The Hunt Club

20

Checking his calls driving back from Juhle's, Hunt got the message from his answering machine at work. "Wyatt Hunt, this is Gary Piersall. I'd like to talk to you as soon as you can get back to me. No matter what time. It's about Andrea Parisi, and it could be very important." He left three telephone numbers.

He got him on the first one. Piersall was still at the office and told him to come on down as soon as he could get there. He should just park in one of the partners' spaces under the building. They were marked.

Hunt checked his watch. It was closing in on ten thirty. "Do you want to tell me about it on the phone?" he asked.

"Are you on a cell?" Piersall asked.

"Yeah. In my car."

A pause. "No. I don't think so."

Hunt rang off, intrigued. Piersall was a smooth and experienced attorney, used to going up against some big boys. If he was suddenly paranoid, that in itself was instructive. But if Hunt was going to be meeting with Piersall now and maybe learning something he'd have to move on, there was a very good chance he wasn't going to be able to stick with his original plan. Which had been to talk to Mary Mahoney, the witness who'd identified Staci Rosalier, during her nighttime shift at MoMo's. A minute later, he was back on the phone, talking to Tamara, turning her and Craig loose on it.

His sense of urgency was increasing with each passing hour. If Andrea were already dead, time would not matter. Maybe this was his way of putting off that ultimate acceptance, but whatever this need to move was, he was not remotely inclined to fight it. He would find out as much as he could as quickly as he could, from whatever source he could tap. It was the only thing-if, in fact, there were any hope left at all-that could possibly, possibly make any difference. More, it was the only thing he could do.

The garage elevator in Piersall's building automatically stopped on the ground floor, and Hunt got out there and jogged to the guard's station in the vast, glass-enclosed lobby. Piersall had already called down and told them to expect him, and as he signed in, the guard called up and announced that he'd arrived. Jogging back to another of the four banks of elevators-floors 11-22-Hunt almost allowed himself to feel a glimmer of hope. Clearly, Piersall had something.

The elevator opened onto a reception area that was designed to impress. The fog hadn't made it this far inland, and the city glittered all around and below out the floor-to-ceiling glass. A massive, shining waist-high bar of finished redwood, probably thirty feet long, gleamed even in the dim pinpoint after-hours lights. Several trees grew from their enormous urns and threw subtle shade patterns across the redwood, over the cushy wall-to-wall carpet.

Keyed up as he was, Hunt almost jumped as Piersall slid off the plain desktop where he'd been sitting in the semidarkness.

"Thanks for coming down on so little notice. I appreciate it. And let me make this clear: You are working for this firm on some CCPOA matters, and what I am telling you now, I tell you as my investigator, so it's all covered by the attorney-client privilege."

The man exuded tension. Hunt had never before seen him without his tailored suit precisely arranged. Now he wore neither coat nor tie, and he'd unbuttoned the shirt at his throat, both sleeves at the wrists, and rolled them up. "You want to sit down?" Piersall walked back over to one of the waiting couches and plopped his long, lean frame down into it. Without waiting for Hunt to settle, he began to talk. "I don't know exactly how to put this in a favorable light, but by now you've done enough work for us, you know how it is sometimes." He inhaled, then blew out a stream of air. "I had to lie to the police this afternoon."

"What about? Andrea?"

"Not directly, no." He hesitated. "About our main client, which as you know is the prison guards' union. I told the inspectors looking into Judge Palmer's murder that they didn't have an enforcement arm. Which, of course, they do."

"The cops suspect that anyway, sir. Your telling them one way or another isn't going to change anything."

"No, but you see the position I'm in. I represent these people. I can't very well sic the cops on them. That's what they pay us all-and very handsomely as you know-to keep from happening. Look around us here, all of this comes from CCPOA money, all of it."

Silence. Hunt didn't need to look and verify what he already knew. He said, "You think they've done something to Andrea."

Another lengthy silence. Piersall exhaled. "Have you ever heard of Porter Anderton?"

"No."

Piersall clucked in frustration. "Doesn't seem anybody has. Porter Anderton was the DA in Kings County up for reelection last year. But he'd made the mistake of investigating some allegations of prisoner abuse by some guards at Corcoran, then moving forward with the cases. Twenty-six guys."

"Twenty-six guys? All prison guards. What'd they do?"

A weak smile. "You mean what did they allegedly do, remember. These are our boys. We defend them. These particular guys evidently had a tough day out with their work crew, so when the crew were getting off the bus back at the yard, they needed to let off a little steam and choked and punched and beat up their prisoners, who by the way were still apparently shackled."

"Cute story," Hunt commented.

"Yeah."

"Just out of curiosity," Hunt said, "how many cases like that do you get every year?"

"This firm? Against all prison employees? About a thousand."

Hunt whistled. "That's every year?"

"Ballpark. Of course, most of those don't get beyond the investigation stage. For obvious reasons," Piersall added, "like cons as witnesses deciding they couldn't exactly remember what they'd seen after all."

"So what about this Anderton?"

"Ah, well, Porter went all gung ho on these guys, the guards. He decided they had a huge problem with the whole correctional system at Corcoran, which was in his jurisdiction, and he was the one who was going to stop it. He got in touch with George Palmer, too."

"And something bad happened to Porter." Not a question.

Piersall nodded. "Huge coincidence, isn't it? He had a hunting accident. Shooter never found. Just one of those things."

"Imagine that. And what about his prosecutions?"

"Well, we're their attorneys. We did our job. The cases fell apart."

"Yeah, but a bus full of victims? Didn't any of the other guards see this happen, too?"

Piersall shrugged. "The other guards, no. You ask any prison guard if he's ever seen one of his colleagues cross the line into brutality, you get a categorical denial every time. It never happens. And in their defense, I must say that if your job is making some three-hundred-pound gorilla get in his cell when he doesn't want to, you might have to get a little creative from time to time. But the inmates? They all eventually decided it was really in their best interests to just let the matter slide."

"All of them?"

For a response, all Piersall could manage was a thin, tight smile.

"So you're thinking," Hunt said, "that Palmer, and maybe Andrea…?"

"I don't know. I don't know. I almost can't bear to think about it, to tell you the truth." Piersall's head hung as though by a single thread in his neck. "I've worked with and built a career around these people for the past fifteen years. My family has gone on vacations with Jim Pine's family. I don't want to believe he'd order what I can't help but think he might have."

"But why now?"

"That's just it. Just now is why it's suddenly feasible. I don't know if you've been following it, but the prison system's had a bad few weeks. They just indicted eight guards at Avenal for blood sport…"

"What's that?"

"Human cockfights. Gladiator contests to the death."

While Hunt tried to fit this degree of organized brutality into his worldview, Piersall continued, "On top of that, we had four inmate deaths at Folsom…"

"In one week? How did that happen?"

Again, the tight smile. "One bad fall. One complication from-I'm not joking-a pulled tooth. And two pneumonias that didn't get diagnosed in time, which isn't much of a surprise considering the head physician up there doesn't have a license to practice in hospitals anymore. But, hey," he added with a bitter laugh, "at least no shootings, so it wasn't the guards."

"Does that happen a lot? I thought that was mostly the movies, guards shooting prisoners?"

"Depends on where you happen to be locked up. Here in California, happens about once every two months. Rest of the country, maybe once a year, and that's usually only if you're actually about to kill somebody else. In any case, the situation is bad enough that Palmer's already appointed both an investigator and a special master to get a plan going, how to deal with the constitutional issues of prosecuting these things. You want more?"

"I think I'm getting the picture."

"Well, but you need the last piece, which just came to a head over this last weekend. Palmer had ordered an audit…"

"So he's all over this, isn't he?"

"Oh, yeah. He's the man-or was-no doubt about it. Anyway, a while ago, he got wind of money being laundered through the prisons, so he ordered an audit on the prisoners' books at Pelican Bay."

"I don't know what they are, prisoners' books."

"Inmate trust accounts. All prisoners get one so their friends or family can get them money inside to buy stuff-food, bathroom supplies. That stuff's legit at the commissary. Under the table, of course, you've got cigarettes, dope, booze, women, boys, whatever they can score."

"This is in the prisons?"

"Right."

" Pelican Bay? Toughest lockup in the country?"

"That's the one."

"With the guards there?"

"Yeah. Probably cutting half the deals, taking a percentage on all of them."

Hunt had to break the tension. "You're not making this up?"

It brought back the tight smile. "So what did the audit disclose? Half the guys in the SHU-the Security Housing Unit-meanest place on campus, trust me, half of the books on these guys, had over twenty thousand dollars in them. Two of them had over forty thou."

"Thousand?"

"Thousand."

"That'll buy a lot of Snickers," Hunt said. "How'd they get that kind of money?"

"You'll love this. It's Eme."

"It's getting so I need a scorecard. Who is Emma?"

"No, no. EME. Mexican Mafia. Bad, bad, bad dudes, the worst. Their guys are all over the state but mostly down south-I'm talking dealers on street corners-they're paying protection to the EME heavyweights in the joint. So it's just another extortion racket, but it seems to bring in big money, which then goes back out to buy more drugs or support the con's family. I don't know, maybe they send their kids to college with it. But the point is it's large, and by the time it goes out, it's clean. Laundered through the prison."

"Jesus."

"Yeah, well, you put all this together. The audit was the last straw, and Palmer finally ran out of patience. He had his office drafting up an emergency order to federalize the entire state prison system, which meant taking the union out of the equation. He had some jurisdiction issues, but it's not impossible he would have had the damn thing signed by now."

"Except he got killed."

"Right. Except that." Laying it all out seemed to have calmed Piersall's nerves to some degree, but now the reality of his situation settled on him heavily again. He came forward on the couch, feet flat on the floor, elbows resting on his knees, his shoulders sagging under the load. "I've been sitting in my office since early today." He was whispering, perhaps afraid of being heard even up here. "Ever since I heard that Andrea was missing. I just don't know what I'm going to do, except I know I can't go to the police." He looked up across the space between them. "I'll be honest with you. I'm scared shitless."

To Hunt, this seemed like a justified response. He'd be scared, too. Perhaps he should be now, though he wasn't. All the prison stuff felt far removed from him. Although if Andrea was involved in it, he knew that this wasn't the case. He was in up to his neck. "I'm assuming," he said, "that Pine knew about the judge's order."

Piersall nodded. "We called him from my office, as soon as Andrea told me about it. This was early Monday afternoon. So now look at this." From his shirt pocket, he took a small newspaper clipping. "Yesterday's Chronicle."

Hunt took it. He had to stand up and move under one of the lights to read it.

INMATE LAST SEEN GOING FOR A SMOKE

A 35-year-old ex-convict who recently had violated his parole escaped yesterday from San Quentin, where he was awaiting transport to Vacaville State Prison, when he left his cell in midafternoon, apparently with permission to go smoke a cigarette.

Although a tracking canine unit was dispatched to the scene, the dogs were apparently unable to pick up any scent of Arthur Mowery, and in response, the Department of Corrections has expanded its search to outlying counties.

Mowery was originally arrested in July of 1998 for burglary and possession of a firearm by a felon and, since that time, has been paroled twice. Both times he was rearrested for violating his parole.

Hunt looked up. "Yesterday's Chronicle. That makes the escape Monday afternoon."

Piersall lifted, then dropped his head. "Yes, I noticed that."

Coming back to his own seat, Hunt said, "So what do you want me to do? You think this guy Mowery is…?"

Piersall held up a restraining hand. "I don't know," he said. "That's my mantra for this whole situation. I don't know anything about him, except what you've just read. But I do know that most of the work you've done for us, you got through Andrea. Her secretary told me that your office had called several times asking about her." He drew a deep breath, finally made eye contact. "Look, Wyatt, I can't be any traceable part of anything that results in problems for the union. I want you to understand that perfectly. But someone needs to know about all this if it's hurt Andrea. Someone needs to look into it. You seemed the logical choice."

"Okay, I'll buy that. But how do you read this?" Hunt asked.

"I don't think…I know that Jim Pine put Mowery on the payroll for a couple of months several years ago, after he got paroled the first time."

"On the payroll doing what?"

Clearly, this confession was weighing heavily on Piersall. He wiped the shine off his forehead. "Security. He went up the second time because he got a little too enthusiastic. That's when I heard his name the first time. I couldn't believe Pine had hired him on the books, and we had a discussion about it. It couldn't happen again. You hear what I'm saying?"

"I think so."

"But he got paroled again."

"During the campaign season," Hunt said, "when there were all the problems."

"Correct. And he's been out ever since, until last Saturday when he got violated back in again-I checked when I saw that article. For the record, I think the escape was legitimate."

"So what happened, you think?"

"I think his controller gave him the job to kill Palmer, and he decided the job was too hot for him. I mean, killing a federal judge isn't vandalism to a campaign headquarters. Mowery said no, and they violated him back in for disobeying."

"And what about the breakout?"

"He either got the message that they were serious, and he was going down for hard time, so he changed his mind, or he broke out on his own."

"So this kind of activity is really going on? This is what Andrea had been looking into?"

"Maybe. She mentioned the possibility to me on Monday. She didn't know about Mowery, though. Not by name, anyway."

"Did you mention her suspicion to Pine?"

Miserable, Piersall pulled at the sides of his face. "Maybe enough for him to get the idea."

Craig Chiurco and Tamara Dade came across exactly like what they were, a couple of young lovers. They had known each other-both working with Hunt-for almost two years but were still in their first six months as sweethearts. This was the first time Wyatt had assigned them to the same job, and it had the feel of a date about it, especially here at MoMo's, which neither of them felt they could afford to frequent in their regular lives. But they were here now, on the job, long after the dinner crowd had gone home.

Which didn't mean the place was empty and dragging by any means-to the contrary, the meeting and greeting seemed to be at a high pitch.

This meant that Mary Mahoney wasn't going to be able to get with them for a while. After she'd talked to Hunt and gotten his instructions, Tamara had called to make sure that Mary was working tonight. And then they'd gotten themselves a bit turned out and cruised downtown.

Now, by the front door so they wouldn't miss Mary if she forgot that she'd promised to see them, Tamara sipped a cosmo, and Chiurco a gin and tonic. It was a good night for celebrity sightings-they spotted Robin Williams and Sean Penn in separate parties at the back. The mayor, Kathy West, was holding court at a large table by the front windows. They were just trying to identify who was sharing the table with her when a well-formed black man walked by them on the way to the men's room. Chiurco pointed and said to her, "Jerry Rice."

"That isn't Jerry."

"Number eight-oh in the flesh. Bet?"

She held out a hand, palm up, and paused. "Five bucks," she said.

He raised his hand and slapped it down on her own gently. "Five it is." They turned to their drinks, each harboring smiles as Mary Mahoney emerged from the crowd in the bar and came over to them. "I don't know if it was going to free up here for a couple more hours, so I asked Martin-my manager-if I could take a break since it was about Staci. He was cool, but it can't be too long, okay?" There wasn't another free stool to be had, so Chiurco got up and offered her his, asking her at the same time if he'd just seen Jerry Rice walk by.

"Oh, yeah, that's him. He's in here all the time."

Chiurco flashed his girlfriend a smug little grin, and the waitress said, "I still can't believe we traded him, you know. That was so dumb."

"I don't know," Chiurco said. "I've got to believe it's better than the Giants trading for all these guys who are at the end of their careers, instead of trading them away."

"Yeah, but Jerry. It's like if they would have traded away Montana."

"I never would have traded either one," Tamara said. "And now I'd let Jerry play until he didn't want to anymore, then make him a coach and keep him around forever."

"Then rename the park after him." Chiurco, having fun, going with the moment, letting the ice break naturally.

"I like it." Mahoney nodded. " Rice Park? Rice Field?"

"How about The Rice Field?" Tamara asked. "The Rice Field."

"Perfect," Mahoney said. "We'll tell him when he comes back."

"Except he's not a Niner anymore," Chiurco said.

Mahoney made a sad face. "Oh, yeah. That." With hardly a pause, she switched gears. "So you guys said you're with a private investigator, not the police?"

"Right," Tamara said. "The Hunt Club." She had a card with her name on it and presented it to her. "Right now we're hunting for Andrea Parisi."

Mahoney wore her expressions on her sleeve; now she looked a question. "The trial person? I saw that on TV, but I didn't really…she's really missing?"

"Why wouldn't you believe it?" Chiurco put in.

A shrug. "No real reason. I mean, she just missed one show, right? And they only had it on one channel. I thought it was probably some ratings thing."

"No," Tamara said. "She's really missing. Since yesterday afternoon."

"And she's got something to do with Staci?"

Tamara kept it low-key. "We don't know. That's what we're trying to find out."

"Evidently," Chiurco said, "Staci had one of Andrea's business cards in her wallet."

"That's it? That's the connection?" Reaching down into her apron, she pulled out a thick deck of business cards and placed it on the table. "That's tonight," she said. "That's every night." She took Tamara's card and placed it on the top of the stack. "Now you're in it." She turned to Chiurco. "You got one, you can buy in, too. I hope that's not all you have."

Tamara, cool and elegant, took a sip of her drink. "Not exactly."

Chiurco leaned in, elbows on the high table. "So we're trying to figure out if there was some connection between all three of them. If Staci knew Andrea, for example."

"She never said anything about that to me." Mahoney felt on firm ground here. "And she would have. Definitely, I think. She was a big Trial TV fan."

"So you two were close?" Chiurco asked.

Just like that, the liquid eyes threatened to overflow and she dabbed underneath them.

They waited.

Mahoney sighed, sighed again, then shrugged. "I was nice to her when she first came on here, and maybe that hadn't been so normal for her in her life before. That's the impression I got anyway."

"So you didn't know her before she started working here?" Tamara asked.

"No."

"Do you know if she grew up here in the city?"

"I don't think so. Just the last couple of years. Before that, I don't know."

"Because," Tamara continued, "no one has turned up from her family. The police haven't been able to get any kind of background on her yet."

The waitress frowned. "Nothing?"

"Not a thing."

"That's just so wrong." She brightened for a second. "But wait. I know she has…had, I mean, a younger brother. She had his picture in her room."

"Did you ever meet him?"

"No."

"How about his name?" Tamara was carrying on the interrogation while Chiurco stood, arms crossed, letting her go with it.

"I don't know what it is," Mahoney said. "She just called him her brother." She looked over at the bar; she'd been on break about long enough and this brother stuff wasn't going to help Staci or find Andrea. "We never really talked about him. I just saw the picture and asked who he was and she said, 'Oh, that's my brother.' We didn't really go into it. He was just her brother."

"This couldn't have been her first waitress job," Chiurco said, taking a different slant, trying to get Mary back into it.

"No. She worked, I think, at a Thai place out on Ocean. She was going to school at City College and lived out on that side of town before she got the place here."

"What's here?" Tamara asked.

Mahoney pointed behind them out the window. "Right there. Those condos just across the street. The judge got it for her."

"We're almost done, Mary," Chiurco said. "Can you try to remember? Did Staci ever mention Andrea Parisi to you at all, in any context?"

Her collagen-enhanced lips tightened with a few seconds of concentration. "I'm sorry, but I don't really remember anything like that."

"Okay, last one," Tamara said. "Is there anything you remember about Staci that you think might help us? Any reason somebody might have wanted to kill her?"

"I just can't believe anybody wanted to kill her. I think it must have been all about the judge, and she just happened to be there."

"But to your knowledge," Chiurco added, "had she ever gone there before, to his house?"

"No. I'm pretty sure of that, actually. She would have mentioned it."

Tamara seemed to be asking it as much of herself as of Mahoney. "So why then?"

"I don't know." Mahoney offered a broken smile. "Why any of it, you know?"