Clutching at Straws

by J. L. Abramo

  “Vinnie? What time is it?”

  I had the frightening thought that I had somehow lost track of half a day.

  “Nine ten,” Darlene said. “He’s been waiting since eight.”

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “I found him at the front door. I asked him what could possibly have him awake and down here before one in the afternoon. Vinnie gave me a wink, if you can believe it, and said, ‘You’ll see. If I walked over to the coffeemaker, poured a cup, and courageously headed to the back. When I came through the connecting door, Vinnie was pacing and fidgeting like a fifth grader waiting for an audience with the school principal. The difference was that he had a grin on his face so wide that I was afraid he might poke his eyes out.

  “Wait till you see this, Jake,” he said, bubbling.

  Vinnie began waving his arm. I noticed that he was holding what I was finally able to identify as the classified section of the Sunday Examiner. For a brief moment, I fantasized that Vinnie had found a job.

  “Sit down, Vin, you’re making me dizzy,” I said.

  I moved around the desk and settled into my chair.

  Vinnie unfolded the newspaper, sat in the seat across the desk, and handed it over with the back page facing me. The page was covered with auction notices.

  “What am I looking for?” I asked.

  “Bottom left,” he said, almost giddily.

  The display ad on the bottom left announced an auction of items from the estate of the late Judge J. Andrew Chancellor, to be held at Butterfield’s Galleries that evening. The sale included antique furniture, collectable coins, stamps and books, Civil War and World War II memorabilia, fine china, silverware, and artwork.

  The artwork included African masks, English porcelain, and French impressionist paintings. Among the paintings listed was The Tugboat. The artist was Alfred Sisley.

  “What are the odds that this was the painting hung over Chancellor’s bedroom safe?” I asked Vinnie.

  “Even,” he said.

  “We need to get our hands on the thing.”

  “I called Butterfield’s. The bidding on the Sisley will be starting at fifty thousand; they expect it to bring close to a hundred grand.”

  “It might as well be a million. Is there any other way to get close to it?”

  “I suppose we could try stealing it,” said Vinnie.

  “Too bad that the only person I knew that could maybe pull it off is dead,” I said. “I wonder if Lefty had any idea of the cache he stumbled into when he slipped through Chancellor’s kitchen window.”

  “He could have cleaned up if he had a little more time. We can wait to see who buys the Sisley and nicely ask to examine it in private for few minutes,” said Vinnie.

  Not a bad idea, really, if the right person bought the painting. An hour later I was in the Toyota, crossing the Golden Gate Bridge.

  I had never asked anyone to put up a hundred thousand dollars before. Though I was about to ask someone who was accustomed to being asked, I’d decided to broach the question in person rather than on the telephone.

  I considered taking Tug along for the ride, thinking McGraw might distract the ugly little ankle biter that had wowed me with his egg-juggling skills during my last visit. Darlene nixed the idea, suggesting that I would make a better impression if I could dig up a clean necktie. As far as bringing Vinnie Strings along, as much as he pleaded and as much as I appreciated his early-morning efforts, I never considered it for a second.

  I parked in the circular driveway, walked to the front entrance, and pushed the doorbell. The chimes sounded a lot like “My Way.”

  “Mr. Diamond, come in,” said Jeremy Cash.

  I followed Cash to the kitchen. Kafka was thankfully nowhere in sight. Cash offered coffee, and I accepted. He asked what he could do for me. I told him.

  That evening I sat beside Cash in the auction hall as he joined the bidding on the Sisley. Cash had assured me that he would not be outbid. He told me, after viewing the painting, that he actually liked it quite a bit. At the close of bidding, Jeremy Cash had purchased The Tugboat for ninety-seven thousand, four hundred dollars. He arranged to have it delivered to his San Francisco office the following morning, at which time I was welcome to examine the painting to my heart’s content.

  I thanked Cash, declined a dinner invitation, and went home to my apartment. I reheated one of my mother’s frozen care packages, ziti Siciliano, washing it down with old Chianti that was just this side of becoming vinegar. I knew I had to find something to take my mind off the painting, and what it might tell me about the Chancellor case, or the suspense would wreck me.

  The Count of Monte Cristo did the trick.

  Jeremy Cash told me that he would phone as soon as the painting was delivered. Darlene took the call just past ten the next morning.

  Cash had an office in the Transamerica Pyramid, near the top of the pyramid. There, he wrote, scheduled speaking engagements, and coordinated radio and television appearances. When I arrived at eleven, Cash’s assistant greeted me with an apology. Cash had to attend a meeting with his publisher and would be gone until after lunch. She told me that I could use Cash’s private office for as long as I needed. She escorted me to his office, opened the door for me, then went back out to her post. I closed the door behind me. The painting sat leaning against Cash’s desk, wrapped in plain brown paper.

  I placed the package on the desk and removed the wrapping, stealing a glance out the window as I worked. The view of the Golden Gate Bridge and the Sausalito Marina was spectacular. I moved the wrapping to the floor and looked down at the painting. I lifted the painting and turned it facedown. There was heavy paper backing stapled to the frame. It was the only place to look. I carefully removed the top row of staples, using a letter opener that I discovered on the desk. I lifted the painting again, held it at a forty-five-degree angle, and gently shook it from side to side. A nine-by-twelve-inch brown manila envelope slid out onto the desk. I replaced the staples, using Cash’s brass paperweight. I patiently rewrapped the painting and leaned it against the foot of the desk. I walked around the desk and lowered myself into Cash’s leather chair.

  Finally, I picked up the manila envelope.

  The envelope was addressed to Judge J. Andrew Chancellor at his courthouse chambers. There was a return address stamped in the upper-left corner. Officer Daniel Williams, Records Division, 46 Natoma Street, Folsom, California 95630.

  I turned the envelope over and worked open the sealed flap. I noticed that my hands were shaking.

  In the envelope, I found six sheets of paper. On top was a cover letter, addressed to Chancellor and signed by Officer Williams, acknowledging the judge’s request for police records and compliance to the request by way of the photocopies attached.

  The remaining pages were copied from the Folsom Police Department log for the twenty-eighth of June 1985, documenting every incident attended to by the police during the twenty-four-hour period. Traffic violations and accidents, robberies, disturbances of the peace, vandalism, assaults, all in chronological order. It looked to be a busy day for the Folsom police, and busier as the evening arrived with its graduation day events and celebrations.

  The phone call from Calvin Ryder, reporting the incident in the parking lot, was logged in at nine-fifteen that night. Followed by the arrival of Ryder and his son Chance, accompanied by Chief Gunderson, at the police station at ten, the questioning and arrest of Chance Ryder, and Calvin Ryder’s departure from the station at ten-forty. Chance remained in jail overnight.

  The last entry of the night was made at eleven-ten. A young woman was picked up for vagrancy, taken to the police station, questioned by the chief of police, and then released by Gunderson at eleven forty-five. The woman’s name was listed as Jenny Solomon, nineteen, of Sacramento.

  I went through the five pages at least three times, trying to determine what Judge Chancellor had been looking for. Who was Chancellor willing to pay Tony Carlucci ten thousand dollars
to find? Jenny Solomon was the only reasonable answer.

  A teenage girl, alone, found wandering the streets a good distance from her home, and released with no mention of any attempt to contact parents or run a check with authorities in Sacramento.

  I placed the pages back into the envelope and left Jeremy Cash’s office. I thanked his assistant, asking that Cash call me as soon as he returned.

  I rode the elevator down to the street and walked back to Columbus Avenue.

  There was no longer any question about the subject of the envelope in the judge’s safe. It had to do with a fifteen-year-old confrontation that ended in death. And if something in those five pages had Ryder scared enough to commit murder, somehow Ryder had to know that it had come into Judge Chancellor’s hands.

  I had a few phone calls to make.

  Back at the office, I asked Darlene to try locating Officer Phil Moss and went to my desk to call Officer Daniel Williams at the Folsom Police Department.

  Williams had met Judge Chancellor in mid-September. The judge had been down to talk with Chief Gunderson and had ultimately asked the chief if he could see certain police records. Gunderson had referred Chancellor to Officer Williams, who handled department archives. Williams told the judge that it would take a while to dig up the records, which were filed in cartons in the basement of the station. Williams promised to mail the information as soon as possible. He sent the package off to the judge the following week.

  “Did Chief Gunderson know what was in the package to Chancellor?” I asked.

  “Sure,” said Williams, “he asked me, I told him. He’s the chief, right?”

  Right.

  The chief who failed to mention Chancellor’s visit when Joey and I had dropped in, the chief who may have mentioned the judge’s visit and request for records to Lowell Ryder, the chief who would certainly hear about my chat with Officer Williams.

  I quickly decided that Police Chief Gunderson should hear just what I wanted him to hear.

  “Any idea what it was that the judge was looking for?” I asked.

  “No, only what he asked to see. I’m just a paper pusher,” he said, “you’re the detective. How about I just send you copies of what I sent to the judge.”

  “Could you do that?”

  “Sure, why not,” said Williams. “It is public record, and it should be easier to find this time.”

  I gave Williams my address and phone number and thanked him for his help.

  Darlene yelled from out front that Phil Moss was on the other line.

  “Phil, it’s time to pay your dues. Do you know anyone with the Sacramento PD?”

  “Yeah, as a matter of fact I have an uncle out there, a captain.” Was I getting lucky, or what?

  “I need anything he can find out about a Jenny Solomon. She would have been nineteen and living in Sacramento in eighty-five, and may have had some kind of run-in with the law.”

  “I’ll get right on it,” Moss said.

  Darlene poked her head in.

  “I’m going for lunch, Jake. Want to join me?”

  “I’m waiting for a call or two.”

  “I’ll bring something back for you, maybe you can sit out front and keep McGraw company.”

  I sat at Darlene’s desk and fielded phone calls like a volunteer at a Jerry Lewis telethon.

  Officer Dan Williams phoned. Williams said that it would take longer than he had thought to get the copies he’d promised. It seemed that the records had somehow been misplaced.

  Why was I not surprised.

  Jeremy Cash called.

  “Did you find what you were looking for, Mr. Diamond?” he asked.

  “Yes, I think so. But I can use some more help, Mr. Cash.”

  “Anything.”

  “The first time I met Freddie, he was attending a fund-raiser for Lowell Ryder. Can you tell me anything about their relationship?”

  “I really don’t know much about it. I know that Freddie was involved in Ryder’s campaign, and that my son spoke highly of the man. Freddie seemed to think that he could earn a choice position at the DA’s office after graduation, though I thought it very unlikely. I don’t like to admit it, but Freddie was a poor student. I didn’t really believe he would ever make it through law school.”

  Unless a highly respected and influential alumnus could pull a few strings, for a price. A campaign donation, perhaps. Something in the area of a hundred thousand dollars, possibly in twenty- and fifty-dollar bills.

  And probably impossible to prove.

  “This Mancuso, who they’re saying killed my son, did he do it?” asked Cash.

  “No.”

  “Can you say who did?”

  “I really can’t say,” I said.

  Which was the truth.

  I could venture a good guess, but who could really say. Freddie Cash could say, if Freddie Cash was in any condition to say anything and if he ever saw it coming. And I was guessing that Lowell Ryder could say, but I doubted that he would.

  Jeremy Cash didn’t press me.

  Tug McGraw was pushing his empty food dish around the floor. I realized how hungry I was myself as I poured soy chow into his bowl. Darlene walked in with a grilled-chicken Caesar salad just in the nick of time.

  I retired to my inner sanctum and had swallowed my last mouthful when Phil Moss called.

  Jenny Solomon had been wanted by the Sacramento police since the twenty-eighth of June 1985, for questioning in a robbery-homicide. The body of Ed Clarke, 42, had been found in Clarke’s ice cream parlor at two in the morning. Clarke had been shot to death with a gun registered to him, which he kept at the shop. The cash register had been emptied. Jenny Solomon worked at the shop. A second employee, Susan Bryant, testified that Solomon and Clarke were alone cleaning the shop after closing when Bryant left shortly after eleven. A call to Solomon’s mother, when Clarke’s body was found, established that Jenny had never arrived home after work. An APB on Jenny Solomon went out over the wire to all surrounding cities and towns.

  Out of the corner of my eye I spotted a flyer from the new sandwich shop up on Columbus Avenue. It sat pinned under a slab of plaster, the shape of Rhode Island. I yanked it out and flipped it over. It was the three-column inventory I had scribbled a week and a half earlier. I scanned the first column, things I thought I knew, concluding that I had batted a thousand. The questions in the center column, things I’d like to know, had all been answered.

  The last column, things I’ll never know, remained blank. I decided to leave it that way for as long as I could.

  An all-points bulletin on Jenny Solomon had gone out to all surrounding cities and towns.

  Less than twenty-four hours later, the Folsom police had the fugitive in custody.

  And Chief William Gunderson let her go.

  Twenty Eight

  The next morning, I was driving east, directly into the sunrise, thinking thoughts that should have been reserved for dark, menacing nights.

  Like scary stories around a campfire.

  I had picked up the Impala from Joey Russo’s garage at daybreak, declining Joey’s offer of company.

  I was feeling like a coward but not wanting to act like one.

  I had been feeling defiant, noble. Taking up the banner for Lefty Wright. Trying to empathize, to feel what Lefty had suffered at the hands of his betrayers.

  I mistook it for bravery.

  Until I learned about Jenny Solomon.

  Then I began to see bravery differently. Charlie Mancuso, risking his freedom to defend a sister. And I caught a glimpse of incomprehensible courage, in a teenage girl who had lived through a twenty-four-hour nightmare fifteen years ago.

  And for how many of the countless hours since.

  I had ideas about what may have happened to Jenny Solomon that terrified me, had me wondering what could have put me in mind of such deceit, had me convinced that thoughts so black could be condoned only if they were true.

  I had run to Sally, to hear her say it
wasn’t so.

  Sally couldn’t help me.

  I couldn’t sleep, I was up and out at dawn.

  I was driving east, into the sunrise, to hear someone say it wasn’t so.

  I parked the Chevy in front of the Folsom Public Library and walked over to the police station to hear from Chief William Gunderson.

  Gunderson sat at his desk, across the large room. I zeroed in on him. I must have looked a bit crazy. There were others in the room, though I couldn’t say how many; they gave me a wide berth. Gunderson saw something, too, in my face or in the way I held my hands, that had him up and around the desk very quickly for so large a man. He caught up to me halfway.

  “I came to tell you what I think,” I said.

  “Let me buy you a cup of coffee,” he said, turning me around and leading me back out to the street.

  I followed him to the small restaurant across from the library. “Is that your Chevy convertible?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Very nice.”

  “It’s my pride and joy,” I said. “What’s yours?”

  “My job,” he answered.

  Gunderson led me toward the rear of the restaurant; stopping along the way to greet each of the handful of diners scattered at tables in front. Greeting all of them by name. We settled into a booth against the back wall.

  A young girl quickly arrived, holding an order pad, pulling a pencil from behind her right ear. She was eighteen, maybe nineteen, years old. Her name tag read Rebecca.

  “Good morning, Chief,” she said, “what can I get for you, gentlemen?”

  I felt very old.

  “The strawberry rhubarb pie is the best in the state,” Gunderson said.

  It wouldn’t surprise me.

  “Just coffee, Rebecca,” I said.

  “So, Mr. Diamond,” Gunderson said, after ordering the same and watching the girl start for the counter, “what exactly are you looking for?”

  I was tempted to say that I was looking for the truth, but I doubted, after fifteen years, that anyone could possibly guarantee the truth. I waited, watching Rebecca place a stainless steel creamer and two heavy mugs on the table. She filled the two cups from a glass carafe and walked off.