“Let me guess,” I tell her. “Ben caught Tony taking a loan?”

She nods. “Bingo,” she says. “And Ben was spitting fire.”

I am not surprised. There had been little skirmishes over the Greek’s indiscretions with the client trust account on previous occasions, before I left the firm. He used it like a private slush fund, always just a half jump ahead of complaints by clients to the state bar. On two occasions that I know of, Ben had to smooth ruffled feathers over dinner and fine wine with clients who’d caught the Greek with his fingers in the till, borrowing their retainers.

“This time,” she tells me, “it had gone too far. Skarpellos had taken more than petty cash. And a client had in fact filed a complaint with the bar. It ended with Skarpellos storming out of Ben’s office, after Ben had delivered an ultimatum.”

According to Jo Ann, Potter gave Tony forty-eight hours to restore the money to the trust account, two or three hundred thousand dollars, she can’t remember the exact amount, “borrowed” by the Greek for one of his “business deals,” to cover his interest in some glitzy real estate development. It seems that Skarpellos had one of his perennial cashflow problems.

With the state bar already nosing around, Ben had Jo Ann take two letters, a succinct one-pager to the Greek confirming Ben’s demand that he repay the money, in forty-eight hours, and another to the disciplinary authorities at the bar, so that there would be no question as to who was responsible for this trust imbalance. The first letter was delivered to Tony in a sealed envelope. The second was post-dated, to be mailed two days later from Washington, if Skarpellos did not correct the problem.

Whether Ben would have actually followed through on this threat to send the second letter neither of us can say. But if I know Skarpellos, he was sweating bullets. In a hand of high-stakes poker, Potter could always buffalo the Greek.

“Ben was mad as hell,” she says. “He took it very personal, that Tony would act this way just at a time that federal agents were crawling all over the office getting background information on the Supreme Court appointment.”

I now realize that Potter, on his return from Washington, had more on his mind than my fling with Talia. He had a thieving partner who was threatening to damage his reputation. Stories of embezzled trust funds are not conducive to high court nominations. Senate confirmation would take months and would turn over every rock in Potter’s life. Politicos in Washington were not likely to spend the time to consider which of the partners were culpable and which were the innocent victims in such a scam. The mud would spatter far enough to hit Ben.

“Surely Ben must have discussed this with the other partners.”

She shakes her head between gulps of coffee. “There was nobody else he could confide in.” Nobody but her is what she’s saying. “None of the partners wanted to take sides. They figured Ben was leaving, and they’d be left to face Tony-alone. Not a happy prospect,” she says.

An understatement. In any balls-to-the-wall office showdown the Greek would have eaten any one of them for lunch. He had proven on a dozen different occasions that he could cow them, collectively and individually-except for Ben.

“What’s more to the point”-she takes a long drag on her cigarette-“the letter of complaint to the bar, the one I prepared for Ben to sign, it disappeared. The file copies, the original, every trace of that letter is gone. Even the backup on the drive in my computer,” she says, “all gone.”

This interests me, and she can read it in my face.

“The day after Ben died,” she says, “I looked for it in the directory. I tried to pull it up and read it back using Ben’s confidential code. But it was gone. Somebody had erased it. And there’s no hard copy,” she adds. “Ben didn’t want it floating around the office.”

The significance of this correspondence has not been lost on Jo Ann, and I wonder aloud why she hasn’t gone to the cops.

“And tell ’em what? I have no proof,” she says. “But it gets worse. I went to Mr. Edwards. Told him about Ben’s concerns regarding the trust account. He said he’d check into it. The next day he came back, very friendly.” Jo Ann smiles like some innocent. “Told me that the account was solid, that there was no trust imbalance. No imbalance.” She repeats this to herself, nodding with purpose as if to show how inane she’d been to ask. “I got the axe an hour later.”

I could have told her, like O’Mally owns the Dodgers, Tony owns Tom Edwards. They are partners in name only. But there is little point in rubbing this salt into the wounds now.

“Why didn’t the police interview you?”

She shakes her head. “I was in England for four months, visiting relatives. Been wanting to do it for years. Getting canned gave me the opportunity.”

This explains it. The cops weren’t breaking their backs chasing leads or sources. Succumbing to a little convenient myopia, they started with one suspect and back-filled their case against Talia. In no time she found herself buried up to her shoulders, relying on Skarpellos to help her out. Suddenly it all makes sense, the inept Mr. Cheetam, Tony waiting in the wings to inherit Ben’s estate, leading Talia to the precipice. Like fingers in a glove it all fits.

“Would you testify?” I ask her.

“Sing like the little old wine maker,” she says. “What have I got to lose?” Then she pauses. “There’s just one problem. Without something more than my word, the tune may sound a lot like sour grapes.”

CHAPTER 24

“Bad news-and surprises,” says Harry. He waltzes through the door, a thin leather briefcase under his arm.

“Skarpellos has an alibi,” he says. “It gets worse.” His expression is somber. This is a serious blow. “Tod Hamilton does not.”

This is not something I want to hear.

He sits to fill me in on the details.

Harry’s been off doing a little gumshoe. Primed by the information from Jo Ann, he’s backtracked over Tony’s statement to the police, something we hadn’t paid much attention to during the prelim, the Greek’s whereabouts the night of the killing.

“Says he went to a basketball game in Oakland,” Harry tells me, “with a friend.”

“The friend?” I ask.

“You’re gonna love this,” he says. “Your client, Susan Hawley.”

“Sonofabitch,” I say. I snap the pencil I am holding in two.

“Can you beat it?” he says. “No wonder he was so anxious to pay for her defense. Guess who would have shown up prominently in the ‘boink book’ if Lama ever got his hands on it?”

The Greek has been using me to keep Hawley quiet. Tony had lied to me that day in his office. The firm never had a client. There was no prominent politician they were running cover for. The Greek was trying to save his own ass. I wonder how often he had used Hawley to chum the political waters for votes on zoning matters or other “business.”

“Did the cops get a statement from Hawley?” I ask him.

“You bet,” says Harry.

“Does she confirm the facts, his alibi?” I ask.

“Like somebody wrote a script for her,” he says.

I fix on him across the desk. “What do you think?”

“I think Skarpellos had a burning need to put a muzzle in Ben Potter’s mouth, and the opportunity to do it.” He smiles. “I think the lady’s lying. Now ask me how we prove it.”

I keep my own counsel on this, but I tend to agree with Harry. If Hawley had been hired by the Greek to service political patrons before the scandal began to break, she would have been the perfect alibi on the night of the murder.

“For the right price Susan Hawley would willingly allow words to be put in her mouth,” I tell him.

“Among other things,” says Harry.

“What about Hamilton?”

“No such luck,” he says. He looks at me perplexed, but not entirely surprised.