“With Presidency Virtually Assured, Banks Calls it Quits.”

  “Mystery Grows Over Banks’ Campaign Shutdown.”

  “Banks Shocker Throws U.S Presidential Election Into Turmoil.”

  But it was only that, a fantasy. He knew he couldn’t anger the Eagle.

  Cort felt the weight of it from a young age, and now he had gone too far to turn back. He no longer possessed whatever shred of courage or independence he may have once had.

  Leave is to us, as Deegan said.

  This is bigger than you, as the Eagle said.

  Cort hated Deegan, of course.

  But he also hated the Eagle. He always had.

  The world didn’t know this. The world saw a well-planned dynasty and assumed a normal, human underpinning to the fantasy. But the world didn’t see the truth behind the facade. The emptiness.

  Empty suit. He had heard Deegan mutter it about him when he thought he wasn’t listening. Or maybe he didn’t care if Cort heard.

  It didn’t bother Cort. It was a typical slur hurled at a politician, and he had uttered it himself, against opponents. The entire enterprise of politics was a kind of performance. It was nothing to be ashamed of. That was the way the game worked.

  What bothered Cort was that he knew the emptiness went even deeper. It was how Cort had always felt. Empty. As though he were only a vehicle for the Eagle’s rage.

  Despair had begun to settle around Cort, as he began realize that even reaching their ultimate goal would not satisfy the Eagle. Victory was always temporary. Cort had sensed it from his earliest days, when triumphs that he thought would please the Eagle only led to a sense of emptiness, and then a dawning horror that nothing he would ever do would be good enough; no decision he made could ever be his own. The Eagle had decided Cort’s fate from an early age and would continue to decide it until one or both of them were dead.

  So he contented himself with fantasies. Many times, Cort had fantasized about taking his destiny into his own hands. On a few occasions he had even acted on his desires, finding a strange and frightening freedom in stepping outside of the circle the Eagle had proscribed for him.

  It had always ended badly.

  Cort thought back to the worst of the times: The poor girl whose name he couldn’t remember anymore.

  Yet somehow he had never paid a price. And now Cort was on the verge of becoming president.

  But Cort knew it would not be his victory. It would feel hollow and sickening. Cort had played his role well and the victory was close now, and the Eagle and his men were making sure that nothing got in the way.

  Just say your lines, Deegan said, with that dismissive tone that Cort had grown to hate. You look the part and sound the part. Now play the part.

  Cort wanted out.

  He knew that was impossible.

  Yet sometimes Cort thought of one the first victims. He thought back nearly four decades, to the girl on Telegraph Hill.

  Karen’s phone rang. She checked her screen and saw that it was Vicky Talib calling. She felt a little leap of delight in her chest.

  “Okay, so I know you were just here this morning, and I wasn’t even going to call, because I didn’t want to spook you,” Vicky said. “But I heard the news on the radio this morning. I’m really happy for you.”

  The Police Commission had cleared her of any wrongdoing in the shooting of Kevin Atkins. At least she could go back to work and try to put it behind her. But if the Chronicle was going to continue to hammer the story, she had the feeling it would follow her for the rest of her career. Maybe her entire life.

  She thought about explaining all this to Vicky. The mixed feelings, the nagging sense that this wasn’t the end of it, as well as the very real relief that came with official exoneration. She longed to open up to someone, and she was starting to think Vicky might be a person she could do that with. But she decided to err on the side of caution, emotionally speaking. She thanked her for the well wishes.

  “I did have another reason to call,” Vicky said. “More business-related, you might say.”

  Karen smiled. “I’m glad you called. Whether you had a reason or not.”

  “I noticed something interesting after you left this morning. All those cases we looked at? They had the same responding officer in each of them. Which is kind of unusual, right? Probably nothing. But I just thought you should know. In case it helps your investigation.”

  Karen hadn’t even thought to inquire about responding officers, figuring it would be of little use nearly forty years later. Now that her job was safe, at least for now, maybe it wasn’t worth raising the cop from whatever retirement home he was probably living in, or find out if he was still alive.

  “That could be helpful, Vicky. Thank you so much.”

  “And here’s the weird part. Or maybe weird is too strong a word. Odd, maybe. Anyway, it’s Frank Flanagan. As in, Mayor Frank Flanagan. Just a lowly beat cop back in those days.”

  Huh, Karen thought. That is odd.

  She decided to give it one more shot.

  Chapter 14

  “Fix you a drink, Marko?”

  Mayor Frank Flanagan poured Irish whiskey from a crystal decanter into two glasses and handed one to Marko. “It’s eighteen-year-old Glenfiddich. A gift from the mayor of Dublin. Some sister-city bullshit. Where’s your partner? I haven’t seen Walter in ages.”

  “Lucky you, Mr. Mayor,” Marko said.

  The mayor laughed. “Sit down, Marko. Christ, it’s good to see you.” He led them towards two leather chairs in the corner of the large office. Gray light came weakly through the window behind the mayor’s mahogany desk. Flanagan turned on a table lamp between them, bathing the corner in a soft golden glow. The mayor’s office was quieter and more peaceful than a gentleman’s club. “I’ve got a lunch appointment, but I’m all yours until then.”

  “I appreciate your time, Mr. Mayor,” Marko said. “Especially during a campaign.”

  The mayor leaned back in his chair, getting comfortable. He was a large man whose well-tailored suits accentuated his height and minimized his girth. His white hair was well groomed and full. “It’s a good thing the electorate doesn’t know how little attention their needs get around here,” the mayor said. “They’d become even more cynical, if that’s possible. I’ve got a campaign staffer that follows me around with a long list of names. If I don’t spend three hours a day calling numbers on that list and begging for contributions, she starts hounding me. Here I am, the mayor of a big city with big problems, and I’m taking orders from a 22-year-old who was planning sorority mixers six months ago.” He laughed ruefully. “Don’t even get me started on the care and feeding of big-name supporters. The amount of ass I have to kiss … after a while, it all gets a little degrading.”

  Marko took a sip of the whiskey. “From what I hear, you won’t have a problem defeating Alfonse Fuqua.”

  “Can’t take anything for granted,” Flanagan said, shaking his head. “The media loves an underdog. They get a notion of him having a chance, just a whiff, now the momentum starts. Before you know it, the voters think he’s a legit candidate.”

  “Let me take a guess. Your reelection is a formality. What you’re really targeting is the Senate seat Cortland Banks vacates when he becomes president.”

  “You’re sharp, Marko. Always have been.”

  He smiled suddenly, a dazzling thing that made Marko smile too. Marko was secretly fascinated by the interpersonal skills of politicians. How they could make the right facial or hand gesture at just the right moment. He wondered if there was any true sentiment behind it, or if their very neurons were amoral, shooting messages out from their brain stem that caused the desired angle of the eyebrow or vocal timbre.

  “Listen to me, going on about myself,” Flanagan said. “It’s no secret why everybody hates politicians.” The voice dropped a notch, becoming more personal. “How are you doing?”

  “I’m okay, Mr. Mayor. No shortage of work.”

  “That’s not what I mean, Marko.”

  “I’m alright. Some days are better than others. I’m just trying to move on.”

  “You’ve been through a lot, young man. You know you can always come to me for anything.”

  Flanagan reached across the table and patted Marko’s arm. Marko flashed on a memory of Flanagan wearing his police chief’s uniform and hugging him at Donna’s funeral. Once Marko made inspector, Flanagan made a special point of treating him well when he saw him, pulling him aside and sharing a private joke or piece of department gossip. Nurturing the idea that he was a mentor to a rising star, Marko imagined.

  For a time after Donna’s death, Flanagan called Marko once a month or so to offer his support. Marko figured his name was on a list somewhere.

  “I appreciate it,” Marko said, putting his drink down. He felt the oppressive weight of Flanagan’s charm and longed to rid himself of its effects. “I know you’re busy so I’ll get to it. I’m investigating the death of Roland Solorzano. We have reason to believe he may have been killed.”

  The mayor raised an eyebrow. “Murder? I thought he just missed a turn on Devil’s Slide. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to kill Roland. The guy wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

  “What can you tell me about him?” Marko said. “He worked for you for three years. What kind of guy was he?”

  Flanagan thought about it. “Kept to himself. Family man. Reliable. I don’t know what else to tell you. He was always there when I needed him. We made small talk occasionally, but I can’t pretend I knew much about him. In fact, I barely knew him.”

  It was Marko’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “Barely knew him?”

  “You have to understand how we operated. Roland would pick me up, at City Hall usually. He’d drive me to two or three events a night. Five or six nights a week. While we were driving I was almost always on the cell phone.”

  “Who would you be talking to?” Marko said.

  Flanagan smiled, and his eyes narrowed just enough for Marko to notice it. “Shit, Marko, you want a list? My staff. My wife. My campaign manager. Organizers for my fundraisers. Members of various commissions. Lobbyists. Should I go on?”

  Marko eased back. “Anything strike you as odd about Roland? Any dark secrets or personal habits he kept hidden? Psychological issues?”

  The mayor shrugged. “He seemed salt of the earth. But you never know about people, right?”

  The mayor was jiggling his glass lightly, staring off toward the window and Civic Center Plaza beyond. “In ’78, when Dan White shot Mayor Moscone and Harvey Milk, I was in City Hall. The clerk of the Board of Supervisors called me in for a meeting. They were getting worried about all the bad feelings going around and wanted us to provide extra security at their next meeting. I heard a pop, like a firecracker. But I knew it wasn’t. Milk’s office was two doors down from where I was. It wasn’t until later we found out the mayor had been shot first. Christ, the utter waste. Two great men struck down. And Harvey, he was an icon to the gay community. Maybe it doesn’t hurt for a movement to have a martyr. I still wish Harvey were here, pissing everyone off and fighting the good fight.”

  It was all before Marko’s time. He saw a documentary about it once, and thought about it when he drove by the Harvey Milk Elementary School in the Castro.

  “Given what came later,” the mayor said, “I’m embarrassed to say that I knew and liked Dan White. He seemed like a standup guy, a little uptight maybe, but basically OK. You just never know.”

  The mayor took a long pull of his drink and looked out soulfully toward the gloom. He looked close to tears. Marko had the feeling, as he always did when he was with Frank Flanagan, that his character was marked either by deep compassion or unfathomable falseness.

  The mayor shuddered, as though awakening from a bad dream. “A few years ago they refurbished City Hall, that $200 million bond measure. When they pulled up the carpets in the mayor’s office, they found a big stain on the subfloor. It was the mayor’s dried blood. Still there, all those years later, just a stain on some concrete. His widow and his kids, they’re still here in town. They’re good people. I forbade my staff from mentioning the bloodstain to the press. They would have had a field day with that. We just let it rest. Put that new carpet in and didn’t say a word, to spare the family from reliving what that pathetic coward did to their lives.”

  The mayor shrugged and jiggled his glass again. “Fucking Dan White. Seemed like a normal guy. But in every man’s heart there are secrets.”

  “The night before he died, Roland met with Maurice Weathersby. Did you know that?”

  The mayor looked down, then back at Marko. When he did there was something colder in his tone. “Not a clue.”

  “We obtained an audiotape of their conversation. Roland claimed that on July 19, 2007, you had phone conversations shortly before ten o’clock with a Tommy and a Wayne. Do you remember those conversations now, Mr. Mayor?”

  “I don’t have the slightest idea where you’re going with this, inspector.”

  “That was the night of the La Traviata shooting,” Marko said. “Tommy Phong was the triggerman. Wayne Bordelay was the cop who let Phong and his men shake down the coffeeshop. The cop who was on the take.”

  Marko watched Flanagan stew and then turned up the flame. “Sorry, I forgot. Phong recanted. Not that we can ask him about that, because he’s dead now.”

  Flanagan slammed his fist on the small table with thunderous force, causing Marko’s drink to crash to the floor. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing, inspector? You think you can come in here with some half-assed conspiracy theory and accusation in your voice?”

  Marko leaned forward, his eyes locked with the mayor’s. “Then how do you explain it, mayor? Why that night? Those names? Just coincidence?”

  “You want an explanation?” Suddenly the mayor was calm, talking quickly and persuasively. “Let me tell you something about Roland Solorzano. I didn’t want to speak ill of the dead, but there was a bitterness to him. He was a middle-aged guy who was starting to see that his life wasn’t going to turn out the way he wanted it to. Happens to a lot of people. I’ll tell you how I explain it, inspector. You want motives? Here goes. One, Solorzano had his sights set on getting a taxi medallion. He told me about it once and I told him flat out that I was planning on changing the laws. He wasn’t happy about it. Two, I was quietly asking around about another driver. It was time for a change. I didn’t completely trust him. He might have found out that he was on the verge of losing his job. And three, Maurice Weathersby, who I hasten to remind you is running my opponent’s campaign and has a vested interest in spreading lies about me, was going to pay Roland for any sleaze he concocted, I assume. How much more explanation do you need, inspector?”

  Marko kept pushing. “By that reasoning, Roland dug up a massacre from two years ago and inserted you into it,” he said. “Why would he do that? There are easier ways to smear your boss. He could have claimed he drove you to a different massage parlor every Wednesday night. As campaign smears go, that would work just fine. Better, maybe.”

  The mayor raised an eyebrow almost imperceptibly. Marko had heard a rumor once that Flanagan enjoyed the comfort of paid sex with Asian transvestites. Marko wasn’t planning to blackmail him, but he didn’t mind that his knowledge made the mayor uncomfortable.

  “But this … this is specific,” Marko continued. “It’s elaborate. All it does is raise questions, without any chance of getting answers. If Roland was savvy enough to figure out a way to tie you to La Traviata, he’d be savvy enough to know it wouldn’t really pay off for him. Weathersby admitted he couldn’t do anything with the information.”

  “You’re asking me to justify irrational actions,” the mayor said. “I don’t know why in the hell he’d do it that way. You asked me why he’d want to take me down. I told you. Beyond that, I can’t help you.”

  The mayor sat back in his seat, his face a mask of stone. “Thanks for the drink,” Marko said, getting up. The mayor stayed seated and glared at him. Marko thought he better get rid of the bad taste. It didn’t do any good to have the mayor think of him as an enemy. Maybe it was too late for that, but it was worth trying.

  Marko looked down at the carpet and spoke haltingly. “Sometimes a case gets under your skin a little. I was thinking out loud, trying to make sense of it. There was no offense intended.”

  Mayor Flanagan looked at Marko for several seconds, then something went soft in his face. A synapse firing. Marko decoded it as a temporary truce, but things had changed permanently between them.

  The mayor stood up and put his arm around Marko. “You’re a hell of a cop, kid. If I were you and a piece of evidence pointed to the mayor, I’d jack him up a little too.” He smiled and patted Marko heartily on the back. “Let me know if you need anything else.”

  Marko left the mayor’s office and walked down the marble corridors of City Hall, hearing his footsteps echo and watching tourists take pictures of the massive rotunda hundreds of feet above. He felt no closer to cracking the Solorzano case than he did that first night on Devil’s Slide.

  He heard footsteps behind him and a female voice calling out.

  “Marko, wait. Can I talk to you for a minute?”

  He turned and saw Karen Yancey, carrying two cups of Starbucks coffee.

  Chapter 15

  Yancey was relatively new to the job and Marko didn’t know her well. Truth be told, he hadn’t made much of an effort. His default mode toward most fellow humans had become one of suspicion in the last couple of years, and that extended to coworkers as well.

  Yancey struck him as a little too green, a little too ambitious. He couldn’t put his finger on why he felt that way, and it was probably nothing in particular she had said or done. He wasn’t proud of not giving her the time of day, but he wasn’t going to apologize about it either.

  “What do you want?”

  She was flushed, having crossed the expanse of marble at a fast walk to catch up with him. “Hey. Just wanted to talk. Got a minute?”

 

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