The 8th Confession

“Who’s ‘we’?” I demanded.

“The Fifth Street Association. Look it up. I filed a complaint on behalf of the association in February, and again in March. Again in April. The cops did nothing. We were told, ‘If you don’t have proof, fill out a form.’ ”

“You own a gun, Mr. Pincus?”

“No. And I’m asking you for a break. Release Samantha into my custody. Jail, even for a night, could destroy this child.”

We agreed to let the girl go, gave Pincus a warning not to let her leave town.

As soon as the two had left the squad room, Conklin and I went to our desks and called up Pincus’s name in the database. He didn’t have a sheet, but Conklin found something else.

“Neil Pincus has a license to carry, and he’s got a registered Rohm twenty-two,” Conklin said over the top of his monitor. “A cheap dirty little pistol for a cheap dirty little lawyer. That son of a bitch lied.”

Chapter 85

CONKLIN AND I were at the door to Pincus and Pincus, Attorneys- at-Law, by noon, and we had four other cops with us. When the door opened, we pushed past the reception area, and I handed Neil Pincus a warrant.

I said, “Keep your hands where I can see them.”

Pincus blinked stupidly. “What?”

“Did you think we wouldn’t find out about the gun?”

“That… thing was stolen,” Pincus said. “I reported it.” The lawyer pushed back his chair, said, “I kept it in here.”

I opened a desk drawer, bottom right, saw the metal gun box. I lifted the lid, stared at a cardboard box for a Rohm.22. The box was empty.

“You kept this gun box locked?”

“No.”

“Where’d you keep the ammo?”

“Same drawer. Look. I know that’s a violation, but if I was going to need the gun, I was going to need it fast. Sergeant, I rarely opened the box,” said Pincus. “It could have been stolen any time in the last six months. You turn your back for a second around here, take a phone call or take a piss -”

I stepped in front of Pincus, jerked open the rest of his desk drawers as Conklin did the same to brother Al’s matching desk in the next room.

Then the six of us jacked open the file cabinets, tossed the supply room, looked under the cushions on the cracked leather sofa. After a short while, the Pincus brothers settled down, talked over us to their clients, acted normally and entirely as though we weren’t there.

When we came up empty, Conklin and I visited both of the Pincus homes, one in Forest Hill and the other on Monterey Boulevard. Good neighborhoods, places where bad kids didn’t happen. We met the two nice wives, Claudia and Reva, both of whom had been asked by their husbands to cooperate.

We acquainted ourselves with the insides of the Pincus family closets, cupboards, hope chests, and tool chests, and the Pincus wives voluntarily let us search their cars.

Their places were as brilliantly clean as white sheets hanging from the line on a sunshiny day.

Executing those warrants had been physically and emotionally draining. I was wrung out and depressed, and we had nothing to show for our work.

Had Neil Pincus’s gun been used to kill Bagman?

I still didn’t know, but if I had to guess where that gun was now, I’d say the shooter had dropped it off the bridge sometime after Rodney Booker’s execution. And at present it was being buried by the shifting sands at the bottom of San Francisco Bay.

Chapter 86

CONKLIN AND I got into the squad car we’d parked outside Alan Pincus’s house.

I owed Jacobi a call and an explanation, and knew he’d go bug-nuts when I told him we’d spent our day chasing Bagman’s hit man when a psycho was dropping the mayor’s friends with a poisonous reptile.

I was about to say so to Conklin, but now that we were alone, the elephant in the car could not be ignored.

Conklin turned down the radio, jumbled the car keys in his hand for a moment, and said, “Cindy talked to you about… uh… us.”

“Yep. It was quite a surprise,” I said, holding his gaze until he looked away.

“She said you were upset.”

I shrugged.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, Linds -”

“Hey. I’m fine. Fine,” I lied. “Once I thought about it, I realized you two are a natural.”

“It’s only been, like, a week.”

“Whatever. As Jacobi says, ‘I love you guys.’ ”

Conklin laughed, and that laugh told all. He was having a wonderful time with my bodacious, cheeky, bighearted friend, and he didn’t want to stop.

The guy who’d kissed me last week – that guy was gone. Sure, I’d rejected him, and sure, I didn’t own him. But even so, it hurt. I missed the Richie who’d mooned over me.

I wondered if his sleeping with Cindy was a roundabout way of sleeping with me. It was a crummy thought, hardly worthy of me, but – ha! – I thought it anyway.

And I remembered Yuki’s advice: “Let him go. Let yourself go.”

Conklin was watching my face for a sign, perhaps my blessing, so I was glad when knuckles rapped on my window. It was Alan Pincus, home early from work.

He was bigger than his older brother, had more hair. Otherwise, they were clones.

I buzzed down the glass.

“Sergeant Boxer? Are you people done? Because I want to get my family life back to normal.”

“We’re done for now, but we’re not going away.”

“I understand.”

“Anything comes up we should know about, call us.”

“Boy Scout honor.”

Pincus held up three fingers, then turned and marched up the walk to his front door. Was he sticking it to us? I couldn’t tell. When he was inside, I said to Conklin, “Let’s call Cindy.”

Chapter 87

LATER THAT DAY, Conklin, Cindy, and I had MacBain’s Beers O’ the World Pub practically to ourselves. We had a table in the back, a bowl of freeze-dried peanuts, and diet colas all around.

Cindy’s face was flushed, and it had nothing to do with her proximity to my partner.

“You let them go? You didn’t hold them, squeeze them -”

“Sounds like a pop song,” Conklin cracked, and he was so high on Cindy, he actually sang a few lines: “Hold me, squeeze me, never let me go…” But Cindy was not in the mood.

“How can you make fun of me?”

Conklin’s smile dropped. “Cin, we would’ve if we could’ve – but we can’t make an indictable charge. Not yet.”

“But you’re working the case? Swear to God?”

Conklin and I both nodded, Conklin adding, “We are seriously working the case.”

Cindy dropped her head into her hands and groaned. “I put this guy on the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle. ‘Bagman Jesus, Street Saint.’ And he’s what? Turning teens into drug dealers? And you think that’s why someone killed him? God Almighty. What do I do now?”

“Do what you always do,” I said to my friend. “Run with the truth. And hey, Cindy, this is a better story, right?”

Her eyes got bigger as she saw the size of the headline in her mind. “I can cite reliable sources close to the SFPD?”

“Yes. Sure.”

Conklin paid the tab, and we three left the bar together. Cindy headed back to the Chronicle and an emergency meeting with her boss, and Conklin and I walked over to the Hall.

Back in the gloom of the bull pen, Conklin booted up his Dell. I sorted through the messages that had come in while we were out, found one from St. Jude that Brenda had marked URGENT. I had punched in half of McCorkle’s number when Conklin said, “Unbelievable.”

I stopped dialing. “Whatcha got?”

“Rodney Booker’s van is in impound, Lindsay. The day after he was killed, it was towed from a no-parking zone.”

I called impound, located the car, and put in a rush order to have it brought to the crime lab.

Our dead end had sprung wide open.

And that’s what I shouted over my shoulder to Jacobi, who was advancing on us, breathing fire, as Conklin and I fled the squad room.