Higher Law Boxset, Volume 3

by Sheldon Siegel

  Ward answered. “We’ll get it to you as expeditiously as possible.”

  “Have you scheduled the arraignment?”

  “No sooner than Wednesday. DeSean will be in touch.” Ward stood up—a signal that our conversation was ending. “Are you going to handle this case yourself?”

  Yes. “We’ll decide on staffing in due course.”

  “You’re hedging like a politician, Mike.”

  “I’m learning.”

  “Give my best to Rosie.”

  “I will.” Rosie and Ward couldn’t stand each other.

  “Is Rosie going to run for another term?”

  Absolutely. “She’s going to make a decision in the next few months.”

  “You are learning.”

  I’d like to think so. “In the spirit of the holidays, is there anything else that you’d care to share with me about this case?”

  “Tell your client to plead guilty to first-degree murder.”

  “You’re overreaching.”

  “It will save everybody a lot of time and make our holidays more enjoyable.”

  * * *

  My iPhone vibrated as I was sitting at my desk a couple of hours later. Pete’s name appeared on the display.

  “You got anything on Lexy’s phone?” I asked.

  “Not much, Mick. She got a text from King inviting her to the party. Just time and place. He told her not to talk to anybody. No other details.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Billionaires Row. I may have some information for you.”

  “We haven’t been approved to handle Lexy’s case.”

  “You will.”

  “Even if we are, I can’t hire you.”

  “You want the information or not, Mick?”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  8

  BILLIONAIRES ROW

  Pete pulled up the collar of his bomber jacket to block the gusty wind. “What took you so long?”

  The sky was overcast. “Uber was slow.”

  At ten-thirty on Monday morning, we were standing on the sidewalk on Twenty-First Street, halfway up the steep hill between Church and Sanchez, two blocks above Dolores Park. When I was a kid living down the hill in the Mission, the peak between our neighborhood and the Castro was known as Liberty Hill. In the eighties, the real estate agents rechristened it as Dolores Heights. Nowadays, everybody called it Billionaires Row.

  Century-old oak and pine trees formed a graceful canopy over refurbished pre-earthquake Victorians, Edwardians, and brown-shingles. The houses had survived the 1906 earthquake because water had miraculously continued to flow to a still-functional hydrant around the corner at Twentieth and Church. In commemoration of its historic significance, the neighbors give it a fresh coat of gold paint on April eighteenth of every year.

  Although the homes had panoramic views from the Golden Gate Bridge to downtown, the neighborhood’s origins were working class, so the houses were more modest than the mansions of Pacific Heights. To their credit, the tech honchos kept their security guards, limos, and surveillance cameras out of view. On the other hand, if Pete and I had accidentally encroached upon somebody’s property, we would have received an instant response from a polite and well-armed guard. Billionaires Row was the safest street in San Francisco.

  “You ever work security here?” I asked.

  Pete’s eyes were always moving. “Couple times.”

  “I understand that the head of Facebook lives down the street.”

  “I cannot confirm or deny.”

  “Did he make you sign a non-disclosure agreement?”

  “That’s confidential.”

  “You can’t even tell me if you signed an NDA?”

  “That’s confidential, too.” My brother gave me a wry grin. “In this neighborhood, you can’t take out your trash without signing an NDA.”

  Welcome to my hometown in the new millennium. I pointed at a white frame house hidden behind a garish display of Christmas decorations. “Tom and Jerry are still here?”

  “Yup.”

  The “Tom and Jerry House” had become a San Francisco holiday institution three decades earlier—long before the tech barons arrived. Two good-natured souls named Tom and Jerry started hanging lights on the pine tree in front of their house. The decorations became more elaborate as the tree got taller. They transformed the sidewalk and garage beneath the stately pine into a fantasyland of toys, trains, giftwrapped boxes as big as Priuses, and two huge stockings bearing their names. The gaudy exhibition looked out of place on the staid street, but the neighbors took it in stride. Over the years, it had become a tourist attraction rivaling the “Full House” house on Broderick.

  “Why don’t they sell?” I asked. “They could cash in for millions.”

  “They like it here, Mick.”

  So would I. I thought about the days when our parents scraped together a down payment for a modest house on Kirkham Street around the corner from Big John’s saloon. According to family lore, Pop got the money during a brief stint in Chinatown, where “gratuities” to the cops were more lucrative than his usual beat in the Tenderloin. Pete and I finally sold it after our mom passed away—at a seven-figure profit.

  I smiled. “Think Mom and Pop could have afforded a house on this street when we moved to Kirkham?”

  “Probably. This neighborhood was pretty beat up in those days. If they had, we could have made a fortune by selling it to another tech honcho.”

  That would have pleased Tom and Margaret Daley. Our parents were children of the Depression who lived within their means, paid off their mortgage early, and put four kids through Catholic schools and state universities. They would have been appalled by the profligate spending and crass consumption of the tech titans living on Twenty-First Street.

  Pete’s tone turned philosophical. “We made out on the house, Mick. Pop would have said it was okay that we didn’t extract every last penny from the family that bought it.”

  My younger brother had inherited our father’s practical wisdom and generous spirit.

  I looked up San Francisco’s most exclusive block and saw a half-dozen black-and-whites parked at the crest of the hill in the intersection of Twenty-First and Sanchez. News vans were parked haphazardly below the police cars.

  “Which one is King’s house?” I asked.

  “The big one at the top. Probably cost twenty million to buy it, gut it, and remodel it.”

  “That’s insane.”

  “It was walking-around change for him. He tried to buy the house next door, too, but the owner wouldn’t sell.”

  “Were you ever hired to tail him?”

  “Nope.”

  “Do you know anybody who was?”

  “Maybe.”

  “You ever work security for him?”

  “I’m not qualified.”

  “You’re an ex-cop.”

  “The head of King’s security detail is a retired Israeli commando. He’s very selective.”

  “Can you find out who was there last night?”

  “I’ll see what I can do.” Pete’s thin lips transformed into a half-smile. “Does this mean you plan to hire me?”

  I hope so. “For now, this is just a brother-to-brother favor.”

  “What’s in it for me if I do you a solid?”

  “Dinner for you, Donna, and Margaret at the Gold Mirror.” It was the old-school Italian restaurant at Eighteenth and Taraval where our parents took us for pasta on special occasions.

  “Might work.”

  “You said you had some information for me.”

  “Ken Lee just left. They’re almost finished processing the scene. King’s widow showed up a little while ago. She was pretty upset.”

  “Understandable. Anybody else?”

  “Blackjack Steele. He didn’t look happy, either.”

  I recognized the name. Jack “Blackjack” Steele was the CEO of Y5K. The veteran “suit” had been brought in to provide adult supervision to the f
ounders of a series of startups, including Y5K. Between gigs, he was a venture capitalist and a talking head on Fox Business.

  I took a step toward King’s house, but Pete stopped me.

  “Not a good time,” he said. “The cops won’t let you inside. Besides, if you get any closer, one of King’s security guys might shoot you.”

  “That would ruin my Christmas.”

  “Mine, too. Let’s not take any unnecessary chances. You go back to the office and do lawyer stuff. I’ll do some poking around.”

  I was about to start walking down the hill when I saw a commotion in front of King’s house. A young woman dressed in an overpriced sweatshirt and high-end yoga leggings stormed out the metal gate and strode to a Tesla parked at the curb. She turned around to face a pudgy, balding man, whom I recognized as Steele. She pointed her finger at him and began gesticulating.

  “King’s widow?” I said.

  Pete nodded. “Chloe was married to King for three years. She was the personnel director at his previous startup. She broke up his second marriage.”

  Awkward.

  Chloe’s high-pitched voice transformed in to a plaintive wail that carried down the street. “You killed my husband! You knew that he was doing smack, and you did nothing to stop him.”

  Steele held up his hands in a defensive posture.

  She pointed at the house. “This house belongs to me.” She got into her Tesla and slammed the door behind her. The status symbol barreled around the corner onto Sanchez and disappeared.

  My brother took it in with his usual stoicism. “I’ll call you, Mick.”

  “Pete?”

  “Yes?”

  “Thanks.”

  9

  “I FIGURED YOU MIGHT NEED A HAND”

  At eight-thirty on Monday night, the doorway of Rosie’s office was filled by the six-foot-six-inch, three-hundred-pound presence of our secretary, process server, bodyguard, and onetime regular client, Terrence “The Terminator” Love. “Evening, Mike,” he said.

  “Evening, Terrence. You didn’t have to come in tonight.”

  “I saw our D.A. on TV talking about Sexy Lexy. I figured you might need a hand.”

  “I do.” And I’m profoundly grateful.

  The former small-time heavyweight boxer and retired petty thief was dressed in a double-breasted suit and a maroon tie that he had purchased with his first paycheck after he had come to work for us at Fernandez and Daley. We hired him as part of a plea bargain that I worked out with a sympathetic judge after Terrence had gotten into a shoving match with a homeless guy over a stolen roast chicken in front of his favorite liquor store on Sixth Street. When Rosie and I moved to the P.D.’s Office, we insisted on bringing him with us. To his unending credit and our everlasting delight, he hadn’t missed a day of work or consumed a drop of malt liquor in more than ten years.

  The gentle giant’s shaved head reflected the light as he handed me a printout and spoke in his high-pitched voice. “This is the financial report on Alexa Low.”

  “Thanks, T.”

  “Anything else today?”

  “Yes. I want you to go home and celebrate Christmas Eve with your daughter. And tomorrow is a holiday, so you need to stay out of here. Understood?”

  His smile exposed a gold front tooth—a souvenir of his last stay at San Francisco County Jail. “Yes.”

  “Thanks for coming in today. Merry Christmas, Terrence.”

  “Merry Christmas, Mike.”

  A decade ago, if you had told me that one of our most dedicated employees would have been a recovering alcoholic and former small-time crook who had lost more prizefights than he had won, I would have said that there was a better chance that I would be the starting point guard for the Warriors.

  I turned to the last page of the report, which I read aloud. “Defendant has total assets of less than five hundred dollars and debts in excess of ninety thousand.”

  Rosie was scrolling through her e-mails. “Sounds like we have a new client. Lexy must have gone through a lot of money in a hurry.”

  “Heroin addiction is expensive.”

  I turned to face one of the newer additions to our team. Nadezhda “Nady” Nikonova was an intense woman in her mid-thirties whom Rosie and I had liberated from a well-connected firm downtown where she had spent mind-numbing hours poring over phonebook-length documents to help her clients buy and sell office buildings. Nowadays, she spent mind-numbing hours trying to keep criminals out of jail—which she found more to her liking. Nady liked to say that there was little substantive difference between the morals of her old and new clients—the former simply had the wherewithal to pay private lawyers.

  I spoke to Rosie. “I’m going to take the lead. Nady will sit second chair.”

  “Excellent.”

  I turned to Nady. “The arraignment will probably be set for Wednesday. I’ll need your help tomorrow preparing document requests.”

  “Already started.”

  She was painstakingly thorough. “I’m sorry that you’ll need to work on Christmas.”

  “Hanukkah ended on Wednesday.”

  “I’ll put in a good word for you with your rabbi.”

  “Thank you.” Her expression turned serious. “Should we bring in backup?”

  “You can handle it. This isn’t like your old firm where matters were staffed with a dozen lawyers. It will be a good experience for you.” And trial by fire.

  “Great.”

  She was one of our most promising lawyers. She had graduated at the top of her class at UCLA and Boalt Law School and was a lightning-fast study. She was also fearless. It may have had something to do with the fact that she and her mother had been chased out of Uzbekistan when Nady was eleven, and eventually found their way to relatives in L.A.

  I turned back to Rosie. “We’ll need an investigator.”

  “You can pick anybody in the office.”

  Here goes. “I’d like to use Pete.”

  “He doesn’t work for us.”

  “Our people are great, but Pete is better.”

  Her hesitation indicated that she agreed. “We don’t have the budget for an outside P.I.”

  “I’ll find the money in my discretionary fund.”

  “No.”

  “He has excellent contacts in Silicon Valley.”

  “No.”

  “I’ll pay him on my own nickel.”

  “Let’s try it my way for now, Mike.”

  “Fine.”

  “Then we’re in agreement.”

  Not exactly. I looked over at Nady. “I need you to find out everything you can about Jeff King. We need to know who had a grudge against him—the list could be long. See if you can figure out who was at his house last night.”

  “Will do.”

  “I want you to prepare paperwork to qualify us as attorneys-of-record.”

  “Already done. I’ve also started putting together requests for police reports, security videos, cell phone logs, computer records, and everything else that I can think of.”

  “Perfect.” She reminded me of Rosie—always thinking two steps ahead. “You can reach me on my cell if you need me.”

  “Are you going home?”

  “No, I’m going to church.”

  10

  “MERRY CHRISTMAS”

  I closed my eyes and listened to the soaring tones of the organ and the choir. I opened them and looked up at the familiar statue of St. Anne comforting the Virgin Mary beneath the stained-glass window in St. Peter’s Catholic Church, which had stood on Florida Street in the Mission since 1867. My parents were married here. So were Rosie and I. The modest frame structure where my siblings and children had been baptized lacked the majesty of St. Ignatius, but its understated dignity embodied the working-class neighborhood it had served for more than a hundred and fifty years.

  I still loved sitting in church.

  At one o’clock on Christmas morning, I was in the seat that I had occupied at midnight mass for fifty-four o
f my fifty-seven years. I had missed three years while serving as a junior priest at St. Anne’s in the Sunset. I knew every word of the liturgy by heart.

  My parents had grown up around the corner on opposite sides of Garfield Square Park, when the Mission was still home to Irish and Italian families. When I was little, we lived in a two-bedroom, one-bath apartment across the street from the Garfield Swimming Pool. We moved to the Sunset when I was seven, but we always came back to St. Peter’s for Christmas Mass. When the Irish and Italians moved out of the neighborhood in the fifties and sixties, the Latino families moved in. Rosie’s parents bought their bungalow on Harrison Street the same year that we moved to the Sunset. Swaths of the Mission had gentrified during the tech boom, but many Spanish-speaking families still lived in the two- and three-story apartment buildings along its crowded streets and narrow alleys. Mass at St. Peter’s was celebrated in Spanish and English.

  When my parents were still alive, the seating arrangements in the ninth row on the left side were always the same. My dad sat on the aisle. My older brother, Tommy, sat next to him. I came next. Then Pete. Then our baby sister, Mary. My mom sat on the other end. We could get away with a little mischief at home, but never—ever—at church, where I was known as Officer Daley’s second son and Tommy, Jr.’s younger brother.

  Nowadays, our seating configuration was, of necessity, different. Rosie’s mom, Sylvia, sat in my dad’s old seat. Rosie was in Tommy’s place. I still sat in my usual spot. Then came Grace and little Tommy. Pete and his family used to join us, but they now attended mass at St. Anselm’s in Marin County. Mary lived in L.A. Times change.

  Rosie’s older brother (and Rolanda’s father), Tony, sat with us. He ran a produce market around the corner on Twenty-Fourth. His wife had passed away a dozen years earlier and Rolanda was on her honeymoon, so we made sure that he wasn’t alone during the holidays. Rosie’s younger sister, Theresa, was conspicuously absent. She had married at eighteen and had two kids right away, one of whom died of lymphoma at the age of five. Shortly thereafter, her husband walked out, and she started drinking. Then she got addicted to painkillers and crack. She was in and out of treatment for years until her liver gave out the day after her fiftieth birthday.