“Okay.”
“Yes, well . . . the point is that he was a sole practitioner. No firm, no partners, but a reasonably robust caseload.”
“Good for him.”
“True, but his disappearance hasn’t been good for the court. Or for his wife and daughter either, to tell you the truth. She’s hired her own lawyer to file a presumption of death claim, which between you and me has very little chance of getting recognized, in spite of the fact that it would be convenient for the court.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because when sole practitioners die and go to heaven, the bar inherits the caseload and has to dispose of it.”
“What if they don’t go to heaven?”
“Most lawyers argue themselves in, don’t you think? I know you would.”
“Thanks, I think. Your honor.”
“Anyway, I know it’s just housecleaning, but Bowen had a ton of work outstanding, and that work needs to get done. And while we’re not going to issue any presumption of death until he’s been gone a lot longer, last month Marian Braun”—another of the city’s Superior Court judges—“ruled that his disappearance rendered him legally incompetent, and just yesterday the State Bar suspended his ticket at the court’s request.”
“So now they’ve got to farm out his cases. If he hadn’t returned my calls for six months and I was his client, I would have fired him by now.”
“I’m sure some of his clients may have done just that, but not all by a long shot.” Thomasino sighed. “Charlie was a friend of mine. His wife’s going to need whatever he still has coming from his cases. I’d like to be sure that the bar puts those cases in the hands of somebody I know will do the right thing by her. Anyway, bottom line is that I ran into Wes Farrell today at lunch.” This was one of Hardy’s partners. “He said things at your place were a little slow. The good news is that you can probably count on some percentage of Mr. Bowen’s clients hooking up with your firm. Not that any of ’em will make you rich.”
Reading between the lines, Hardy knew what the judge was saying—that this was grunt administrative work. The court probably had appointed the majority of Charlie’s clients, indigents up for petty crimes and misdemeanors. Nevertheless, the court would pay for every hour Hardy’s associates spent on the criminal cases, and if the civil cases made any money, the firm could expect reasonable compensation. And it was, again, an opportunity to do a small good deed for a judge, and that was never a bad idea.
“You could probably get them all assigned out or closed in the next couple of months.”
“I’m sold, your honor. I’d be happy to help you out.”
“Thanks, Diz. I appreciate it. I know it’s not very sexy. I’ll have it all delivered to your office within the week.”
“How much stuff is it?”
Thomasino paused. “About sixty boxes.” In other words, a lot. “But here’s the silver lining. It’s only half as much as it appears, since half the boxes are one client.”
“Tell me it’s Microsoft.”
A soft chuckle. “No such luck. It’s Evan Scholler.”
Hardy hesitated for an instant. “Why is that name familiar?”
“Because you’ve read all about it. The two guys who’d been over in Iraq together?”
“Ah, it comes flooding back,” Hardy said. “They had the same girlfriend or something, too, didn’t they?”
“I believe so. There’s a bunch of juicy stuff, but you’ll find that out soon enough, I guess. But in any event, Diz, I really appreciate you doing this.”
“I live to serve the court, your honor.”
“You’re already up on points, counselor. Don’t lay it on too thick. Have a nice night.”
Hardy hung up and stood for a moment, musing. The judge’s line played back in his mind: “There’s a bunch of juicy stuff” in the Scholler case. Hardy thought he could use some juicy stuff in his life about now. If his memory served, and it always did, Scholler’s situation was even more compelling than the bare bones of the murder case because of its genesis in chaos and violence.
In Iraq.
A burnt orange sun kissed the horizon to the west as twenty-six-year-old Second Lieutenant Evan Scholler led his three-pack of converted gun truck support Humvees through the gates of the Allstrong compound in the middle of an area surrounded by palm trees, canals, and green farmland. The landscape here was nothing like the sandy, flat, brown terrain that Evan had grown used to since he’d arrived in Kuwait. The enclosure was about the size of three football fields, protected, like every other “safe” area, by Bremer walls—twelve-foot-tall concrete barriers topped with concertina wiring. Ahead of him squatted three double-wide motor-home trailers that Allstrong Security, an American contracting company, had provided for its local employees.
Pulling up to the central temporary building, over which flew an American flag, Evan stepped out of his car onto the gravel that extended as far as he could see in all directions. A fit-looking American military type stood in the open doorway and now came down the three steps, his hand extended. Evan snapped a salute and the man laughed.
“You don’t need to salute me, Lieutenant,” he said. “Jack Allstrong. Welcome to BIAP. You must be Scholler.”
“Yes, sir. If you’re expecting me, that’s a nice change of pace.”
“Gotten the runaround, have you?”
“A little bit. I’ve got eight men here with me, and, Colonel . . . I’m sorry, the commander here?”
“Calliston.”
“That’s it. He wasn’t expecting us. Calliston said you had some beds we could use.”
“Yeah, he called. But all we’ve got are cots, really.”
“We’ve got our own on board,” Evan said. “We’re okay with cots.”
Allstrong’s face showed something like sympathy. “You all been on the road awhile?”
“Three days driving up from Kuwait with a Halliburton convoy, four days wandering around between here and Baghdad, watching out for looters and getting passed off around the brass. Now here we are. If you don’t mind, sir, none of my men have seen a bed or a regular meal or a shower since we landed. You mind if we get ’em settled in first?”
Allstrong squinted through the wind at Evan, then looked over to the small line of Humvees, with M-60 Vietnam-era machine guns mounted on their roofs, exhausted-looking and dirty men standing behind them. Coming back to Evan, he nodded and pointed to the trailer on his right. “Bring ’em on up and park over there. It’s dorm-style. Find an empty spot and claim it. Showers are all yours. Dinner’s at eighteen hundred hours, forty minutes from now. Think your men can make it?”
Evan tamped down a smile. “Nobody better stand in their way, sir.”
“Nobody’s gonna.” Allstrong cocked his head. “Well, get ’em started, then.”
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A PLAGUE OF SECRETS
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Friday, the end of the workweek.
On the small deck outside his back door, a lawyer named Dismas Hardy sat with his feet up on the deck’s railing and savored a rare moment as the sun spent the last hour of its day lowering itself toward the horizon behind his home.
The house cast its ever-lengthening shadow out over the neighborhood to the east—San Francisco’s Richmond District—and it threw into relief the bright west-facing facades of the buildings in the city before him as it stretched away to downtown. The random window reflected glints of sunlight back at him, fireflies in the gathering dusk, shimmering in the Indian summer air.
He sipped his gin and ice, placed the glass down on the meshed metal of the picnic table they’d set up out here, and was suddenly and acutely aware that he could not be more content. His wife, Frannie, whom he still loved after twenty-three years, was inside the house behind him, humming as she did whatever she was doing. His two children were away and doing well at their respective schools—Rebecca at Boston University, and Vincent at UC San Diego. The law firm of Freeman, Farrell, Hardy & Roake, of which he was the managing partner, was humming along as though it were on autopilot.
Hardy looked for a moment into the blue above him, blinking against a wave of emotion. Then, being who he was, his mouth cracked into a small grin at himself and he lifted his glass for another sip.
Inside, the telephone rang twice and stopped, which meant that it was someone they knew and that Frannie had picked it up. Her voice, with notes of sympathy and understanding, floated out to him, but he didn’t bother trying to make out any of the words. She had begun to have a somewhat thriving career of her own as a marriage and family therapist and often would wind up counseling her clients from home.
Hardy drifted, not off to anywhere, but into a kind of surrender of conscious thought. For a long moment, he was simply there in the same way that his drink or his chair existed, or the light, or the breeze off the ocean a little more than a mile west of where he sat. So that when the door opened behind him, he came back with a bit of a start.
Frannie put a hand on his shoulder and he brought his hand up to cover hers, half turning, seeing the look on her face. “What’s up?” he asked, his feet coming down off the railing. “Are the kids all right?” Always the first concern.
She nodded a yes to the second question, then answered the first. “That was Treya.” Treya was the wife of Hardy’s best friend, Abe Glitsky, the head of San Francisco’s homicide department. Anguish in her eyes, Frannie held and released a breath. “It’s Zack,” she said, referring to Glitsky’s three-year-old son. “He’s had an accident.”
Accompanied by her five-year-old daughter, Rachel, Treya Glitsky opened the gate in the Har dys’ white picket fence. Dismas Hardy, in his living room watching out through the plantation shutters of his front window, called back to his wife in the kitchen that they were here, then walked over and opened his front door.
Treya turned away and, closing the gate, reached down for a small duffel bag. By the way she picked it up, it might have weighed a hundred pounds. When she straightened up, her shoulders rose and fell; then she brought a hand to her forehead and stood completely still for another second or two. With her tiny hand, Rachel held on to the front pocket of her mother’s jeans while she looked up at her face, her own lips pressed tight.
Hardy crossed his porch and descended three steps to the cement path that bisected his small lawn. The sun had gone down behind the buildings across the street although true dusk was still twenty minutes away. Treya turned and saw him now, and her legendary composure threatened to break. She was a tall woman—nearly Hardy’s size—and strongly built. Her mouth, expressive and normally quick to smile, quivered, then set in a line.
Hardy came forward, took the duffel bag from her, and put an arm around her neck, drawing her in, holding her for a moment. Finally he stepped back and whispered, “How is he?”
She shrugged and shook her head. Then her voice was as quiet as his. “We don’t know yet.”
Frannie came up, touched his shoulder, and came around to hug Treya.
Hardy stepped to the side and went down to one knee to face Rachel at her level. “And how’s my favorite little girl in the whole world?”
“Okay,” she said. “But Zack got hit by a car.”
“I know he did, hon.”
“But he’s not going to die.”
Hardy looked up at the two women. Treya gave him a quick nod, and he came back to her daughter. “No, of course not. But I hear you’re going to stay here for a couple of days while he gets better. Is that okay with you?”
“If Mom says.”
“And she does. Is that duffel bag your stuff? Here, let me get it. If you put your arms around my neck, your old uncle Diz will carry you inside.”
Then they were all moving up the path and into the house. “Abe went with the ambulance,” Treya was saying. “We don’t know how long we’re going to have to be down there. I don’t know how to thank you for watching Rachel.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Frannie said. “We love Rachel.” She reached out and touched the little girl’s cheek where she rested it on Hardy’s shoulder. “She’s our favorite little girl.”
Hardy and Frannie walked Treya out after they got Rachel settled in with cookies and milk in front of the television. They stopped again on the path just inside the fence. “Was he conscious?” Hardy asked.
“No.” Treya paused, then lowered her voice. “He didn’t have his helmet on.”
“What happened exactly?” Frannie asked.
“We may never know,” she said. “Abe had just brought down his Big Wheel bike and Zack was on it, but Abe told him to just sit still and wait a minute while he turned around and got his helmet. Which he’d set down, like, two feet away on the stairs. But then as soon as his back was turned, Zack got aboard and either started pedaling or just rolling down the driveway just as another car was coming up the street. One of our neighbors. He was only going, like, five miles an hour but Zack just plowed into him and got knocked off the bike and into the street.” She flashed a pained look from Hardy to Frannie. “He banged his head.” She hesitated. “I’ve got to get down there now. You guys are great. Thank you.”