Chapter 2

As I've admitted, I've got a very trusting sort of nature but I'm no fool. In return for my revenge I'd handed over a good bit of my soul in return. Mr. Virzi would have plenty of work for me in years to come, defending his associates and keeping the authorities (local, state and federal) as far out of his business affairs as possible.

This was a deal with the devil that at the time I was willing and even eager to make, consequences in the years ahead be damned!

The hardest part was the waiting and for a day or two I wasn't even certain if Calista and her boss were going to even be able to take their planned vacation. The Saturday before their departure, at their biggest and parent store on Market Street a large well-organized 'smash and grab' robbery took place, seizing over $650,000 dollars worth of Rolex, Patek Philippe, Tag Heuer, Hublot and Cartier watches and several pieces of high value designer custom jewelry. The merchandise was far too valuable for common robbers to ever hope to be able to fence. All of the watches were absolutely unpawnable, each having traceable serial numbers.

The criminals caught on camera inside the store appeared to be common Hispanic gang members, but their tastes for stolen loot were extremely professional. This more than suggested 'inside job' to SFPD and the retailer's mega-insurance company. Calista and Irving had to answer a lot of probing questions but none of the evidence pointed towards them, and they were able to make their plane flights to Florida on schedule, to enjoy their sex in the sun without a care in the world.

To make things worse, an on-duty security guard in the jewelry department was shot and badly wounded by an overly nervous gang member and remained in critical condition for some days after the robbery. The guard, as trained and following company security procedures, had not offered any resistance to the armed thieves but he had been senselessly shot anyway. He'd make a full recovery in time but the violent attempted murder just increased SFPD's interest in solving this case in record time. With the couple getting ready to leave town shortly afterwards, this did raise an eyebrow or two.

Actually, for my wife and her lover, it seemed that their problems were only just now beginning!

About a week later I got the joyful phone call I had been expecting. I had my mobile phone with me at the cabin on the Russian River (heavy and the size of a brick in those days) and I was already well-served that early afternoon with six or seven bottles of Henry Weinhard's Reserve beer already down the hatch as I nervously drank while fishing with some friends.

"Phil, I've been trying to get ahold of you at home but I just now remembered that you were heading up to the cabin. Listen up! I'm in the Dade County jail in Miami and I need you to come bail me out, fast!"

"Bail you out? What for? Did you nick something at the jewelry convention? Ha ... ha ... ha..."

"Goddamn it Phil! Shut the fuck up and get down here and bail me out of here!"

"No ... fuck you princess! I'm on vacation ... by myself as usual because your plans were always more important than mine. Use your own damn money and bail yourself out!"

"I can't! My accounts are all frozen and I can't get a penny. Besides, they set bail for me at one million dollars, that's at least one hundred kay hard cash to a bailsman, and I don't have it! There has been some big misunderstand somehow ... they've charged me with felony theft, international trafficking in stolen diamonds, assault and all sorts of other things ... they're adding new charges every time I talk to them!"

"I don't have that kind of money, empress of the frigid west, even if I cleaned out Justin's college savings account. Your tight ass is on your own ... as least until we run out of beer up here or fish in river. Besides, I'm not licensed to practice law in Florida, so be a good girl and confess to everything. Maybe they'll let you off with a severe spanking!"

With that I hung up on her and went back to my fishing buddies and started to do some really serious drinking. The phone rang nearly constantly the next couple of days before I returned home to San Francisco but I didn't answer it once.

Yes, our house high upon Tank Hill had a great view and was an easy streetcar trip down Market Street to my work. I'd made every single dollar of the mortgage payment myself and I'd decided that I'd keep the place, after a little cleanup and redecoration. Besides, when the States of California and Florida (not to mention perhaps the Feds for interstate flight and transportation of stolen goods) got finished with Calista and Irving, they'd be calling prison their new homes for the next decade or two. With a good divorce attorney (actually a very good one) I'd gain sole custody of our son and the house ... and frankly that was all I ever really cared about at the moment.

A little over a year later I was having a working but friendly lunch with my old boss at the DA's office. We were doing some minor horse trading, working out a couple of plea bargains that my various clients could live with and getting the charges for yet another minor offense for one of boss Virzi's lads dismissed. Yeah, every month it was becoming more overtly obvious that the mob was becoming my biggest single client. My revenues were still growing again this year, nearly equally matching what Calista and I had earned as a couple previously.

Thinking of my ex-wife caused my face to temporally darken with obvious sadness. Yes I had wanted (and had gotten) revenge against my faithless cheating whore of a wife, but I had loved Calista once and sometimes I just wished things could have been otherwise. If she'd loved her jerk/petty thief of a boss, why hadn't she just asked for a divorce? I'd been too weak, I guessed, always willing to give her everything she'd wanted and then more. I suppose she just thought it was better the way things were, to keep taking and taking more, all the while having her bit of fun on the side?

"Phil ... Joyce and I are sad as we can be about this business with Calista, we really are. Truthfully, we never liked her very much, the times we met her just after the two of you were married, right after you joined the ADA's office. Is the divorce final yet?"

"Effective last month." I replied, looking away to look at pedestrian traffic passing by our Union Square restaurant. Anything other than having to look into my old boss's eyes where he could see the hurt. The pain was surprisingly still pretty fresh, even with the divorce decree in my hands. I was making money hand over fist and now swinging single to boot, but somehow I just wasn't having a lot of fun.

"Our office has completed making our own filings, concerning the big store robbery. She's named as an accomplice to the crime of course, for providing the gang with the security information and the alarm shutoff key before the break-in. Unfortunately, that also makes her an accessory to the attempted murder of the security guard, even though she wasn't physically present at the time of commission of the crime. That's the law on conspiracy for you, in for a dime and you're in for a dollar. With the gang using guns in commission of the crime that's some more serious hard time too! A really clever defense attorney {cough – cough} could probably get the charges significantly reduced, maybe even get her out in ten or less, after the Florida time is served. That sentence was eight to sixteen, right?"

I nodded. She'd get parole in Florida about four years we figured, just due to overcrowding alone, but the word was already that she wasn't accruing much in the way of 'good time'. The haughty bitch hadn't learned to change her tune much, if at all. I had a local PI there quietly tracking her prison record and she wasn't taking to the discipline well. She'd need to learn, and fast ... if she ever wanted to taste freedom before she'd be able to collect social security!

"For the local charges, is Morrissey's still her assigned PD?" My old boss twitched his nose and upper lip and grunted something that sounded like a confirmation. Morrissey was one of the newer members of the Public Defender's office, a gal pretty much straight out of law school (near the very bottom of her class) and with a chip on her shoulder. Already she was getting the 'unwinnable' cases that no other ADA wanted marring their own records of success. She had the unique talent of pissing off judges and annoying a jury to the extent that it severely prejudiced her cases.

"You're one of the very best Phil, but I can understand that you don't want to defend her yourself, but if you had done so, she'd probably be out already with deferred adjudication and probation. Just give me the word Phil and I'll pull in an old favor and get them to assign someone else ... anyone else you'd like, to defend her. There is a good whiff of circumstantial evidence to a lot of the case against her, and frankly, if someone could put up a believable argument or two on her behalf, I think they'd jump on the idea of a deal. Work the sentencing to include time served in Florida at the very least. What about it?"

"Need to think about that one Ned. Part of me still wants to 'torch the bitch' and let her rot away. I still don't ever want to see her again anyway. On the other hand, I've seen the poor clowns locked away in San Quentin on a far too regular basis and I can't see Calista doing well at the women's facility in Chino either."

"Let me think about it." I told him, and I did!

Twelve years later I was tending bar, business as usual and just enjoying the sights and sounds of another lovely Lovett sunset. The late summer breeze was blowing softly and Charles or Charline had just turned on the magnificent neon lights for the diner and motel, casting its own happy glow down the length of the beach.

It was one of the moments that I just seemed to live for with expectation every evening, knowing that I was at complete peace with the world and that the world was entirely at peace with me. Charli would be home too, waiting to serve up dinner in an hour or two for me as well, or perhaps on such a lovely evening she'd just bring it down to the beach with her, with enough probably for a dozen friends as well so that we'd all feast here at the Cantina tonight.

Life couldn't have been better, I thought for perhaps the one hundredth time this week alone ... and then I saw Calista for the first time in over thirteen years.

Calista was walking along down the beach with my son Justin and his wife Carole and holding in her arms our young granddaughter, while our slightly older grandson raced ahead of them, wanting to arrive first at the Cantina to meet me. They were coming from the southwest side of the beach, the much quieter section near the marshes, and the Marsh-King's place. Perhaps visiting there for pleasure or even just enjoying the walk together as a family. Or at least as much of a family was possible without me there too by their side.

I'd known my ex-wife was coming to Lovett to stay, to live with our son and his wife to help out my daughter-in-law, who was in relatively delicate health still. My son couldn't have picked a finer bride but since her latest pregnancy her health had been seriously impaired and her recovery had been long and slow. My son's a pipeline engineer for a local oil and gas firm and he travels a lot, often out on oilrigs in the gulf for weeks at a time. With her illness and two young children, Carole had been having serious difficulties coping with everyday minor problems, even after hiring some part-time to help with the running of the household.

The matter of 'what to do about Calista' had come to a head about five years ago while I was still in San Francisco. I'd been muttering increasingly loudly about quitting/selling the practice and/or just getting on the next plane out of the city to anywhere else but here for awhile ... but yet I lingered on.

It was hard to say what my main problem was, whether I just hated and loathed my job these days or else it just the sight of my own face in the mirror.

Giovanni Virzi had been a fair and reasonable crime boss, as they go. He didn't tend to hire thugs and gunsels and liked his senior assistants to find creative ways of solving problems that didn't (usually) involve two .22 bullets to the head and short trip into the Pacific Ocean to be crab chow. Unfortunately, his business competitors in the Russian mob weren't nearly as enlightened. In the course of a very cold but angry spring weekend Mr. Virzi and the majority of the senior members of his organization were either gunned down in public or died in car explosions. The survivors retaliated, entheusiasticlly ... and rumor was amoung the Italian mob rank and file that the Mad Turk himself personally avenged Mr. Virzi's death by similarly decapitating in response the senior Russian mob leadership, but in a much more private and quiet sort of manner, thus sort of restoring something of a status-quo to a rather nervous city.

With Mr. Virzi's entire organization in shambles I had taken it upon myself to defend the survivors of their various gun related charges up to and including capitol murder but I could tell right from the start that the formerly favorable winds from city hall were now starting to change. Giovanni Virzi might not have started the orgy of violence in the streets (and worse, directly in front of the tourists) but now that he was gone there was no one willing to play a moderating role in restore gangland piece. Sensing weakness on all sides, the growing Hispanic gangs and even some of the more aggressive Chinese tongs now saw opportunities of their own and the flow of bloodshed now never ceased ... but merely hid under the cover of night.

I kept telling my old friends at the ADA's office that I'd had enough – that I'd just finish up one last case or two and then quit, but it seemed that there was always just one more case to be defended. Yet another former Virzi associate with blood clearly dripping down his fingers from exacting yet one more bit of vengeance, another eye for an eye in the name of his dead boss. It was getting well past the point where I could go before any reasonable jury and make my bloodstained defendants appear as victims of circumstance or even acting in innocent self defense. Everyone knew there was a gang war in progress and John Q. Public wanted the streets safe, even if they had to lock up the innocent along with the guilty.

Now losing as many cases as I was winning, I didn't the helpful reminder of a gasoline bomb flying through my front window early one morning to prompt me to sell off my practice quickly, and at something of a bargain price. My son had just graduated from college last fall, gotten married to a very nice girl, and already they were starting a family. He had accepted a job offer in Texas and wanted me to leave San Francisco for good and come with him. But there was one slight catch.

"Look Dad! I know that you've never forgiven mother for what she did to you, and honestly I can understand your feelings about that, but it's time that you stepped out of that locked room you've hidden yourself in since she went into prison and did something ... anything now to help her! She's dying there in prison, even the relatively minimal security one she got assigned to. She won't eat and she's losing 'good time' again! Carole and I visited her last week and talked with one of the assistant Wardens and her doctor, who's overworked and sees at least a thousand patients other than mom. She's lost the will to live entirely and just wants to die now in her cell ... and they're pretty much going to let her."

"Just do something for Mom!" My son repeated ad nauseum, until he was outright begging. "She cried so ... it just destroyed her to see Carole now five months pregnant, knowing that she'll never hold her grandchild. Carole's MD is getting worried about her blood pressure too and wants to put her to bed as a precaution for the last few months. Mom can stay with us! We'll take care of her and she can help with Carole and the baby. Please?"

It was the final 'please' about six or sixteen after that that finally made me decide to help. California's prisons were already horrifically overcrowded and with a few moderately successful defense appeals, I could probably get her sentence halved, and probably also get her good time restored. With luck, I could have her out on parole about a year, two at the latest. It took closer to three, mostly due to the glacial speed at which the pardons and parole board works, but it wasn't much of a challenge to spring her loose eventually. The old defense litigation trickster was back in fine form once again, but I'd already long decided that my ex would be my last and final case. For once, I'd actually be helping to release someone that was really and truly completely innocent!

It was even much more of a pleasant challenge than the way I'd framed her for the robbery!

First of all, Mr. Virzi's assistant (my primary co-partner in this crime of revenge) arranged for a stealthy and professional intrusion into both Calista and Irving's offices late on several evenings to conduct a forensic investigation into their work affairs. It was determined that Irving, at the very least, had been skimming some more or less untraceable smaller and less valuable items, but the books seemed to balance what the executive office safes claimed that they held. A few invoices looked tampered with to the trained eye, but this alone would be an insufficient smoking gun to get the authorities interested, without other reasons to pry deeper.

The finding of the flagship store jewelry department master security alarm key in Irving's desk drawer did suggest alternative possibilities. The fact that he also kept copies of the current security procedures manual in one of his filing cabinets offered another opportunity for minor, but rather detailed additional circumstantial evidence.

The Saturday before the big jewelry robbery, while Calista and Irving were safely accounted for at the Hilton, having their regular tryst, a woman looking and dressed very much like Calista was caught by a nearby security camera going into a Mission District bar that was the front for a minor but aggressive Mexican criminal gang that specialized in smash and grab robberies. Not particularly famous or even very notorious yet, but their names and their leaders' faces had been marked by the SFPD Gang unit for careful watching. Another man, who appeared much like Irving to another nearby grainy security camera, followed behind her and stayed by the entrance to the bar, just inside, remaining in the shadows to watch over her.

It was an entrapment, of course, but our Hispanic gangster patsies were eager for a shot into the big-time, to pull a really major heist and also have a buyer already set for the loot. Our faux-Calista (a hired out-of-town actress selected for her appearance nearly exactly matching my wife's) was told that she was helping a undercover police investigation, to entice the Hispanic gang into a specific course of action, and she was well paid for her bit role, more than enough to ensure her permanent silence.

By handing over the master alarm key, so that the criminals could disable both the silent and public alarms in the jewelry department, and the current manual of security procedures, the gang felt emboldened enough to act and commit the smash and grab exactly as their client had requested.