The 6th Target (14 page)

Jordan said that she was the registry’s only full-time employee. There were two tutors, both women, who worked when needed. Apart from the co-owner, a fifty-year-old white man, there were no men associated with the registry and no minivans, black or otherwise.

The owners of the Westwood Registry were Paul and Laura Renfrew, husband and wife, Ms. Jordan told us. At the moment, Paul was calling on potential clients north of San Francisco and Laura was off recruiting in Europe. They’d left town before the kidnappings.

“The Renfrews are nice people,” Jordan assured us.

“And how long have you known them?”

“I started working for the Renfrews just before they relocated from Boston, about eight months ago. The business isn’t breaking even yet,” Jordan went on. “Now, with Paola dead and Madison Tyler . . . gone . . . that’s not very good publicity, is it?”

Tears filled Mary Jordan’s eyes. She pulled a pink tissue from a box on her desk, blotted her face.

“Ms. Jordan,” I said, leaning across her desk, “something’s eating at you. What is it?”

“No, really, I’m fine.”

“The hell you are.”

“It’s just that I
loved
Paola. And I’m the one who matched her up with the Tylers. It was
me
. If I hadn’t done that, Paola would still be alive!”

“THE RENFREWS HAVE AN APARTMENT down here,” Ms. Jordan said as she walked us around the administrative floor. She pointed to the green-painted, padlocked door at the end of a hallway.

“Why the padlock?” I asked.

“They lock up only when they’re both away,” Jordan said. “It’s a good thing. This way I don’t have to worry about the girls poking around where they don’t belong.”

The bumping sound of footsteps came through the floor above.

“The common room is over there,” Jordan said, continuing the tour. “The conference room is on your right, and the dorm is upstairs,” she said, looking up at the wooden stairway.

“The girls live at the registry until we place them with families. I live up there, too.”

“How many girls are here?” I asked.

“Four. After Laura gets back from her trip, we’ll probably bring over four more.”

Conklin and I spent the remainder of the morning interviewing the young women as they came downstairs, one by one, to the conference room. They ranged in age from eighteen to twenty-two, all European, with good-to-excellent English.

None had a clue or a suspicion or a bad thought about the Renfrews or about Paola Ricci.

“When Paola was here, she said her prayers on her knees every night,” a girl named Luisa insisted. “She was a virgin!”

Back at Ms. Jordan’s desk, the Renfrews’ office manager threw up her hands when we asked her if she had any idea who might have kidnapped Paola and Madison. When she answered a ringing phone, Conklin asked me, “Want me to bust that padlock?”

“Want your next career to be with the sanitation department?”

“It could be worth it.”

“You’re dreaming,” I said. “Even if we had probable cause, Madison Tyler isn’t in there. The den mother would spill.”

We were leaving the house, walking down the front steps, when Mary Jordan called out, caught up with us, clutched Conklin’s arm.

“I’ve been debating with myself. This could be gossip or just plain wrong, and I don’t want to make trouble for anyone,” she said.

“You can’t worry about that, Mary,” Conklin said. “Whatever you think you know, you’ve got to tell us.”

“I’d just started with the Renfrews,” Jordan said, darting her eyes to the door of the house, then back to Conklin.

“One of the girls told me something and made me swear not to tell. She said that a graduate of the registry left her employers without notice. I’m not talking about bad manners — the Renfrews had her passport. That girl couldn’t get another job without it.”

“Was the missing girl reported to the police?”

“I think so. All I know is what I was told. And I was told that Helga Schmidt went missing and was never heard from again.”

THE TENANTS’ MEETING HAD HEATED UP to a full boil by the time Cindy got there. A couple hundred people, more or less, were crammed into the lobby. President of the Board Fern Galperin was a small, pretty woman with wire-frame glasses, her head barely visible over the crowd as she tried to quell the clamor.

“One at a time,”
Ms. Galperin shouted. “Margery? Please go on with what you were saying.”

Cindy saw Margery Glynn, the woman she’d met in the garbage room yesterday, sitting on a love seat, jammed between three other people.

Glynn cried out, “The police sent me a
form
to fill out. They’re not going to do anything about Barnaby, and Barnaby was family. Now I feel even more at risk because he’s gone. Should I get another dog? Or should I get a
gun
?”

“I feel as scared and sick as you do,” Galperin said, clutching her own small dog to her bosom. “But you can’t be serious about getting a gun! Anyone else?”

Cindy put down her computer bag, whispered to a striking brunette woman standing next to the refreshment table, “What’s going on?”

“You know about Barnaby?”

“Afraid so. I was in the garbage room when Margery found him.”

“Nasty, huh? Barnaby was kind of a pest, but for somebody to kill him? It’s certifiably crazy. What is this . . .
New York
?”

“Catch me up, will you? I’m new here.”

“Sure, okay. So Barnaby wasn’t the first. Mrs. Neely’s poodle was found dead in a stairwell, and that poor woman blamed
herself
because she’d forgotten to lock her door.”

“I take it someone in the building doesn’t care for dogs.”

“I mean, yeah,” the brunette woman continued. “But there’s more. A month ago, Mr. Franks, a real nice guy who lived on the second floor, had a moving van come, like, in the middle of the night. He left Fern a packet of threatening letters that had been slipped under his door over a number of months.”

“What kind of threats?”

“
Death threats
. Can you believe it?”

“Why didn’t he call the police?”

“I guess he did. But the letters were anonymous. The cops asked a few questions, then let the whole thing drop. Typical crap.”

“And I assume Mr. Franks had a dog?”

“No. He had a
stereo
. I’m Debbie Green, by the way.” The woman smiled broadly. “2F.” She shook Cindy’s hand.

“I’m Cindy Thomas. 3B.”

“Nice to meet you, Cindy. Welcome to
A Nightmare at the Blakely Arms
.”

Cindy smiled uncertainly. “So aren’t you scared?”

“Kinda.” Debbie sighed. “But my apartment is fantastic. . . . I’m dating someone now. I think I’ve talked him into moving in.”

“Lucky you.” Cindy turned her attention back to the meeting as a stooped elderly gentleman was recognized by the board president.

“Mr. Horn.”

“Thank you. What bothers me the most is the stealth,” he said. “The notes under the doors. The murdered pets. I think Margery is on to something. If the police can’t help us, we must form a tenants’ patrol —”

Voices erupted, and Ms. Galperin cried out, “People, raise your hands, please! Tom, you have something to say?”

A man in his thirties stood up. He was slight and balding, standing far across the room from Cindy.

“A tenants’ patrol scares the hell out of me,” he said. “Who-ever is terrorizing the Blakely Arms could sign up to be on a patrol — and then he wouldn’t have to sneak around. He could walk the halls with impunity. How scary would that be?

“About three hundred eighty-five people live in this building, and more than half of us are here tonight. The odds are nearly fifty-fifty that our own private terrorist is in this room.
Right now
.”

YUKI HAD NEVER SEEN Leonard Parisi
mad
before. “Red Dog,” as he was called, was red haired, tall, more than two hundred pounds, usually affable and avuncular — but right now his dark eyes were pumping bullets as he pounded the conference table with his fist.

Platters of leftover Chinese food jumped.

The five new ADAs around the table looked shocked, with the exception of David Hale, who’d had the bad judgment to remark that the Brinkley case was a “slam dunk.”

“There’s no such thing as a slam dunk,”
Parisi roared.
“O. J. was a slam dunk.”

“Robert Durst,” said Yuki.

“Bingo,”
Parisi said, staring around at all of them. “Durst
admitted
that he killed his neighbor, chopped him into a dozen parts, and dumped him into the ocean — and a jury of his peers found him
‘not guilty.’

“And that’s our challenge with Brinkley, David. We have a taped confession and more witnesses than we can count. The
crime
was caught on tape. And still, it’s not a slam dunk.”

“But, Leonard,” Hale said, “that tape of the crime makes the killer in the
act
. It’s admissible and indisputable.”

Parisi grinned. “You’re quite the bulldog, David. Good for you. You all know about Rodney King?” Parisi asked, loosening his tie.

“Rodney King, a black parolee, refused to exit his car after he was stopped for speeding. He was pulled out of his vehicle and struck fifty-six times by four white cops — a massive, bloody beating, all caught on videotape. The case went to trial. The cops were
acquitted
, and so began the race riots in LA.

“So the tape didn’t make the case a slam dunk. And maybe this is why: First time you see the Rodney King tape, you’re horrified. Second time, you’re outraged. But once you see it for the
twentieth time
, your brain has been around every corner of that scene, and you remember it, sure, but the shock power’s gone.

“Everyone in this country with a television set has seen Jack Rooney’s tape of Alfred Brinkley shooting those people over and over and over again. By now it’s lost its shock power. Understand?

“That said, the tape
is
in. We
should
win this case. And we’re going to do everything we can to put Brinkley on death row.

“But we’re going against a smart and tenacious attorney in Barbara Blanco,” Parisi said, leaning back in his chair. “And she isn’t working this crap public-defender job for the money. She believes in her client, and the jury is going to feel that.

“We’ve got to be prepared for anything. And that’s the end of today’s lecture.”

A respectful silence fell over the conference room. Len Parisi was definitely “da man” around here.

“Yuki, anything we forgot to go over?”

“I think we’re covered.”

“Feeling good?”

“Feeling great, Len. I’m ready to go. Can’t wait.”

“Sure. You’re twenty-eight. But I need my beauty sleep. I’ll see you here at seven thirty a.m. Everyone else, stay tuned. We’ll have a postmortem at close of day tomorrow.”

Yuki said good night to her colleagues and left the room, feeling charged up and lucky that tomorrow morning, she’d be Leonard Parisi’s second chair.

And despite Parisi’s cautionary rant, Yuki did feel confident. Brinkley wasn’t O. J. or even Robert Durst. He had no star wattage, no media appeal. Only weeks ago he was sleeping on the street with a loaded gun in his pocket.
He’d killed four total strangers
.

No way a jury would chance letting that maniac back on the streets of San Francisco again.
Would they
?

YUKI PUT HER BRIEFCASE next to Leonard’s on the table outside Department 21. They passed through the metal detectors, walked through the first set of double doors into the small anteroom, then through the second set of doors and directly into the courtroom.

There was a definite buzz from the gallery as Red Dog, at six two in navy-blue pinstripes, walked next to Yuki, at five three in heels, a hundred pounds in her pearl-gray suit, down the center aisle of the courtroom. Leonard yanked open the gate that separated the gallery from the bar, let her go ahead of him. Then he followed and immediately began setting up at the prosecution table.

Yuki’s thrill of anticipation was cut sharply with first-day jitters. There was nothing more she could do to prepare, and she couldn’t bear to wait. She straightened her lapels and her stack of papers, glanced at her watch. Court was due to begin in five minutes sharp, and the defense table was
empty
.

The room stirred again, and what she saw almost stopped her heart. She nudged Leonard, and he turned.

Alfred Brinkley was coming up the aisle. His beard had been shaved, his long hair had been buzzed short, and he was wearing a blue polyester suit and tie, looking about as dangerous as rice pudding.

But it wasn’t Brinkley who’d made her stomach clench and her mouth drop open.

Barbara Blanco wasn’t at Brinkley’s side.
Instead, there was a man in his early forties, prematurely gray, dressed in a charcoal-gray Brioni suit and yellow-print Armani tie. She knew Brinkley’s new attorney.

Everyone did.

“Aw, fuck,” Parisi said, smiling stiffly. “Mickey Sherman. You know him, don’t you, Yuki?”

“Sure do. We were cocounsel when we defended a friend of mine only months ago.”

“Yeah, I remember. Homicide lieutenant charged with wrong-ful death.” Parisi took off his glasses, polished them with his handkerchief, said to Yuki, “What’d I say last night?”

“ ‘Be prepared for anything.’ ”

“Sometimes I hate it when I’m right. What can you tell me, apart from the fact that Sherman’s never seen a camera he doesn’t like?”

“He’s a big-picture guy,” Yuki said. “Leaves the details to others. Stuff might fall through the cracks.”

Yuki was thinking how she’d read that Mickey Sherman had resigned his job as deputy corporation counsel for the City of San Francisco and opened a small private practice. He’d do the Brinkley case pro bono, but the media attention would be a hell of a launching pad for Sherman and Associates —
if he won
.