Hardy 05 - Mercy Rule, The (22 page)

‘Actually’ — Michelle was more comfortable now that they were back to business — ‘I see a way that we can use this to our advantage. We should be able to string this along for a while.’

‘Okay, hit me,’ Hardy said.

‘Take it out to bid. We’ll of course comply with the ruling, but unless the Port wants to take on some — no,
all —
of the expense, I think we can argue that it’s only fair that we solicit bids from competing dredging firms, get the best possible price. Who could argue with that?’

Hardy had to admire her. Say what he would about the values of his own classical training, he had to admit that in the here and now Michelle was a godsend. Competing bids would buy them another few months at least, and anything could happen in a couple of months.

Maybe, Hardy fantasized, he could convince Brunei to hire a team of scuba divers to locate the container in deep secrecy by night and put in some extra units, the presence of which Brunei continued to assert.

‘How would you like to handle the details?’ he asked her. She had already gathered the paperwork and put it atop the stack of briefs they still had to discuss.

‘That’s what I’m here for.’

*
    
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*
    
*
    
*

Before the ‘horse’s mouth’ issue had intervened, the morning routine at home had been anything but. Today’s drama was the mystery of how every toothbrush in the house had disappeared.

Upon some pretty hefty cross-examination, Rebecca and Vincent had confessed that maybe they remembered that yesterday Orel Glitsky might have thought of another use for them and they’d played some game in the backyard, or mostly in the backyard, they thought. There were fences and forts involved.

And Jason, their little nephew — ‘and he’s still a baby, Dad,’ Rebecca reminded him — had played with the toothbrushes too. But both of his kids were
sure
, they were
positive
, that if somehow they
had
taken all the toothbrushes, which wasn’t very likely, but if they had, then they had put them back right afterward.

After finishing up the morning’s strategy-and-review session with Michelle, he’d walked three blocks in the breezy forenoon and picked up half a dozen fresh
bao —
sticky buns filled with
hoisin
and plum and barbecued sauces and stuffed with various roasted meats — pork, chicken, duck. All by itself, he thought, the ready availability of hot-out-of-the-oven
bao
was reason enough to live in San Francisco.

He was in the greenhouse Solarium, alone, the
bao
a still-fragrant and comforting memory, the morning
Chronicle
open on the table in front of him. He hadn’t forgotten anything about his talk last night with Abe Glitsky. (Maybe Glitsky had stolen the toothbrushes! Aha! That was it. Even if it wasn’t, he could accuse him of it and have some fun.)

It had become pretty clear in the talk at the table that Glitsky thought Sal had been killed and, more, that Graham had murdered him. And if that was the case, then Glitsky knew more than Hardy did.

He scanned the paper, but there was nothing particularly new and exciting there. The weekend hadn’t provided any startling revelations. Even DA Pratt and AG Powell had maintained what one article called a ‘wary silence.’ Thirty-one doctors took out a full-page advertisement announcing that they had helped patients kill themselves, but this, Hardy knew, wasn’t going to have any direct impact on the Graham Russo case.

So what did Glitsky know?

Pulling the ten-button conference-room phone over to him, he started to call the homicide detail, but hung up. If the lieutenant hadn’t talked to him sixteen hours ago, he wasn’t going to start now. Nothing had changed on that front.

Suddenly, that old horse’s mouth yawed open before him again. ‘Idiot,’ he said to himself, shaking his head.

*
    
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*

A miracle, Graham was home and picked up his telephone. But the first words out of his mouth — that he’d spent more time chatting with Sarah Evans — cut short Hardy’s happiness that he’d reached his client. ‘You’re making this up, aren’t you, Graham?’ he said. ‘Please tell me you’re making this up.’

‘No. I’m not. It was really good.’

‘It was really good,’ Hardy repeated. ‘That’s nice. I’m happy for you.’

‘It wasn’t like what you’re thinking,’ Graham protested.

Hardy could picture him, sitting framed in his splendid back window, looking out over the city, having a cup of his terrific Kona coffee, perhaps savoring a fresh croissant, bought with who knows what money. Maybe, Hardy thought, living up there in fairy-tale land colored one’s view of the rest of the world.

In any case, Graham was in serious need of a reality check. ‘What wasn’t it like? You tell me. How it
could
be different from what I’m thinking? Even in the best of all worlds, what other interpretation could there possibly be?’

‘If Sarah was going to arrest me, Diz, she would have done it already. She just wanted to know.’

‘We’re talking
Sergeant
Evans of the homicide detail, is that right? Suddenly, she’s Sarah now? Are you guys going out together, staying in, what? It would help if I knew.’

‘Nothing, Diz. Nothing like that.’

‘She just wanted to know the truth?’

‘Right.’

‘And the
Time
guy, what about him?’

‘He was a good guy.’

Hardy could envision the shrug, the nonchalance. He knew he was getting geared up here, and he didn’t think it would hurt his client any to realize it. ‘Graham, it’s this reporter’s
job
to be a good guy and get you to like him so you’ll open up and tell him the story he needs to write. It’s not personal.’

‘No.’ Graham was convinced. ‘This was different. Really. It was great to get to lay some of it out finally.’

Hardy had both of his elbows on the table, the receiver cradled against one ear, his head held up with the other one. There wasn’t any sense in going further with this. It was time to shift to damage control, if that was going to be possible. He forced some modulation into his voice. ‘So what did you tell your friend Sarah this time? I hope parts of it were close to the last version.’

He heard an amused chuckle. ‘It’s just the obvious stuff. Nothing to worry about.’

‘Obvious?’

‘You know.’

‘I don’t, really. Why don’t you humor me?’

‘Well, the truth about my dad and me. I mean, of course I helped him out. Once it was clear that we’d kind of patched things up, the rest of it just followed.’

‘What “rest,” though? That’s what I’m trying to get at.’

A pause. ‘That I’d given him morphine a bunch of times. But not that day,’ he added.

‘You told Sergeant Evans that?’

‘Yeah.’ Another hesitation, longer. ‘And that I’d gone by there, on Friday. By Sal’s. But he hadn’t been home.’

*
    
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*

At almost precisely the same moment State Attorney General Dean Powell was reaching his own decision. He’d quietly come down from Sacramento early in the morning and spent the morning with Drysdale and Gil Soma. Now they were finishing their lunch at a back table in Jack’s — one of the city’s finest and oldest restaurants. An elderly waiter in a tuxedo was pouring coffee all round. The white linen had been cleared of crumbs.

Powell originally hailed from San Francisco. Before his election he’d been a senior attorney in the DA’s office. His habit of combing his long white hair with his fingers had been the subject of dozens of caricatures, and he was doing this as he spoke to Soma. ‘I think we’re close to settled on the basics, but I must confess, Gil, I’ve got a reservation or two about your involvement. You ever put on a murder trial before?’

Powell, of course, knew the answer to this. He was impressed with Soma’s credentials and, more, his passion, but if the young man couldn’t stand up to the pressure of his boss’s informal interrogation now, he’d melt in the crucible of a special-circumstances-case courtroom. Better to find out sooner.

Soma brought a napkin to his lips, but didn’t waste any time with the motion. He wasn’t stalling. ‘No, sir, but I can win this case.’

‘As a murder one?’

‘It is a murder one. This morning’s police reports lock that up. This wasn’t any assisted suicide.’

Powell nodded. ‘I buy that, Gil. It’s critical, though, that we have the right man.’ He leaned over the table, combed his hair back again, then pointed a finger at Soma. ‘You hate this Graham Russo, don’t you? It’s personal, isn’t it?’

Soma glanced over at his mentor, Art Drysdale, who was stirring his coffee. No help there. ‘I don’t like him, sir, that’s true.’

‘And you’re sure you’re not seeing what you want to see here? You’ve thought about this a lot?’

Now Soma did reach for his coffee. Powell thought this a well-rehearsed move. The question appeared to call for thought and even if Soma had considered every possible ramification of it, he would take a formulaic pause. Placing the cup carefully into the center of its saucer, Soma brought in Drysdale for a beat, then proceeded. ‘The original case — the DA’s here in the city — had several holes. The money alone wasn’t really enough, and we knew that, which was why we waited. Since then we’ve discovered that there was a fight, that Graham Russo was there — he’s admitted it…’

Drysdale finally spoke up. ‘That’s a little squirrely.’

But Soma didn’t think so. ‘It’s evidently not on the tape, but Glitsky guarantees we’ve got Evans’s testimony. She’ll swear to it.’

‘Then we’re back to “he said, but she said.” ’

Powell interrupted. ‘Art, play devil’s advocate a little later. I want to hear what we’ve got altogether.’ He gestured back to Soma.

‘Okay, we’ve got the fight. We put Graham there. We’ve got the morphine, plus syringes from a box traced to his ambulance company. We got a fistful of his lies on the record. We’ve got his financial position, which is horrible, and which leads us back to the money. We’ve got means, opportunity, and motive. It’s classic, sir. He did it and we can prove it.’

On Soma’s left Drysdale cleared his throat. He wanted in.

‘Art?’ Powell asked.

‘I agree with everything Gil’s said here, but if we’re talking specials…’

‘We are.’ Powell was solid with this decision.

‘Okay, then the options we’ve got are LWOP’ — this was life in prison without the possibility of parole — ‘or death. Gil, you’re telling me you’re comfortable asking the state to put your old office mate to death?’

This, finally, stopped the posturing. Some of Soma’s spark went away. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, taking in both of his superiors. ‘To be honest, I don’t think so. I don’t think we should ask for death.’

Powell nodded. This was the right answer. Soma was passionate, but not blinded by hatred, a critical distinction.

‘I wouldn’t either,’ Drysdale said, ‘but we might wave it around early on, see if something shakes loose.’

Soma shrugged. ‘I can do that.’

‘And no other suspects? Real? Imagined? Implied?’ Powell wasn’t getting into this without having it locked up. He hadn’t gotten where he was by going high profile and losing. Drysdale passed the question over to Soma with a look. ‘We’re still checking some of his fisherman contacts. He poached for a living, but the volumes are tiny. A hundred, two hundred bucks. I don’t see anyone killing him for it.’

‘The family,’ Drysdale prompted.

‘Oh, yeah. Sal — the victim — he broke into the family house three times in the past few months. Nobody seemed to get too upset, though. They didn’t file criminal charges. Just wanted to help him get some assistance.’

Okay, Powell was thinking. The loopholes are closing up. ‘And it was definitely not a suicide? I don’t want to have that come back and bite us.’

Drydale took this one. ‘I don’t think they’ll even make the argument, but Strout’s got some pretty good stuff for us. Nobody thinks Sal killed himself. That didn’t happen.’

A silence descended for a moment. Powell raised his eyes, ‘Dismas Hardy’s doing the defense?’

‘Yes, sir.’ Soma knew the story as well as he knew his name. Three years before, in the last major case Powell had prosecuted before moving to the state capital, Dismas Hardy had pulled a rabbit from a hat and beaten him after a jury had both convicted his suspect
and
sentenced her to death. It was no secret that the AG longed for payback.

‘All right,’ Powell said at last. ‘Let’s go get him.’

Drysdale tapped the table with a fingertip, getting their attention one last time. ‘I suggest, with all respect, Dean, it might be wiser to wait another couple of days. Graham’s not going anywhere. Make it fat.’

This was jargon from Powell’s earliest days with the DA — FAT was the acronym they’d all used back then for making a watertight case. Frog’s-ass tight — FAT.

Powell gave it another second’s thought, then nodded. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘That’s probably smart. But let’s tie this sucker down by Thursday, Friday at the latest.’

He was looking directly at Soma, and the young attorney simply nodded. ‘Done,’ he said.

*
    
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He’d been the head of homicide now for nearly two years, and Glitsky felt he was growing into the job, taking bold steps to improve conditions and performance. This morning, for example, after he’d trotted down to vice again with Lanier and Evans so they could enjoy the privacy of an office with a door, he’d come back to homicide and pulled a tape measure from one of the drawers in his desk.

After carefully measuring the size of the hole in his wall where the door should have been — in fact, used to be until it was removed one day for painting and never returned — he called a local hardware store and found that doors were not some kind of embargoed item. The salesperson to whom he’d spoken had seemed somewhat amused that Glitksy didn’t realize that doors were available on a regular basis almost anywhere.