“We were hoping you could tell us.”
“I don’t know.”
I ask, “What were you doing in his car?”
“I wasn’t.”
“The cops are going to say you were and that you were planning to drive away. They’re also going to say you must have forgotten something–maybe the car keys–and gone back to the body, where you passed out.”
“And then somebody else came by and stole the car?”
“Yes.”
His tone turns emphatic. “I was never inside Grayson’s car. I swear to you on my mother’s grave.”
“Why was your lighter in the car?”
“The guy who hit me must have taken it.”
“Can you prove it?”
“Of course not. I kept my lighter in my jacket pocket. When the guy stuck the knife and the money in my pocket, he must have found the lighter and taken it with him.”
“You expect the judge to believe you?”
“It’s the truth.”
His tone is credible, but this isn’t the first time he’s neglected to mention something important. “If you’re lying to us,” I say, “I’ll hang your ass out to dry.”
“I’m not lying.” His eyes light up and he says, “There must have been fingerprints on the lighter.”
“Nothing recognizable,” I tell him. “The heat from the fire was intense and the lighter was covered with soot.”
We continue to probe, but his denials become more vehement. I change course and ask, “Did you buy a hunting knife a couple of weeks ago?”
“Everybody in the neighborhood has one.”
“Why didn’t you tell us about it?”
“What’s the big deal?”
“The cops are going to argue that you used it to kill Grayson.”
“They’re wrong.”
Another denial. “What kind was it?”
“I don’t remember.”
“What happened to it?”
“I don’t know. I lost it.”
“When?”
“Last week.”
“You aren’t helping us Leon.”
“I know.”
We browbeat him for a few more minutes, but he’s unable to provide any additional details. Finally, Rosie leans over and gets right in his face. “Is there anything else that you haven’t told us that might come back to bite us?”
“Absolutely not.”
# # #
Rosie’s tone is hushed, but her eyes are determined. “Leon didn’t tell us everything,” she says. “He was sandbagging.”
We’re sitting in her office at eight o’clock Tuesday night. Rosie and Carolyn are cooling down with Diet Cokes and I’m drinking a Diet Dr Pepper. Pete has removed the bomber jacket that is a permanent appendage to his body. He’s nursing a Gatorade.
“I think he was telling us the truth,” I say.
Rosie isn’t backing down. “I don’t.”
“He’s dying and he has nothing to gain by lying. He admitted he bought a knife.”
“Which he conveniently says he lost.”
“The cops won’t be able to prove it was his knife.”
“And we won’t be able to prove it wasn’t. This isn’t about finding reasonable doubt, Mike. We have to prove that he’s innocent and we aren’t getting there.” She adds, “How do you explain the lighter?”
“The guy who murdered Grayson stole it from Leon and put it in the car.”
She isn’t buying it. “You keep giving him the benefit of the doubt.”
“And you keep trying to convict him.”
“You need to stop letting your benevolent instincts cloud your judgment.”
“I know him better than you do.”
“No, you don’t, and it doesn’t help if you keep telling him that you believe him when you know he’s lying.”
“I don’t think he is.”
“Then maybe you should let me take the lead when he talk to him again.”
“Fine.”
“This is turning into another nightmare,” she says.
“Let’s play it out and see where it leads,” I say.
We replay the highlights of another decidedly frustrating afternoon. After we met with Leon, Rosie and I pounded the pavement on Sixth Street in another futile attempt to find somebody with information about Alicia Morales. Our effort was strong but our results were abysmal. A couple of people recognized her photo, but nobody had seen her since last week. Willie Kidd isn’t talking and Terrence the Terminator was sleeping off last night’s bender.
Things didn’t get better when Marcus Banks and I held a press conference to plead for the public’s help. We’ve received two calls from marginally-reliable informants who demanded cash up front. True to form, their information was worthless. Roosevelt isn’t doing any better. He hadn’t received any leads when I spoke to him fifteen minutes ago and we don’t have the resources to offer a reward. We spent a half hour with Jerry Edwards and gave him every shred of information that we’ve gleaned about Alicia Morales. If we can’t find her, maybe Jerry can.
Pete had an equally unenlightening day. He went door-to-door at the Griffith projects in a futile attempt to obtain information about Morales’s sister. He confirms that she closed her bank accounts on Thursday and disappeared on Friday. “Sounds like Alicia Morales and her sister had a plan,” he says, “but Alicia had only about fourteen hundred dollars in the bank.”
“Not enough to retire to the Bahamas,” I observe, “unless she won the lottery or got a substantial subsidy from somebody.”
Pete is now fully engaged. “Who do you think might have funded her retirement?”
“Grayson had a pocket full of cash when he walked into the liquor store.”
“Does that mean you think she killed him?”
“I don’t know, but we may want to present her as an option in court.”
“Do you have any evidence that she did it?”
Unfortunately, no. “I can’t rule her out and she isn’t here to defend herself.”
“You aren’t going to base your entire case on that, are you?”
My brother has a very direct way of putting matters into perspective. “You’re starting to sound like Roosevelt,” I say.
“I try to build cases with hard evidence,” he says. “I leave the speculation and innuendo to you defense attorneys.”
He’s still a cop at heart. We sit in silence for a moment, then we start brainstorming the possibilities. Maybe Alicia Morales was selling drugs or sex to Grayson and the deal went bad. Maybe Grayson got in sideways with somebody from Basic Needs. Maybe one of his investors got mad at him. Maybe his wife or son took out some long-harbored resentments. So many possibilities–and so little evidence that points to anybody other than Leon. The discovery of Leon’s lighter in Grayson’s car doesn’t help.
The only good news, if it can be described as such, is that Leon is rallying and may be able to testify. It may not be an ideal legal maneuver, but it will fulfill a dying man’s last request.
Carolyn reports on the status of our motions, subpoenas and other legal issues. Her level head will come in handy as we get closer to the prelim. “We’ve subpoenaed the witnesses on our list. Carponelli gets sued all the time and took it in stride. J.T. Grayson and his mother weren’t ecstatic. Chamberlain called his lawyer. Lucas threatened our process server with legal action.”
She reminds us that we have a hearing before Judge McDaniel tomorrow afternoon to argue about witness lists, evidentiary matters and other issues. We’ll lose more than we’ll win.
Rosie says to me, “You need to spend some time on your opening and the exhibits.”
“I know.” I lean back in my chair and say, “What idiot insisted that we schedule a prelim on only two days’ notice?”
“That would have been you.”
“Remind me to fire myself at our next partners’ meeting. I turn to Pete and say, “Is somebody watching Debbie Grayson?”
“Yes. And I h
ave somebody watching her son, too.”
Perfect. “What are you doing tonight?”
“I thought I’d play a hunch. I’m going back down to Basic Needs.”
“Do you think there’s any chance you’ll see Alicia Morales?”
“I don’t know. Do you want to meet me down there around ten o’clock tonight?”
“Maybe later.”
“Got a hot date?”
“Yeah. I’m having dinner with an eighty-seven year-old man.”
*****
Chapter 39
Nick the Dick
“Founded more than sixty years ago, the Hanson Investigation Agency offers a full range of services. Discounts available for long-term surveillance projects.”
— Brochure for Hanson Investigation Agency.
“It’s nice to see you,” Nick Hanson croaks to me in his frog-like voice. He’s talking out of the right side of his mouth as he chews French bread on the left. “It’s been too long.”
“Yes, it has, Nick.”
It’s nine o’clock on Tuesday night and the octogenarian PI adjusts the boutonniere on the lapel of the perfectly-pressed Italian suit that matches his perfectly-pressed American toupee. At barely five feet tall and maybe a hundred and twenty pounds dripping wet, the former welter weight boxer still packs a wallop. His picture was on the front page of the Chronicle last month when he finished the grueling seven-and-a-half mile Bay-to-Breakers footrace for the fiftieth consecutive year. He isn’t likely to slow down any time soon.
“I saw your press conference with Banks,” he says. “Did you find the missing whore?”
What he lacks in political correctness he makes up for in directness. “Not yet,” I say.
“She’ll turn up eventually.”
“I hope so.”
Dinner with Nick the Dick requires a major commitment. At his request, we’ve put the frills aside to eat at Capp’s Corner, an historic dive at Green and Powell, about a block from his office on Columbus. It hasn’t changed much since the waiters first gave Nick his own table almost sixty years ago. The aroma is enticing, the dark decor is plain and the food is more bountiful than distinguished. It’s one of the few restaurants left in North Beach where you can still get a decent five course meal for less than twenty bucks.
I start by trying to soften him up a little. “I spoke with your great-granddaughter,” I tell him. “You must be very proud of her.”
“Indeed I am.”
The ritual begins. A meal with Nick always starts with a twenty minute dissertation on his children, grandchildren, and, now, great-grandchildren. Nick does all the disserting. This is followed by a half hour monologue on the plot and marketing plan for his newest novel. He keeps a straight face when he tells me that his publisher is going to promote him as a modern day Sam Spade. He says that Ben Stiller wants to play the young Nick in the movie, and that his father, Jerry, will play him as an older man. If only Humphrey Bogart were still alive.
We reach halftime in Nick’s soliloquy at eleven o’clock and he shows no signs of tiring. He puts a piece of his petrale on a bread plate and pushes it toward me. “You need more protein,” he tells me.
It’s easier to eat the sole than to argue. He orders a second helping for me, then he launches into a description of his exploits on the North Beach playground with his boyhood friend, Joe DiMaggio. The stories have gotten taller as the years have worn on. Legend has it that Nick introduced the Yankee Clipper to Marilyn Monroe. Nick started that legend himself.
It’s almost midnight and the restaurant is empty when he finally decides it’s time to ease into a conversation about business. “So,” he says, “did Walker kill Grayson?”
Nick Hanson has many virtues, but finesse isn’t one of them. “No,” I say.
“They found the murder weapon in his pocket.”
“It was planted.”
“It was covered with blood and your guy had a pile of stolen cash.”
He does his homework. “It was a set up,” I say.
“They found his cigarette lighter in Grayson’s car.”
He has good sources. That information hasn’t been released to the public. “He didn’t put it there.”
He takes a sip of his Chianti and gives me a knowing smile. His voice takes on a fatherly tone when he says, “Let me give you some friendly advice.”
I can’t possibly stop him. “I’m listening.”
“There’s an old saying: don’t bullshit a bullshitter.”
It’s good advice. “Did you make it up?”
“I’m not that old.”
Game on. “I understand you were hired to keep an eye on Grayson.”
“Indeed I was.”
“Who hired you?”
He looks me in the eye and says, “You already know the answer, don’t you?”
Indeed I do. “Lawrence Chamberlain,” I say. “What can you tell me about him?”
“He’s young, good looking, and loaded. He reminds me of a younger version of myself.” He adds with perfect timing, “Except for the part about being loaded.”
“Why did he hire you?”
“Grayson was cooking the books on his venture fund. We caught him with his hand in the cookie jar and made him pay back the money.”
“Why wasn’t that the end of it?”
“Chamberlain wants to run the fund himself and Grayson’s behavior was becoming erratic.”
I’ve been waiting for this opening for two hours. I ask, “What was Grayson doing?”
“You name it.” He becomes more animated as he tells me that Grayson was spending five nights a week at Basic Needs and buying drugs and sexual favors from Alicia Morales. He shows me a series of snapshots of Grayson and Morales in the club, in Grayson’s car and in the alley behind the theater. His eyes light up when he says, “His life was an ongoing Mardi Gras.”
I say, “His wife and son said he was a pillar of the community.”
He doesn’t mince words. “He was until he had a torrid affair with the guidance counselor at his kids’ school.”
I look into his eyes to try to glean whether there is any chance that he might be kidding.
He adds, “That particular indiscretion didn’t play very well with the citizens of Atherton–or with his wife, for that matter. Suffice it to say, it wasn’t his only dalliance.”
He does have a gift for storytelling.
“In any event,” he continues, “the marriage was shot and the wife was going to file for divorce. That’s why she hired Kaela Joy to watch him. He didn’t get along with his son, either. He thought J.T. was an unmotivated bozo and let him know about it regularly.”
“Were you watching the son, too?”
“Only when he and his father were hanging out together, which wasn’t very often.”
I ask, “Were you watching Grayson on Friday morning?”
“Yes. I was in my usual spot in the alley by the back door to Basic Needs. My son, Rick, was watching the front. Grayson never showed up, but his son did.”
This confirms Kaela Joy’s sighting of J.T. I ask, “What was he doing there?”
“Either he was looking for his father or he wanted to watch the naked girls dance.”
I let it go. “What time did he leave?”
“A few minutes before two.”
A few minutes before his father was murdered. “Where did he go?”
“Down the alley toward Alcatraz Liquors, but I couldn’t see him from my spot and I didn’t see him return. He probably left the alley on the Fifth Street side.”
I ask him if he saw anybody else.
He gives me a half smile and says, “I saw Alicia Morales.”
Bingo! “What time was that?”
“About ten after two. She came out the back door of Basic Needs a few minutes after young Grayson did and headed down the alley toward the liquor store. I couldn’t follow her because she would have seen me. I couldn’t see her, but I heard some shouting a few minutes later. I don’t
know who it was, but it sounded like a man and a woman.”
“Is it possible that it was Tower Grayson and Alicia Morales?”
“I don’t know.” He says Morales returned to Basic Needs a short time later. She was by herself.
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