The Motive

by John Lescroart

  “That would be fine with me,” Theresa said. “That’s who I’m in this for.”

  “We’re all in it for them, too, Mom,” Will said with some asperity.

  “Well, he didn’t mention any of those other possibilities to me, Aaron.” Catherine sat rigidly in her chair. “He told me it was going to Missy. That’s what he wanted. It really wasn’t any of the family’s business.”

  “That’s so ridiculous and just so like him,” Theresa said.

  “Easy, Mom, okay?” Will said.

  “Well,” she shot back, “you tell me. How could it be any more the family’s business? We were certainly all well enough aware that it was before . . . well, before this week.”

  “Okay,” Will said, “but it’s still Dad.”

  “I’m sure it was mostly her,” Beth said, “not him. She had him so fooled. I can’t believe he intended to cut us out completely.”

  “You can believe anything you want, Beth,” Catherine said, “but the fact of the matter is that once the marriage happened, the whole financial picture was going to be different. And we all know what that was going to mean in practice, even if they hadn’t died.”

  “But they didn’t just die,” Mary said. “Somebody killed them.”

  “Well,” Theresa said, “of course I’m sorry about your father, but all I can say about Missy is good riddance.”

  “Mom!” Mary exploded. “God!”

  “What?” Theresa said. “If you’re honest, I know you’re all saying the same thing inside yourselves. Thank heaven that woman is out of the picture.” The matriarch threw her gaze around the room, daring anyone to disagree with her. “I’ve heard all of us say one time or another that we wished she would either go away or just die.”

  Catherine spoke up. “If we did, of course we were joking, Theresa. What do you think?”

  “No. Obviously. I was just making the point that we knew what a danger that woman was to all of us.”

  “Well, she’s not now,” Aaron said.

  And at that truth, the family went silent.

  Will was forty-five years old, with an athletic frame and a conventionally handsome face that had not yet gone to slack or jowl. Still wearing his Dockers and short-sleeved Tommy Bahama shirt, he was sitting on the bed as his wife came into the room carrying a load of folded laundry. “Hey,” he said.

  “Hey,” she answered with an uninflected, mechanical precision.

  “How are you doing?”

  “I’m doing fine, Will. How are you doing?”

  “Good.”

  She stood still for a moment, looking at him. Then she exhaled and went over to the dresser, put the pile of laundryon the chair next to it, and opened the top drawer. She wasn’t facing him. “So,” she said, “no fish?”

  “None. No keepers anyway. Isn’t that weird? We’re out two hundred miles, feels like halfway to the Galápagos, and there are no fish. I’ve never been completely skunked before on one of these trips.”

  “How many of you were there?”

  “On the boat? Just three of us, plus the captain and crew.”

  “Nice guys?”

  “Okay, I guess,” he said. “The usual. Good ’ol boys. Tim and Tom.”

  “Easy to remember.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Nothing. Never mind.” She closed the top drawer, opened the next one down. “I wish you’d have called, though. Not being able to reach you was terrifically frustrating.”

  “I’m sorry about that. Next time I’ll remember.” He pushed himself back against the headboard. “What was that motivation you talked about tonight?”

  “When?”

  “When Aaron asked why you’d gone to see Dad that day.”

  She stopped moving, let out a long breath, still facing away from him. Slowly she turned full around, holding one of his folded T-shirts. Finally, she shook her head slightly from side to side. “I guess I just got tired of not knowing where we were going to stand. Saul starts collegein a little over a year, and he’s the first of the grandkids. I’d talked to Beth and Mary and both had asked if I’d heard anything from your dad, what with Sophie and Pablo right behind Saul. So I just thought I’d go get it from the horse’s mouth.” She was wringing the T-shirt between her hands. “Then, as you heard, we got on to other things.”

  “Missy.”

  “Among others.”

  “Did you have words?”

  “Some. Nothing worse than usual. We just talked, maybe argued a little. But it was all his decision, and there was really nothing to fight about. Besides, your father, as opposed to your mother, likes me. Or should I say liked.”

  Will shrugged. “He liked attractive women. So does his son.” He patted the bed next to him. “Speaking of which, you’re looking good tonight, especially to a man who’s just spent five days at sea. Are you planning on coming to bed?”

  “Eventually,” she said. “I usually do.”

  “I’ve missed you,” he said.

  Biting her lip, nodding to herself, she turned back to the dresser, dropped the crumpled T-shirt into the open drawer. Clearing her throat, she said, “Let me go check on the kids,” then left the room.

  The assistant district attorney who handled arson cases was Chris Rosen. He’d been a prosecutor for nine years now, after first serving a year fresh out of law school as a clerk for Superior Court Judge Leo Chomorro. So he’d lived his entire legal life in the Hall of Justice at Seventh and Bryant. Rosen thrived in the environment.

  An old-fashioned, hard-on-crime professional prosecutor, he didn’t believe that he’d ever seen an innocent person in custody. “You don’t get all the way to arrested—and believe me, that is a long, long way— unless you did it,” he liked to say. “That’s the truth, it always has been and always will be nothing but the truth, so help me God.”

  Unmarried and slightly unkempt, with an easygoing personal style, he often grew a day or two’s stubble when he wasn’t due in court. His dark hair licked at the top of his collar. The conscious image he projected was borderline blue collar, a guy with no special passion for prosecuting his fellow citizens. He was just a regular working dog going about his business, doing his job. Nobody to worry about. Attorneys who hadn’t already faced him in court found out the truth soon enough, and often found themselves on the defensive from the get-go, blindsided by his cold passion.

  “No law says you can’t come across out of court as sympathetic, you know, a little . . . sensitive,” he was saying over midnight drinks to Dan Cuneo as they sat at the bar at Lou the Greek’s. “Then you get ’em in court, suddenly I’m the iceman and whop ’em upside the head. They don’t know what hit ’em.”

  Rosen’s experience had taught him that he needed every advantage he could get in San Francisco, where juries tended to see their main role as finding some reason, almost any reason—stress, hardship, bad luck, unfortunate upbringing—to let defendants off. There always lurked some mitigating factor, some reason for juries to forgive.

  “Hey, but enough about me.” Rosen sipped at his single malt. It wasn’t anywhere near his working hours on a Friday night. He was out here now with his Oban on the rocks as a favor to his main-man arson inspector Arnie Becker, and also because the recent double-homicide fire was going to be the biggest case he’d tried to date. “Becker says you got a lead on Hanover.”

  Cuneo, on duty, drank Cherry Coke, no ice. “You know the basics?”

  “Not much beyond Hanover and his girlfriend.”

  “All right.” Cuneo tapped his fingers on the bar. “There was this couple, Maxine and Joseph Willis . . .” Drinking more Cherry Coke, fidgeting in his chair, continuing his percussion on the bar top, Cuneo laid out for Rosen the originally conflicting stories of the Willises— how Maxine had seen Missy D’Amiens leave the Hanover house within minutes of when the fire must have started, how Joseph had been uncertain—it might have been somebody else. Then there was Jeffie at the Valero station who volunteered that someone wh
o looked something like her, but had different hair, had bought gasoline in a container and put it into her trunk.

  “I’m still listening,” Rosen said. “So you’ve got a woman who resembled this Missy.”

  “Well, wait. More than that. I’ve got a true fox, middle-aged . . .”

  “Which one?” Rosen asked. “A fox or middle-aged?”

  “Both.” At Rosen’s skeptical look, Cuneo said, “It happens. You’d seen her, you’d believe it. Anyway, she’s in jeans and a shiny blue shirt, black leather jacket, driving a Mercedes, buying a container of gasoline and then coming out of Hanover’s house a few minutes before it goes up.”

  “If it’s all the same woman.”

  “Right. Of course. It was.”

  “Which means?”

  “Which means, what if she had a motive?” Cuneo waited, but Rosen didn’t bite. “Which she did.”

  “So you’re telling me you’ve got a suspect.”

  “Not quite yet. I’m close. Light on physical evidence, but loaded with probable cause.”

  “You want a warrant,” Rosen said.

  “Yep, yep, yep.” Cuneo bobbed his head, tattooed the bar with a final paradiddle. “Becker says you’re tight with some judges.”

  Rosen shrugged. “The question is, can we make the case. I don’t want to bring anybody in front of a grand jury and have nothing to talk about.” He cast his eyes around. “I need a narrative. If I buy it, I can sell it to whoever’s signing warrants.”

  Cuneo willed himself still, met Rosen’s eye. “Grand jury’s Tuesday, right?”

  “Every week. You’re thinking that soon?”

  “I can do the search tomorrow if we can get a warrant now. We’ll know by Sunday. Is that enough time for you?”

  Rosen swirled the last of his Scotch and drank it off. “Plenty,” he said.

  11

  Glitsky used police magic to find the address he wanted. Now, just before ten o’clock on Saturday morning, he was walking up Russian Hill in bright sunshine to the door of an enormous three-story brown box of a building on the corner of Green and Larkin. He stood in the covered entryway for a minute, trying to imagine what a place this big, in this neighborhood, would cost. Decided it didn’t bear reflection. From his perspective, it was all the money in the world.

  He rang the doorbell and listened as chimes sounded behind the double doors—etched glass in carved dark wood. After a long, silent moment, a short female figure appeared behind the glass and opened the door. In a black uniform with a white apron, she smiled formally and, seeing that Glitsky was a man of color in casual clothes said, “Deliveries are in the back.”

  Producing his wallet, Glitsky displayed his badge.

  “I’m Deputy Chief of Inspectors Abe Glitsky. I wonder if I might have a word with Mr. Granat.”

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  “No, ma’am. I was hoping to catch him in.”

  “Is this, then, official police business?”

  “I’d just like to talk to him, if he can spare a minute.”

  “Certainly,” she said. “I’ll see if he’s available.” She turned, had a thought and turned again. “Would you care to wait inside?”

  Glitsky crossed the threshold into the house and watched the maid walk down the long hallway and then somewhere off to her left. She’d left him standing on a burgundy Oriental carpet that was larger than Glitsky’s living room, yet still did not quite reach the walls around the grand foyer. Even with the sunshine outside and the windows behind him, even with the six-foot chandelier and its fifty bulbs lit above him, the space was dim. No sound came from the rest of the house, and only gradually did Glitsky become aware of the ticking of a clock, although he couldn’t locate its source. His eyes went to the art—dark oils in large burnished gilt frames—hung in the spaces between doorways. They were frankly—he thought purposefully—disturbing, all blacks and reds, flesh and blooded browns. Erotic overtones, sexually ambiguous—hints of nakedness amid industrial waste, a pack of dogs gathered over something not quite identifiable in a graffitied doorway.

  “You like my paintings?”

  Surprised—where had the man come from?—Glitsky whirled and found out. A door on the left wall stood open, blessedly light and even inviting. “I can’t really say they speak to me.”

  “Yes, I do suppose it’s an acquired taste. The tension of whether something terrible has just happened, or whether it’s about to.”

  Glitsky shook his head. “I get enough of that in my job.”

  “Yes, of course. I suppose you do.” He extended his hand, revealing a mouthful of perfect teeth under a crisp gray mustache. He was about Glitsky’s size, a bit thinner. His hair was thick, silver. Even here in his home on the weekend, he was well turned out—black merino sweater, tan slacks, expensive-looking loafers. A handsome, confident man. “Nils Granat,” he said, gripping Glitsky’s hand hard, meeting his eyes. “We’ve met before, haven’t we?”

  “Yes, sir, a couple of times at City Hall. I wasn’t sure you’d remember.”

  Granat turned his mouth up slightly, touched his forehead. “I remember people. It’s almost what I do best. So what can I do for you, Chief? Is ‘Chief ’ all right?”

  “Fine.”

  “You want to sit in the library?” He jerked a finger behind him. “Right here.” Without waiting for Glitsky to respond, he was already through the door and into the large, airy, pleasant adjoining room. “That foyer is a little gloomy, isn’t it?” he said over his shoulder. “I should probably leave the side doors open, brighten it up. But then, I wasn’t expecting anybody, especially this early on a weekend morning.” He turned, confident that Glitsky would be there, and when he was, motioned him to the red leather couch. Granat himself pulled an Empire chair around and sat on it, crossing one leg over the other. “So how can I help you?” he asked. If he had any sense that this no-warning, early-morning visit by a high-ranking policeman meant that he was in trouble, he showed no sign of it.

  Glitsky came forward to the front edge of the couch, and came right to the point. “I’m investigating the murder of Paul Hanover.”

  “God. Wasn’t that a tragedy!”

  “Yes, sir. But it was more than that. Somebody killed him.”

  Granat nodded. “That’s what they’re saying.”

  “You don’t believe it?”

  “Oh no, not that. Of course I believe it. I mean, he was shot, wasn’t he, before the fire? I just meant I hadn’t heard that anyone had determined he’d been the primary target.”

  “You mean the woman?”

  “Yes. Didn’t she have some . . . well, maybe I shouldn’t say.”

  “No. Say anything you want. At this point, I’m interested in anything you might know.”

  “Well, I can’t say that I know anything. It’s just that . . . Missy, wasn’t it? You know that she just sort of appeared one day, and after that she was with Paul—a fait accompli, if you will. Not that she wasn’t beautiful, but she didn’t seem to be quite . . . one of us in some way. I may not be saying anything very coherent.”

  “So you think somebody in her past might have . . .”

  Granat shook his head. “I can’t say I’ve gotten so far as to actually think anything. Maybe it was just that she was foreign. French, I think. In any event, when I heard about the killings, I wondered about her background first, her enemies, not Paul’s. I mean, Paul was extremely well liked, very respected by everyone. And not just here, but in Washington, everywhere. He put people together, did immense good work on many, many fronts. I knew him pretty well, as you may know, and I can’t imagine anyone wanting to hurt him, much less kill him. It just doesn’t make any sense.”

  “So your initial feeling was that it had something to do with Missy?”

  “More than with Paul. Yes.”

  Glitsky sat back. “That’s interesting.”

  “Do you know anything about her? Not that it’s any of my business.”

  “Not t
oo much,” Glitsky admitted.

  “Well.” Granat lifted his hands palms up. “But you came to see me? About Paul? It must be about the towing, then?”

  Glitsky halfway apologized. “It was someplace to start.”

  “Sure, I understand. It would be.” Granat sat back, his arm outstretched along the row of books behind him. “Well, I’d be the first to admit that for the most part, the towing industry is a bit of a tough crowd, although that’s still a long way from saying that violence is a common negotiating tool.”

  “But not necessarily unheard of.”

  Granat shook his head. “As a matter of fact, I’m not aware of any time recently that Tow/Hold has resorted to anything like strong-arm tactics. It’s one of the reasons they retain me. To get things done a different way.”

  “But now with Mayor Washington gone . . .”

  The lobbyist smiled. “We still have a mayor, and the city still needs an experienced company to handle its towing. And in spite of what you might have heard, no final decision has been reached.”

  “No, I realize that. In fact, it’s kind of my point. Now, with Hanover out of the picture, it leaves Bayshore rudderless. . . .”

  Granat’s dry chortle cut him off. “I wouldn’t say ‘rudderless.’ These people are not rudderless. They’re a very sophisticated bunch of venture capitalists who are trying to buy their way into a business they believe to be profitable but don’t completely understand.”

  “As Tow/Hold does.”

  Another nod. “I believe the mayor might come to see it that way, yes.”

  “Or one of the members of the Municipal Transportation Agency?”

  “Or one of them, that’s true. Three, I believe, are already inclined to retain Tow/Hold.”

  “I’ve heard that, too.”

  “So from my perspective the decision is still very much a matter of the merits. Three of the MTA people obviously think that we—Tow/Hold—should stay on because we’re doing a pretty good job, in spite of some of the problems we’ve had.” Granat leaned forward in his chair. “You’ve got to understand, Chief, that whoever gets the contract, they’re going to have the same problems. Fact is, they’re going to have to hire the very same folks that we use to run the lots and patrol the streets. That’s the reality. And they’re not going to pay those people any more than we do—they can’t and make a profit. So they’ve got the same labor pool doing the same work for the same price. The only change is the employer’s name and a few guys at the top of the food chain. At least Tow/Hold has identified a lot of the bad eggs and knows to keep them off the payroll. Under Bayshore, it’ll be the same thing we’ve got now, only worse because of the learning curve on top of everything else. I’ll be telling that to the folks at MTA next week, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if I convince at least one of them with the simple logic of it.”