I stop to regroup. “Skipper,” I say, “why did you call me?”
“We need somebody to deal with this right away. We have to start damage control. This isn’t going to help me in the polls.”
I’ll say. A dead body is serious. “You know how the system works. You should hire somebody you trust. There are a lot of defense attorneys around town. I may not be the right guy for you.”
I hear him exhale heavily. “You
are
the right guy. Notwithstanding our history, I called you for a reason. You’re a fighter. You have guts. You’ll tell me what you really think.” He pauses and then adds, “And unlike most of your
contemporaries in the defense bar, you won’t try to cut a fast deal or turn this case into a self-serving infomercial.”
I’ll be damned. A compliment from Skipper Gates. “All right,” I say. “You’re on.” I ask him a few more questions and agree to meet him at the Hall.
I glance at my watch. Five to nine. Rosie walks in. “So, did you get lucky?” she asks.
“Maybe. Looks like we may have a new case.”
“No, dummy. Mexico. Did you get lucky in Mexico?”
Rosie. Ever the pragmatist. First things first.
“No,” I say. “I didn’t get lucky.” I’m probably the
only
guy at Club Med who didn’t get lucky. “I’m still all yours.”
She’s pleased. “Well, then you
did
get lucky, didn’t you?” She glances at the notes I’ve scribbled. “What’s Skipper’s story?”
I take a long drink of coffee. “Nothing out of the ordinary. A dead body wandered into his room in the middle of the night. The cops think he had something to do with it becoming dead.”
She takes this news in stride. “Do they know who the victim is?”
“No ID yet. The cops told him it may have been a prostitute.”
“How did she die?”
“They think it was suffocation.” I arch my eyebrows and add, “By the way, it wasn’t a she.”
2
THE ASSHOLE PREMIUM
“The Hall of Justice isn’t a big tourist attraction.”
—S
AN
F
RANCISCO
POLICE CHIEF
.
S
AN
F
RANCISCO
C
HRONICLE.
T
UESDAY
, S
EPTEMBER
7.
In San Francisco, the wheels of justice grind at a snail’s pace in the Hall of Justice, a monolithic six-story structure that rises above the 101 Freeway at the corner of Seventh and Bryant. The criminal courts, DA’s office, chief medical examiner and county jail jockey for position in this crowded testimonial to industrial-strength urban architecture. A modernistic new jail wing that opened in the early nineties adds little to the overall ambiance of the original gray building, which dates to the late fifties and looks as if it could withstand a nuclear attack. I park my eleven-year-old Corolla in the pay lot next to the McDonald’s and walk quickly through the throng of reporters who are already camped on the front steps of the Hall. The news is out.
I glare into the nearest camera and invoke Skipper speak. “We have a situation. This misunderstanding will be resolved shortly and Mr. Gates will return to his duties at the DA’s office.” I push through the heavy doors, nod to the guard as I pass through the metal detector and walk up the stairs to the
sixth floor of the new jail wing, known as County Jail Number 9.
I present my state bar card and driver’s license to Sergeant Jeff Dito, a mustached, olive-skinned sheriff’s deputy who administers the intake center with a steady hand. He studies my bar card through deepset eyes. When I explain I’m here to see Skipper, he furrows his brow. “‘Mr. Law and Order’ is in booking,” he says. He punches some buttons on his computer keyboard and makes a phone call. “He’ll be up in a few minutes.”
It’s early, but things are hopping. For historic bureaucratic reasons, the jail facility is run by the County Sheriff’s Department. Deputies walk through the hallway. I nod to a couple of my former colleagues from the PD’s office. I take a seat next to a man who is trying to persuade his parole officer that Jesus is talking to him. The parade of humanity resembles a flea market on a busy afternoon. Police, prosecutors, public defenders and criminals barter in the hallway. Instead of selling trinkets and other junk, the prosecutors sell trips to jail and probation terms. The defense attorneys do their clients’ bidding. If you sit here long enough, it almost sounds as if you’re listening in on a half dozen simultaneous time-share pitches for those condos in Mexico. When I was a PD, I used to make some of my best deals in the corridor just outside the old booking hub on the sixth floor of the Hall. That part of the facility is now used for hard-core prisoners. The new jail wing is a lot quieter.
Whenever I’m in the Hall, I think of my dad, who was a San Francisco cop. He died a few weeks after Grace’s first birthday. He was beside himself when I decided to go to law school. He detested lawyers—even the prosecutors. He was appalled when I became a PD. He took it as a personal affront. Somehow, I still expect to see him walking down the corridor, chest out, cigarette in his hand.
Five minutes later, Sergeant Dito nods and a deputy leads me to an airless room just behind the intake desk, where I find Skipper pacing like a caged lion. Even unshaven and in an orange jumpsuit, he’s impressively handsome, all trim six feet six of him. His charismatic public persona remains intact. Until now, I have never seen him dressed in anything other than a top-of-the-line Italian suit. He wags a menacing finger at me. “Somebody’s ass is going to fry for this,” he says.
Hopefully, it won’t be yours.
“I’m going to kick the chief’s butt all the way back to Northern Station for promoting McBride,” he snaps. Inspector Elaine McBride made the arrest. She’s only the second woman to make homicide inspector on the SFPD. She’s tough. Her stellar reputation is well deserved. Skipper sits down in a heavy wooden chair. “This is preposterous,” he says. “It’s a publicity stunt.”
This sort of thing just isn’t supposed to happen to God-fearing Republicans. In many respects, getting arrested is society’s great equalizer. Even a well-connected, rich white guy like Skipper has been strip-searched, showered with disinfectant, given a medical interview and placed in a holding cell. There isn’t much dignity left after the process is completed. I place a pad of white paper in front of me on the table. Most lawyers have stopped using those ugly yellow pads because they can’t be recycled. I look directly into his eyes. “You’re the DA,” I say. “You know the drill. Tell me what happened.”
He’s indignant. “Nothing happened,” he replies, emphasizing each syllable. He looks at the drab walls. On Friday, he was sitting in his opulent office on the third floor of the old Hall. Now he’s sharing space with murderers, child molesters and pimps. “We had a kickoff rally for my campaign in the grand ballroom at the Fairmont last night. Fifteen hundred people showed up. It was terrific.”
Particularly if your idea of a good time is paying a thousand bucks a head to the Republican caucus to eat rubber chicken and kiss Skipper’s ass.
“The program broke up around eleven,” he continues. “Then we had a summit conference upstairs.”
Skipper never attends garden-variety meetings. Every gathering rises to the level of a “summit conference.” You would think they were talking about nuclear disarmament. Likewise, Skipper never serves on committees. Whenever he is with another person, they become a “task force.” I decide to play along. “Who was at the summit conference?” I ask.
“A couple of people from Sherman’s campaign. We were setting ground rules for our debates. They left around twelve-thirty.”
Leslie Sherman is Skipper’s worthy opponent. She’s a state senator from L.A. She’s a liberal Democrat. I don’t mention it, but I’m planning to vote for her. Skipper can’t stand her.
“Who showed up from her staff?” I ask.
“Dan Morris and one of his lackeys.” His voice drips with contempt.
Morris is Sherman’s campaign manager. He’s the most successful political consultant on the West Coast. He’s also the most vicious. Although he didn’t invent the negative campaign ad, he may have perfected it. He makes the guys in Washington look like choirboys. He ran Skipper’s campaign for DA two years ago. Then they had a little falling out. Seems Dan wanted to double his fee this time around. Skipper thought the four hundred thousand Dan charged for the DA’s race was exorbitant, and he balked. True to form, Dan switched sides. He’s already taken off the gloves. Although it’s still early, the Sherman camp is running attack ads suggesting Skipper isn’t morally qualified to be the chief law enforcement officer of the State of California.
I ask, “Was anybody else with you?”
“Turner was there.” Turner Stanford is Skipper’s confidant, campaign manager and former law partner. He lives around the corner from Skipper in Pacific Heights. They spend a lot of time hobnobbing in the rarified air of San Francisco’s aristocracy.
“My daughter was there, too,” he adds. Ann Huntington Gates is a one-woman wrecking crew in local government. A couple of years ago, Skipper convinced the mayor to appoint Ann to fill a vacancy on the Board of Supervisors. It’s a decision the mayor has regretted ever since. She lobbies long and hard on behalf of the real estate developers and other big-business interests. By and large, the people from the neighborhoods hate her. She doesn’t seem to care. When she isn’t terrorizing the Board of Supervisors, she operates at the high end of the legal food chain. She’s a partner at Williams and Perry, a big downtown firm. She’s a tenacious commercial litigator. She’ll remind you of it every chance she gets.
“What about Natalie?” I ask. Skipper’s long-suffering wife. Serious old-line money. Her great-grandfather was a Crocker. Her mother’s family used to own the
Chronicle
, where her name appears regularly in the society column.
“She stayed for a few minutes and went home. She was tired.” He sighs and adds, “I have no idea how I’m going to explain all of this to her.”
I guess even self-centered guys like Skipper have to answer to somebody from time to time. “So you decided to stay at the hotel?” I ask.
“I do it all the time,” he replies. “I had a breakfast meeting this morning.” His eyes wander over my left shoulder. “I didn’t want to go all the way out to the house.”
This is odd. He lives ten minutes from the hotel. “May I assume, Skipper, that the dead man wasn’t there when everybody left?”
“That’s right.”
“And he wasn’t in your room when you went to bed?”
He looks a little too solemn. “I was by myself.”
Uh-huh. “And when you woke up this morning, the dead man was in your bed with you?”
“He was in the bed,” he explains. “I fell asleep in the chair. I was watching TV I woke up when the room service waiter knocked on the door. That’s when we found the body.”
“You didn’t hear anything?”
“Nope.”
“See anybody?”
“Nope.”
He’s a sound sleeper. “Did anyone else have a key to your room?”
“Just the hotel staff, I suppose.”
There you have it. He fell asleep in the chair in front of the TV In the middle of the night, a body wandered into his room and plopped itself into his bed. Same thing happened to me in Cabo last week. “Skipper,” I say, “did you know the guy?”
His eyes dart toward the door. “I’d never seen him before.”
“Do you know how he died?”
“It looked like he had suffocated. His face was covered with gray duct tape. He was handcuffed to the bedposts.”
I can confirm this from the police reports. “Did you touch the body?”
“Of course. I checked for a pulse. I pulled the tape off his face in case he could still breathe. I tried to release the handcuffs, but I didn’t have a key.”
“Then you called the police?”
“I called the hotel operator, who put me through to security. I told them to call the cops.”
“You realize your story sounds just a tiny bit odd, don’t you?”
He looks right at me. “I didn’t do it.”
It’s his story and he’s sticking to it. “For some reason, the police seem to think you did.”
His eyes narrow. “It’s no big newsflash that I’m not going to win any popularity contests with the SFPD. I’m making the cops work harder than they have in a long time.”
They hate his guts. Although the public perceives Skipper as a champion of law-and-order, the police aren’t as easily impressed. They think he ducks the tough cases.
“I did the right thing,” he says. “I gave them my statement. Next thing I know, McBride decides to be a big shot and arrests me.”
“What are you leaving out?”
“Nothing.” Even in an orange jumpsuit, he is capable of sounding condescending. “It’s a setup. I’m ahead in the polls. My political enemies want to embarrass me. That’s the only plausible explanation.”
Another plausible explanation is that he did it. On its face, that would seem pretty far-fetched. Politicians call each other names, lie, cheat and run attack ads. By and large, they don’t commit murders in hotel rooms. And it seems unlikely that a murderer would spend the night in the same room as the dead body and hang around until the cops showed up.
I ask if he’s spoken to Natalie.
“I talked to her for a few minutes right before I called you. She’s terribly upset. Ann went over to try to calm her down.”
“I’ll go talk to McBride and the DA,” I say. “The arraignment will be later this week. I’ll need you to sign a client retention letter and I’ll need a fifty-thousand-dollar retainer.”
“Fifty thousand?” he says. “Seems a little steep.”
If this case goes to trial, he’ll spend at least a quarter of a million dollars on legal fees and another hundred thousand for experts, jury consultants and investigators. He’s well aware of this. “Grace has to eat,” I say. “If you’re out of here
as soon as you think, your money will be cheerfully refunded.”