It was four-thirty on Tuesday afternoon.
“Actually,” Elliot was telling her, “if I believed in coincidences, I’d say it was quite a coincidence you happening to come by here today with that question.”
“Why is that?”
“Because just today, I . . .” Rummaging around on the surface of his desk, he extracted a sheet of paper from a small pile of them. “Well, here. Troglodyte that I am, I still ask for and get hard- copy galleys. They hate me for it, but what are they going to do? I’m a star. So, anyway, this is tomorrow’s column. You might find it somewhat interesting.”
CityTalk
BY JEFF ELLIOT
Everyone knows that the murder last Tuesday of community activist Dominic Como has left his flagship Sunset Youth Project (“SYP”) in a precarious state. But CityTalk has learned from sources in the city’s Health Services Department that its troubles may have begun before Mr. Como’s death. The sources, who wished to remain anonymous because the reports they spoke about were not due to become public until later this week, portrayed an organization rife with political intrigue and corruption.
Roake looked up from the page. “Let me guess,” she said. “Como and his pals were lining their pockets with grant money.”
“Damn,” Elliot said. “You stole my scoop. Who woulda thunk it?”
“Okay, so let me go double or nothing. Just a wild guess. Somehow Len Turner’s in this up to his eyes.”
Elliot sighed. “You’re psychic.”
Gina shrugged. “It’s a small talent.” She went back to the column.
According to documents released by the federal government last Friday, the SYP is to be barred access to federal grants and contracts for up to one year due to its unauthorized use of AmeriCorps funds. AmeriCorps has contributed over $4.6 million to SYP over the past four years. According to its contract with AmeriCorps, SYP agreed to use these funds to pay tutors at its Ortega campus, to redevelop certain selected properties to be used as residential treatment facilities, and to assist with marketing and operations in SYP’s other subsidiaries, such as its moving company, art gallery, and theater.
Instead, the documents list a number of violations against Mr. Como, including:
• Misuse of AmeriCorps funds for his personal benefit, including paying several different drivers to take him to personal appointments, wash his car, and run personal errands.
• Unlawfully supplementing the salaries of instructors at the Ortega campus with federal grant funds by enrolling these instructors in the AmeriCorps program and giving them federally funded living allowances and education awards.
• Improperly using AmeriCorps members for political activities, such as pamphlet distribution and telephone solicitation.
• Misusing AmeriCorps members as janitors and clerical personnel at the Ortega campus, not as tutors.
“So how’d they find out?” Gina asked. “Tell me someone in the organization ratted him out. I love it when the vipers turn on each other.”
“Nothing so dramatic. At least not that we know of. Someone with the federal Corporation for National and Community Service caught some irregularities. You gotta see the full report. It’s pretty blunt.”
“Bean counters,” Gina said. “You gotta love ’em.”
Elliot nodded. “Keep reading. Now comes the juicy local stuff and affirmation of your psychic power.”
In a closely related matter, just this past weekend the San Francisco Board of Supervisors released its yearly budget analysis of the Communities of Opportunity (“COO”) program, headed by Len Turner. Mr. Turner, apart from this mayoral-appointed position, also serves as legal counsel to several service-oriented nonprofit organizations, including the Mission Street Coalition, the Sanctuary House for Battered Women, and, notably, the SYP, among several others.
The COO program has supplied nearly $4 million, mostly foundation money from private sources, into community redevelopment for some of the city’s most poverty-stricken neighborhoods. But the just-released budget analysis has revealed that despite this influx of cash—earmarked for after-school tutoring, health care, addiction rehabilitation, and job placement—the program has essentially nothing to show for its efforts over the past two years.
“So,” Gina said, “the Supes found out this was coming?”
“Looks like it.”
“And they were shocked, shocked, that there was gambling going on at Rick’s.”
“Exactly.”
“So where did the money go?”
“Read on.”
Below is a partial listing of questionable expenses so far unearthed: conferences for community development professionals ($602,335), theatrical and musical events ($136,800), consultants and public relations ($477, 210), program office and community staff ($372,000), and community outreach ($256,780). Beyond these “expenses,” nearly $2 million went to “community-based organizations and other services”—i.e., to the very nonprofits who were charged with administering the COO funds. And finally, in the COO program alone, Mr. Turner pulls down a salary of $370,000 per year.
Revelations such as these lend credence to the pejorative term sometimes used to describe these professional fund-raisers and community activists: “poverty pimps.” They like to describe themselves as people who are “doing well by doing good.” They are doing very well indeed. In fact, judging from the financial improprieties apparent in these two recent reports, it seems that in San Francisco, nonprofit is in fact a high- profit, big- money game. And taking into consideration Mr. Como’s murder, it may also be a deadly one.
Gina Roake handed the galley sheet back to Jeff Elliot. “Looks plenty grafty to me,” she said. “Not to mention slightly dangerous, which is exactly the message I’ve been trying to get through to Wyatt.”
“It’s a good one. Isn’t he getting it?”
“Not clearly enough, I don’t believe.” She paused. “So, off the record, what do you think the odds are that these two reports”—here she indicated the article she’d just read—“had nothing whatsoever to do with Como’s death?”
Elliot leaned back and scratched at his beard. “Fifty to one. Maybe a hundred to one. I’d be stunned if they didn’t.”
“I would be too. The timing’s just too perfect. So the question is, why exactly would someone want to kill him over this?”
Elliot broke a smile. “You going for the reward?”
“Not specifically, although if we came up with something really good right here and now, I’d be happy to share with you.”
“Okay. Deal.” Elliot stretched out a hand and they shook. “Now give me a second.” Sitting in his wheelchair, he closed his eyes, head back. “Theory number one takes a bit of a stretch to start out, but ends strong.”
“Let’s hear the stretch part.”
“All right. We assume that Como either didn’t know about or wasn’t hands-on responsible for any of the stuff from tomorrow’s column.” He held up a hand. “I said it was a stretch. But let’s assume . . .”
Roake made a face. “Okay, but only for the sake of argument.”
“Fair enough. Como is a bona fide saint who doesn’t know that scandal is about to blow up all over at Sunset. Somebody else, let’s call him Turner for lack of a better word, has been screwing with the books and playing loose with the rules for three years or more—”
“Try twenty,” Roake said.
“Okay, twenty. Anyway, so last week Como gets wind of let’s say the AmeriCorps problem cutting off his federal grants. So he goes to Turner, his corporate counsel, and realizes that it’s got to have been Turner behind the cooking of the books and the misuse of the funds. So he meets him alone and calls him on it, says he’s going to fire him, get him kicked off the COO program, all of the above. Turner can’t have that happen, and voilá. He whacks him.”
“Yeah, but Turner knows this stuff’s going to come out anyway.”
“Sure, but if the community hangs together, Sunset loses some federal fun
ding for a while, but otherwise nothing happens. Nothing changes. On the other hand, if Como makes a stink, Turner’s in deep shit with the whole nonprofit world, which is his entire income. Not to say life.”
Roake chewed on it for a moment. “Possible,” she said, “if you can buy the premise, which I’m afraid I can’t.”
“Yeah,” Elliot said. “I don’t know if I can either. I mean, it would be hard to argue that Como didn’t know he had some drivers taking him around places, you know?”
“I know. So where’s that leave us?”
“We need a second theory, and I got the first one, so it’s your turn.”
“All right.” Roake closed her own eyes. “Okay, how’s this: One of those private interests that provided the funding, they got pissed that Como was essentially stealing from them, personally.”
“So they killed him?” Elliot was shaking his head. “Doesn’t sing for me at all. And besides, that’s the COO money you’re talking about, and that report—the budget analysis—was coming out right about the time somebody killed him. So if it was about money, the timing says it was about the federal money.”
“And Turner, somehow, don’t you think? All right, how’s this? They both knew about the money problems. Are either of them looking at prison time over this?”
“I don’t know. You’re the lawyer, you should know this, right? Me, I’d say not impossible.”
“Okay, let’s go with that for the moment. Say Turner knows he’s going to jail if it’s him and Como each pointing fingers at each other. Except if Como’s dead, then it’s Turner’s finger and that finger’s only pointing in one direction, at Como. Como stole the money, misappropriated the money, it’s all his fault.”
“That’s good,” Elliot said.
“Yeah, but . . . if that were the case, I’m surprised Turner didn’t even try to make it look like a suicide—Como knows he’s going down for this, and decides to kill himself. But still, in general terms, I think it flies. Or”—Roake’s eyes lit up—“even better . . . you’re going to like this . . . Turner’s got some rehab and paroled people in these residential units and he hires one of them to take Como out. They don’t do it, he violates them back, and they go to jail. And, hell, what do they care about Como anyway?”
“So it’s a hit?”
“At least it’s a theory that works. And we’ve got to have something involving both Len Turner and the money, right?”
Elliot clucked. “It’s tempting to think so. Maybe Hunt ought to talk to him.”
“Thanks, Jeff,” she said, “but that’s pretty much exactly what I came here to talk him out of. He’s basically working for Turner, but he doesn’t want to be messing with him. Besides, Turner’s controlling the funds for the reward.”
Elliot raised his eyebrows. “So you’re telling me Hunt gives Turner a pass? He’s not going to look at him at all?”
“That’s my hope. They’re just supposed to be a clearinghouse for information going to the police.”
“So what do your psychic powers say?”
“Unfortunately,” she said, “they say I’m whistling in the wind.”
When they looked in the trunk of the limo out at the Sunset Youth Project, they found that its tire iron was in fact missing. Now, back at his desk in the homicide detail, Devin Juhle hung up his telephone and looked across his desk and then the desk of his partner, Russo, where she sat with the tip of her tongue sticking out through her lips as she labored over the typed transcription of an interview they’d done on another of their cases.
Picking up a paper clip, he tossed it across, and she looked up in exasperation.
“What?”
“You’ll never believe who that was.”
“George Clooney.”
“Nope. Guess again.”
“If it’s not George Clooney, I don’t care who it was.”
“Yes, you will.”
She picked up the paper clip, unbent it, bent it back. “It couldn’t have been the lab already with the tire iron.”
Juhle nodded with satisfaction. “Mr. Como must have been more important than even we thought he was. And they found a trace of his DNA. Strong profile, and no doubt about it.”
“How’d the lab even find the DNA after that soak in the lake?”
“Probably that prayer to Saint Jude I said.”
“But really?”
“Really. Hair follicle stuck to the tire iron. It settled into the mud and the mud covered it up so all of it didn’t wash away. In a million years it might have been a hair fossil if we’d have left it alone.” Juhle leaned back, linked his hands around the back of his head. “You know what this means? Warrant for the car.”
Russo’s shoulders sagged as she let out a sigh. “And I suppose we’re going to want to do this tonight?”
“Get the warrant tonight, impound it tonight before anybody can get it any cleaner, do the search first thing tomorrow.” He gestured to the marked-up paperwork on his partner’s desk. “Sarah, what’s got into you? Look what you’re working on when the game’s afoot. The trail’s heating up. I can feel it.” Now he was on his feet. “Let’s go find us a judge. You with me? I know you’re with me.”
She sighed again, with perhaps exaggerated weariness. “Yes, kimosabe, I’m with you.”
16
Much to Hunt’s delight, Tamara had fielded three calls in the afternoon from previous clients who all seemed to have developed amnesia about the last six months. Or maybe Hunt had served sufficient penance for his transgressions and his firm’s name in the newspaper suddenly announced to the legal world at large that he was back in business. If the city’s well-connected service-oriented charities were entrusting him with work, then clearly his name was no longer anathema, and his firm no longer a pariah.
All three of the clients were law firms located in buildings that were within a short walking distance from Hunt’s office, and by seven-thirty on this Tuesday night he was walking out of the last one at Market and Spear, now wrestling with something that had been the least of his worries over the past months—staffing. In the past two and a half hours, he’d just reestablished personal relations with these big-time litigators who needed private investigators to sit in on their depositions or serve subpoenas or locate and deliver witnesses. Everybody he’d talked to seemed genuinely enthusiastic that he was back in business—had they actually thought he’d closed up?—and all of them had work that, of course, couldn’t wait. After all, this was the law, where nothing could wait. Everything had to be done yesterday latest. When could he start?
But he only had Mickey, who didn’t have any kind of license besides the one that he used to drive, and Tamara, ditto, who’d been back on the job for a whole two days now. Thinking it never rained but it poured, but basically happy about it, Hunt headed back to his office to make some calls to see if he could line up a few underemployed, licensed stringers that he could bring on to do some work for him temporarily.
When he got inside the main door, though, he noticed the message light blinking “1” and pushed the button to hear Juhle pass along the news that Hunt’s anonymous source might be in line for part of the reward after all, since the police lab had discovered Dominic Como’s hair on the tire iron they’d retrieved from the drained lagoon. And what did Hunt think of that?
Hunt thought first that Cecil Rand would be happy to see some money at the end of this, and second that it was not too surprising, finding the murder weapon near the scene of the crime, although the speed of the police lab’s analysis was nearly unprecedented. He also didn’t think any of this was overwhelmingly important. It didn’t identify a suspect, not unless there were fingerprints or other identifying marks on the tire iron, and there couldn’t have been or Juhle would have mentioned them.
Hunt went back through the door behind Tamara’s station, switched on his light, and, pulling the chair up behind his own desk, sat down and started going through the notes he’d taken at his various meetings, estimating his
personnel needs for the next couple of weeks. Touching his mouse, he awakened the computer screen in front of him, and he pulled up his address book.
And then suddenly he wasn’t looking at the screen anymore, but had slumped back in his chair, some barely registered thought nagging at him. For a minute, maybe more, he didn’t move except to squeeze the skin around his lower lip.
Finally, he got up and walked outside again to the reception area, over to Tamara’s desk. There, on her yellow pad, she’d written the names and telephone numbers of the reward callers, and up near the top was Nancy Neshek, who hadn’t been either at work or at her home all day. Hunt had tried for the fourth and last time just at five o’clock, before he’d gone out for his first meeting, and neither had her workplace heard from her nor had she answered her home telephone.
Hunt sat down in Tamara’s chair and punched in the Neshek home number. On the fourth ring, the answering machine picked up again and Hunt waited and then, on the off chance that she was monitoring her calls and would pick up when she heard him, he left a brief message identifying himself. He then waited again to give her time to reach the phone, until at last, when it was clear she wasn’t going to answer, he hung up.
And sat still again.
She had called and left a message here last night, saying it was somewhat important and that he could reach her either at her home or office the next day. She’d been very specific. He could reach her either at home or her office. And he hadn’t been able to do so. Of course, something could have come up. She might have made other last-minute plans, but . . .
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