Women's Murder Club [08] The 8th Confession

by James Patterson

  “Come on!” She laughed again.

  “Really. You didn’t threaten me, didn’t hit me or stick me with a needle. I’ve got a guy in the ER right now with three broken ribs and a concussion, and he won’t give up his cell phone. ‘I’m working,’ he says. Took three of us to wrench his phone out of his hand.”

  And just then, Chesney’s beeper went off. He looked at it, said, “Damn. I’ve got to get back. Um, Yuki, would you want to do this again sometime?”

  “Sure,” said Yuki. “I’m only a taxi ride away.”

  “Maybe we could go somewhere else. Maybe you could show me the city.”

  Yuki gave him a coy smile, said, “So I guess I’m forgiven.”

  John put his hand over hers. “I’ll let you know.”

  She laughed and so did he, and their eyes locked until he took his hand away — and then he was gone.

  Yuki was already waiting for his call.

  Chapter 36

  CINDY TOOK A right turn out of her apartment building, cell phone pressed to her ear, listening to Lindsay say, “I wish I could do something, but we’re drowning in the Bailey case. Drowning.”

  “My editor is holding page one of the Metro section for my story. I’ve got a deadline. You’re saying you’ve got nothing at all?”

  “You want the truth? Conklin and I were kicked off Bagman Jesus on day one. We tried to work it on our own time —”

  “Thanks anyway, Linds. No, really,” Cindy said, snapping her phone closed. Enough said. No one was working the case.

  Cindy walked up Townsend Street to the corridor between her apartment and the spot where Bagman Jesus had been murdered. She stopped at the humble shrine outside the train yard, blood still staining the sidewalk, newly wilted flowers and handwritten notes woven into the chain-link fence.

  She stood for a while reading the messages from friends telling Bagman Jesus that he’d be missed and remembered. These notes were heartbreaking. A good man had been killed, and the police were too busy to find his killer. So who was fighting in Bagman’s corner?

  She was.

  Cindy moved on, keeping pace with pedestrians exiting the train station. She turned onto Fifth Street and made her way toward the brick building in the middle of the block that housed the soup kitchen called From the Heart.

  On one side of the soup kitchen was a hole-in-the-wall liquor store. On the other side was a fast-food Chinese restaurant that looked really low, like it served tree squirrel sautéed with brown sauce and peanuts.

  In between the restaurant and the soup kitchen was a black door. Cindy had a date behind that door. She hoisted her computer bag higher up on her shoulder, turned the knob, and gave the door a shove with her hip. It opened at the foot of a dark and sour-smelling stairway.

  Cindy began the steep climb, the stairs wrapping around a small landing, rising again to a floor with three doors, the signage identifying them as a nail salon, a massage parlor, and, toward the front of the building, PINCUS AND PINCUS, ATTORNEYS-AT-LAW.

  Cindy pressed the intercom button on the panel beside the door, gave her name, and was buzzed in. She took a seat in the reception area, an alcove filled wall-to-wall with a cracked leather sofa and a coffee table. She leafed through an old copy of Us Weekly, looking up as someone called her name.

  The man introduced himself as Neil Pincus. He was dressed in gray slacks, a white button- down shirt with the sleeves rolled up, no tie. He had a receding hairline and a pleasant, unremarkable face, and he was wearing a gold wedding band. He put out his right hand and so did she.

  “Nice to meet you, Mr. Pincus.”

  “Neil. Come on in the back. I can give you only a few minutes, but they’re all yours.”

  Chapter 37

  CINDY SAT ACROSS from the attorney’s desk, her back to the dirty window. She glanced at a grouping of framed photos on the credenza to her right: the Pincus brothers with their good-looking wives and teenage daughters. Neil Pincus stabbed a button on his telephone console, said to his brother, “Al, please take my calls. I’ll be just a few minutes.”

  Then he said to Cindy, “How can I help you?”

  “You’ve got a heck of a reputation in this neighborhood.”

  “Thanks. We do what we can,” Pincus said. “People get arrested and either get a public defender or they ask us.”

  “Nice of you to do this work for free.”

  “It’s pretty rewarding, actually, and we’re not alone. We work with a group of businesspeople around here who kick in money for legal costs and special needs. We have a needle-exchange program. We run a literacy program —”

  The phone rang. Neil Pincus peered at the caller ID, turned his eyes back to Cindy, and talked over the ring tone. “I’m sorry. But I think you should tell me why you’re here before the phone drives us both crazy.”

  “I’m doing a five-part piece about Bagman Jesus, the homeless man recently found dead.”

  “I read your story.”

  “Okay. Good. So this is it,” Cindy said. “I can’t get the police interested in his death. They don’t think his murder is solvable.”

  Pincus sighed, said, “Well, that’s typical.”

  “I need Bagman’s real name in order to get a fingerhold on his past and work forward from there. I’m hoping he may have been a client of yours. If not, maybe you could lead me to someone who knew him.”

  “Ah. If I’d known what you wanted, I could have saved you a trip. I’ve seen him on the street, sure, but Bagman Jesus never came here, and if he had, I probably wouldn’t tell you.”

  “Lawyer-client privilege?”

  “Not exactly. Look, Cindy, I don’t know you, so I shouldn’t be telling you what to do. But I will anyway.

  “The homeless aren’t stray puppies. They’re homeless for a reason. Most of them are drug addicts. Or they’re psychotic. Some are violent. I’m sure you’re well- meaning, but this fellow was murdered.”

  “I understand.”

  “Do you? You’re a pretty girl in pretty clothes, walking around the Tenderloin alone asking who killed Bagman Jesus. Just suppose for a minute that you find his killer — and he turns on you?”

  Chapter 38

  WHEN CINDY LEFT Neil Pincus, she was irritated and just as determined as before. The lawyer had called her a girl. Like she was one of his kids. He’d underestimated her tenacity, and he didn’t get that she was a working journalist who covered crime.

  She was careful. She was experienced. She was a pro.

  And what she hated most? He’d gotten to her.

  She shook off a wave of anxiety, opened the door to From the Heart, looked around at the hundred ragged people going through the food line, others hunched over their plates, protecting their bacon and eggs. Three men in dirty clothes rapped in the corner.

  For the first time, she wondered if someone in this place had killed Bagman Jesus.

  She looked for but didn’t see the day supervisor, Luvie Jump, so Cindy made a bullhorn of her cupped hands and shouted for attention.

  “I’m Cindy Thomas from the Chronicle,” she said. “I’m writing a story about Bagman Jesus. I’m going to be sitting right outside,” she said, pointing through the window to two plastic chairs on the sidewalk. “If anyone can help me, I’d be grateful.”

  Voices rose and echoed around the large room.

  Cindy went out the door and took a seat in the more stable of the two chairs. She opened her laptop and a line formed, and from the first interview, Cindy learned something: “I’d be grateful” was code for “I’ll pay for information.”

  An hour after making her announcement, Cindy had collected thirty stories of personal contact with Bagman Jesus, scraps of barely intelligible and frankly meaningless conversations, nothing solid, useful, or even interesting.

  The price for this crazy pastiche of information had added up to seventy-five bucks, including all the change at the bottom of her handbag, plus a lipstick, a penlight, the barrette in her hair, a tin of Altoids, and
three gel-ink pens.

  It would make a hilarious expense report, but her story hadn’t advanced even an inch.

  Cindy looked up as the last person, a black woman in a red stocking cap and purple-framed eyeglasses, took the chair opposite hers.

  “I’m out of cash, but I’ve got a BART card,” Cindy said.

  “Cindy? You taking up permanent residence here? Because that’s not allowed.”

  “Luvie! I’m still working this darned story. Still getting nothing, not even Bagman’s real name.”

  “Tell me who you talked to.”

  “Cindy scrolled to the top of her computer screen. “Noise Machine. Miss Patty. Salzamander. Razor, Twink T, Little Bit —”

  “Let me stop you there, honey. You see, your problem is also your answer. Street people use their aliases. You know. ‘Also known as.’ Some of them got records. Or don’t want their families to find them. They want to be lost. That could be why Bagman Jesus doesn’t have a real name.”

  Cindy sighed, thinking how she’d been hustled all morning by the nameless, homeless, and hopeless, feeling remorse for snapping at Lindsay, who was right to till more fertile ground.

  Mentally kissing her deadline good-bye, Cindy thanked Luvie, packed up her computer, and walked toward Mission, thinking that Bagman Jesus had disconnected from his past by his own design. His death was the end of his story.

  Or was it?

  An idea bloomed.

  Cindy phoned her editor, said, “Therese, can you give me some time in about five minutes? I want to run something by you. Something with legs.”

  Chapter 39

  AFTERNOON SUN FILTERED through the skylight and haloed Sara Needleman’s head as she gave Pet Girl holy hell.

  “What were you thinking when you left the Baileys’ place cards on the table?”

  “I wasn’t in charge of the place cards, Sara.”

  “You were. I specifically asked you to check the place cards against the guest list. Are Isa and Ethan on the guest list?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “I could kill you, I really could. Those two empty seats at table four. Everyone is thinking about the Baileys as it is.”

  “I’m sorry, Sara,” Pet Girl said, but she was decidedly not sorry. In fact, elation was rising in her like champagne bubbles. She had to stifle a laugh.

  Place cards! Like place cards were important!

  Pet Girl and two other gal Fridays sat behind the reception table in the magnificent Loggia of the Asian Art Museum, welcoming the guests to an engagement dinner for Sara Needleman’s niece, Frieda.

  The guests were the cream of San Francisco society: senators and doctors of medicine and science, publishers and movie stars. They came up the grand staircase in their tuxedos and custom-made gowns, found their seat assignments at the reception table, and were directed to Samsung Hall.

  From there, they could enter the galleries to view the priceless works of art from Japan and China and Korea before sitting down to a table dressed with raw silk and calla lilies. Then they’d be served a seven-course dinner prepared by the eminent chef Yoji Futomato.

  But that would be later. Right now Sara Needleman wound up her tirade with a final flourish. “You can leave now,” she snapped. “Only a few people have yet to arrive.”

  “Thanks, Sara.” Pet Girl smiled. “Still want me to walk the dogs in the morning?”

  “Yes, yes, please do. I’ll be sleeping in.”

  “Don’t worry,” Pet Girl said. “I won’t wake you.”

  Pet Girl said good-bye to the other gals. She took her annotated copy of the guest list and stashed it in her handbag, already mulling over the two hundred people she’d greeted this evening — who had acknowledged her, who had not, how many points each had scored.

  And she thought ahead to her evening alone.

  She’d make a little pasta. Drink a little wine. Spend a couple of pleasant hours going over the guest list.

  Sort out her notes.

  Make some plans.

  Chapter 40

  CLAIRE HAD PLANTED her hands on her hips and said, “We need police work” — and we’d done it. Conklin and I had strip-searched the Baileys’ house for the fourth time that week, looking for God only knew what.

  We’d been through all thirty thousand square feet: the ballroom; the two poolrooms, one with a pool table and one with a pool; the bedroom suites; the kitchens; the pantries; the sitting rooms; the playrooms; the dining rooms and living rooms. We’d opened closets, boxes, and safes; dumped drawers; and flipped through every book in the whole flippin’ library.

  “I forgot what we’re looking for,” I groused to Conklin.

  “That’s because whatever killed them isn’t here,” said Rich. “Not only am I out of good ideas but I don’t have any bad ones either.”

  “Yes, and haven’t we done a fine job of trashing the place?” I said, staring around the main salon.

  Every doorknob and flat surface and objet d’art was smudged with black powder. Every mirror, every painting, had been taken down from the walls.

  Even the benign and wise Charlie Clapper was disgusted: “The Baileys had a lot of friends and a lot of parties. We’ve got enough prints and trace to short out the crime lab. For a year.”

  Conklin said, “How about it, Sarge?”

  “Okay. We’re done.”

  We turned out the lights as we worked our way to the front hall, bumped into each other in the dark as Conklin locked the front door behind us. Then he walked me to my car.

  He held the door open, and as I stepped up to my Explorer’s running board, my foot slipped, throwing me off balance. Rich caught me, his hands gripping my shoulders, and there was a fraction of a moment when I could see the danger.

  I closed my eyes.

  And as if we’d planned it, his mouth was on mine and my arms were around his neck, and I felt like I was falling off the face of the earth.

  I held on tight, the heat burning me up, my hair blowing around our faces as cars streamed past us. I heard a driver calling out his window, “Get a room!”

  And with that, gravity dropped me back to earth with a jolt.

  What the hell are we doing?

  Before Rich could say, “That man has the right idea,” I panted, “Damn, Richie. I don’t know who’s crazier, you or me.”

  His hands were at the small of my back, pulling me tight against his body.

  I gently disengaged from his arms. His face was all twisted up from our kisses, and he looked… stung.

  I said, “I’m sorry, Rich. I should’ve…”

  “Should’ve what?”

  “I should’ve watched my step. Are you okay?”

  “Oh yeah. Just have another thing to pretend never happened.”

  My lips were still tingling, and I felt ashamed. I couldn’t look at his hurt face any longer, so I turned away, placed my shaky foot firmly on the running board, and hauled my stupid ass into the driver’s seat.

  “See you tomorrow,” I said. “Okay?”

  “Sure. Yes, Lindsay, yes.”

  I closed the door and put the car in gear, and as I backed out, Rich motioned for me to roll down my window. I did.

  “You. Since you asked, you’re crazier,” he said, putting both hands on the window frame. “Between you and me, it’s you.”

  I leaned out the window, put my arm around Rich’s neck, and drew him to me so that our cheeks touched. His face was warm and damp, and when he put his hand in my hair, I almost melted from his sweetness. I said, “Richie, forgive me.”

  I pulled back, tried to smile. I waved and then headed out to the empty apartment I shared with Joe.

  I wanted to cry.

  For all the reasons being with Rich was wrong before, it was still wrong. I was still about ten years older, we were still partners — and I still loved Joe.

  Sowhy, I asked myself, driving away from Rich — speeding away, as a matter of fact — does doing the right thing feel so bad?

&n
bsp; Chapter 41

  YUKI AND PHIL HOFFMAN sat in easy chairs in Judge Duffy’s chambers. The court stenographer was sitting behind her machine near the judge’s desk, and Yuki was thinking, What now? What the hell is it now?

  Judge Duffy looked frazzled, as though he’d misplaced his hallmark nonchalance. He tapped an audiocassette on its side, called out edgily, “Corinne? Got that player ready?”

  The clerk came into the wood-paneled office and placed the cassette player in front of the judge, who thanked her and then pressed the tape into the box.

  Duffy said to Yuki and Hoffman, “This is a tape of a phone call made from a monitored pay phone at the women’s jail to juror number two. It’s crackly but audible.”

  Yuki looked at Hoffman, who shrugged as the judge pressed the play button.

  A young woman said, “Can you hear me okay?” A second woman, recognizable by her nasal twang as juror number two, the retired postal worker Carly Phelan, said, “Lallie, I can’t talk long. I’m supposed to be in the little girls’ room.”

  The judge pressed the stop button, said, “Lallie is the juror’s daughter.”

  Hoffman said, “The juror has a daughter in detention at the women’s jail?”

  “So it seems,” said Duffy.

  The judge pressed the start button, and the tape played again. There was some back- and-forth conversation between the two women: how Lallie’s defense was going, how her mother liked the hotel accommodations, what was happening with Lallie’s son now that both mother and grandmother weren’t home.

  Duffy said, “It’s coming now. Listen to this.”

  Yuki strained to make out the words under the static.

  “I saw your defendant in the shower this morning,” said Lallie. “That Stacey Glenn?”

  “Crap,” Hoffman said.

  Duffy hit rewind, played it again.

  “I saw your defendant in the shower this morning. That Stacey Glenn? She’s talking to the matron, saying if she had done that murder, she wouldn’t have done it with no crowbar when she’s got a perfectly good handgun at home.”