The Hanging

Chapter 25

Uncle Max was waiting for me on the tarmac outside the executive jet terminal at Burbank Airport.

“Flying like a plutocrat now, huh?” he said, wrapping an arm around me and guiding me toward the exit.

I looked back at the sleek little jet the network had provided for my quick jaunt to Vegas.

“I could get used to that,” I said. “If only to skip the airport security shuffle.”

He gave me a squeeze. “Glad you’re home safe. Successful trip?”

“Very.” I asked, “Did you go to Frankie Weidermeyer’s arraignment this afternoon?”

“As you asked. D.A. said attempted murder, added lying in wait and use of firearm as special circumstances, asked for remand. Frankie told the judge he was indigent, drew a public defender, declared not guilty, got remanded-no bail-to the county lockup until trial.”

“How did he look?”

“How did he look?”

“That’s what I asked.”

“Like a deer caught in the headlights.”

“Poor kid.”

Max’s Beemer was parked at the curb. After we were buckled in and headed toward the exit, I turned toward him.

“The most productive part of this very long, strange day was the quiet time alone during the flight home. Some time to think.”

“Can be dangerous, thinking. So, did you figure it all out?”

“The essentials, maybe,” I said. “After everything I’ve learned, I finally realized that, at its heart, this is a story about two young men more than it is about a congressman who lost his way.”

He furrowed his brow. “Is it?”

“Think about it, Max. First, there’s Sly, who has no idea who his father is, junkie mother, raised by the county from the time he was a baby, spent some time living on the streets at the tender age of nine, surviving by his wits. Yet, along the way he acquired this great network of supporters who truly care about him. He grows up to become a supremely talented, and now, recognized artist. The best part is, I think he’s happy.”

“You can take the credit for that, sweetheart.”

“Only a small share of the credit. I brought Sly in off the street, but it was Mike and his son, Michael, who made certain that Sly got everything he needed, especially unconditional love. Especially love.” I felt my throat constrict and my eyes fill. “I wish Mike could be there next week for the hanging ceremony.”

“He’d be so damn proud.”

Max turned onto Hollywood Way and headed toward the freeway.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“My house,” he said. “You’re staying over; you shouldn’t be alone tonight.”

“Thanks, Uncle. I’ll need to borrow some skivvies.”

He laughed. “It’s your mother’s idea, Maggot. She and Gracie went to your house this afternoon to kibitz with the glazier when he was replacing your windows. While they were there they packed a nice little bag of necessities for you and brought it to my office.”

“Dear God.” The image of my mother and her friend rifling through my underwear drawer flashed behind my eyes like a bad scene from a bad comedy.

Max put the conversation back on topic. “The other boy you’re thinking about is the Weidermeyer kid?”

“Yes,” I said. “Except he turns out to be Holloway’s kid.”

“Wow!” Max glanced at me. “Is that true?”

“Seems so.”

“That’s big, honey. Really big.”

“What it is, is cruel,” I said. “Think about it: All of his life, Frankie has known who his father was, and apparently spent a certain amount of time with him. His father was very prominent, but Frankie was never publicly acknowledged. He was even denied the right to use his father’s name. Kept hidden in what the older Mr. Weidermeyer called the parents’ love nest. Until…”

I let that hang in the air.

He gripped my knee. “Don’t be mean. Until what?”

“Until his father, the late Park Holloway, promised that he would use his influence on the art award committee at the college so that his son’s sculpture would win the competition and be enshrined, forever, in that great monument to his own tenure at Anacapa College, the Taj Ma’Holloway. A gesture far short of announcing paternity, but a public embrace, nonetheless.”

“Interesting,” Max said. “Must have hurt when Sly won.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” I said. “The other day, I got really angry with one of my students, a kid named Preston Nguyen, for digging up facts about Sly’s mother and spreading them around.”

“That’s a natural reaction,” Max said. “You were protecting your boy.”

“I was. And Preston was being a good investigative journalist, though a bit of a gossip. I owe him an apology,” I said. “I owe him more than that. As background for an article he’s writing for the student newspaper about Sly’s sculpture, Preston sought out Frankie and asked him how he felt about losing to Sly. He also told him about Sly’s mother, which was gratuitous, in my humble and very biased opinion. It was after that conversation that Frankie let us know exactly how he felt.”

“He came gunning for you,” Max said.

“The first episode, with the pellet gun, I think he hit his intended target, Sly, with the graffiti, and I was collateral damage. But when he came to my house last night, I wonder if he was trying to protect his mother from me.”

“Your visit to her gallery certainly set a few things in motion.”

“It was Jean-Paul who set things in motion for Clarice Snow,” I said. “Do you think Frankie could have been gunning for Jean-Paul?”

“Only the kid can answer that.”

“Max, all the way home, I kept flashing on Sly’s anger last Friday when Holloway told him that his sculpture would come down after a year. Something magnificent had been yanked out from under him, and he did not know how to handle his grief and his rage over it.”

“Sure he did,” Max said. “He went to you. And once again, you got everything made right.”

“When you say it that way, it sounds like a reproach.”

“That wasn’t my intention,” he said.

After a quick glance to check on me, he said, “I still owe you a dinner at the Pacific Dining Car. The one on Wilshire. I’m ready for a steak. You hungry?”

Food was the last thing on my mind, but I wanted to be out for a while longer, surrounded by people, so I said, “Good idea.”

“You were saying?” he said.

“When Sly won that competition,” I said, “everything turned to shit for Frankie. As a consolation prize, Holloway-his father-promised him that he would win in the end. Sly’s work would come down, and Frankie’s would come in. Forever.

“To make that happen, Holloway went out and raised a ton of cash from the college’s donor pool. He actually bought the kid’s big sculpture.”

“The bronze bowling pin?”

“The same,” I said. “On Friday, we blocked Holloway from making good on that promise. How do you imagine Frankie reacted to that ultimate disappointment when he was told? Could he have felt any less grief and rage than Sly had? But who could Frankie turn to? His father? Friends? The man whose name he carries referred to him as a ‘dumb fuck.’ Poor kid.”

“What are you thinking, Maggot?”

“I need a favor from my beloved uncle,” I said.

“I’m shaking in my boots already.”

“Will you defend Frankie?”

“For taking a shot at you?” He laughed. “No judge would allow that.”

“No,” I said. “For killing his own father.”

Max and I were lingering over decaf when Thornbury joined us at the Pacific Dining Car. After our conversation in the car, Max had called him.

“Do I need my Kevlar to sit near you, Maggie?” Thornbury said, sliding into the leather-upholstered booth next to me.

“Not a bad idea,” I said, making room for him.

The detective looked around the posh room appreciatively.

“I’ve been to the Dining Car downtown a couple of times,” he said. “The LAPD Robbery-Homicide guys go there for breakfast on Fridays, but twenty-dollar eggs are a bit rich for my pocket.”

“Have you eaten, Detective?” Max asked.

“I almost got breakfast this morning.” He gave me a sarcastic grin. “But I got called out before I could eat it. Looked pretty good, too.”

“Order whatever looks good to you,” Max said. “My treat.”

“In that case…” Thornbury picked up his menu. After he gave his order to the waiter, he turned to me.

“I spoke with that woman you’ve been worried about, Joan Givens,” he said. “She’s okay. You spooked her when you told her she needed to talk to the police for her own protection, so she borrowed Bobbie Cusato’s place up in Cambria for a few days to hide out, think things over. Mrs. Cusato told her about what Chin did this morning, and that scared her enough to finally call me.”

“Did she tell you anything you hadn’t already heard?” I asked.

“Not really.” The waiter set a martini in front of him. After a grateful sip, he continued. “The real news came from the FBI. They went into Holloway and Chin’s bank accounts, including accounts in the offshore bank you alerted us to.”

“Thanks to Joan Givens.”

“Okay. The thing is, Holloway washed a lot of money through his account. Six figures to that Santa Barbara gallery, six figures to a rehab facility up in Sacramento, more to a trust fund in the name of Harlan Holloway.”

“His disabled son,” I said.

“Makes sense, sort of,” he said. “It was a lot of money, but it was chump change compared to the swag Chin was hauling in. Your academic VP got regular payments from the construction company that’s putting up the new buildings at the college. He was also getting payments from some of the major suppliers. Do you have any idea how much building material is coming out of China?”

“No idea at all,” I said. “But why am I not surprised? If you dig further, I’ll bet you find that Chin has some interest in the supplies that are going to a hospital construction project in Las Vegas, too.”

“Thanks, but I’ll leave that to the FBI.” He drained his martini and sighed; Max signaled the waiter to bring a second. “I just wish I could make Chin for the Holloway killing, but he had a decent alibi.”

The waiter replaced Thornbury’s empty glass with a full one. The detective gripped the stem as if it were a lifeline.

“The thing I don’t get,” he said, “and I don’t know much about who does what in a college administration, but I wouldn’t expect some guy with the word ‘academic’ in his title to have much say over construction contracts.”

“Therein lies the genius of Hiram Chin,” I said. “You’re right, the academic vice president wouldn’t have much input, except for talking with planners about classroom requirements. However, the college president would be involved at every level. I’m sure Hiram guided every decision Holloway made, using his old pal as the front for his own nefarious activities, a layer of protection.”

“Nefarious, huh?” Thornbury chuckled softly.

“And once again,” I said, “it looks like Holloway had no clue what Hiram was up to. Otherwise, when he needed money, wouldn’t he have tapped his old friend instead of groveling for chump change, as you called it, from college donors?”

Thornbury looked at me through narrowed eyes, skepticism written on his expression.

“After that other deal with Chin bit him on the ass big-time,” he said, “why would Holloway go back and work with him again?”

“I asked Francis Weidermeyer a version of that question. The collapse of that first deal left these folks without a lot of options other than the gigs Hiram came up with. Besides, as Weidermeyer said, they’d had some pretty good times together. I think he was a bit nostalgic for the good old days.”

“Jesus.” He sipped his drink. “The more I know about people, the less I understand them. And what I really can’t understand is why Chin took himself out like that.”

“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “He said something interesting this morning. He called Holloway his veneer. When you strip off the veneer, what you find underneath isn’t very attractive. Or marketable. Maybe he needed Holloway every bit as much as Holloway needed him.”

“What do you call that, a symbiotic relationship?”

“By God, Detective, you have hidden depths,” Max said.

Thornbury only rolled his eyes.

He said, “I’ve seen suicides after the fact plenty of times. But I’ve never seen anyone take himself out. And to do it with you standing so close, I don’t get it.”

“I have a feeling he wanted me to be there,” I said. “Payback, maybe.”

“Why on earth?”

“He seemed to think I set his downfall in motion.”

He sipped his drink, thinking.

“Did you get a chance to talk to Frankie?” Max asked him, interrupting his reverie.

“We tried to talk to him last night,” Thornbury said. “But he’s smart enough to keep his mouth shut.”

“I saw you with his P.D. after the arraignment this afternoon. What do you think of the lawyer he drew?”

“Pretty green,” Thornbury said. “He only passed the bar six months ago.”

I caught Max’s eye and he gave me a nod.

Thornbury shifted his gaze from me to Max, trying to read us. “What’s up?”

“Detective,” Max said, “I take it that, because you are enjoying a cocktail and you folks don’t drink on duty, you are off the clock at the moment, just unwinding with friends.”

“If you say so, Counselor.”

“My niece wants to tell you a story. After she finishes, if you do what I think you will, you and I might end up on opposite sides of things.”

“Why is that?”

The waiter set a massive, bleeding steak in front of Thornbury. He closed his eyes and hungrily savored the aroma rising from the plate.

“You eat,” I said. “I’ll talk.”

“Deal,” he said, picking up his knife and fork.

I started at the beginning with Sly’s rant, our confrontational meeting with Holloway, Hiram’s question for me at Mme Olivier’s reception about the way Holloway died, the visit to the Snow Gallery and Frankie’s studio with the damaged gate, Preston Nguyen’s snooping and the hang-up phone calls from Frankie’s female acquaintance, my trip to Gilstrap and conversations with Karen and Trey Holloway, my encounter with Harlan, the research by Jean-Paul’s friend Gilbert and the phone calls that led the FBI to Clarice Snow. One piece at a time, like a giant puzzle, a picture began to emerge.

Before I got to the end, Thornbury had rested his knife and fork across the center of his plate and leaned back, contented, listening, occasionally asking a question.

“Laid out like that,” he said, when I told him I thought that Frankie killed Holloway, “I can see it. But how am I going to prove it?”

Max excused himself and walked up to the front of the restaurant to talk with the mâitre d’, an old friend.

“Where’s he going?” Thornbury asked.

“He doesn’t want to hear this,” I said. “Not with you present.”

“Why?”

“Because I asked him to defend Frankie.”

“Defend him?” He watched Max’s back, head shaking. “I don’t get you people. The guy takes a couple of shots at you and your fancy boyfriend, and you want your uncle to defend him?”

“For murdering his father, yes.”

“You setting him up or something?”

“Not at all. The young man needs some heavy-duty help.”

“Your uncle is that, for sure,” he said. “You think Max can get him off?”

“Not if you do your job,” I said. “Frankie Weidermeyer is a dangerous young man who has committed several despicable acts. He needs the sort of help he won’t get in prison, but at the same time, society doesn’t need him out on the loose.”

“Now I really don’t get it.”

“Detective, you have a difficult job, crazy hours, lots of stress. Do you have family, friends who look over your shoulder, make sure you’re okay?”

He thought about it before he said, “Friends, guys on the job, sure. Two ex-wives, four kids.”

“Two kids per?”

“No. All my kids are from my first marriage.” He had a sad smile. “It was a good marriage, but the job… What you said, it’s hard on people.”

“I know,” I said. “I was married to a cop.”

“The thing of it is, I think that if we could have held it together a while longer, we’d still be okay.”

“The important thing is, you have people to turn to.”

He cocked his head to the side as he looked at me.

“Not like you,” he said. “I never see you alone. You hear a little thunder and they’re on the phone, looking after you.”

“I had a rough year,” I said. “And the last week hasn’t exactly been a picnic. My family and friends are sticking close, making sure I’m okay. Sometimes I feel smothered by them, but most of all I feel loved. It’s been important.”

“I get that. But what does it have to do with Weidermeyer and your uncle?”

“It’s time for someone to step forward and help Frankie,” I said. “He has no one except his mother, and I’m not persuaded that she has much to offer that’s useful to him right now. If she did, maybe none of this…”

He nodded slowly. “Much as I’m not going to like going up against your uncle in court again, I get it. But I still don’t have any hard evidence.”

“You will. What he did was an act of rage. I’m sure he didn’t plan it, so he’ll have left something behind.”

I told him about Frankie’s workshop in Santa Barbara and the adjoining warehouse, and about Eric, Frankie’s friend, if that’s what he was.

“Eric may have something interesting to tell you. You might ask about the warehouse driveway gate that was rammed Friday night.”

“What about the gate?”

“The gate is set far enough down the driveway that it’s not likely that some random drunk hit it. I’d look into it, check Frankie’s car for front-end damage.”

“Why would he do that?”

I shrugged. “Rage, grief, self-destructiveness. Eric said he had to get the gate repaired ASAP or there would be hell to pay. There’s not much in the young men’s studio that needs more security than a good lock on the door, but I wonder if you might find some of his mom’s bogus artwork stored in the warehouse. Not to mention tools that might inflict blunt force trauma if used in certain ways.”

“You think I’ll find what the D.A. needs to file a case there?”

“You’ll find it somewhere,” I said. “I have faith in you.”

He had the grace to laugh.

My faith in Thornbury was not misplaced. During the next week, he and Weber assembled the evidence the district attorney needed to file murder charges against Frankie Weidermeyer.

Frankie had never been fingerprinted until the night he was arrested at my house. The exemplars taken during his booking matched prints found in Park Holloway’s office and on the wall of the stairwell in the lobby around the broken door covering the switch that operated the hanging apparatus.

With the help of police in Santa Barbara, Frankie’s car, an SUV, was found in a body shop where it was having its front end repaired. Inside the car technicians found traces of Holloway’s blood on the steering wheel and gearshift knob. And in a corner of the car’s back deck, under a welder’s apron, a heavy glass paperweight that had once sat on the reception desk in the lobby was found. The paperweight was smeared with bloody fingerprints-Holloway’s blood, Frankie’s fingerprints.

As part of the booking process, Frankie also had his cheek swabbed for a DNA sample. That sample linked him to DNA left on the garrote taken from Holloway’s neck and it proved paternity; Frankie was, indeed, Holloway’s son.

Whatever information I gleaned came entirely from Thornbury and Weber because Uncle Max, of necessity, was staying mute on the topic of his new pro bono client.

Through his friend Gilbert, Jean-Paul received updates on Clarice Snow.

The FBI booked Clarice into the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles, the federal lockup, later on the same day that Hiram Chin took his own life. Federal investigators knew there was something hinky about her gallery, but after seventy-two hours they had to let her go because they hadn’t found anything concrete to charge her with, though the IRS was hard at work dissecting her very complex international finances. In the meantime, the FBI kept her passport.

The enormous collection of beautiful fakes the Feds found in the warehouse adjoining Frankie’s studio had been awarded to Francis Weidermeyer by a federal judge, and Weidermeyer confirmed that he had consigned it to Clarice to sell. Though the operation was certainly shady, it was legitimate as long as Clarice did not misrepresent her offerings.

At the back of her album of exclusive offerings-the fakes-there was a disclaimer that said the works shown were all painted “in homage” to the great artists of Europe, but were not themselves masterworks. The paintings were not forgeries, and according to Clarice, she never represented them as anything except imitations. Jean-Paul and I could not contradict that, though neither of us remembered seeing the disclaimer when we looked through the album in her gallery.

In the end, it didn’t matter very much when she added the disclaimer. Clarice’s local reputation was ruined and there was a going-out-of-business sign posted on her gallery door. I wondered where she would turn up next, but I had no doubts that, unlike her kinsman Hiram Chin, she had at least one more bounce left.

The good news was that the three Millard Sheets paintings that Jean-Paul and I admired turned out to be authentic.

As for the sins of Hiram Chin: forensic accountants delved into his financial records and found enough evidence that he had embezzled large sums from the public construction bond and taken regular kickbacks from suppliers so that, were he alive, he would have spent a long time in prison. The investigation implicated Tom Jaurequi, the chair of the Board of Trustees who had conspired with Hiram to bring Park Holloway to Anacapa College as a not-quite-innocent front for their construction graft scheme.

When Juarequi was arraigned, the judge chastised him for stealing funds from students. His response had been, “Those college administrators are a bunch of eggheads who know jack shit about contracts and construction. Taking their money was just so easy I couldn’t resist.” Juarequi was being held at Metro Detention while he waited for trial. With all of his funds frozen, he couldn’t make bail and had to settle for a public defender.

After Thornbury called and told me about the preliminary DNA results, I spent a sleepless night and called Trey Holloway first thing in the morning. Trey had driven down after his father’s funeral in Gilstrap to take care of the legal details that next-of-kin must after a death in the family, and was staying in his father’s condo. He agreed to meet me at a public park nearby. I thought he should know about Frankie’s paternity before that nugget hit the airwaves. When I told him, he wasn’t as surprised as I expected him to be.

“I knew about the affair, of course. Eventually,” he said. “After all the crap my mom put up with, finding out Dad had supported another woman for about a dozen years was the last straw for her. But I didn’t know about the kid.”

He sat quietly, watching some toddlers play on swings in a far corner of the park. Without taking his eyes from them, he asked, “What’s he like, my brother?”

“Damaged,” I said. “Angry.”

He asked, “Can I see him?”

“You can try.” I pulled out one of my cards and wrote Uncle Max’s name and number on the back. “This is his lawyer.”

“Thanks.” He slipped the card into his shirt pocket and rose from the bench beside me.

“Quite a legacy my father left,” he said, his shoulders sagging from the weight of it all. “A lot of wreckage.”

“I am sorry for what you’ve gone through,” I said. “And for whatever lies ahead. My film will bring up topics that may not be comfortable for you.”

He nodded. “Do you still want me to talk on camera?”

“I do.”

“It’s time to go public with what my dad did. Secrecy only protects him, and I don’t think he deserves protection.” He managed a vague smile. “I’ll be around all week, clearing out Dad’s condo. Tomorrow work for you?”

I told him that would be fine. We set a time to meet and agreed that the condo would be the best place.

As we said good-bye in the parking lot, he offered his hand.

“Thanks for telling me. I’m finding out a lot of things I never knew about Dad. But the boy-that one’s the biggest, so far.”

“Take care,” I said. “See you tomorrow.”

He started for his car, but turned back.

“The thing is,” he said, “I don’t know that I have anything useful to say to you. The more I learn about him, the more I’m aware that I never knew my father.”