Schemers

19

I stayed away from the agency on Thursday morning, with the intention of doing the same in the afternoon. After yesterday’s horror show I figured I was entitled. Write out my witnesss statement and drop it off at the Hall of Justice later on. Putter a little, read a little, catch up on cataloging my pulp collection. Quiet, relaxing day.

Yeah, sure. I should’ve known better.

I forgot about that insidious invention, the telephone. Silly me. If my brain had been functioning properly, I would have turned off the cell, unplugged the house phone, and drowned the answering machine in the bathtub.

The damn things, cell and house phones both, kept up a steady clamor from nine o’clock on. Three calls from Tamara. Three calls from media people, starting with Joe DeFalco, my old muckraking Chronicle buddy. Barney Rivera. Gregory Pollexfen. Even a damn telemarketer.

After the first two calls-Tamara, with a progress report from Jake Runyon on the Henderson investigation, and DeFalco-I wised up and cannily began to monitor the barrage of incoming calls. So I didn’t have to talk to two of the relentless media, or the telemarketer. Or Rivera, whose sadistic imp I could hear lurking inside his message: “Call me. We need to talk.” I knew what he wanted; Tamara had already told me he’d phoned the agency asking for a status report on the missing books and reminding her that the claim investigation was still open. I’d deal with him at my convenience, not his.

The other calls I answered. Tamara’s second had to do with another agency matter. I picked up when I heard Pollexfen’s voice because he sounded upset and didn’t say in the message he started to leave why he was bothering me at home. Curiosity is sometimes one of my strong points, sometimes one of the weak.

“The police haven’t found my first editions,” he said without any preamble. “They searched Jeremy’s records and the Coyne woman’s apartment and there’s no sign of them or what was done with them.”

“So I’ve heard. That’s too bad.”

“Too bad? Is that all you have to say?”

“They’ll turn up eventually. Or some evidence of disposal will.”

“The police don’t care about rare books. They won’t even let me into the library to clean up the mess. Blood spattered everywhere… more than a few volumes may be irreparably damaged.”

Some cold bird, Pollexfen. His brother-in-law had died in that room, apparently by his wife’s hand, and his primary concern was possible damage to his books.

“Why tell me, Mr. Pollexfen?”

“Why? Why do you think? You’re the only investigator I have any faith in.”

“It’s not my case any longer. The police-”

“Hang the police. What happened to my first editions is still an unresolved insurance matter. I’ve already spoken to Mr. Rivera at Great Western and he agrees. The investigation, your investigation, is to continue as long as the eight books remain unaccounted for.”

That little son of a bitch. He’d keep me on the hook as long as possible so he could laugh all the harder when I failed. Well, screw him and screw Gregory Pollexfen.

“If it continues,” I said, “it’ll be by somebody else. As far as I’m concerned, I’m no longer employed as an independent contractor by Great Western Insurance.”

“But you can’t quit,” he said angrily. “You have to keep investigating-”

I said, “No, I don’t,” and hung up on him.

The satisfaction was premature. I wasn’t done with the Pollexfen case, much as I wanted to be; Tamara’s third call convinced me of that.

“I just heard from Paul DiSantis,” she said. “Wants to see you ASAP. Urgent.”

“What about?”

“Mrs. Pollexfen. He says she’s innocent. Says her defense team wants to hire us to prove it.”

“Defense team?”

“Him and the criminal lawyer he got for her. Arthur Sayers. Only the best for the rich folks, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“I think we should do it, and not just for the money. High profile, you know what I’m saying? Good for business.”

Arguable, but I let it pass.

“I told DiSantis I’d get back to him as soon as I talked to you. Wouldn’t do any harm to listen to what he has to say, right?”

I tightened my grip around the receiver’s hard plastic neck and strangled it a little, just for fun. “My office,” I said. “One o’clock.”

A ngelina did not kill her brother,” DiSantis said. “She couldn’t have.”

“No? Why not?”

“Because she was unconscious for three hours before the shooting.”

“Passed out drunk? Pretty flimsy defense.”

He leaned forward in the client’s chair. He didn’t look quite as suave and self-possessed today. Angry, earnest, more than a little worried. He wasn’t just playing bed games with Angelina Pollexfen, I thought; he genuinely cared for her.

“She wasn’t drunk,” he said, “she was drugged.”

“Drugged? She reeked of gin.”

“Two martinis, that’s all she had. You saw how much she drinks-two martinis wouldn’t give her a mild buzz, much less cause her to pass out. Drinking the last one in the library is all she remembers until she woke up in police custody.”

“That doesn’t mean she was drugged.”

“The tox screen we had done does. Clonazepam. It’s still in her system.”

“What’s clonazepam?”

“It’s prescribed for anxiety disorders, among other things. A large dose mixed with alcohol makes a person sick and disoriented. And it can result in short-term memory loss.”

“You must have told the police about this. What did they say?”

“That it doesn’t change anything. That she took it herself, willingly.”

“Well?”

“She wouldn’t and she didn’t.”

“But she had a prescription for it?”

“Yes. For Klonopin, a trade name for the stuff,” he said. “Her doctor gave it to her a while back, when she was having mild panic attacks at night. There’s a supply in her bathroom medicine cabinet. She swears she hasn’t taken any in weeks, and that she’d never voluntarily take it with alcohol.”

“No? Why not?”

“She did that once and it made her sick. Very sick. She had to have her stomach pumped. That’s not an experience anyone would want to repeat.”

The time the EMTs had been called to the house, I thought. Matter of public record and a point in her favor.

“What’s her claim?” I asked. “That her brother spiked her martinis?”

“No. Her husband. He made the martinis, but he drank scotch himself.”

“So she’s saying Pollexfen drugged both her and Cullrane?”

“She’s not sure about Cullrane. We asked the police to have a tox screen done on him, but they said it wouldn’t make any difference if clonazepam is found in his system, she could’ve given it to him as well as to herself.”

“Why would Pollexfen drug the two of them?”

“Isn’t that obvious? To frame her for the murder.”

“How could he do that, Mr. DiSantis? Cullrane was shot in a locked room, Mrs. Pollexfen was the only other occupant, and I was outside with Pollexfen and his secretary when the round was fired.”

“I know that, I know it doesn’t seem possible. But I believe that Angelina is telling the truth. She didn’t kill her brother. And she had nothing to do with those books being stolen.”

“She think her husband is responsible for that, too?”

“Yes.”

“Why? Why would he dream up such an elaborate scenario to frame Cullrane for theft and her for Cullrane’s murder? What does he stand to gain?”

“He hated Cullrane and he hates her.”

“There’d have to be more than that. And there’s still the fact that he couldn’t have fired the shot that killed Cullrane.”

DiSantis spread his hands. “That’s why I’m here. If anybody can find out the truth and prove Angelina’s innocence, it’s you.”

“I’m not a miracle worker.”

“Mr. Rivera at Great Western Insurance thinks you are.”

Rivera again. I said between my teeth, “I’ll want to talk to Mrs. Pollexfen before I make any commitments. Has she been formally charged?”

“Yes.”

“Still being held, then?”

“Until tomorrow morning. Arthur has a court date at ten to try to arrange bail.”

“Can you get me in to see her?”

“Should be able to, yes. Now?”

“Now,” I said. “I need to drop off my statement at the Hall of Justice anyway.”

S an Francisco operates eight city jails, which says something about the local crime rate. Two of them are located down the Peninsula in San Bruno, there’s a prison ward in San Francisco General Hospital, and a pair for the booking and release of prisoners and for “program-oriented rehabilitation” are in the newest jail complex on Seventh Street near the Hall of Justice. The other three are in the Hall itself, on the two top floors. One of those, on the sixth floor, houses the women’s section where Angelina Pollexfen was being held.

Every time I enter the Hall of Justice these days, I can’t help remembering that the sprawling monolith has design flaws and is a potential death trap in a high-magnitude earthquake. I don’t read the newspapers as a rule, but Kerry does; there was an article a few years ago in the Chronicle about the building’s “vulnerability to calamity” that she’d called to my attention. The original structure was built in 1958 and has been expanded twice since, but none of the city administrators has seen fit to authorize the necessary retrofitting to meet current earthquake codes. There’s been plenty of talk about putting up a replacement building, yet in twenty years plans haven’t gotten much beyond the talking stage. The ever-increasing cost of tearing down the old and putting up the new back-burners it every time.

The Hall withstood the Loma Prieta quake in 1989 with only minor damage, though the power failed and prevented officers from opening an electronic door to the secured area where weapons are stored. In a stronger shake centered in or close to the city, the walls would probably crack and even if the building managed not to topple, or the section of the freeway approach to the Bay Bridge in whose shadow it sits didn’t collapse into it, it would likely trap people inside and be rendered unusable-a crisis within a crisis. All of which makes me feel just a little vulnerable in its confines, despite the fact that native San Franciscans learn early on not to be intimidated by the threat of earthquakes.

The jails in the Hall are gloomy, noisy places presided over by grim-visaged sheriff’s deputies of both sexes. DiSantis got us an audience with Angelina Pollexfen with no trouble, after which we went through the usual security checks and paperwork before being admitted to the visitors’ room. A matron brought Pollexfen out and she and I sat down on our respective sides of the glass wall and picked up the communicating handsets. DiSantis stood behind me and, to his credit, kept his own counsel.

Different woman, Mrs. Pollexfen, than the one I’d had the adversarial lunch with on Tuesday. Orange jumpsuit in place of the expensive clothes, hair uncombed, pale face free of makeup, eyes sick and dull. The smart-ass cool had been replaced by a kind of wheedling deference.

“Thank you for coming,” she said. “Paul said you would, but after the other day… I’m sorry about the way I acted. I shouldn’t have had all those martinis.”

I waved that away. “Tell me what happened yesterday.”

“I didn’t kill Jeremy,” she said fervently. “I swear to God I didn’t.”

“Just tell me what happened.”

“I don’t know what happened. The last thing I remember is having drinks with with Jeremy and that bastard I’m married to. I started to feel woozy, I think I said something about it, and then… nothing until I woke up with police all over the place.”

“Where did you have the drinks?”

“The library. I thought that was a little strange because Greg doesn’t usually let anybody in there with him, especially Jeremy and me.”

“His idea, this little gathering?”

“Yes. He insisted we be there at twelve thirty-he said he wanted to talk to us.”

“About?”

“Those damn missing books. But he didn’t really have much to say, just the same old baseless accusations.”

“Against your brother?”

“Yes. And that I must have known and was keeping quiet about it to protect Jeremy.”

“Were you?”

“No. I swear I don’t know what happened to those books. Neither did Jeremy. He called Greg a conniving old fool and told him he’d better watch out or he’d regret it.”

“Regret it how?”

Her gaze shifted to DiSantis, but she must not have gotten anything from him in return; she said to my right ear, “He didn’t say how.”

I said, “Look, Mrs. Pollexfen, if you want my help you’re going to have to confide in me and in your attorneys. Everything you know, nothing held back. Understood?”

“Yes.” Low, almost a whisper.

“The three of you hated one another, and yet your husband kept right on letting you and your brother live under his roof. I understand his reasons in your case, but not in your brother’s. Did Jeremy have something on him, some kind of hold?”

No response for a time. Her lips were cracked and dry; she bit a piece of skin from the lower, scraped it off her tongue with a fingernail. Then, “He knew some things about Greg, yes.”

“What sort of things?”

“Business dealings. I told you Greg was a manipulator. Well, his manipulations got him into a bind once and he did something illegal to get out of it. I don’t know what it was exactly, just that it involved a small aviation company.”

“And your brother found out about it, is that it?”

“Yes.”

“When did this happen-the illegal act?”

“Five or six years ago.”

“So your brother blackmailed him-”

“It wasn’t blackmail. Not exactly.”

“Call it manipulation, then. Manipulating the manipulator. That’s how Jeremy got him to invest one hundred thousand dollars in the San Jose music show.”

She nodded. “And when Jeremy lost the money, Greg hated him all the more. That’s why Greg killed him and made it look like I did it-to get both of us out of his life at the same time.”

“This secret. Can you give me any details?”

“Jeremy wouldn’t talk about it.”

“He never mentioned the name of the aviation company?”

“No. Wait, yes, I heard him talking to Greg once. Green something Aeronautics. Jeremy knew one of the executives who worked there, that’s how he found out what Greg did.”

“Local company? Bay Area?”

“I think so.”

Tamara ought to be able to find out. I said, “Let’s get back to yesterday afternoon. Your husband made the drinks for the three of you?”

“Martinis for Jeremy and me, scotch for himself.”

“You said you felt woozy before you passed out. Your brother have the same reaction?”

“I’m not sure. I think he said his martini tasted funny, but… I’m just not sure.”

“Where were you, the last you remember?”

“Where? Oh. Sitting on the couch.”

“Your brother?”

“Beside me.”

“Your husband?”

“In his desk chair.”

“This was about one o’clock?”

“About that. Greg kept looking at his watch, saying he had to leave soon for some book auction.”

“The three of you were the only ones in the house?”

“Housekeeper’s day off and Brenda had already gone to the auction.”

“The shotgun? Still above the fireplace, or did your husband take it down for any reason?”

“No. It was where it always was.”

“Did he go near it, touch it?”

“No.”

Three hours. Pollexfen could have put enough of the Klonopin into their drinks to keep them unconscious for that long. Shut them inside the library, go off to Pacific Rim Gallery, come back in time to keep his appointment with me. But how could he have timed the shooting so perfectly, with the three of us right there when the shotgun went off? Some way linked to how he’d rigged the crime in the first place? Maybe, if he’d rigged the crime in the first place. But how in hell could you blow off the back of a man’s head when you were on the other side of a double-bolted door?

Angelina Pollexfen intuited what I was thinking. “I don’t know how he did it,” she said. “All I know is that I didn’t. My own brother… my God, we didn’t get along but I would never have threatened him with a loaded shotgun like they’re saying. I couldn’t kill anybody, not for any reason.”

I believed her. Her voice, her body language, the haunted desperation on her face and in her eyes… they all said she was telling the truth.

Pollexfen, then.

I think maybe I’d known all along it had to be Pollexfen.