MD02 - Incriminating Evidence Page 6

  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?”

  “Our system is state-of-the-art. It is virtually impossible to enter or leave this building without being detected.”

  “I understand. But virtually impossible isn’t one hundred percent foolproof, right?”

  “No system is one hundred percent foolproof.”

  Exactly the answer I wanted to hear. “Were you here on Tuesday morning?”

  “Yes. I was the first security person on the scene. I took Mr. Gates’s call. I called the police.”

  “What time was that?”

  “Seven-oh-five. I went upstairs as soon as I called the police.”

  “Are there security videos?” I ask.

  “We’ve already provided them to the police.” He hands me a shopping bag containing about a dozen videotapes. “Inspector Johnson asked us to make copies for you.”

  “Did you see the victim in any of the videos?”

  “We’re still reviewing them.”

  “But you haven’t found him yet.”

  “Correct.”

  “How is that possible? I thought you said your system is state-of-the-art.”

  He backpedals. “This is a hotel, not a maximum security prison. Our cameras cover all of the public entrances but not every conceivable entry. If somebody wanted to get in without being detected, it’s possible they could have done so.”

  That’s what I wanted to know. “Did you ever see the victim around here?”

  “No.”

  “Can you show me the r
oom?”

  “Sure. The police gave us the go-ahead to clean it up this morning.”

  He takes me through a basement corridor to a stairway on the Sacramento Street side, which leads to the entrance to the tower. Although the Fairmont is no longer considered a crime scene, a police officer is sitting by the elevator. He nods to Evans. We enter the elevator and Evans punches the button to the fifteenth floor. “We aren’t going to let guests stay in the room until things calm down a bit,” he says.

  “How else can you access the fifteenth floor?” I ask.

  “There are two stairways on each floor.” He adds there is also a small service elevator.

  The door opens at fifteen and I survey the corridor. There are about a dozen rooms in all. Evans tells me Skipper was staying in Room 1504, which has a southern view. The summit conference with Sherman’s people took place in Room 1504 and the room next door, 1502. He says the two rooms are connected by an internal door and the participants were able to circulate between them. Hotel room service provided drinks and hors d’oeuvres in both rooms.

  Room 1504 has been cleaned and all traces of the events of earlier this week have been removed. It smells of disinfectant. There is a queen-sized four-poster, a desk, an armchair and a TV The carpet has been shampooed. The bed has been stripped of linens. He points out where Skipper was sitting when the waiter walked in. I ask him whether there were any police or security guards on the floor that night.

  “No. A security guard and a police officer were stationed at the elevator on the ground floor. The politicians didn’t want a bunch of cops upstairs.”

  “Was anybody else staying on the fifteenth floor?”

  “No.”

  “Realistically,” I say, “how difficult would it have been for somebody to have gotten upstairs without being detected?”

  “The last thing we needed was an incident while the DA was staying at our hotel.”

  True, but not exactly the answer to my question. He shows me the closed internal door that connects Room 1504 with Room 1502. I ask whether it was open when he arrived.

  “Yes.”

  I ask him to open the door that leads to Room 1502. Like most hotels, the connecting door consists of back-to-back doors, one facing Room 1504 and one facing Room 1502. Evans uses his master key to unlock the door that opens into 1504. Then he pushes open the door on the 1502 side, which is not locked. The room is identical to 1504 but is furnished with tables and armchairs—no bed. Evans explains that 1502 is often used as a hospitality room for social events.

  I say, “So somebody could have gotten into 1504 by going through 1502.”

  “That’s true.”

  I’ve started to look around the room, when we hear the toilet in the bathroom flush.

  Evans gives me a puzzled look. “It must be a member of the maintenance crew,” he says.

  The bathroom door opens. “Hi guys,” says Pete.

  Evans reaches for his walkie-talkie. “Who are you?”

  “He’s my brother,” I say.

  “Nice to meet you,” Pete says.

  Evans clears his throat. “Dave Evans. Building security. What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Taking a look around.”

  “You’re trespassing.”

  “He’s a PI,” I say. “He works for me.”

  “That doesn’t give him the right to break into one of our rooms.”

  “I didn’t break in,” Pete says. “The door was open.” Pete produces his license for Evans to study. Then he turns to me and says, “So what are you guys doing here?”

  I glance at Evans and say, “Dave was just showing me their security system and telling me how hard it would be to get to this room without being detected.”

  Pete grins. “It isn’t that hard.”

  6

  HANGING AL

  “They come in, they enter their plea and they leave. That’s all that happens at an arraignment.”

  —SAN FRANCISCO SUPERIOR COURT JUDGE ALBERT MANDEL. SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 8.

  “And how did you get in here?” Dave Evans asks Pete a moment later. We’re still in Room 1502.

  “I walked in the front door.”

  Evans isn’t amused. “The hell you did.”

  “You’re the one with all the fancy surveillance equipment.”

  Evans glares at me. “I don’t have time for this nonsense,” he says.

  “Suit yourself,” Pete says. “I’m not telling.”

  “Pete,” I say, “let’s try to be cooperative.”

  “Fine. I came in through the catering kitchen,” he says to Evans. “I took the tunnel under the grand ballroom to the service stairs. I jimmied the door and walked up to the fifteenth floor. That’s when I got lucky. The door to this room was open. I suppose the cleaning people left it that way. I’ll bet you dinner at that fancy restaurant downstairs that you won’t find me in your security video.”

  “We’ll find you,” Evans says.

  “No, you won’t.”

  Evans turns to me. “I don’t care if he’s a PI. I don’t appreciate the fact that you sent him to break into my building.”

  “Mike had nothing to do with this,” Pete says. “I got up here on my own.”

  This isn’t entirely true. I did ask Pete to check out the security system. I didn’t ask him to see if he could beat it.

  Pete adds, “We did you a favor. We found a hole in your system. Now you can fix it.”

  Evans snaps, “This doesn’t have anything to do with what happened the other night.”

  “Maybe not,” I say. On the other hand, if this case moves forward, we will put Evans on the stand to admit there are ways to get into this hotel that cannot be detected by his security cameras.

  “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” I recite. I’m sitting in a confessional near the back of St. Peter’s later the same evening. The church is quiet. A dozen votive candles flicker.

  St. Peter’s was first dedicated on July 4, 1886, when San Francisco was still young and the Mission was a stronghold of Irish immigrants. It has been and always will be a symbol of our neighborhood. It rose like a phoenix after it was gutted by fire a few years ago. Although it has been completely refurbished, the feeling I have for the church that I attended when I was a kid is still there. To me, St. Peter’s will always be much like the Mission itself: ordinary-looking on the outside but special within.

  “How long has it been since your last confession, Mike?” a familiar voice responds. Nowadays, there aren’t too many churches where you can recite your confession to a priest who knows you by name. For the last twenty years or so, St. Peter’s has been the sanctuary of Father Ramon Aguirre, a strong-willed priest who grew up a few blocks from here and was a classmate of mine at the seminary. When we were in school, Ramon once told me that he didn’t just want to become a priest; he wanted to become the priest at St. Peter’s. He has brought a modern perspective and unlimited energy to a once-demoralized parish. He’s known as the “rock-and-roll reverend” because he allows rock bands to play at youth functions in the social hall on Saturday nights. From time to time, he’s been known to pick up a guitar and take the microphone. He’s the first to admit that he must bring political as well as spiritual capital to hold the parish together. He is worthy of the legacy of the legendary Reverend Peter Yorke, a pastor who plied his trade in this very building over a century ago. Yorke fought for labor unions, edited his own newspaper and supported Irish revolutionaries. He once sat in this very confessional booth.

  “It’s been a long time, Ramon,” I reply. “At least a year or so.”

  “You should try to set a better example for Grace.”

  “I know.” We go to church when we can. I find it difficult to make Grace go into a little chamber by herself to confess some alleged sins that don’t seem particularly sinful to me. I worry about the effect of this. I want her to like herself. “It’s the old story,” I say. “It’s hard to get the kids interested
. They’d rather be home playing with their computers.”

  “Tell me about it. Last week I had a nine-year-old ask me if she could just log on to God’s Web site and submit her confession by e-mail.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “God isn’t online yet.”

  I can’t resist. “And what did she say?”

  “If God is so almighty, how come God doesn’t have a Web site?”

  It’s a fair point. “What was your answer?”

  “Same thing we always say. Sometimes there are no easy answers and you have to take it on faith.” He chuckles and adds, “I told her she could e-mail her sins to me in a pinch and I would see what I could do.”

  There are some things they just don’t teach you at the seminary.

  “So,” he says, “I understand that you’re representing Mr. Gates.”

  “It’s true.”

  “What’s that like?”

  “Challenging.”

  He grins and asks, “Did he do it?”

  I shake my head and say, “I don’t think so.”

  “It’s a sin to lie to a priest.”

  “Very funny. It’s also a sin if I violate the attorney-client privilege. Actually, I was hoping you might be able to give me some information about the boy who died at the Fairmont. I understand he was from the neighborhood.”

  His interest is piqued. “He was, but I think we have some business to attend to first.”

  “Business?”

  “Yes. This is a confessional and I’m a priest. You haven’t been here for a year. You’re going to have to confess to something while you’re here.”

  Every time I go to confession, it seems I have to tell my deepest, darkest secrets to a priest who thinks he’s David Letterman. “Can I e-mail you?”

  “No.”

  “Fine. Have it your way. I have slept with a woman who is not my wife.”

  His head drops. “Oh, Mike.”

  “Wait,” I say. “There are mitigating circumstances.”

  “There are no mitigating circumstances when it comes to this.”

  “Hear me out.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “I’m sleeping with a woman who used to be my wife.”