It just hadn’t crossed his mind until now that the perjury of drug cops had become a recruiting mechanism for people like Jackson to sign on to the agenda of corrupt lawyers like Hamlin.
The truth-that Donnally knew, that she knew, that every cop in the city knew-was that the task force officers would just sweep into the projects and round people up and search them and the area. If the cop found dope on somebody, he’d falsely testify he’d seen the dealer drop it. If the cop found it in a wheel well or in a bush or in a fence board knothole, he’d look for the guy with the worst attitude or who was already on probation or parole, and lay it on him.
Donnally thought back on his conversation with Janie at the kitchen table and understood that while his father’s lies had driven him toward a uniform and a badge in search of the truth, Jackson’s past had driven her toward a life beyond truth and lies.
“You’re right,” Donnally said. “But I suspect the private investigators Hamlin hired weren’t like you, hadn’t had your experiences, weren’t from the street. I’ll bet they’re all college grads who never stepped into a housing project until they got paid to.”
Donnally pointed up at the courtroom sketch in the Demetrio Arellano case, the one showing Hamlin looking at his watch. It was the case in which the private investigator working for Hamlin had left a threatening message for the main prosecution witness, who then fled to El Salvador.
“Is that what you mean by pushing the limits?” Donnally said.
Jackson cringed and lowered her head.
Donnally pushed on. “I don’t understand how your moral outrage at the stuff that happened to you, and at the things you’ve seen in your life, transformed into a way of looking at the world that allowed you to work for Hamlin.”
Donnally watched her taking long breaths, not looking up. He wondered whether he’d jammed her too hard and too fast. After half a minute, she spoke.
“I don’t know.” She looked up. “It wasn’t about the money for me. Not like it was for his PIs. Money bought them. They pretended they were in it for the cause, but they were no more than lab rats, conditioned to do tricks for the pellets. For me. .” Her voice faded. After a moment, she made another attempt. “For me, I guess, he was the only game in town.”
“Where else did you try?”
“The police review commission. I worked there for two years.” Her voice ratcheted up again. “What a bunch of incompetent assholes. They were all in it for the swagger. Didn’t do shit. The same rotten cops kept coming through over and over, but nothing ever happened to them. They beat people. Lied about them. Never got fired. Hardly ever even got suspended.”
Jackson paused and her vision clouded. Another trip back into the past.
“Then one day in a preliminary hearing in a dope case, I watched Mark nail one of the worst of those cops.” She blinked and focused on Donnally. “Ripped him a new one. Did more in ten minutes than the commission did in a generation. The cop resigned that same day, afraid to ever testify in court again. I walked in here the next morning and asked Mark for a job.”
“I’m not sure that answers my question.”
“And I’m not sure I can answer it. All I know is everything looks different now that Mark is dead.” Jackson pressed her lips together, then lowered her gaze. “For some reason I keep thinking about Jonestown. My uncle committed suicide with the rest of them down there.” She looked again at Donnally, but her eyes seemed dulled by a terror that had turned inward. “People who stayed up here and survived told me after Jim Jones died it was like they all woke up and saw what insanity it had been all along.”
Chapter 26
Got a lead for you,” Navarro told Donnally over the telephone just after he’d returned to Hamlin’s desk. “A court clerk just called me. A couple of months ago, one of the victims in a case confronted Hamlin outside of court after a not guilty verdict. Threatened to kill him. Wasn’t the kind of thing she’d ever seen happen before. Victims break down and cry in their seats when the crook goes free, they don’t run to the hallway to issue threats. It was People v. Thule. Got lots of local press coverage.”
Donnally located the case on his list, found the closed file in a cabinet in the conference room, and brought it back into the office. According to the SFPD summary sheet, Thule was a mall owner who hired Gordon amp; Sons Construction to replace a steel pedestrian bridge from the second floor of a parking garage to the shopping area. The structure collapsed a year later, on the day before Easter, killing two shoppers, one of whom was pregnant, and injuring four others. The cause of the collapse was faulty Chinese steel used by the construction company.
John Gordon told the police and OSHA, and testified at the grand jury, that Thule had directed him to purchase all the steel from a particular U.S. importer. He produced letters to support his claim. The defendant, Thule, refused all law enforcement interviews and pled the Fifth at the grand jury.
The DA charged Thule with three counts of manslaughter for the two adult victims and the fetus.
Donnally found two private investigators’ invoices in the file. One did all but one interview. That one was done by Frank Lange, among the most well-known private investigators in the city. He was one of a very few that politicians, business leaders, and the wealthy hired when the truth was against them. Donnally had never seen him and had no reason to pay attention to him during his cop years since Lange had never been hired to work on the defense side of any of Donnally’s cases.
According to news clippings in the file, Lange had testified in Thule’s trial that he’d confronted Gordon with what Lange claimed were the true versions of the same letters, ones from Thule, not directing the contractor to buy the Chinese steel, but warning him against using it. Lange also testified that faced with this evidence, Gordon had admitted forging the ones that allegedly incriminated Thule.
Interviews of the jurors after the trial showed three of the jurors believed Lange, and those three convinced the rest that Lange’s testimony provided sufficient reasonable doubt for a not guilty verdict.
Donnally placed the investigators’ invoices side by side on the desk blotter.
The investigator who did most of the work charged a hundred dollars an hour and billed a total of twelve thousand dollars.
Lange billed at a flat rate of fifteen thousand dollars-for one interview and one hour of testimony.
Donnally called Jackson into the office to ask her about the connection between Lange and Hamlin.
“Mark and Lange go way back,” Jackson said. “They started out at about the same time. I guess you could say that they grew up together in the business. Because of how much Frank charges, for the last ten years Mark only used him for the make-or-break interviews.”
“Like the Thule case.”
Jackson nodded. “He specializes in impeaching witnesses and victims, and jurors love him. Maybe because he seems like an ordinary guy, one of them. Somebody you’d go to have pizza with and complain to about your wife. I went to watch him a couple of times. Comes across kinda mousy. Yes-sirring and no-sirring the DA and the judge. The prosecutor gets aggressive with him and the jurors feel like they’re under attack, too. But when he got back here after testifying in court, he wasn’t that way at all. They’d come in swaggering and hoot it up like they’d bluffed their way to winning the World Series of Poker. High-fiving like juveniles.”
“You ever see any proof he perjured himself?”
Jackson smiled and gazed at Donnally as though at a child who’d selected the correct square peg, but couldn’t quite fit it into the hole.