission District is one of San Francisco’s oldest and most complex neighborhoods. It sits on a sunny plain just south of downtown. Its main artery is Mission Street, which is home to businesses, residential hotels and restaurants. Like many inner-city neighborhoods, it has undergone several evolutions. Fifty years ago, it was working-class Irish. My mom and dad grew up on opposite sides of Garfield Square and were married at St. Peter’s. We lived in an apartment at Twenty-first and Alabama when I was little. We moved to the Sunset when I was nine and my dad had saved up enough money for a down payment on a house. About the same time, many of the Irish residents moved to other parts of the city and out to the suburbs. When they moved out, the Hispanics moved in. Rosie’s parents were among the new arrivals. Her mom still lives at Twenty-fourth and Bryant, three blocks from our apartment when I was a kid. Small world.

  “The name of the victim is John Paul Garcia,” the reporter says.

  At least we now know his name. The camera pans toward the door to the church, where a small pile of flowers sits beneath a hand-lettered sign that says “Justice for Johnny.”

  The phone rings and Rosie answers. It’s her older brother, Tony, whose produce market is around the corner from St. Peter’s. “Yes,” I hear her say, “I just saw it.” I watch her face turn ashen. She says “Uh-huh” a couple of times. She says she’ll make some calls and hangs up.

  I grab the remote and turn the TV off. Rosie is sitting in stone-cold silence, her right hand covering her mouth, her eyes open wide.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  “It’s Johnny Garcia,” she whispers in a broken voice.

  “Did you know him?”

  “He’s from the neighborhood.” She bites her lip. “We knew his mother.”

  5

  “THE DA IS SUBJECT TO THE SAME LAWS AS EVERYBODY ELSE”

  “The district attorney’s office will conduct business as usual during Mr. Gates’s leave of absence.”

  —CHIEF DEPUTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY WILLIAM MCNULTY. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 8.

  Rosie is on the phone right away. She is pulling on a Cal sweatshirt as she talks in Spanish to her mother. Sylvia Fernandez is always available to her children. She stays with Grace when Rosie is in trial. We couldn’t practice law without her help. After Rosie hangs up, she says, “She’s going to ask around.”

  This may help. Sylvia has known everybody who’s lived within a one-mile radius of St. Peter’s for the last forty years.

  “How did you know Johnny Garcia’s mother?” I ask.

  Rosie is sitting up in bed. “She lived down the street.”

  I ask if they were close.

  “Pretty close.”

  “Do you know how to reach her?”

  “Theresa’s dead, Mike,” she says. “She died about five years ago. Johnny and his older brother Carlos were kids. Johnny couldn’t have been much older than twelve when she died.”

  “What about the father?”

  “That’s a long story.”

  “I have plenty of time.”

  Rosie stands and says, “Let’s make coffee.”

  Rosie has brewed a pot of Peet’s. She explains that Theresa Lopez Garcia was a pretty girl who tried to please. “She was a cheerleader. Very sweet,” Rosie says. “Not very forceful or independent, though. She married her high school sweetheart when she turned eighteen. Her parents weren’t happy about it. They wanted her to go to college. They didn’t like her husband, Roberto, who was a football player at Mission High. He wasn’t interested in school. He thought he was going to get a football scholarship. He didn’t.” She says Theresa worked at one of the produce markets on Mission. She and Roberto had two kids: Carlos and Johnny. Then things went to hell.

  “Roberto had a temper,” Rosie goes on. “He couldn’t hold a job. He drove a forklift. He worked at a hardware store. He tried to sell cars. When the money got tight, he’d come home late and drunk. That’s when he used to hit her. You can guess how it ended. When Johnny was little, Theresa told Roberto that she’d leave him if he didn’t stop drinking. A week later, he was gone. We heard he died in an armed robbery in L.A. a few years later. Theresa and the kids moved in with her parents, but they were elderly. When they died, they moved into Valencia Gardens.”

  In contrast to the working-class Hispanic enclave near St. Peter’s, much of the north end of the Mission is a blighted crime-and drug-ridden ghetto. There is nothing garden-like about the decaying, low-rise Valencia Gardens housing projects. Likewise, the broken-down residential hotels in the immediate vicinity of the BART station around the corner at Sixteenth and Mission are a depressing cesspool of drugs, prostitution and homelessness.

  “She went back to her job at the market,” Rosie says. “Then she got into drugs. She ended up on welfare. She worked as a prostitute.” She takes a drink of her coffee and glances toward Grace’s room. I know this look. Even during our divorce, Rosie made sure that Grace had everything she needed. It’s hot-wired into Rosie’s psyche—and mine. Your kids don’t ask to be born. You can screw up your own life but not theirs. You can’t send them back.

  I ask her how Theresa died.

  Rosie swallows hard. “Overdose. She was only thirty-four.”

  “And the kids?”

  “Carlos died in a gang fight. Johnny moved in with a great-aunt in the projects and I remember hearing it didn’t work out. He was tough to handle. Last I heard, he was out on his own. I’d guess he must have been about seventeen by now. Tony didn’t know what Johnny had been doing for the last couple of years. We lost contact with the family when Theresa died.”

  We sit in silence, finishing our coffee. Rosie looks right at me and says, “I want to find out what happened.”

  “I do, too.” I pause. “Rosie,” I say, “Skipper is our client.”

  “Understood.”

  “We can’t personalize this case. Skipper is entitled to a defense.”

  “Which we will give him. That’s our job.” She points her finger at me and adds, “I can’t help it that this case is already personal.”

  I lean forward and take her hand. “Are you going to be able to deal with this?”

  “For one thing, we shouldn’t assume he did anything wrong. For another, we defend evil people every day. We’ve represented murderers, rapists and pornographers.” She draws the line at accused child molesters. She got one off when she was a PD. He turned around and tortured and killed the girl next door. She vowed she’d never let that happen again. She adds, “We don’t have to love our clients.”

  “Even Skipper?” I already know the answer.

  “Even Skipper. I want to know the truth. We’d better get down to the Mission first thing in the morning.”

  At seven-thirty in the morning, I’m back at Rosie’s, eating a bagel in her small kitchen. Grace is sitting at
the counter eating Froot Loops and speculating on when she’ll get her first homework assignment. She explains that third grade is much harder than second.

  The TV is turned to the news. Three times a week, an aging criminal defense attorney named Mort Goldberg holds court on Channel 4. “Mort the Sport” was a fixture in the corridors of the Hall for four decades before he found a new career as a TV legal analyst a couple of years ago. His segment is known as “Mort’s Torts.” Although he once taught criminal procedure at Hastings, his TV spot isn’t scholarly. On the other hand, it’s wildly entertaining. He’s sort of a short, bald, Jewish Rush Limbaugh. Theoretically, he is supposed to discuss legal issues, but on a given day, he’ll cover everything from world politics to the state of the Giants’ pitching staff. His producers admit they never know what he is going to say. His ratings are almost as high as those of the attractive young woman who reads the traffic reports and has every male in the nine-county Bay Area sending her marriage proposals.

  An anchorman whose blow-dried hair makes him resemble a middle-aged Leonardo DiCaprio lobs the first softball. “Well, Mort,” he says through a wide grin, “what do you think about our district attorney?”

  Mort makes a valiant attempt at looking serious. He stares through thick Coke-bottle-bottom glasses. His puffy face looks a little like the late Harry Caray. He sounds like him, too. “Well, Sam,” he lisps, “District Attorney Gates has a substantial problem.”

  There’s insight for you.

  Mort squints into the camera. “My sources tell me that the police have evidence placing him at the scene and tying him to the commission of the crime.”

  His “sources” are the night custodial staff at the Hall and the bail bondsmen across the street. He takes a drink of coffee from an oversized mug with the Channel 4 logo on it. It took him six months to learn to hold the cup with the logo facing the camera. The blond guy asks him about Skipper’s defense team.

  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, “T
here’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.”