An Insignificant Case

Chapter Eight

CHAPTER EIGHT

Charlie spent an hour on a divorce he was handling for his cousin. When he was finished, his thoughts returned to Guido Sabatini. Who was he before he became delusional? Charlie searched the Web for “Lawrence Weiss.” Several individuals popped up, but one stood out.

Lawrence Weiss majored in mathematics at Cal Berkeley, where he earned a bachelor’s degree, and Stanford, where he had earned his master’s. Weiss had used his mathematical abilities to amass a small fortune in casinos around the country until he had been banned for counting cards. While working on his Ph.D., he had been hired by the University of Oregon, and he had been on its faculty until he quit in the middle of the term after claiming that he was a reincarnation of a painter who had trained in Renaissance Italy with Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci.

Charlie stared at the monitor and wondered what had caused Guido’s break from reality. Charlie decided that he would probably never know what it was if he could convince Gretchen Hall to agree to hang the Venice painting in the dining room of La Bella Roma. If that happened, Guido’s case would disappear, and he wouldn’t have to do any more work on it.

He looked at the police report in the Bella Roma case and found the phone number for the restaurant. Salvatore Borelli picked up after three rings.

“La Bella Roma Italian Ristorante. How can I help you?”

“Hi. My name is Charlie Webb, and I’m the attorney representing Guido Sabatini, the guy who took your painting.”

“Condolences. That guy is some piece of work.”

“Yeah, I can see why you’d say that. I’d like to talk to Gretchen Hall so I can get the painting back to her.”

There was dead air for a moment.

When Borelli spoke, he sounded nervous. “Miss Hall isn’t in Oregon. She’s in LA.”

“When will she be back?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Can you give her my number and ask her to call me? I think we can settle the problem pretty quickly.”

“Sure. I’ll tell her you called.”

Charlie recited his number and ended the call. He decided that there was nothing more he could do in Guido’s case until he talked to Gretchen Hall. He put the file on his desk and pulled up the draft of the memorandum in support of the motion to suppress that was due Friday. Then he froze. Gretchen Hall had been arrested on the red carpet along with the guy who produced Amazon !

Charlie began surfing the Web for information about the case against Leon Golden and Gretchen Hall. It didn’t take him long to find a video of a press conference that had been held shortly after the arrests and to recognize a familiar face. Bridget Fournier was standing at a podium in the Multnomah County district attorney’s office in Portland.

During the press conference, Fournier was vague about the facts of the sex trafficking case, so Charlie didn’t know a lot about it when she stepped away from the microphone. He did learn that a man named Yuri Makarov had also been arrested. Charlie frowned as something occurred to him. Guido seemed awfully confident that Gretchen Hall was going to drop the charges against him. Why was he so sure? Suddenly, Charlie had an overpowering desire to know what Guido Sabatini had stolen from the safe in Hall’s office.