The 8th Confession (2 page)

They stank and they twitched, they stammered and scratched, and they jockeyed to get closer to Cindy. They reached out to touch her, talked over and corrected one another.

They wanted to be heard.

And although a half hour ago Cindy would have avoided all contact with them, she now wanted very much to hear them. As time passed and the police didn't come, Cindy felt a story budding, getting ready to bloom.

She used her cell again, called her friend Lindsay at home.

The phone rang six times before a masculine voice rasped, "Hello?" Sounded to Cindy like maybe she'd interrupted Lindsay and Joe at an inopportune moment.

"Beautiful timing, Cindy," Joe panted.

"Sorry, Joe, really," said Cindy. "But I've got to speak to Lindsay."

D
ON'T BE MAD," I said, tucking the blanket under Joe's chin, patting his stubbly cheeks, planting a PG-13-rated kiss on his mouth, careful not to get him going again because I just didn't have enough time to get back in the mood.

"I'm not mad," he said, eyes closed. "But I am going to be seeking retribution tonight, so prepare yourself."

I laughed at my big, handsome guy, said, "Actually, I can't wait."

"Cindy's a bad influence."

I laughed some more.

Cindy is a pit bull in disguise. She's all girlie-girl on the outside but tenacious through and through, which is how she pushed her way into my gory crime scene six years back and wouldn't give up until she'd nailed her story and I'd solved my case. I wished all of my
cops
were like Cindy.

"Cindy's a peach," I said to my lover. "She grows on you."

"Yeah? I'll have to take your word for it." Joe smirked.

"Honey, would you mind—?"

"Will I walk Martha? Yes. Because
I
work at home and
you
have a real job."

"Thanks, Joe," I said. "Will you do it soon? Because I think she's got to go."

Joe looked at me deadpan, his big blue eyes giving me the business. I blew him a kiss, then I made a run for the shower.

Several months had blown by since my cozy apartment on Potrero Hill had burned out to the walls—and I was
still
getting used to living with Joe in his new crib in the high-rent district.

Not that I didn't enjoy his travertine shower stall with the dual heads and a gizmo that dispensed gel, shampoo, and moisturizer, plus the hotel-style bath sheets folded over a heated brass rack.

I mean, yeah. Things could be worse!

I turned the water up hot and high, soaked and lathered my hair, my mind going to Cindy's phone call, wondering what she was so charged up about.

Last I heard, dead bums didn't make headlines. But Cindy was telling me this was some kind of special bum with a special name. And she was asking me to check out the scene as a favor to her.

I dried my hair, padded down the carpeted hallway to my own walk-in closet, which was still mostly empty. I stepped into clean work pants, shrugged on an aqua-colored pullover, checked my gun, buckled my shoulder holster, and topped it all off with my second-best blue blazer.

I bent to ruffle the silky ears of my lovely border collie, Sweet Martha, and called out, "Bye, honey," to Joe.

Then I headed out to meet Cindy's newest passion: a dead bum with a certifiably crazy name.

Bagman Jesus.

C
INDY STOOD AT the dead man's side and filled her notebook, getting down the names, the descriptions, the exact quotes from Bagman Jesus's friends and mourners.

"He wore a really big
cross,
" said a Mexican dishwasher who worked at a Thai restaurant. He sported an Adidas T-shirt and jeans under a dirty white apron. Had koi tattooed on his arms. "The cross was made of two, whatchamacallit,
nails
—"

"It was a
crucifix,
Tommy," said a bent white-haired woman leaning against her shopping cart at the edge of the crowd, sores on her legs, her filthy red coat dragging in the street.

"'Scuuuuse me, boss. What I meant was, a
crucifix.
"

"And they weren't nails, they were
bolts,
about three inches long, tied together with copper wire. And don't forget that toy
baby
on that cross. A little pink baby." The old woman held a thumb and forefinger an inch apart to show Cindy how small that toy baby was.

"Why would someone take his crucifix?" the heavyset woman asked. "But his b-b-bag. That was a real leather bag! Lady, write this down! He was murdered for his
s-s-stuff.
"

"We didden even know his real name," said Babe, a big girl from the Chinese massage parlor. "He give me ten dollah when I had no food. He didden want
nothing
for it."

"Bagman took care of me when I had pneumonia," said a gray-haired man, his chalk-striped suit pants cinched at the waist with twine. "My name is Bunker. Charles Bunker," he told Cindy.

He stuck out his hand, and Cindy shook it.

"I heard shots last night," Bunker said. "It was after midnight."

"Did you see who shot him?"

"I wish I had."

"Did he have any enemies?"

"Will you let me
through?
" said a black man with dreads, a gold nose stud, and a white turtleneck under an old tuxedo jacket who was threading his way through the crowd toward Cindy.

He slowly spelled out his name—Harry Bainbridge—so Cindy would get it right. Then Bainbridge held a long, bony finger above Bagman's body, traced the letters stitched to the back of Bagman's bloody coat.

"You can read that?" he asked her.

Cindy nodded.

"Tells you everything you want to know."

Cindy wrote it down in her book.

Jesus Saves.

B
Y THE TIME Conklin and I got to Fourth and Townsend, uniforms had taped off the area, shunted the commuters the long way around to the station entrance, shooed bystanders behind the tape, and blocked off all but official traffic.

Cindy was standing in the street.

She flagged us down, opened my car door for me, started pitching her story before I put my feet on the ground.

"I feel a five-part human-interest series coming on," she said, "about the homeless of San Francisco. And I'm going to start with that man's life and death."

She pointed to a dead man lying stiff in his bloody rags.

"Thirty people were crying over his body, Lindsay. I don't know if that many people would cry if it was me lying there."

"Shut up," Conklin said, coming around the front of the car. "You're crazy." He gently shook Cindy's shoulder, making her blond curls bounce.

"Okay, okay," Cindy said. She smiled up at Conklin, her slightly overlapping front teeth adding a vulnerable quality to her natural adorableness. "Just kidding. But I'm real serious about Bagman Jesus. You guys keep me in the loop, okay?"

"You betcha," I said, but I didn't get why Cindy regarded Bagman Jesus as a
celebrity,
and his death as a major deal.

I said, "Cindy, street people die every day—"

"And nobody gives a
damn.
Hell, people
want
them dead. That's my point!"

I left Cindy and Conklin in the street and went over to show my badge to K. J. Grealish, the CSI in charge. She was young, dark-haired, and skinny, and had nearly chewed her lips off from stress.

"I've been on my feet for the last twenty-seven hours straight," Grealish told me, "and this pointless dung heap of a crime scene could take another twenty-seven hours. Tell me again. Why are we here?"

As the trains rumbled into the yard, dust blew up, leaves fell from the trees, and newspapers flew into the air, further contaminating the crime scene.

A horn honked—the coroner's van clearing cops out of the way. It parked in the middle of the street. The door slid open, and Dr. Claire Washburn stepped out. She put her hands on her size-16 hips, beamed her Madonna smile at me—and I beamed back. Then I walked over and gave her a hug.

Claire is not only San Francisco's chief medical examiner but my closest friend. We'd bonded together a decade and a half back when she was a plump, black assistant medical examiner and I was a tall blonde with a 34D bra size, trying to survive my first savage year of on-the-job training in Homicide.

Those had been tough, bloody years for both of us, just trying to do our jobs in a man's world.

We still talked every day. I was her new baby's godmother, and I felt closer to Claire than I did to my own sister. But I hadn't seen her in more than a week.

When we turned each other loose from the hug, Claire asked the CSI, "K.J.? You got your photos of the victim?"

Grealish said she had, so Claire and I ducked under the tape and, no surprise, Cindy came along with us.

"It's okay," I said to Grealish. "She's with me."

"Actually," Cindy said under her breath, "you're with
me.
"

We stepped around the blood trail, skirted the cones and markers, then Claire put down her bag and stooped beside the body. She turned Bagman's head from side to side with her gloved hand, gently palpated his scalp, probing for lacerations, fractures, or other injuries. After a long pause, she said, "Holy moly."

"That's enough of that medical jargon," I said to my friend. "Let's have it in English."

"As usual, Lindsay"—Claire sighed—"I'm not making any pronouncements until I do the post. But this much I'll tell you… and this is off the record, girl reporter," she said to Cindy. "You hear me?"

"Okay, okay. My lips are sealed. My mouth's a
safe.
"

"Looks like your guy wasn't just given a vicious
beat-down,
" Claire murmured. "This poor sucker took multiple gunshots to his head. I'm saying he was shot at close range, probably until the gun was
empty.
"

T
HE KILLING OF a street person has zero priority in Homicide. Sounds cold, but we just don't have the resources to work cases where the killer will never be found.

Conklin and I talked it over while sitting in the car.

"Bagman Jesus was robbed, right?" said Conklin. "Some other homeless dude beat the crap out of him and, when he fought back, blew him away."

"About those gunshots. I don't know. Sounds more like gangbangers. Or a bunch of kids rolling a bum for kicks, then capping him because they could get away with it. Just
look
at that," I said, indicating the crime scene: bloody footprints crisscrossing the pavement, tracking in nonevidentiary trace with every step.

And to add to that mess, there were no witnesses to the shooting, no handy video cam bolted to a streetlight, and no shell casings to be found.

We didn't even know the victim's real name.

Were it not for the drama Cindy was about to create in the
Chronicle,
this homeless man's case file would have gone to the bottom of the stack until he was forgotten.

Even by me.

But those multiple gunshots fired "at close range" nagged at me.

"Beating
and
shooting is crazy for a robbery, Rich. I'm sensing a hate crime. Or some kind of crime of passion."

Conklin flashed his lady-killer smile.

"So let's work it," he said.

He turned off the engine and we walked down to the end of the block, where Cindy's subjects still loitered outside the barrier tape.

We reinterviewed them all, then expanded our scope to include all of Townsend as well as Clyde Street and Lusk Alley. We talked to bodega cashiers, salesclerks at a gay men's novelty sex shop, hookers and druggies hanging out on the street.

Together we knocked on apartment doors in low-rent housing and spent the afternoon questioning forklift operators and laborers in the warehouses along Townsend, asking about the shooting last night outside the Caltrain yard, asking about Bagman Jesus.

Admittedly, many people scattered when they saw our badges. Others claimed to have no knowledge of Bagman or his death.

But the people who knew of Bagman Jesus had anecdotes to tell. How he'd broken up a liquor-store holdup, sometimes worked in a soup kitchen, said that he always had a few dollars for someone who needed it.

He was the elite, king of the street, we were told, a bum with a heart of gold. And his loss was tragic for those who counted him a friend.

By day's end, my attitude had shifted from skepticism to curiosity, and I realized that I'd caught Cindy's fever—or maybe the fever had caught me.

Bagman Jesus had been the good shepherd of a wounded flock.

So why had he been murdered?

Had he simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time?

Or had his death been specific and deliberate?

And that left us with two big questions no good cop could dodge with a clear conscience: Who had killed Bagman Jesus? And why?

C
ONKLIN AND I got to the Hall around five, crossed the squad room to Lieutenant Warren Jacobi's small glassed-in office that once had been mine.

Jacobi once had been mine, too—that is, he used to be my partner. And although we'd swapped jobs and disagreed often, we'd put in so many years and miles together, he could read my thoughts like no one else—not Claire, not Conklin, not Cindy, not Joe.

Jacobi was sitting behind his junkyard of a desk when we walked in. My old friend and boss is a gray-haired, lumpy-featured, fifty-three-year-old cop with more than twenty-five years' experience in Homicide. His sharp gray eyes fixed on me, and I noted the laugh lines bracketing his mouth—because he wasn't laughing.

Not even a little.

"What the hell have you two been doing all day?" he asked me. "Have I got this right? You've been working a homeless DOA?"

Inspector Hottie, as Conklin is known around the Hall, offered me the chair across from Jacobi's desk, then parked his cute butt on the credenza—and started to laugh.

"I say something funny, Conklin?" Jacobi snapped. "You've got twelve unsolveds on your desk. Want me to list them?"