The McCone Files (2 page)

Make myself comfortable, indeed!

Ted Smalley had disappeared down the long central hall off the foyer. I looked around some more, wondering what the hell Hank was doing in such a place.

Hank Zahn was a Stanford grad and had been at the top of his law school class at Berkeley's Boalt Hall. When I'd last seen him he was packing his belongings prior to turning over his room in the brown-shingled house we'd shared on Durant Street to yet another on an ongoing chain of tenants that stretched back into the early sixties and for all I knew continued unbroken to this very day. At the time he was being courted by several prestigious law firms, and he'd joked that the salaries and benefits they offered were enough to make him sell out to the establishment. But Hank was a self-styled leftist and social reformer, a Vietnam vet weaned from the military on Berkeley's radical politics; selling out wasn't within his realm of possibility. I could envision him as a public defender or an ACLU lawyer or a loner in private practice, but what was this cooperative business?

As I waited in the parlor, though, I had to admit the place had the same feel as the house we'd shared in Berkeley; laid-back and homey, brimming with companionship, humming with energy and purpose. Several people came and went, nodding pleasantly to me but appearing focused and intense. I'd come away from the Berkeley house craving solitude as strongly as when I'd left my parents' rambling, sibling-crowded place in San Diego. Not so with Hank, apparently.

Voices in the hallway now. Hank's and Ted Smalley's. Hank hurried into the parlor, holding out his hands to me. A tall, lean man, so loose-jointed that his limbs seemed linked by paperclips, he had a wiry Brillo pad of brown hair and thick horn-rimmed glasses that magnified the intelligence in his eyes; in the type of cords and sweaters that he'd always favored he looked more the college teaching assistant than the attorney. He clasped my hands, pulled me to my feet and hugged me. “I see you've already done battle with the couch,” he said, gesturing at the protruding spring.

“Where did you get that thing—the city dump?”

“Actually, somebody left it and the matching chair and hassock on the sidewalk on Sixteenth Street. I recognized a bargain and recycled them.”

“And the piano?”

“Ted's find. Garage sale. The same with the schefflera.”

“Well, you guys are nothing if not resourceful. You want to tell me about this place?”

“In a minute.” He steered me to the hallway. “Wait till you see the kitchen.”

It was at the rear of the house: a huge room equipped with ancient appliances and glass-fronted cupboards; dishes cluttered the drainboard of the sink, a stick of butter melted on its wrapper on the counter, and a long red phone cord snaked across the floor and disappeared under a round oak table by a window that gave a panoramic view of downtown. A book titled
White Trash Cooking
lay broken-spined on a chair. Hank motioned for me to sit, fetched coffee, and pulled up a chair opposite me.

“Great, isn't it?” he said.

“Sure.”

“You're probably wondering what's going on here.”

I nodded.

“All Souls Law Cooperative works like a medical plan. People who can't afford the bloated fees many of my colleagues charge buy a membership, its cost based on a scale according to their incomes. The membership gives them access to consul and legal services all the way from small claims to the U.S. Supreme Court. Legal services plans're the coming thing, an outgrowth of the poverty law movement.”

“How many people're involved?”

“Seventeen, right now.”

“You making any money?”

“Does it look like we are? No. But we sure are having fun, Most of us live on the premises—offices double as sleeping quarters, and there're some bedrooms on the second floor—and that offsets the paltry salaries. We pool expenses, barter services such as cooking and taking out the trash. There're parties and potlucks and poker games. Right now a Monopoly tournament's the big thing.”

“Just like on Durant.”

“Uh-huh. You remember Anne-Marie Altman?”

“Of course.” She'd been an off-and-on resident at Durant, and a classmate of Hank's.

“Well, she's our tax attorney, and one of the people who helped me found the co-op.”

“Why, Hank?”

“Why a co-op? Because it's the most concrete way I can make a difference in a world that doesn't give a rat's ass about the little people. I learned at Berkeley that bombs and bricks aren't going to do a damned thing for society; maybe practicing law the way it was meant to be practiced will.”

He looked idealistic and earnest and—in spite of the years he had on me—very young. I said, “I hope so, Hank.”

He must have sensed my doubt and felt a twinge of his own, because for a moment his gaze muddied. Then he said briskly, “So, how's business?”

I made a rueful face, glancing down at my ratty sweater and faded jeans. The heels on my leather boots were worn down, and the last time it rained, water leaked through the right sole. “Bad,” I admitted.

“Thinking of looking for permanent employment?”

“With my references?” I snorted. “ ‘Doesn't take direction well, nonresponsive to authority figures, inflexible and overly independent. Can be pushy, severe, and dominant.' That was my last review before the agency canned me. Forget it.”

“Jesus, that could describe any one of us at All Souls.”

“Maybe it's a generational flaw.”

“Maybe, but it's us. You want a job here?”

“Do I want…
what
?”

“We're looking for a staff investigator.”

“Since when?”

He grinned. “Since yesterday when I ran into you in front of City Hall and started thinking about all the nonlegal work we've been heaping on our paralegals.”

“Such as?”

“Nothing all that exciting, I'm afraid. Filing documents; tracking down witnesses; interviewing same; locating people and serving subpoenas. Pretty dull work, when you get right down to it, but the after-hours company is good. We're all easygoing; we'd leave you alone to do our work in your own way.”

“Salary?”

“Low. Benefits, practically nil.”

“I couldn't live in; I've kind of o.d.'d on the communal stuff.”

“We couldn't accommodate you, anyway. The only available space is a converted closet under the stairs—which, incidentally, would be your office. I might be able to raise the salary a little to help with your rent.”

“What about expenses? My car—”

“Is a hunk of junk. But we'll pay mileage. Besides…” he paused, eyes dancing wickedly, “I can offer you a first case that'll intrigue the hell out of you.”

A steady job, bosses who would leave me alone, a first case that would intrigue the hell out of me. What more was I looking for?

“You've got yourself an investigator,” I told him.

Hank's client, Marnie Morrison, was one of those soft, round young woman who always remind me of puppy dogs—clingy and smiley and eager to please. A thinly veiled anxiety in her big blue eyes and the way most of her statements turned up as if she were asking a question told me that the puppy had been mistreated and wasn't too sure she wouldn't be mistreated again. She sat across from me at the round table and related her story—crossing and recrossing her blue-jeaned legs, twisting a curl of fluffy blond hair around her finger, glancing up at Hank for approval. Her mannerisms were so distracting that it took me a few minutes to realize I'd read about her in the paper.

“His name, it was Jon Howard. I met him on the sorority ski trip to Mammouth over spring break. In the bar at the lodge where we were staying? He was there by himself and looked nice and my roommate Terry, she kind of pushed me into going over and talking. He was kind of sweet? So we had some drinks and made a date to ski together the next day and after that we were together all the time.”

“Jon was staying at the lodge?”

“No, this motel down the road. I thought it was kind of funny, since he told me he was a financier and sole owner of this company with holdings all over Europe and South America. I mean, the motel was cheap? But he said it was quieter there and he didn't like big crowds of people, he was a very private person. We spent a lot of time there because I was rooming Terry at the lodge, and we did things like get take-out and drink wine?” Marnie glanced at Hank. He nodded encouragingly.

“Anyway, we fell in love. And I decided not to go back to USC after break. We came to San Francisco because it's our favorite city. And Jon was finalizing a big business deal, and after that we were going to get married.” The hurt-puppy look became more pronounced. “Of course, we didn't.”

“Back up a minute, if you would.” I said. “What did you and Jon talk about while…you were falling love?”

“Our childhoods? Mine was good—I mean, my parents are nice and we've always had enough money. But Jon's? It was awful. They were poor and he always had to work and he never finished high school. But he was self-taught and he'd built this company with all these holdings up from nothing.”

“What kind of company?”

Frown lines appeared between her eyebrows. “Well, a financial company, you know? It owned… well, all kinds of stuff overseas.”

“Okay,” I said, “you arrived here in the city when?”

“Two month ago.”

“And did what?”

“Checked into the St. Francis. We registered under my last name—Mr. and Mrs. Jon Morrison?”

“Why?”

“Because of Jon's business deal. He'd made some enemies, and he was afraid they'd get to him before he could wrap it up. Besides, the credit card we were using was in my name.” Her mouth drooped. “The American Express card my father gave me when I went to college. I…guess that was the real reason?”

“So you registered at the St. Francis and…?”

“Jon was on the phone a lot on account of his business deal? I got my hair done and shopped. Then he hired a limo and a driver and we started looking at houses. As soon as the deal was finalized and his money was wire-transferred from Europe we were going to buy one. We found the perfect place on Vallejo Street in Pacific Heights, only it needed a lot of remodeling, we wanted to put in an indoor pool and a tennis court. So Jon wrote a postdated deposit check and hired a contractor and a decorator and then we went shopping for artwork because Jon said it was a good investment. We bought some nice paintings at a gallery on Sutter Street and they were holding them for us until the check cleared.”

“What then?”

“There were the cars? We ordered a Mercedes for me and a Porsche for Jon. And we looked at yachts and airplanes, but he decided we'd better wait on those.”

“And Jon wrote postdated checks for the cars?”

Marnie nodded.

“And the rest went on your American Express card?”

“Uh-huh.”

“How much did you charge?”

She bit her lip and glanced at Hank. “The hotel bill was ten thousand dollars. The limo and the driver were over five. And there was a lot of other stuff? A lot.” She looked down at her hands.

I met Hank's eyes. He shrugged, as if to say, “I told you she was naïve.”

“What did your parents have to say about the credit-card charges?” I asked.

“They paid them, at least that's what the police said. Or else I'd be in jail now?”

“Have you spoken with your parents?”

She whispered something, still looking down.

“I'm sorry, I didn't catch that.”

“I said, I can't face them.”

“And what about Jon?” I recalled the conclusion of Marnie's tale from the newspaper account I'd read, but I wanted to hear her version.

“A week ago? They came to our hotel room—the real-estate agent and decorator and the salesman from the gallery. The checks Jon wrote? They'd all bounced, and they wanted him to make good on them. Only Jon wasn't there. I thought he'd gone downstairs for breakfast while I was in the shower, but he wasn't any place in the hotel, he'd packed his things and gone. All that was left was a pink carnation on my pillow.”

It was difficult to feel sorry for her; she had, after all, refused to recognize the blatant signs of a con job. But when she raised her head and I saw the tears slipping over her round cheeks, I could feel her pain. “So what do you want me to do, Marnie?”

“Find him.”

“Aren't the police trying to do that?”

She shook her head. “Since the checks were postdated they were only like…promises to pay? The police say it's a civil matter, and all but one of the people Jon wrote them to have decided not to press charges. The decorator had already spent a lot of money out of pocket ordering fabric and stuff, so she hired a detective to trace Jon, but he's disappeared.”

I thought for a moment. “Okay, Marnie, suppose I do locate Jon Howard, What then?”