Authors: Steven Gore
I
just keep hearing this grating in the back of my mind,” Gage told Faith as they hiked up the hill from their house toward the pine- and oak-lined trails of the regional park early on Saturday morning.
Gage hoped the perspective of distance and high places would help him discern a pattern in what seemed contradictory and incongruous.
“Maybe it's just Porzolkiewski lying all the time,” Faith said.
“That's part of it, but not all. I've got this peculiar feeling I'm doing someone else's work.”
“You mean helping someone frame Porzolkiewski?”
“You should've seen the way he broke down at the end of the recording of my interview of Wilbert Hawkins. I don't think he was faking.”
“How do you know it wasn't just relief he'd killed the right guy? Maybe he had a lingering doubt about what happened, then you proved the company was guilty and Charlie was part of the cover-up.”
The road jogged west just before the park entrance. They paused, surveying the bay from San Francisco north toward Mount Tamalpais in Marin County. Low fog still lay outside the Golden Gate, extending past the Farallon Islands twenty-seven miles out into the Pacific.
Gage's eyes settled on the Richmond refineries in the distance, miles of jagged metal fragments jabbing upward.
“Imagine the men watching the flames shooting up the tower toward them,” Gage said, “trapped, helpless . . .”
Faith finished the thought. “Then imagine Porzolkiewski living it over and over in his mind for fourteen years. Like Sisyphus, condemned to pushing the boulder up the hill, then watching it roll back down time and again. Then you showed him he could pick it up and use it as a weapon.”
“Maybe it would've been better if he'd never learned the truth.” Gage closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. “But . . .”
“Something doesn't fit?”
Gage looked again toward San Francisco, first focusing on the Hall of Justice south of downtown, then making out Russian Hill rising above the incoming fog to the north.
“Why don't we cut this short,” Gage said, “and go visit Socorro.”
V
iz answered Socorro's door, wearing a sweaty T-shirt, grimy with dirt.
“We were in the neighborhood,” Gage said. “We thought we'd check on your sister.”
“Come on in. We were just taking a break from cleaning up the backyard. It got a little overgrown in the last couple of months.”
They found Socorro in the kitchen, finally changed out of her saggy sweats into faded Levi's and an oversized plaid shirt, dropping ice cubes into a pitcher of tea.
She turned at the sound of their footsteps, then smiled and said, “Reinforcements have arrived.”
Faith stepped forward and reached out to her hug her, but Socorro held up her hands.
“I don't think you want to be wearing mud and lawn clippings on your sweater for the rest of the day.”
Socorro motioned toward the veranda.
“Sit down. I'll bring you out something to drink.”
They walked out into air perfumed by the smell of cut grass and fresh earth, and then sat down in the heavy wicker chairs now arranged in a semicircle facing the lawn.
A minute later Socorro arrived and set down their drinks, and then smiled at them.
“So, what do you need to know?”
Faith blushed. “Can't people just drop by?”
“Yes, but Graham has the look.” She settled into her chair and patted Viz's arm. “I first noticed it on my brother's face after he'd been in the DEA for a couple of years.”
Gage put up his hands. “I surrender.”
“So?”
“I'm interested in the last week before Charlie died.”
“Are you still putting the case together against John Porzolkiewski?”
“I wouldn't call it that exactly, but basically that's right.”
“He didn't come by when I was home, and Charlie didn't say he was here.”
Viz caught Gage's eye. Of course he wouldn't say anything, there'd be too much to explain.
Socorro shuddered. “The idea of Porzolkiewski sneaking into my house and poisoning Charlie. I haven't been able to sleep. I just keep imagining it over and over.” She lowered her gaze and shook her head and said in a grim tone of self-reproach, “If I just hadn't left him alone.”
“You can't blame yourself,” Gage said. “I'm not sure we even know when it happened or how the poison was given to him.”
Socorro shrugged. There was nothing Gage could say to defend her against her self-accusation. He knew it and she knew it. So he moved on.
“Let's go back a little further,” Gage said. “You told me Brandon called about a week before Charlie died and they argued about something that was supposed to take place and about Charlie being unable to do some work.”
Socorro nodded.
“Anything else happen during that last week?” Gage asked.
She propped her elbows on the arms of the chair, then rested her chin on her interlaced hands.
“I'll try to work backward. He woke up feeling weak and had difficulty breathing. Not suffocating, just really labored. I called the doctor, then went to pick up a prescription for Amantadine.” She glanced behind her toward the inside of the house. “I gave the bottle to Spike when he came by yesterday.”
She closed her eyes for a few moments, then opened them.
“Viz told me you were coming back from Zurich. I passed it on to Charlie and he said wanted to call, but he had trouble dialing the phone because of numbness in his hands. So I did. Then he broke down when he heard Moki's name. And about forty-five minutes later I heard a thump and I . . . and I went back upstairs . . . and . . .”
Faith reached over and took Socorro's hand. “It must have been terrible.”
Socorro took in a breath, then shuddered again, tears now forming in her eyes.
“Maybe I gave it to him myself, in the Amantadineâ”
Gage cut her off.
“That's not possible. Sodium monofluoroacetate doesn't act that fast. It takes at least two and a half hours and as long as twenty. If he woke up with respiratory problems, that means he probably got it the day before.”
“The day before?” Socorro shook her head. “I don't remember anything special happening the day before. The physical therapist came by in the early afternoon, Jeffrey something, so I went shopping. I got back about three o'clock. Jeffrey told me he went to the store for a few minutes to buy some massage lotion he forgot to bring.” She looked over at Gage, “Is that when Porzolkiewski snuck in?”
“I don't know,” Gage said. “How can I get ahold of Jeffrey? What agency is he with?”
“Physical Therapy Associates over on Mission below Cesar Chavez Street.”
Gage pulled out his cell phone, punched in directory assistance, then let the service connect the call. He handed her the telephone.
“Ask for his last name, tell them you want to send a thank-you note. Don't pressure them for an address. I'll find it.”
Socorro obtained the name, hung up, and then repeated it as she handed the phone back to Gage.
“I'm sure it wasn't Jeffrey,” Socorro said. “He was wonderful, a sweetheart, much nicer than the previous one. I was glad when she quit.”
Gage slipped the phone into his shirt pocket.
“Let's go back a little further,” Gage said.
“Nothing. Everything was routine. No one came to see him except the kids. They flew up on Friday night and went back on Sunday. I know they were upset seeing their father in the condition he was in, but they didn't leave his side. They even slept in chairs in his room.” She paused, probing her memory, then said, “There was a plumbing problem the day before Charlie died, but I was with the plumber the whole time.” Her eyebrows furrowed. “At least I think I was.”
“You know his name?”
“I've got his business card.” She walked into the kitchen, then returned with a glossy blue card with gold lettering: Sang Ngoc Pham Plumbing and Rooting.
Gage took it from her hand, examined it, and then shook his head.
S
ang Pham's first words as he crawled out from under the house in South San Francisco were, “Oh shit.”
Gage reached down and grabbed Sang's arm before he could slither back under, then yanked him out onto the grass. Sang rose to his feet and glanced around. His eyes hesitated when they found his stepside van, but his dejected expression seemed to be saying there was no point in running because he'd have to come back for it and Gage would be waiting.
“It's called the statue of limitations.” Sang's Vietnamese accent had faded a bit since they last met. “My lawyer told me about it.”
“
Statute
of limitations,” Gage said.
“Yeah. Statute.”
Two generations of police detectives in San Francisco knew Sang, his grandfather, his father, his five brothers, and their sisterâand the Phams made sure they knew each of their enemies. The family was a form of organized crime: gambling, extortion, fraud, prostitution. Gage's last contact with them was ten years earlier, in connection with a year-long series of Silicon Valley high-tech burglaries in which Sang's role was to deliver the stolen microprocessors to off-brand server manufacturers.
Sang was the youngest and the lightweight among the siblings, less a danger to society than a burden on it.
“What exactly did you do?” Gage asked.
Sang stared at Gage, then smiled the subservient grin Gage suspected he reserved for white people to whom he was giving plumbing estimates.
“Oops.”
Gage pulled the Sang Ngoc Pham Plumbing and Rooting business card out of his shirt pocket.
“How'd you get a plumbing license?” Gage asked.
“Felonies okay. Really.” He shrugged “Bonding, maybe not.”
“The card says licensed
and
bonded.”
“Good intentions.”
Gage pointed toward the concrete front steps of the lime green stucco house. They walked over and sat down.
Sang spread his hands, grinning. “What do you think? Really.”
“About what?”
“My rental house.”
“Who chose the color?”
“Nobody. It was on sale. It's good in Vietnam.” Sang surveyed the earth-toned houses bracketing his. “Here, maybe not.” He lowered his hands and let his grin fade. “But you didn't come to talk real estate investment.”
“I wanted to ask you about Charlie Palmer.”
“Who?”
Gage cast him a sour look.
“I don't know a Charlie Palmer, really. He deal in computer chips? I've been out of that business a long time, since I got out of prison. Really.”
Sang seemed convincing. With or without all the “reallys.”
Sang cocked his head and squinted toward the sky.
“Palmer . . . Palmer. I did a Palmer.” He looked at Gage. “A woman with a Mexican name. Senora or something.”
“Socorro.”
“That's it. She had a clogged drain in the kitchen. And I cleaned out some roots in the line near the street.”
Gage gave him another sour look.
“She needed it. Really. I didn't cheat her.”
“Did anyone come to the house while you were there? Maybe an older guy, heavyset?”
Sang scrunched up his face in thought, and then shook his head and said, “There was just a young guy in a golf shirt who came down from upstairs. I remember because he wanted to use the sink to get a drink of water. I don't know if he was still there when I left.”
“What was he like?”
Sang gave a limp wrist wave, then grinned.
“Like that.”
J
effrey Stark wasn't at all like that. He was all black leather, except his butt cheeks, which were pink and hairy, and he was a hard man for Gage to find, even with the DMV photo Spike had given him. Gage spent the evening searching for a twenty-five-year-old in a golf shirt, not realizing it was theme night at the Bootstrap on Folsom Street.
Gage wore slacks and a button-down blue shirt, trying to look like a closeted middle-aged suburban husband on the prowl. He was leaning against his car three spaces down from the club when Jeffrey walked out, led by a shirtless eighteen-year-old in a black vest and leather pants. The combination was absurd even by San Francisco standards and too early for Halloween. The kid looked like an elf leading a wolf.
Gage pushed himself off the car and stepped in their path as they approached.
“Mind if I hold the leash?” Gage said.
A heavy chrome chain hooked to a spiked leather collar around Jeffrey's neck terminated in Elf's left hand.
Elf's eyes registered the ten-inch rise between his eyes and Gage's. It caused him to a come to a stop one step sooner than Jeffrey, who bumped into his back.
Gage took the chain out of Elf's hand and pointed at the Bootstrap.
“Maybe you should go back inside for a couple of minutes.”
Jeffrey's eyes were red and his face was bleary from too much dancing, too much beer, and too much giving and receiving inside the jail cell arena, the service stalls, and the glory holes.
“I want to ask you about a client,” Gage said.
Gage's presence registered.
Jeffrey struggled to put some words together. “I . . . I can't talk about clients . . . because of . . . because of HIPAA. Confidentiality and all that.”
Gage glared down at Elf. “I asked you nicely.”
Elf looked up at Jeffrey, who shrugged and said, “Go. I'll meet you when I'm done.”
They watched Elf walk to the entrance and glance back. The opening door released a thumping blast of music and a flood of light as he stepped inside.
Gage gave the chain a tug.
“Hey man, that's not aâ”
Gage smiled. “A leash?”
Jeffrey's eyes flared. “You know what I mean.”
“I'm not asking about anybody's medical condition. I just want to know what happened at Charlie Palmer's house during the two days before he died.”
“Who are you?”
“Graham Gage. I'm a private investigator.”
“For who?”
“His wife.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Just what I said.” Gage tilted his head toward the club. “Didn't you get enough dancing inside?”
Jeffrey bit at his thumbnail. “Nothing happened during the last two days.”
“The sun came up, the sun set . . . what do you mean nothing happened?”
“I mean nothing important.”
“You remember a plumber coming by the day before Charlie died?”
“Yeah, that happened.”
“How long was he there?”
“A couple of hours. He left before I did.”
“Anything else happen?”
A transvestite wearing a pink empire halter dress came clicking down the sidewalk in high heels. She stopped next to them and smiled at Gage holding the leash.
“Mm'mm. Room for a third?”
Gage shook his head. “Sorry. We're monogamous.”
She shrugged and moved on.
Gage looked back at Jeffrey. “I was asking what else happened that day.”
“I don't remember anything.”
“What about the day he died?”
“I didn't even go inside the room. There was nothing for me to do. He was already dead when I showed up.”
Jeffrey put on a satisfied expression, like he was off the hook.
Gage circled back. “You remember anyone coming to visit Charlie?”
Jeffrey paused and then seemed to drift off.
Gage tugged the leash.
“Hey. I'm thinking . . . Yeah, a guy came by the day before he died. A Polish name nobody can pronounce. He claimed Charlie called him so I let him in.”
“What did he look like?”
“White guy, big. Sorta stooped over. Had a comb-over. Silliest thing I ever saw. I don't know who he thought he was kidding.”
“You sure it was the day before?”
Jeffrey nodded. “Positive.”