Clutching at Straws

by J. L. Abramo

  “I told you all that I could about the Davey King murder case. Then I hear that you’ve been pestering Officer Williams. Now here you are again, coming all this way from the big city. What are you looking for?”

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

  “I’m a very busy man, Mr. Diamond. What makes you think that I’m interested?”

  “I doubt you’d be buying me coffee if you weren’t, Chief.”

  “Okay, Diamond, I’ll bite. What do you think?”

  “I think you picked up a girl named Jenny Solomon that night. A scared young girl, most likely disoriented and in shock, who had been attacked in a parking lot less than two hours before. And instead of helping the kid, you put her out on the street.”

  “That’s far-fetched, Diamond. The girl had nothing to do with the King incident. She was legal age, said she was visiting a friend and just out walking. I had no reason to believe otherwise, and no cause to hold her.”

  “Except that she was wanted by the Sacramento police.”

  “How would I have known that?” he asked.

  “You knew it, Chief. It was out on the wire, and I’ve confirmed that you received word long before you brought the girl in.”

  “And why would I cut her loose?”

  I suddenly realized what I had suspected all along, and I said it with conviction.

  “Because Jenny Solomon would have been able to testify that it was Lowell Ryder, and not his brother Chance, who killed Davey King.”

  “And who gave you that idea?”

  “Chance Ryder,” I said, “and you must have known that also, and you didn’t want to have to explain why you went along with Calvin Ryder’s version of events.”

  All of the air went out of Gunderson, like a punctured inner tube.

  “Calvin was a lifelong friend, Chance was willing, where was the harm in that?”

  “I’m in no position to judge the decisions of consenting adults. I’m aware of the gray areas. The harm came afterward, when the well-being of a teenage girl in great need of help was sacrificed for the cover-up.”

  “The girl robbed and murdered her boss,” said Gunderson.

  “We don’t know that. We can’t know what happened in Sacramento. But now, five men have been murdered in San Francisco and I’m convinced that it’s connected to what happened to Davey King fifteen years ago. It’s time for you to tell me all you know about that night.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, and quickly rose.

  “I’ll find out,” I said, having no idea how I would.

  “I wish you luck, Mr. Diamond” he said, already moving away. “You really should try the pie.”

  I watched him all the way to the front door. He stopped briefly at the counter.

  “Ray, put the coffee on my tab, and anything else Mr. Diamond might like.”

  And he was gone.

  “More?”

  I looked up to find Rebecca holding a pot of coffee.

  “Sure, thank you,” I said, “and how about a slice of that strawberry rhubarb I’ve heard so much about. And Rebecca.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’ll take care of the check.”

  Twenty minutes later I walked across to the town library. I found Mrs. Dewey shelving books.

  “Why, hello,” she said, “you must have taken a liking to our quiet town.”

  I really couldn’t say.

  “I was wondering if you had a local phone book I could look at.”

  “What are you looking for?” she asked. “I think I know all there is to know about where everything is around here.”

  “I was hoping to locate Calvin Ryder,” I said.

  “Oh, Calvin. I’m afraid you won’t find him here. The poor man is at the Mercy Hospice in Sacramento. Cancer. He doesn’t have long, from what I understand.”

  I thanked Mrs. Dewey and walked back out to the Impala.

  Phil Moss had acquired the address for me. Barbara Solomon on Ninth at Q Street in Sacramento. The night before I had talked about phoning the woman. Sally had a feeling that Mrs. Solomon wouldn’t talk.

  According to Moss, Mrs. Solomon had insisted, every time she was asked, that she had never seen or heard from her daughter Jenny since the night Ed Clarke was killed in the ice cream shop.

  “I’m going to Folsom tomorrow morning,” I said. “I’ll stop to see Mrs. Solomon on my way back and explain why I need to find her daughter.”

  “She won’t talk, Jake,” Sally had repeated, “but I have an idea.” The letter was in my jacket pocket, addressed to Jenny Solomon.

  I exited Route 50 at Sixteenth Street, drove over to Q Street and down to Ninth. The small house stood on a corner lot. I parked the Chevy, walked to the front door, and pressed the buzzer. The woman who answered looked as if she had been waiting for me to arrive, so that she could get finished asking me to leave. It took all of my charm to coax her out onto the front porch.

  Sally had been absolutely correct. Barbara Solomon had nothing to say about the fate or whereabouts of her daughter, in spite of my insistence that I would do nothing to harm or jeopardize Jenny.

  “Do you believe that Jenny was protecting herself in some way when Clarke was shot?” I asked.

  “Mr. Diamond, Ed Clarke was a good friend of mine, a special friend. Jenny had always been a troubled girl, particularly in her teens, after her father passed away. Ed had been good enough to give her a chance working at his shop. I can’t bring myself to believe that Ed would have done anything to harm my daughter.”

  “I understand,” I said.

  “You’ve come a long way. Can I offer you a cup of coffee before you start back?”

  “That would be good,” I said.

  I followed her into the house and back to the kitchen. There was a photograph on the fireplace mantel, a pretty blue-eyed girl at her high school graduation. We drank coffee, silently, at the kitchen table. I kept forming questions in my mind, and fighting every impulse to ask them.

  “Mrs. Solomon, do you know why Jenny may have gone to Folsom after she left the shop that night?”

  “I didn’t know she had gone there,” she said. “The police never mentioned it.”

  “Let’s say she had.”

  “There was a boy in Folsom that she had been seeing for a month or so. They had met at a concert here in town. I don’t know of anyone else Jenny may have known out in Folsom.”

  “Do you remember his name?”

  “It was an unusual name, Chance, I think it was. It was a long time ago.”

  I reached into my jacket for the letter I had written for Jenny the night before.

  “Mrs. Solomon. Please. If you should happen to hear from your daughter, could you pass this along to her?”

  I placed the envelope on the table. I didn’t wait for an answer. I rose, thanked her for the coffee, and moved to leave. I could hear her rise and follow behind me. At the door I turned to her, saw the puzzled look in her eyes. She tried to say something but couldn’t. When I pulled away from the house, she was still standing at the door.

  On my way down from Folsom I had thought I would drop into Mercy Hospice to visit Calvin Ryder. I changed my mind. I couldn’t bring myself to confront a dying man until I found the courage to confront his elder son, to confess to Chance Ryder, to tell Chance who I really was and why I had deceived him.

  I wondered how long that might take.

  And I wondered how long I could wait before having to admit that I would never hear from Jenny Solomon.

  I pointed the Impala toward home.

  I was crossing the Sacramento River into Rio Vista when I heard the radio news report. State police were investigating the apparent suicide of Chief William Gunderson, found dead from a gunshot wound in the men’s room of the Folsom Police Station an hour earlier.

  I drove, blind, all the way back to San Francisco.

  I was thinking that I had the kiss of death.

  I had instigated a hunt for Vic Vigoda and he
had landed in McCovey Cove.

  I had pressed Katt, and he and Lefty had been silenced.

  I had uncovered Freddie Cash’s self-manufactured kidnapping, and Freddie had turned up DOA.

  I had pushed Chief Gunderson to the point where the only way to save his job, his pride and his joy, had been to take his own life.

  I was ready to give it all up, before I condemned another soul, innocent or guilty.

  Then I thought about what Jimmy Pigeon would have said to me.

  Jimmy Pigeon, who had brought me into the business. Jimmy Pigeon, who had promised from the start that the truth never came cheap.

  Jimmy would have told me that I was giving myself far too much credit.

  I walked into the office. The dog seemed genuinely glad to see me. Darlene happily reported that we had a few new cases to consider. I asked her, kindly, to hold the thought.

  I made a quick phone call to the Brown Palace.

  Chance Folsom had wrapped his work in Denver and would be back home in Los Angeles after the weekend.

  And a letter to Jenny Solomon had made it at least as far as her mother’s kitchen table.

  I asked Darlene to fill me in on the prospective clients. All I could do was to keep busy.

  And wait.

  Twenty Nine

  The World Series was over.

  With baseball in the record books, the spotlight turned to the gridiron. Sadly, the 49ers were playing in the dark. Darlene had flown to Charlotte to watch the Niners lose to Carolina, 34 to 16, their sixth loss in eight games. Darlene had decided to stay over until Tuesday morning; she had her hands full trying to cheer up a very melancholy defensive lineman.

  I stopped into Molinari’s for two cups of coffee, just as I had the last time Darlene took a post-game Monday off. Exactly four Mondays before. The day I got the call from Lefty Wright.

  Angelo Verdi was going on about the murder trial. Charlie Mancuso was being tried for the murders of Freddie Cash and Mike Flanagan, notwithstanding that Mancuso was nowhere to be found. A conviction was imminent. Lowell Ryder was riding high, with the election only eight days off. Jeremy Cash was conspicuously absent from the proceedings, and Governor Krupp was keeping unusually silent about how far the trial at hand came toward solving the Chancellor homicide.

  I had dog-sat Tug McGraw over the weekend, in Darlene’s absence, and he waited patiently outside of Molinari’s door for me to tear myself away from Angelo’s commentary. He greeted me with a deep sigh when I finally emerged and followed me up the two flights of stairs to the office.

  I stationed myself at Darlene’s post. McGraw squeezed his way under the desk, causing us equal levels of cramped discomfort. With a good excuse for putting my feet up on the desktop, I dug the Dumas novel from my jacket pocket and did just that.

  A small slip of notepaper marked where I had left off in Dantes story, marked the only real progress I could point to over the past four weeks—1,007 pages down and 71 pages to go. I glanced at the note. Chance Folsom’s Los Angeles address and phone number, furnished by cousin Bobby, courtesy of his Screen Actors Guild directory.

  I glanced at the note, looked at the telephone, and placed the note face down on Darlene’s desk.

  Edmond Dantes had finally come around to dealing with the Crown Prosecutor, M. de Villefort. Three men, motivated by greed and envy, had falsely framed Edmond, implicating him in a Bonapartist plot against the crown. The case against Dantes would never have led to conviction and imprisonment, however, if it were not for the ambition of the public prosecutor, Villefort. Villefort’s policy against the Bonapartists had to be extremely vigilant if he was to please the ruling Royalists and advance his career. Villefort’s father is a known Bonapartist. Villefort feared that leniency in the case of the young Dantes, who he truly didn’t believe guilty, might be seen as anti-Crown sentiment. Villefort prosecutes Edmond as a traitor and has him incarcerated as a dangerous criminal, insuring his own climb up the political and social ladder.

  Edmond uncovers a secret from Villefort’s past. Literally, a buried secret. Years before, Villefort had buried his newborn bastard child, alive. Bertuccio, a sworn enemy of Villefort, had dug up the child and saved the baby’s life. Edmond, now the Count of Monte Cristo, learns of the event when Bertuccio becomes the count’s servant. The rescued child, Benedetto, is now a young man being brought to trial before Villefort for murder and prison escape. Dantes sees the trial as the means to disclose Benedetto’s identity and ruin Villefort. If Edmond Dantes cannot prove that he was an innocent man, convicted and imprisoned with the help of Villefort’s complicity, he will pull the Crown prosecutor down by whatever means available. When Benedetto testifies to the identity of his true father, and of the attempted burial, Edmond’s retribution is complete.

  Good old Alexandre Dumas could spin quite a yarn. And Dumas had a huge advantage over Diamond.

  He could write his own resolution.

  Just before noon Joey Russo called, offering to drop by with some lunch.

  Whenever Darlene was out of town, everyone who knew me well was afraid I would forget to eat.

  Joey arrived at one with a covered plate lovingly prepared by his wife, Angela. Smoked mozzarella, fresh basil, Greek and Sicilian olives, and thinly sliced prosciutto. Perfectly supplemented by a warm loaf of seeded Italian bread and a cold six-pack of St. Pauli Girl.

  “What’s in the other bag?” I asked.

  “A few of Angela’s meatballs for the pooch,” said Joey, “I thought we could slip him a treat while Darlene is away.”

  As if he understood English and welcomed the prospect of eating something not derived from soybeans, Tug McGraw popped his head out from under the desk.

  “So, Joey, tell me,” I said, as we cleared what remained in the platter of food, each working on our second beer, “how do you get to the truth?”

  “Short of sodium pentothal and the rack?”

  “Okay.”

  “Three ways I can think of. Scientific method, deductive reasoning, and finesse,” said Joey. “The first requires plugging values into a known formula and seeing if both sides of the equal sign are actually equivalent. It doesn’t work very well with the truth of human behavior, since there’s no real formula.”

  “Deductive reasoning?”

  “Better, but unless you’re Sherlock Holmes and consider every single possibility you run the risk of throwing out the baby with the bathwater.”

  “Which leaves?”

  “Finesse. Like in pinochle, when you try to finesse the ten of trump. You get someone to admit a truth in order to cover up a more damning truth. I knew a guy who confessed to robbing a liquor store because his only alibi was that he was at a motel at the time of the robbery, with his wife’s sister.”

  “How did the investigation of a murder that went down a month ago turn into an investigation of crimes fifteen years past?” I asked.

  “On the surface, it looks as if you’re bucking for a guest spot on Unsolved Mysteries. If you want to get to the truth, you have to go where it takes you.”

  “I’ve come to a roadblock.”

  “Either you find a way around it,” said Joey, “or you wait until the road reopens. If it’s waited fifteen years, it can wait a while longer. And in the end, all scores will be settled, with or without our help.”

  “Do you really believe that?”

  “Absolutely,” said Joey. “Why don’t you get out of this office for a while? The air is a lot better out there.”

  “I’ll hang in a bit longer. In case Darlene checks up on me. Thanks for lunch. Thank Angela.”

  “You know how to reach me. Don’t forget the meatballs for the mutt.”

  With that, Joey picked up the empty platter and headed out the door. I threw the meat into Tug McGraw’s food dish, and he wandered out from under the desk to explore. Anticipating the dog’s eventual return, I propped my feet back up on Darlene’s desk and set to finish reading the Dumas novel. Shortly after closing the book at
the end of the last page, I must have dozed off. A light knocking at the office door woke both the dog and me. I swung my legs down to the floor and went to open up to my late afternoon visitor.

  The woman standing in the hall outside the door was in her early to mid-thirties. She wore her shoulder length dark blonde hair in a ponytail. She had piercing blue eyes and a faultless complexion with no makeup. She wore a knee-length maroon raincoat over a plain deep-blue A-line dress.

  “Jake Diamond?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m Jennifer Hamilton. I used to be Jenny Solomon. And I’m here to find out if you are planning to turn my world upside down.”

  “Would you like to come in and have a seat?” I said, flustered.

  She walked past me and settled into the customer chair. McGraw peeked out briefly and disappeared again under the desk. I walked around to Darlene’s side. I was grasping for an answer to her question. I couldn’t find one. I opted for a question of my own, instead.

  “Can I offer you something to drink? I can send down to the deli for coffee or a soft drink.”

  “Have any bourbon?”

  “Give me a minute,” I said.

  I went back to my room and grabbed the pint bottle of George Dickel and the two small glasses from my desk drawer. I returned to the front, sat across from Jenny Solomon, and poured two drinks. She picked up her glass and took a sip.

  “Well?” she said.

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” I said.

  “Then forget me,” she said.

  “I’d rather not do that, either.”

  “What do you want?” she asked.

  “I’m looking for the truth,” I said feebly.

  “Ha,” she said, “tell me what you’re thinking.”

  “I’m thinking that you killed your mother’s boyfriend because he assaulted you. I’m thinking that you ran, not wanting to face the consequences, or to face your mother. I’m thinking that you went to find Chance Ryder, because you had nowhere else to go.”

  “You’re quite the detective,” she said.

  “I get a lot of help. What I would like to know is what exactly happened in the parking lot in Folsom and with Chief Gunderson afterward.”