by D. F. Bailey
“Landed face first, from what I heard.” Adrian Shouldice smiled, then glanced at Finch as if he wanted confirmation that his colleague had come to the worst possible end.
“Maybe,” Finch said, but he didn’t want to reveal what he’d seen on the corner of Washington and Stockton Streets. It was terrible enough recalling the moment of Esposito’s death. No need to turn it into a cause for celebration.
※
Shouldice’s phone rang and after he picked up the handset, Finch made a silent gesture that he’d gathered all the information he needed and would find his way out. Shouldice smiled, waved a hand and Finch slipped into the hallway and closed the door.
From the reception area, he could hear Shirley laughing on her phone. Finch walked to the opposite end of the corridor to the kitchenette. Facing it, a series of glass panels marked off what Finch assumed was the boardroom. Both spaces were empty.
He turned and retraced his path until he reached the door to Esposito’s office. He tried the handle again. Still unlocked. He drew a breath, stepped inside and eased the door closed. He turned on the ceiling light and examined the locking mechanism on the door lever. A built-in thumb bolt. He turned it clockwise and tested it. The door was now locked.
Unlike Shouldice’s office, Esposito’s workspace didn’t have an exterior window. Instead, a three-by-five foot photo-poster was tacked to the wall opposite Esposito’s desk. The photograph offered a sunlit view of a lake filled with century-old wooden boats. A caption read: “Lake of the Ozarks Boat Show, 2005.” Finch imagined Esposito gazing at the poster from time to time, dreaming of his life back in Missouri. The Show Me State.
Will chuckled to himself and sat at the desk. “All right, Esposito, now show me what the hell happened to you.”
He drew his Canon Powershot camera from his courier bag. The camera was a birthday present from Cecily, and for the first time, Finch was about to use the ultracompact for business purposes.
A green ink blotter with an opaque plastic cover lay across the arborite desktop. On the right corner of the blotter sat a green coffee mug inscribed with white letters that stated “Money I$ Everything.” The mug held a quarter cup of cold, black coffee. A gray desk phone sat on the left corner. The phone wasn’t quite state-of-the-art, but it had a display screen, and Finch scrolled through a list of recent calls. Ten numbers came up, and then the series began to repeat as he clicked the down arrow button. He tightened the focus on this camera lens and captured the set of ten numbers in two shots.
Next to the phone sat an old-school, circular Rolodex file that held hundreds of business cards stapled to the two-by-four-inch cards. When he considered this, Finch wondered if Esposito had a computer. If he’d been bundling sub-prime mortgages — two or three of them a month, according to Shouldice — Finch couldn’t imagine Esposito functioning without a computer or laptop. He opened the three drawers on each side of the desk and found nothing but paper files, correspondence, bills, and papers about the Chapter 11 Bankruptcy filings for Esposito & Associates. He took pictures of the most recently dated legal documents, and several of the bills marked “Past Due.”
On the wall opposite the door, a small futon sofa squatted under a framed certificate that identified Esposito as an accredited investment advisor by ICI Realtor Institute. Finch stood up and took a picture of the document. Next to the futon, he could see a power outlet and the ethernet cable for an internet connection. The cable lay on the carpet next to the desk. Again, he couldn’t find a laptop or any peripherals. No laptop cover, no mouse, no printer.
It was possible that Shirley provided printing services in the reception area and Finch made a note to check for a printer on his way out. In the meantime, he decided to thumb through the Rolodex for any contacts that seemed irregular. He sat at the desk again and began his search. Most of the cards came from investment firms, banks, mortgage brokers (including one from Adrian Shouldice) real estate firms and lawyers. Nothing struck his curiosity, and after ten minutes, Finch set the Rolodex aside.
The bookcase provided the only other area of interest. It stood against the wall next to the door. Finch assumed it was an Ikea product, one of those unpronounceable brands that sold in the millions around the world. He nosed through the books, all of them industry guides, references and source documents. Between the second and fourth row of books stood a shelf reserved for knick-knacks and memorabilia. The most personal item was a framed picture of Esposito standing on a lakeside dock holding a fishing rod in his right hand. He stood tall, a big man who appeared to be over six feet according to the vertical measure painted onto a wharf piling that rose from the dock. From his left hand, he gripped a flathead catfish by the gills. The gauge showed that the fish was at least three feet long. Esposito’s face bore a contented smile. At least the dead man had once enjoyed his lot in life.
Beside the photograph sat a collection of coffee mugs and some real estate convention swag. Orlando in 2003, San Diego in 2004, Portland in 2005, and San Francisco in 2006. Maybe after the 2006 convention, Esposito had decided to locate his business in The Bay Area.
After he completed his survey, Finch stood at the door and tried to piece together what he’d seen. The desk arrangements suggested that Esposito was right-handed: coffee mug on the right along with the Rolodex file and phone on the left. The room was orderly — but almost devoid of personality. Esposito had been a clean and tidy soul. Finch found it odd that the mug still held a splash of coffee without Esposito washing it up. He’d apparently taken his laptop, but left the coffee untended.
He decided that any meaningful information would come from Esposito’s last ten calls or whatever he could discover in the bankruptcy files and unpaid bills. As he stood at the door, he heard Shirley’s shoes clicking along the hallway toward him. The walls were thin, and he could hear her talking to another woman. He checked to ensure that the thumb bolt was locked. It was. Then he stood against the wall beside the bookcase, the only hiding place at hand if the door swung open.
“I’ve been told we’ve got to go through probate, first,” Shirley said in a firm voice. “Then I can rent Esposito’s office. It could all take forever.”
He heard a key struggling to fit into the lock.
“Damnit. Wrong key,” Shirley said and retreated along the hall with her guest.
Finch took the opportunity to open the door and step into the corridor. He reset the thumb lock, closed the door behind him and tiptoed back toward Shouldice’s office. When he turned, he saw Shirley and a uniformed female SFPD officer in her mid-forties approaching him.
“We’ll see if this works,” Shirley said to the cop and slipped the key into Esposito’s office lock. “Yes. There we go.”
He smiled and eased past the women on his way to the office reception area. Next to Shirley’s desk stood a Xerox Phaser printer—a workhorse that could churn out print copies for a dozen offices. Satisfied that Esposito didn’t need a printer, only one question remained unanswered. Where was the dead man’s laptop?
As he made his way down the steps to Sacramento Street, he realized that he’d just missed a close call. The fact that the SFPD was searching Esposito’s office demonstrated that they were still probing the circumstances surrounding his death. The case was still open. Likely Detective Staimer had uncovered something critical from Jojo.
Finch knew he had to talk to her and now a new idea came to him.
※ — SIX — ※
FINCH GAZED THROUGH the space of the Hawaii West Bar. A man dressed in a floral shirt restlessly tapped a plastic straw against the edge of his bottle of Miller Highlife. Another customer sat next to the front door muttering into an empty highball glass. Opposite him, the bartender stood alone reading a paperback as he leaned on the wood rail next to the till. Above the rack of liquor bottles, a muted TV monitor broadcast the most recent events concerning the financial troubles on Wall Street.
In the far corner, Finch waited for his lawyer friend, John Biscombe. Will had n
ever heard of the Hawaii West before, but it was an agreeable place to sit out the rain. More important, it was just a few doors away from the SFPD Central Station on Vallejo Street. He’d called Biscombe from the bar phone and spent the past forty minutes nursing a Heineken beer and gnawing on some chicken wings. While he waited, he began to organize his thoughts on his laptop. He sensed that the Esposito story would change and evolve as he worked through the breaking events. Until he could see the direction ahead, he compiled a list of the facts, conjectures, and possibilities.
• The cops continue to question Jojo.
• The cops continue to investigate Gio Esposito.
• Esposito murdered in a bungled frame-up?
• The killer fled and left the door to the crime scene unlocked. Why?
• The killer’s loyalty to Jojo is zero.
• Jojo knows more than she lets on. Her loyalty to the killer: 110%.
He tried to envision the jigsaw puzzle before him. A vital puzzle piece concerned Esposito’s unlocked office door. Also the open door to the apartment where he’d been thrown to his death. It had to be a coincidence, Finch told himself. But as he sat at the corner table sipping his beer and adding this detail to his list, he began to wonder about the odds. Two unlocked doors. Was it probable? He knew it was the sort of question no one could answer decisively. You either believed in coincidence, or you didn’t. Things are either evolving in a state of random selection, or they’re meant to happen. Darwinian or preordained.
Finch shook his head. He was inclined to the Darwinian view. But that only made things more incomprehensible. As he mulled over the options, John Biscombe entered the bar and peered through the dank gloom in Finch’s direction. Will waved him over to his table.
Last fall Will met John Biscombe on a double date with Cecily’s friend, MaryAnne. He was tall, fit and good-looking. In his undergraduate years, he’d been on the UCLA baseball team and still had the deep tan to prove it. He smiled often and had the sort of charm that Finch usually considered with suspicion. Will imagined that he’d grown up surrounded by aqua-marine swimming pools, ski lodge condos, and season tickets to the LA Dodgers. He was surprised to learn that Biscombe’s parents divorced when he was ten, after his father had lost his job with AT&T. He’d made his way through college on a sports scholarship and working six-hour shifts at Starbucks. During the first two summers of his law degree, he’d worked on an uncle’s fishing seiner out of Tillamook Bay in Oregon. Finch knew this was hard, dangerous work and he admired him for it.
“Bisk, glad you could make it.” He stood up and shook the lawyer’s hand. “Sorry, but we don’t have time for another beer.”
“No problem. You called me from the bar phone?” He crooked his thumb toward the payphone on the wall next to the dart board.
Finch grimaced and nodded. He knew what Biscombe was about to say. One more dig about his cellphone.
“Look at you.” Biscombe put on a show of mock sympathy and wrapped an arm around Will’s shoulder. “The league MVP catcher who bumbled an underhand toss. Just a rookie after all.”
Biscombe flashed a smile. Then they both laughed, Biscombe with a little more zest than Finch as they pondered the story of how Will had lost his cellphone.
Two weeks earlier, on Saturday — Cecily’s first day off from her new job — Will and Cecily had decided to take a mini-holiday. A day trip. The two of them boarded the ferry to cross San Francisco Bay from the Embarcadero to Sausalito. Twenty minutes into voyage she clutched the crook of his elbow in her hand and pulled him close.
“Guess what?” she asked.
“What?” he said. The breeze tugged at her hair. Her face bore a worried demeanor that made him wonder.
“What?” he asked again.
“I’m pregnant.”
The news took him by surprise — but he was elated. So delighted that he’d dropped to one knee and proposed to her on the spot. People began to notice. He looked up to her radiant face and popped the question. She nodded, and the crowd cheered. He passed his phone to a teenage boy and assumed he’d know what to do.
“Take a picture would you?” Will and Cecily stood next to the railing and wrapped their arms around one another. Kissed. And kissed again. More whoops from the crowd. The boy smiled as he held the phone out to Finch.
“I got a good one,” he said. As Finch reached for the phone, he planted another kiss on Cecily’s cheek. He felt the Nokia touch his fingers, then slip. As he turned away from Cecily, he fumbled badly. The phone bounced in his hand — once, twice — and flipped overboard. A collective moan went up from the crowd.
“That’s terrible,” said a bystander. She wore thin leather gloves and held a child by his hand. Perhaps her grandson. “I hope that’s not bad luck.”
“Yeah, me too,” Finch said. He tried to dismiss the idea. Will believed in all forms of luck, good and bad. Like a roll of the dice, he considered them part of the Darwinian matrix. So for the rest of that day, he wondered — could it be a bad omen?
“So when’ll you get a new phone?” Biscombe sounded a little more sympathetic now.
“I dunno. When I get paid?” Finch rolled his shoulders and glanced away. During their phone conversation, Will had revealed that he’d landed a freelance contract with the Post. A paycheck would soon follow.
Thinking about the lost phone put him in a funk. Biscombe seemed to appreciate his friend’s mood and decided to shift the topic.
“Hey, you ready for the game on Sunday?”
Biscombe loved baseball, especially the beer league they’d joined in May. He could play shortstop, left field or third base. While he never made the leap into the semi-pro circuit, his years on the UCLA team made him pretty adept.
“Of course. I wouldn’t miss it.”
“Good. Once Jerry confirms the game time, I’ll call you.”
“Sounds good.”
“We’re in the semis, man!” He held up his hand for a high-five and Finch gave him the slap.
“Okay.” Finch felt the need to turn the conversation back to business. “I take it you’re not too busy today.”
“Busy enough. You know. Trawling the police reports looking for new clients.”
When he graduated from law school, Biscombe had told Will and Cecily that he’d struck on the idea of scanning the traffic accident reports to scare up some personal injury lawsuits. So far, the newly-minted lawyer had landed only one client.
“Well, I might have a live one for you.”
“Yeah?” Biscombe straightened the knot in his tie. “Big money?”
“More likely no money.” Finch packed his laptop into his courier bag.
“Pro bono, huh?” The corners of his mouth turned down. “Another one.”
“That’s why everyone calls you Mahatma Bisk.”
They laughed again and made their out of Hawaii West and across Vallejo to the jail. As they walked, Finch explained Jojo’s situation — and his plan to set up a private conversation with her. Apart from Biscombe gaining access to Jojo and managing all the legal niceties, when the right time came, Finch would signal Biscombe to step aside and allow him to speak to Jojo.
“So you’re asking me to trust you?”
“Always,” Finch replied. “Always and forever.”
※
Jojo appeared before Finch and Biscombe with a spark of hope on her face. When she recognized Will, however, the veneer of optimism faded. She dipped her head to one side, and a shank of blonde hair fell across her forehead and covered her right eye. An fascinating way to duck out of sight, Finch thought. He recalled observing the same habit back in the San Sun Restaurant last night. Whenever he pressed her for an answer, she dipped her head and let the hair cover her eyes. A personal tic.
“So they let you out, huh,” she mumbled.
Finch nodded. “Jojo, this is John Biscombe. He’s a lawyer.”
“Lawyer? Can you get me out of here?” Her mood brightened. “Get me bail or something?”
“From what the desk clerk told me, you haven’t been charged with anything yet,” Biscombe said. “So you don’t need bail. Not so far, anyway.”
She shook her head as though she sensed a conspiracy. “What the hell? Then how do I get out of here?”
Biscombe shrugged. “Habeas corpus. The law says if they don’t charge you in forty-eight hours, they have to let you go.”
“Yeah? And who holds them to that?”
“Me,” Biscombe said.
“And if they do charge me with some faked-up sh—”
“Then I’ll try to get you bail.” Finch interrupted her, knowing it could be a stretch. Still, he knew he’d do what he could for her.
She brushed a hand over her face and pushed the hair bangs aside so that she could see him. “What’s the catch, Finch?”
Will turned to his friend and gave him a wink.
“All right, this is where I need to disappear,” Biscombe said and nodded to Finch. It was their prearranged signal. The moment when he could no longer be part of any bargaining between Finch and the girl. He walked to the door and turned his back to them.
Will leaned closer to the bars and whispered so that no one could hear them. “The catch is See-See.”
“Jeezus. This again?” She glanced away but then appeared to give it a second thought.
“Ask yourself something, Jojo. Has See-See come down here to spring you?”
Her hair slipped over her eyes again.
“How about I answer that for you,” Finch continued. “No, he hasn’t. And why? Because he’s blown town, Jojo. He’s in too deep, and he knows it.”