Treasure Hunt wh-2

by John Lescroart

  “No. But my father disappeared and then my mother overdosed. Same result. No parents.”

  She closed her eyes, then shook her head. “I don’t really remember it too much. It was just the way it was. I was only nine.”

  “I was seven, but I think it’s the most indelible memory of my life-the shape under the sheet on the gurney, knowing it was Mom, as they wheeled her out.”

  “I must have blocked it,” she said.

  After a silence that lasted for half a block, Mickey cleared his throat. “So, about Dominic, all these charities he ran…”

  “He only ran one. The Sunset Youth Project. And of course all the subordinate groups off that.”

  “Okay. So what are those?”

  She shrugged. “Let’s see. The art gallery, the two schools, the development company, the theater, the moving company, the Sunset Battalion…”

  “Sunset Battalion sounds like a bunch of commandos.”

  “No. It’s more like an urban Peace Corps. Mostly older guys, some of the girls, people who’ve been in the program awhile.”

  “So what do they do?”

  Another shrug. “Pretty much whatever needs to be done. Tutoring, handing out pamphlets, bringing back the strays, working the neighborhoods. They’re kind of the boots-on-the-ground people.”

  His understanding limited at best, Mickey nodded.

  “Well, then, with this other stuff, what’s the actual Sunset Youth Project do?”

  “Sunset itself? It’s the… I don’t know what you’d call it. The umbrella. The administrative side.”

  They kept walking, and she must have noticed another question playing around on Mickey’s face, because she said, “What?”

  “I’m just trying to get my arms around this whole thing. I mean, if Dominic was only running one program, what’s with the car?”

  “Well, the one program has maybe two dozen sites in the city, maybe more. The main office and K through eight down on Ortega, the residential treatment center in Potrero, the outpatient center for adults by City College. Then the high school…” She stopped the litany. “You get the idea. I could get you the whole list if you need it, but the point is that Sunset’s a huge organization. Huge.”

  “What’s its budget? Do you know?”

  “Total?” She thought a moment. “Fifty million a year, give or take.”

  Mickey stopped in his tracks. “No. Really.”

  “Really. I’m pretty sure it’s somewhere in that neighborhood. It’s in the annual report. You could check.”

  “Fifty million dollars?”

  “Somewhere in there, I’m pretty sure. With everything, I mean all the programs, Sunset’s probably serving five thousand people a day, all told, citywide. It adds up.”

  “I’ll say. So where’s all that money come from?”

  “Everywhere, Mickey, are you kidding me? Individual philanthropists, foundations, tuition and other income from the schools, moving company fees and the sale of the redeveloped buildings. I mean, a lot of these things are profit centers in themselves. But also there’s a ton of public health money from the city…”

  “This city? I thought we were in a budget crunch.”

  She nodded. “Always. But even if they cut way back, the Health Services Department is going to stay the single biggest agency in the city.”

  “Is that true? The biggest?”

  Alicia shook her head. “I’m sure that’s right. I think they’re in for five million to us, just Sunset. But then there’s also AmeriCorps, which is federal and funds the Battalion, for another several mil. And then there’s all the just day-to-day regular fund-raising.”

  “That gets you to fifty million?”

  “Pretty close, most years.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah, I know. It’s impressive.”

  “So, I’ve got to ask this, what was Dominic making running this thing? Does anybody know that?”

  “Sure. It’s public record again. You could look it up in twenty minutes.” She broke a small smile. “But you don’t have to because I already know. His salary was six hundred forty-eight thousand dollars.”

  “Every year?”

  “Last year, anyway. And at least close to that the year before, and before that.” She shrugged. “It’s a major executive job, Mickey. He earned what he made. He deserved it.”

  “Still,” Mickey said. “Six hundred and fifty grand. Makes me think I might want to go into charity work myself.”

  “I thought you wanted to be a chef.”

  “I do. But I’m flexible. For that kind of money I believe I could be tempted.”

  “No.” She touched his arm again. “You don’t do it for the money. You do it for the work. It’s great helping people, it really is. Way better than standing in a restaurant saying hello with your smile on all day.

  That’s why I got into my own volunteering. Although now with Dominic gone…” She stopped and visibly gathered herself as she threatened to tear up. “Sorry,” she said. “I keep doing this.” But wiping her hands over her eyes, she got herself back under control. “So I guess we’re to that now. My relationship with Dominic.”

  “We can be if you’re comfortable with it.”

  “I’m fine with it.” The words confident enough that they carried with them almost the hint of a threat. “I’ve done nothing I’m ashamed of.”

  “Although the other day you said that maybe you and Mr. Como were too close. What did you mean by that?”

  “I meant that there was some chemistry, physical chemistry, that we both acknowledged. But he was a married man and he wasn’t going there. And neither was I. We’d even talked about me quitting so we wouldn’t be around one another so much, but that just seemed like a needless hardship on both of us. And why did we want that? We liked being together. We joked and had little secret things we did that made everything fun. I mean it, in the middle of all this serious stuff he did, every day was fun. He was just a great guy doing great work. And that was the other side of it.”

  “Of what?”

  “The job. The actual job.”

  “What about the job?”

  She bit her lower lip. “This is the part where you laugh at me.”

  “I don’t think so. Try me.”

  As they started walking again, she took a breath of air. “I kind of want to go into politics and change the world. At least try to make it a better place.”

  “That’s not a bad thing. The politics, maybe, but not the general idea.”

  “No, I know. But here I am with my little degree in political science, and I’m a hostess at Morton’s. You know what I’m saying?”

  “Sure. You wanted to do something more important.”

  She nodded. “And now you’re thinking, ‘So she gets a job driving a limo?’ ”

  “I’m not thinking that. I’m listening.”

  “Okay. So the thing about this job with Dominic isn’t so much about driving him around. It’s about moving into another world where there’s power and money and good things can happen.” She was getting into it now and her voice came to life. “You know what happened to the last three of Dominic’s morning drivers? This is in, like, the last two or three years.” She held up one finger. “Jon Royce, now administrative assistant to guess who? Alice Tallent, city supervisor. Two, Terry McGrath, EMT school and fast- tracked to the Fire Department. Three, DeShawn Ellis, scout for the San Francisco Giants who got Dominic and me the best tickets I’ve ever seen last Opening Day.”

  “Connections,” Mickey said.

  She nodded. “I know it might sound crass and self-serving, and then, of course, it maybe looks like I’m using the relationship with Dominic to get a leg up on a career. But I’d already done a lot of volunteer time at Sunset when Ian was there, just to be near my brother. So it wasn’t like I just glommed on to this opportunity to get ahead. And then this driving job came up, and I was kind of next in line, and I truly didn’t know how I was going to feel about Dominic on
ce I got to know him.”

  On the way back, by now chilled to the bone, they found themselves on either end of the back couch at the Little Shamrock, drinking Irish coffees. The place, late on a Sunday afternoon, had only two other customers playing a nearly silent and intense game of darts.

  Alicia came back from the bar and put their second round down on the small table in front of them. Sitting back, she crossed one leg over the other and flashed a quick glance in Mickey’s direction. “Here we’ve been doing all this talking,” she said, “and I haven’t really been completely straight with you.”

  “About Dominic?”

  Shaking her head, she said, “No, not about Dominic. I’ve told you everything about Dominic.” Hesitating, she drew a breath. “You know how I said I must have blocked out everything around what happened with my mom and dad? That’s not really true.”

  “I didn’t think it was,” Mickey said. “I don’t think anybody does that, not at nine years old. I was going to let it slide.”

  She nodded. “I noticed. And I thank you for that. But maybe I shouldn’t be so defensive about it. Especially with somebody who’s doing all this work for me and who’s been through something so similar.”

  “I don’t know how similar it really was, Alicia. Me and Tamara got a home out of it. I gather you and Ian didn’t.”

  “No,” she said. “They split us up. Not that they tried to, but Ian was, I guess, kind of gangly and sullen and all bad attitude. So it turned out not too many people were willing to take a chance on him.”

  “But they were with you?”

  A shrug. “I was quieter, maybe more pliable. Just as angry as Ian was, I think. Maybe I still am, I don’t know. But nobody saw it at first, although none of my homes really stuck either. Anyway, the bottom line is we got separated pretty quick, and he got into most of the drugs in the universe and some pretty bad behavior.”

  Mickey remembered. “He told me he spent some time at the work farm.”

  “Not really some time,” she said. “Just about all the time from thirteen to eighteen.”

  “But you kept up with him?”

  “Not so hard, really. His address didn’t change.” She reached for her Irish coffee and took a sip. “Anyway, I guess my point is that I was on my own and wasn’t really too much of an angel myself. I don’t like to think about how I was back then, but I don’t want to pretend to you that I didn’t have any reaction to what my dad did, and that I didn’t act out because of it. Because I did. I was pretty rage-driven.”

  “Okay.”

  “No, not really okay. I was as bad as Ian was, not with all the drugs, maybe, but getting myself in trouble. And I kind of focused on older men, if you see where I’m going with this.”

  “Dominic.”

  She nodded. “If the cops look, they’re going to think they see a pattern,” she said. “But I wanted you to know that stopped a long time ago, and it was all long over by the time I started working with Dominic. And it didn’t start up again with him.”

  “I believed you the first time,” Mickey said.

  “Still,” she said. She reached over and rested her hand for a second or two on his thigh, looked into his eyes. “I wanted you to know.”

  Mickey, his leg nearly burning where she’d rested her hand, reached out and grabbed his own Irish coffee, brought it to his mouth. “Well, while we’re on this type of stuff,” he said, “Ian mentioned something else I was a little curious about.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Jail.” He put his glass down.

  “What about jail?” Suddenly her voice became querulous, frightened. In her eyes he picked up a sense of the dark rage she’d alluded to earlier. “I’m not going to jail,” she whispered at him. “You said you were going to keep me out of jail.”

  “And that’s still our intention.”

  “I didn’t do anything to Dominic. I really didn’t.”

  “Easy, Alicia. I didn’t say you did. I said we’d be trying to keep you out of jail. And just to try to prepare you for possible eventualities, maybe keeping you out of jail won’t be possible after all. That’s a major part of the job, but it’s not the only part.”

  “No, that won’t work. It’s got to be the major part, Mickey. Don’t you understand? I didn’t do anything.” Again, she emphasized her point by reaching over and putting a hand on his leg. “I can’t go to jail.”

  “That’s what Ian said too. He said he thought it would kill you.” He looked over at her as now she pulled her hand away from him, came forward, and hunched over, her hands clasped in her lap. “I was hoping to reassure you that even if it came to that, you could get through it.”

  “How can you say that? How can you know? Have you ever been in jail?”

  “No, but I know-”

  She cut him off, her voice loud, and harsh. “I don’t care what you know! You can’t know until you’ve been there. It’s not what you think, okay? They’ve got complete control over you. I can’t go there again.”

  Suddenly the bartender was back with them. “Everything okay here?”

  Alicia threw a look at Mickey, then up. “Fine. We’re fine,” she said. “Sorry.”

  “Just try to keep it down a little back here, then, huh?”

  When he went back to the bar, they sat in silence for a long minute. Finally Mickey said, “Again?”

  She was back to being hunched over, her breathing heavy.

  “Alicia?”

  At last, with a deep sigh, she straightened up. “The cops shouldn’t have it. It shouldn’t be on my record. I wasn’t even eighteen. It’s supposed to be erased. It was just a joyride and a stupid accident.”

  “Was anybody hurt?”

  “No. Just me, a little. But the car belonged to the house I was staying in, the guy there’s a fucking pervert, and I stole his fucking car, which ended that particular shot at my domestic bliss with stepparents. But the jail part was…” She stopped, looked pleadingly at him. “Nobody knows this except Ian.”

  “You don’t have to say,” Mickey said. “I’ve got a good imagination.”

  “I thought because there were only women on that side of the jail

  …”

  Mickey moved over next to her, put his arm around her, and brought her in next to him. “Nobody’s going to let you go to jail,” he said. “That’s not going to happen. I promise.”

  As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Mickey regretted them. You didn’t promise when you couldn’t absolutely deliver; it was one of the mantras he and Tamara had lived by-a promise is a promise, they used to say.

  But this particular horse was already out of the barn, and there was nothing he could do about it now.

  8

  When Wyatt Hunt opened his office door in Chinatown the next morning at eight forty-three, Tamara was at her old desk. She’d told him on Saturday night that if he’d take her back, she would be there, but actually seeing her in the flesh gave him a hopeful jolt of adrenaline. Maybe the firm would get back on its feet again and this was the first sign that things were turning around.

  She glanced at her wristwatch, then up to her boss, her face alight. “I didn’t realize that you’d changed your hours.”

  At a glance, she looked good, lightly made up with lipstick, mascara, and eye shadow. A black silk blouse under a multicolored scarf around her neck camouflaged her protruding collarbones. The overall effect was nothing like anorexia. She’d obviously lost some weight, of course, but Hunt might not have noticed anything amiss if he hadn’t seen her and had his arms around her two nights before.

  Still, reluctant to embarrass her on the one hand, or to scare her off with overeffusiveness on the other, he kept his greeting low-key. “So the cat actually did drag you in. For the record, I can’t tell you how good it is to see you sitting there again.”

  “I can’t tell you how good it feels to be sitting here again.” She hesitated, then added, “I really want to thank you for letting this happen, Wyatt.
I don’t know too many other people who would be okay with taking me back.”

  “Anybody who’d had you working for them once would take you back in a New York minute, Tam. I’m the one who should be thanking you. And I do.”

  “Okay.” She lowered her eyes, then raised them back up to him, a trace of her old impish smile playing around her mouth. “Do you think we can be through with all of this yucky stuff pretty soon?”

  “Absolutely. No more yuck, starting now.”

  “Good. Mickey’s already out on that Len Turner list you gave him. He’ll check in when he’s done or a little before lunch, whichever comes first. And Devin Juhle called. No message, just please call him back when you get in.”

  “Got it. And, Tam”-he stopped on his way to the back office and stood by the side of her desk-“one last bit of yuck.”

  She sighed with some theatricality-one of her mannerisms from the old days which he loved. “Okay, one. What?”

  Striking fast, he leaned over and kissed the top of her head. “Welcome back.”

  On his way to the Sunset Youth Project administrative offices at Ortega Street and Sunset Boulevard, Mickey couldn’t get Como’s $650,000 salary out of his brain. Or Sunset’s $50 million- per-year operating budget. These dollar figures shifted his initial take on Como’s murder. This much money around, it was likely in play.

  And as far as this went, it was good news for Alicia. If she was of any interest at all to the police, it was not because of money, but because of her relationship to Como.

  As Alicia had told him, information on nonprofits was a matter of public record, and hence easily accessible. With Len Turner’s list to guide him, Mickey had done some computer research last night and verified that the three largest nonprofits where Como had a seat on the board-the Mission Street Coalition, Sanctuary House, and Halfway Home-each operated with a budget of over $30 million per year. Since none of these quite matched the size and scope of the Sunset Youth Project, Mickey’s first call was on Como’s home turf.

  The two-story building wasn’t much of a scenic destination. The low, overcast skies didn’t help much either.