by Jim Kohlberg
Chapter 11
I walked alone across the fields and noticed two men standing near my car. One was a black man in a gray snap-brim hat and dark suit and the other a white man wearing jeans and a Hawaiian shirt and holding a tan jacket slung over his shoulder. They leaned against my Audi, and the white guy took out a pack of cigarettes and mouthed one. I could see his jet-black hair pulled into a ponytail when he bent over to light the cigarette. The black man turned his face to look at him, then languidly reached out a long arm and snapped the end off the cigarette. The filter stayed in the white guy’s mouth. The black man put his arm down and cupped his hands in front of him like a schoolboy at the head of the class.
When I came near my car, they pushed themselves off my fender and stepped forward. Ponytail flicked his cigarette filter under my car. The black guy took his hat off, pulling it away from his head by the crown with two fingers. Ponytail reached around into his back pocket and pulled out a wallet.
“Mr. Smoller?” he asked.
I nodded. “Yeah.”
He flipped open the wallet and I saw a silver badge inside. I was about to protest but realized I wouldn’t know a real badge from one you could buy at a dollar store.
“I’m Arty Hannaford,” he said, “with the San Francisco PD.” He nodded at his partner. “This is Detective Hopkins.”
I looked at Hopkins. “As in Lightnin’?”
“As in Napoleon.”
“Napoleon?”
“Detective Napoleon Hopkins,” he said and flipped open the badge carrier that he pulled from his breast pocket. He was a big man, with the gentleness of someone who had been big all his life. He held his arms across his chest and shrugged. “My mother was a history buff.” I was about to ask him about his father, but Hannaford stepped in.
“Mr. Smoller, we caught the Dempsey case. We wanted to ask you a few questions about Joe.”
Behind them, in the road, Christina’s gold convertible glided by. She sat in front, both hands on the wheel, her face wrapped in large sunglasses and a scarf over her hair. Jackie O out for a Sunday drive.
“Mr. Smoller. A few questions?” Hannaford asked again, leaning in at me.
“Sure,” I said, pulling my eyes off her car, “of course.”
“You know Joe a long time?”
“Ten years. About. We met at Andersen. Arthur Andersen accounting, not the consulting side.”
“You an accountant then?”
“Yeah.”
“You do his taxes?”
“Yeah.”
“Sign them?”
“Some. Until a couple of years ago. You can check yourself.”
“Actually, we have to get them through the DA. Right now they’re his wife’s property.”
“Oh.”
They nodded. I watched Christina’s car turn onto Route 1 from the cemetery and head north, up to the city. Gulls wheeled in front of us, and their raucous cawing mingled with the sunshine and the brine smell of the kelp beds from the sea.
“What about the DA?” I asked.
“Guthrie? He showed us what he took from the home.”
“That’s not enough?”
“He’s running for mayor. Wants arrests, headlines. We were hoping you would give us something more than just obvious background information. Maybe your copies of his returns. Help us get to know her.”
“Me?” I asked, pointing at myself and turning to see if someone else was standing behind. Hopkins shifted his weight to his other leg, and Hannaford tilted his head sideways a degree or two, like Alfalfa’s spot-eyed dog, Pete the Pup.
I said, “This is where you ask me if I can give you stuff that you know I can’t. And then you ask me, ‘Don’t you want to find who killed one of your best friends?’ And I say, ‘Sure.’ Like I said sure before. But then I say—I really say—‘I don’t think she did it, and the files are technically hers, and I was the one who found her a lawyer, and I can’t.’ So that conversation’s over.”
They looked at each other and seemed impressed. Then they nodded at each other, too, and looked back at me.
“Cute,” Napoleon said. “But we need to find a money trail.”
“What is that? Like the Chisholm Trail? You going to lead cows across it?” I asked.
Napoleon Hopkins stepped forward, all six four of him. “Look, Max. He’s your best friend. You just buried him.” He stopped and pointed with a hitchhiker’s thumb over his shoulder toward the grave.
Hannaford put a hand on his arm. They didn’t make eye contact. Hannaford came up even with Hopkins. A wall in my face. “We caught you just after you buried your friend, and you’re a little nervous. Maybe you get sarcastic when you’re nervous. And you just got Christina out of jail. But you might want to think about this, because we’re just trying to find a motive,” he said.
“For God’s sake! Guthrie’s already convinced Christina did it. He already got the will. He’s convinced she beat him with a bat before he could sign it. What more motive do you want?”
“You’ve known Christina a long time?”
“Yeah.”
“How long?”
“Ten, twelve years.”
“She strike you as dumb?”
“Sharper than a paper cut. Though you can’t tell under that getup. But she doesn’t miss a thing. Sees right through everybody. Except for men she’s interested in; then she’s blind as a duck flying over shotguns,” I said, and added, “Lousy taste in men.”
“Even Joe?”
Even Joe? Even me? The question ate through me like poison, like chemotherapy. I took a deep breath of air and thought about asking Hannaford for a cigarette, but I didn’t want the shared bond between us. I turned and looked at him.
“It’s hard to imagine Joe dead. You . . .” I swallowed, my tongue dry in my mouth. “You didn’t know him. As soon as he left the room everything went to black and white.”
Hannaford took another step closer to me, nodding. “It’s shocking.”
I craned my neck back in surprise. “That was exactly it. Shocking.”
“You know the way when you read a good book it seems more real than real life? Joe was like that,” I said. “It’s hard to believe it goes away when you close it.” I could still hear clods thudding on the coffin. While the sun beat down on the distant artichoke fields.
“We see it, too,” he said.
And I looked at him and saw a deep and sad knowledge in his face. He had seen it before, many times.
“We see it, too,” he said again.
Hopkins stepped up to me and added, “Isn’t there anything you can help us with?”
I asked, “Is it always the money? Is that all you guys do? Just follow the money?”
“Max,” Hannaford said, “people don’t kill for money, they . . .”
Hopkins finished, “They’ll say they wanted forty bucks, or the season tickets to the Giants, or the boat on the Sacramento, or the keys to the business, or a zillion things that they make in this world.”
This time Hannaford did take out his cigarettes. He toyed with the box, flipping it over like a dealer shuffling cards one-handed.
“But it’s never really about the money,” he said.
Hopkins gingerly put on his hat. “But it is the proximate cause.”
“The delusion,” Hannaford said.
“The delusion?” I asked.
“Illusion, delusion, whatever you want to call it,” Hopkins said with a shrug.
“They can’t live with emptiness,” Hannaford finished, and now he tossed off a shrug too.
“What are you, a philosopher?” I asked Arty.
Hopkins rolled his eyes. “A Buddhist.”
Hannaford glanced at his partner. He smiled. “Zen,” he said. “It goes with the ponytail.”
I wanted to help them, so I guess they had done their job. The good cop routine had worked, though there was a “but.” With me, there’s always a however, a whereas, an alternative minimum tax. Something that held me
back.
“You guys don’t think Christina did it?”
“Well, like you said, she’s not dumb. The will was only a couple of days old, signed by Christina, not by him. The DA says you thought they were separated, but there’s no evidence of that. She found the body and was covered in blood.”
“It’s not the profile of a money killer,” Arty said. “They hire someone. Have an alibi.”
“Motive’s always the weak link,” Napoleon said.
“You’ve got the will. She loses,” I said.
“Too obvious. Doesn’t add up.”
“What about Guthrie? He sounds like he’s going with what he’s got.”
“It’s the smart play. The best odds. Good press.”
“And you’re not so smart?”
“Nope,” said Arty. “Right, Nap?”
Napoleon rubbed his face. “We got a short window here. Before management yanks us off and closes the case.”
“Management,” I said.
“We’re just hired muscle. Punch cards. Union dues,” Arty said, throwing a couple of air punches hunching behind a shoulder. “Coulda been a contender, Nappy could. Coulda been somebody.”
“Art, give it a rest.”
“Sure, Nap.” Arty danced on his toes a couple of times, shrugging his shoulders, and touching his balled fists to his nose.
“Art.”
“Okay, okay.”
I watched all this, not knowing what to say. These guys were detectives?
“Listen, guys,” I said. “I’ll go over the stuff with you. But I don’t think you’ll find much.”
“Why not?”
“I used to do his taxes; I know what’s in them. They’re pretty straightforward for a complicated business.”
“You want to explain that?”
“Joe ran a hedge fund. He had a huge number of investments. Had a huge number of clients. But it’s just sending out more 1040s or 1099s. Recording the income at the fund level was just a matter of keeping track of the trading. They divided it by the number of investors and their pro rata percentages. Not complicated. Just math.”
“What’s a hedge fund?”
“It’s a private partnership that buys shorts and longs, distressed securities, derivatives to lay off risk, everything.”
“This is simple?”
“Listen, why don’t you guys come to the reception at his place? I’m sure there’ll be a bunch of people there you can ask about Joe. A lot of his clients. I’ll explain it to you then.”
“I need a suit?” asked Arty.
“You don’t own one,” said Nap.
“Excuse me, Mr. Brioni.”
Nap opened his jacket, holding the flaps open, and did a 360-degree pirouette.
“Ain’t it grand?” he said, and out came this deep chuckle that rumbled into a delicious full-throated laugh. They turned and walked away, a pair of clowns returning to the dressing room after a second ovation.
“Five thirty,” I shouted at their retreating backs.
Arty waved without looking back and opened the door for Nap. I watched them get in and drive away, making the same turn Christina had a long half hour before.
Chapter 12
Joe’s Pacific Heights home was lit up stem to stern against a night fog bank. I stood on the white stone steps, which were not his steps or his house any longer, with the fog whipping across the top of the Heights and yellow lamps backlighting the walkway. The dark night and the cold took the heart out of me, and I wanted to turn around, to go home again. I had heard Joe eulogized and had thrown dirt on his coffin, but now, at this party, carrying his favorite whiskey through the doorway without him, a pall of sadness fell over me.
I had never grieved before, was unfamiliar with death in general, unaware of its river-flowing-by finality. A kid’s toy got lost in the current, floating out of sight one moment, gone forever the next. I needed to escape but went inside. Having the reception at Joe’s house had felt weird but Christina wanted it that way and made me pressure Guthrie to release the crime scene. She had the upstairs stains cleaned and the rugs thrown out. A metaphoric chin held high against her detractors.
I stepped through the oak front doors, flung open to the night, into the crowd of mourners eating, laughing, and smoking. Most were holding thick, multisided bistro glasses filled with wine and liquor. I passed an elegant gray-haired man in a brown suit and striped tie who said hello to me. I nodded back and took a deep breath. Looking right, where French doors overlooked the bright lights of Alcatraz and a black bay of night water, I saw a table loaded with wine, vodka, and already five empty bottles of Jameson. I put my fresh one next to them. A sixth stood half full until a man in a navy jacket and gray pants pointed at the bottle. The bartender poured him half a glass, but he tilted his head sideways, waving his hand, and the bartender filled it to the brim.
And so there was escape. I pointed at a new bottle and heard the cork pop, like a starving man hearing steak sizzle on a grill.
“Ah, now. Mr. Smoller,” Danny Cleveland said. “Good to see you here. Sad days though. Very sad.”
Danny bent his knees down to the table, stooped over, and with pursed lips slurped off the top of the full glass. He straightened up with a sigh of satisfaction and turned around with the glass in his plastic right hand.
“It is,” I said. “Big party.”
“Your hand is empty, sir. We must remedy that immediately.” Danny Cleveland put out his good left hand and grabbed the open bottle of Jameson off the bar. “This is my wee private bottle,” he said. If not for the broadening brogue, I wouldn’t have guessed he had made the dent in the bottle’s content by himself.
“I didn’t expect you here,” I said. “I think I owe you an apology.”
“Nonsense, sir. Nonsense. I haven’t the faintest clue what you are dithering on about.”
“I haven’t had time to call Armand Redfield.”
“No apology need be considered.”
“After you left my office, I went over to Joe’s. The DA grabbed me from there. I haven’t had a second to even catch my breath.” My voice faded as my mind reeled from the fresh, scarred memory of the last three days. I rubbed my face to clear the movie replaying in my head. “Hard to believe, but it was only three days ago,” I said, mainly to myself.
“Completely. I understand completely. Really I do, my dear boy. Utter shock. Utterly shocking.”
He pursed his lips again and brought them down to the glass as if magnetized by a powerful force. When his face came away from the thick-walled glass, the glass was empty. He looked over my shoulder and stiffened suddenly. He placed a hand on my shoulder and looked at my face, his eyes wandering back and forth with drunken freedom.
“Nature calls, dear boy. Excuse me.”
I watched him weave through to the kitchen, toward a bathroom I knew was off the butler’s pantry. I took a drink of my scotch and felt its cool hot first sip. The one that always tasted good, never wrong. Knots in my shoulders and back loosened with the initial burn of it. Before I drank a second, the crowd parted quickly for another dark-suited man pushing through. I was slow to recognize him.
“Max,” said Armand Redfield, “I’m glad you’re here. I knew you would be.”
I stiffened. “Armand Redfield,” I said. “I can’t say the same for you. What are you doing here?”
“I’ve known Joe almost as long as you.”
“Not quite. Only if you call ten years—”
“I said almost, didn’t I?” he interrupted. He kept on. “Max. This is a funeral reception. Can we just move on for a minute? I’d like to talk to you anyway.”
“About what?”
“Who was that you were talking to before?”
“McClellan Cleveland,” I said. If Armand already knew about Danny, I might as well go for it. It would be fast and easy, though possibly inappropriate at Joe’s house. But if you don’t use a hot iron, you never get the job done.
“Calls himself Dan
ny,” I said. “I was going to call you anyway. Look, all the guy wants is not to get his refund. I’m sure I don’t know why. Maybe some divorce thing. He says he’s not owed it. But can I come and talk to you about it? Show you his calculations, his 1040 maybe?”
“Who’s Danny Cleveland?” Armand asked.
“You don’t know?”
“Not from Adam. Weren’t you talking to Michael Kessler on the way in?”
“I don’t know Michael Kessler.”
“Joe’s silent partner. Michael Kessler. CleanEdge Technology Kessler? You were talking to him in the foyer.”
“The blond guy when I walked in? That’s Kessler? He’s Joe’s partner?”
“He just about owns the disk drive market.”
“Bully for him.”
“Joe was running half a billion dollars of his money.”
“Half a billion? As in five hundred million?”
Armand smiled, pleased that finally I was impressed with him, or Joe, or both. “It adds up to real money after a while, doesn’t it? Just a year’s worth of interest for a guy like that.”
“How much did Joe have under management?” I asked. Why I was asking Redfield I wasn’t quite sure, but it was out of my mouth before I knew it. Sometimes, though, those are the best questions, the pop-out ones. I had honed my diplomatic interrogation skills trying to get under my clients’ personal finances. It required the persistence of a detective and the subtlety of a card shark.
“Ten and a half billion dollars,” Armand said.
“A couple of years ago I thought he only had a billion and a half.”
“Joe did real well the past couple of years. Money was flying in from everywhere apparently.”
“Apparently.” I wondered why Joe had not told me. I knew his income was going up. His firm was growing. But not that big. Normally, he would have told me. Or maybe I just didn’t listen.
“You talked to Joe about Cleveland?” I asked.
“No, of course not. You know the ethics rules better than anyone.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing. I just wanted to meet Kessler. I’ve always admired the guy. Hero worship. You know.” He turned his head and took a drink.