Dammit. His fingerprints are turning up in a lot of places where they shouldn’t. I ask if she’s heard anything from the chief medical examiner’s office.
“I spoke with Dr. Beckert briefly,” she says, “and he’s willing to talk to us.”
“Any hints?”
“He said it was definitely not a suicide, and the time of death was between nine-thirty P.M. and one A.M.”
“That means she could have been alive after Ramon left,” I say.
“If you believe Ramon’s story.”
I do. “It also opens up the possibility that somebody came in later and killed her.”
“Or that she committed suicide,” she says.
“Not if Beckert is right.”
She hands me a stack of computer printouts and says, “These are the phone records from last Monday–both cell and land lines.” There were no incoming or outgoing cell phone calls. She confirms that Concepcion received calls at her apartment from Shanahan at seven, her mother at seven-thirty, Ramon at seven-forty-five and Peterson at nine-fifteen. “The last incoming call was at nine-forty-seven and lasted less than a minute.”
“From whom?”
“It was placed from the general number at the headquarters of the archdiocese.”
I can’t wait to hear Quinn’s explanation. “Were there any outgoing calls?”
“Just one. It was at nine-fifty and it lasted for a minute.”
“To whom?”
“Eduardo’s Latin Palace.”
“Maybe she ordered dinner.”
“Or maybe she talked to her ex-boyfriend. Did you happen to notice any food in her kitchen when Roosevelt showed you her apartment?”
“Not that I recall.”
She studies the police reports for a moment and says, “They found a partially-eaten chicken burrito on her kitchen table. It was in a wrapper from Eduardo’s.”
Chapter 19
“Things Just Didn’t Work Out”
“I have tried to give something back to our community.”
— Eduardo Lopez. San Francisco Chronicle.
It’s cool outside, but the heat is on at Eduardo’s. The packed restaurant is pulsating with athletic bodies at eleven-thirty on Wednesday night. Pete and I have worked our way to a booth in the corner of the bar, where we’re sweating profusely, nursing our beers and admiring the lead stallions on the dance floor. He leans across the table and shouts, “Oh, to be young and single.”
I nod, but make no effort to respond above the roar.
Pete spent the last few hours talking to people in the alley behind Concepcion’s apartment with little to show for it. He gestures to a shapely waitress with seductive eyes and long black hair and says, “Two more beers, please.” He winks and asks, “Is Mr. Lopez in?”
She responds with an indifferent shrug.
He places a twenty on the table and her reticence magically transforms into a warm smile. She sweeps up the bill with a graceful motion and says, “He just arrived.”
“Would you ask him to come see us?”
“Of course, sir. What’s your name?”
“Tell him we’re friends of Tony Fernandez.”
I love to watch my brother work.
She returns a moment later with our beers and her boss, a dapper man in his late fifties who looks as if he was transported intact from a GQ ad and bears a striking resemblance to Raul Julia. His tailor-made navy suit and crisp rep tie complement a perfect tan, slicked-back hair and neatly-trimmed silver goatee. He flashes a practiced smile, extends an inviting hand and manages to sound charming, even above the din. “I’m Eduardo Lopez,” he says in a lightly-accented voice. The consummate host presents the beers to us himself. The warmth in his tone seems genuine enough when he says, “I understand you know Tony Fernandez.”
Pete smiles back and says, “We do.”
He winks at the waitress and says, “These are on the house.”
She responds with a demure smile and walks away.
We thank Lopez profusely and the crinkles at the corners of his eyes become more pronounced as his plastic smile broadens. We partake in small talk for a few minutes before he tries to disengage. “It’s nice to meet you,” he says. “Please give my best to Tony.”
Pete stops him with an upraised hand and says, “We really need to talk to you.”
“About what?”
“Business.” The band launches into a raucous number that causes the dance floor to erupt. Pete gestures toward the back of the restaurant and shouts into Lopez’s ear, “Can we go someplace quiet?”
Our genial host forces a smile as he tries to figure out who we are and what we want. He motions us to follow him and we weave our way through the crowd, where he has a handshake for every man and a peck on the cheek for each woman. It takes him ten minutes to lead us less than fifty feet to a soundproof office above the kitchen, where I can still feel the reverberations from the drums downstairs. The windowless space is almost as large as Shanahan’s office and has a comfortable, albeit kitschy feeling. It houses an antique roll-top desk, two brown leather armchairs, a credenza and a conference table that holds a scale model of a low-income housing project to be built near the Sixteenth Street BART station. His cluttered desk is covered with photos of his numerous grandchildren, and the paneled walls are filled with citations, awards, testimonials and photos of Lopez with politicians, entertainers, sports figures and other celebrities. The most prominent is a signed picture of a young Lopez standing next to Orlando Cepeda at Candlestick Park. Next to it is a more recent photo of a graying Lopez with a retired Cepeda in front of Lopez’s burrito stand behind the scoreboard at SBC Park.
He eyes us warily and says, “What can I do for you gentlemen?”
Pete is chomping to leap into interrogation mode, but I want to ease Lopez into this discussion more slowly. I look at his family photos and say, “How old are your grandchildren?”
His chest puffs out when he says, “They range from six months to seventeen years.”
I was hoping this would get him talking, but he’s a man of relatively few words. I find another prop on the table and ask him about the development plans.
“It’s called Riordan Square,” he says. “We’re going to provide housing for over five hundred low-income families.”
“How did you happen to get involved in the development business?”
His eyes light up. “Our community has supported my business for a long time and I wanted to give something back. Conventional developers can’t make money on low- and moderate-income projects, so I created a template for establishing partnerships between private builders and nonprofit agencies. The developers handle the construction at a reduced cost and the nonprofits provide subsidies to make the units affordable.” He says that the archdiocese is the lead investor on Riordan Square. “Construction will begin in the spring.”
This calls for a platitude. “That’s tremendous,” I say. “Do you get any compensation for your efforts?”
“A lot of satisfaction.” He hesitates before he adds, “And a modest fee.”
I’m tempted to ask him how modest, but that would be pushing it. “Is there anything that could derail the process?”
“I certainly hope not. I’ve always been an optimist.”
And I’ve always been a cynic. “There has been speculation that the archdiocese may face serious financial problems if it suffers an adverse result in its pending litigation.”
He assures me that the archdiocese has more than adequate resources to fulfill its financial obligations. He sounds like a new father as he expounds about his plans, although the level of self-aggrandizement is a bit much for my taste. Finally, he decides it’s time to see why we’re really here. “Did you want to talk about the real estate business?” he asks.
I come clean. “Tony’s sister is my partner and we’re representing Father Aguirre. We’re looking for information about Maria Concepcion.”
The affable smile is still plastered on
his face, but his eyes show the first hint of concern. I can hear tension in his voice when he says, “I am certain Father Aguirre is not a murderer.”
It’s reassuring to hear him say it. “We were hoping you would help us demonstrate the correctness of your view to the District Attorney. We understand that you knew Ms. Concepcion.”
“I did. She patronized this establishment and I considered her a friend.”
He strikes me as the sort of guy who considers everybody on his dance floor a friend.
He adds, “I am very saddened by her sudden and untimely loss.”
Of course. “Do you know anything about her death?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Would you mind telling us where you were a week ago Monday night?”
“Are you suggesting I had something to do with it?”
“I’m not suggesting anything.”
His inflection remains upbeat when he says, “I was in the restaurant from six o’clock Monday evening until twelve-thirty Tuesday morning.” There’s an almost-imperceptible hint of defensiveness in his tone when he adds, “You don’t have to take my word for it. Feel free to ask any of our employees.”
We will, and if they value their jobs, they’ll give us the answer he wants us to hear. “We understand you knew Ms. Concepcion pretty well.”
“In my line of work, you get to know a lot of people.”
Too glib. “We’re told you were involved with her.”
“Involved?”
“Yes.” He might be able to buffalo his employees, but he won’t be able to do it to me.
“Where I come from,” he says, “personal relationships are nobody else’s business.”
“I grew up in this neighborhood and I agree with you, but things tend to get complicated after somebody has been murdered.”
“If you want to ask any additional questions, you’ll have to talk to my lawyers.”
That experience is likely to be considerably less than satisfying. “We aren’t after you,” I say. This isn’t entirely true. If I could prove that he was at her apartment on the night she died, I would scream until somebody down at the Hall of Justice decided to question him. “We can talk about this politely and we’ll get out of your hair, or I can bring over a subpoena and we can do this in a more unpleasant way.”
His eyes narrow. “My lawyers will tie you up for years.”
This is undoubtedly true. “You’ll look like you’re trying to hide something.”
No reply.
Egomaniacs generally like to have their psyches massaged, and I try to butter him up. “You know everybody in the neighborhood,” I say, “and we were hoping you might be willing to help us.”
He thinks about it for an instant and decides to show a degree of cooperation. “This situation is difficult,” he says in a subdued tone. “My wife and I are getting divorced. Obviously, my relationship with Ms. Concepcion has been a complicating factor.”
I try to empathize. “I can understand why you don’t want to do your laundry in public and I can assure you we’ll do everything to minimize your part in this matter.” It’s more than a little white lie, but still well south of a big whopper. I would broadcast everything I know about his divorce on KGO if it would help Ramon’s case.
He isn’t buying it. “I am most impressed by your sensitivity,” he says.
I offer a realistic assessment. “The police will find out about your relationship with Ms. Concepcion. If you don’t tell them about it, your wife will.”
He decides to play it straight. “They’ve already asked me about it,” he says.
It’s the opening I wanted. It also indicates that Roosevelt knows more than he’s told me. “What did you tell them?”
“That’s none of your business.”
It is now. I feed him the party line that the law requires the police to provide copies of their reports to us. “I’m going to find out,” I say, “and I’d rather hear it from you.” More importantly, I want to watch your expression as you tell me about it.
“I don’t want to hear my name on the news tomorrow,” he says.
I assure him that he won’t hear anything about it from me.
“Ms. Concepcion and I were involved for a short time.”
Was that so hard? “Was your wife aware of it?”
“Yes. I told her about it.”
“Before or after she hired the private investigator?”
He stares daggers at me and whispers, “After. It made reconciliation less likely.”
I’ll bet. This isn’t an opportune time to ask him to admit to serial adultery. “When did you start seeing Ms. Concepcion?”
“In March.” He confirms that they split up in early September.
“What caused the break-up?”
“Things just didn’t work out.”
I’m hoping for a little more. “Can you be a bit more specific?”
His tone turns more emphatic when he repeats, “Things just didn’t work out.”
Dammit. “Did you break up with her?”
“It was a mutual decision.”
That’s never the case. “And did she give you any indications she was unhappy?”
“Things deteriorated over time. She was fifteen years younger than I am and wanted to start a family. We were at different points in our lives.”
Not to mention the fact that you were still married.
“Obviously,” he says, “the end result was not the one either of us had hoped for.”
His tone suggests he’s told us everything he plans to about that subject. Pete reads the cue and interjects a fresh voice. “How was Ms. Concepcion’s mood the last time you talked?”
“Same as always.”
It’s a perfectly good answer that says nothing, and Pete keeps pushing. “Was she unhappy about the termination of your relationship?”
“She was getting counseling from Father Aguirre and seeing a therapist.”
“Did you notice any unusual behavior?”
“None.”
“Sadness or even depression?”
“No. Would you mind getting to the point?”
I tell him that the cops found Prozac in her medicine chest.
“I run a restaurant. I’m not a therapist.”
His tone is more callous than I might have expected. “There is some evidence that she may have committed suicide,” I say. “Do you think it’s possible?”
“It would trouble me to think she took her own life.”
“But you wouldn’t rule it out?”
“No, I wouldn’t.”
It isn’t as good as getting a diagnosis from her shrink, but it may help. “Mr. Lopez,” I say, “when was the last time you saw her?”
He says she came into the restaurant for dinner a couple of weeks ago by herself, and they had a polite, albeit strained conversation. She appeared nervous about the O’Connell case and expressed problems with a key witness. He says they didn’t speak again.
I tell him that there was a call from Concepcion’s apartment to this restaurant at approximately nine-fifty on the night she died.
“We receive hundreds of calls a day,” he says. “I have no idea who she talked to or what she was calling about. She may have ordered a take-out dinner.”
“Is there any way you can tell if she did?”
“Only if she paid with a credit card.”
I ask him to check it out, and he agrees to do so. I tell him the police found a partially-eaten burrito in a wrapper from his restaurant in her apartment.
“Are you suggesting I had something to do with it?”
“I’m trying to find out whether you or anybody else from your restaurant delivered a burrito to her apartment last Monday night.”
The last remnants of cooperation disappear. “I did not talk to her last Monday night,” he says, “and we don’t deliver.”
# # #
My brother is less than convinced of the veracity of our host’s story. “He was lying,
Mick,” he says.
“About what?”
“I’m not sure.”
“How could you tell?”
“His lips were moving.”
Pete’s instincts are significantly better developed than his communication skills. I press him, but he sets his jaw and refuses to elaborate.
MD05 - The Confession Page 10