“Overinclusiveness… But something else jumps out at me. Quick’s car is listed last. You’d think spotting his father’s car would have caught Gavin’s attention first.”

“Unless he listed the cars in order of arrival, and Daddy arrived last.”

“Good point,” I said. “So what are you thinking, some sort of meeting?”

He nodded. “Quick and Albin Larsen and the other two. The big question is why was Gavin surveilling Daddy? It smells to me like Daddy was up to no good, and that’s why he cleaned out Gavin’s room- getting rid of any evidence his kid mighta come up with. Then he left town- his kid’s just been murdered, and he’s off traveling again, leaving the wife alone, doing business. It smells ripe, Alex. The mistake ol’ Jerry made was not clearing out Gavin’s clothes.”

He picked up the list, refolded it, put it back in his pocket. “It’s not much. But to my mind, it changes everything. Let me tell you about the other guys on the list.”

I said, “The con cleaning the building- Kristof- said his parole officer was named Hacker.”

He sat down at the kitchen table. “I’m impressed. Yeah, he’s a PO working out of the downtown office, and Raymond Degussa’s one of his former clients. Major client, string of arrests for assault, larceny, extortion, armed robbery, dope. Degussa beat a bunch of raps, pleaded out others, did some county time, finally got tagged for fifteen years on a strong-arm robbery beef. San Quentin, time shaved for good behavior, and he seems to have behaved himself during parole, checked in with Hacker regularly, got free and clear two years ago. I called over to Q and spoke with an assistant warden who’s relatively new to the job and didn’t know Degussa. What she dug up for me was that he was a dominant con, no gang membership, but he never got victimized. They figured him for a supplier of some kind because he always had cigarettes and candy. He was also a suspect in at least two inmate murders, but there was no evidence.”

“Career bad guy,” I said. “Two suspected murders, and he got time shaved for good behavior?”

“Without evidence he did. Prison administrators have their own agenda: They’re always overcrowded, want to move guys out. And wonder of wonders, Degussa appears to be rehabilitated. Not a single brush with the law since being off parole.”

“A friendly parole officer would help that,” I said. “Successful rehabilitation. Albin Larsen would like that. Maybe Degussa was one of his pet projects. Or Mary Lou Koppel’s. What weapon was used in those prison murders?”

“A blade; in prison it’s always a blade.”

“Any impaling?”

“Nothing about that in his file.”

“Degussa went away on a strong-arm robbery,” I said. “Any weapon at all?”

“Just intimidation.”

“Did Bennett Hacker spend any time at any of those satellite offices?”

“Flora Newsome,” he said.

“She worked in parole. It seems awfully coincidental.”

“Yeah… I didn’t want to ask too much. If Hacker’s dirty, I don’t want him to know I’m snooping around. But I’ll do what I can to sniff behind the scenes.”

He drummed the table. “I’m getting that feeling- the stew is starting to simmer. But everything’s still at arm’s length- like I’m cooking in someone else’s kitchen.”

He got up, paced the room, tugged at his tie. “The way I see it, Gavin convinced himself he was gonna be some kind of investigative reporter, was nosing around in his dad’s affairs. Or, he’d noticed funny goings-on at the therapy building, first. Started doing some serious surveillance, took notes.”

“A psychologist, a parole officer, and a con,” I said. “Without Jerry Quick, it could just be some sort of treatment arrangement.”

“Precissimoso. Jerry being there takes it in a whole other direction. Jerry’s a womanizing hustler who hires someone like Angie Paul for his front gal. He’s also Sonny Koppel’s tenant. And Sonny’s Mary Lou’s business partner in the halfway houses, the moneyman. The one who referred Jerry to Mary Lou in the first place.”

“Have you found any business dealings between Sonny and Quick?”

“Not a damn thing. And I dug deep, yesterday and early today.”

He slouched over to the fridge, returned drinking pink grapefruit juice from a carton. “Can’t find a speck of dirt on ol’ Sonny. No slumlord problems, no criminal complaints, no one in Organized Crime has ever heard of him. So far he’s coming across as exactly what he claims to be: a guy who owns a lot of properties. He was also being straight about giving away big bucks. Franchise Tax Board says Charitable Planning is on the up-and-up as a tax-exempt foundation. Sonny files his papers on time and donates at least a million every year.”

“To whom?”

“The poor, the sick, the halting. Every worthy disease, plus Save the Bay, Nourish the Trees, Coddle the Spotted Owl, whatever.”

“Saint Sonny,” I said.

“If it looks too good to be true… I don’t know what that meeting was about, but the only thing that makes sense is they’re all involved in something shady. Maybe Sonny got a hook into Jerry Quick because Quick’s always cash shy. But I still can’t figure out what use Quick would be to him. Putting that aside for the moment, what kind of scam could a bunch of shrinks pull off that would make big bucks?”

“The first thing that comes to mind,” I said, “is basic fraud- overbilling insurance or the state. The easiest target would be the state- some kind of government contract. Sonny would know how to work that angle. He gets the government to finance his halfway houses and his senior citizen housing. He claims the halfway houses were Mary Lou and Larsen’s idea. Maybe that’s true, but if owning halfways helped plug Sonny into a subsidized treatment plan, that would appeal to his business sense.”

“Therapy for cons,” he said.

“A built-in supply of patients. Patients they could bill for whether or not they treated them because who’s going to complain?”

“Sonny and Mary Lou and Larsen. And Gavin saw some kind of staff meeting.”

“Gavin didn’t copy down Gull’s license number,” I said. “So maybe Gull missed the meeting. Or he wasn’t involved. He’s got personal problems, and he sweats too much. If I were setting up a slick criminal enterprise, I’d view him as a poor risk.”

“I’d still like to know why Gavin ditched him as a therapist.” He paced some more. “For a guy like Sonny to get involved in a scam, it would have to be big money.”

“Maybe not,” I said. “Sonny claims he’s not into accumulating stuff. That seems to be true, meaning he’s turned on by the game- the process of making money.”

“Soaking the government.”

“Or Sonny did figure out a way to make some serious money. He claims he was holding the ground floor open until Koppel and the others decided about group therapy. If they were setting up some sort of parolee treatment that brought in big bucks, that would justify leaving the Charitable Planning suite vacant. I got into the space, yesterday. They were cleaning the carpets, and I was able to walk in. Empty, except for a small office for Sonny and a big room with some folding chairs. Why would Sonny need chairs if all he did was come in and sign checks? But they’d be useful if someone checked and you were claiming to be running groups. Of course if the person checking was your pal, you wouldn’t need to put up much of a front.”

“Bennett Hacker,” he said. “There’s some deal with the parole board, and Hacker’s the overseer.”

“A guy in Hacker’s position could also supply names in return for kickback. And Raymond Degussa, being a wily, dominant con- someone who pulled off robberies using intimidation alone- could convince the patients to cooperate.”

“Headshrinking for parolees,” he said. “Something like that could really bring in serious money?”

“If there were enough parolees,” I said. “Let’s do the math. Private practice group therapy can run between fifty and a hundred bucks an hour. Medi-Cal reimburses for much less- fifteen, twenty. But there are all sorts of other things you can bill Medi-Cal for. Individual treatment, initial intakes, follow-ups, testing, case conferences-”