The 8th Confession

bitch when I was here.”

“Ha! You were the best mad patient I’ve ever had.”

“Come on!” She laughed again.

“Really. You didn’t threaten me, didn’t hit me or stick me with a needle. I’ve got a guy in the ER right now with three broken ribs and a concussion, and he won’t give up his cell phone. ‘I’m working,’ he says. Took three of us to wrench his phone out of his hand.”

And just then, Chesney’s beeper went off. He looked at it, said, “Damn. I’ve got to get back. Um, Yuki, would you want to do this again sometime?”

“Sure,” said Yuki. “I’m only a taxi ride away.”

“Maybe we could go somewhere else. Maybe you could show me the city.”

Yuki gave him a coy smile, said, “So I guess I’m forgiven.”

John put his hand over hers. “I’ll let you know.”

She laughed and so did he, and their eyes locked until he took his hand away – and then he was gone.

Yuki was already waiting for his call.

Chapter 36

CINDY TOOK A right turn out of her apartment building, cell phone pressed to her ear, listening to Lindsay say, “I wish I could do something, but we’re drowning in the Bailey case. Drowning.”

“My editor is holding page one of the Metro section for my story. I’ve got a deadline. You’re saying you’ve got nothing at all?”

“You want the truth? Conklin and I were kicked off Bagman Jesus on day one. We tried to work it on our own time -”

“Thanks anyway, Linds. No, really,” Cindy said, snapping her phone closed. Enough said. No one was working the case.

Cindy walked up Townsend Street to the corridor between her apartment and the spot where Bagman Jesus had been murdered. She stopped at the humble shrine outside the train yard, blood still staining the sidewalk, newly wilted flowers and handwritten notes woven into the chain-link fence.

She stood for a while reading the messages from friends telling Bagman Jesus that he’d be missed and remembered. These notes were heartbreaking. A good man had been killed, and the police were too busy to find his killer. So who was fighting in Bagman’s corner?

She was.

Cindy moved on, keeping pace with pedestrians exiting the train station. She turned onto Fifth Street and made her way toward the brick building in the middle of the block that housed the soup kitchen called From the Heart.

On one side of the soup kitchen was a hole-in-the-wall liquor store. On the other side was a fast-food Chinese restaurant that looked really low, like it served tree squirrel sauteed with brown sauce and peanuts.

In between the restaurant and the soup kitchen was a black door. Cindy had a date behind that door. She hoisted her computer bag higher up on her shoulder, turned the knob, and gave the door a shove with her hip. It opened at the foot of a dark and sour-smelling stairway.

Cindy began the steep climb, the stairs wrapping around a small landing, rising again to a floor with three doors, the signage identifying them as a nail salon, a massage parlor, and, toward the front of the building, PINCUS AND PINCUS, ATTORNEYS-AT-LAW.

Cindy pressed the intercom button on the panel beside the door, gave her name, and was buzzed in. She took a seat in the reception area, an alcove filled wall-to-wall with a cracked leather sofa and a coffee table. She leafed through an old copy of Us Weekly, looking up as someone called her name.

The man introduced himself as Neil Pincus. He was dressed in gray slacks, a white button- down shirt with the sleeves rolled up, no tie. He had a receding hairline and a pleasant, unremarkable face, and he was wearing a gold wedding band. He put out his right hand and so did she.

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Pincus.”

“Neil. Come on in the back. I can give you only a few minutes, but they’re all yours.”

Chapter 37

CINDY SAT ACROSS from the attorney’s desk, her back to the dirty window. She glanced at a grouping of framed photos on the credenza to her right: the Pincus brothers with their good-looking wives and teenage daughters. Neil Pincus stabbed a button on his telephone console, said to his brother, “Al, please take my calls. I’ll be just a few minutes.”

Then he said to Cindy, “How can I help you?”

“You’ve got a heck of a reputation in this neighborhood.”

“Thanks. We do what we can,” Pincus said. “People get arrested and either get a public defender or they ask us.”

“Nice of you to do this work for free.”

“It’s pretty rewarding, actually, and we’re not alone. We work with a group of businesspeople around here who kick in money for legal costs and special needs. We have a needle-exchange program. We run a literacy program -”

The phone rang. Neil Pincus peered at the caller ID, turned his eyes back to Cindy, and talked over the ring tone. “I’m sorry. But I think you should tell me why you’re here before the phone drives us both crazy.”

“I’m doing a five-part piece about Bagman Jesus, the homeless man recently found dead.”

“I read your story.”

“Okay. Good. So this is it,” Cindy said. “I can’t get the police interested in his death. They don’t think his murder is solvable.”

Pincus sighed, said, “Well, that’s typical.”

“I need Bagman’s real name in order to get a fingerhold on his past and work forward from there. I’m hoping he may have been a client of yours. If not, maybe you could lead me to someone who knew him.”

“Ah. If I’d known what you wanted, I could have saved you a trip. I’ve seen him on the street, sure, but Bagman Jesus never came here, and if he had, I probably wouldn’t tell you.”

“Lawyer-client privilege?”

“Not exactly. Look, Cindy, I don’t know you, so I shouldn’t be telling you what to do. But I will anyway.

“The homeless aren’t stray puppies. They’re homeless for a reason. Most of them are drug addicts. Or they’re psychotic. Some are violent. I’m sure you’re well- meaning, but this fellow was murdered.”

“I understand.”

“Do you? You’re a pretty girl in pretty clothes, walking around the Tenderloin alone asking who killed Bagman Jesus. Just suppose for a minute that you find his killer – and he turns on you?”

Chapter 38

WHEN CINDY LEFT Neil Pincus, she was irritated and just as determined as before. The lawyer had called her a girl. Like she was one of his kids. He’d underestimated her tenacity, and he didn’t get that she was a working journalist who covered crime.

She was careful. She was experienced. She was a pro.