MD06 - Judgment Day

by Sheldon Siegel

  He pretends to sniff his cigar––which is still wrapped in cellophane. “Why the hell not?” he finally says. “What do you want to know?”

  “Did Nate kill those people at the Golden Dragon?”

  He shakes his head. “We had our differences,” he says, “but he isn’t a murderer.”

  “Was he trying to take over Terrell Robinson’s heroin-distribution business?”

  “No.”

  “Then how did he end up in an alley with the murder weapon?”

  “It was a setup.”

  “By whom?”

  “The cops.”

  “Which ones?”

  “If I knew the answer, I wouldn’t have lost the case in the first place.”

  Perhaps. “Maybe we can start with what happened that night.”

  He uses the cigar to gesture as he lays out a story that jibes with Roosevelt’s.

  “How did Nate get a gun inside the restaurant?” I ask.

  “The cops said he’d planted it in the bathroom down the hall. That was bullshit.”

  “Nate admitted that he used the bathroom just before the shooting started.”

  “It doesn’t mean he planted a gun. He was searched when he entered the building and when he returned to the meeting. Roosevelt claimed they didn’t frisk him carefully enough or the bodyguards were paid off. That was another load of crap.”

  “Where was Nate when the shooting started?” I already got this information from Nate. I want to see if Mort can fill in any additional details.

  “He was sitting at a table in the middle of the room. He pushed it over when the shooting started. It was riddled with bullet holes and probably saved his life. He ran to the window and jumped onto one of those old-fashioned iron fire escapes that you see in Chinatown. It was slick from the rain. He fell two stories into the alley. It’s a miracle that he wasn’t killed on the spot.”

  This is consistent with Nate’s version. “They found a gun under his arm.”

  “I know. Somebody put it there.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What happened to Alan Chin’s operations after he was killed?”

  “I don’t know. Chin’s family got out of the drug business. His son runs a bank in Chinatown.”

  “What about Terrell Robinson’s business?”

  “A guy named Marshawn Bryant took over Robinson’s construction firm.”

  “Did he also take over Robinson’s drug business?”

  “You’ll never be able to prove it. Bryant is a big success story. He grew up in the projects in the Bayview. He worked his way up to vice president in Robinson’s operation. Now he’s the head of one of the largest minority-owned contracting firms in the Bay Area. He’s given a lot back to the community.”

  “Did you talk to him?”

  “Of course. We talked to everybody who worked for Robinson.”

  “Where was he on the night of the shootings?”

  “With his girlfriend. She backed up his story.”

  “She could have been protecting him.”

  “We couldn’t refute her alibi. She isn’t going to change her story. They got married a few years ago. It was all over the papers. She runs a hotshot design firm.” He grabs his cigar and twirls it. “For what it’s worth,” he says, “the cops found a witness who saw a black man in the alley behind the Golden Dragon around the time of the shootings. The description loosely fit Bryant. Then again, it also fit about a million other men in the Bay Area.”

  “Does the witness have a name?”

  “Eugene Tsai. He worked nights at the Chinese Hospital. He was on his way home from work.”

  “Did he testify at the trial?”

  “He never had a chance. He was stabbed to death in an armed robbery a couple of days after the shootings at the Golden Dragon. The cops never figured out who killed him.”

  “Did you talk to him?”

  “No. He was killed before we had a chance.”

  It has to be more than a coincidence. “Did you get this information from the cops?”

  “No, we got it from Tsai’s brother, Wendell.”

  “Is the brother still alive?”

  “As far as I know. He used to work at Brandy Ho’s.”

  It’s a well-known Hunan restaurant on Columbus Avenue. “Did Wendell testify at the trial?”

  “Nope.”

  “Why not?”

  “He refused to get involved after his brother was killed.” He shrugs. “He wouldn’t have been a strong witness. His English was poor and he was scared to death. Besides, his testimony would have been inadmissible hearsay.”

  “Did you consider the possibility that Eugene’s death was more than a coincidence?”

  “Of course. We had no proof.”

  I press him, but he has no additional details. “What can you tell me about the claims that the cops planted evidence?”

  “The crime scene looked like it was staged by somebody who knew what they were doing.”

  “What makes you think so?”

  His eyes open wider. “They found a pristine set of Nate’s prints on the gun—too clean, if you ask me. It was pouring rain. At best, they would have been smeared.”

  “Anything else?”

  “There was no gunpowder residue on Nate’s hands.”

  “It was raining.”

  “The cops said it washed away. They were full of crap. They should have found traces—even in a rainstorm.”

  “You really think the cops planted the gun?”

  “It was no secret that they were out to get Nate after the disaster in the Posse case.”

  “You got any proof?”

  “Nope.”

  “Was anybody else involved?”

  “An undercover cop named David Low was the first officer at the scene. I went after him at the trial, but I couldn’t nail him. He had a clean record and a Medal of Valor. The rest of the cops closed ranks.”

  “Did you hire a PI to look into it?”

  “Yep. We used Nick Hanson.”

  The entertainment value of this case just went up exponentially. Nick “the Dick” Hanson is an octogenarian PI who is a throwback to simpler days. His agency in North Beach employs four generations of Hansons. In his spare time, he writes mysteries that are slightly exaggerated recountings of his most colorful cases. “Have you seen him lately?” I ask.

  “He stops in every couple of weeks. He had arthroscopic surgery on his knee after he ran the Bay to Breakers.”

  Every May, seventy-five thousand costumed runners trudge seven and a half miles from downtown to Ocean Beach in a bacchanalia that’s one part race and ten parts street party. Nick has finished it sixty-nine times.

  “We’ll talk to him,” I say.

  7/ NOTHING WAS PROVEN

  Saturday, July 11. 12:02 p.m.

  7 days, 11 hours, and 59 minutes until execution.

  “Let me see if I have this straight,” Rosie says to me. “Mort the Sport hired Nick the Dick to work on Nate the Great’s case?”

  “More or less,” I say.

  “Priceless.”

  It would have greater practical value if the guys with the colorful nicknames could help us find the real killer––assuming it isn’t our client.

  I’m pressing my cell phone tightly against my ear as I stand in the entrance alcove of the Jewish Home. A warm breeze is whipping down Mission Street. Rosie takes in the description of my conversation with Mort without comment. Good lawyers are good talkers. Great lawyers are excellent listeners.

  “I just got off the phone with Roosevelt,” I tell her. “He confirmed that a man named Eugene Tsai told him that he saw a young African American male in the alley behind the Golden Dragon around the time of the shootings. He also confirmed that Tsai was killed in an armed robbery a few days later. That case was never solved.”

  “Why didn’t Roosevelt mention it sooner?”

  “Tsai didn’t make a positive ID.”

 
; I can hear the skepticism in her voice when she asks, “Did Roosevelt pursue the lead on the African American man?”

  “Yes. He said they turned up empty.”

  “Tsai’s death had to be more than a coincidence,” Rosie says.

  “Maybe. He promised to send over a copy of the case file. He said there wasn’t much in it. I’ve asked Pete to try to track down Tsai’s brother—if he’s still alive. Did you subpoena the IA file?”

  “Yes. I prepared a subpoena for Fitz, too.”

  She’s always a step ahead. “Did you get anything useful from Lou Cohen’s associate?”

  “She started walking me through the police reports, trial transcripts, and appellate briefs, but we still have a long way to go. I contacted the clerks at the California Supremes and the Ninth Circuit. We’ll start by filing papers on Monday to request a stay based upon Cohen’s death. Don’t hold your breath.”

  I ponder our options for a moment. “I think our best bet is pursuing the possibility that the cops planted the gun.”

  “Nobody in the SFPD is going to talk to us about it. It might also implicate your father.”

  “I know.”

  “What’s Plan B?”

  “We need to find Tsai’s brother. Maybe there was somebody else in the alley. Maybe we can persuade a judge to let him testify about what his brother told him.”

  “That would be inadmissible hearsay,” she says.

  “Then we’ll have to persuade a judge that it’s better to bend the rules of evidence than to execute an innocent man.”

  # # #

  My brother greets me with a terse “What took you so long to get here?”

  “I was meeting with Mort Goldberg,” I tell him.

  His tone softens. “The Jewish Home isn’t so bad—as nursing homes go.”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  Pete and I had what we called The Nursing Home Conversation when our mother’s Alzheimer’s got worse, but she lived at home until she died.

  Pete’s eyes move constantly as we stand on the sidewalk at the busy intersection of Market, Jones, and McAllister, where the epicenter of the Tenderloin pulses with an edgy energy at twelve-thirty on Saturday afternoon. The area around United Nations Plaza is a crowded melting pot of the disenfranchised and the destitute. Working-class immigrants are walking to the nearby farmers’ market. Ill-smelling homeless people are panhandling the few misguided tourists who took a wrong turn when they left their posh hotels at Union Square.

  The sticky sidewalks reek of urine and garbage. Drug dealers are conducting business openly, despite a significant police presence. A fourplex cinema on the south side of Market shows X-rated movies. A crumbling old bank across the street was converted into a makeshift police station a few years ago after the drug wars became especially ugly. The city has put up colorful banners in an unconvincing effort to persuade the uninitiated that we’re standing in an area known only to civic propagandists as Little Saigon. It feels like a third-world country.

  Joey D’Amato’s currency exchange occupies the ground floor of a Depression-era three-story structure that needs a sandblaster. The upper floors house a residential hotel that will never be mistaken for the gold-trimmed jukebox Marriott two blocks down Market. It appears that Joey and his neighbors have developed certain economic synergies among their respective businesses. Some of the residents cash their welfare checks at Joey’s place, then quickly turn over the proceeds to the huge, tattooed man selling crack in the doorway.

  I ask Pete if he got anything useful from his sources at the Hall of Justice.

  “I felt like an insurance salesman,” he says. “The room cleared out as soon as I started asking questions about the Fineman case. I’m going to check with a couple of other people.”

  “May I ask who?”

  “You may not.” Working with Pete is always a need-to-know deal. “Joey got here a little while ago. He’s a little hotheaded, so you might want to let me do the talking.”

  # # #

  Little Joey D’Amato doesn’t look the part of your typical financial mogul. Then again, managing a currency exchange in the Tenderloin isn’t quite the same as running Bank of America. The diminutive, hyperactive former street cop is dressed in generic khakis and a navy polo shirt. His mustache is a dignified shade of silver. His slick hair, on the other hand, is the victim of an atrocious dye job. It looks as if he stuck his head in a bottle of black ink. It’s hard not to stare.

  Our father’s last partner is sitting at a beat-up desk in the corner of his fine establishment. He’s clutching a stained copy of the Daily Racing Form and glaring at us through the scuffed Plexiglas that separates Joey and his two employees from the unwashed masses who pay his exorbitant fees to get their welfare checks cashed. “Why the hell are you here?” he barks.

  The low-overhead operation with the barred windows isn’t much larger than Rosie’s living room. Plywood counters and chipped walls are painted mismatched shades of prison gray. The furniture is bolted to the floor. Hand-lettered signs in a dozen languages instruct his customers to present two photo IDs to initiate any transaction. Two muscle-bound armed guards stand adjacent to the iron front door. When your business involves the exchange of significant amounts of cash, the best defense is the conspicuous display of firepower.

  Pete attempts to soften Joey up with small talk. He has to raise his voice to be heard through the Plexiglas. “How’ve you been, Joe?”

  He makes no attempt to hide his contempt. “Terrific.”

  Pete tries again. “How’s business?”

  “Terrific.”

  So much for chatting him up. Joey’s elocution is just a cut above grunting. His voice sounds as if he massages his vocal cords with sandpaper every night before he goes to bed. My dad grudgingly agreed to work with him when nobody else was willing. Pop always got the short straw on partners after Roosevelt moved up the ranks.

  Joey’s ratlike eyes form narrow slits. “Let’s cut the bullshit,” he says. “What do you want?”

  Pete plays it straight. “Information about the Fineman case.”

  “I don’t talk about old cases.”

  “Come on, Joey.”

  “Your client was guilty. End of story.”

  My brother feigns exasperation. “Look,” he says, “we can do this the easy way or the hard way. If you answer our questions, we’ll get out of your hair. Otherwise, we’ll come back with a subpoena and the same conversation will become significantly more unpleasant.”

  “I don’t know anything,” Joey says.

  “You haven’t even heard our questions,” I say.

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  Asshole. “What happened that night?” I ask.

  “Read the record.”

  “We have. I want to hear your side of the story.”

  He flashes irritation. “Your father and I went to the Golden Dragon as soon as we got the call. Fineman was unconscious in the alley, with a loaded piece. We helped Dave Low secure the scene. Reinforcements got there right away. Roosevelt took over when he arrived. That’s it.”

  “There were allegations that the murder weapon was planted.”

  “That was crap. Nothing was proven. We did everything by the book.”

  “Why did they call in IA?”

  “It was a high-profile case. Every defense lawyer tries to prove the cops screwed up. Mort Goldberg tried to pin it on us years ago. He was wrong then. He’s wrong now. If you believe him, you’re wrong, too.”

  Helpful. “We understand an eyewitness saw an African American man in the alley around the time of the shootings.”

  “You’ll have to talk to Roosevelt about it.”

  “I already did. What about bodyguards?”

  “You’ll have to talk to Roosevelt about that, too.”

  I feel like pounding my fists on the stained Plexiglas. “There’s something about this case that I don’t understand. Fineman had a thriving law practice. He was rich. There was nothing in it for him.”


  “Money.”

  “He didn’t need it.”

  “You think Fineman was the only lawyer on the face of the earth who got greedy? He wanted a bigger piece of Robinson’s action. Robinson told him to go fuck himself. Fineman got pissed off. End of story.”

  I lean forward and place my hands on the window. “I heard Fitz did the IA investigation.”

  “He did.”

  “I heard you guys were buddies.”

  “We went to the academy together.”

  I raise the stakes. “Your pal was in a position to smooth things over.”

  “There was nothing to smooth over. Besides, Fitz wasn’t that kind of cop.”

  “Maybe he was that kind of friend.”

  “You’re full of shit. It was a clean arrest and conviction.”

  “Prove it.”

  “We did––a long time ago.”

  “Maybe we’ll lean on Fitz. Maybe we’ll look at the IA report.”

  “Be my guest.” He runs his stubby fingers through his greasy, badly dyed hair. “Just remember this: if you try to drag me through the mud, I’ll drag your father with me.”

  8/ HIS LIPS WERE MOVING

  Saturday, July 11. 1:05 p.m.

  7 days, 10 hours, and 56 minutes until execution.

  “That was bullshit,” Pete says My ever-so-judgmental brother. “What makes you think so?” I ask.

  “His lips were moving.”

  We’re walking up Grove Street past the new library toward Civic Center Plaza. His irritation is exacerbated by a lack of sleep and the gale-force winds hammering us as the city hall rotunda comes into view.

  He’s still expounding. “What a crock,” he says. “The cops couldn’t come up with a real motive, so they played the greedy lawyer card. It might have made sense if Fineman was a small-time schmuck like you.”

  I ignore the dig. I trust his instincts and I want him to keep talking.

  “Fineman was a prominent attorney with great connections,” he says. “He had a house in St. Francis Wood, a couple of Jags in the garage, and a condo in Maui. Do you really think he would have been stupid enough to pop a couple of drug bosses?”

  “The jury bought it.”