Clutching at Straws

by J. L. Abramo

  “And then?”

  “And then I’ll add up the score, tell you what I think the story is, and let you decide if you want me to forget you or not. It’s up to you. I don’t want to hurt you,” I repeated.

  She downed the rest of her bourbon and slid the empty glass toward me for a refill. I topped both of our glasses.

  “I ran out of the shop and called Chance at home. His father told me where I could find him. I found the bar, but before I got in to look for Chance, I ran into his brother in the parking lot. He was very drunk. He made a pass at me. After what had happened at the ice cream shop, you can imagine that I wasn’t in the mood for unwanted advances. I started for the bar, he grabbed my arm, and I broke away. Then I fell and he was on top of me. He must have knocked me out cold. Next, I remember the two boys struggling on the ground nearby. I jumped up and took off. I was wandering the streets in a daze. A patrol car picked me up. I was taken to the police station. I sat alone in a closed room for thirty minutes. I was released. End of story. Forget me.”

  “The boy who tried to rescue you was killed for his effort,” I said.

  “I didn’t know that. I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “He was also accused of being the one who attacked you. Killed in self-defense. His name was Davey King.”

  “And Chance’s brother got away clean?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said, and decided to leave it at that. “How are you doing now?”

  “I’m married to a good man. We run a small gift shop in Half Moon Bay. I have two beautiful young daughters. I manage a superficial relationship with my mother, who remains in denial after fifteen years. I have no interest in revisiting the past. I want to be forgotten. Jenny Solomon has left the building.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Okay?”

  “Okay, thanks for dropping by.”

  I picked one of my business cards off Darlene’s desk.

  I spotted the Dumas novel. I turned to page 1,007 and put the card in to mark the place.

  “Take this. My card is in here in case you ever need to reach me. If you like reading, I’m done with the book. I particularly enjoyed chapters 59 and 60. I’ll forget I ever met you, Mrs. Hamilton,” I said, handing her The Count of Monte Cristo.

  She took the book, slowly rose, looked me once in the eyes, and was quickly out the door.

  Then I was alone in the office, looking at the door that had just closed behind Jenny Solomon. At the deadbolt that you could unlock with a paper clip, the scratches Tug McGraw had contributed to the door’s character, the coffee stain at the threshold, and the words Diamond Investigation in reverse on the opaque glass panel.

  And I wondered what it would take to get to the other side.

  Thirty

  The call came two days later, on a Wednesday afternoon. I had just about given up on the Chancellor case. I felt like an inept Colombo, as if I knew who the killer was but couldn’t spring the trap. And then Darlene buzzed me with word that a Mrs. Jennifer Hamilton was on the line.

  “Diamond, I get the picture.”

  “Oh?”

  “The Dumas book,” she said. “You think that you can snare Ryder by getting me into court to spill the beans about that night.”

  “I guess I thought about it.”

  “Did you think about my being convicted for killing the ice cream man?”

  “Sure, I’ve thought about that, too,” I admitted. “But if we can get some kind of testimony, to suggest that Clarke had been hitting on you and conceivably threatened your life. I can get you the best defense lawyer that money can buy.”

  Well, that Jeremy Cash’s money could buy.

  “The other girl who worked with me, Sue Bryant, if she’s still to be found. She saw some evidence of Clarke’s lecherous intentions.”

  “How about your mother?”

  “Jesus, Diamond, you’re merciless.”

  “Jenny,” I said, playing my last card, “Chance Ryder took the rap for his brother that night in the parking lot. Chance never knew who the girl was, he never knew about you. And he believed that Lowell had been the good guy. Lowell was on his way to Stanford Law School and the father asked the older brother to take the heat. Chance couldn’t say no.”

  “That’s a horrible story.”

  “Yes, it is. And Davey King is in the ground, for trying to do the right thing,” I said. “Chance did the prison time for manslaughter and now he does movies.”

  “I’ve seen him in a few.”

  “And Lowell Ryder is about to be elected district attorney of San Francisco,” I added. “Look, Jenny. This guy Ryder has killed five people to save his own skin. Not to mention letting his brother go to prison in his place. But this has to be about you. You have to want to get clear of the Clarke murder and settle the score with your mother. If you’ve really put it behind you, okay. But if not, this is the chance for you to throw it off, once and for all, and I’ll do everything I can to help. Regardless of whether we can nail Lowell Ryder.”

  “I’ll have to see my mother before I can decide.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “And you’d better talk to Chance Folsom.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because if we go ahead with this, it’s going to come out that his father was at the police station the night Gunderson had me there and that Ryder paid me off to walk out and disappear.”

  “Wow.”

  It was the best I could do.

  “Good word for it,” said Jenny. “Talk to Chance, I’ll talk to my mother. I’ll call you back.”

  And with that she was off the line.

  And I was left to decide how to ask a son to help implicate his father in a criminal cover-up and perhaps expose his brother as an alleged multiple murderer.

  Talk about a break in the case.

  “So, let’s see if I’ve got this straight,” said Darlene the next afternoon at the airport, about to put me on a plane to Los Angeles, “Jenny Solomon turns herself in for the murder of her mother’s boyfriend. Self-defense. She’s found innocent, kisses and makes up with Mom and incidentally fingers Lowell Ryder for attempted rape and manslaughter after fifteen years. How is that going to strap Lowell with the rash of killings up here?”

  “It probably doesn’t, but it ends his career. And for Ryder that’s probably worse than death.”

  “And what if no one believes her, about Ryder I mean?”

  “His brother and his father can corroborate.”

  “You’re dreaming, Jake,” Darlene said, “but that’s what makes you so endearing.”

  “I wondered what it was.”

  “Good luck,” Darlene said as I walked through the boarding gate.

  “Thanks,” I answered.

  As if I had any idea what kind of result could possibly be considered lucky.

  I had phoned Chance the night before. How are you, I’ll be in L.A. for a day and a half. Maybe we can have dinner tomorrow night.

  “Sure, sounds great, I’m looking forward to it,” he said, compounding my feelings of guilt.

  I was planning to stay at my cousin Bobby’s place in Westwood. Bobby was on location for the dinosaur movie. I asked Chance to meet me there for a drink before we went for dinner.

  I took a cab from LAX, having the driver stop and wait while I picked up a bottle of Dickel on the way. I broke the seal the moment I entered Bobby’s apartment around seven. I found a clean glass and some ice and started preparing myself for Chance’s arrival at eight-thirty.

  By eight I was on my third drink, surfing Bobby’s thirty-two-inch TV for distraction. As with almost everything else, there were too many choices. I ultimately landed on a Steven Seagal flick. I’d seen them all, but really couldn’t say which one it was.

  The doorbell rang at precisely half past eight. I killed the TV, picked up my glass, and opened for Chance Folsom. He followed me into the kitchen, where I poured him a bourbon and refilled my own.

  “I hope you didn’t open tha
t bottle tonight,” he said.

  “Afraid so,” I said.

  “Cheers,” he said, taking a long drink. “The Chicago theater community has never heard of Jake Falco. Before you get too drunk to speak, maybe you can tell me who you are and what you want from me.”

  Everyone’s a detective. At least it gave me an opening.

  So we sat at the kitchen table and he quietly listened as I related the events of the past month. Judge Chancellor, Vic Vigoda, Officer Katt, Lefty Wright, Freddie Cash, Charlie “Bones” Mancuso. And when I was done, Chance asked the obvious question, the question I really dreaded answering.

  “So,” he said, helping himself to another drink, “what has all of this have to do with me?”

  “It has to do with your brother,” I said. “I’m almost positive that your brother is responsible for the murders.”

  “Is that a joke?”

  “No.”

  “My brother is some kind of big shot DA, why would he be running around killing people?”

  “Precisely because he’s a big shot DA who is about to be elected the chief San Francisco DA in a few days, with aspirations for political office that go at least as far as the governor’s mansion. It’s all he’s wanted all of his life, you told me so yourself. And when Davey King came back to haunt him, threatening to destroy it all, your brother took steps and then totally lost control.”

  “Davey King was self-defense. I did the time for it and I’m the guilty party of record. Only Lowell, my father, Gunderson or I could say different; and not one of us will. Lowell has nothing to be afraid of. You’re not making any sense.”

  “Davey King was as innocent as you were. It was Lowell who attacked the girl, it was Davey who tried to come to the rescue and he died for it.”

  Chance gripped his glass so tightly I was afraid it would shatter in his hand. His eyes went blank, but for a split second before they did I saw something in his eyes that made me believe that the thought had crossed his mind more than once over the past fifteen years.

  I waited.

  It was going to be entirely up to him where it would go from there.

  After a lifetime or two he finally spoke.

  “Who could possibly tell you that?” he asked. “Who beside Lowell could possibly know that?”

  Jennifer Hamilton had called me merciless. I had no choice. It was far too late for mercy. I felt as if I had plowed over Chance Ryder with an automobile, and that all I could do was to throw it into reverse and back up over the body.

  “Gunderson could have told me, but he decided to kill himself instead. It was the girl who told me what happened in the parking lot that night.”

  “The girl?”

  “The girl who Lowell attacked, the girl Davey King tried to protect, the girl that your brother was so afraid Judge Chancellor would find.”

  “Who was she?”

  And so I said the name Jenny Solomon. And Chance came across the table and hit me so hard in the face that I was out cold for nearly ten minutes.

  When I came to and slowly opened my eyes I was lying flat on the living room sofa.

  Chance sat across from me on the armchair, with a half-empty bottle and a full glass of Dickel sitting on the table beside him. As my eyes focused, he spoke.

  “When I was a boy,” Chance began, “I felt as if I owed my father everything, but I never imagined that I would be paying for the rest of my life. My kid brother was very intelligent. All my brother ever wanted was to become a lawyer. He graduated at the top of his high school class and earned a full scholarship to Stanford. On graduation night, I went with my brother to celebrate at a local saloon. After a few drinks, I decided to leave while I was sober enough to drive and could still hope to get some work done with my father on the farm the following day. I made it safely and I was sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee with my father when my brother called. My father spoke with him briefly on the phone, I heard him tell my brother to come directly home. Then my father told me what I had to do to help my brother and to help him. My father had sacrificed for his family, and he expected me to do the same. I couldn’t say no. My brother couldn’t say no. My father was not a man you could say no to. He was a very determined and frightening man. The fierce discipline Calvin handed out as we were growing up left no doubts about the consequences of not obeying his wishes.”

  And so it was that Chance Ryder was given his first acting role, as a stand-in for his brother. A scandal could have ended his brother’s dreams before they began, his father explained to Chance. Calvin Ryder asked his oldest son take the heat. Calvin called Gunderson and filled the chief in about the incident in the parking lot, substituting Chance for his brother as the son who killed Davey King in self-defense.

  “To help sell the story, my father put his hands around my neck and choked me until red marks appeared,” said Chance, “then he took me back to the parking lot to meet the chief and turn myself in.”

  It was a heartbreaking tale.

  And now I had told Chance Folsom that his sacrifice was a cover-up for a crime committed against someone he had cared about. It would change everything Chance ever believed or felt about his family. And I wondered if I had any right to be the bearer of such ill tidings, since I had nothing to offer in the way of consolation and hearing his story had taken me no closer to solving a single thing. And then he asked the question that made me wish I were still out cold.

  “Did my father know who the girl was?” he asked.

  “Jenny claims he did,” I said.

  With that he emptied his glass with one long swallow, placed it on the table, rose from his seat, and walked over to and out the front door without another word.

  With great difficulty I managed to rise, stagger over to the table, and grab the bourbon bottle.

  I was still holding it when I woke up on the floor the following morning.

  Thirty One

  I hadn’t heard a word from Chance Folsom after he had walked out of my cousin Bobby’s apartment in L.A. that Thursday night. I had received a call from Jenny Solomon Hamilton on Saturday night. She had visited her mother and was calling to tell me that she had decided to let sleeping dogs lie.

  “So, what did I do wrong?” I asked Sally after the call from Jenny.

  Sally had come by on Saturday evening with Vietnamese take-out in hand.

  “Nothing,” she said, “it has nothing to do with you. It’s about children protecting their parents when it should have been the other way around. Chance won’t put his father through it, no matter that his father and brother hung him out to dry. You told me that Calvin Ryder is dying of cancer. What could you expect a son to do? And Mrs. Solomon. It’s obvious that she couldn’t handle the truth about what Ed Clarke did to her daughter, she’s been denying it for fifteen years. And Jenny knows that it would tear the woman to pieces. No, Jake, you can’t blame yourself. It was a no-win situation.”

  “So, that’s it? Lowell Ryder skates?”

  “Unless you can bluff the guy,” said Sally.

  Which is exactly what I tried to do the following afternoon.

  I had made up my mind to drop in on Ryder unannounced. I had counted on finding him at home, relaxing alone after an arduous campaign on the Sunday before Election Day. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

  Ryder lived in a huge Victorian on Russian Hill, at Filbert and Jones, not far up the hill from my office. As I approached the house I could see the group of people milling about in front, male and female, ranging in age from college to thirty-something, holding drinks, exchanging talk and furtive glances and generally looking handsome.

  I put on my party-crashing attitude.

  It was obviously a pre-victory celebration; the participants were surely campaign contributors, staff and volunteers. The mood was festive; the prize trophy was in the bag. They all had the “I backed the right man” look on their beaming faces. When I strolled through the gate of the white picket fence they all seemed glad to see me. When I asked w
here I could find Lowell they looked at me as if I were important. As I walked around to the back of the house as directed, I could hear the whispered inquiries as to who in the world I might be.

  I found Ryder holding court in the large yard behind the house, which overlooked the Bay and the Golden Gate Bridge. There were dozens of people; there was food and drink everywhere. I didn’t recognize a soul other than Ryder himself; then again I didn’t get around much. A bartender was splashing Jack Daniel’s into a row of glasses. I was tempted to grab one, but decided I would wait to be offered.

  “Mr. Ryder,” I said, coming up through his audience, “I was wondering if I might have a word or two in private.”

  Ryder looked up at me and smiled broadly, not batting an eye. The group around him reacted very differently and shrunk away.

  “Mr. Diamond,” Ryder said, “nice of you to come. Can we offer you a drink?”

  I wondered which we he was referring to. I must have been out of my mind.

  I had come this far, so I went the distance.

  “Sure, is there somewhere we could talk,” I said, “I’ll only take a few minutes of your time.”

  I suppose I convinced him that I meant business. He excused himself, took me by the arm, grabbed a couple of bourbons with his free hand, and led me into the house. The house was packed as well. I followed Ryder up the stairs to a small sitting room that must have been the only empty square footage on the property. He invited me to take one of the two chairs in the room and he took the other.

  “You’re on, Diamond. What’s on your mind?” he asked.

  I couldn’t help feeling as if he had been expecting me. Sooner or later.

  “I spoke with your brother about what happened back in eighty-five. And with Jenny Solomon.”

  “And you came to tell me you’re upset that I lied to you at Twin Peaks.”

  “It’s a little more than that, Ryder.”

  “Oh, yes. I almost forgot. Chance said something about me being suspected of committing half of the San Francisco homicides in the past month.”