The Hunt Club (29 page)

“Not enough.” Juhle gestured with his head to the interview going on in front of them. “Who's that?” he asked.

“Jim Pine,” Piersall said. “A client of mine. He and the judge were acquainted.”

Hunt threw Piersall a sideways glance to see if he was joking. But no, this was the drill for today. Hunt realized that Piersall wasn't going to be debriefing him on their discoveries in Andrea's office. “He runs the prison guards' union, doesn't he?” Hunt asked, telling Juhle.

Piersall's eyes flicked between them. “Yes, he does.”

“What's he talking about?” Juhle asked.

“Apparently, some irresponsible parties have been trying to establish a connection between the judge's death and some recent actions he'd been contemplating with respect to union matters. Mr. Pine is debunking that speculation as ridiculous, which, of course, it is.”

“Really?” Juhle said. “That's your position? Because I must tell you, I've heard a little bit about it myself, and it doesn't sound so far-fetched to me. Especially with the Andrea Parisi situation.”

“Well, inspector, if that's the direction your investigation is leading you, it's a small wonder you've not made much progress. Now if you'll excuse me, it looks as though Mr. Pine is about done, and we've got to be getting inside.” Piersall leveled a last glare at Hunt and stepped around him to get next to his client.

“Let him go,” Hunt whispered, moving Juhle along. “It's an act for Pine's benefit. He's got to be the good attorney in public. He told me last night that he was scared to death.”

“Of Pine?”

“Keep walking. Yes, of Pine.”

The light going on in his head, Juhle stopped in his tracks. “You saw him last night. That's how you found Parisi's car. You were there on something else.”

“I was there on what I found this morning, Dev. I just didn't know it then 'cause I hadn't found it yet.”

“Well, I've got to have a few words with Mr. Pine.”

“And he's going to talk to you?”

“I'm a cop, Wyatt. It's not like he gets to choose.”

“He'll be lawyered up. He's already lawyered up. It'll just waste your time. You know it as well as I do.”

“You got a better idea?”

“You know,” Hunt said, “I think I do.”

They decided to check out
the inmate who'd escaped from prison.

On the plus side, San Quentin occupies a large waterfront site with harbor views. Juhle was telling Hunt that he thought a developer could make a fortune here with a small city of condo complexes and an upscale mall, a marina with bay-front dining. The main buildings currently on the property—enormous, industrial-looking concrete structures in a square around an inner yard—would have to go, of course, and they'd have to think up some way to purge the bad karmic load that had accumulated from the decades that the facility had spent housing, feeding, guarding, and executing its inmates. But once they got that done: “They give it a fancy name. The yuppies would be lined up for a mile to bid on the suckers. Hey, ‘Q by the C'—get it? Just the letters?”

“I get it. You missed your calling, Dev. I'm serious.” Hunt driving, they had left the main road a mile before and joined a surprising albeit short line of vehicles that were now pulled up to the guard's station at the gate. Three hundred yards farther, past the cluster of administration buildings, they saw the entrance to the prison proper. Guard station, double fencing, barbed and razor wire. “How does somebody break out of this place?”

“Good question. That's what we're here to find out.”

Juhle had called the warden's office on the way up to make arrangements for their visit—as a homicide inspector on an active case, especially one of this import, he had theoretical access just about anywhere he wanted to go—and they only spent a minute at the guard's station with their identification and signing in.

It was by now early afternoon on a Friday, and half of the parking lot off to their left was filled with the cars of other visitors who had come up the road with them—wives, girlfriends, children, lawyers. But Hunt had been directed to his right, to the administration building, and he parked in a visitor's space in front of it. The wind here whipped off the bay, cold and biting as they emerged from the car.

The warden, Gus Harron, projected a stern bureaucratic competence befitting someone who directed a business whose budget was over one hundred twenty million dollars a year. San Quentin housed over five thousand inmates, almost twice the capacity for which it had been built, and supported fifteen hundred or so combined guards and other staff. Harron wore a gray business suit, white shirt, dark gray tie. He carried a large frame that showed no sign of fat. Rimless eyeglasses seemed to intensify an already imperious countenance, but for all that, he came around his desk and shook hands pleasantly enough, then took a seat on a couch under one of his windows, bidding Juhle and Hunt to take the chairs that faced it.

“Did I get this right, inspector?” he began. “You're working on the Palmer homicide?”

“That's right. And Mr. Hunt's a private investigator who's been handling an investigation for one of his clients—a law firm named Piersall-Morton—that seems to have intersected my own at a couple of points.” He paused. “Andrea Parisi works for Piersall.”

Harron sat back, one leg crossed over the other, radiating the fact that the connection was intuitively clear. “And somehow both of your investigations are related to San Quentin?”

Juhle shifted slightly. “We don't know for certain, sir. We're interested in finding out as much as we can about the inmate who escaped out of here last Monday.”

All amiability vanished from the warden's demeanor. “Arthur Mowery. He's the first escapee I've had in six years. You really need to contact the Department of Corrections personnel investigating that case. I can assure you, there'll be an exhaustive investigation and report into what happened.”

“The papers had it that he went out to get a smoke and simply walked away.” Juhle was treading lightly. “We were wondering if you had any more details.”

Harron uncrossed his legs and leaned forward. “Look. I really don't want to talk about this. An escape is the worst thing that can happen to the warden of a prison, and now you want me to help you make it worse by connecting it to the murder of a federal judge.”

“We don't know if it's connected,” Juhle said. “If you can eliminate the possibility, we'd be grateful.”

A long pause while Harron considered this. “All right,” he said at last. “But how is Mowery even theoretically connected to Palmer's murder?”

“We've seen some articles on the possibility that the union might be using parolees on jobs outside.”

“What kind of jobs?”

“Muscle. Extortion. Vandalism.”

“Mowery was in for violating his parole,” Hunt added. “His first time out, he was actually on the union payroll.”

Harron's eyes were slits. “And what?”

“And Inspector Juhle here and myself thought it might be worth asking you if you'd heard anything about Mowery getting busted back here for failing to obey orders.”

“What orders?”

Juhle shrugged. “Hitting Palmer, for example.”

The slab of Harron's face had hardened down to rock. “Bullshit.” Abruptly, he stood, walked over to his office door, opened it, and looked out. Then closed it again and came back to Juhle and Hunt and sat again. When he spoke, his voice was barely a whisper. “It couldn't happen. And even if it did, under your theory, Mowery wouldn't have been reported missing.”

“Except he broke out,” Hunt said. “And really went missing.”

Juhle soft-pedaled. “We'd just like to know a few more details about the escape. Maybe there was an unexpected shift change among the guards. The guys who were supposed to protect him didn't get to his new guards in time…”

“All inmates must be in their cells at lockdown, inspector. There are no exceptions. If someone's not there, it gets reported immediately. As was the case here.” He gave Juhle the hard eye, shook his head dismissively. “Listen. These people, inmates, they don't get out to do a job.”

“We realize that, sir,” Hunt said. “But until last weekend, Mowery had been out on parole.”

“Okay. And?”

Juhle took it up. “And maybe he got violated because he refused to take a job.”

Harron wasn't buying it. “In or out, these people are not contract labor, gentlemen. They're psychopaths. They don't keep agreements and they don't follow the rules. If they get out, they're gone until we find them. They never come back on their own.”

Hunt knew that this was the obvious and correct response. It was also self-serving. But everyone in the room knew what was being left unsaid—that every prison had a bustling black market in tobacco, liquor, and dope; that sexual activity not only between inmates but between guards and inmates was not unknown; that “marriages” of convenience or protection or even love could create bonds as strong as anything on the outside, bonds that could make life in jail preferable to a life outside; that guards could beat inmates to death and never be called to account for it; that omerta—the code of silence—was the rule among the guards at every prison in the state.

Whatever crimes might be ongoing and abetted by some few venal guards—money laundering, prostitution, drug deals, murders—the danger and boredom of the daily work and the degree of interdependence among these men guaranteed that no other guard would come forth to testify against any of their own. A bad guard was a bad guard, true, but he was a brother first. And you did not rat out your brother. That was the culture. Hunt, Juhle, and Harron all knew that Arthur Mowery's escape could have been arranged and executed with the collusion of some of the prison's guards.

Juhle said, “Nevertheless, at the moment, we've got no choice but to consider Mr. Mowery a person of interest to this investigation.”

“Do what you want,” Harron said. “But let me ask you this: In any of these articles you saw, was San Quentin in any way implicated?”

“No, sir. Corcoran, Avenal, Pelican Bay, Folsom, a few others, but not San Quentin.”

“I'd like to think nothing like what you're proposing could happen on my watch.”

“Yes, sir.”

“We've already done our preliminary investigation, of course.” He crossed to his desk, picked up a folder. His shoulders settled. He ran his whole hand across the top of his head. “I can't give you all of this, but what kind of details are you looking for?”

“You tell us,” Juhle said.

Harron in his chair now held the folder open in front of him. He adjusted his glasses, but before looking down, his eyes came up, and he stared off into space. “Mowery's two previous parole violations are interesting in this context, aren't they?” Then he went back to the folder, flipped some pages, passed a computerized printout across the desk. Juhle and Hunt were up now, by the warden's desk.

“Written up three times for assault,” Harron said. “Active AB”—the Aryan Brotherhood—“thought to be an enforcer. Connected to one fatal prison stabbing. No willing witnesses, so no prosecution. Five thousand dollars on his books. Probably bribery or extortion or both.”

“So he's got money,” Hunt said, “which means a connection on the outside.”

Juhle went back to the sheet. “He apparently went straight for…eight years.”

“Either that,” Hunt said, “or his parole officer had a reason to stop violating him.”

Juhle looked at the warden. “You don't have Mowery's lawyer in there, do you?”

Harron thumbed through some pages, found a business card clipped to one of them. “As of seven months ago, Jared E. Wilkins. The third, no less.” He handed the card over.

Juhle took it, gave it a glance, held it up for Hunt. “Sacramento,” he said.

“Does that mean something?” Harron asked.

“How does a San Francisco thug get hooked up with a Sacramento lawyer?” Hunt said. He took out his cell phone and, on a hunch, punched up the number on the card. “Mr. Wilkins, please,” he said. “Sure, Jim Pine…. Yeah, I know, I'm fighting a cold.” Hunt closed the phone back up and handed it to Juhle. “Mowery's lawyer knows Pine.”

Harron's mouth was stuck on open. Finally he got it to move. “If this goes anywhere, inspector,” he said, “I'd appreciate a heads-up, just between us.”

“If it goes anywhere, warden, the whole world's going to know about it. Who's Mowery's parole officer, who's busted him twice?”

For an answer, Harron found the page he wanted and under his breath said, “Son of a bitch.” He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “Phil Lamott.”

“He means something to you,” Juhle said.

The warden nodded. “I recognize the name. He started his career here, early nineties. As a guard.”