— San Francisco Chronicle. Monday, June 7.
“Did you see the paper?” I ask Rosie. She’s in her kitchen pouring water into the coffee maker at six o’clock the same morning. Grace is still asleep.
She ignores my question and asks, “How was your date last night?”
First things first.
I reply honestly. “Fair.”
I had a horrible night. I tossed and turned for a couple of hours, then I gave up at five-thirty and came over here. Rosie was already up and dressed when I arrived. Her small TV is tuned to Channel 2. A copy of the Chronicleis on the kitchen table. I’m studying the photo of Petrillo, Rosie and me standing on the sidewalk in front of the United terminal. Petrillo’s eyes are bulging. I’m looking down. Rosie’s arms are folded. The headline reads, Studio head holds secret meeting with movie star’s attorneys. There is a smaller photo of Petrillo leaving Little Richard’s house.
“So,” Rosie says, “is Leslie prepared to step up to the plate?”
Not exactly. “She’s still weighing her options.”
“She’s been doing that for weeks.”
“She’s very methodical.”
Rosie scowls. “She should have been able to figure it out by now. She’s stalling.”
“It’s complicated.”
“It isn’t that complicated. Life is all about dealing with complications. Anybody can handle the easy stuff.”
So true. “There are issues on many levels.”
“Such as?”
“Her career. It doesn’t look nice for a potential federal court nominee to be intimate with a criminal defense attorney.”
“Whom she chooses to sleep with has nothing to do with her qualifications as a judge.”
“It may be viewed as a lapse of judgment.”
“I didn’t view it as a lapse in judgment when I was sleeping with you.”
“You weren’t being considered for the federal bench.”
She gives me a half smile. “Tell her to grow up and get over it.”
“I may have suggested that to her.”
“I presume this was not met with resounding enthusiasm?”
“That would be correct.”
She sighs. “What else?”
I explain that Leslie has concerns about Grace. “She thinks Grace may resent her.”
Rosie’s tone softens. “It’s a risk. I’ll do what I can to help.”
“Thanks.” I pause for a moment and add, “She’s also worried about you.”
This gets a discernible reaction. “Me? Why?”
“She thinks we still have feelings for each other.”
“Do we?”
“I can only speak for myself.”
“And speaking only for yourself, what have you decided?”
“Come on, Rosie. I thought we agreed that it was time to move on. I thought that was what you wanted.”
Her eyes flare. “Don’t lay this on me. And don’t tell me what I want. What do you want?”
It’s too early for this. I swallow hard and say, “I will always have feelings for you, Rosita, but I don’t think we’re meant to live with each other. I think it would be better if we tried to move on with our lives in some positive direction.”
“And you want to move on with Leslie?”
“I think so.”
She nods. “Do you love her?”
“I’m pretty sure.”
“Does she love you?”
“She’s trying.”
“Tell her to try a little harder.”
“What about you, Rosita?”
“What about me?”
“Are you ready to move on?”
“I think so.” She pauses and adds, “I have a lot of stuff going.”
“I know.”
“Do you have any idea how big my sacrifice has been?”
“How’s that?”
She smiles and says, “I gave up my personal sex toy so you could roll around together. The least she can do is pay me the courtesy of being serious about you so that my self-control hasn’t been in vain.”
Ever the pragmatist. “Where do I fit in? You seem to think of me as some sort of a functionary in all of this.”
Her eyes dance. “Essentially.”
I chuckle. “Do you think I’ll ever be in a story where I actually get the girl in the end?”
“It happened once,” she says. “Then we got married and ruined everything.”
“Not everything,” I say. “We still have Grace.”
“That’s true.”
“And we have each other.”
“Yes we do.”
I say, “Do you think other divorced couples have conversations like this?”
“We aren’t like other divorced couples.”
That’s for sure. It’s one of the reasons we weren’t good at marriage counseling. Rosie says neither of us reacts well to conventional stimuli. I came over here to talk about Angel’s case and the Chronicle article. So far, I’ve gotten ten minutes of advice on my love life. She has a unique ability to make me feel better while she’s telling me I’m acting like an idiot.
She’s ready to talk business. “So,” she says, “that was a nice picture in the paper.”
“We look bad.”
“It could have been worse.” She arches her eyebrows. “They got your right side.”
“So?”
“That’s always been your good side.”
I’m a basket case and she’s making wisecracks. I wish I had her ability to keep things in perspective—and to sleep at night.
She takes a sip of orange juice and says, “This headline about a secret meeting is preposterous. There was nothing secret about it. We were in a public place. They took our picture in a crowded airport. They could have followed us to the Red Carpet Club.”
“It doesn’t help. The article suggests we were trying to cut a deal.”
“That’s bullshit. We were talking to the wrong guy. Last time I checked, the president of Millennium Studios has no authority to approve a plea bargain for an accused felon. Did Edwards consider that Petrillo’s company invested millions in this movie? Does he expect him to walk away from Angel? He’s trying to protect his investment.”
I start to respond when she holds up her hand and points to the TV. “Looks like they’re talking to your new buddy.”
The anchorman with the impeccable hair furrows his brow and tells us in his best melodramatic voice that there have been significant developments in the MacArthur case. He says, “Chronicle political correspondent Jerry Edwards has joined us.” His tone suggests Edwards just happened to be driving by the studio and decided to drop in for a chat.
Edwards looks like he slept in his rumpled gray suit. His narrow tie is loosened and his collar is open. He bears an uncanny resemblance to a bulldog. “Big developments overnight,” he growls to the camera. His delivery is a cross between Walter Winchell and Paul Harvey. “One of our camera crews was at SFO last night.”
“What a coincidence,” Rosie says.
Edwards cocks his head and starts talking faster. “Lo and behold, guess who drove up?” He pauses and says, “None other than Dominic Petrillo, the head of Millennium Studios, which is financing The Return of the Masterand the controversial China Basin project.”
I find it annoying when people ask questions of themselves on TV and answer them as if they’re imparting oracle-like wisdom. I prefer to talk to myself in the privacy of my own home.
Edwards continues his conversation with himself. “Guess who else was there? None other than Michael Daley and Rosita Fernandez, the attorneys for Angelina Chavez.”
Before I realize I’m talking to a television, I say, “It doesn’t mean a thing.”
“There’s more,” Edwards says. His eyes open wide. “Guess where Mr. Petrillo was earlier yesterday evening?”
The anchorman gets into the act. He sounds like Ed McMahon feeding straight lines to Johnny Carson when he asks, “Where?”
“The home of Richard MacArthur, Jr. Coincidence? I think not.”
Rosie asks, “Do you think this guy talks to his wife that way?”
“Yeah. They’re in bed and she says, ‘Sex tonight?’ Then he says, ‘I think not.’”
This elicits the hint of a grin.
Edwards is still going strong. “Who was Mr. Petrillo dining with at Postrio yesterday evening? None other than Carl Ellis, the construction contractor for the China Basin project.”
I say, “I thought Ellis went back to Vegas.”
Rosie can’t resist. She smiles and says, “I think not.”
Edwards explains the studio project is up for final approval next week. “Where does this leave the people of San Francisco?” he asks. “Why are secret meetings being held at the airport?”
The camera flashes back to the anchorman. He takes the cue and asks, “Why, Jerry?”
Edwards jabs an index finger at the camera and says, “We don’t know.”
I say, “There’s insight for you. Don’t you just love live TV?”
Rosie puts a finger to her lips.
Edwards isn’t finished. “Something smells,” he says. “We will continue to monitor this situation. We willtalk to Dominic Petrillo. We willtalk to Michael Daley and Rosita Fernandez. We will talk to Angelina Chavez. We will talk to Richard MacArthur and Carl Ellis. We willmake sure the China Basin project does not move forward without a full hearing.”
Rosie adds, “We willmake noise just to hear the sound of our own voice.”
I glance at the TV a moment later. They’re showing video of flames shooting out the roof of a liquor store. “Isn’t that down near Tony’s market?” I ask.
Rosie looks at the TV and nods. She turns up the sound. The announcer says a three-alarm fire destroyed a liquor store on Twenty-fourth. Nobody was injured. Fire department officials are investigating the possibility of arson.
Rosie’s phone rings and I pick it up. It’s Tony. He asks, “Did you see what they did to Roberto Pena’s store?”
I put it together. “Yeah. Who did it?”
“I don’t know.” His breathing is heavy. “It’s three blocks from the market. I’ll bet you I’m next.”
“Stay calm, Tony.”
“Easy for you to say. Roberto’s store is gone. He could have been killed.”
“We don’t know if this has anything to do with you.”
“Let me talk to Rosita.”
I hand her the phone. Rosie’s family speaks Spanish only when there’s a serious problem. She hangs up a few minutes later. “I need to get down there right away,” she says. “I want to talk to Sergeant Alvarez.” She reflects for a moment and says, “Are you still planning to intercept Daniel Crown?”
“Yes. Do you still want to come with me?”
“No. I have to see Tony. Let me know if you find out anything from Crown.”
# # #
“Do you really think Crown is going to show up?” I’m talking to the young woman who has turned the operation of the espresso machine at Willie’s Café into a higher art form.
Her name is Becky. Most of her customers think of her simply as the woman who runs the coffee machine. If they spent a minute with her, they’d discover she’s a single mom who attends College of Marin. Trying to make ends meet on her modest income with a four year-old isn’t easy. Her blonde hair cascades down her shoulders. Her eyes look older than twenty-four.
“He’ll be here,” she assures me. “He hasn’t missed a day since his son started first grade, except when he was out of town working on movies.”
When I was a kid, people used to get their morning coffee at coffee shops and donut stores. In Marin County, people hang out at places like Willie’s, an upscale café on the edge of Kent Woodlands, an affluent community set in a tree-lined canyon adjacent to the Mt. Tam watershed. A two-bedroom fixer-upper in this part of the woods will set you back at least two million dollars. My car looks lonely among the SUVs in the parking lot. The oak tables in the restaurant are covered with checked cloths. The sweet aroma of freshly-brewed coffee and home-baked muffins wafts through the cheerful room. A harried young man with piercings on various parts of his anatomy operates the grill behind the counter. Everybody in the line outside the door seems to be wearing a designer sweatsuit or a cycling jersey. Attractive young au pairs rock infants in souped-up jogging strollers. The atmosphere is friendly, almost festive.
I’m sitting at the counter at the end of the coffee bar, not far from the windows. It’s a few minutes before eight. I dropped Grace off at school. Rosie went to see Tony. Then she’s going to the Hall to see Angel. I’m picking at my scrambled eggs and drinking coffee. It’s warm this morning and I wish I had a seat out on the deck. A steady stream of joggers and cyclists kibbitz at the coffee bar. It seems everybody knows everybody else—except me. I have more in common with Becky than anybody else in this restaurant. I’m trying to hide behind the sports section. My picture is on the front page.
The minutes tick. I finish my eggs. I ask Becky for another cup of coffee. I pay the bill. Still no sign of Crown. Finally, at eight-thirty, Becky gives me a nod. I glance toward the door. Crown walks in and takes a seat at an open table in the corner near the windows. He looks more like the guy who grew up in a comfortable Chicago suburb than a budding movie star. He’s wearing a University of Illinois T-shirt and a pair of cutoffs. His golden hair is slicked back and his eyes are covered by sunglasses. Becky leaves her post at the espresso machine to pour him a cup of coffee. He talks to her for a moment. It seems he’s ordering the usual, whatever that may be. On her way back to the counter, she walks by me and says, “Here’s your chance.”
I stick out like a sore thumb as I start walking toward Crown. I’m due in court later today and I’m wearing a business suit. I’m the only person who isn’t wearing spandex. I sense every eye in Willie’s is upon me.
Crown looks up when I reach him. A few months ago, I went to a seminar on criminal procedure given by a flamboyant criminal defense attorney named Mort Goldberg, who said that if you want to get somebody talking, you should act like you know them and start with sugar. If flattery doesn’t work, you can try something else. I extend my hand and say, “Danny, I’m Mike Daley. Our kids played soccer together.”
I get the reaction I want. His face breaks into a broad smile and he seems at ease. “Tell me your daughter’s name again,” he says.
“Grace.”
“I remember Grace,” he lies. Then he backtracks. “Well, maybe. I spend a lot of time on the road. I don’t always remember all the kids on my son’s teams.”
He starts to open his newspaper. We aren’t bonding yet. I try another softball question. I ask him how he likes living in Marin.
He’s a little more forthcoming. “It’s very nice,” he says. “The whole scene in L.A. was bad news. People respect our privacy here. I can come into a place like this and they treat me like I’m one of the neighbors. We live down the street from Sean and Robin. We can have them over to our house for a barbeque without helicopters flying overhead.”
I try to remain nonchalant as I quickly slide into the chair across from him. It’s considered bad form to act awestruck when someone mentions one of our local celebrities. Sean and Robin are the Penns, who live about a mile from here. They caused a bit of a stir when they moved in because they wanted to put up a new fence that was a little taller than permitted by code. The town fathers ultimately concluded the fence would discourage gawkers and tabloid photographers. Notwithstanding the height of their fence, they’re good neighbors. I’ve seen them at Little League games.
We exchange small talk. He doesn’t seem to mind my company. “Look, Danny,” I say, “there’s something I was hoping I could talk to you about.”
His demeanor changes abruptly. He picks up his newspaper, but doesn’t open it. When you’re a budding movie star, you always have to keep your defenses up.
“I have to make a confession,” I tell him. “I’m
Angelina Chavez’s lawyer.”
The warm glow in his eyes quickly disappears. He doesn’t say a word.
It’s better to come clean. I point toward his newspaper and say, “You’ll see my picture there along with my partner and Dominic Petrillo.”
He looks at the front page. Then he looks at me, but doesn’t say a word.
I tell him, “It would really help me if I could ask you a few questions.”
MD03 - Criminal Intent Page 24