Steven Gore - A Criminal Defense

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.”

Donnally dropped into a chair across from Ramon Navarro in the Golden Phoenix, a shotgun Chinese cafe 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 we’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 cafe.”

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.”