Steven Gore - A Criminal Defense

Donnally watched the numbers rise on the gas pump as he listened to more of Navarro’s typing in the background-

Then a laugh.

“Guess who his lawyer was?” Navarro asked.

The laugh had already given Donnally the answer: “Mark Hamlin.”

Inever saw the Little Bud file,” Takiyah Jackson told Donnally when he got back to the office.

They were standing on the rug in front of Hamlin’s desk. He suspected from her outfit, a V-neck sweater and a push-up bra, that he would have a problem with her again. He felt himself in the middle of a sort of crossfire with Jackson poised next to him and a mother bear parked in her truck down the block.

It had made no sense to try to lose Mother Number Two since she could catch up with him whenever she wanted, at Hamlin’s office or at Janie’s house, which was still in his name. He also didn’t want to clue her in that he knew she was following him by making any quick moves.

“I’m not sure there even was a file,” Jackson continued, “or at least much of one. It was a bang-bang thing. I think Mark only made three appearances. When Little Bud was arraigned, when he pled guilty, and when he was sentenced.”

“Didn’t he even file a motion to find out the name of the informant who snitched him off? Or to suppress the evidence in the case? I thought that was routine.”

“It is, but he didn’t. And not out of laziness. It didn’t make any difference who the informant was and there’s no way to suppress evidence that’s in plain view. The DEA flew a helicopter over the site. Even hidden among the ferns and tomato plants, the pot glowed in the infrared camera like landing lights.” She pointed upward and made a circling motion, then curved her hand down toward the floor and leveled it off like a landing airplane. “And they swooped in.”

“And I take it he didn’t try to negotiate for a better deal.”

“The U.S. Attorney played hardball. She threatened thirty years, figuring Little Bud would cave and cooperate. She put it to him as an ultimatum. First, last, and best offer. Snitch or do the time. She couldn’t back down. He couldn’t back down. Because of the length of his sentence, they sent him to a level four prison. Hard-core.”

“Did Frank Lange have anything to do with the case?”

Jackson’s eyebrows narrowed like it had never crossed her mind Lange had a role in it, then she shrugged and said, “I don’t think so.”

“What about his daughter?”

Her brows went deeper and the skin folds between her eyes seem to crevasse. “How’d you know about her?”

It was Donnally’s turn to shrug.

“Frank didn’t talk about it much,” Jackson said. “He wasn’t the fatherly type. But I knew.”

“You know her?”

Jackson looked away. “Ryvver didn’t spend much time in San Francisco.”

“That wasn’t my question.”

She looked back. “It’s complicated.”

“Then uncomplicate it for me.”

“I’d see her once in a while at Frank’s when she was a kid and she stayed with me for a couple of months after she got out of. . of. .”

For some reason, Jackson couldn’t get the words out. It made Donnally want to hear them all the more.

“After she got out of what?”

“She. . uh. . lived in Mann House.”

Donnally hadn’t heard the name for more than a decade. It had been a home for mentally disturbed kids.

“You know what the diagnosis was?”

Jackson shrugged again. Donnally knew she knew, but didn’t press her for fear she would feel he was trapping her into attacking Ryvver, or perhaps reducing her identity to a mental illness, by saying it aloud.

“I didn’t want her to go back to Guerneville and into the mess with her mothers. She was a lost soul and I didn’t think she could find herself up there. And I couldn’t bear her living with Frank. He couldn’t even take care of a dog, much less someone as troubled as her. She finally got herself together and went home after a few months, but then came back to San Francisco to work for Frank.”

“You know who she stayed with down here?”

“She shared an apartment with a couple of guys out near Golden Gate Park. But they’re gone. Moved overseas somewhere, Thailand or Vietnam or someplace, but not the same thing.”

“The same thing as what?”

She didn’t answer, only smiled at the implication. She reached out and gripped his upper arm.

“As far as I know they had no interest in teenage kids. They were straight up do-gooders, like in the Peace Corps.”

Donnally glanced at the computer monitor and used that to set up an excuse to turn away and break her grip.

“Maybe I can find some notes in his computer,” Donnally said, then pulled his arm free and walked around to the other side of the desk. He didn’t sit down, waiting for her to return to her desk.

“I didn’t mean anything by that,” Jackson said.

“I think you did.”

She forced a smile. “I’m just a touchy-type person. Black people are like that, you know.”

“Don’t try that cultural bullshit,” Donnally said. “I think you’re afraid of something.”

“You?”

“Some thing . Not some one .”

She tilted her head toward the couch along the wall below the window. “You want me to lay myself down so you can play therapist?”

“No. I want your help, and I don’t like these games getting in the way of my getting it.”

Jackson straightened herself and folded her arms above her breasts. “Is that better?”

“It’ll do for now.”

Donnally spotted a parking place in front of Hector Camacho’s Taqueria Michoacan at Twenty-fourth and Mission. He also spotted a lookout leaning against the wall of the liquor store at the end of the block. He took the next corner, drove down the street until he found a space just beyond a machine shop driveway, and slid in. He figured he’d only be gone from the office for an hour, so he’d slipped out and left the parking garage by the rear exit, leaving Mother Number Two in her surveillance position. He also instructed Jackson to leave the lights on after she left for the day to suggest he was still working inside.

His cell phone rang. It was Janie. “I was near Hamlin’s building so I stopped in. Looks like I just missed you.”

“I’m out trying to get ahold of a guy.” Donnally didn’t want to tell her it was in the Mission. His worries were her worries, and hers were his. No reason to put her through it again.

“Takiyah was just closing up when I got there. It was interesting.”

“Personally or clinically?”

“Both. You have a run-in with her today?”

“She started the sexualized little girl thing again and I had to shut her down.”

“Whatever you said left her teary-eyed and bewildered. I had the feeling she’s starting to see what she’s been doing and she didn’t like what she saw. I think she wanted to apologize to me for trying to move in on you or wanted to explain herself to me or maybe wanted me to explain her to herself. She called me Dr. Nguyen, so I think she knows I’m a psychiatrist. Did you mention it to her?”

“No. But she could’ve asked around, checking me out. How’d it end?”

“She stammered and then froze up and ran out of the office. She was in the elevator and going down before I could catch up.”

“I’ll keep that in mind when I see her tomorrow. Maybe it means she’s getting close to opening up to me.”

Donnally looked up. Fog was crawling over the western hills and darkening the city, graying the pastel apartment buildings in the next block and chilling the air. His gaze lowered to street level. A couple of mid-twenties Nortenos wearing red plaid shirts stared at him from where they leaned against a bus bench in front of a body shop. His hand went to his holster and he checked the strap.