Authors: John Lescroart
After a minute, an orderly came out holding a large plastic sack. He looked around and came over to them. “Are you with Mr. Freeman? I’ve got some of his personal effects that you might want to take.”
Roake reached out for the bag, and for the first time Hardy noticed the ring—twice the size of Frannie’s diamond, newly mounted and bright. She opened the bag and looked inside, then closed it back up. “His good suit,” she said as though to herself. “I bought it for him.” Turning to Hardy, her lip quivered for an instant. She bit down on it. “How could this happen?” she asked. “Who could have done this to him?”
After a sleepless night, Hardy’s first stop at a little after 6:00
A.M.
this morning had been the hospital again. It was still long before visiting hours and though he believed he had no chance to get in and see Freeman, he knew he’d get more information talking to a human being than to a voice on the telephone.
Sure enough, at the nurse’s station, he had learned that Freeman’s condition was unchanged from the night before, but that at least there had been no deterioration. He was no more critical than he’d been. Armed with that news, he walked down the hallway and looked in on the ICU waiting room, where the nurse had told him another of Freeman’s visitors had spent the night.
Roake clearly hadn’t spent it sleeping either. Alone in the room at this time of the morning, she’d aged five years in the past six hours. Her eyes were heavy, red-rimmed, her hair all over the place. As Hardy got to the door, she was running her hands through it as though trying to still the ravages of a severe headache.
Seeing him, she stood and walked over, put her arms around his neck and sagged for an instant. He saw the plastic bag that held Freeman’s suit on the floor next to the couch where Roake had been sitting—she really hadn’t gone home.
After they’d sat, Hardy delivered the latest prognosis in the best possible light, then asked if he could do something for her, drive her home, anything.
Her first reaction was to shake her head as though she didn’t understand the question. A random syllable escaped, stopped again. She ran a hand through her hair again, squeezed at her temples. “I suppose I’ve got to get to my clients. I know there’s something this morning, but . . . but that’s not you, is it? I’d better leave a message for Betsy.” She looked out beyond Hardy. “It’s morning already, isn’t it?”
“Getting there,” Hardy said. “You ought to go home and get some sleep, Gina.” It was hard advice but she had to hear it. “Nothing’s happening here. The nurse told me this could go on for a while.”
“I know.” Then, again, “I know. I just wanted to stay. I thought . . .”
He waited, but no further words came. “I can drive you to David’s now,” he said. “You get a little sleep, call your office when they open. If they need you here, you can be back in five minutes. How’s that sound?”
She was perfectly immobile for half a minute or more, then finally let out a heavy breath, reached for the plastic bag, stood up. “You’re right. You talked me into it.”
Fifteen minutes later, he couldn’t believe the amount of legal curb that was available just around the corner from the Hall of Justice. Then he remembered, of course, the time. But he’d wanted to get down here if he could while someone from the night shift might still be in the building.
Miraculously, he was talking to Inspector Hector Blanca within ten minutes, Blanca was a dark-skinned Hispanic sergeant with the General Work Detail and he’d pulled the call on the Freeman beating. It was not only fresh in his mind, he was reviewing the incident report, written by the patrolman who found Freeman, as Hardy got to his desk. After the introductions, and Hardy’s reassurance that he was a friend of Abe Glitsky and used to be a cop himself, that he wasn’t some ambulance-chasing dick of an attorney looking to make trouble, Blanca must have decided it was okay to talk. “So, this man Freeman. He was your partner?”
Technically David wasn’t, but Hardy didn’t think it mattered. “I hope he still is.”
The sergeant grimaced. “Sorry. I didn’t mean that. What’s the word at the hospital?”
Hardy told him, but he’d come to Blanca to get information, not give it. “His fiancée, Gina Roake, told me he still had his wallet. That’s how you guys knew to come to his house.”
“That’s right. Beat him near to death, but didn’t take his wallet, his watch, nothing.”
“Was there money in it?”
Blanca tried to keep his face neutral, but it wanted to react. “Six hundred fourteen dollars, right there in the regular section.”
Hardy sat with that a minute. “So it wasn’t any kind of robbery. You saw him. What was it about?”
“I’ve got no idea. It was about as brutal as I’ve seen. He fucking somebody’s wife, anything like that?”
“No,” Hardy said.
“What I mean is, maybe if it was personal . . .”
“Yeah, I know. I can’t think of anything—” He stopped.
“What?” Blanca asked.
“I just thought about this pretty ugly lawsuit we’re working on. But I’ve never seen anything like that before and I’ve been practicing twenty years.”
Blanca gave him another chance. “You sure? I’ll grab at anything.”
But after another minute with it, Hardy shook his head. “No. Couldn’t be.”
“All right. But whatever it was, let me tell you, this was deliberate damage. Boots and blunt objects. Not just fists.”
Hardy didn’t want to think about Freeman lying helpless, curled on himself, as a group of vicious assailants worked him over. “So there was more than one guy?”
A shrug. “I can’t say for sure, but I’d bet on it.” He drummed his fingers on his typewriter keys, then met Hardy’s eye. “I guess there’s no nice way to put it, sir. Whoever it was, these guys left him for dead.”
“But took nothing?”
He shook his head. “Nothing obvious, at least.”
“So what’s that leave?”
Blanca frowned in concentration. “It leaves the whole universe, to tell you the truth. People nowadays, you wouldn’t believe how many are just nuts.”
“I bet I would. You think it was just some kind of rage?”
“It looked like that, but who knows? It might have been just for the thrill.” Something seemed to nag at him. “An old guy like this, though? It doesn’t make any sense, not that it has to. Tell you what I’ll do. I’ll pull some other reports from the general vicinity. Maybe come up with something similar. MO. Something.”
“Thanks,” Hardy said. “I’d appreciate it.”
Okay, Hardy told himself. He’d done his little bit with detective work, and without any conclusive results, but the real reason the hospital and the Hall had had to come first and early this Wednesday morning was because he had to get to his office.
Freeman & Associates kept formal hours, from 8:30 to 5:30. Like most law firms, F&A expected its associates to bill two thousand hours every year. With a two-week vacation, that computed to forty billable hours every single week, even weeks where there was a holiday or two. Working at perfect efficiency, the best attorneys could perhaps get all their administrative and other unbillable work, such as lunch for example, done in two hours every day. This meant that, if they did not double-bill—if discovered, a firing offense at Freeman’s—associates averaged about ten hours at their desks every single day, often working weekends to make up for holidays or the rare day off when they needed to bill but the office was closed.
The awesome burden of billing two thousand hours was perhaps the main reason Hardy had never joined Freeman’s, or any other, firm. Not that he didn’t work round the clock and then some when he needed to, but at least in theory—though meeting his monthly nut kept it from being his common practice—he could make his own decision to put in fewer hours and therefore make less money. This wasn’t an option for Freeman’s full-time associates. But since it was the norm everywhere else, what were they going to do?
So although it was still a few minutes short of 8:00
A.M.
when Hardy walked up the stairway and entered the lobby, the place wasn’t deserted, but the somber tone was decidedly unusual. Word must have gotten out.
At the receptionist’s desk, although Phyllis wasn’t in yet, they had the radio tuned to the all-news station. A group of maybe ten associates stood around, listening, murmuring. Hardy knew three of them quite well—Amy Wu, Jon Ingalls and Graham Russo—and Russo broke from the knot when he saw Hardy. All the other eyes followed him. “Do you know anything about David?” he asked. “Amy heard the end of something in her car, but . . .”
Russo and everyone else could tell from Hardy’s expression that what Wu had heard was both true and bad. The knot coalesced around him and Hardy gave them the very short version and answered as many questions as he could. While he was in the middle of one of them, Phyllis came up the stairs behind him—her usual grim-lipped, uptight self. She stood behind Hardy for a moment, clearly perplexed at the gathering.
Hardy stopped midsentence and, cued by his audience, turned. “What’s the matter?” she asked. “What is this about?”
“David’s in the hospital,” Hardy said simply. “Somebody beat him.”
“What do you mean, beat him? He’s not in trial.”
“Not that kind of beat. Somebody mugged him, beat him up.”
For a long moment, she still appeared not to comprehend. Finally, she backed up a step and put a hand over her heart. “Why? I mean, is he all right?”
“I was just telling the folks here. It’s bad. He’s unconscious.”
Phyllis looked down to Freeman’s office door as though she expected him to appear from behind it. One of the associates yelled from back at reception. “Here it is, here it is!” And as a body, the mass of people turned and fell silent.
“. . . flamboyant and famous attorneys in the city was found beaten last night a few blocks from his home. Police have no known motive yet in the brutal attack, which has left Mr. Freeman in critical condition at St. Francis Memorial Hospital. Robbery doesn’t seem to have been a factor, although police are refusing . . .”
Hardy and the rest of the associates all missed the rest of the report. At the word “critical,” Phyllis had uttered a small cry and crumpled to the ground.
In his office, Hardy had three voice mails from Jeff Elliot, his friend and the writer of the “CityTalk” daily column for the
Chronicle.
They shared the basic information that each had independently gathered; then Elliot asked, “So where does this leave you?”
“You mean me personally or the firm here?”
“Both.”
“Well, he’s the rainmaker here, so people are freaked. If he’s even out for a couple of weeks, the work dries up. Phyllis fainted. You know he’d just asked Gina to marry him?”
A short silence. Elliot, Hardy knew, trying to digest it. “What’d she say?”
“She said yes. He gave her a ring.”
Another pause. “Was she seeing anybody else?”
“Who’d want to kill David and thereby eliminate the competition? I don’t think so. She was at the hospital all night.”
“Still . . .”
“I think it’s a dry well, Jeff, but you can ask her if you want.”
Elliot seemed to accept that. “So how are you doing?”
“I’m worried. Unconscious isn’t good. They’re saying critical, and the nurse this morning wasn’t what you’d call optimistic. Blanca—you know Blanca—he seemed to think that whoever did it meant to hurt him bad at least.”
“What for?”
“No theories. Not robbery, unless he was carrying something unusual with him, which he never did. But not his wallet, not his watch—a Rolex by the way.”
“So what do you think?”
“I’m totally stumped. At the moment, I’m tempted to think it might even have been random. Easy target. Cheap thrills. It’s been known to happen. Hey, I’m getting another call. You want to wait?”
“No thanks. I’m crankin’ here. I hear anything, I’ll let you know.”
“Dismas Hardy,” he said, punching into his call waiting.
“Diz. Dick Kroll. I just heard about David. My God . . .”
“Yeah. I don’t know what’s happening yet. Did we have a depo today? We do, don’t we?” Hardy brought his hand to his forehead, squeezed his temples.
Kroll was sympathetic. “We can put that off as long as you need. The important thing now is David. How’s it look?”
For the hundredth time, Hardy ran down what he knew. Answered the same questions. No robbery. No motive. No clues. A senseless beating of an old and defenseless gentleman. When he finished, the line hummed open for a long beat.
“I don’t know what to say, Diz. I’m in shock, really. Is there anything I can do?”
Hardy gave it an instant’s thought. “Maybe see if any of your client’s men noticed or heard something. Or will. It wasn’t one of Wade’s beats, though, was it?”
“I don’t know. Where did it happen exactly?”
“Two blocks north of here. Right around the corner, actually.”
“No, then. Thirty-two ends down at Post.”
Hardy kept on. “It was his usual route home, which he always walked because he was bullet proof. Jesus . . .”
“What?”
Hardy blew out. “Nothing. I just remembered I offered to drive him.” He swore.
“Don’t blame yourself. It wasn’t anything you did.” Kroll cleared his throat. “So listen, I don’t want to add to your troubles today. Why don’t you dig out, call me when you want to start up on these depos again. I’m assuming if David’s out, you’ll be taking the lead.”
“It’s too early, Dick, okay? I don’t want to go there yet.”
“Fine, fine. I’ll wait till you call me. Meanwhile, is there anything else I can do? Anything at all?”
“I can’t think of anything, but thanks.”
“I’ll pray for him. How about that?”
Hardy hadn’t ever considered Kroll much of a religious man—certainly he was an unscrupulous attorney and dirty fighter, but you never knew. “Couldn’t hurt,” he said. “Thanks.” Yet another call was coming in on the heels of the last. He looked at his watch—the regular workday still wouldn’t begin for seven minutes and he’d already been going for two hours. He punched the button on his phone, stifled a weary sigh. “Dismas Hardy,” he said.
It was the first time Hardy had been to Glitsky’s new domain on the fifth floor. The lieutenant was leaning over a computer terminal in a claustrophobic room occupied by two women, one of them with an enormous girth. Glitsky was saying something to her about the new software they should be getting sometime in the next decade that would do it all faster and better. Hardy, in low enough spirits already, found the moment nearly unbearably sad.