Clutching at Straws

by J. L. Abramo

  “I didn’t know about any of this until after the fact,” he began, taking a seat at the table, “and the longer I kept it quiet the less chance I had of coming forward without seeing my life go down the toilet.”

  “Maybe we can still save your skin, Phil, for the sake of your family. But only if you level with me, one hundred percent.”

  “After we left Chancellor’s place I laid into Tom about taking the Rolex. He was really terrified. He said he was being paid to get something from the judge’s safe. Tom said that he simply had to go into the house on the pretense of investigating a reported disturbance, grab an envelope from the dresser top, and get out. He said that he never expected to find Lefty Wright at the scene, and certainly never expected to find Judge Chancellor under the bed. I believe him on that, I saw his reaction when we got up the stairs and into the bedroom.”

  “Okay.”

  “Tom said that not finding the envelope was really bad news, and that finding it was his only chance of survival. He pleaded with me like he was begging for his life. He even offered me money. He begged me for some time to work it out. And I stepped into the quicksand.”

  “Did he say anything about grabbing Mancuso’s gun from evidence lockup and trying to enlist Charlie Bones to put a scare into the judge?”

  “No. But it wouldn’t surprise me. Especially after what happened to Vic Vigoda. Vic came to us, like I was in on the thing, and tried to put the squeeze on Tom for more dough. Tom told Vigoda he could count on it, and the next day they fished the kid out of McCovey Cove. By then, I was so deep in it I couldn’t budge.”

  “And he never said who was paying him?”

  “No.”

  “Did he have an idea about who killed the judge?”

  “He said he had a very good idea. He said he had proof, and that it was the only thing that would keep him alive.”

  “The Rolex.”

  “Yes.”

  “And he gave it to you to hold.”

  “What’s going to happen to me?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure. You may have to testify that you spotted the Rolex in the judge’s bedroom that night. What you say about what happened after that is up to you. I’ll say that someone delivered it to me anonymously. You say differently and we can both go down.”

  “Why take the risk?” he asked.

  “I couldn’t explain it,” I answered.

  It may have been the truest thing I’d ever said.

  Moss rose from the table and walked over to the sink. He opened a cabinet above it and rummaged in back. He came back with a gold Rolex in a plastic bag. He handed the bag to me, picked up my empty glass, and fixed me another drink.

  “How was this handled?” I asked.

  “Tom was wearing plastic evidence gloves. I’m sure he didn’t touch the watch with his bare hands. The only prints on the Rolex are those that were there before we arrived. The bag is a different story, but it’s easy enough to take care of.”

  Without much trouble I was able to read the inscription on the back of the watch face. I decided not to ask Moss if he knew who the Rolex belonged to. I knocked down the fresh drink in one shot and rose from my seat.

  “Good luck,” I said, moving toward the front door.

  “I have a feeling you’re the one who’s going to need it,” he said.

  Somehow, miraculously, I made it out of the subdivision without hitting a single dead end.

  I might have taken it for a good omen if I believed in them.

  I pulled the Impala into the alley off Union Street and parked behind Molinari’s. I looked down at the gold Rolex in the plastic bag beside me on the car seat.

  There was only one way it would work. And it would require the trust of someone who had every reason in the world not to trust me.

  I picked up the bag, placed it into my shirt pocket, and climbed out of the Chevy.

  I walked around to Columbus Avenue and up the stairs to my office to call Chance Ryder.

  Feeling a lot like the boy who cried wolf.

  Thirty Four

  Take away the people and Earth is a magnificent planet. A garden. An Eden.

  Take away the people and Earth is a big rock, covered mostly in water, revolving thoughtlessly and involuntarily around a larger rock with no one to care.

  And therein lies the advantage of having human beings aboard. There is always the outside chance that someone will care.

  The office of the San Francisco District Attorney was spacious. It had to be to accommodate the massive oak desk that separated me from Lowell Ryder by at least four feet. The look on the DA’s face told me with no uncertainty that Ryder would have preferred the distance to be more like four miles.

  I had arrived without an appointment. You can get away with it more often than not in my business. After all, who would really take a PI seriously if he always warned you he was coming? Getting past a receptionist can be tricky or simple, depending on your approach. In this case, I confronted her with the news that Bruce Willis was out in the hall and when she ducked out for a look, I slipped into Ryder’s antechamber.

  Ryder could have reacted to my intrusion in many ways, and I thought that I had prepared myself for any of them. Instead, he surprised me by greeting me by name and inviting me to take a seat. I thought briefly about waiting for Ryder to ask me what in the world I wanted this time, but the look in his eyes told me that the stage was mine.

  Usually an investigator is looking for the who and the why. This was one of the rare cases in my illustrious career where I thought I had those little details figured.

  What I didn’t know and really wanted to know was how the hell it all actually happened.

  “I have something that you want, and you have something that I want,” I said. “Let’s make a deal.”

  “What could you possibly have, Mr. Diamond, that would interest me in the least?”

  I couldn’t blame him for trying.

  “I have a gold Rolex with your name on it, corroboration that it belongs to you, a witness that puts it in Judge Chancellor’s bedroom the night he was murdered.”

  I waited a beat. There was no reaction. I summed up.

  “If that’s not enough,” I concluded, “I’ve got both your and Chancellor’s fingerprints on the watch.”

  That was as far as I could go for the moment. If he didn’t have something to say, we would be sitting in silence at that large oak desk for a very long time.

  When he finally spoke, I have to admit I was disappointed. “Are you wired?” he asked.

  “It’s not my style, but feel free to pat me down.”

  “How about I have no idea what you’re talking about?” he suggested.

  “Okay, now we’re getting somewhere. I give you a phone number. You call. And you become a believer. Care to give it a try?”

  “Sounds like a trap.”

  “Believe me Mr. Ryder, you’re already trapped. Now it’s only a matter of what you’re willing to do to get sprung. Here, use my cellular. I’ll dial. Use this to hold it,” I said, pulling out the phone and a handkerchief. “Simply ask the person who answers whether or not what I’ve claimed is true. After he says yes, we can move on.

  “Why should I believe it?”

  “Trust me, you’ll feel compelled.”

  I punched in the number. I handed Ryder the phone wrapped up in the handkerchief. He asked his question, he got his answer, and he handed the cellular back over to me.

  “It was my brother,” he said.

  “You have a good ear,” I said. “Are you ready to listen to what I want from you?”

  “Why not,” he said.

  He was getting so listless I was afraid he might fall asleep. “Lowell, snap out of it. This is no time to go simple on me. I need for you to pay attention.”

  “I’m listening, Goddamn it,” he said, raising his voice slightly. I would have preferred a shout, but at that point any reaction at all from the man was a great relief.

  “I want
whatever is left of the hundred grand you got from Freddie Cash. My math may be a little off but I figure it for at least fifty thousand.”

  “You’re after money?”

  “Sure, why not? I’m as greedy as the next guy, or should I say the last guy. But I’ll have a little more insurance than Vic Vigoda, Lefty Wright, and Tom Katt did. I’ll keep the watch in a safe place. Pay me off and you don’t have to worry about me turning you in. I keep the Rolex simply to insure against my premature retirement.”

  “And that’s it?” he asked.

  “Well, not quite. It’s going to take a little help to ease my guilty conscience. You’ll have to resign from your office and give up politics forever. I hear there’s an avocado farm down in Folsom that needs some attention.”

  “You’re really enjoying this, aren’t you?”

  “Not particularly. It takes an awful lot to get me feeling so vindictive, Mr. Ryder, but you managed admirably.”

  “Let me think about it,” he said.

  “It’s a onetime offer, and there’s something else. I’m cursed with this morbid curiosity. I need to know everything about what happened, from start to finish.”

  “I’m not sure I know where to begin.”

  “Begin with the money. The ransom money. Since you’re probably the only player who wasn’t driven by it.”

  “Including you?”

  “Let’s leave me out of it for the time being,” I said.

  Ryder picked up his phone, buzzed his receptionist, and asked her to hold all calls. He swung his chair around toward the huge windows looking out over Van Ness Avenue, as if it were beyond his motor skills to speak and face me at the same time.

  “It was last spring. One of my professors from Stanford invited me to speak to his class. I had just thrown my hat into the ring for the DA’s office. Speaking in front of a hall full of first-year law students was the last thing I wanted to do, but it wasn’t a good time to say no to someone who could do me a lot of good. At the end of the lecture this kid swooped down on me, telling me how much he admired me, how much he wanted to help in the campaign, how much he would love to work by my side in the future. I could tell he was trouble from minute one. But when he told me his name and who his father was, I forgot to be rational, thinking only of how a connection to a rich and famous writer might come in handy sometime. Call me an opportunist and you can consider yourself a good judge of character.”

  Ryder waited for me to interrupt. I passed. He continued.

  “I had this naive idea that when a rich kid needs money; his rich old man just forks it over. So, when I suddenly needed some big money, I simply asked Freddie Cash. He was thrilled to help. I never thought that the crazy kid would have to kidnap himself to get it. And I never guessed that the money would cause so much havoc. I never saw any of that ransom money myself, never held a penny of it. So, if you’re really after what’s left of it, you came to the wrong place.”

  “You never touched the money? How did that work?”

  “I wouldn’t exactly say it worked. Katt walked into my office one afternoon and told me that the judge wanted to see me. I was a little surprised, since Chancellor hadn’t given me so much as a glance since the time I convicted his friend and the poor bastard killed himself. So I met with the judge, as I told you that night we walked up to Twin Peaks. Chancellor told me he knew about my brother’s jail time and invited me to drop out of the running. I told him to do what he had to do. And that was the last I heard of it until Katt dropped by again, this time on his own behalf.”

  “Katt approached you?”

  “It gets better. Seems that Katt had been doing legwork for Chancellor, looking into my skeleton closet. It was Katt who tipped the judge to my brother’s prison stint. Now, Katt decides there may be some currency in jumping ships. He tells me, that the judge has a lead on Jenny Solomon and is looking to track her down. In the same breath Katt tells me he can get the judge off my back. All he needs is fifty thousand dollars for expenses.”

  “Did he lay out his plan?” I asked.

  “No, I didn’t want to hear it. All I wanted to hear from him is that no one would get hurt, physically hurt. I’d never heard of Vic Vigoda until Katt called me and said that the kid was squeezing him for more money. I told him I didn’t have any more to invest; the entire fifty grand from Freddie had gone directly to Katt. I told Katt that the Vigoda kid was bluffing, that Vigoda wasn’t going to talk to anyone if he wanted to stay out of jail. Then the kid winds up at the bottom of McCovey Cove. I can convince a jury of just about anything, but I couldn’t convince that maniac Katt to chill out.”

  “What happened to the rest of the ransom money? Jeremy Cash forked over a hundred grand for his son.”

  “I couldn’t tell you. I asked Freddie for fifty and that’s what he gave Katt. If he scored more from his old man, he must have kept the change.”

  “How about Lefty Wright?”

  “I’d never heard of him, either. Wright let Katt know that he had the envelope from Chancellor’s safe, that he wanted to be sprung from jail and paid what was owed him before he would hand it over. I arranged to have Wright released on bail, just to keep him calm until we could work out the details. The Wright kid could have saved himself, but he was still after the money. He never came clean, not even to the sap who was trying to help him.”

  I resented being referred to as a sap, but it beat being played for one.

  “Katt shut him up for good,” I said.

  “Either you believe that the kid was shot trying to escape, or you imagine Wright said something that Katt didn’t like hearing and Katt pulled the plug. Who knows?”

  I felt fairly sure that we both knew.

  I had figured Katt for Vigoda and Lefty. Ryder seemed to be taking the long way around getting to Chancellor. There was still Freddie Cash to talk about. And of course, Katt himself.

  “So you decided it was time to take care of Katt,” I said.

  “Yes and no. I decided it was time to put an end to it. I should have done it as soon as Vigoda took the swim. By not doing it, I was as guilty of Wright’s death as Katt was. I was ready to march right into Vallejo Street Station with my hands above my head.”

  “You didn’t kill Katt?”

  “No.”

  “Who did?”

  “I have no idea,” Ryder said, “and if you’re going to ask me about Freddie Cash, I’m afraid I can’t help you there, either. I can only say for certain that it wasn’t Katt. The gun was the only thing I had to go on, and it pointed right to Charlie Mancuso.”

  “This isn’t going quite the way I thought it would go,” I said.

  “Tell me about it,” Ryder said, without irony. “You did pretty well. I put myself into this corner, but you managed to find me cowering here. You want me to give up politics and pick avocados? You got it. You want me to tell it all to Lieutenant Lopez? Lead the way. I was a drunk teenager in a nowhere town and I fucked up royally. I thought that I could run away from it, but it caught up to me. I made criminals of my father and my own brother and unleashed a monster when I made a deal with the devil Katt.”

  Ryder finally swung his chair back around and looked straight into my eyes.

  “I never killed anyone who wouldn’t have killed me first,” he said, “but I’m a murderer nonetheless and I deserve to go down as one.”

  “Chancellor?”

  “I really don’t know, Diamond. Katt had something to do with it. I’ve been going on the assumption that Mancuso was involved.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said, “I believe he was set up.”

  “Who was left to set him up?”

  “How did your Rolex get into Chancellor’s bedroom?”

  “It had to be Katt. Vigoda and Wright were squeezing him and he turned around and squeezed me. It was the day Vigoda was killed. Katt was down in the parking lot leaning on his car and called me over. He said he needed more money or things were going to fall apart. What an understatement. I was ta
pped out. He made reference to the Rolex. I took it off my wrist, laid it on the hood of his car, and walked away. I had no idea it wound up at the Chancellor place until you said so. Katt must have handled the watch very carefully if it only turned up my prints and the judge’s. I guess he had plans for it that went beyond the local pawn shop.”

  “Unbelievable,” I said.

  But I found myself believing every word of it.

  “Was there anyone with Katt when he stopped you in the parking lot?”

  “There was someone in the car, another man, in the passenger seat. I saw him when I dropped the watch on the hood, but I couldn’t see his face from where I stood. I later figured it was Charlie Mancuso. What happens now?” Ryder asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “I don’t know yet, I’m sort of in shock at the moment.”

  “You’ll let me know?” he asked.

  “You’ll be the first to know,” I said.

  I rose slowly from the chair. My legs were rubbery. I had a headache that could have floored a hippopotamus. I had arrogantly walked in with all the cards and found myself stumbling to the exit door with a fistful of straws. All short straws.

  “Diamond,” Ryder called before I could slip out, “tell my brother that I’m sorry.”

  I had called Chance Folsom and told him that I had his brother’s Rolex in my hands, and what I thought it meant. I had asked him to trust me, to sit at his phone and wait for a phone call that could confirm my suspicions. Chance was right there when I handed the cell phone to Lowell.

  “Tell him yourself,” I said.

  It wasn’t my intention to be cruel.

  I was going to have enough on my hands telling Chance Folsom that Jake Diamond was sorry.

  On my way through the outer office, Ryder’s receptionist gave me a look that could freeze molten lava.

  “Did you catch a glimpse of Willis?” I asked.

  “Very funny,” she said, and buried her face in a file folder. I walked out into the hall.

  There was a bank of telephone booths along the wall outside what had once been Judge Chancellor’s office. I called the Vallejo Street Police Station and asked for Sergeant Johnson. “What now, Diamond?” he said.