The Hunt Club

by John Lescroart

  "What are you doing?" Juhle asked.

  "Getting her out of here. Her mother had her tied up."

  "She let you just take her?"

  "I explained the situation, gave her the forms."

  "Still. Anybody sees you or she come screaming out raising a stink, the people here "

  "The mom's gonna learn to live with it. I do this for a living, okay? There's a technique." I was walking quickly, breathing hard. "You got a car nearby?" I asked. "I'm three blocks away. Mistake."

  "Yeah, but anybody comes out—"

  "That's why I'm in half a jog here, Dev," I snapped, cutting him off. I indicated Keeshiana. "I'm worried about her."

  "My car's just down here, around the corner," Juhle said, and led the way for us, double time.

  3 /(2000)

  Deputy Director Wilson Mayhew left a polite note in my cubicle asking if I could please come to his office at my earliest convenience. There was nothing ominous about the summons except that it was the first time I'd had any personal contact with Mayhew since we exchanged cordial hellos at the Christmas party two years before. At that time, finger right on the pulse of those he supervised, he had asked me what my connection was to the CPS. Since I'd only been with the department for eight years back then, and ever since Mayhew himself had come aboard five years before, I told him to keep it between us, but that I was really FBI, working under-cover to ferret out the pimp who was running the illegal-alien child-prostitution ring out of the CPS. Surely he'd heard of it.

  After that, at least he knew who I was.

  So that October afternoon, I found myself standing in front of the DD's desk in his third-floor office on Otis Street. Though the furnishing and decor of the rest of the CPS offices could have been case studies in drab bureaucratic aesthetics, heavy on grays, greens, and metal surfaces, Mayhew's workplace, like the man himself, was done up in a semblance of style if not taste. The desk was an enormous redwood burl, polished and asymmetrical, without any apparent drawers, and a flat surface only large enough to hold a phone and a nearly empty in-and-out box. There was no sign of a computer or workstation of any kind. He had three Walter Keane paintings—large-eyed children on the verge of tears (get it?)—framed and hung to cover any free wall space. A teak credenza hugged the wall to my right, opposite the windows. It was covered by a large crocheted doily on which stood what appeared to be an actual silver Russian samovar. The bookshelves behind him held very few books and mostly featured silver-framed photographs of Mayhew with the past three mayors, the chief of police, Governor Gray Davis, Boz Scaggs, Danielle Steel, and a few other celebrities I couldn't identify. The top shelf was entirely devoted to Lladró ceramics. Touching.

  Mayhew stood. His Armani couldn't disguise the extra forty pounds he carried. His round, faintly cherubic face glistened slightly over the double chin, as though perhaps he'd overscrubbed it. A high forehead wasn't improved or mitigated by his decision to comb what hair there was straight back. His own mother probably wouldn't have called him attractive, but he nevertheless exuded a confidence born of the exercise of power. The fat older white guy who'd made it, and if you didn't like how he looked, you could bite him.

  He pushed his bulk up from in his chair and reached over the desk to shake my hand and thank me for coming so promptly. He was back in his seat by the time I answered.

  "Sure. What's up? Is there a problem?"

  "No, no. No problem at all. In fact, rather the opposite."

  "Great." I waited.

  "So how long have you been on the street now, working cases?"

  "Eight years, sir."

  He emitted a low whistle. "That's what I'd understood. Do you realize that you're the senior caseworker downstairs?"

  "I hadn't really thought about it."

  "And you've had nothing but glowing evaluations all that time."

  I shrugged. "I care about the work, sir."

  "Obviously. Obviously." Sitting back, he linked his hands over his stomach. "The point is that you've got a lot of firsthand street knowledge you could pass on to new caseworkers coming up into the department."

  "I try to help when I can."

  "Yes, well but I was thinking we might want to formalize that relationship a bit." He came forward, his small eyes locking into mine, a smile of sorts appearing. "I'll put it right to you, Wyatt. Have you ever considered stepping up to supervisor?"

  "I've never applied, no, sir."

  "Why not?"

  I gave it a moment's thought. "I guess I like being on the street."

  "That's commendable. Where the action is, huh?"

  "Something like that."

  "Would you consider moving up?"

  Again, I didn't answer right away. I must have appeared to be looking around the room at his pictures and trophies.

  He blindly read it as envy. "With your stellar record to date," he said, "it's not out of the question you could be sitting here where I am in a matter of years."

  Oh, be still, my heart.

  Besides, this was a blatant lie. Mayhew himself had never worked the street. I didn't even know for sure that he had a master's in social work, which was a prerequisite for us street types. But casework was not one of the prerequisites for deputy director. Political connection was. Mayhew was the brother of a city supervisor, Chrissa Mayhew. I neither had nor wanted to have any part of that.

  But we were being friendly, and I saw no reason to change the tone. "Well, it's flattering that you should consider me "

  He jumped in again before I could outright refuse. "It's quite a significant bump in salary, you know."

  I shook my head. "It's not that."

  "What is it, then?"

  "What I said. I guess I'm just not much of an office person. I like going out on calls."

  Sitting back, slumped in the chair again, Mayhew's face had closed down. "And you often go out alone."

  It wasn't a question. Still, I said, "Yes, sir, I do."

  "Why is that?"

  Because most of my coworkers, whom you've hired, are unmotivated, you idiot. But I said, "Sometimes it's hard to coordinate schedules."

  "And do you think that's particularly efficient?"

  "Sometimes in the field, an inexperienced partner can be more a hindrance than a help."

  "But how are they to gain that vital hands-on experience if veteran caseworkers won't go on calls with them?"

  "Well it's not a matter of 'won't.' Some of the people downstairs feel like they have to write up their reports, and that's their priority. And sometimes that keeps them at their desks." We were leaving the faux friendly arena quickly. "As to efficiency, you said I've had good performance reviews."

  "On the calls themselves, yes. But we've got a ship to run here, and we need all the sailors to cooperate if we're going to keep it afloat."

  The old salt in me failed to respond to the analogy. So hire people who want to go out and do the work. But I dredged up a hopeful smile. "I like to think I'm cooperating, sir."

  For a long moment, Mayhew chewed on his thin lower lip. Sighing heavily with apparently deep regret, he said, "We've got several promising young people we'd like to bring on here, Wyatt, and frankly they could start at a much lower salary than you're drawing right now. Even if you moved up to supervisor, the impact on our budget would be positive if we could bring some of these people on."

  So now it was a budget issue. Mayhew was pulling out all the stops as I began to see the bottom line. He'd promised a job—my job—to the son or daughter of one of his cronies.

  "Who would I be replacing?" I asked. "As supervisor?"

  "Darlene's been out on maternity leave for five months already," he said. "Two more than she applied for. I don't think she's coming back."

  "Can I give it some thought?" I asked.

  "Sure." The shiny face beamed. "Take a few days, Wyatt, as much time as you need."

  * * *

  I said no.

  Two weeks after my refusal, Mayhew announced an administrative
shakeup in the department whereby the three caseworkers with the most experience—that would be me, Bettina Keck, and a ten-year vet with chronically poor attendance named Lionel Whitmore—would evaluate both the seriousness and the credibility of abuse reports and assign caseworkers as appropriate. This was essentially the role that our level-one supervisors had filled before, and it was full-time in-office work, but no raise was involved this time.

  Every actual case of child abuse was serious, of course, but not every call to report abuse was legitimate. When I'd first started working, I was surprised at the number of these complaints to CPS that turned out to be bogus—called in by fathers wanting to get their baby's mama in trouble or neighbors as payback for other neighbors making too much noise at night or an ex-wife wanting to hassle an ex-husband while he had the kids for a weekend. These and dozens of others like them were the all-too-common ugly, stupid, petty scams in which kids were used as pawns in the adults' games. Citing the facts that we were chronically understaffed, hammered by budget constraints, and overwhelmed by the sheer volume of legitimate complaints, Mayhew decided that his experienced caseworkers would be just the ticket to separate the wheat from the chaff among the complaints and thereby improve the efficiency of the CPS as a whole.

  Mayhew's plan was as obvious as it was simple. From his point of view, I wasn't a team player, Bettina was a candidate for rehab, and Lionel was useless. If he could keep me off the street, I'd probably quit before too long. And without me holding down the fort on the false complaints, Bettina and Lionel would both screw up eventually if not sooner, clearing not just one but three caseworker spots. Mayhew could then make three of his wealthy friends happy and maybe get himself a new car—or at least another silver samovar or photo op with a famous person.

  But truly outraged now, I would be damned if I was going to let myself be so easily ousted from a career I cared about. I figured I could outlast Mayhew. He needed good, solid caseworkers or he would begin to look bad from the outside. I figured it would be a waiting game, and I'd play it until the worm turned, then I would get assigned back to the street. And thereby win.

  * * *

  Wrong.

  Late one Friday afternoon in February, alone at my cubicle—both Bettina and Lionel gone AWOL earlier in the day—with a stack of complaints that needed to be evaluated before the weekend in front of me, I fielded a mandated report from the emergency room at San Francisco General Hospital. A five-year-old Hispanic boy, Miguel Nunoz, had been admitted at a little before two o'clock that afternoon with a broken arm that struck hospital officials as unusual. I called the admitting station and talked to a Dr. Turner, who had discovered that this was the boy's third admission to three different hospitals—two broken bones and a dislocated shoulder—since his mother had taken up with a new boyfriend. Now they had casted the arm, and the mother was, even as we spoke, waiting to take Miguel home, but Turner thought somebody from CPS ought to get out there and talk to both the mom and her son and evaluate the situation before the doctor would feel comfortable releasing the boy back into his mother's custody.

  I tended to agree.

  Willa Cardoza and Jim Freed were just coming in for the swing shift. Inseparable, both were new hires within the past two years, which meant they were Mayhew's people. I'd never before had anything but professional interactions with either of them, and while not exactly gung ho, they showed up to work every day and seemed okay. At least, apparently, they went out on calls, filed decent reports, did the minimum. I also didn't know at the time—I was not a supervisor and so had no access to worker files—that neither of them had yet had to pull the trigger, i.e., forcibly remove a child from a parent's custody.

  Nevertheless, they were the best, not to say only, choice at hand. My job was to evaluate the legitimacy of the complaint, and this one was no doubt as real as a heart attack. So I gave them the quick synopsis and told them they'd better hustle, the mom was sitting in the waiting room, anxious to take the boy home, and Dr. Turner wasn't going to be able to stall her forever.

  By the time they left and I'd finished the last of my pile of evaluations, it was close to seven o'clock. Still concerned about the seriousness of the complaint, I swallowed my bile and went up to see if Mayhew was still in his office. His secretary had gone home, but he was there, drinking what looked like brandy in a snifter, talking to someone on the telephone. He made a fast excuse and hung up when he saw me in his doorway. It was my first audience with him since I'd turned down the promotion.

  "Yes, Hunt, what is it?"

  I'd been Hunt, not Wyatt, since the day. I briefed him on Miguel, told him whom I'd assigned, and said that I thought that this was a case he might want to keep an eye on over the weekend, to follow its disposition.

  He thanked me for my responsibility in bringing this serious case to his attention and said that's just what he'd do.

  * * *

  Ms. Nunoz took Miguel home on Friday night. On that Sunday, he was again brought to the hospital, but this time with a concussion from which he did not recover. At the inquest, Dr. Turner testified that he had spoken to me and that I'd assured him that CPS would have someone out to the hospital within an hour, two at the most, but that no one from the department had arrived.

  In both of their individual testimonies, Cardoza and Freed admitted that I had given them the case, but that I'd put no particular emphasis on it. Certainly, I had put nothing in writing (and in my haste to get them moving, this at least was true). They'd even gone on another call first—they had the address and case number to prove it—and had arrived at the hospital long after Ms. Nunoz had gone home with her son. Believing that Dr. Turner would never have released the boy if he'd believed there to be danger, they had gone to their next call and left a follow-up note on the Nunozes for Monday morning.

  Wilson Mayhew, while I was sitting in front of him in the same small room at the disciplinary hearing, calmly and emphatically denied that I'd ever mentioned the case to him in any context whatsoever.

  4 /(2001)

  When all the administrative hearings and appeals ended, the bottom line was that I could stay with the CPS if I accepted a formal letter of reprimand they wanted to include in my personnel file. There was nothing else even remotely negative in that file, and I'd done nothing wrong in the Nunoz case. No power on earth was going to get me to take any part of the hit for Mayhew's betrayal and the incompetence and dishonesty of his protégés. I realized that the price for my refusal to accept the reprimand letter was my career at CPS.

  So be it.

  * * *

  For ten years I've lived in a rent-controlled, barn-size warehouse south of Market, essentially in the shadow of the 101 Freeway. When I'd first moved in, it was empty space with a twenty-five-foot ceiling. I'd drywalled off and enclosed a little over a third of the three thousand square feet, and within that area, I'd put down industrial carpet and further subdivided it into three discrete units—a living room/kitchen, my bedroom, and the bathroom.

  Five months after I quit, I was on my futon reading the final pages of The Last Lion, the great second volume of Manchester's biography of Winston Churchill. When I finished, I put the book down and sat for a while, contemplating the life of the man about whom I'd just been reading. Brilliant military leader, mesmerizing public speaker, superb watercolorist, Nobel Prize–winning author, prime minister of England and—oh, yeah—savior of the Western world. His personal trials between the two world wars, when he was discredited and vilified by enemies and friends alike, put my setback with Mayhew and the CPS into some sort of perspective.

  Which isn't to say I didn't have some issues with rage. Mostly I'd been working those issues off by windsurfing for a couple of hours nearly every day down at Coyote Point. I was also in two men's basketball leagues where elbows got thrown. I jogged the Embarcadero a lot. Plugged in my Strat and nearly blew the windows out of the warehouse. With Devin Juhle, several times a month, I'd stop by Jackson's Arms in South City and shoot a few hundred 9 mm roun
ds at what I imagined to be Wilson Mayhew's head. Amy Wu, a sympatico lawyer in town I'd met through CPS, was a good platonic drinking buddy with a light-handed knack for keeping in check my temper, always hair-trigger and worse since I'd quit work.

  But as I say, I was working on it.

  I got up and went to check the contents of my refrigerator. Standing barefoot in my kitchen area, the crud under my feet made me realize that I hadn't done a stem-to-stern clean of my rooms in a while, and without thinking too much about it, I grabbed a mop. When I'd finished with the floor, I emptied my hamper into the washing machine off my bedroom, added detergent, and set it for a heavy load. I wiped down the counters in the bathroom and kitchen, then scoured the corners for cobwebs and dust. Next, I ran the dishes that I'd been stacking rinsed in the dishwasher for the past week or so—mostly coffee mugs, a few utensils, and small plates.