Clutching at Straws

by J. L. Abramo

  It was at that point in my presumptive analysis that I remembered the coffee in the fallen paper bag, started toward the hall to pick it up and saw the dark brown liquid seeping into the office from under the door. Then I noticed the doorknob turning and instinctively ducked behind Darlene’s desk.

  “Sorry about that, Jake. Not a great place to leave your break-fast,” said Vinnie Stradivarius, tracking in Italian roast and talking through a mouthful of buttered hard roll. “Luckily this bread didn’t get too soggy.”

  “Glad to hear it, Strings,” I said.

  I moved past Vinnie into the hallway to fetch a mop from the janitor’s closet.

  Vinnie just stood by watching me clean up the mess. I finally accepted that I was going to have to ask.

  “Vinnie.”

  “Yeah, Jake?”

  “Would you do me a favor?”

  “Sure, Jake. Anything.”

  “Would you run down to the deli and grab a couple of coffees,” I said, as nicely as possible. “And when you get back you can tell me what you’re doing here so early.”

  Seeing Vinnie Strings awake before noon was a rarity.

  “I figured you could use the help, with Darlene not back yet.” Great.

  “Oh,” I said, “well how about just getting the coffee then.”

  Strings looked at me as if I’d asked him to explain the theory of relativity and had warned him not to budge an inch until he did. I reached into my pocket, pulled out a five-dollar bill, handed it to him, and watched him skip off toward the elevator.

  “Take the stairs, Strings,” I cautioned.

  I had quasi-employed Vinnie Strings to do odd jobs for me, hoping it would allow him less free time to get into trouble. On top of that, Vinnie hit me up for money so often that I thought I might as well give him the opportunity to earn some of it. It was a rational and noble gesture, but not a very successful one on either count. Since I had inherited Vinnie from my old friend Jimmy Pigeon, I kept trying.

  We sat over coffee for a while, Vinnie doing most of the talking, primarily about his consummate bad luck in picking horses. Like everyone who was hooked on playing the ponies, Vinnie Strings had a system. His was like a sewerage system. I asked him to stay by the phone, write everything down, and not try to solve any mysteries without me.

  Then I headed over to the Vallejo Street Station to talk with Lefty Wright.

  Three

  My mentor, the late Jimmy Pigeon, wisely suggested that before agreeing to accept a case I should always get the question that was nagging me most out of the way as soon as possible.

  “So, let’s see if I have this straight,” I said, “Lefty is your given name and Al is your nickname.”

  “Correct.”

  Great.

  Now I could move on.

  “Okay, you’re going for the Rolex and you trip over the body.”

  “Yeah. And I’m half wondering why his watch is lying there. Whoever iced him had to be waiting for him in the room,” Lefty Wright said. “The poor bastard didn’t even get his jacket off.”

  “And the knife that killed him?”

  “It came from Chancellor’s kitchen, had the judge’s prints all over it, but the cops are ruling out suicide.”

  “And he was dead for how long?”

  “I’m being told the body was still warm. And that’s the thing. The judge gets home, gets a knife in the chest, and my timing is right on. I’m in the place for less than fifteen minutes and the police are all over me like it was Waco. If that isn’t a setup then Nixon erased the tapes by accident. And the worst part is that I never saw it coming.”

  “So, who’s the guy who sent you in and how do I find him?”

  “Vic Vigoda, and I’m guessing that finding him is going to be tricky.”

  “Where would you start?” I asked.

  “The way my luck has been going since I dropped off a balcony a few weeks ago, I’d start with the morgue.”

  “You should try being more optimistic.”

  “It’s not in my nature. Look, you don’t have to be Galileo to figure out that someone put Vigoda up to it. Vic could hardly spell his own name. And he’s far from a saint, but he wouldn’t have sent me in if he knew what was under the bed. Someone wanted the judge dead, and an idiot to take the rap. That’s why I called you. Sam Chambers told me that you were skilled at rescuing idiots.”

  “Have you found a lawyer?”

  “I have a lawyer, but she’s not going to do me much good if you can’t give her something to work with.”

  “I don’t remember saying that I would take the case,” I said.

  “Who are you kidding? How could you resist?”

  Lefty Wright was one perceptive felon.

  Four

  I was almost out the door of the police station when a winning figure came into view. A shoulder-length cascade of strawberry-blonde hair topping shoulders in a well-tailored light gray herringbone suit, all held up by a pair of legs that would have made Betty Grable envious forty years ago. I walked up behind the apparition just as she turned around.

  “Good morning, Lieutenant,” I said, smiling my smile. “Nice threads.”

  “New tie, Diamond?” she parried.

  Detective Lieutenant Laura Lopez had it all, striking physical beauty, street smarts, and my number.

  “Congratulations. Your guys solved the Chancellor murder case in no time flat.”

  “They’re not my guys, Diamond. Am I detecting a special interest in the case on your part?”

  “The kid they have locked up is my client. He seems to believe that the real killer is still out there, and I’m inclined to agree. If you get a minute, talk to the kid and let me know what you think.”

  “I’ll tell you what I think, Diamond, and then I really have to get to work. Lefty Wright is it until something better comes along.

  Wright is twice convicted for B and E, and he had a history with the judge. A good citizen who preferred to remain anonymous heard a commotion, made a phone call, and the SFPD responded quickly and efficiently. That’s straight from the mayor’s press conference statement and was penned by some hotshot journalism grad student intern from the governor’s office. The governor was a good friend of the late judge, and it is mandatory that an alleged suspect be in custody.”

  “And it doesn’t matter that Wright has never pulled an armed robbery, or that in fact the kid is obviously harmless except to himself?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “With the possible exception of my mother, everyone in the Bay Area had more reason to snuff Chancellor than some smalltime crook caught with his paws in the safe.”

  “Which is exactly Wright’s biggest problem. When everyone is a suspect, you have to like the one you’ve got locked up. Particularly when the governor of the state is scarier than Michael Myers.

  “Wright is saying that a toad named Vic Vigoda lured him to the scene, that it was a setup. He thinks someone put Vigoda up to it because Vic is dumb as a rock.”

  “So I heard. We’re looking for Vigoda, but I don’t see how we’ll prove he had anything to do with it unless he’s a self-incriminating dumb rock.”

  “And that’s the way it is?”

  “I didn’t write the book,” she said. “You know me, Diamond. If I’m not happy with Wright as the perp, I’ll do whatever I can do to straighten it out. However, to be perfectly sincere, without another lead it’ll be a midnight walk in the park.”

  I did know the lieutenant, and I did know she would do what she could. I also knew that for the time being I’d be walking the park alone.

  I thanked Lopez, just to be polite.

  I walked back to my office.

  I stopped into Molinari’s to pick up some take-out for lunch, a sausage-and-pepper hero for Vinnie and a salad for myself. I had been trying to cut down on my consumption of meat, without actually knowing why.

  I had some ideas about how to get started on Lefty’s behalf, but I was tied up for the
rest of the day. I was checking out a few other cases, one of them was taking me out to Marin County at three.

  I would get Darlene busy on the Chancellor case as soon as she got back and in the meantime give Vinnie a chance to play detective. When I walked into the office with the food he was on me like a puppy.

  “You had three calls, Jake. I wrote it all down, are you ready?” he said, shuffling his notes and visibly laboring to identify priorities.

  “Take it easy, Vin, you’re going to bust a vein. I brought you a sandwich.”

  “Sausage and peppers?”

  “Yup.”

  Vinnie threw his scribbling down on the desk and reached out with both arms like a trained seal. I barely succeeded in popping open a soft drink and getting it into his hand in time to save him from gagging. I let him go through a few more sequences of filling his mouth to capacity and trying to swallow without suffocating, not daring to say a word. I hadn’t touched the salad. He finally slowed down and managed to choke out a few words about the merits of the sandwich.

  He took a deep breath, and as the color returned to his face I decided it was safe to speak.

  “You okay, Strings?”

  “Never better, pal.”

  “Ever hear of a guy named Vic Vigoda?”

  “Vic Vigs? Sure, I know who he is,” Vinnie said. “Are you going to drink that other Pepsi?”

  “Go ahead,” I said, shoving it over. “I was hoping you could try to locate him.”

  “Absolutely, Jake. I’m all over it.”

  I wasn’t sure if he was referring to his commitment to the assignment or to his attempt at self-strangulation.

  “Good. That would be a great help to me.”

  Not even the wolfing down of a huge greasy Italian sub made Vinnie happier than an opportunity to help me. I only wished he were as proficient at the latter.

  “What do you want me to do when I find him?”

  I tried to think of a nice way to say don’t do anything. I couldn’t think of one.

  “Nothing, Vin. I beg you. Just call me and tell me where you are.”

  “Sure, Jake. You’re the boss.”

  I really hated that.

  “Great. You have my cell phone number, right?”

  “Write it down for me. Want me to get going?”

  “No need to rush out, Vinnie. Why don’t you take some more of that soda, take a quick peek at your notes, and tell me who called.”

  Strings relocated the three small slips of paper he had torn off the “While You Were Out of the Office” notepad I had given to Darlene on her first day of work. In five years she had never used it, except occasionally as a coaster. He arranged the notes in a row in front of him on the desk and started moving them around like a three-card monte dealer.

  I basically liked Vinnie Stradivarius.

  But he never made it easy.

  Finally he chose the one that was now in the center, picked it up, reviewed it for a moment, and made his report.

  “Sally called to say she would meet you at La Folie at eight for dinner.”

  Sally French had been my first client, my wife, my ex-wife, and, currently, my sort of steady female companion, in that order. We were taking it very slowly.

  When Vinnie was sure that I understood the message, he continued.

  “Jeremy Cash called to confirm your meeting with him today at his beach house at three,” he said.

  Vinnie sat, I waited.

  I became tired of waiting.

  “Well?” I said.

  “Well, I guess I’ll get out there and track down Vic Vigoda.”

  Vinnie crunched up the deli paper, tossed it into the wastebasket, and got up to leave.

  “Weren’t there three calls, Vin?”

  “Oh yeah,” he said, “Joey Russo called to tell you that he has two tickets to the play-off game against the Mets on Wednesday afternoon, if you weren’t busy. He’s at home if you want to call him back.”

  It hurt Vinnie just to say it.

  “You know, Jake, if you can’t make it I’d be glad to take your place. I’d hate for Joey to have to sit at the ballpark alone.”

  “Thanks, Vinnie, that’s very considerate. I’ll let you know.”

  That pretty much took care of new business, so I reminded Vinnie to do no more than call me if he spotted Vic Vigoda. I jotted down my cell phone number for the fiftieth time, and Vinnie headed out the door.

  I played around with the salad for a while but couldn’t deal with it. I called Joey Russo to tell him that Wednesday sounded great.

  It was nearing two in the afternoon so I changed my shirt and tried to hand press the wrinkles out of my suit jacket. I was off to see a rich man in the land of rich men and wanted to appear a little less as if I’d just crawled out of a sleeping bag.

  I had even taken out the ’63 Chevy Impala convertible for the occasion.

  I hopped into the car and headed out Lombard toward the Golden Gate Bridge to see Jeremy Cash.

  Five

  Jeremy Cash had made lots of money writing books on how to make money.

  In the early nineties, How to Make a Million in Real Estate and the subsequent How to Make a Million in Foreign Real Estate occupied spots on the nonfiction best-seller lists for nearly three years. Cash’s How to Make a Million in the Stock Market held solid in the top ten for fourteen months until it was finally knocked off the list by Cash’s How to Make a Million on Internet Stocks. His latest tome, How to Make Millions Writing How to Make Millions Books, debuted at number one and was currently holding the top spot, more than a year later. Jeremy Cash could hardly have done better conjuring up the adventures of a skinny English kid with large round glasses.

  Most professional investors understood that Cash’s books were better suited to the other best-seller list, since they read much more like fiction. But the uninformed public ate them up, and Jeremy Cash’s uncanny ability to attract wanna-be millionaires was rivaled only by state lotteries and Regis Philbin.

  Any rational thinking human being knew that if the advice in Cash’s books could actually make you wealthy, Cash wouldn’t be writing books about it.

  Jeremy Cash had been in the headline news since the previous week when his twenty-three-year-old son, Freddie, had been kidnapped outside a health club in the Marina District, and a one-hundred-thousand-dollar ransom demand for his safe release followed. Cash had dodged every attempt by the local authorities and the FBI to get involved in the case. He had quickly rounded up the money and made the exchange, doing a better job at running the cops and the feds in circles than the kidnappers could ever have hoped to have done.

  Less than forty-eight hours after the abduction, Freddie Cash was back at the country club for Sunday brunch with his father.

  A week later, Cash bumped into my ex-father-in-law, Lincoln French, as the two jogged along Stinson Beach, where they both owned large homes. Cash casually asked Lincoln if he knew of a dependable and discreet private investigator. A few months earlier, for better or worse, Lincoln would have said no. But of late, my relationship with Sally’s father had progressed from frigid bordering on nonexistent to tolerable bordering on amiable.

  Lincoln gave Cash my number.

  The question that intrigued me as I pulled the Impala into the circular driveway fronting the beach house was why Jeremy Cash was looking for a PI now that Freddie was back in the cradle. I imagined that the request for a meeting could have been totally unrelated to the kidnapping, but I somehow doubted it.

  My musings were rudely interrupted when I stepped out of the car and a small ugly dog began snapping its jaws at my feet like a turtle. I was deliberating whether to jump back into the car or kick out at the puny varmint when a voice from the front door froze my attacker into a prostrate statue of an ugly little dog.

  “Stay, Kafka!” was all Cash had to shout and the metamorphosis was complete.

  I stepped over the animal, who was lying there as motionless as a desk ornament, and moved to meet J
eremy Cash moving to meet me. Cash shook my hand firmly and then motioned toward the open door.

  “Come, Kafka,” he called. I hurried ahead of them into the house.

  Cash led us into his library, the dog and I exchanging untrusting glances all the way. Once Cash and I were seated opposite each other in matching leather armchairs, and he had poured a glass of Glenlivet for each of us, his pet took a spot near his feet and assumed the shape and expression of a gargoyle on the tower of Notre Dame. The animal remained so silent and motionless that I might have believed the ugly little thing would never move again if I weren’t such a pessimist.

  Cash lifted his drink, brought it up to his eyes, and looked at the twelve-year-old whiskey with great reverence before taking a healthy swallow. I took a quick swig of my own, just to be sociable. I would have preferred a shot of George Dickel Tennessee Sour Mash Whiskey.

  “So, Mr. Diamond,” he said, finally setting the ball in motion, “it was good of you to come. I suppose you are wondering why I called you here.”

  I had absolutely no comeback.

  “Call me Jake,” I said.

  “You may have heard of the recent incident involving my son,” said Cash.

  Next he would ask me if I knew what day it was and if I’d ever heard of Barry Bonds. I thought about telling him to stop beating around the bush, but the single malt had numbed my tongue.

  “Yes, and I was glad to hear that your son came through this terrible ordeal unscathed,” I said lamely.

  “I would like you to try to discover if my son was in any way involved in his own kidnapping,” he said.

  Cash had been slow out of the starting gate but he quickly had my full attention.

  “Do you have reason to suspect your son?”

  “Not really. I’m a naturally suspicious person.”

  “Is it the money?”