The 7th Canon (20 page)

Ross had chosen the office closest to the exit, in case of a fire. He’d had to pay six months’ rent in advance before the landlord would stencil the black letters on the smoked glass window of his office door.

2
C

FRANK ROSS

PRIVATE DICTECTIVE

Mr. Chang proved to be more adept at collecting rent than spelling. He’d promised to correct the mistake, but Ross wasn’t holding his breath, except when he walked down the hallway and “dictected” the lingering smell of the accountant.

Ross pushed open the door and stepped into an office bathed in a light blue from the arched, stained-glass window behind his desk. On sunny days, the room shaded a color of a particular windowpane depending on the time of day and time of year. Ross had rented the office on a cloudy day, not realizing he was destined to sit inside a kaleidoscope until the first sunny day.

He dropped the newspapers on his desk and hit the button on the answering machine, listening to his messages as he sorted through the stack of mail, depositing most pieces into the garbage can at the side of his desk. He stopped when he heard Nathaniel Collins’s nasal whine. The wealthy lawyer from Pacific Heights was convinced his young wife was cheating on him with her tennis instructor. He wanted photographs to prove the affair. Under the terms of the couple’s prenuptial agreement, Abigail Collins stood to make a tidy $1.5 million if the couple divorced, but she received nothing if Mr. Collins could prove she’d been unfaithful. What a way to start a marriage. Collins’s terse message indicated his displeasure with Ross’s efforts to catch his young wife and lover. Apparently his mistress, the next Mrs. Collins-in-waiting, was growing impatient.

The second message was from the owner of Fotomat kiosks whose cash registers weren’t adding up at night. On other days, the messages would have depressed him. Today, Ross just smiled. Before settling at his desk, he pulled the cap off a black marker and put an
x
thru the days he’d been away. Three additional days. Sober.

One day at a time.

He sat and unfolded the newspaper for Tuesday, December 23. His eyes stopped on the black block headline indicating the priest was to be arraigned the following day, Christmas Eve.

“What the hell?” he said, quickly opening the paper to where the article jumped to an inside page. Ross noticed a second headline and quickly sat forward, knocking over his cup of coffee.

The Sunset District, forty city blocks bordered to the north by Golden Gate Park and to the west by the Pacific Ocean, was one of those odd San Francisco neighborhoods where the weather in the winter and fall was actually better than in summer and spring. In the summer, pea-soup fog driven by heavy winds off the ocean often prevailed, but the winters could be crisp and clear. The day after Christmas was one of those days. Donley sat huddled in the Saab, the collar of his leather jacket pulled up around his neck to ward off the cold. As with most streets in the Sunset, foliage was sparse, sporadic trees planted in dirt squares in cement sidewalks. The one-story, detached houses had been cut from the same developer mold: two-bedroom-and-one-bath buildings with flat roofs. The front door, centered between two windows, faced the street. The houses varied only in the color of the stucco and amenities to the gardens. It was Anywhere, USA, and according to real-estate records, it included the house once owned by Max and Irene Connor, where their son, Dixon, currently lived.

The exterior of Connor’s home seemed to confirm everything Harris had said about the man: cold, dark, and uninviting. Swatches of moss that thrived in the damp climate spotted the beige-stucco exterior. The small patch of lawn had died and sprouted dandelions, and the planter boxes beneath the windows were empty.

Donley needed to subpoena Connor to appear at the evidentiary hearing on Thursday. He’d done it before. When you were a small practice, you became a jack of all trades. Harris said Connor was a mean son of a bitch who did not like lawyers, which meant he definitely wouldn’t appreciate being subpoenaed to answer questions in court, but Donley had a job to do. He was hoping that Connor might have an ax to grind against the department for suspending him, which might make him willing to talk.

Even if Connor refused to talk to him or to attend the hearing, Donley might be able to use his refusal to seek a continuance, or to argue against the court admitting the evidence since an inability to cross-examine the detective who found it would greatly prejudice Father Martin’s defense.

Donley might never know. He’d thought the day after Christmas would be the best time to find Connor, but no one had answered the front door, and no car was parked in the driveway down the side of the house. He was beginning to wonder if Connor had gone away for the holidays.

Donley started the ignition and pulled away from the curb. Harris had told him that Connor frequented a local bar in the Sunset called The 19th Hole, which was near Golden Gate Park Golf Course, just a few blocks from Connor’s home. The bar was next to a small grocery store, both likely built when neighborhoods were still where people lived, shopped, and socialized, before cars became individual neighborhoods.

Like Connor’s house, the stucco of The 19th Hole needed painting and repair. Gangs had tagged the building, and a fender-high hole revealed mesh where a car had jumped the curb and come to an unplanned stop. The neon sign overhead displayed a green flagpole with a white flag, and the bar’s name in pink, though part of the tubes no longer lit, so the sign actually read, T
HE 1
H
O
.

Donley stepped from the car and zipped his leather jacket against a chill wind as he crossed the street. He pushed through weathered, swinging doors. The interior was a narrow, windowless corridor, the bar set along the west wall. The only light came from the portholes in the doors and a light beneath the bar that illuminated the bartender in strange shadows that brought to mind a set in a black-and-white horror film.

Sitting on a bar stool, his thick shoulders and a broad back hunched over a cocktail glass, was a man who fit Harris’s description of Dixon Connor. His arms looked to be putting the seams of a tweed sports coat to the test. A crew cut shaped his head square. Two other men sat several stools away, keeping to themselves, watching a college football game on a television mounted in the corner of the room.

Feeling like he was plunging into shark-infested waters, Donley sat down on an empty stool one removed from Connor. When the bartender approached, Donley took out a ten-dollar bill.

“Corona.”

“They don’t serve that Mexican shit in here,” Connor said, without looking at him. “Why don’t you order an American beer?”

The detective’s gaze remained on the television. Donley looked up at the bartender. “Budweiser.”

The bartender pulled a Budweiser from under the bar and put the bottle on a paper coaster adorned with the 19th Hole neon sign and made change at an old-fashioned cash register.

Donley took a pull on his beer. “What’s the score?”

Connor gave no indication he’d heard the question. He sipped from a highball glass, probably Scotch or whiskey over ice, and returned to cleaning his teeth with a toothpick.

“I got fifty bucks on the Forty-Niners tomorrow,” Donley said, “but I’m worried about the spread. It was eight and a half this morning. That’s a lot of points, no matter who they’re playing.”

Connor took another drink and spit an ice cube back into the glass.

“Can I buy you a drink?” Donley flagged the bartender. “Whatever he’s drinking.”

The bartender gave Donley an inquisitive look before pulling a glass from under the counter and pouring Jameson Irish Whiskey over ice. He put the glass on the bar. Connor ignored it.

Donley let a few plays pass. “You’re Dixon Connor?”

Connor continued to work the toothpick between his teeth.

“I’m Peter Donley. I represent—”

Connor raised his left hand and placed a .44 Magnum handgun on the bar. The bartender stopped washing glasses. The two men sitting nearby froze with their beer bottles at their lips.

Donley took a swig from his bottle, fighting to remain outwardly calm, though his insides were churning. He was already evaluating potential options should Connor raise the gun.

“I know who you are.” Connor spoke without looking at him. “And I know who you represent.”

“I want to talk—”

“Want?”

Connor glanced at Donley. His face was fat and fleshy, his eyes as dark as checker pieces. He smelled like the bar—a mixture of cheap cologne, perspiration, alcohol, and cigarettes. God, how Donley hated that smell.

Donley’s pulse quickened. “All right, I need to ask you a few questions about what happened at the shelter the night you arrested Father Martin.”

No response.

“I understand you’ve been suspended.”

Connor slid the second drink in front of Donley. “Don’t
want
your drink. Don’t
want
to answer your questions. Don’t like lawyers who represent murderers. Don’t give a shit what you want or need.”

A voice in Donley’s head cautioned him to get up and walk out. But there was that stubborn streak again, and Donley hated bullies. “I’m just trying to do my job, Detective.”

“So was I,” Connor said.

“I don’t doubt that.”

“Don’t kiss my ass.”

“Fine. Why did they suspend you if you were only doing your job?”

Connor didn’t answer.

“I could subpoena you, Detective.”

“You could.”

“I will.”

Donley reached into his pocket for the subpoena at the same time Connor lifted the Magnum off the counter and pointed the barrel directly at Donley’s head. The bartender stepped away from the bar. Donley heard the doors behind him creak open and closed, presumably the other two men leaving, but Donley didn’t see anything except the barrel of the gun. Mike Harris had once told Donley that looking down the barrel of a gun was like looking down a sewer pipe. You saw nothing but the black hole. It had been an appropriate analogy.

“You don’t want to do that, counselor.”

Donley froze, hand still in his jacket.

He won’t shoot. There’s a witness. He’s just trying to intimidate you.

But the more Donley tried to convince himself, the more he saw the reality in Dixon Connor’s black, lifeless eyes. He would shoot. And as if to emphasize that point, Connor pulled back the hammer.

Frank Ross struggled to read the coffee-dampened newsprint. Lou Giantelli had been taken from a courtroom on a stretcher, but nothing indicated what kind of shape he was in. He searched through the other articles but did not find a name identifying the attorney representing the priest.

Ross opened the second paper. The priest not only had been arraigned but had entered a plea of not guilty, and the court had scheduled a preliminary evidentiary hearing that week. The article mentioned an attorney named Peter Donley. Things were moving fast, and Ross was well behind, assuming he was even still working on the case. Ross picked up the telephone and pressed the buttons for a number committed to memory. “Detective Frank Ross for Sam Goldman,” he said out of habit.

After a moment, an animated voice boomed through the receiver. “How are you, hero?”

Sam Goldman called everyone hero, great hero, friend, and chief.

“Curious,” Ross said, holding the phone from his ear. “When are you guys going to print some stories with some meat on the bones?”

Goldman laughed. “You’ve been complaining since the day you walked into my journalism class twenty-five years ago and haven’t stopped since.”

“Hey, at least I’m consistent.”

“How were the holidays?”

“Good. Spent a couple of days in Tahoe to recharge. Now I’m back reading about the priest. What’s going on, Sam?”

“Is that something or what? The circus is in town, friend.”

“I thought I’d call the premier newspaperman on the West Coast and try to find some of the facts your reporters left out of their stories.”