Higher Law Boxset, Volume 3

by Sheldon Siegel

  “Already an ex-boyfriend.”

  “That didn’t take long.”

  “She’s very particular.”

  Just like her mother. “Is Tommy okay?”

  “Fine.”

  Our twelve-year-old son was a pleasant, but unplanned surprise long after Rosie and I had split up. He was more dedicated to video games than schoolwork, but he was a good kid. “I’ll be at his basketball game on Saturday.”

  “I’ll let him know.”

  Rosie and I lived a couple of blocks from each other fifteen minutes across the Golden Gate Bridge in Marin County. I spent three nights a week at her house. Old habits.

  I glanced at the flat-screen TV on her wall. It was tuned to the local news, the sound turned down. “What’s going on?”

  “There was an officer-involved shooting in the Fillmore.”

  “Not good. Do you know which cop?”

  “They haven’t released a name.”

  My dad was a San Francisco police officer for thirty-five years. He had died almost twenty years earlier. He always referred to SFPD as the “family business.” My younger brother, Pete, had worked in the family business until he and his partner cracked some heads breaking up a gang fight in the Mission. He lost his job as part of the settlement of the inevitable lawsuit. Nowadays, he worked as a private investigator. We still knew a lot of cops.

  Rosie glanced at her watch. “I need to get onto a conference call.”

  Her doorway filled with the imposing presence of our secretary, legal assistant, process server, bodyguard, and one-time client, Terrence “The Terminator” Love, a former small-time prizefighter who was one of my most reliable customers during my first stint at the P.D.’s Office. The light reflected off the bald head of the gentle giant who clocked in at six-six and three hundred and fifty pounds. “Pete’s on the phone. He tried your cell, but you didn’t answer.”

  I glanced at my iPhone and saw that the battery had run out. “Is he okay?”

  “Yes, but he needs to talk to you right away. It sounded important.”

  Terrence was perceptive for a guy who had taken more punches than he had given. “I’ll take it in my office.”

  ✽✽✽

  I sat down at my metal desk and picked up the phone. “You okay, Pete?”

  “Fine, Mick.” His rasp was more pronounced than usual.

  “Everybody okay at home?”

  “Yeah. Got a minute?”

  “For my kid brother, always.”

  “I need to see you right away. We gotta deal with a problem.”

  Uh-oh. “What kind?”

  “You seen the news?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “There was an officer-involved shooting in the Fillmore.”

  “I heard. I hope it isn’t somebody we know.”

  “It is.”

  2

  “THERE COULD BE RIOTS”

  “Who’s the cop?” I asked.

  Pete’s voice was tense. “Johnny B.”

  Oh, crap. “Is he okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “But?”

  “He shot an eighteen-year-old kid during a traffic stop. The kid died.”

  Not good. “Stuff happens.”

  “This is bad, Mick.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  Giovanni “Johnny” Bacigalupi IV was a rookie cop and fourth-generation SFPD. The youngest of seven siblings, all of his brothers were police officers. His father, Giovanni “Gio” III, was an assistant chief and my high school classmate at St. Ignatius. His grandpa, Giovanni II, used to be the commander at Taraval Station. He was one of my father’s best friends.

  “Where’s Johnny?” I asked.

  “Northern Station.”

  “Has Gio talked to him?”

  “Not yet.”

  “He’s the assistant chief.”

  “Doesn’t matter. You remember the chaos during ‘Fajitagate.’ They aren’t going to let Johnny talk to anybody—especially his father—until they get his statement.”

  True. In 2002, three off-duty police officers had too much to drink and got into a fight outside a bar on Union Street after they demanded a bag of fajitas from two young men who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. The cops were exonerated of assault and battery charges, but two were held liable in a civil case. The situation was exacerbated by the fact that the father of one of the cops was an assistant chief. He and other members of the brass were absolved of obstruction of justice. When the smoke cleared, the three cops lost their jobs, and the big guns looked terrible. SFPD adopted a policy that the chief or an assistant must recuse himself from the investigation if his kid is accused of wrongdoing.

  I kept my tone even. “He has to go through the process, Pete.”

  “This is going to get messy.”

  Yes, it is. “Who else was there?”

  “Three other cops. It gets worse. The victim may have been unarmed.”

  In which case, this could be a full-blown disaster. “Have they ID’d the victim?”

  “SFPD hasn’t released a name.”

  “Did Gio call you?”

  “No, Luca did. He couldn’t reach you.”

  Lucantonio “Luca” Bacigalupi was Gio’s older brother and Johnny’s uncle. He was a “juice” lawyer downtown who used his family’s connections on behalf of developers to ram building projects through the City’s Byzantine permitting process. He was the only member of the immediate family who wasn’t SFPD.

  “Why didn’t Gio call me?” I asked.

  “He’s at Northern Station trying to see Johnny.”

  “What does Luca expect me to do?”

  “Line up a lawyer.”

  “He knows everybody in town.”

  “He does real estate deals. He wants a criminal defense attorney.”

  “The POA has people on-call.”

  “He wants somebody he knows.”

  “Johnny won’t qualify for a public defender. The family has plenty of money.”

  “Luca wants somebody he trusts.”

  So would I. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We don’t know that Johnny did anything wrong.”

  “In that case, we can call off the fire drill. For now, we have four cops involved in an officer-involved shooting. Gio wants a lawyer for Johnny in case this gets out of hand.”

  “Is there video?”

  “Probably. The world has changed since I was a cop. SFPD still doesn’t have dash cams, but every cop wears a body cam. Something might have been caught on a security camera. And there’s always a chance that somebody taped it on their iPhone.”

  “Johnny’s lawyer needs to see the videos before somebody puts them up on YouTube.”

  “Agreed. Pop never had to deal with this.”

  “He would have quit.”

  “So would I. Local TV is all over it. CNN and Fox News will pick it up any minute. Twitter is going wild.” My streetwise younger brother’s tone transformed into a whisper. “There could be riots, Mick.”

  “Where did you leave it with Luca?”

  “I told him that you and I would come over to his office as soon as we could.”

  “I’ll meet you there.”

  ✽✽✽

  I was walking down the corridor at the P.D.’s Office when I heard Rosie’s voice from behind me. “Going somewhere?”

  “I need to see Luca Bacigalupi.”

  “Does this have anything to do with Johnny B.?”

  “Yeah. How did you find out?”

  “I’m the Public Defender of the City and County of San Francisco.”

  “How did you really find out?”

  “Twitter.”

  Thought so. “I’ll be back this afternoon.”

  “Johnny won’t qualify for a P.D., Mike.”

  “I know.”

  “Why are you going?”

  “He’s my godson.”

  3

  “I’M JUST BEING CAUTIOUS”

  The well-heeled attorney extended a meaty hand and spo
ke to me in a flowing baritone. “Thanks for coming in on short notice.”

  “Pete said it was urgent, Luca.”

  “It is, Mike.”

  Unlike many of his contemporaries who have switched to business casual, Luca Bacigalupi still wore a charcoal Brioni suit, a white oxford shirt, and a conservative tie to work. Built like an SUV, his slick gray hair, gold Rolex, and maroon pocket square meshed with the rosewood-paneled walls in the reception area of his law firm on the twenty-seventh floor of the historic Russ Building on Montgomery Street. The eldest of the seven Bacigalupi brothers had just turned sixty-seven, but he still looked like he could hold his own on the offensive line at St. Ignatius, where he had starred a few years before my older brother, Tommy. Luca went on to USF for college and law school. Tommy became an all-city quarterback and the starter at Cal before we lost him in Vietnam.

  “How’s your dad?” I asked as he escorted me down the hall.

  “Good days and bad days.”

  A year earlier, his father had suffered a debilitating stroke, and Luca had become the de facto head of the family. “Is he still living at home?”

  “For now. He has a full-time caretaker.”

  Pete and I had been through a similar experience with our mother, who had suffered from Alzheimer’s during the last years of her life. “Tough stuff.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Is Pete here?”

  “He’s inside.”

  I accepted his offer of coffee as he led me into a conference room with overstuffed leather chairs and Currier and Ives lithographs. The traditional look was a welcome respite from the sterile designs of many contemporary law firms. I looked out the window. Through the heavy rain, I saw the outline of the Transamerica Pyramid and, in the distance, the Golden Gate Bridge.

  Pete was standing by the credenza. My younger brother was stockier than I was, with a pockmarked face and closely-cropped gray hair. He was dressed in his ever-present bomber jacket, a cup of coffee in his hand. Luca closed the door behind him, and we took our seats around the rosewood table. There was a poster-sized drawing of a condo tower near the ballpark that Luca was trying to bulldoze through the planning commission. The conference room reminded me of the five years I had spent at a power firm at the top of the Bank of America Building after Rosie and I had split up. I took the job because I needed the money. It was a bad fit from day one. The white-shoe guys who run white-shoe firms don’t like it when you represent blue-collar criminals—you know—the kind who steal stuff and kill people.

  Luca’s tone was somber. “This conversation is attorney-client privileged.”

  “Understood.” Since Pete wasn’t a lawyer, this wasn’t true for him. Then again, he wasn’t going to tell anyone about our discussion. He never said much. “Is Johnny okay?”

  “Yes. He’s at Northern Station.”

  “Is Gio there?”

  “Yes, but they won’t let him see Johnny.”

  “They have to follow procedures.” I didn’t need to mention Fajitagate. “They’ll want to get Johnny’s statement.”

  “Gio’s an assistant chief.”

  “There can’t be any appearance of special treatment. He’s going to have to recuse himself.”

  “I know.”

  “What else did Gio tell you?”

  “Johnny shot and killed a young man during a traffic stop.” He waited a beat. “The kid was black. Johnny and the other cops are white.”

  Uh-oh. “Is there a problem?”

  “Just a hunch. You know the issue. Trayvon Martin. Ferguson. LaQuan McDonald. Black Lives Matter.”

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Luca.”

  “I’m just being cautious, Mike.”

  Got it. “Why did you want to see me?”

  “Gio asked me to line up a criminal defense lawyer for Johnny.”

  “The POA will provide an attorney. They probably have somebody there already. If not, you know the good defense lawyers in town.”

  “I know you better.”

  “I’m a public defender.”

  “You’re family. I trust you. So does Gio. So does Johnny. I want you to come with me to Northern Station. If they won’t let Johnny talk to Gio, maybe they’ll let him talk to you.”

  I considered my options for a moment. “Okay.”

  Pete finally broke his silence. “You want me to come along?”

  Luca nodded. “Yes, but you can’t talk to Johnny. Anything he says to you isn’t covered by the privilege. I want you to work your sources at Northern Station and the Fillmore and see if you can find out what happened.”

  4

  “THEY WON’T LET ME TALK TO MY SON”

  “Where’s Johnny?” I asked.

  Assistant Chief Giovanni “Gio” Bacigalupi gestured with his thumb. “Upstairs.”

  “Is he okay?”

  “As far as I know. He isn’t answering his police or personal cell.”

  “Have you seen him?”

  “No.” His voice filled with frustration. “They won’t let me talk to my son.”

  Gio’s features were similar to his older brother’s, but he was rail-thin, and his face bore the scars of three decades of police work. Unlike Luca’s flowing hair, Gio still wore a traditional crewcut. His badge was displayed on the breast pocket of his Men’s Wearhouse suit.

  “We’ll get this sorted out, Gio,” I said. “You know the drill. They need to follow procedure.”

  He took a sip of room-temperature coffee. “Yeah, right.”

  At ten-forty-five on Wednesday morning, my high school classmate was sitting at a metal table in an interrogation room in the basement of Northern Station, a windowless bomb shelter at Fillmore and Turk. Luca and I were across from him. Given Gio’s rank, I figured that he would have been given more comfortable accommodations. The desk sergeant had received iron-clad instructions to escort Gio downstairs and out of range from his son, the brass, and, most important, the press.

  Gio’s scowl became more pronounced. “I’m the assistant chief.”

  “SFPD has to be careful with an officer-involved shooting. Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they’re following procedure and taking Johnny’s statement.”

  “He should talk to a lawyer first.” He turned to his older brother. “Right, Luca?”

  “Yes.”

  Something didn’t sound right. “Do you have any reason to believe that Johnny did something wrong?”

  “No.”

  “But?”

  “You know how it works, Mike. Johnny’s a kid. In SFPD, crap always flows downhill. If something got screwed up, Johnny is going to take the hit.”

  Yup. “Who is taking his statement?”

  “The chief and the commander of this station.” He waited a beat. “And Roosevelt Johnson.”

  What? “He’s retired.”

  “Evidently, he’s agreed to help with this investigation.”

  I exchanged a glance with Luca. Now in his eighties, Roosevelt Johnson was the most decorated homicide inspector in SFPD history. He had handled countless high-profile cases until his retirement ten years earlier. Coincidentally, he and my father were San Francisco’s first integrated patrol team when they walked the beat in the Tenderloin almost sixty years ago. His credentials were impeccable, and his integrity was unquestionable.

  “Why is a homicide inspector involved?” I asked Gio.

  “It’s the protocol for an officer-involved shooting. The D.A.’s Office also has the authority to conduct its own parallel investigation.”

  “SFPD has two dozen active homicide inspectors.”

  He gave me a sideways look. “I guess they’re busy.”

  “What’s going on, Gio?”

  “I don’t know, but I don’t like it.”

  Neither do I. Why is a highly respected and very retired homicide cop coming back to handle the investigation of an officer-involved shooting? “Have you talked to him?”

  “Not yet.”
<
br />   “What about the chief?”

  “He ordered his people to send me down here.”

  It was no secret that Gio and Chief Alshon Green weren’t pals. Green had been hired three months earlier when his predecessor was forced to resign after two officers shot an unarmed man in the Mission. The cops were exonerated after what some viewed as a less-than-robust investigation. The press coverage was merciless, and the former chief took the fall. When it was time to pick his successor, Gio was passed over. He never complained in public, but I knew that he was bitter.

  Luca spoke up. “What else did the chief tell you?”

  “Johnny was the shooter. No cops were hurt. Then he told me that I should stay out of the building and avoid the press.” His tone turned sarcastic. “Optics.”

  Of course. “How are you and the chief getting along these days?”

  “We keep it professional.”

  “It’s better that way.” I pushed back my chair, stood, and headed toward the door. “You should stay here, Gio.”

  “Where are you going?”

  I motioned to Luca to join me. “To see our client.”

  ✽✽✽

  “How are you, Ignacio?” I asked.

  The desk sergeant looked up from the sports section of the Chronicle. “Fine, Mike.”

  “Pete says hi.”

  “Give him my regards.”

  Sergeant Ignacio Navarro was sitting at a console behind bulletproof glass in the lobby of Northern Station. He was Pete’s first partner at Mission Station thirty years earlier. Back then, he was a person of few words. Nowadays, he said even less. I’ve always wondered whether he and Pete ever spoke to each other.

  His eyes darted from me to Luca and then back to me. “Yes?”

  “We’d like to see our client.”

  “Who’s that?”

  We’re going to have to do this the hard way. “Come on, Ignacio.”

  “Do you know how many people are in the lockup?”

  I care about just one. “Johnny Bacigalupi.”

  “They’re taking his statement.”

  “We’re his attorneys.”

  “I was told that the POA was going to provide somebody.”

  “Change of plans.”

  “How come the P.D.’s Office is involved? He can afford a private attorney.”

  “That doesn’t concern you. We want to see our client.”