San Francisco Noir 2 by Peter Maravelis

Author:Peter Maravelis [Maravelis, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
ISBN: 9781933354651
Publisher: Akashic Books
Published: 2009-02-02T05:00:00+00:00

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All Souls Legal Cooperative is housed in a ramshackle Victorian on one of the steeply sloping side streets of Bernal Heights, a working-class district in the southern part of the city. The co-op caters mainly to clients who live in the area: people with low to middle incomes who don’t have much extra money for expensive lawyers. The sliding fee scale allows them to obtain quality legal assistance at reasonable prices—a concept that is probably outdated in the self-centered 1980s, but is kept alive by the people who staff All Souls. It’s a place where the lawyers care about their clients, and a good place to work.

I left my MG at the curb and hurried up the front steps through the blowing fog. The warmth inside was almost a shock after the chilliness at Fort Point; I unbuttoned my jacket and went down the long deserted hallway to the big country kitchen at the rear. There I found my boss, Hank Zahn, stirring up a mug of the Navy grog he often concocts on cold November nights like this one.

He looked at me, pointed to the rum bottle, and said, “Shall I make you one?” When I nodded, he reached for another mug.

I went to the round oak table under the windows, moved a pile of newspapers from one of the chairs, and sat down. Hank added lemon juice, hot water, and sugar syrup to the rum; dusted it artistically with nutmeg; and set it in front of me with a flourish. I sampled it as he sat down across from me, then nodded my approval.

He said, “How’s it going with the DiCesare investigation?”

Hank had a personal interest in the case; Vanessa’s fiancé, Gary Stornetta, was a long-time friend of his, which was why I, rather than one of the large investigative firms her father normally favored, had been asked to look into it. I said, “Everything I’ve come up with points to it being a disappearance, not a suicide.”

“Just as Gary and her parents suspected.”

“Yes. I’ve covered the entire area around the bridge. There are absolutely no witnesses, except for the tour bus driver who saw her park her car at four and got suspicious when it was still there at seven and reported it. But even he didn’t see her walk off toward the bridge.” I drank some more grog, felt its warmth, and began to relax.

Behind his thick horn-rimmed glasses, Hank’s eyes became concerned. “Did the DiCesares or Gary give you any idea why she would have done such a thing?”

“When I talked with Ernest and Sylvia this morning, they said Vanessa had changed her mind about marrying Gary. He’s not admitting to that, but he doesn’t speak of Vanessa the way a happy husband-to-be would. And it seems like an unlikely match to me—he’s close to twenty years older than she.”

“More like fifteen,” Hank said. “Gary’s father was Ernest’s best friend, and after Ron Stornetta died, Ernest more or less took him on as a protégé.

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