A Criminal Defense

Chapter 21

Galen was right,” Navarro said as they sat in the office of the A amp;B Gas Mart on International Boulevard in East Oakland near the Sixty-fifth Avenue housing project.

Donnally remembered when the name of the wide commercial street had been changed from East Fourteenth Street. It had been done at the same time and for the same reason that garbage collection had been renamed waste management and budget cuts were called revenue recapture-and nobody had been fooled. There weren’t fewer drug dealers on the side streets, hookers walking the sidewalks, or murderers hanging out on the corners and along the storefronts because the four lanes of litter-strewn blacktop had been relabeled based on some bureaucrat’s melting pot fantasy.

It sometimes seemed to Donnally that more than the taquerias and Vietnamese noodle shops and Arab markets, what made the boulevard international was the same thing that made it territorial: the gangs that controlled it from Lake Merritt downtown all the way to the southern city limit. The Mexican Nortenos, Surenos, and Border Brothers; the Asian Bui Doi, V-Boyz, and Sons of Death; and the Salvadoran M-13.

Despite the name change, the street remained not merely mean, but wounded, like a victim of Tink Fischer’s fight-mangled pit bull.

Donnally and Navarro were peering at a monitor displaying a soundless month-old video showing the market’s gas pump islands and the front of Burger’s Motorcycle Repair across the street. They’d just watched Mark Hamlin pull to a stop under a streetlight in his Porsche and knock on the door an hour before a homicide had been reported to 911 by the admitted killer, David Burger.

On the drive over, Navarro had relayed to Donnally what he’d learned from Oakland homicide. Burger and the victim, Ed Sanders, operated both the garage on International Boulevard and a meth lab in the Central Valley, but they’d had a falling out. Burger had claimed in his statement to the police that Sanders had come at him with a lug wrench. Burger had punched Sanders and he’d fallen back, hitting his head on a metalworking lathe.

Donnally and Navarro were only able to recognize Hamlin in the grainy video because Sheldon Galen told them what to look for and when to look for it. Navarro hadn’t asked the Oakland Police Department to review their copy of the recording for fear they’d study it more closely and figure out why he wanted it. Neither Navarro nor Donnally wanted to risk losing control of the investigation.

They watched the front door to the garage open from the inside. A white male stuck his head out and glanced up and down the sidewalk, then stepped back into the shadow to let Hamlin in.

“That’s Burger,” Navarro said.

A homeless man pushing a grocery cart came into the frame a couple of minutes later. He peered into Hamlin’s car and tried the passenger door handle. He then reached in among the cans and bottles in the cart, pulled out a brick, glanced around, and smashed the window. He yanked out what looked like a laptop case, hid it in the cart, and disappeared from view.

“Didn’t the car alarm go off?” Navarro said.

The garage door opened. Hamlin came running out. He stared at the broken glass, then his head swiveled as he surveyed the street for someone running away. He started in the direction the homeless man had gone, then stopped and turned back and ran the other way.

“Something must have caught his attention,” Donnally said. “Maybe the guy had a crime partner, a decoy to lead Hamlin in the wrong direction.”

Donnally realized he hadn’t seen a laptop or tablet in Hamlin’s car, apartment, or office. This burglary must be the reason. He stopped the recorder, skimmed back to where the burglar was facing the camera, then walked to the front counter and returned with the owner.

“You recognize that guy?” Donnally asked.

The owner squinted at the figure, then said in a heavy Indian accent, “I am thinking he is coming by here often. A very smelly man.” He pointed north. “He is always going to the recycling center with cans and bottles.”

“You know his name?”

“No idea.” The owner then straightened up and returned to the front counter.

Donnally started the video again. A minute later Hamlin reappeared. He opened the passenger door and pulled out his briefcase, apparently to keep someone else from stealing it. He glanced over as two motorcycles passed by, the riders wearing black leather vests and Nazi-like helmets, then went back into the garage. He left again a half hour later.

Two patrol cars arrived thirty minutes after Hamlin drove away. Burger opened the door and spoke with the officers. The officers gestured him outside, patted him down and handcuffed him, and then one of the two officers walked inside.

“Galen was right so far,” Donnally said. He turned to Navarro. “Can you confirm real quick that Hamlin didn’t report the car burglary?”

Navarro called the Oakland Police Department records section and asked whether a Mark Hamlin had ever reported his car burglarized in the city.

“Galen was right about that, too,” Navarro said, after he disconnected. “He didn’t report the break-in.”

Donnally thought for a moment.

“The victim’s family may have seen something in the condition of the garage that led them to believe Hamlin helped stage the scene to make it look like self-defense. Hamlin and Burger could’ve moved things around-chairs, tables, maybe even the lathe-to make sure all the blood spatter was in the right places. Who knows what else they could’ve done.”

“And when they couldn’t get to Burger in the county jail,” Navarro said, “they went after Hamlin.”

Navarro’s cell phone rang. He listened for a few seconds, then said to Donnally, “You were right about putting a tail on Galen. He just let himself into Hamlin’s place through the back door.”