"And why would he do that?"
"Because he liked them to cover his tracks after he assassinated people."
Allstrong laughed out loud, although through the phone Hardy picked up as much nerves as humor in it this time. When he got his breath, he said, "That accusation is really beneath contempt, Mr. Hardy. Ron was my recruiter out here. He didn't assassinate people."
"Yes, he did. The FBI has made that clear enough to the Khalil family, who were among his victims. That's the evidence I'm trying to get in front of the court this time around. If Nolan was killing people on contract, then revenge becomes a motive for his own death, and that might give Evan an out."
Allstrong came out with the question Hardy had been leading him toward. "You say Nolan was killing people on contract? That's absurd."
"The FBI doesn't think so."
"So who was paying him?"
"Well, the FBI makes the case to the Khalils that it was one of your former clients in Iraq, a man named Kuvan Krekar."
"Kuvan is dead. He's been dead now a couple of years."
"I know that. He was killed by the Khalils over in Iraq, but I don't think Kuvan was paying Nolan anyway. For what it's worth, a couple of inspectors with San Francisco's homicide department think the same thing I do, and they won't be giving up on their investigation anytime soon. They think that whoever paid Nolan to kill the Khalils also had a hand in the deaths of Charlie and Hanna Bowen. You got any idea who that might be?"
"None at all."
"That's funny, because all of us have the idea that it's someone in your company, Jack. Allstrong Security."
After a long pause, Allstrong said, "If that ridiculous accusation ever sees the light of day, Mr. Hardy, I hope you're prepared to spend the rest of your life defending the lawsuit I'll bring against you."
"I'm glad I did it," Hardy said. "I had to shake something up. It was kind of fun."
Frannie sat next to him at the bar of the Little Shamrock. Her brother, Moses McGuire, was standing across from them both behind the bar. "It was kind of fun," Frannie said to Moses, mimicking Hardy's voice with heavy irony. "I think it's kind of fun to threaten a man who's already killed at least two people and tried for three trying to keep this information from getting out. I think it's kind of fun that he can put me on his kill list next so me and my family can live in fear of being murdered every day from now on. I really think that's kind of fun." Frannie's color was high, her eyes shining with anger.
Hardy put a hand over his wife's. "That's not going to happen, Frannie. And you know why? Moses knows why, don't you, Mose?"
McGuire sipped his soda and lime. "Because you told Allstrong the cops were on it too. Killing you the way he'd done the Bowens wouldn't get him anything. But"-he held up a finger-"here's the tiny flaw my smart little sister has picked up on in your strategy, Diz. If this guy is juiced enough that he can pull strings inside the FBI, and apparently he is, what on God's good earth makes you think that he can't get around Abe Glitsky and Darrel Bracco?" He turned to Frannie. "Did I express that succinctly enough, you think?"
She bobbed her head once, still furious. "Perfectly," she said.
"Guys, come on," Hardy said. "He's not going to kill two cops, for Christ's sake. And who knows who else is in on the investigation. That's just not going to happen."
"He doesn't have to kill them," Frannie replied. "But what about if he has them ordered off from on high? Where does that leave you then?"
"Me, me, Monty, call on me." Moses wasn't smiling, either, though. He leaned over into his brother-in-law's face. "That leaves you hanging out there alone in the breeze, Diz."
"Okay, but if that unlikely event happens, which I doubt-"
"Then you'll have an accident, like Charlie Bowen did," Frannie said.
"No, Abe would never rest if-"
Frannie slammed her palm down on the bar. "You'd already be dead, you idiot!"
In the silence that descended, Hardy put his hand gently over Frannie's again. "Well," he said, "then I'd better get this whole thing done fast, shouldn't I?"
Hardy could be glib all he wanted, but in fact Frannie and Moses weren't all wrong, or even mostly wrong. He knew that he'd possibly put himself in an elevated state of jeopardy and could live with that-he also thought he'd mitigated the problem dramatically by telling Allstrong that the police were already involved in this same investigation.
But the more he lived with it, the more he found himself worrying. He hadn't adequately considered that his phone call to Allstrong might also have put Frannie in danger. That had not been his intention, though it might very well be the result.
So Date Night, even at their old favorite restaurant Yet Wah, ended early. Frannie, still very upset over Hardy's call to Allstrong, went straight up to bed. Hardy went to his chair in the living room and punched up Darrel Bracco's number on his cell phone. The inspector picked up and Hardy told him his story-putting a press on Jack Allstrong in person-to a considerably more enthusiastic response than Frannie had given him. When he finished, Bracco said, "So we know both the Bowens were talking to Allstrong. I got that from the phone records too. But so what?"
"So what is what else this tells us."
"What's that?"
"This is close to him, personally. It's not just some corporate thing."
"How do you know that?"
"Mostly," Hardy said, "because he came to the phone to talk to me when there was no reason he needed to. He's got two hundred people under him down there. I guarantee he's got several levels of bureaucracy between him and the front desk. But I call him up out of thin air and mention Evan Scholler and the Bowens and he came right away. He wanted to know what I knew, to see how exposed he was. And I'm confident that I made it pretty clear."
"Why did you want to do that?" Bracco asked. "Warn him we're coming."
"My wife had the same question," Hardy said. "But maybe rattling his cage gets him to do something stupid."
"Something stupid to do with you, maybe."
"Maybe, but unlikely. I made it clear to Allstrong that now it's not just one lone attorney, and then several months later, his wife, also acting alone. The police are part of it now. If any of us disappears or has an accident, the heat only goes up on him. So he's got to figure another way out, make this investigation go away, and I'm trying to make it easy for him."
"He's not going to confess to ordering a domestic murder. Or anything to do with the Bowens."
"True. But I don't need that. I just need to get my client off. As far as he's concerned, that's going to be all I want."
"I want these murders," Bracco said.
"Of course you do," Hardy replied. "And you should. But you'll admit that building any kind of winnable case on the evidence we see so far after all this time is pretty long odds. Meanwhile, Allstrong knows this whole thing is driven by Evan Scholler. That's what was behind the attack this morning in prison. He already believes that if Scholler goes away, all his problems go away."
"I'm not going to go away," Bracco said.
"You won't have any choice if he's left you no evidence to work with. I got the feeling this guy's built his business by getting around local authorities everywhere he sets up shop. Now he's got political clout and the veneer of respectability. We're not going to take him head-on."
"So you've got a better idea?" Bracco asked.
"As a matter of fact," Hardy said, "I think I do."
As he tiptoed into his bedroom at a little after eleven o'clock, Frannie switched on the light next to the bed.
"Hey," Hardy said.
"Hey." She patted the bed next to her. "I'm sorry," she said. "I was worried. I'm still worried, but I don't want to fight about it."
He crossed over to her and sat down, put a hand on her shoulder. "I don't either."
After a minute, she let out a long breath. "So how'd it go?"
"I think I've got Darrel talked into it. He really wants this guy. As do I."
"What about Abe?"
"I didn't get around to talking to Abe. He might have reservations I'd rather not entertain at this point in time."
Frannie closed her eyes and sighed again. "It's really that important?"
"Charlie Bowen told his wife it was the most important thing he'd ever worked on. It was his biggest chance to do some real good in the world."
"In the world, huh?"
"The big old world, yeah." He kept rubbing her back. "I didn't pick this fight, Frannie. It just came and fell in my lap. And now it turns out that this guy's just the smiling face of evil in this world, and what makes it worse is he cloaks it all in patriotism and loyalty while he deals away lives so he can make another buck. It makes me puke."
"And it's all up to you? It's got to be you, Dismas Hardy?"
"I think I've got the cards," Hardy said. "I can beat him and take him down."
"And what about the people protecting him politically?"
"Well, with any luck, them too. But Allstrong's enough for my purposes. I'm just trying to do the right thing here, Frannie, mostly for my client."
"I'm not sure I believe you, babe. I think you want to save the world."
"But if I did that," Hardy said, "I'd need personal theme music."
39
Hardy didn't sleep as well as he would have liked. He woke up for the first time at two-sixteen to the sound of squealing tires out on the street below his bedroom. Wide awake, he went downstairs to check that the house was locked up front and back, which it was.
Behind the kitchen, he turned on the light and went to his safe under his workbench, opened it, and brought out his own weapon, a Smith & Wesson M &P.40. He hesitated for a moment, then picked it up and slammed a full magazine into the grip, racked a round into the chamber, and took off the safety. Then, quietly and methodically, he went through the downstairs, checking the kids' rooms, the family room, back up through the dining and living rooms. Nobody there.
Back upstairs in his bedroom, the gun's safety on, he put it in the drawer next to his bed and lay down again.
The sound of a Dumpster slamming shut, or a garbage can being dropped-something loud and clanging-woke him up at four thirty-eight. He grabbed the gun again and made another tour of the house, with the same result.
Up for the day, he realized, he put on a pot of coffee and went out to get the newspaper, but stopped at the front door first and looked down the street in both directions. Only after satisfying himself that it was clear did he go outside and grab the paper.
This was not turning out to be the way he had planned it.
About five minutes before Frannie's alarm was going to go off, he went upstairs again and laid a hand on her shoulder, gently waking her up.
"Is everything all right?" she asked him.
"So far everything's fine. But sometime in the middle of last night, my subconscious must have decided that you were right. I've been awake half the night worrying. I shouldn't have put us in this situation. I'm sorry."
She reached out and took his hand. "Apology accepted. So what do you want to do?"
"I don't think it would be the worst idea in the world to check into a hotel for a couple of days. Treat it like a vacation."
She sat up, letting go of his hand. "Did something else happen last night that I didn't hear about?"
"No. I've just had time to think about these guys some more. Until it's clear to Allstrong that Glitsky and Bracco are really in on this investigation with me, which I hope ought to be by today or tomorrow, it's like Moses said-we're hanging out there all alone in the breeze."
Frannie shuddered. "I think I liked it better when you were pretending there was nothing to worry about."
"Me too. But I don't think that's the smart move right now. I think we'd be wise to lie a little low."
Sitting with the idea for another moment, Frannie finally sighed. "A couple of days?"
"Probably no more than that."
"Probably." She shook her head. "Do you have any idea how much I wish you hadn't called him?"
"Pretty much, yeah. If it's any consolation, I didn't feel like I had much of a choice."
"Right," she said. "That makes me feel much better."
Allstrong would also know that Hardy went into his office every day, but Hardy had convinced himself that he could minimize his risk on that score by pulling directly into his parking place in the gated and locked parking garage underneath the building and taking the inside elevator up to his office. Once he was inside, he had a reasonable faith in his firm's security system.
As he pulled in about to park, though, he noticed a brown paper lunch bag lying against the wall just in front of his space. For a minute, the sight of the thing froze him. It was just the kind of harmless-looking item, he imagined, that might in actuality be an improvised explosive device. Turning on his lights, he illuminated the bag, which looked to be nothing more than what it was.
Setting the brake, Hardy opened his door and walked over to the bag, touching it gingerly with his foot, then leaning over to pick it up. It weighed almost nothing, and contained only a few napkins, an apple core, and a couple of Baggies.
Forcing a small nonlaugh at his paranoia, Hardy got back in to his car and parked, then crossed to the elevator and pushed the button to call it down.
In his office, Hardy went over the final draft of his appeal, which explicitly laid out his argument on the Brady violation in such a way as to maximize Allstrong's connection to Nolan and to the Khalils. He attached a declaration from Wyatt Hunt detailing the conversation Hunt had had with Abdel Khalil. Included in the narrative was Tara Wheatley's information about the cash Nolan had brought back from Iraq, buttressing the idea that perhaps he'd been paid to carry out a contract on the Khalils. Of course, the FBI's interrogation of Abdel Khalil, which the agency had not seen fit to share with the prosecution team, was at the crux of his discussion.
In toto, Hardy believed that the appeal raised enough questions about important evidence that had not been admitted in the trial that he thought he'd at least get a hearing out of it. And possibly, if things worked out with Allstrong between now and then, a new trial for Evan.
Satisfied with his work, he sent one of his paralegals down to the court of appeals to file the brief, and then sent registered copies of it, as required, to Mary Patricia Whelan-Miille down in Redwood City, and also-although there was no mandate he do so-overnight to Allstrong Security marked "personal and confidential" for Jack Allstrong. He wanted Allstrong to know what he was doing, when he was doing it, and how it was likely to affect him if he didn't step in and do something to stop it.
Next, calling the prison, Hardy learned that Evan was still in the infirmary and that his condition had stabilized. There was some chance that he would be able to have visitors, perhaps as soon as the next day.
Hardy's cell phone went off-Bracco calling him. "It worked," he said. "I used the old 'Surely you'd want to cooperate in a murder investigation' and he opened up some time for me and I'm on the way down there right now."
"Have fun," Hardy said, "but be careful."
"Right." Bracco barked out a short, nervous laugh. "I'm all over it."
ALLSTRONG AND HIS ATTORNEY, who introduced himself as Ryan Loy, led Bracco back through a maze of hallways into a beautifully designed medium-sized oval conference room containing an apparently custom-made table with twelve matching chairs around it. An enormous spray of fresh flowers claimed the center of the table; at the counter under the tinted windows, someone had set up a full coffee service with pastries and fruit. When Bracco sat down at last with his coffee and Danish, he had a view of the entire South Bay as it shimmered in the sunshine.
Jack Allstrong had played the gracious host in his garrulous style as they moved back through the building, pointing with pride to the headquarters of the other divisions that now made up much of the company's work-computer security, water safety, privatization, logistics consulting, aquaculture. Loy, bookish and reserved in his suit and bow tie
, nevertheless came across as another truly nice guy. Everyone they passed in the hallways was well-scrubbed, nicely dressed, young.
Loy closed the door to the conference room behind them and went around the table to Bracco's left while Allstrong sat two chairs over from him on the right. Bracco took out his pocket tape recorder and without comment placed it prominently on the table out in front of everyone.
"Excuse me, Inspector"-Loy had stopped in the middle of raising his cup-"but I understood this was to be an informal discussion and not a formal interrogation."
"Either way," Bracco said with a matter-of-fact tone, "I'm going to need a record of it. I understood that you wanted to cooperate. Mr. Allstrong doesn't have to answer any question he doesn't want to. You both understand that, right?"
Loy looked at Allstrong, who nodded.
Bracco picked up the tape recorder and spoke into it. "This is homicide Inspector Sergeant Darrel Bracco, Badge Number 3117, conjoined case numbers 06-335411 and 07-121598, talking with Jack Allstrong, forty-one, and his attorney, Ryan Loy, thirty-six. It's eleven forty-five on Wednesday morning, May ninth, and we are at the offices of Allstrong Security in San Francisco. Mr. Allstrong, did you know an attorney named Charles Bowen?"
"Yes."
"How well did you know him?"
"Not well at all. I met him two or three times here in these offices to talk about an appeal he was working on."
"Evan Scholler."
"Yes."
"How did you figure in that case, that Mr. Bowen wanted to talk to you?"
"One of my past employees, Ron Nolan, was the victim. Scholler was eventually convicted of killing him."
"Do you know the grounds that Mr. Bowen planned to base his appeal on?"
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