John Lescroart - The Motive

"Yeah. I called Strout, keeping up."

Cuneo drummed on his chair for a few seconds, staring into the air between them. Suddenly he snapped his fingers. "That's it. I knew there was something else. You just said something about 'our man' when you were telling me about the gas. You got anything that narrows it down to a guy?"

"No," Becker said. "I've just always assumed it was a guy. I told this to Glitsky."

"And what did he say?"

"Nothing, really. He just took it in. Why? Is something pointing you toward a woman?"

"Maybe," Cuneo said. "I'll let you know."

Glitsky figured that if he didn't want to ask the mayor directly, and he didn't, then his best source of information on her perhaps-hidden connection to Paul Hanover was likely to be found in the basement of the Chronicle building at Fifth and Mission. Despite the receptionist calling Jeff Elliot to tell him Glitsky was upstairs wanting to see him, when Glitsky got buzzed down and got to Jeff's small, glass-enclosed cubicle, the reporter/columnist was in his wheelchair at his desk, typing up a storm at his computer terminal, apparently lost to the world until he suddenly stopped typing and looked over. "This is my Pulitzer," he said. "You mind waiting for two more 'graphs?" He motioned to a chair just inside the cubicle.

Glitsky nodded and took the seat.

The office was small and cluttered. It sported an old metal desk that held Elliot's computer and a telephone, a waist-high oak bookshelf crammed to overflowing, and another metal shelf contraption stacked with about a year's worth of newspapers, and against which leaned a set of crutches. A bunch of New Yorker and other cartoons were taped on the glass wall by Glitsky's head. Next to the phone on the desk was a picture of his wife with their daughters.

Elliot stopped typing and stared at his screen, then raised his right hand over the keyboard and brought it down with a triumphant flourish. The screen cleared. He turned his head toward Glitsky. "Sorry about that, but it's brilliant. You'll see tomorrow. So to what do I owe the personal appearance?"

"You said you wanted to talk to me, remember? About the picture of me and the mayor? The scoop I was hiding from you?"

"I was giving you grief, I think. Now you're telling me there was one?"

"If there was, I thought maybe between us we might find it."

Elliot pushed his wheelchair back from the desk and around to face him. "You're losing me."

"I don't mean to. What do you know about Paul Hanover?"

"Other than the fact that he's dead? This is going to have to do with the mayor?"

"It might. And we're off the record, okay? It'll be worth it in the long run."

Elliot nodded with some reluctance. "All right. What do you have?"

"I don't know if it's anything, but you remember yesterday at the Ferry Building when I told you I had business with Kathy. The business was that she had asked me to get involved, personally, with Hanover."

"Why would she want you to do that?"

"That's unclear. Maybe she thinks we've got a relationship."

"So you'll control what gets out?"

"I don't want to think she thinks that."

"But you suspect it?"

"Maybe that's putting it too strongly. I know nothing about Hanover other than the fact that he gave her campaign money. I thought you might have heard a little more."

Elliot took his hands off the armrests of his wheelchair and linked them on his lap. His eyes went to the cartoons on the partition by Glitsky's head, but he wasn't looking at them. Finally, he drew a breath and let it out. "First," he said, "he didn't just give her some money. He threw the fund-raising dinner that kicked off her campaign last summer, where they raised I think it was about six hundred grand. You might have read about that, since the story appeared in the general newspaper and not my column." He grinned at his little joke. "But Hanover, I guess you'd say, was catholic in his political contributions. Kathy, of course, is a Dem, but he was also the Republican go-to guy."

"When did we start allowing Republicans in San Francisco?"

"You'd be surprised. Last time the president came out here to raise some money, guess who hosted the party?"

"So what were his politics? Hanover's."

"He didn't have politics so much, per se. He had clients. But wait a minute." Jeff went back to his terminal, hit a few keys, then sat back in satisfaction. "There you go. When memory fails…"

Glitsky came forward in his chair. "What'd you get?"

Donnell White, a midthirties black man with an upbeat demeanor, managed the Valero station on Oak and Webster. He wasn't the owner, but he worked afternoons six days a week. He took one look at Cuneo's picture of Missy D'Amiens and nodded. "Yeah, she in here all the time, every week or two. She must live nearby."

"Not anymore." Cuneo told him the news, then went on. "But the question is whether you saw her come in on Wednesday and fill up a portable gas container."

"Not if she come in the morning." He looked down again at the picture, scratched his short stubble. "But hold on a sec."

They were standing out in front by the gas islands, and now he turned and yelled back into the garage area, where some rap music emanated. "Jeffie, come on out here, will you?"

When there was no response, White disappeared back into the station. After a few seconds, the music stopped and White and Jeffie emerged back into the late-afternoon sun. Jeffie was young, as sullen as White was effusive. Apparently bored to death, his eyes rolled upward as he slouched with his hands in his pockets, listening to why the cop was here. Finally they got to the picture and he nodded. "Yeah," he said. "Could have been her."

Something about the phrase struck Cuneo. "What do you mean, could have been? It either was or it wasn't."

He shrugged. "Hey, some woman get some gas." He looked to his coworker. "Who you said you lookin' for?"

Cuneo jumped in. "It might not have been this woman?"

He shrugged. "I'm eating lunch inside. She fills the thing and not her car. Put it in the trunk."

"She put the portable container in her trunk?"

He fixed Cuneo with a flat stare. "What'd I just say, man? Yeah, she put the container in her trunk."

"What kind of car was it?"

Again, the eye roll. "Maybe a Mercedes? I don't know. Coulda been. Something like that."

Cuneo held the photograph out again. "And would you say it was this woman or not?"

Jeffie looked more carefully this time, took it in his hands and brought it closer to his face. "I seen her… this woman, before, I think." He kept looking. "Mighta been her, but if it was, she had her hair different. But I don't really know, 'cept she was white and fine-lookin'. Big jugs, no fat. Nice butt."

"You remember what she was wearing?"

The young mechanic cast his eyes to the sky again, then closed them. "Maybe a blue shirt, kind of shiny. Oh yeah, and sunglasses. She never took the shades off." He pointed at the picture again. "It could have been her, now I look at it. It's hard to say. But maybe not."

This time, cocktail hour Friday night, Maxine and Joseph Willis were both home at their place a few houses down from where Paul Hanover's used to be. They were drinking manhattans in stem glasses and going out to meet some friends for dinner in a while, but Cuneo didn't pick up any sense that they resented his visit. They invited him in, offered him a drink, which he declined, and then Maxine explained to Joseph again about what she'd told Cuneo the night before. As she talked, the three of them drifted back over to the space by the front window.

"I'm here about the same thing again, I'm afraid." Cuneo took out the picture and handed it across to her. "We want to be sure that Missy D'Amiens was who you saw. I wondered if you'd mind looking at this?"