Book Case

by Stephen Greenleaf

  “The book was purportedly written in prison by a man who’d been falsely accused of a crime. According to the manuscript, the man was a teacher, the crime was sexual abuse, the victim was his student, and the date was nine years back.”

  “According to the book,” Jake mimicked.

  I nodded. “I got into this because Bryce Chatterton hired me to find the author—the manuscript showed up at Periwinkle unaccredited. Kind of a weird assignment, I thought, and after I read the book it seemed even more bizarre, because what I decided was that what was purportedly fiction was most probably a roman à clef that described a set of historical circumstances and the fallout therefrom.” I paused and looked around the room. “I apologize for the lawyerese—the fumes off the Commercial Code are warping my brain.”

  Jake took advantage of the interruption. “Who else knows this story you’re telling?”

  “No one but me knows the whole truth, I don’t think, not even your client. The police know some of it and when I’m through here they’ll know enough more to make an arrest.” I looked at Gillis. “A friend of mine has a letter that lays it all out in the event something untoward befalls me on my way back to the office.”

  I leaned back in the chair and put my feet on the desk. “The assumption that the author had been in prison for the reason set out in the book seemed legitimate at first. I found a school—Sebastian—where a sex scandal had apparently occurred, though not nine years ago but six. Then I got the name of a teacher—Wade Linton—who had gone to jail for a similar crime even though the people who knew him best said he was incapable of such an act and suggested he’d been framed. Finally, I got what purported to be the name of the victim—a former Sebastian student named Carrie Devlin.”

  “Who?” Emma Drayer asked sharply.

  “Carrie Devlin. Scholarship girl from Noe Valley. Kind of a loner at Sebastian; she didn’t even play soccer.”

  “You’re saying she’s the one Wade made love to?”

  “I’m saying that’s what someone told me.”

  “Who?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  My attentions started to return to Jake, who was the only audience I cared about, but I thought of something that needed nailing down so I kept my eyes on Emma. “The day we met, Christine mentioned that you’d taken one of the soccer players to Europe, to attend a special camp.”

  Emma frowned. “So?”

  “I was wondering which one it was.”

  Her glance flicked toward Marvin Gillis, then retreated from his lordly stare. When she looked at her lawyer, she got only a puzzled shrug. In the resulting vacuum, Emma Drayer decided to say nothing.

  “This is about soccer?” Jake’s sarcasm was in full bloom.

  “This is about fraud and murder.”

  “Not so far.”

  I glanced at Gillis, who was careful to meet my eye, but his bluster had begun to wilt. “At this point my theory started to fall apart,” I went on. “For one thing, the victim’s mother was certain her daughter had never been molested, plus she had never been advised by the DA that such a charge had been made, rather a strange omission. Also, the actual perpetrator of the crime, according to the book—Carrie Devlin’s father—doesn’t seem to have had an opportunity to do it, since he was divorced and out of the household by that time. And finally, the manuscript contains some text that indicates it wasn’t written by a person who’d been locked away for the last six years.”

  “What kind of text?” Jake asked.

  “The kind that talks about establishments that didn’t exist when the author went off to Folsom.”

  Gillis couldn’t contain either himself or his image any longer. “What’s this crap about a father?”

  “Lloyd didn’t tell you? The last section of the manuscript showed up at Periwinkle a few days ago, the part where the protagonist is released from jail and hunts down the person who actually did abuse his student. According to the book, the real bad guy was the father.”

  “That’s preposterous,” Gillis growled.

  “That’s the book.”

  “Get on with it, Tanner,” Jake Hattie demanded again. “Where the hell’s the crime?”

  “The crime is that your client killed Wade Linton.”

  Jake fought my accusation and my look. “That’s absurd.”

  “Or, rather, had him killed,” I amended, “by a man named Arthur O’Shea. The cops are looking for him now.”

  I turned to Gillis. “I don’t say it’s going to be easy to pin it on you—you didn’t do the deed, after all, you were just behind the scenes pulling the puppet strings, the way you always have at Sebastian. But somehow you lured Linton into thinking the evidence he was looking for was still in the counselor’s office at Sebastian. Then you warned Arthur O’Shea he was coming. O’Shea’s a sanctimonious automaton, probably battle-fatigued as well—he thinks he owes his soul to Sebastian and you had him primed to defend it with every ounce of his well-trained strength. When Linton showed up, sneaking around the way you had said he would, the mix was made and the end inevitable.”

  Gillis was poised to rebut me, but Jake held up a hand. “You say nothing,” he instructed darkly. “This man has accused you of staging a murder. That’s slander per se. We’ll have a complaint on file by Monday.”

  “A waste of time, Jake.”

  “Just stick to the narrative, Tanner.” He looked at his client. “Does this O’Shea person have a lawyer?”

  Gillis shrugged.

  “Everyone sit still.” Jake walked across the room, picked up the telephone beside me, dialed, whispered some instructions, and hung up. “He’s got one now,” he said on the way back to his chair. “Go on, Tanner. And let me say I’m shocked at what you’re doing.”

  “Not as shocked as that poor kid was when he found Wade Linton’s body in the light well.”

  Next to me, Emma Drayer began to cry.

  Jake whispered something and Gillis shook his head. The distress in the air was palpable. I waited for one of them to say something more, but they left the lead with me.

  “What I finally figured out was that the book—Homage to Hammurabi is the title, by the way—was both right and wrong. There was a frame, all right, and Linton really was imprisoned for something he didn’t do. But it wasn’t because Carrie Devlin was sexually abused, it was because of what happened to another student at Sebastian.”

  “Who?” Jake asked.

  “Jane Ann Gillis.”

  Gillis exploded. “How dare you tar my child with your slur. Bad enough that you make scurrilous allegations against me, but to inject Jane Ann into your perverted fantasy is criminal. I’ll see that your license is—”

  “I know what happened, Gillis,” I interrupted. “I know how Jane Ann was involved, and how you used her mistake to further your own purposes. If you think I don’t, ask Emma. That’s why she’s here.”

  When Gillis looked at her he was greeted by a perfect mask of loathing. In its acrid glare, Marvin Gillis chose to opt for silence.

  “The question you have to decide is whether I go into Jane Ann’s part in all this,” I went on. “Or do I keep it quiet for as long as I can? It’s up to you. If you’re as concerned about your daughter as you say, you’ll go along with my proposal.”

  “Which is what?”

  Jake started to say something to him, but Gillis shook his head. Bluff and bluster dropped from him like leaves. “Go ahead,” he added softly.

  I made my pitch. “If you go along with me, I’ll do my best to keep Jane Ann’s situation confidential. No guarantees, but I’ll try.” I looked around. “And so will everyone else in this room. In return, you and Jake have to get together with the people downtown and come up with a plea bargain I can live with. Between the two of you, you’ve got enough clout to cut any deal you want, but I want a real plea—no nolo, no dismissal. The deal has to include jail time for Gillis—one year, minimum. If I hear you’re denying involvement in Linton’s death, I’m going to
the DA and tell all.” I smiled. “In other words, Mr. Gillis, I’m doing to you what you did to Wade Linton back in ’eighty-three—I’m sending you off to prison without a trial by a jury of your peers.”

  Gillis sagged. “No,” he said softly. “I can’t. Not that.” His plea was elemental, the entreaty of a frightened old man.

  “Are you saying Marvin molested his child?” Jake demanded. “If you are, I have to warn you that—”

  “No,” I said quickly. “I should make that clear. I’m not saying that at all. It’s the book that said that.”

  “Then what are you saying?”

  “I’m saying Marvin Gillis had Wade Linton killed to save the Sebastian School.”

  There was a long lost moment before Jake Hattie asked, “How could this Linton character be a threat to an institution like Sebastian?”

  “Because Gillis and his henchman Finner had a little scam going.”

  “Which was?”

  “Falsifying grade transcripts and test scores to get Sebastian kids admitted to colleges for which they didn’t qualify.”

  “You must be mad,” Finner rasped in the hush that followed, but the effort was meek and tepid, in keeping with surrender.

  “Linton was framed to keep him from getting enough evidence together to blow the whistle,” I elaborated, for the first time certain I was right.

  Jake thought it over. “More,” he said simply.

  “It was pretty basic, actually. Over the years, Sebastian had justified its existence by getting its graduates admitted to the most prestigious colleges in the country. That kept the parents happy, which kept the endowment flush. But in the eighties, the job got tougher. On one hand, the student body contained an increasing number of pampered kids who spent more time hanging out in SoMa and Stinson Beach than hitting the books at Sebastian. On the other, because of what was going on at the colleges, there were far fewer places left over for the Sebastian grads. When the number of Sebastian admissions to the good schools started dropping precipitously, Gillis and Finner came up with a way to cheat.”

  “This is kid stuff, Tanner,” Jake groused. “Literally.”

  “Talk to people, Jake, people with teenagers. What you’ll hear is that they’re in a panic these days. They want their little darlings to go to Cal and Stanford and Harvard and Yale like they did, but getting admitted to those schools has become almost impossible. Berkeley is twenty-five percent Oriental because so many Asians have top grades and test scores. Stanford’s reputation is as good as Harvard’s, so it gets a dozen applications for every available slot. Because things have tightened up so much, kids are applying to ten or twelve schools unstead of one or two which makes the whole admissions process haphazard. I’ll tell you how bad it is—last year, Cal turned down two thousand applicants who came out of high school with four-point averages. How do Jason and Jennifer McWealthy compete with all that? They don’t, unless they come out of Sebastian with almost perfect records. And if you think I’m exaggerating about the panic, you’ve been spending too much time with your bimbos.”

  “You’re saying the colleges are corrupt, too?”

  I shook my head. “I’m saying when the child of a mover and shaker is involved, maybe they don’t look real hard at the student’s stats. But they’re no more corrupt than the admissions system in general; it’s Sebastian that fudged. The grades were upped and the test scores were inflated as well.”

  “How?”

  “The grades were just a double set of books. Linton got his hands on a set of the real transcripts just before he went to jail. What he needed were the applications that showed the phony numbers Sebastian sent to the colleges.”

  “What about the scores?” Jake asked. “Those are national testing companies. Are you saying they were in on it, too?”

  I shook my head. “Those companies rely on local institutions to administer the tests, and I’ll bet Sebastian administered a lot of them. Once Gillis and Finner decided to cheat, my guess is they used ringers to take the tests for the poor performers. I’m told kids take the SATs half a dozen times these days, starting as early as eighth grade. There are courses that do nothing but teach kids how to beat the stupid things. As a result, scores can hop by hundreds of points. If the first results of a Sebastian student were poor, I figure Finner sent in a reliever.”

  “Aren’t they fingerprinted or something?” Jake asked.

  I shook my head. “A teacher I know tells me the only thing they do is check the admission slips the kids receive from the testing service against their driver’s license or other ID. You know as well as I do that if money and honesty aren’t drawbacks, you can beat any security system there is, and Sebastian could certainly beat that one.” I laughed. “I suppose it’s progress, in a way. It used to be the athletic departments were the ones trying to beat the tests—back when I was a lawyer I had some cases of ringers taking SATs for jocks or jocks taking the test themselves but copying every answer from the person sitting next to them, with the cooperation of that student in return for a payoff from the athletic department. The bottom line is, if no one questions a given result, the system can be beaten, and no one was raising questions about the Sebastian kids till Wade Linton came along.”

  “This is the reason you’re claiming Gillis had Linton sent to jail?” Jake asked.

  I nodded. “And ultimately killed.”

  “You have evidence of this scam, as you call it?”

  “It’s around. The police are at Sebastian now, impounding records. The admissions files at Stanford and Cal are being screened to compare with what they find at Sebastian, and they’ve issued a subpoena duces tecum to the testing company in New Jersey. Also, somehow or other, Linton got hold of the double numbers for about a dozen students, from talking to the kids, or maybe because he had friends in some college admissions departments. The notations of grade and test score discrepancies he made in a yearbook are in the hands of the police as well. What he was after when he died was documentary proof to take to the cops. I suppose as an ex-con, he figured he had to nail it down before he could get anyone to do anything.” I looked at Gillis. “He was probably right.”

  “Where did they find the yearbook?” Gillis blurted.

  “In Golden Gate Park. That was a break—I figure you sent your flunky Lloyd out to track down Linton after the manuscript showed up. Lloyd must have located his hideout just before I did, but he got scared off before he searched the place well enough to find Linton’s stash.” I grinned. “Next time you need a surrogate, pick one with some guts.”

  “Is this true?” Emma Drayer blurted. I thought the question was addressed to me, but her eyes were fixed on Gillis.

  “Of course not,” Gillis said stiffly.

  “You killed Wade Linton to save that obnoxious school?”

  Gillis flared. “That school is the most important institution in this city. It has done more for San Francisco than any of you will ever do. Sebastian is San Francisco. Sebastian must never die.”

  “That’s enough,” Jake Hattie said, regarding his client with what looked a bit like disappointment. Then he looked at me. “There’s more to this, Tanner. And you know me well enough to know I’m going to find out what it is.”

  “And you know me well enough to know you can’t keep me from doing what I have to do.”

  “Which is what?”

  “Make sure no one else suffers because of what went on at that silly school.”

  When I was certain he was dying, I knelt at his side and asked if he had anything to tell me. His eyes would barely open; his voice was barely audible.

  Instead of the apology I expected, I heard only this: “At least I have accomplished something—now you truly are a criminal.”

  Homage to Hammurabi, p. 331

  30

  Gillis and Finner and their lawyers stomped out of the office and down the hall, no doubt bent on further consultation, leaving Emma Drayer looking out the window at the pigeons and the rooftops while her la
wyer looked at me, her feelings mixed, her stylish suit a natty barrier between us. I preferred her in a headband, so I told her so.

  She waved away the observation. “You know this finishes us with the firm, don’t you? Even if he survives all this, the last people Marvin’s going to want to see around here are Emma and me.”

  “He’s not going to survive this—not as a lawyer, at any rate.”

  “I suppose not,” Christine concluded after a lengthy moment. “Clients get nervous when their attorney is the main subject of gossip at the Pacific Union Club.” She looked at her friend. “Guess we’d better get our résumés up to speed, huh, Em?”

  Motionless and morose, Emma didn’t answer. In a dark corner of the room, she seemed as bewildered as a recent widow, receding into shadow and stupor.

  Her lawyer shook her head with compassion. “There’s one thing that bothers me.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I didn’t hear Emma’s role mentioned during all of that.”

  “That’s because Gillis was smart enough not to take me on.”

  “She hasn’t been real candid about all this,” Christine continued, as if Emma had just stepped out. “If I’m going to be her lawyer, I think I should know what her exposure is.”

  I looked at Emma. “Do you have any problem with that?”

  It took a while, but Emma finally shook her head.

  “Do you tell her, or do I?”

  Slumped against the wall, eyes still on the out-of-doors, doubtlessly wishing she was a referee rather than a participant, she told me to go ahead.

  I swiveled toward Christine. “Emma didn’t have anything to do with the phony records. What Emma had to do with was helping Gillis prevent Wade Linton from exposing the admissions scam back when Linton first suspected it.”

  “How did she do that?”

  “Remember back in ’eighty-three, when Emma was in trouble for challenging Gillis over the edict following the Balboa game? She was afraid Gillis was going to fire her as an insubordinate, so she looked into the possibility of getting a new job. But when she did, she found she’d been blacklisted. She was pretty desperate at that point, quite naturally. Then Gillis came along and offered her a deal.”