The Big Exit

by David Carnoy

  “I don’t know,” Madden says. “What do you need the hat for? What’s in the hat?”

  “Nothin’s in the hat. It’s just like, you know, sort of like an appendage.”

  “You mean part of the act,” Burns says.

  “What are you worried about?” Madden says. “You got a nice full head of hair. The only reason Sinatra wore that thing was because he was losing his.”

  “Ah, we have ourselves a fan. You a fan, Detective?”

  “My father,” Madden replies. “And I know a thing or too about going bald.”

  Burns isn’t happy with the conversation’s direction. “About those Tongans …”

  “Alleged Tongans,” Richie counters. “How ’bout we call them Pacific Islanders until we know for sure? I don’t want to cast racial aspersions.”

  “They said they were working for McGregor?”

  “They didn’t say his name, per se, but they made it seem that way.”

  “So you have no proof they were working for him,” Madden says, “We just have to take your word—”

  “What am I being charged with?”

  “Well, right now you’re looking at murder,” Madden says. “But hey, maybe it didn’t go down like that. Maybe you’ve got something to tell us that might help get it knocked down to manslaughter.”

  “When am I getting arraigned?”

  “You’re looking at Monday morning. With what we got, the judge will remand you back to prison. You’re okay with that, right?”

  Richie: “What do you have?”

  “We got a couple of nice prints. One off the panel of the buzzer to the house and one right near the body. And I bet when we run the cell-phone data, you’re going to be right there in the window.”

  Fuck, Richie thinks. He’d wiped off the buzzer but he didn’t think he’d touched the panel. But what was this bullshit about a print near the body? What the fuck was that about? He had to be bluffing.

  When he doesn’t respond, Madden goes on. “Here’s the deal. You’re going to be locked up for a while. This here’s a country club compared to the county jail next door in Redwood City. Clean, new building like this. Private room. Nice, right? But if you don’t give us something soon, we’re going to have to pass you on to the folks over there. So what you got, Richie? What can you tell us that will help us help you? Because the fact is I like you. I think you’re a good guy who’s had some bad luck. I really do.”

  “I like you, too, Detective. You know that. But my own personal opinion is that I think you’re too old for this shit. I don’t know why you don’t pack it in. Can’t you get ninety percent of your highest salary for the rest of your life? Oh, wait, I get it, you keep pulling all nighters, you’ll pick up some nice overtime, bump your salary up a little more this year, then retire at an even higher rate.”

  “You know what they call me?” Madden asks, leaning forward a little.

  “No, what?”

  “Minimum Wage Madden. You know why?”

  “Because you’re only working for that ten percent you could get if you retired.”

  Madden glances at Burns, who nods, impressed he’s figured it out so quickly.

  “You got it,” Madden says. “And do you know why I keep working?”

  “Because you like what you do and don’t like the idea of the city losing experienced officers and you want to give something back to the community. Yeah, I read that article. Dug it up on Google one day. Very noble of you, Officer. If I was a taxpayer in this county, I’d be touched. Really tickled. But you know how much it cost to keep me in prison each year? Around forty-five, fifty grand. A real menace to society like me costing taxpayers fifty grand a year when instead I could have been making, I don’t know, a quarter million, and giving back eighty or so to the government. What’s the tax rate for rich people these days?”

  “I didn’t put you in prison,” Madden says, his anger showing for the first time. “You can thank the DA for that and the jury of your peers that convicted you.”

  “You were part of it. You testified.”

  “I questioned you and McGregor, that’s it.”

  “Well you didn’t do a very fucking good job of it.”

  “Well, next time take a fucking cab,” Madden fires back, edging toward, him, a tiny fleck of his saliva hitting Richie on the cheek. “Oh, and, here’s another thing you might think about. Don’t drive around in an ancient car that doesn’t have airbags. If you’d been driving around in a car from the era, you’d have both been pinned to your goddamned seats. You thought you were so cool with your classic Caddy, lot of good it did you. What, don’t tell me, Sinatra drove that kind of car?”

  Burns puts a hand up in front of Madden as if to restrain him.

  “Easy Hank,” Burns says.

  Richie smiles, feeling a weird sense of accomplishment. It’s the most emotion he’s ever seen Madden display and he’s thrilled that it’s on tape. But at the same time he knows Madden’s right about the airbags. He’d thought about that a lot—that fucking car. He hated that car. Still, he can’t help taking one last swing, just one more little potshot.

  “You should have retired after shooting that kid,” he says. “You’re never going to top that.”

  “I’m not trying to top that,” Madden replies more calmly.

  “You think you got enough? Really? You got a witness? An actual fucking witness? Let me be absolutely clear, Detective. I did not kill Mark McGregor despite your circumstantial trumped-up bullshit.”

  Madden’s eyes meet his. They really bear down on him.

  “Mr. Forman, I have one question for you,” he says.

  “What’s that?”

  “Do you still love Beth Hill?”

  Richie doesn’t flinch. He stares right back at Madden. A good five seconds pass.

  “Your question assumes I loved her at some other point in time,” he finally says.

  Madden seems taken aback by the response.

  “You were engaged to be married.”

  “Yes. We were.”

  Again, Madden goes with the hard, probing eyes. They’re in full-on stare-down mode, when Burns says:

  “See the thing is both me and Detective Madden here are kind of romantics. We believe that if you really love someone, you never stop loving them.”

  “Even if she completely betrays you?”

  “Maybe things don’t appear exactly as they seem,” Burns says.

  “What are you implying, Detective?”

  “That maybe Ms. Hill had ulterior motives for marrying Mark McGregor.”

  “Really? That’s news to me.”

  Madden: “We don’t think Ms. Hill is telling the truth. She’s already made some contradictory statements. And she’s hired a lawyer.”

  “Last night?”

  “Asked for one right away.”

  His jaw tightens. Not good, he thinks. Why the hell did she do that?

  “Where is she?”

  “She’s here. Or she’ll be here shortly. But she was questioned some last night.”

  Richie shrugs. “Did you ask whether she still loved me?”

  Burns looks at Madden, who looks back at him. Then Madden says:

  “Look, if you’ve got anything to tell us, you should tell us now. If you’re protecting her in any way, you’re an accessory to murder. You’re going away for the rest of your life. You tell us what happened now, how she’s involved, and we’ll see what we can do for you.”

  Richie sits there impassively, clenching his teeth, getting more and more aggravated. What the fuck do these assholes know about love? he thinks. About what we went through? And what I went through because of their ineptitude? What right do they have asking me if I still love her?

  “What do you say, Richie?”

  This is Burns trying to prompt him. He looks at the detective, then slowly and deliberately leans forward, puts his elbows on the table and clasps his hands in front him.

  “This is all I got to say to you guys. Stop
talking about love. No one ever does anything for love in the Valley. People obsess over deals. Over networking. Over building a company. But not genuine love. A woman once told me this was one of the most asexual places on earth. She said people were more interested in her introducing them to investors than fucking her. And let me tell you, she wasn’t bad-looking. So cut the love bullshit. No one killed Mark because someone loved or didn’t love someone.”

  “So why’d he get killed?” Madden asks.

  “Well, that’s up to you to find out now, isn’t it? But my money’s on money. And not no piddly-shit one hundred thousand.”

  “Two hundred fifty thousand,” Burns corrects him.

  “Whatever,” he says.

  13/ SCOOP WHORE

  “NICE WORK,” BILLINGS SAYS SARCASTICALLY WHEN MADDEN COMES out of the interrogation room. “You got a lot out of him.”

  “Don’t start,” Madden grumbles.

  “Give me fifteen minutes alone,” Billings says.

  “Not now.”

  “When?”

  “After Burns is through. I gotta deal with the commander. He just texted me.”

  “And Crowley.”

  This is news to him. He didn’t realize Dick Crowley, the San Mateo County district attorney, is already in the office.

  “He’s here?”

  “Yeah. Just saw his car pull in. What are you going to tell him?”

  “What he probably doesn’t want to hear.”

  Madden starts to walk away.

  “You sleep?” Billings calls after him.

  “A little.”

  “I got four hours,” Billings boasts.

  Madden, who rarely ever swears, uncharacteristically holds up his middle finger, extending it over his shoulder, backwards. “One for me,” he says without turning around.

  Commander Pete Pastorini’s door is open. He’s sitting at his desk, an iPad in his hand, while Dick Crowley, the DA, sits in a chair on the other side of the desk. Pastorini’s a big man, imposing, and though he’s lost some weight, he still has the look of an operatic tenor, with dark, wavy hair that he wears slicked back.

  Back when he was a sergeant, some of the guys would good-humoredly call him “Luciano” or “Maestro,” but since his status was elevated to commander, those nicknames haven’t been heard. However, they still occasionally mock him for his caffeine addiction, referring to him as Commander Loca. Pastorini used to drink eight to ten Diet Cokes a day. Now he’s moved on to Java Monster Loca Moca energy drinks. He prides himself on cutting down his fluid intake, going from that eight to ten to two to three cans. The only problem is the stuff he’s drinking probably has three to four times the amount of caffeine as coffee, so he’s as amped as ever.

  When Madden walks in, Crowley swivels ninety degrees toward him, so that his back is now facing the window.

  “Morning, Hank,” Crowley says.

  “Morning, Dick.”

  Tall and lanky, near six-nine, Crowley has big features and sandy brown hair flecked with gray. He played basketball in college for Cal in the late 1970s and comes across as easygoing and genial, a guy who shakes your hand with both of his while looking you in the eye. There’s something good-natured, even almost bumbling about his demeanor. But underneath that exterior layer lies a more manipulative, calculating side that has a tendency to sneak up on people just as they’ve let their guard down. Madden learned to stop underestimating him long ago.

  Pastorini motions for Madden to sit in the open seat next to Crowley. Feeling pretty beat, he gladly takes a seat. He’s even tempted to ask Pastorini for one of his Loca Mocas.

  “How’s it going in there?” Crowley asks. “We got our guy or not?”

  “Maybe.”

  “He talking?”

  “Sure. He’s saying the same thing over and over. Singing a little, too. He’s been making a living as a Sinatra impersonator.”

  “Pete told me,” Crowley says. “Richie Forman doing Sinatra. He any good?”

  Madden: “Actually, yeah. Takes it very seriously. In fact, he’s been in character pretty much the whole time we’ve questioned him.”

  “You think he’s going to try for some insanity thing?”

  “He could.”

  “Does he think he’s Sinatra?”

  “I don’t know exactly what he’s thinking. He’s straddling this line. I’m not sure how he thinks it’s going to help him. He’s got a lot of cards stacked against him and he’s playing it like he’s got a full house.”

  “Strange,” Crowley says. “You got the prints on the lighter and the buzzer panel. That’s pretty good. Anything else?”

  “Nothing concrete so far. But the fact that this guy lives up in the city and is down here during the window says a lot. And, of course, he’s got motive. In spades.”

  Crowley nods. “Still no weapon?”

  He tells Crowley they’d picked up two diver’s knives at Forman’s apartment. However, from what he can tell, he thinks they’re too small to inflict the kind of damage he saw on the body.

  Pastorini: “And why would the guy keep the murder weapon in his apartment?”

  Crowley agrees. “You’d think he’d be bright enough to ditch it.”

  “The weapon may have been there already. In the garage, I mean.”

  He explains that there was an empty, open slot on the wall for a missing tool. The wife seemed to remember some sort of hatchet being there. They were going to go through credit-card records to see what they could come up with.

  “But he admits to being down here yesterday?” Crowley asks.

  “Says he took the six forty-five home. Told us to check the video.”

  “And what time did he come in?”

  “Around noon.”

  “Where’d he go?”

  “Won’t say. He’s waiting for legal counsel to talk about certain details. But he may have met with Ms. Hill. He picked up his engagement ring, he says. Someone returned it to him.”

  “And between noon and seven, how did Mr. Forman get around town?” Crowley asks.

  “On a bike.”

  “A bike?”

  “He doesn’t have a driver’s license. He brought a bike on the train. We got that out of him.”

  “Anybody see him? I mean, we’ve got motive. We’ve got the prints. And we’ve got a guy who admits to being in the general vicinity at the time of the crime. But someone must have seen him.”

  “We’re working on it,” Madden says. “As you know, a lot of those folks on Robert S have security cameras. Unfortunately, McGregor didn’t. He’s got a home security system but no cameras. But some of the neighbors say they have cameras that are pointed at the street. We’re also going to get his cell-phone data, though that’ll take a few days. If he had his phone on, we should be able to pinpoint exactly where he was at what times. The satellite may be our best witness.”

  “You should be able to pinpoint where his phone was,” Crowley corrects him. “Not him for certain.”

  Crowley is old-fashioned. He likes his witnesses to be real people if he can get them. But so much more detective work these days is being done through cell-phone tracking, with investigators combing through call logs and location-based data that carriers keep stored on their servers. In many crimes, the smoking gun often turns out to be a cell phone in a pocket, not a weapon in a hand.

  Crowley stares past Madden, mulling things over. After a moment, he says:

  “I think we’ve got to consider that maybe this wasn’t premeditated. You know, the guy comes into town, and against his better judgment, decides to pay his old friend a visit. And, you know, they get into it.”

  “Forman doesn’t have a mark on him,” Madden counters. “Go see for yourself. And there are no defensive wounds on the victim.”

  “I’m going to have a word with him later. And with Ms. Hill. When’s Carolyn bringing her in?”

  Madden: “We said eleven but I’m not banking on it.”

  Crowley shakes his head. “
I bet Sinatra boy sings.”

  Pastorini: “I’m going with the wife cracking first.”

  “You, Hank?” Crowley asks, as if he’s somehow the tie-breaking vote.

  “I don’t know. I’m working on one hour of sleep.” He rubs his eye. “Been a while since I did that.”

  Madden regrets making the statement as soon as he says it. Pastorini looks at Crowley, their eyes locking for a second. It’s one of those knowing looks that speaks volumes. Madden gets the distinct feeling they were discussing him—and perhaps his ability to handle the case—before he walked in.

  Pastorini picks up the iPad and turns it around toward Madden.

  “You see this?” he asks.

  Madden leans forward, squinting. When Pastorini hands the iPad over to him, he lifts his glasses, propping them up on the top of his head. It’s an article from Tom Bender’s site, OneDumbIdea.com—or ODi, as the site’s prominent red logo reads. The piece is written by Bender himself, with a typically inflammatory headline: EXCLUSIVE: SILICON VALLEY ENTREPRENEUR HACKED TO DEATH, BUMBLING DETECTIVES MAY HAVE CONTAMINATED CRIME SCENE.

  Madden skims through the article, which is a first-person account of how Bender stumbled upon the crime while walking his dog and, with a little investigative fortitude, gained access to important details that he claimed were anonymously leaked to him by reliable sources. As he reads, Madden feels the heat rise in his face, his heart pounding in his chest. The guy’s taking potshots at him left and right.

  “What do you think?” Pastorini says.

  Madden shrugs, doing his best to feign indifference. “I think the guy’s looking for traffic. That’s what he does.”

  “Yeah. But where’s he getting his info? You think it’s someone from our side or is our little lady counselor making a play here? Dick says she said something to him last night about how the crime scene was being handled.”

  “Look, half of it is innuendo. There were people in the house before I got there. It took us a little while to get the wife out of there and over to the neighbors’ house. We secured the crime scene, which was out in the garage. That’s it, end of story.”