by D. F. Bailey
“How much?”
“Dunno.” She shrugged. “But none of that happened tonight. Believe me, the guy never touched me.”
Finch considered this. A blackmail set-up that somehow escalated into a hit job. Somebody had made a mistake. Probably See-See realized it when his victim flew out the window. In a panic, he fled the apartment without Jojo. And without locking the door.
“What’s See-See’s last name?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where does he live?”
“Don’t know that either.”
“Yeah?” He tipped his head to one side. “I don’t believe you.”
“Well, Finch, then why don’t you fucking fly away home. You think I care?” She slipped another forkful of rice into her mouth.
“Where do you live?”
She ignored the question, and her defiance returned. Will doubted he could draw any more information from her and she finished the last of her meal in silence. Let her enjoy it, he thought. Soon things will be much more difficult for her.
“So, Jojo,” he said when she nudged her dinner plate to the edge of the table. “You have a choice to make. You can choose door one” — he held up his left hand and swiveled it palm out, then back — “or door two.”
“Fine. Door two. Just take off the cuffs and I’ll get out of your life.”
He smiled and continued with his analogy. “One, you can either take me to where See-See lives right now” — he swung his hand in the air again — “or go through door two, and we pay a visit to the local cop shop.”
Her eyes widened with disbelief. “Well, door one is locked shut. And if you think I can’t play the police game as good as you — think again, mister.”
Before he could reply, Jojo began screaming. She stood up and threw Finch’s jacket to the floor and shot their cuffed hands in the air.
“Call the cops!” she screamed. “He’s kidnapping me! Call the cops!”
The restaurant manager approached the table and gazed at the scene unfolding before him. A frantic woman handcuffed to a man who bore an expression of meditative calm. The manager froze at the apparent contradiction.
Finch nodded at him. He pulled a twenty dollar bill from his pocket and set it on the table. He made an effort to soothe Jojo but when her frenzy broke into relentless crying, he knew she’d won.
“Okay, do as she says. Call the police,” he conceded and then turned to the girl. In a flat, even voice he said, “Sit and relax, Jojo. They’ll be here in a couple of minutes. Then you’ll get your day in court.”
※ — THREE — ※
THE SAN FRANCISCO Police Department’s Central Station occupied the bottom floor and basement of a five-story parkade on Vallejo Street. Built in 1969, the facility was the oldest of ten SFPD stations spread throughout the city. The building exterior was composed of scores of vertical concrete bars that ran from the bottom floor to the top of the garage. Despite the best intentions to make Central a community resource, from the sidewalk it seemed more like a bomb-proof prison than a hub of civic pride.
Although Will Finch had never been in a police interview room before, Room 3 held only a few surprises. Years of watching TV cop shows as a teenager led him to believe the space would contain something more than a door, a mirrored glass window, a table and two chairs. But in Room 3 there were no intercom buttons, no electronic locks, no digital recorders. Apart from the video camera retrofitted to the ceiling with a vice clamp, the room appeared to be state-of-the-art for 1969.
While he waited for his interrogation, Will paced the dimensions in a toe-to-toe march along the length and width of the tiny box. Ten by fourteen feet. Even if you suffered from the mildest form of claustrophobia, you’d likely plead guilty to any number of crimes to secure your release from the room. In his case, Finch imagined that Jojo was cooking up a charge of kidnapping. Who knows, he asked himself, she might even be trying to pin the murder on him.
Another hour passed before Detective Richard Staimer entered the room and introduced himself. He was tall and lean, and his face held a taut, leathery grimace. A faded bruise and a few stitch marks sat below his right cheekbone. If he were a ranch hand, everyone would call him Slim or Hank. He settled himself in the metal chair next to the door and placed a manila file folder on the table.
“Okay, Mr. Finch, time for your side of the story. I’m interviewing you as a witness. If that changes, I’ll be reading you your rights.” He raised his eyebrows to indicate that Finch’s situation was fluid, if not a potential sink-hole. “Do you understand?”
“Yes.” He realized this could go either way. What he said now — and how he said it — would determine if he would walk away a free man.
“Good. So, what happened out there?”
Will exhaled a long breath. “Well, the last thing Jojo said to me was that I’d kidnapped her. I imagine that’s what she told you, too. Maybe more. But it’s not true.”
He studied Staimer’s face to see if this suggestion had an impact. He blinked and rolled his hand to urge Finch to continue.
“The fact is, I rescued her. About ten minutes after a group of teenagers found the body of someone who’d fallen to the sidewalk on Washington Street. Then I noticed a light flashing next to an open window on the eleventh floor above the Bank of America. I went up to the room. It was unlocked. I heard a cry and entered the apartment. That’s when I found her partially naked and handcuffed to a bed.”
“Whoa.” He held up a hand. “You said some kids found the corpse? And then you went up?”
“That’s right. I was there when he landed. Just behind them.”
“You know these kids?”
“One of them. Alice Winkler.”
“Do you know how to reach her?”
“Give me a slip of paper and a pen, and I’ll give you her number.”
Detective Staimer pursed his lips with a determination that suggested he was prepared to follow the new lead. He pulled a pen and palm-sized notepad from his jacket pocket and passed them to Will.
He wrote the information on the first page and felt a glimmer of hope, grateful now that he’d taken two seconds to commit Alice’s number to memory.
Staimer checked his watch. “All right, give me some more time, and I’ll get back to you on this.” He stood and put his hand on the doorknob then turned back to Will. “Want some water?”
“I’d prefer a coffee.”
Staimer coughed up a laugh. “Uh, not from here, you don’t.”
Finch smiled at that. “Okay, I’ll settle for the water.”
Staimer nodded and left the room.
Over the next hour, Finch slumped his torso over the tabletop and rested his head on his forearms. He managed to doze in a sort of half-sleep but never fell into unconsciousness.
“All right,” Staimer said as he returned to the interview room. He passed Finch a bottle of Evian water. “The Winkler kid backed you. So did two of her friends. No question, that helps you. But tell me about the handcuffs. And why the hell did you cuff yourself to the girl and then take her to the San Sun Restaurant?”
Will realized that he was now in control of a credible narrative. He uncapped the water bottle and took a deep drink. Then step-by-step he took Staimer through the entire story. From cuffing the girl to himself in the apartment, riding down the elevator, slipping out a back exit and along the block to the San Sun Restaurant. His goal, he told Staimer, was to take Jojo to safety and away from the threat posed by whoever threw the victim out the open window. “Once I determined that Jojo was safe,” he concluded, “I intended to bring her with me to the first cop I could find. Believe me, I had no interest in being charged with accessory to murder.”
“And she knew that?”
“I told her that’s what I was going to do.” He decided to omit the first option he’d offered her: To choose door number one and lead him to See-See’s apartment.
“But then she beat you to the punch.”
“Yeah, t
hat was the only play she made. Jumping up and screaming that I’d kidnapped her.” He shrugged. “To be honest, I didn't see it coming. You should talk to the restaurant manager and waitress. I think they saw my side of events. I didn’t force her to do anything. Hell, I bought her a plate of chicken fried rice.”
“Yeah, I already talked to them.” Staimer folded his arms across his chest to suggest they were about to change course. “So who are you, Finch?”
“What?”
He opened his file folder. “It says here you spent four years in the US Army. Half the time in Abu Ghraib.” He shifted his gaze from the file. “Awarded the Distinguished Service Cross. That right?”
Finch nodded. While he’d been made to wait, apparently someone in the SFPD had pulled together his bio. He wondered what they had on him. And what they’d missed.
“Then discharged two years ago.” He closed the file folder. “I mean, what’s your story? How do you go from that” — he tipped a hand to the file — “to cuffing yourself to an underage prostitute in an apartment in Chinatown rented to someone named Ray Smith?”
Ray Smith. Finch wondered if the name was genuine or bogus.
“Yeah, sounds like a back-flip, I know.” Finch laughed as though he couldn’t quite believe it himself. “Look, after Iraq I needed a change of direction. The fact is, I’m not so different than a lot of guys who finish a tour in the sandbox. Some of us started to question things.”
Staimer nodded with a glower that said, go on.
“So I decided to go to grad school. I’d done journalism in college. When Berkeley offered me a spot in their MJ program, I jumped at it. By the end of December, I’ll be done. And looking for a job.”
“As a reporter. Working on stories like this.” He opened his hand to indicate the story was still unfolding. “That’s why you took the girl with you. You wanted to squeeze out all the juice you could, right?”
Finch took a moment to consider this. Despite his cowboy appearance, Staimer was smarter than Finch had assumed.
“Maybe. Maybe not. My first instinct was to get both of us out of there — she said both of us could be killed. Besides, if I just released her, it presented one more risk that I could be charged as an accessory. And I didn’t want her to run before you could talk to her. After the years I spent in Abu Ghraib, I learned the value of a thorough interview.”
“You mean interrogation?”
Finch didn’t know how to interpret this. At first, Staimer seemed to credit him for his service. Now came this slight shift. If he needed to, he could say that he’d never conducted any illegal interviews. In fact, he’d been assigned to Abu Ghraib Prison as an undercover military intelligence officer to determine what had gone so wrong at the prison. His cover was to serve as the regional Public Affairs Specialist. Otherwise known as a “Flak” to the international media who reported the stories of torture and forced confessions. But Finch could never disclose any of that. He’d been sworn to secrecy and more important, promised himself to bury the past.
“I prefer the word ‘interview.’ Obviously, others dispute that. In any case, tell me how I stand here, Detective Staimer. Am I under arrest?”
Staimer shrugged and pursed his lips again, a mixed gesture that Finch couldn’t decipher. He decided that Staimer would make a good poker player. Impossible to read his hand. Or his loyalties.
“No, not today.” He held up a finger. “But I’ve got to warn you, Mr. Finch, if the girl goes to trial, you’ll be called to testify. Then all bets are off. In the meantime, if you hear anything more on this, call me.”
He passed Finch his business card. As he tucked the card into his shirt pocket, Will felt a wave of relief flood through his chest and arms.
“Thanks, Detective.” He placed his hands flat on the table and pushed himself out of the chair. “By the way, did you get the name of the guy who went out the window?”
Staimer snorted with a glare of disbelief and stood up. “I can’t believe you’re asking me that.”
“No?”
“Why don’t you read about it in the morning papers?”
“All right.” Finch absorbed the sarcasm and knew not to press him.
Staimer picked up the file folder and opened the door for Finch.
“And do me a favor. Don’t me let me see you back here again.”
“Like you said, ‘not today.’” Finch tried to suppress a smile. “Or at least not until you upgrade the coffee.”
※ — FOUR — ※
THE HEAVY RAIN that forecasters had predicted over the last two days now began in earnest. Finch pulled his hoodie over his head, zipped up his leather jacket, and made his way to the Montgomery Street BART station. From there he took the subway under the Bay and over to Berkeley.
By the time he entered the apartment he shared with his fiancée, she’d already left for work. After he’d arrived at the SFPD station for questioning, he’d been allowed to make a call and left a message on their landline answering machine. Now he found a note from her on the kitchen table.
Are you alright? If you don’t call me by noon, I’ll get John Biscombe on this. Call me ASAP! xo xo xo
John Biscombe had just graduated from Berkeley Law and was starting to build his practice. Everyone knew that growing a private law firm from scratch was risky, but he’d managed to land a client during his first week out. Perhaps Finch would be next on his roster. Hopefully not, he told himself.
He called the Doe Memorial Library and managed to reach Cecily on the second ring.
“Are you okay?” Her voice held a note of desperation — and relief. He immediately regretted putting her through the stress of his absence. Their first night apart during six months of living together hadn’t unfolded as he’d imagined.
“I’m fine. It’s nothing.” He walked to the sliding glass doors that led to the balcony and gazed across the parking lot onto Dwight Way. “Like I said on the message, I was witness to something, so the police had to question me.”
“Something? What something?”
Finch heard the doubtful tone. She had a good ear for things left unsaid.
“It was crazy.” He glanced away as the memory of the death on the street washed over him. “I was on the way home after meeting with Bisk, Jerry and Phil at Cafe Zoetrope, when this guy landed on the sidewalk in front of me.”
“What?”
“Yeah. Horrible. From eleven floors up. Four kids were right there, too. They shouldn’t have seen it — but what can you do? There it was.”
“Oh my God. Are you all right?”
“Yeah. But the police wanted to question me, and it took way longer than I imagined.” He paused to think how much more he should reveal on the phone and decided to leave it at that for now. “Look, I’m going to get some sleep and then finish the last edit of my thesis.”
“Okay.” She sighed. “See you for dinner?”
“Sure. Eight o’clock at Kiraku?”
“Mmm, yes,” she purred. She loved sushi and ate it at least once a week.
He laughed. “Then I’ll bring you back here for dessert.”
“Ha-ha. Dessert, huh?” She chuckled at that. “Well then, you better be good to me. No more nights out.”
“For sure. I guarantee it.”
※
After he ended the call with Cecily, Will showered, shaved, brushed his teeth and made his way to the bedroom. He glanced at the clock and decided to take a short nap. Finch set the alarm for noon and slipped under the covers. Moments later he fell into a heavy, dreamless sleep.
The sound of the rain hitting the roof woke him at twelve-thirty. He checked the alarm and silently cursed himself when he discovered that he’d set it for midnight by mistake. A symptom of sleep deprivation, he thought and forced himself out of bed. By one o’clock he was sitting in the Caffe Mediterraneum — the funky, purposefully misspelled cafe on Telegraph Avenue — sipping an Americano and leafing through the San Fransisco Post. On page seven he found a three-pa
ragraph story about the death on Washington Street.
FALL FROM 11th FLOOR PROVES FATAL
Local real estate investor, Gio Esposito, fell from the eleventh floor of an apartment tower on the corner of Washington and Stockton Streets last night.
Adrian Shouldice, an associate of Esposito, stated that his colleague had become dispirited following a series of recent business failures. “Last time I saw him, he was flat-out depressed. His last two business deals failed due to the collapsing mortgage market,” said Shouldice who shared a co-op office with Esposito on Sacramento Street.
An online report from the San Francisco Police Department states that they searched the apartment from which Esposito fell but could find no suicide note. They are interviewing a woman who may have witnessed the incident, but police did not reveal her identity.
Finch read the story a second time. He now had a few new facts in hand: the name of the victim, his occupation, and the name of his associate. Furthermore, Detective Staimer had revealed that the apartment was rented to someone named Ray Smith. Likely a pseudonym, but worth checking.
As he read the story a third time, he realized the Post had uncovered a few details, but none of the background facts. Nothing about Jojo handcuffed half-naked to the bed. No mention of See-See. And no reference to the unlocked apartment door. He checked his watch: 1:25. He guessed he could make it back to San Fransisco and over to the Post editorial office in a little less than an hour.
He stuffed the newspaper into his courier bag, pulled the hoodie over his head and made his way through the rain to the Downtown Berkeley BART station.
※
Wally Gimbel was a big man. Big face, big shoulders, big voice. But more striking than any other feature was his smile. It broke open on his face, wide and ear-to-ear — a smile full of joy and the love of life. The laugh that came with it was big, too. But then he quickly cut off the laugh while the smile lingered. As if the audio portion of a marvelous video clip had been stopped short. The effect took Finch by surprise. As suddenly as he felt embraced by Wally, he wondered if he’d just been shown the door.