A Criminal Defense

by Steven Gore

  Rusch reached down, filled a glass with beer from the tap, and slid it to Donnally.

  “On the house.”

  Donnally nodded thanks and took a sip.

  Rusch cocked his head toward the front window and pointed up the block toward Mission Street.

  “I’d just bought this place when you got shot out there. At least ten years ago and I remember it like it was yesterday. People are still talking about it. You’re a legend … a leg-end.” Rusch smiled and made a trigger motion with his thumb. “Like at the O.K. Corral. Bam-bam, bam-bam-bam.” He laughed. “All my customers go running out the back door like they didn’t want to be anywhere near the Mission District when the cops showed up and started patting people down. Then sirens coming from everywhere. Whoop—whoop—whoop.”

  Donnally had gotten caught in a crossfire between Sureño and Norteño gangsters after he climbed out of his car to meet an informant at Morelia Taqueria. He put fatal slugs into both of them, and the Norteño put the one into him that ended his career.

  “I ran out there. I could see by the way them EMTs were working on you that your cop days were done.” Rusch pointed down at Donnally’s hip. “All the blood coming out of there told me that’s where you got shot. I didn’t figure that you’d be doing much running and gunning after that.”

  Rusch rubbed his side as though in sympathy. “That joint back to working okay?”

  In fact it wasn’t. Donnally woke up to the stabbing memory of that day every morning and went to sleep with it every night.

  But that was none of Rusch’s business.

  Donnally nodded and changed the subject. “I found some cash in Hamlin’s safe.”

  “Not from me. I gave him thirty grand altogether. It’s got to be gone by now. Long gone.”

  “Madison seemed to think that the deal was for life with a hundred grand always on deposit.”

  Rusch smiled again. “He should’ve taken up that little misunderstanding with Hamlin.”

  “He tried.”

  Rusch paused and pursed his lips, then squinted at Donnally and asked, “What kind of bills did Hamlin have?”

  “Hundreds.”

  “You won’t find my fingerprints on that money.” Rusch gestured toward the cash register. “Biggest bills I get coming through here are fifties and most are twenties.”

  Rusch didn’t need to say that the denomination of choice in the biker drug trade was the twenty.

  “Then why the attempted hit on Madison in prison?” Donnally asked.

  Rusch’s brows furrowed and he drummed his fingers on the bar. “Where’s this information going?”

  “You see me taking notes?”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “In my head unless you’re lying to me.”

  Rusch stared out into the bar until he got the attention of a biker wearing a black vest and a green T-shirt with a shamrock printed on the front, then he nodded at the stool next to Donnally.

  Donnally recognized the shamrock as an Aryan Brotherhood emblem. One of the first homicides he investigated was an execution of a Hell’s Angel named Irish by an Aryan Brotherhood member wearing a similar T-shirt, except with the words “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling” printed below it. He now wondered if this gang connection was the reason Rusch remembered his name and the day he was shot down. Donnally was known throughout the Aryan Brotherhood because he’d chased down scores of members, their wives, girlfriends, hangers-on, and associates and until he’d gathered enough leads to identify the killer.

  The biker walked over and slipped onto the stool. He had a windburned, middle-aged face that had seen a lot of sun and grit, and teeth that had met a lot of cigarette smoke.

  “You know anything about a stabbing in CMF Vacaville? Guy named Madison.” Rusch looked at Donnally. “When?”

  “Little over a month ago.”

  The biker rotated his chair toward Donnally and inspected him. “What’s your interest?”

  Rusch cut in. “My interest.”

  “He looks like a cop,” the biker said, still eyeing Donnally, but not recognizing him due to the passage of time. “Who is he?”

  “He was a cop. Now he …” Without lifting up his hand, Rusch flicked his forefinger at Donnally. “What do you do now?”

  Donnally noticed that Rusch had avoided introducing him by name, probably fearing the biker would take a swing at him, with the rest jumping in, because he’d put a gang brother in prison for life.

  Looking at bikers reflected in the mirror behind the bar, Donnally imagined that after the police cleared the scene on the day he was shot, some of these same men had returned to celebrate. Laughing, backslapping, high-fiving, and laying bets on whether he’d ever walk out of the hospital.

  “I run a restaurant in Mount Shasta.”

  “Which one?” The biker asked the question like he’d been through the town enough to catch Donnally in a lie.

  “You know it,” Donnally said. “Lot of motorcycle club guys stop in on their way up to Washington and Oregon. Lone Mountain Café.”

  The biker nodded, spun his stool around, and walked back to his table. Moments after he sat down and whispered a few words to the others at the table, one of them withdrew a cell phone and made a call. It rang a few minutes later and the biker returned.

  He looked at Rusch. “Bennie Madison? The guy who—”

  Rusch nodded.

  The biker turned toward Donnally. “His nickname is Shitty. He refused to pay for some crystal meth he got from somebody.” The biker emphasized the last word, then paused, implying the somebody was the Aryan Brotherhood. “He was supposed to hand over some Oxycontin tablets he got from the doc.” The biker pointed at his own head. “He was milking some kind of brain thing. Scamming the hell out of it. Shitty claimed the meth was bunk—it wasn’t. And somebody couldn’t let that kind of disrespect pass.”

  Chapter 12

  Donnally dropped into a chair across from Ramon Navarro in the Golden Phoenix, a shotgun Chinese café composed of six tables, two fish tanks at the back, and a cook who doubled as the waiter, halfway between the Hall of Justice and the Mission District bar of Rudy Rusch. It was long past sunset and they figured they owed themselves both lunch and dinner. Only one other table was occupied, by an old man hunched over a bowl of soup and watched by a lobster sitting shoulder-level behind the glass.

  “A waste of time,” Donnally said. “My guess is Madison knew he was dead on the case and figured he’d be dead for real in a year or two, so he sent Hamlin to threaten Rusch and extort some cash in order to cushion his fall. Maybe they split the money.”

  Navarro displayed an I-was-right-about-Hamlin smirk. “So it wasn’t so pro bono after all.”

  “Looks that way.”

  Donnally reached for the menu standing between the napkin dispenser and the wall.

  “You sure it wasn’t Rusch who sent the Aryan Brotherhood after Madison?” Navarro asked. “The rumor years ago was that they backed him in buying the bar.”

  “In a credibility contest between Madison and Rusch, I’ll take Rusch. He still calls his wife The Bitch, even though saying it paints crosshairs on his forehead.”

  The cook walked up. Donnally ordered chicken chow fun. He’d missed Golden Phoenix’s version of the dish, nutty, dry-fried, and spicy, during the years since he’d moved up to Mount Shasta. Since he was doing cop work, he felt like eating cop food, at least in San Francisco. Long gone were the days when officers limited themselves to a Norman Rockwell diet of burgers and fries and roast beef or turkey plate specials.

  Navarro ordered the same.

  “You get any prints off the money?” Donnally asked.

  “Some.” Navarro reached down and withdrew a file folder from his briefcase and handed it to Donnally, who passed over copies of his cell phone research and Hamlin’s calendar. “We’ve dusted most of the bills and recovered a few prints so far. The techs are still going through them.” He pointed at the folder. “Those are the people w
e’ve identified so far.”

  Donnally spotted Takiyah Jackson’s name, along with Hamlin’s and one he didn’t recognize.

  “How’d you happen to have Jackson’s prints on file?” Donnally asked.

  “She got arrested in a raid on a Black Prisoners Union hideout in the eighties.”

  “Which one?”

  “The one in which Bumper was killed.”

  Donnally now understood why Jackson had been drawn to Hamlin. It had been one of the most notorious cases of the era. The medical examiner’s autopsy had confirmed witnesses’ testimony that the ideological leader of the Black Prisoners Union had been killed by police officers while lying facedown on his bed. Donnally guessed from then on Jackson’s world was made up of cops and cons, and she saw herself as a con.

  “What was she doing there?”

  “A runaway from the East Oakland housing projects. Sexually abusive father. Heroin-addicted mother. She’d been in the BPU house for a couple of days. I pulled the file when we got the match. Her real name is Jeanette. They gave her the African name Takiyah. It means righteous.”

  Donnally read off the second name. “Who’s Sheldon Galen?”

  “Defense lawyer. Been around San Francisco for about eight years. Shares Hamlin’s point of view, but doesn’t have his brains. Hamlin would bring him in on codefendant cases. Hamlin always took the heavy and gave Galen the lightweight and expected Galen to make sure the client didn’t turn snitch and roll on Hamlin’s guy.”

  “He have a criminal history, too?”

  “No. His prints were in the applicant file from when he tried to get a job in the public defender’s office.”

  “If his prints were on the cash,” Donnally said, “that suggests he must’ve been the bagman, collecting the fees and bringing them to Hamlin.” He smiled. “I don’t see Hamlin handing anybody a hundred grand and then telling him to strip off a couple as his cut.”

  Donnally leaned back and held the sheet against his chest as the cook delivered their plates of chow fun. The peanut-oiled noodles in brown sauce shimmered under the overhead fluorescent lights. He could tell by the aroma that nothing had changed in the kitchen of the Golden Phoenix since he’d last eaten there.

  “Homicides are usually about drugs, sex, or money,” Donnally said after he walked away. “Maybe I should drop in on Galen tomorrow.”

  “Let me make a few calls first and see if any of the courthouse gossips know if there was anything going on between them. Maybe a fight over a case or fees or something. Some kind of falling out. Give you something to work with.”

  Donnally nodded. “It’s tough to go after a witness cold, especially a lawyer.”

  Navarro grinned. “You mean a professional questioner like yourself has no chance against a professional liar like him?”

  “My professional days are long over. Now I’m just a guy who runs a café.”

  Donnally pointed at Navarro’s plate, then took a bite from his own. They didn’t speak again until they’d gotten a few mouthfuls down.

  “What did you turn up from the apartment?” Donnally asked.

  “A few latents, but none from the kitchen. Somebody did a helluva clean-up job. The people in the other half of the duplex were out of town, and neighborhood canvass got us nothing at all. Hear no evil, see no evil. But we haven’t given up. We’re looking for some local kids who hang out in the park across the street at night.”

  “What’s your thinking about the hairs in the bathroom and the rope left behind?”

  “Maybe they got panicky or something made them rush at the end.” Navarro smiled again. “Like you used to say, nobody gets murder right the first time. It takes practice.”

  “You sure this was a first time?”

  “At least in terms of MO. I’ve never seen anything like it in San Francisco before.” Navarro took a sip of tea. “It’s so bizarre the loonies are all coming out. A couple of them called the tip line. Apparently a conspiracy of Martians and Scientologists did Hamlin in.”

  Navarro reached into his briefcase again. Donnally expected him to take out the legitimate leads from the calls. Instead, it was his department-issued iPad. He turned it on, tapped an icon, and handed it to Donnally. It displayed a story about Hamlin’s murder on the home page of the San Francisco Chronicle.

  “You’ll love this,” Navarro said, pointing at a second paragraph.

  Donnally read it to himself.

  “It is a monumental loss to the legal community of San Francisco,” District Attorney Hannah Goldhagen said late this morning. “We’ll miss his intelligence, his aggressive advocacy, and his humor that informed as much as it entertained. I can guarantee the people of San Francisco we will find and prosecute whoever murdered him to the fullest extent of the law.”

  Donnally passed it back. “She had to say something other than good riddance. It’s Bay Area politics in its most perfect state.”

  Navarro’s fists tightened on the table. “That bitch has never prosecuted anyone to the fullest extent of the law. She’s spent her whole career oiling the hinges on the revolving door.”

  “And somehow I get the feeling you’re hoping whoever did Hamlin in is one of those who slipped through.”

  “Yeah. With him holding it open.”

  Chapter 13

  Donnally noticed the letter-sized envelope protruding from under the doormat as he reached into his pocket to dig out his house keys. He bent down and rolled back the corner of the rubber pad, then squeezed the envelope by opposite edges and picked it up. The words printed on the paper inside showed through when he raised it up toward the porch light: “Follow the Money.”

  What do you think I’m doing? was his first thought. His second was Who gave you the right to come to my house?

  He unlocked the door of the two-story bungalow and followed the distant light through the living room and into the kitchen where Janie was working on her laptop at the table. Handwritten case notes from her psychotherapy sessions at Fort Miley lay next to it. He set the envelope on top of the newspaper lying on his side of the table, then kissed her on the forehead.

  “What’s that?” she asked, pointing at the envelope.

  “A love letter from somebody who’s one step behind me, but who thinks they’re one step ahead.”

  “Better for you than the other way around.”

  Donnally made a point of scratching his head. “I’m not sure I understand that one.”

  Janie smiled. “Ever since Freud and Jung, shrinks are allowed to be cryptic and nonsensical. It adds to our aura of enlightenment.” She pointed at the chair across from her and closed the laptop lid. “Tell me about your day. All I know is what’s been on TV.” Her smile transformed into a grin. “I kind of like the title special master, especially since in San Francisco it sounds kind of sexual. Dungeons. Dominatrices. And special masters.” She raised her eyebrows. “Did they give you a little whip?”

  Donnally smiled back, holding up his empty hands, and then filled her in on what had happened since he’d climbed out of their bed at 4 A.M.

  “I’ve got to handle Takiyah Jackson carefully,” Donnally said when he came to the end of the story and began to think about next steps. “I’m convinced that folie à deux really does capture her relationship with Hamlin.”

  “Or maybe a folie à plusieurs,” Janie said. “A madness of many. He had lots of people willing to work for him and lots of attorneys willing to work with him, like Sheldon Galen.”

  Donnally narrowed his eyes at her. “How do you know about Galen?”

  “He was on the news. And not easily forgotten. He has a New York accent and a face like a greyhound.”

  Janie paused in thought for a moment, then said, “ ‘Madness’ may be too strong a word, but I see why you’d latch on to it.”

  Donnally felt himself stiffen and his stomach tighten. The problem with having a shrink as a girlfriend is the continuing risk of getting shrunk.

  Janie stared at him. He knew she was waiti
ng for permission to say what was on her mind. He nodded.

  “It’s because you can’t accept that people like Hamlin feel morally justified in what they do.”

  He knew she was right.

  “I think that’s why you never really understood narcotics officers who planted drugs on gangsters and then committed perjury to make the cases stick. You always believed their motives were more basic, like it was only about power. Cons playing the part of cops. Same with Hamlin, you always thought attorneys like him were motivated by greed alone and they merely disguised their motives in moral language.”

  Donnally always thought one of his strengths as a detective was that he never believed either cops’ or crooks’ justifications for their criminal offenses. Rather, he saw the crimes graphically and abstractly, like moves in a game, or as forms of self-deception or as attempts to justify the unjustifiable.

  Janie hadn’t known him during those years. He had been referred to her after he was shot. It wasn’t that the department thought he’d gone nuts and needed treatment. It was just a requirement of the general orders that an officer who killed a suspect in the line of duty undergo a psych evaluation. He considered it a sign of his sanity that at the first meeting he decided he’d rather date her than get shrunk by her.

  She ended up doing both, starting with the dating.

  “I think that’s why you sometimes sound like you operate on a kind of mechanistic and reductionist theory of homicide and view them as motivated only by drugs, sex, or money.”

  It was like she’d been sitting at the next table in the Golden Phoenix listening in, but in truth it was that she’d paid close enough attention over the years to be able to tell him how he saw the world, and why he did so.

  “But I’m not sure you really believe that. It’s just that thinking in terms of power, of brute causes and effects, seems more honest to you than the way your father thinks about the world.”

  Donnally felt himself tense. Every time Janie started down this kind of analytic road, his past washed over him like a flash flood, the storm triggered by the mention of his father. It made him feel like he’d spent too many years circling in an eddy.