Bill Pronzini - Schemers

“Yes.”

“Still being held, then?”

“Until tomorrow morning. Arthur has a court date at ten to try to arrange bail.”

“Can you get me in to see her?”

“Should be able to, yes. Now?”

“Now,” I said. “I need to drop off my statement at the Hall of Justice anyway.”

S an Francisco operates eight city jails, which says something about the local crime rate. Two of them are located down the Peninsula in San Bruno, there’s a prison ward in San Francisco General Hospital, and a pair for the booking and release of prisoners and for “program-oriented rehabilitation” are in the newest jail complex on Seventh Street near the Hall of Justice. The other three are in the Hall itself, on the two top floors. One of those, on the sixth floor, houses the women’s section where Angelina Pollexfen was being held.

Every time I enter the Hall of Justice these days, I can’t help remembering that the sprawling monolith has design flaws and is a potential death trap in a high-magnitude earthquake. I don’t read the newspapers as a rule, but Kerry does; there was an article a few years ago in the Chronicle about the building’s “vulnerability to calamity” that she’d called to my attention. The original structure was built in 1958 and has been expanded twice since, but none of the city administrators has seen fit to authorize the necessary retrofitting to meet current earthquake codes. There’s been plenty of talk about putting up a replacement building, yet in twenty years plans haven’t gotten much beyond the talking stage. The ever-increasing cost of tearing down the old and putting up the new back-burners it every time.

The Hall withstood the Loma Prieta quake in 1989 with only minor damage, though the power failed and prevented officers from opening an electronic door to the secured area where weapons are stored. In a stronger shake centered in or close to the city, the walls would probably crack and even if the building managed not to topple, or the section of the freeway approach to the Bay Bridge in whose shadow it sits didn’t collapse into it, it would likely trap people inside and be rendered unusable-a crisis within a crisis. All of which makes me feel just a little vulnerable in its confines, despite the fact that native San Franciscans learn early on not to be intimidated by the threat of earthquakes.

The jails in the Hall are gloomy, noisy places presided over by grim-visaged sheriff’s deputies of both sexes. DiSantis got us an audience with Angelina Pollexfen with no trouble, after which we went through the usual security checks and paperwork before being admitted to the visitors’ room. A matron brought Pollexfen out and she and I sat down on our respective sides of the glass wall and picked up the communicating handsets. DiSantis stood behind me and, to his credit, kept his own counsel.

Different woman, Mrs. Pollexfen, than the one I’d had the adversarial lunch with on Tuesday. Orange jumpsuit in place of the expensive clothes, hair uncombed, pale face free of makeup, eyes sick and dull. The smart-ass cool had been replaced by a kind of wheedling deference.

“Thank you for coming,” she said. “Paul said you would, but after the other day… I’m sorry about the way I acted. I shouldn’t have had all those martinis.”

I waved that away. “Tell me what happened yesterday.”

“I didn’t kill Jeremy,” she said fervently. “I swear to God I didn’t.”

“Just tell me what happened.”

“I don’t know what happened. The last thing I remember is having drinks with with Jeremy and that bastard I’m married to. I started to feel woozy, I think I said something about it, and then… nothing until I woke up with police all over the place.”

“Where did you have the drinks?”

“The library. I thought that was a little strange because Greg doesn’t usually let anybody in there with him, especially Jeremy and me.”

“His idea, this little gathering?”

“Yes. He insisted we be there at twelve thirty-he said he wanted to talk to us.”

“About?”

“Those damn missing books. But he didn’t really have much to say, just the same old baseless accusations.”

“Against your brother?”

“Yes. And that I must have known and was keeping quiet about it to protect Jeremy.”

“Were you?”

“No. I swear I don’t know what happened to those books. Neither did Jeremy. He called Greg a conniving old fool and told him he’d better watch out or he’d regret it.”

“Regret it how?”

Her gaze shifted to DiSantis, but she must not have gotten anything from him in return; she said to my right ear, “He didn’t say how.”

I said, “Look, Mrs. Pollexfen, if you want my help you’re going to have to confide in me and in your attorneys. Everything you know, nothing held back. Understood?”

“Yes.” Low, almost a whisper.

“The three of you hated one another, and yet your husband kept right on letting you and your brother live under his roof. I understand his reasons in your case, but not in your brother’s. Did Jeremy have something on him, some kind of hold?”

No response for a time. Her lips were cracked and dry; she bit a piece of skin from the lower, scraped it off her tongue with a fingernail. Then, “He knew some things about Greg, yes.”

“What sort of things?”

“Business dealings. I told you Greg was a manipulator. Well, his manipulations got him into a bind once and he did something illegal to get out of it. I don’t know what it was exactly, just that it involved a small aviation company.”

“And your brother found out about it, is that it?”

“Yes.”

“When did this happen-the illegal act?”

“Five or six years ago.”

“So your brother blackmailed him-”

“It wasn’t blackmail. Not exactly.”

“Call it manipulation, then. Manipulating the manipulator. That’s how Jeremy got him to invest one hundred thousand dollars in the San Jose music show.”

She nodded. “And when Jeremy lost the money, Greg hated him all the more. That’s why Greg killed him and made it look like I did it-to get both of us out of his life at the same time.”

“This secret. Can you give me any details?”

“Jeremy wouldn’t talk about it.”

“He never mentioned the name of the aviation company?”

“No. Wait, yes, I heard him talking to Greg once. Green something Aeronautics. Jeremy knew one of the executives who worked there, that’s how he found out what Greg did.”

“Local company? Bay Area?”

“I think so.”

Tamara ought to be able to find out. I said, “Let’s get back to yesterday afternoon. Your husband made the drinks for the three of you?”

“Martinis for Jeremy and me, scotch for himself.”

“You said you felt woozy before you passed out. Your brother have the same reaction?”

“I’m not sure. I think he said his martini tasted funny, but… I’m just not sure.”

“Where were you, the last you remember?”

“Where? Oh. Sitting on the couch.”

“Your brother?”

“Beside me.”

“Your husband?”

“In his desk chair.”

“This was about one o’clock?”

“About that. Greg kept looking at his watch, saying he had to leave soon for some book auction.”

“The three of you were the only ones in the house?”

“Housekeeper’s day off and Brenda had already gone to the auction.”

“The shotgun? Still above the fireplace, or did your husband take it down for any reason?”

“No. It was where it always was.”

“Did he go near it, touch it?”

“No.”

Three hours. Pollexfen could have put enough of the Klonopin into their drinks to keep them unconscious for that long. Shut them inside the library, go off to Pacific Rim Gallery, come back in time to keep his appointment with me. But how could he have timed the shooting so perfectly, with the three of us right there when the shotgun went off? Some way linked to how he’d rigged the crime in the first place? Maybe, if he’d rigged the crime in the first place. But how in hell could you blow off the back of a man’s head when you were on the other side of a double-bolted door?