by G. M. Ford
I was standing behind Gabe’s office chair peering at the computer when Saunders knocked on the security door. I tore myself away from the screen and let her in. Gabe gave her a wave and kept reading Charity’s latest email aloud.
“Trager, William D. for Donald. Medical degree from Farley University in Iowa. Bottom third of his class. Started out in private practice in Oklahoma forty-eight years ago. After settling a couple of malpractice suits, he couldn’t get insurance anymore, so he moved on to something called the Hartwell Clinic up in Oceanside. Stayed there for more than twenty years, until the State of California jerked his license about five years back. Doesn’t say what for. Whatever it was, he sued to have the records sealed and won the court case. Charity says he’s still working on that end of it but is pretty sure he can swing it. For the past three years Trager’s worked as the private medical consultant for Florence Haller. She’s his only patient and, as far as the boys can tell, his sole source of income.”
“What did he make last year?” I asked.
Gabe clicked through a number of on-screen pages. “He reported income of just under two hundred grand in 2018.”
“From one old lady?”
“Must be a miracle worker,” Gabe said.
“Especially for a guy with no medical license,” Carolyn Saunders added. “What about the other one. The Pemberton guy?”
“That’s where things really get interesting,” Gabe said, tapping the keyboard.
“Samuel Rice Pemberton the Third. Hired on with Mrs. Haller about five years ago. Before that there’s no record of him, at least not under that name. They’re working on that too. Get this: he was originally hired as her driver. If you read between the lines, seems like he just sort of took over things as he went along. One function at a time. These days he’s the executor of the estate and has her power of attorney. Signs all the checks for Allied Investments and calls himself the majordomo.”
“Pretty upwardly mobile for a chauffeur.”
“With a bullet,” Saunders threw in.
“She have any kids?” I asked.
“Two,” Gabe said. “Mary Jean, who’d be fifty-eight if she hadn’t died of ovarian cancer a few years back, and Jack, who has been suing Allied for one thing or another for the past few years.” I started to ask another question, but Gabe cut me off. “Eighteen months ago, Allied Investments and Florence Haller took out a restraining order against him. He can’t be closer than a hundred yards to anything owned by the company.”
“The only son expelled from the garden?”
“Bit of family conflict there, I suspect,” Gabe said.
“More than a bit,” I said.
“Let’s see if I can get an address for him,” Gabe said and started tapping away.
I looked over at Saunders. “The whole thing sounds real sketchy to me,” I said. “Something just ain’t right here.”
Saunders looked grim. “Me too,” she admitted, “but sketchy isn’t going to be enough if this has anything to do with Florence Haller. We’re gonna need a smoking gun, Leo. Florence Haller is about as Social Register as you can get. One of the biggest philanthropists in the San Diego area for the last fifty years or so. Her mother-in-law was a grand dame named Ruth Rader. Florence Haller built Rader Children’s Hospital out of her own pocket and named it after her. Major contributor to the library. That kind of stuff. Sits on every board of directors in the county. If you’ve got anything criminal on her, it better include HD pictures.”
“White pages says a Jack Haller lives on Mission Boulevard,” Gabe announced.
I walked over and checked the street address over Gabe’s shoulder.
“Twenty-nine fifty-eight,” I read. “Just south of the roller coaster.”
Gabe shut down the computer and stood up.
“Let’s go.”
Gabe and I started for the door. I stopped and turned to Saunders, who hadn’t moved. “You coming?” I asked.
“I can’t,” she began. “If I—”
“You’re on vacation.”
She thought it over. “Yeah, you’re right,” she said. “I’m on my own time.”
Something about post-middle-aged men with ponytails always rubs me the wrong way. Seems like they’ve stayed too long at the fair. Like maybe it’s way past due for something new to happen. Something a little more grown-up maybe.
We were on one of those short-term vacation rental streets that run at right angles to the ocean. Almost Disney-like in its pastel cuteness, the sole concession to livability was a single condo building about half a block from the water. That way the city planners could pretend it was still a neighborhood where regular people lived.
Haller’s place was on the third floor, which was as high up as things were allowed to get this close to the Pacific. We climbed the stairs and knocked on his door.
Jack Haller was using a Ferragamo necktie as a headband when he pulled open the door. Midfifties. Thin and in shape. The wheatgrass-enema type. Wearing biking shorts with enough ass padding to give the impression he’d baked a load of brownies in his drawers. His head was bald in front with a long white shock of hair hanging down his back. Haller the Hun.
I could see all the way through the condo, past the sliding patio doors, out onto the Mission Beach boardwalk and the hordes of tourists biking, scootering, or merely strolling along, backed by battalions of beach umbrellas, and beyond the blaze of color, the rippling muscles of the Pacific Ocean.
“Whatcha need?” he asked.
“We wanted to have a few words with you about Allied Investments,” I said.
He made a rude noise with his lips and slammed the door.
“That went well,” Gabe commented.
I knocked again. Nothing happened, so I really put the knuckles to it.
He jerked the door open and stepped out onto the landing. His face was twisted into an angry knot. “Do I need to call the cops?” he demanded.
“How come Allied got a restraining order against you?” Gabe asked.
A super loud Harley came roaring by out on Mission Boulevard, setting off a couple of car alarms as it passed. The bleatings of urban crickets suddenly filled the air. Nobody said anything until they finally stopped chirping.
“I had the gall to want to see my mother,” Haller said bitterly. He looked us over. “Who the hell are you anyway? That asshole Pemberton send you?”
“Nope,” I said and left it at that.
“We’re looking into something,” Carolyn said, “something that may have to do with your family trust.”
“It’s not my family anymore. They cut me loose. Might as well have set me adrift on an ice floe.” He wiped the corners of his mouth with his thumb and forefinger. “At least Pemberton did. Couple years back, I got pissed and insisted on talking to my mother directly. Said I wasn’t going to leave until I saw her. Next thing I knew, they hurled me out the front door and then hauled me into court and handed me that restraining order.”
“When was the last time you spoke to your mother face-to-face?” Carolyn asked.
Haller thought it over. “Damn near two years now. Even before that, she was always either sleeping or indisposed in some manner every time I showed up at the house. Eventually, when I kept insisting, Pemberton had his pet gorilla throw me out into the street and then slapped that restraining order on me.”
“I mean . . . ,” I started. “Did something happen between you and your mother—you know, some kind of argument—something that would have . . .”
“It wasn’t her,” he scoffed. “No . . . no . . . she’d never do that. It was that Pemberton asshole. He just sort of took over her life.” He stopped talking and seemed to go elsewhere for a moment. Gabe was all over it.
“What?”
“A while back . . .” He sighed and looked around. Unsure he wanted to spill it. “Back when he first started taking over for her . . . I don’t know . . . I know how weird this sounds, but . . . I know this sounds crazy, but . . . I think he mig
ht have been sleeping with her.” Haller shook his head and held up a restraining hand. “I know . . . I know . . . she’s thirty years his senior and all . . . but it was just a feeling I got the last time I saw them together. Just something about the way they moved with each other . . . something about how they handled the space . . . you know, between them . . .” He let it peter out.
This didn’t seem to be the occasion for a jaunty quip, so everybody shut up.
Haller began to talk again. “From then on, one step at a time she signed things over to him. I got a call from my mother’s former business manager. He told me the Allied Investment property is being offered for sale. The cliff house, the Lemon Grove property—all of it. They’re looking for a private buyer for the whole thing.”
“Could Pemberton do that? You know, just on his own without your mother?”
“Oh yeah,” Haller said. “He’s like some kind of fucking parasite. Nowadays he’s in charge of everything. He’s the executor of the estate. He signs all the checks. You want to deal with Allied Investments and you gotta go through him. That’s all there is to it anymore. He fired all her doctors and lawyers and accountants. Nobody sees Mother except him and that quack doctor he hired.”
He studied our faces for a long second looking for signs of disbelief and then went on talking. “It’s not just me, man. Check with her friends. Check all those corporate and city boards she sits on. Nobody’s seen her in public in forever. It’s everybody. Pemberton’s walled her off from the world.”
“Why would he do that?” Gabe asked.
“He’s sold everything. The boats, the equipment. Every piece of land the trust owned. Only reason he hasn’t sold off Mother’s house and the property in Lemon Grove is that I’ve got them tied up in court. Those properties are mentioned in my trust fund, so they need my signature, otherwise they’d be gone too. My attorneys have put a restraining order on them. All their accounts are frozen until the courts rule on my suits.”
He grabbed the door again, pulled it open. The reddish hue of his face told me he was embarrassed and wished he hadn’t shared with us.
“Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got things to do.”
We were about halfway back to the car when Carolyn said, “This is the definition of frustration. We keep pumping. We keep picking up more and more information, and none of it does us a bit of good.”
Up in the eucalyptus trees a mourning dove was cooing his broken love song. Somewhere in the distance an approaching siren began to sing sad harmony.
Hector knocked on the study door. Waited and then pulled it open.
“Did we have a visitor?” Pemberton asked.
“Yes. One of the young women who clean the house.”
Pemberton frowned. “They were just here, weren’t they?”
“Yes sir.”
“What did she want?”
“She had a tale to tell. I thought you would be interested.”
“Pray tell.”
“She said that those two people we have on tape, the ones who’ve been poking their noses into our affairs . . . they set up a meeting with our house cleaners earlier this evening. At the company office in Chula Vista. She said they wanted to know all about us. About the house and the residents. About Mrs. H. and what goes on here.”
“And what did they tell them?”
“She didn’t know. Says she left before the interview really got started.” Hector kept talking. “She also said that one of her crew called her later, after they all got home—making sure she was all right and such. The men told her they had CC images of us as well. You and Dr. Trager in particular.”
“Really?”
“What now, sir?”
“Inform the cleaning company that we will no longer require their services. Pay them off for whatever we’ve contracted for. We don’t need minor annoyances gumming up the works right now.”
“Yes sir.”
“And get me Mrs. Cisneros on the secure line.”
“Yes.”
Pemberton paced the room until the light on the desk phone began to blink.
She wasted no time. “I found them,” she said by way of a greeting. “They go by the names Leon Marks and Gene DeGrazia. They live on Del Monte. And guess what?”
Pemberton said nothing.
“Two days ago, Marks rented an apartment on Narragansett, in the building at the end of your alley. Number eight in the back.”
“Well, that answers that question, doesn’t it?” Pemberton murmured.
“Huh?”
“We’re going to have to do something about them.”
“Something like what?”
“Like Mr. Pickett.”
Long silence. “You think they’re getting that close?” she asked finally.
“I think they’re closer than anybody’s gotten before. And most of all, I think we’ve milked the situation here for nearly everything it’s worth. We can’t keep up this charade forever. The arrangements for departure have already been started. It’s time for all of us to sit back and let the dust settle.”
She didn’t say anything for a while.
“When?”
“As soon as possible. Certainly in the next few days.”
He told her how and where he thought it should be done. She agreed.
“I’ll see to it,” she said and hung up.
We blew the rest of the day trying to find a surviving member of the Martini family—anybody who knew the full story of how the Martinis got separated from the family homestead—but we came up dry. From what we could find online, the youngest daughter, Serena, used to live out east in Santee. We found our way to Santee and eventually found the last known address of Serena Martini. The babysitter wasn’t even sure what town it was, she just knew how to get there, but the little girl in the fairy costume playing out in the yard said her family had lived there for as long as she’d been around, which was, judging from the princess herself, about five years or so. As we started to leave, the purple princess said she hoped Serena Martini had gone to Jesus. We said we hoped so too.
Traffic back to O.B. was shitty, but we drew Schadenfreudian solace from the fact that most of the bumper-to-bumper traffic was crawling in the other direction and the mean-spirited notion that we’d probably beat most of those poor suckers home.
“This is like riding an escalator backwards,” Saunders said as we cut down onto Sea World Drive. “No matter how fast we walk, the thing just keeps us moving in the other direction. We don’t have one damn thing we can use. Nothing.”
I was going to agree, but Gabe looked up from the phone.
“Charity.”
Carolyn unbuckled her seat belt, leaned forward, and pushed her head between Gabe and me.
Gabe began to read from the screen. “Trager got caught with his hand in the cookie jar. More than once. Charity says the clinic doesn’t say it in so many words due to the legal ramifications, but he thinks Trager is a full-scale junkie. They sent him to rehab twice before they fired him. He says the clinic Trager was working at when he lost his license is what amounts to a private sanatorium, and that they’ve been investigated and fined for the overmedication of patients on four occasions. Sued more times than that. Won some. Lost some. Says they were headed for bankruptcy when the opioid epidemic gave them new life.”
“Pill pushers,” Carolyn muttered.
“So how does a guy with no license still get to practice medicine?” I asked.
Gabe looked up. Made a face. “It’s not like he’s got an office someplace. He’s only got one client. I’m betting that as long as nobody complains, he’s pretty much invisible to the medical authorities.”
Gabe tapped the screen. “But somebody did complain,” Gabe said.
“Who?” Carolyn asked.
“Guy named Pickett. Simon Pickett. An old guy who’d known Mrs. Haller since they were kids. About five months ago, he lodged a complaint regarding elder abuse with social services.”
“What happen
ed?”
“The report says he failed to follow up on his complaint. Seems this Pickett guy just up and disappeared. His family reported him missing two days later. Nobody’s seen or heard of the guy since. The case was referred to missing persons and is still unsolved.”
“What else?” I pushed.
“He says Allied Investments has been selling off its inventory for the past couple of years.”
“What inventory is that?”
“Various parcels of land in San Diego County. Old fishing boats. The original Haller fleet. Thirty-four of them. Auctioned off one at a time over the past two years, mostly in Mexico. Took in nearly nine million bucks, not counting the nets and equipment, which were shipped back to San Diego for later disposal.” Gabe went on. “Nine million of which never appeared anywhere in the Haller trust accounts. Nine million whose whereabouts are presently unknown.”
“Why not sell the equipment with the boats?” Carolyn asked.
“Good question.”
Both Gabe’s and my phones bonged at the same time.
“More Charity,” Gabe said and began reading the screen.
“You know,” Carolyn said from the back seat. “The elder abuse angle might be a slick way into this thing.”
“Why’s that?” I asked.
“Because it’s trending these days. SDPD’s run a couple of mandatory staff workshops on elder abuse lately. They say we’ve got a generation coming up that’s not going to have it nearly as good as their baby boomer parents did and that some of them are in a real big hurry to come into the family money. There’s a special hotline to report it on. It’s presently cause du jour in the anti–domestic violence campaign.”
“Maybe we should lodge an anonymous complaint,” I said.
Carolyn nodded. “I’ve got a friend on the task force. Let me make a call and find out the best way to go about it, but yeah—that might be a real good idea.”
“You wanna hear the scoop on Samuel Rice Pemberton the Third?” Gabe asked.
We waited for the rim shot.