Clutching at Straws

by J. L. Abramo

  “What’s wrong with the one I have on?” I asked innocently.

  “Everything,” said Darlene.

  When I reached the Vallejo Street Station I thought I’d drop in on Lieutenant Lopez. Maybe she could give me a word of encouragement to pass on to Al Wright.

  I couldn’t have been more wrong.

  “The arraignment is in the morning,” she told me.

  “Lefty said he had a lawyer, who is she?”

  “Kay Turner, she’s actually a public defender,” said Lopez. “Turner is actually a pretty good one, but her opposition is deadly.”

  “Who’s prosecuting?”

  “Lowell Ryder,” Lopez said.

  You learn something new every day, never knowing when it will come in handy.

  I had come across Ryder’s name only the day before, in the Metro section of the Examiner. With the election less than five weeks away, Lowell Ryder was on his way to becoming the youngest district attorney in San Francisco history. An honors graduate of Stanford Law School, Ryder had been raised in a small rural town east of Sacramento. He’d climbed the ladder with absolutely no political connections; his father was an avocado farmer.

  Ryder moved quickly from DA offices in Stockton to Oakland to San Francisco, where longtime Chief Prosecutor Harmon Kramer took to Lowell like candy, appointing him assistant DA two years earlier at the age of thirty-two. The polls had Ryder twenty points ahead of his opponent.

  “I thought that Ryder was super smart,” I said.

  “They don’t call him Wonder Boy for nuthin’,” Lopez said. “Then why would he take on a case he can’t win, so close to the election?”

  “He wouldn’t,” said Lopez.

  “Oh.”

  “You can bet your cravat collection that Ryder wouldn’t touch it unless he was confident that it was a slam dunk.”

  “I can’t wait to tell Lefty,” I said.

  “I meant what I said yesterday. You come across something I can work with and I’ll run with it,” she said.

  “You’ll be the first to know,” I promised. “Any luck locating Vigoda?”

  “Not yet, but don’t count on Vigoda solving the case for you.”

  I didn’t see how the DA’s office thought they had a case. If Wright had just emptied the safe, stuffing his pockets full of cash while juggling a thirty-eight snubnose and a flashlight as Chancellor walked in and surprised him, where did he find the extra hand to stab the judge? Why would Lefty even pick up a knife on his way through the kitchen? He was already in possession of a lethal concealed paint scraper.

  It was illogical.

  But from what I had heard so far from Lopez, the prosecution was going to base its arguments on motive and opportunity and leave logic to the fickle.

  So much for hoping to offer Lefty a little encouragement. I figured that a look at my friendly mug might not be quite enough to make his day. I decided to postpone my visit until I had better news. I hoped that with some luck I would be back to see Lefty again before the end of the month.

  I tried to track down Vinnie Strings with no success. I could only wish that he was staying out of trouble. He was either out scouting for Vic Vigoda or blowing his weekly stipend on some nag at Bay Meadows Race Course in San Mateo.

  I was anxious to hear if Darlene had learned anything from her cousin, but it was nearly four in the afternoon when I called the office and she wasn’t back yet. I saw no reason to go back there myself, since the answering machine was already fielding calls.

  I left a message for Darlene to phone me at my apartment. When I reached home I took a shower and poured a bourbon to clear my head.

  The combination put me to sleep in my living room chair. The call from Vinnie Strings woke me up at half past eight. “They just fished Vic Vigoda out of McCovey Cove,” he said.

  More real bad news for Lefty Wright, not to mention what Vigoda’s day must have been like.

  I had promised Lefty Wright that I would be there for the arraignment.

  After hearing from Vinnie I decided that Vic Vigoda, Freddie Cash, and the late judge could well be spared my concern until after the arraignment and the baseball game.

  I picked up The Count of Monte Cristo and read until I couldn’t read anymore.

  Eight

  I was down at the criminal courts building on Van Ness at eight-forty-five for the arraignment, which was scheduled for nine. I went directly to the rear entrance. Hank Strode, the security guard stationed there, was an ex-cop from Santa Monica and an old acquaintance from my days working for Jimmy Pigeon. Hank bore an uncanny resemblance to the African American actor Woody Strode, who was featured in a slew of classic Westerns, always standing in the shadows with a very big rifle draped across his arm, ready to back up John Wayne or William Holden if the odds turned against them. When I first met Hank, I asked if he was related to the actor.

  “No,” he said, “how about you? You look a lot like Neil Diamond to me.”

  I got the point, and we became friendly when Hank retired and came up to San Francisco. And I never had to empty my pockets when I came in the back way.

  I spotted Al Wright as soon as I entered, standing handcuffed between two large police officers who watched his every twitch as if he were John Dillinger. A petite blonde who looked as if she should be in the next building taking the written test for her driver’s permit, stood talking with Lefty. I guessed it was Kay Turner.

  “Ms. Turner,” I called to her, when Lefty had been escorted into the courtroom, “I’m Jake Diamond.”

  “Mr. Diamond, I’m glad you’re here. I was hoping that we could talk after the arraignment.”

  “Sure. Are you going to be able to get bail for the kid?”

  “It’s unlikely. Not with this prosecutor and this judge.”

  “Who’s the judge?”

  “Adam Morgan, who’s known in the public defender’s office as ‘His Horror.’ “

  Fabulous.

  “I was at least hoping to delay the start of the trial,” she said, “to give us more time to locate Vic Vigoda, but our star witness became immaterial last night.”

  “I heard. The PD have any ideas about who dropped Vic in the bay?”

  “No, but I may have,” she said. “Can we talk after they railroad my client?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  I liked her attitude. Whether it would benefit Lefty was another question.

  Kay Turner had called it perfectly. The arraignment was as quick as the Japanese bullet train. No bail, no continuances, no nonsense. Lowell Ryder didn’t waste a breath, and Judge Morgan more or less told Kay Turner to save it. They whisked Lefty Wright out of the courtroom for the return to the jail so quickly, it was like watching a reel of the Keystone Kops. I stood waiting for Kay Turner to meet me at the rear exit, taking the opportunity for a short chat with Hank Strode while I loitered.

  “So, who do you suppose killed Judge Chancellor?” I asked Hank, jokingly.

  “It wasn’t that poor kid they got locked up at Vallejo, that I can tell you,” Strode said. “It surprises me that Ryder wants to prosecute. I’d have thought Lowell would give the kid a medal.”

  I was about to ask Hank what he meant when Kay arrived, trying to stand tall after the beating she had taken in court.

  I thanked Hank as we left the building, not quite sure what I was thanking him for.

  Kay Turner led me to a coffee shop at Hyde and Turk, near the Federal Building. A look at the clientele had me fairly convinced that it was a lawyer hangout, but not of the four-hundred dollar suit variety. The place oozed of nostalgia.

  The classic coffee shop preceded and for the most part outlived the coffeehouse of the sixties and seventies and, in a scattering of urban neighborhoods and small town Main Streets, has somehow managed to survive the onslaught of the culturally irrelevant contemporary phenomenon known as the coffee bar.

  The coffee shop was traditionally a long, narrow affair with booths on one wall and a counter opposite. The Tur
k Street coffee shop was no exception. Behind the counter were men in grimy white uniforms moving at the speed of sound.

  The coffee was brewed in huge urns, gallons at a time. The grill was piled high with fried potatoes and onions, brittle bacon, and eggs in the process of being prepared in every conceivable way. Large stainless steel contraptions toasted six slices of white bread simultaneously, which were generously covered with swipes from a block of butter the size of Vermont. Underneath scratched and foggy Plexiglas domes sat barely visible wedges of cream pies—banana, chocolate and coconut—guaranteed to satisfy the daily calorie requirements of a rhinoceros.

  “So,” I said, as a waiter brought coffee in ceramic cups that took two hands and a grunt to lift, “you said you had some ideas about who may have sent Vic Vigoda the way of the Titanic.”

  “I’m thinking it was someone involved in the murder of Judge Chancellor.”

  I prayed she was pulling my leg.

  “I had the same thought myself,” I said, seeing no real reason to be rude.

  “What I mean to say is that Vic Vigoda may still have something to tell us about who killed the judge,” she said.

  And of course she had a very good point.

  The end of the road for Vic might open up a whole new avenue of investigation. But what happened to Vigoda made going down that path feel a whole lot scarier.

  “Look,” I said, “I think it’s pretty obvious that Al Wright is innocent and has been elected to hold the bag. I’d like to be able to help clear things up because I like the kid, and that kind of arrogance really gets my goat. As to whether I’m willing to cross a swamp to get there, I may have to give that question some further thought.”

  “I perfectly understand, Mr. Diamond,” Kay Turner said.

  Which was exactly what Turner needed to say to push me right into the swamp. I could only wonder if she had hit the target blindfolded or had done her Jake Diamond 101 homework.

  I would send Vinnie out to beat the bushes for any clues as to who may have been the last to see Vic Vigoda on dry land. I would sit down with Darlene for a recap of her extended lunch engagement with cousin Edie and find out what, if anything, Buzz Stanley might add to the equation. I would revisit Hank Strode and attempt to decipher whatever it was he was hinting at earlier.

  But before I raced into any of that, I would spend the afternoon at Pac Bell Park with the only person I knew who could stop me spinning my wheels.

  Joey Russo was taking me out to the ballgame.

  Nine

  Pacific Bell Park was built at the cost of three hundred nineteen million dollars on a thirteen-acre triangle of land bordered by Channel Street, Sixth, and Third Street, where it continues from downtown across the Third Street Bridge. The short, narrow inlet coming off the bay between the docks south of the Bay Bridge, where the Embarcadero ends at King Street, was christened McCovey Cove in honor of the other Willie. Since the opening of the new ballpark in April, homerun balls hit over the right field wall and landing in the brink have been retrieved by dogs diving off boats that cruise the inlet. It was during a baseball retrieval practice session the evening before that one of the diving canines surfaced with a leather wallet containing two thousand dollars in soggy cash and a driver’s license displaying a photo of Vic Vigoda.

  It was my first visit to Pac Bell Park, and Joey Russo gave me the grand tour. The upper deck high above home plate offered a panoramic view of downtown San Francisco, the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz Island to the northwest, the Bay Bridge and downtown Oakland to the east. Food concessions featured everything from hot dogs to regional Italian pasta dishes.

  “Remind me to pick up a portobello burger for Darlene before we leave,” I said, as we walked back down to our seats on the first-base line.

  We stayed locked on the game through the early innings, but by the seventh it looked bleak for the boys from Queens.

  Born and raised in Brooklyn and having been on hand at Shea Stadium with my father and grandfather on the day the Mets knocked off the Baltimore Orioles when I was an impressionable nine-year-old, I was covertly rooting for the New York team.

  Joey, from whom I held no secrets, was well aware of my sentiments. Joey decided that it might be a good time to shift focus.

  “Well, Jake, what’s the plan now that hopes of getting any answers directly from Vic Vigoda are all washed up?” he asked.

  “I’m wide open, Joey.”

  “There’s a line you hear in a lot of movies and TV shows. The cop asks the suspect if he killed the victim and the suspect answers, ‘I wish I had, but somebody beat me to it.’ The judge never won any popularity contests. We’re fishing for suspects in a very well-stocked pond, if you’ll permit the metaphor. We need to throw back the little ones.”

  I couldn’t have said it better.

  But I could reiterate, just to prove to myself that I was following his drift.

  “So, what we’re looking for is whoever was most threatened by Chancellor’s continued longevity.”

  “Very seriously threatened, if not mortally threatened.”

  “That could narrow the field, but it doesn’t move us along much.”

  “One step at a time, Jake. One step at a time.”

  “And the first step?” I asked, taking every advantage of Joey’s lucidity.

  I often thought that Joey loved detective work better than I did.

  “Let’s bring a portobello burger back for Darlene and find out if she learned anything provocative from her cousin Edie.”

  The Mets lost 5 to 1.

  We grabbed a mushroom sandwich and went back to the office.

  Making jokes at my expense was nearly a national pastime, and Darlene was a Hall of Fame inductee. On the other hand, poking fun at Joey Russo was not a good idea unless you were someone he really liked a lot.

  “If it isn’t Don Vito and Freddo,” Darlene said when we walked into the office.

  Joey got a kick out of it.

  “What happened to you yesterday?” I asked, dropping the sandwich on her desk, “I didn’t realize you were having lunch with Edie in Guam.”

  “We ran into Buzz Stanley on our way back from the Herbivore Restaurant. It cost me all afternoon, part of the evening, and a hefty bar bill at the saloon to move him past his glory days on the gridiron to talk about his former employer. I had to drink orange juice from a can. Is this one of those portobello numbers from the ballpark?” she asked, fumbling with the paper bag.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Hope you brought a side of grapeseed vegenaise to go with it.”

  “So who killed Judge Chancellor?” Joey asked, trying to get us back on track.

  Darlene had taken the sandwich out of the bag, and finding no condiment walked over to the small refrigerator for her egg-free mayo. Don’t ask me how they make it.

  “Edie and Buzz each had a few theories, ranging from jealous husbands to pro-life activists to a certain ex-convict televangelist,” she said. “Which would you like to hear first, the far-fetched or the hallucinatory?”

  “Do this for me,” Joey said, “eliminate everyone Edie and Stanley mentioned who, one, would not have had access to Vigoda’s complicity and who, two, could not possibly have tossed Vigoda into the bay as an encore. Then tell us who’s left on the roster.”

  Darlene thought about it for approximately a split second.

  “No one,” she said.

  “Okay, now we’re getting somewhere,” said Joey.

  “Great,” said Darlene.

  “Jake. How about Hank Strode? Anything there?”

  “I don’t know. I got the feeling he was alluding to something.”

  “About?”

  “About Chancellor and Ryder maybe not being bosom buddies.”

  “Sum it up.”

  “I just did.”

  “If you’ll allow me to be presumptuous,” Joey continued, “I think we have two options.”

  Joey was in the zone.

  And he had
a captive audience.

  “Be as presumptuous as you like,” I said.

  “Go for it,” Darlene said.

  “We forget about trying to find Chancellor’s murderer and concentrate our efforts on helping Lefty’s defense show reasonable doubt. The kid didn’t have a drop of blood on him. And if Chancellor walked in and surprised Lefty in the act, why was the watch on the floor? I think that whoever iced the judge was waiting for him and was there to kill him. Lefty had no real motive, has no history of violence, and he could have got out without having to kill anyone.”

  “Unless Chancellor surprised him with the knife, there was a struggle and the judge took it in the chest,” said Darlene, playing mock prosecutor.

  “Okay. But if the Rolex was found on the floor, it doesn’t add up. If the judge lost it in a struggle, Lefty would have scooped it up. And why would Lefty hang around to shove the judge under the bed? No, I believe if we concentrate on clearing Lefty we don’t have to actually come up with the guilty party.”

  “What’s the other option?” I asked.

  “We admit that the hunt has less to do with Lefty than with our own love of the game,” said Joey, “that we’re as much interested in solving the murder as we are in clearing Lefty, in which case it’s time to stop scratching the surface and start seriously digging.”

  “What’s your gut feeling?”

  “I’m Italian, Jake. I don’t have gut feelings. They’re all right out here on the surface. All I can tell you is what I think would be more dangerous but a lot more fun.”

  “Where would you start digging?” asked Darlene.

  “Well, and you won’t like this, Jake, I think we need to talk with Carlucci.”

  “I labor at avoiding Tony C. every day that I walk down Columbus Avenue.”

  “I’m talking about John Carlucci.”

  “I thought Johnny Boy Carlucci was safely locked up in San Quentin,” I said.

  “He is.”

  “What could John Carlucci tell us about what happened with Chancellor?”

  “If I knew that, we wouldn’t have to go out there and ask him.”