“Kaela Joy Gullion.”
“How did you know?”
“They said so on the news. Who did the business partner hire?”
Rosie’s tries to keep her voice even when she says, “Nick Hanson.”
Sylvia’s serious look transforms into a broad smile. “Nick the Dick! I finally read one of his books. It wasn’t bad.”
“He’s seen it all,” Rosie says.
“No,” Sylvia corrects her. “He’s seen a lot. I’ve seen it all.” Her smile disappears. “They were saying that Grayson had a secret life. He was buying drugs and picking up dancers at a strip club on Sixth Street.”
Grayson’s cat is out of the bag. My feelings of sympathy for his wife and son are tempered by the fact that they lied to our faces about his sordid activities.
“There’s more to it,” Rosie says. She gives Sylvia the low-down on Grayson’s antics, Kaela Joy’s snooping, Debbie Grayson’s attempts at misdirection and J.T. Grayson’s bald-faced lies. We don’t have to remind her that everything we tell her is confidential. She’s better at keeping secrets than I am.
Sylvia takes it in without expression. “Sounds like everybody has something to hide,” she observes. “What does this have to do with the guilt or innocence of your client?”
She always keeps her eye on the ball.
Rosie says, “It’s our job to find out.”
“You’d better do it soon. They said he isn’t going to live more than a couple of weeks.”
# # #
Rosie’s head is on my shoulder as we’re sitting on her sofa. It’s after two and we just finished watching the repeat of the late news. “The prelim starts the day after tomorrow,” she says. “We have to get to J.T. Grayson.”
“I’ll call him first thing in the morning,” I say.
“And we should set up another meeting with his mother.”
She’s incapable of dialing down her thermostat. “She may not talk to us again,” I say.
“Call Roosevelt first thing,” she says.
“I will.” I turn off the TV and ask, “How are you feeling?”
She’s trying to hide her exhaustion. She yawns and says, “Tired.”
Her mother went to sleep a half hour ago. The house is quiet and Rosie reaches back and strokes my hair. I squeeze her hand and ask, “Is your stomach better?”
“It’s fine. It helps that I didn’t eat much today.”
“That isn’t an especially great nutritional idea.”
“It beats puking. You think pizza and Diet Dr Pepper are major food groups.”
I do. We listen to the crickets outside her window. They’re soothing. We didn’t have crickets where I grew up. They didn’t like the fog in the Sunset. I stroke her cheek and say, “This will be over in another week or two.”
She kisses my fingers and says, “Yeah.” She tries to stifle another yawn and says, “Are you getting a sense of déjà vu?”
“Just because we’re representing Leon Walker again?”
“In another hopeless case where he may not be telling us the truth and everybody has an axe to grind.”
“It’s starting to feel vaguely familiar,” I say.
She sighs and adds, “And we’ve been sniping at each other since Friday.”
I stifle my initial impulse to argue. “It hasn’t been quite so bad this time.”
“I’m not so sure about that.”
I look into her deep set eyes and ask, “Do you think he did it?”
“I’m too tired to run the possible permutations. What do you think?”
“I’m not sure. At least we’ve identified some people who were in the vicinity and who may have had motive.”
She closes her eyes and says, “A lot of good it will do. We won’t be able to talk to everybody before the prelim. Even if we get to them, they aren’t obligated to talk to us and they’ll never admit anything.”
“People sometimes get more responsive when they see their name on a subpoena.”
“Not necessarily. Anybody with half a brain will call their lawyer as soon as they see a process server. Any attorney with a quarter of a brain will tell their client to shut the hell up.”
I say, “People tend to become more forthcoming when a judge orders them to talk.”
She stops cold and says, “You’re planning to question these people in open court?”
“Yes.”
“You have no idea what they’re going to say.”
“So what? If we can tie a few of them up in knots, we might be able to create enough doubt that Judge McDaniel will drop the charges.”
“You want to play this out in front of a live audience?”
“That’s the idea.”
“It violates every convention of defense practice.”
“This isn’t a conventional case. If the prosecutors are going to bring capital murder charges against a dying man, we have to take some unusual steps.”
“Judge McDaniel isn’t going to like it.”
“She isn’t on trial.”
“We could end up looking like complete idiots.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time.”
“Jerry Edwards will have us for lunch.”
“I’m not going to worry about it.” It’s a lie.
“Does your master plan also include putting Leon up on the stand?”
“If he’s physically able to do so, yes.”
“It could blow up in your face.”
“It’s the only chance he’ll have to proclaim his innocence.”
“Do you really think this has a snowball’s chance of working?”
I answer honestly. “I don’t know. In the circumstances, our options are limited.”
Rosie closes her eyes and then reopens them slowly. She asks, “Do you still think we’re doing the right thing by representing Leon?”
“That’s a very philosophical question for this hour.”
“I’m in a philosophical mood.”
I’m too tired to engage in meaningful thought. “Leon is entitled to a lawyer and we’re his best chance,” I say. “That’s all that you’re going to get from me until this is over.”
She pecks my cheek and says, “Do you want to stay for a little bit?”
Yes. “It’s late and we have a busy day tomorrow.”
“You’ll make it up to me?”
“As soon as this case is over.”
Her tired smile turns into a grin.
# # #
The light is blinking on my answering machine when I get home at two-thirty. I punch the button and the computer-generated voice informs me that I have one new message. After the beep, a voice that sounds like Walter Matthau’s says, “It’s Nick Hanson. It’s been a long time.”
Yes, it has.
“Dena said you called. I’m going to be on a stakeout for a couple of days and I won’t be able to use my cell phone. I’ll call you as soon as I can.”
Nick the Dick works on his own schedule.
“Looking forward to working with you again,” he says. “I can tell you some amazing stories about Tower Grayson.”
*****
Chapter 35
“We Found It”
“Police are still attempting to locate a Mercedes owned by Tower Grayson.”
— Inspector Marcus Banks. KGO-Radio. Tuesday, June 7. 5:30 A.M.
I’m jolted awake from an uneasy sleep by a blaring ringing. I stab at the clock radio twice before I realize it isn’t the alarm. The green digits indicate it’s six-ten and the sun is coming out. I fight to regain my bearings after only three hours of sleep and I grab the phone on the second try. There is a troubled edge to Roosevelt’s voice. “Are you awake?” he asks.
“I understand you tried to reach us last night,” I say.
“We can talk about it later.” There is static on his cell phone and I can hear sirens in the background. “Turn your TV to Channel 2.”
I grab the remote and turn on the ancient Sony that was a consola
tion prize in our divorce. Jerry Edwards is wearing the same rumpled suit and tie that he had on yesterday at the Gold Rush. He’s pointing a menacing finger toward the camera and venting. “It has come to our attention that Tower Grayson made a phone call to a known drug dealer and prostitute named Alicia Morales immediately before he was murdered.” A photo of Morales flashes on the screen. “Why did he do it? Why wasn’t this brought to our attention? Is the DA withholding evidence? Are the defense attorneys playing games? I asked them about it when I found them at the Gold Rush Hotel yesterday, but they weren’t talking.”
He’s about to launch into his daily tirade about my lackluster performance as an attorney and a human being when the camera cuts to an anchorman with perfect features and blow-dried hair who says with the usual level of practiced TV-news melodrama, “We’re going live to the scene of a four alarm fire in China Basin.” A traffic copter hovering over AT&T Park provides pictures of flames shooting out of the roof of a warehouse south of McCovey Cove.
Roosevelt is back on the line. “Are they showing the fire?”
“Yeah.”
“How soon can you get down here?”
“What’s this all about?”
“We found it.”
“What?”
“Grayson’s car. It was next to the warehouse.”
Yes! “Was anybody in it?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“When are you going to look at it?”
“When it stops smoldering. Somebody torched it and the fire spread to the building. How soon can you get down here?”
# # #
My first call is to Rosie, but parental obligations take precedence for the moment. She says she’ll meet me after she takes Grace to school.
My next call is to Pete, who’s been parked at Debbie Grayson’s house since we finished dinner with Kaela Joy. He slips into police mode and says, “Arson?”
“I don’t know.”
“I can tell you one thing,” he says. “Debbie Grayson didn’t start it. She’s still asleep.”
“By herself?”
“Yes.”
She may not be an arsonist, but I’m not ready to rule her out as a potential suspect in her husband’s murder.
# # #
Seven-fifteen. Roosevelt, Pete and I are standing in the Giants’ parking lot, about a hundred yards west of the burning building. The area is deserted except for fire, police and emergency vehicles and an armada of news vans. In twelve hours, the crowds will start gathering for tonight’s Giants-Dodgers game. The seagulls who have found a home near the ballpark are taking their morning flights through acrid air. A dozen fire engines are lined up and the firefighters are doing their best to contain the damage to a decaying warehouse just north of the huge Mission Rock Terminal. There was talk of converting the eyesore into a mixed-use development. As a plume of black smoke continues to pour through the hole in the collapsed roof, the chances of any meaningful urban renewal on this site seem remote.
Roosevelt says, “Grayson’s car was parked by the loading dock. Somebody torched it and the fire spread to the building.” He says the car is toast and the building is a total loss.
I ask if it was arson.
“I don’t know for sure.”
“Off the record?”
“One of the firefighters told me they found a couple of empty gas cans near the car.”
There is something hypnotic about a big fire and we stare at the inferno. The footage will be the lead story on tonight’s news. A friend of mine who is the news director at Channel 7 once told me that TV is a visual medium and that fires provide excellent visuals. A fire with a possible connection to a murder trial is even better.
I ask, “Was anybody hurt?”
“Not as far as we know. Nobody was in the car.” He says the night watchman at the China Basin Building across the cove called nine-one-one, but didn’t see anybody near the car. There were no other witnesses.
“What about the trunk?”
“Are you looking for somebody?”
“Yeah. Alicia Morales.”
“I don’t know.”
We’ll find out soon enough. I say, “You realize Leon had nothing to do with this.”
“Of course.”
“And it’s possible somebody else murdered Grayson and stole his car. The murderer might have set Grayson’s car on fire to destroy any evidence.”
Roosevelt stops me with a cold stare. He isn’t going to speculate on the answers to hypothetical questions in the early morning next to a burning building. “Don’t get ahead of yourself,” he says.
“You can’t ignore it,” I say. “It’s more than a coincidence.”
“Let’s see what the evidence techs find in the car.”
A white van with a satellite on the roof and the Channel 2 logo on the side comes to a screeching halt in front of us. The door opens and Jerry Edwards come barreling out. His cameraman has to jog to keep up with him. He shoves a microphone into Roosevelt’s face and says, “Who torched the car?”
“We have no comment.”
“Surely, you must know something.”
Roosevelt isn’t going to engage. “We will provide details as they become available.”
He looks at me and says, “What about you?”
I point toward the Marcus Banks, who is about to address a group of reporters. “I’m waiting to hear from the fire chief and Inspector Banks,” I say. “Then I might be in a position to make a comment.”
# # #
It’s sound bite time. The reporters surround Nicole Ward, Marcus Banks and the fire chief and cameramen jockey to find the best vantage point to record the impromptu press conference with the fire as the backdrop.
Pete and I push our way into the outer ring of the media mob as the fire chief steps to the microphones. A burly man in his late fifties with droopy eyes and a gray mustache, he sounds like many of my friends from the old neighborhood. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he says, “the San Francisco Fire Department received a nine-one-one call at five-ten this morning. Our personnel responded immediately and the first equipment arrived at five-twenty A.M.”
Ten minutes. Not bad.
“A Mercedes coupe parked at the loading dock had been set afire. It spread to the adjacent warehouse, which was abandoned and was set for sale and/or demolition.”
I guess they’re all set for demolition now.
He says the car was destroyed and the building is a total loss. A damage estimate is still unavailable. He concludes by thanking SFPD personnel for their heroic efforts and promises to provide additional information as the situation develops. The reporters have what they need, but they proceed through the exercise of shouting the usual questions, to which the chief responds with pat answers. Yes, they’re investigating arson. No, they haven’t analyzed the contents of the car. Yes, the Giants game will go on as scheduled.
Jerry Edwards does an impression of a running back charging through the line of scrimmage as he pushes forward and asks, “Did you find anything in the trunk?”
The fire chief’s basset hound eyes perk up slightly. “Just a spare tire,” he says. He provides no further details.
Nicole Ward takes her turn. Our DA looks ready to shoot a spread in Cosmo as she is beamed live on every news outlet in the Bay Area. If the national news is slow, she might make it to CNN or Fox tonight. “The automobile that was destroyed in the fire was registered to Tower Grayson,” she says.
It’s a perfect sound bite: short, sweet and the ideal lead for the eleven o’clock news.
“This matter relates to an ongoing police investigation,” she continues. “I have no further comment and I would ask you to direct any questions to Inspector Marcus Banks.”
Unlike many of her contemporaries in politics, she knows when to get offstage.
Banks takes his cue and struts to the microphones. They may have called him in the wee hours, but he’s wearing a flashy three piece suit and a paisley tie. He once told me he alwa
ys dresses well out of respect for the dead. Some have suggested that he does so out of respect for the TV cameras that always appear when he’s working on a high profile matter.
His remarks are brief. He reconfirms that the Mercedes was registered to Grayson. He says that nobody was in the car and there were no injuries. He concludes with the standard, “We will provide additional information as it becomes available.” He makes the obligatory half-hearted attempt to walk away from the microphones before he reconsiders and says, “I’ll take a couple of questions.”
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