Heartbreak Hotel: An Alex Delaware Novel by Jonathan Kellerman

Author:Jonathan Kellerman [Kellerman, Jonathan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literature & Fiction, United States, Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, Mystery, Thrillers & Suspense, Crime, Murder, Suspense, Thrillers
ISBN: 9780345541437
Amazon: B01FBZZNEG
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Published: 2017-02-12T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

23

Twenty minutes later, we were in my office. I expected Milo to commandeer the keyboard but he slumped on the old leather couch. “Go for it.”

William P. Wojik was mentioned in several newspaper articles from 1940 and 1941, all to do with Leroy Hoke’s tax evasion trial. As Hoke’s “accountant” he’d been subpoenaed to testify, no record of what he’d said.

Several papers added another label: “reputed mob moneyman.”

“Reputed” in order to avoid a libel suit. I kept scrolling, found no evidence Wojik had ever been charged criminally. Following Hoke’s conviction, he avoided the public eye until 1975, when he, along with other alums, had been honored at a Yale Club of L.A. gala.

New tag: “esteemed financial consultant and philanthropist.”

A photo from the party showed a white-haired man with a toothbrush mustache and an easy smile. A chubby girl clutched his arm and gazed up at him. Eleven or twelve, pigtails, glasses, a frilly pink dress that threatened to consume her.

The round, perplexed face of a young Belinda Wojik.

Milo said, “His dinner companion. Like he told her, common enemy.”

I keyworded jack mccandless.

Even more coverage on him. A “mob lawyer.” “Reputed” not necessary because the facts were clear. Formerly from Chicago, McCandless had defended “Capone soldiers and other organized crime figures” before moving to San Francisco, where he’d served as the “legal mouthpiece of union bosses and political figures accused of corruption.”

Living in L.A. by the midthirties, McCandless had faced a “potential conflict of interest due to his work on behalf of both jewel-theft victim Count Frederick LaPlante and the chief suspect in the case, mobster Leroy Hoke. However, with no one ever charged in the heist, the necessity of making a choice was avoided.”

I kept scrolling.

Similar to William Wojik, public attention on McCandless had faded soon after Leroy Hoke’s imprisonment. I came across a few anniversary trial rehashes then nothing until a twenty-year-old obituary in the American Bar Association Journal.

McCandless was lauded, in memoriam, as a longtime ABA member who’d served on numerous committees, including several that dealt with professional ethics. Another “noted philanthropist.” He’d died at age ninety-six “peacefully, in his sleep.” Interment at Hollywood Legends Memorial Park, in lieu of flowers any sort of charitable donation was appreciated. Predeceased by his wife and son, Mark McCandless. Survived by his granddaughter, Richeline Sylvester, also an ABA member.

Milo said, “Mob moneyman makes ninety-five, mob lawyer goes him one year better, Thalia pushes a hundred. Maybe the good die young because they bore God.”

I laughed, switched to an image search. “Well, what do you know.”

Half a dozen color shots, like Wojik’s, all in formal garb. Planned Parenthood benefit, same for the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, three for the art museum, the zoo.

Even in old age, Jack McCandless had been a forbidding presence, well over six feet tall and three hundred pounds or more, with a hairless bullet head and crushed features. Tiny porcine eyes aimed like handguns intent on demolishing the lens. Or the photographer.

One black-and-white shot, decades older, was familiar: Perino’s, Hoke and a tiny blonde.

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