Steven Gore - Act of Deceit

“Father?”

“Fuck you.”

Pipkins rested his right hand on the butt of his gun and his left hand on his baton.

“I’m sick of you screwing with me, Harlan. You may’ve been a big-city detective once, but you’re just a short-order cook now.”

Donnally glanced back and forth between the two weapons, their outlines framed by Pipkins’s headlights. He then noticed that the silence of the forest hadn’t yet been broken by voices over the deputy’s radio, not even background static.

Pipkins had gone ten-seven. Out of service.

“You follow me across two counties to tell me that?” Donnally asked.

“Nope.” Pipkins smirked as he reached into the inside breast pocket of his parka. “To give you this.” He unfolded a subpoena and handed it over. “A DA down in Alameda County wanted this served ASAP.”

Donnally didn’t look at it. He just reached into his truck window and said, “Ruby, how about do me a favor and ruminate on this.”

Pipkins laughed like someone had just played into his hand at poker.

“He said you’d do something like that and that he’d be just as happy to have you testify in handcuffs.”

“And I guess you’ve already assigned yourself the task of hooking me up and hauling me down there.”

“I’ll be waiting for my phone to ring on Tuesday morning with the DA’s call. You’re either going to be on the stand at 10 A.M. in Oakland or in the back of my patrol car at 10:05.”

Donnally grinned. “Don’t let the anticipation keep you awake the night before.”

“It won’t, but something else will.” Pipkins leaned back against Donnally’s truck and crossed his arms over his chest. “I hear you’re good with numbers, Harlan. How about helping me with a little addition?”

The self-satisfied expression on Pipkins’s face told Donnally that they’d finally arrived at the real reason Pipkins was putting a dismal end to his good day on the river.

“I get this subpoena,” Pipkins continued, “then I call a guy I know in the Sheriff’s Department down there and he fills me in about the Charles Brown case. So I backtrack a little bit and find out that you headed on down there right after Mauricio kicked off. It gets me to wondering if there’s a connection.”

“Apples and oranges,” Donnally said. “That’s all.”

“I don’t think so. When the DA called to see if the subpoena arrived, I asked him about how you got into the case. He said you didn’t tell him and he doesn’t know. That alone tells me you got something to hide. And combine that with the name on the headstone

…” Pipkins arched his eyebrows. “It kinda gets me thinking that there’s a lot more to that little wetback than I thought.”

“Which means what?”

“That maybe we should have the city attorney-”

“You mean, your uncle Bud-”

“The city attorney… tie up Mauricio’s assets until we figure out if it’s all legit.”

With that comment, Donnally grasped the Pipkins family’s preoccupation with Mauricio. They wanted his land. For twenty-five years Pipkins Sr. had used rigged auctions, usually of property seized from pot growers, to build a real estate empire. Everybody in town knew it, but nobody wanted to risk a marijuana plant showing up on their property followed by a zero-tolerance seizure. Now Pipkins Jr. was playing a variation on his father’s theme, maybe trying to prove to his father that he’d someday be ready to sit at the head of the family table.

And what more satisfying way of doing it than by robbing a dead Mexican of his land and his legacy.

Pipkins grinned, then reached down and turned on the radio holstered on his belt. He then spoke into the mike attached to his shoulder strap.

“This is Pipkins. I’m ten-eight again.”

“T here’s no way you’re going to put me on the stand,” Donnally told Blaine over the phone the following morning. He was sitting at his desk in the cafe office. “You’re just covering your ass.”

Donnally had it figured out even before he’d driven a mile from where Deputy Pipkins had pulled him over to serve him with the subpoena. As soon as the judge dismissed the case, Blaine would call a press conference and praise Donnally as the one who exposed it, then hint that it was Donnally’s fault for losing it because he’d refused to testify in support of the DA’s motion to have Brown declared incompetent to stand trial.

Blaine laughed. “Fun, isn’t it? It must remind you of what you left behind when you got out of police work. This is like one of those noir movies from the forties, hard to tell who the good guys are.”

“Maybe I should go all the way and sign on as a defense witness. I’m sure Margaret Perkins would be glad to have me on her team.”

“You missed your chance, pal. We cut a deal late last night.”

Donnally’s body stiffened and he caught his breath.

“You what?”

“Brown pleads guilty to voluntary manslaughter and gets credit for the time he served in the loony bin.”

Donnally’s hand clenched the telephone receiver. “And that means he gets out…”

“The end of next month.”

Donnally pushed himself to his feet, as if the force of his body in motion would deflect the course of the case.

“Is that what a life is worth down there?”

“It’s the best we could do,” Blaine said. “The judge didn’t want to take the political heat for dismissing a murder on speedy trial grounds. The defense gets to wash its hands of the case. And I get a conviction. It works for everybody.”

“It sure as hell doesn’t work for Anna Keenan.”

Blaine snorted. “Well, she’s never gonna find out, is she?”

F or the first time in his life, Harlan Donnally felt like he’d become a hick. Sitting on a leather couch in the lobby of Schubert, Smith, and Barton, looking out at the San Francisco financial district, wearing jeans and a Levi’s jacket, with his gray Stetson lying on the coffee table.

He could’ve worn a suit. He had one left over from his detective days that still fit.

But when he was getting dressed to drive down from Mount Shasta, he felt like he needed to let Margaret Perkins know that there remained a real flesh-and-blood working world where people still cared about the truth and tried to do the right thing.

But now he wasn’t so sure.

After all, what was the real difference between the Blaines and the Nanstons, and the Pipkinses and the Mauricios?

Sitting there, watching the starched shirts and silk ties and eight-hundred-dollar shoes walk from the elevators into the glass-walled conference room bordering the lobby, he concluded that the only difference was the area code.

Donnally rose when Perkins came out from the hallway to the left of the receptionist. He was surprised not just by her genuine smile, but by her pink tennis shoes.

Perkins stuck out her hand as she approached and said, “Maybe we should get out of here and take a walk. There’s never been a conversation inside here like the one I think we’re about to have.”

Donnally nodded, then picked up his hat.

“D o I think he did it?” Perkins said as they walked up Stockton Street toward Chinatown. “I assume so, but I’m too scared of him to give you a rational answer.” She reached over and took Donnally’s hand for support as the hill steepened, then pointed at her hip. “Brand-new. I’m still getting used to it.”

Donnally wondered if she’d done some research on him, learned about him being retired out on disability after the ambush, and was trying to position herself on common ground.

“Then why plead him out?” Donnally asked. His voice was more accusatory than he wanted it to be. “If you believe he’s incompetent-”