Hardy 05 - Mercy Rule, The

by John Lescroart

  He was leaning against the counter, his arms crossed over his chest, his massive shoulders slumped. ‘He said I was right. He was crying. And you know what, I was glad he was crying. He said he was so sorry.’ Graham blew out in frustration. ‘And right in character, I told him sorry wasn’t good enough. Sorry didn’t make any damn difference anymore.’

  In the pause she asked, ‘And then what?’

  ‘Then I left.’

  ‘So how did you… ?’

  ‘That was later,’ he said.

  There was an old hose in the alley where he parked his truck across from his apartment. It had been left behind by the construction crew at the federal courthouse, and Sal Russo had claimed it. He had it hooked to a spigot and was washing out the bed of his truck, which got tolerably rank by the end of Friday.

  There wasn’t any nozzle, but Sal was happy enough to control the spray with his thumb. It spit water back all over him, but he didn’t care. His life was sea spume and fish smell. This was part of it.

  He’d polished off the last mouthfuls of the gallon bottles of Carlo Rossi that his customers hadn’t got to. He had the cigar butt in his teeth, chopping words off around it, half singing, half humming ‘Sweet Betsy from Pike’. It was the middle of the summer, two or more hours of daylight left, and the wind was gusting up in front of him, blowing the spray back, soaking him by the second. Chomping down harder on his cigar, he grinned into the force of it, then turned to get another angle on the truck bed, flush out the scales.

  Initially, he thought it was a premonition of one of his spells — a shadow in the center of the sun’s glare, something about the shape so mnemonic, it felt like a haunting. Moving to one side, he squinted up into it. ‘Graham?’

  ‘Hey, Dad.’

  Sal bent the hose over on itself, stopping the flow of water. He hadn’t seen his son since that time in Vero, and that had been a stupid mistake. He had seen him play and then hadn’t been able to stop himself. He thought enough time might have passed. Maybe Graham could understand. But he’d been wrong.

  And now here he was again. ‘What’s goin’ on? Your mother all right?‘ He couldn’t imagine any other reason his son would come to see him — not after the last time. Helen, he thought, must have died and they send Graham to tell him.

  ‘Mom s fine.’ He shifted on his feet. ‘I, uh, I came by to apologize. I’m sorry.’

  The world took on a blurry edge for a beat, but Sal only blinked and nodded. ‘Yeah, well, like I said, you were right.’ He released his grip on the hose, pointed it vaguely at the truck. ‘So how you doin’?‘

  His son didn’t answer right away, which forced him to look. ‘Not that great, to tell you the truth!

  Sal kept the water going. ‘I saw they cut you!

  ‘I don’t blame ’em,‘ he said. ’I sucked.‘ There was a set to the face, a tight control. He looked about to break. ’I’m too old. It’s a kid’s game. I was stupid, the whole thing was stupid.‘

  Sal nodded. ‘Yeah, probably. If it’s any consolation, it’s in the blood. I’d a probably done the same thing, then got cut too. Bet that makes you feel better!’

  A smile started, but went nowhere. ‘Lots. Thanks!

  ‘Don’t mention it. You hungry?’ He squeezed off the water again, held it with one hand, and pulled a roll of bills out of his front pocket.

  Sal had a regular spot at the U.S. Restaurant, a lone table that spearheaded the sidewalk at the narrowest point in the triangular building. The place was in the heart of North Beach and had been in its location half a block from Gino & Carlo’s bar, essentially unchanged, for as long as Sal could remember. You still couldn’t spend ten bucks on a meal there if you tried.

  They were on their third carafe of red wine. The wineglass was a prop and Sal had his hands wrapped around his. A foot from them both, outside the glass, the tourist night was getting into swing, the lights coming up on the street.

  ‘I don’t know if there is a why anymore,’ Sal was saying. ‘Maybe there never was. I don’t know.’

  ‘But there had to be, Sal. You don’t just…’

  ‘Maybe you do. Maybe one day you wake up and you’re a different person. You’re going along and something happens and the whole vision you have of who you are — suddenly that whole thing just doesn’t work anymore. So everything it was holding up comes crashing down around it.’

  ‘What? Did Mom have an affair?’

  Sal shook his head. ‘It wasn’t your mother. This was me. Who I was.’ He lifted the prop and used it, buying some time. ‘It wasn’t anything as easy as an affair.’

  ‘So what was it?’ Sarah asked him.

  By now it was nearly midnight, although neither of them was much aware of the time. They were facing each other, sitting cross-legged on the floor.

  ‘To this day I don’t know. He said I didn’t realize how insecure a person my mother was — still is, if you want to know. No one who saw her out in the world would ever see that. Though we kids had seen it, of course, after we were older. The face-lifts now, the trappings. Stuff you don’t need if you’re together with yourself.’

  Graham seemed embarrassed by the cheap psychology. He looked down at his hands. ‘Anyway, she loved him. Their backgrounds might never mesh, they got uncomfortable doing each other’s things, you know?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Oh, Mom wouldn’t go out on the boat. Sal wouldn’t get dressed up for anything. It broke down to money — Mom was used to things you bought, Sal liked things you did. It was a pretty big difference.’

  ‘But they got together?’

  He nodded. ‘They’d never be friends like some couples were, but he loved her and knew he could make her keep loving him.’

  ‘He could make her?’

  ‘That’s what he said.’

  ‘And how did he do that?’

  ‘By being stronger than she was, having a stronger will.’

  ‘And that made her love him?’

  ‘Yeah, I think it might have.’

  Sarah and Graham had never gotten around to drinking any of their wine — the glasses remained half filled on the hardwood by the couch. Graham was still trying to reason it through for himself, how it had happened with his father and mother.

  So it wasn’t the hour or the alcohol. Still, with no real intention of doing so, he was becoming more aware of the planes of Sarah’s face, the soft bow of her lips, the way her hair fell across her cheek.

  Sal’s eyes danced with the memory. ‘See? I knew who I was. I was happy in myself. I was a person — okay, a schlemiel like I still am, but I knew where I belonged, who I was. Your mother, she didn’t. She was looking, always looking for something solid, always unsure of where the ground was.

  ‘I think — no, hell, I know — that nothing in her parents’ life got inside her. She’d gone to the schools and had the clothes and the fancy friends, but you know what? They didn’t do it for her. Then when we got together, finally she was happy — not always thrilled with the way we lived, with no money, none of that society junk, but she loved you kids.’

  ‘And what about you? Did she still love you?’ His father leaned across the table and Graham could pick up the odor of fish, of cheap wine. But even with that, the old clothes and the stubble, the random fish scale on his skin, Sal remained a compelling figure. I told you. I made her.‘

  Graham rolled his eyes and his father laughed.

  ‘That, too, but that wasn’t what I was talking about.’ Graham hadn’t touched his spumoni ice cream and now it had melted into a waxy, pinkish-brown liquid in its small, tarnished metal bowl. Sal pulled it over in front of him and dipped a spoon. ‘She’d get the doubts, you know. “Do we belong here?” “Maybe my parents are right.” “Where are we going?” “Did I still love her the way I did when we started?” All the time!’ He shook his head, sadly. ‘All the goddamn time, Graham’.

  ‘And you know what I’d do?’ He scooped up another spoonful of melted spumoni. ‘I’d tell her I
was sure. That this is really what she wanted, down in her soul. That the kids, the house, the worries — this was real life. It was the only thing that had ever made her happy. She knew that. And that I loved her, not because of anything except for who she was.’

  He sat back, scratched at his face, pulled at the sides of his mouth. Finally speaking about this after all these years, to his oldest son, bringing it up again — the memory seemed to be battering him. ‘It was just a constant battle, Graham. You can’t imagine — the conflict between how she was raised and how she was living. It seemed like she always had one foot out the door, ready to go back. So I couldn’t ever waver, couldn’t show any doubt of my own, or she’d lose faith. If I stopped acting like I believed, then she couldn’t go it on her own. It wasn’t her dream at all, really. It depended on who I was.’

  ‘And who were you?’

  He sighed wearily and spoke with a huskiness that now betrayed the words. He had confidence in the memory. He knew who he ‘d been. ’I was Sal Russo. I’d never make a lot of money, never change the world, but I was as good a man as there was. I was strong, I worked hard, I didn’t cheat. I loved your mother with all my heart. Simple stuff, but it was what she needed to hear, who she needed me to be. And it was true.‘

  ‘So what happened?’

  He searched the crowded restaurant for a minute, hiding or searching for the answer. Letting out a deep breath, he shrugged. ‘I lost my confidence, I guess. I couldn’t pretend I was anybody special anymore.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Because I wasn’t.’

  It wasn’t really an answer, but another, more pressing, question kept Graham from pursuing it. ‘But what about us? Me? Deb? Georgie? How could you just leave us?’ He reached across the table and put a hand on his father’s arm. ‘I’m not here to bust your chops on this. I’d just like to understand it, that’s all.’

  ‘I would, too, Graham. I’d go back and live every minute of that time over again if I could. I don’t know how I could have done it. I want to blame your mother, but again, it was all me. I could have fought her.’

  The implications here rocked Graham. The only story he’d ever heard was that his father didn’t want to see his children anymore. And, indeed — apparently — he hadn’t made any effort to. Not that Graham had heard of. ‘What do you mean,’ he asked, ‘you could have fought Mom?’

  They were out of props: wineglasses, ice cream, coffee cups. At the U.S. Restaurant steady customers could sit all day and night over a demitasse if they wanted. Nobody hustled them out.

  Sal had his hands folded on the table, the knuckles gnarled and white with pressure. ‘I don’t know exactly how to say this, but when we broke up, when it stopped working, your mother… it meant she’d failed. She’d gone up against everything she was raised with, because I’d convinced her it was somehow truer, or nobler, better. Then when it didn’t work, she had no choice, I think. She had to hate me. I had betrayed her. I was the devil.’

  ‘You couldn’t see us because of her?’

  Sal didn’t like that slant on it. It wasn’t Helen’s fault. It was his own. ‘She got very protective of you. I had ruined her life. She wasn’t going to let me ruin yours.’

  ‘And you accepted that?’

  He shook his head. ‘I was at the bottom, Graham. I was worthless. I guess I thought she must be right. It was too hard. I don’t know. Every time I tried, she was in the way until finally I just gave up.’

  Graham’s hand was still on his father’s arm. He tightened down his grip. ‘How could you do that?’

  Sal’s eyes leveled on his. ‘I got hit pretty hard by a few of life s pitches, Graham. I guess I got afraid to come back to the plate. You know what I’m talking about?’

  ‘I think I do,’ he said. ‘It s kind of how I feel. Why I thought I ’d come look you up.‘

  They were outside now, where Hardy and Graham had sat late that afternoon. Though by now the temperature had dropped to the fifties, Graham was still barefoot, still wore his shorts, although he’d pulled on a warm-up jacket. Sarah leaned against a lightpost, hands in her pockets.

  Graham was concluding. ‘So that’s when we became friends again. I was pretty low. I didn’t know who else…’ He let it hang, but it was clear enough. Graham felt — and from all accounts with some justification — that he’d alienated everyone in his world, too, and didn’t know where to start to get back in. Maybe with his dad, who’d been there as well.

  ‘I wish I’d known him, somehow,’ she said.

  ‘I’m glad I did, finally.’ But the subject suddenly seemed too close, embarrassing him. ‘He was great.’

  ‘But that night, in North Beach, did he already have Alzheimer’s then?’

  Graham nodded. ‘I know, that’s a question. It didn’t seem like it at all. He was like he’d always been. But the symptoms had started before. I found that out later, after we… after I became more involved with him. It was getting worse, of course, it doesn’t get better, but he was still trying to live with it.’

  It was a clean opportunity to get back to the pursuit of her investigation, but she no longer had the heart for it. ‘So how sick was he at the end?’

  ‘It wasn’t the Alzheimer’s,’ Graham said. ‘AD wasn’t ever going to kill him. It wasn’t going to get the time.’ He shook off the thought. ‘The funny thing is, you know, we were so much like each other. Firstborn kids, jocks, confident to a fault. Even now…’ He stopped again.

  ‘Even now what?’

  ‘Even now, with everything that’s happened with the clerkship and with baseball, with being unemployable, getting arrested, then fired — I still know who I am. I’m fine with me. It’s everybody else’s reaction that’s a little hard to take.’

  He wasn’t whining. It was said so matter-of-factly that another person might have missed it altogether, and that would have been fine with Graham. But Sarah knew what he was saying: he had no close friends anymore, no one to share what went on in his soul. There had been Sal, his father, and now Sal was dead.

  His smile wasn’t a come-on; it was a question. ‘It makes one cautious.’

  Sarah smiled back. ‘I’m a firstborn jock with attitude myself,’ she said. ‘Do you know the secret handshake?’

  ‘I’m not sure I do.’

  Moving off the lamppost, she took his hand, raised it open to her mouth, and, holding his gaze, licked his palm.

  Part Three

  17

  It was Friday in the third week of May. Hardy was at an outside table, alone, just finishing an order of mussels from a lunch at Plouf, a bistro on Belden Alley, smack in the middle of the financial district. Belden was a true downtown alley, perhaps a dozen feet wide, shaded except at high noon by the buildings on either side of it. The sun had just passed out of sight, and the slice of sky above the alley was bright blue.

  Hardy had taken Frannie to Paris the previous summer, leaving the kids with Moses and Susan, for five too-short days. He hadn’t been to France since just after his hitch in Vietnam, and going back had nearly broken his heart. He’d been a free man in Paris, the one Joni Mitchell had written her song about — unfettered and alive.

  Well, the savory smells of great food cooking here on Belden didn’t completely mask the underpinning aromas of fish and tobacco and urine. With those, plus the half-dozen French restaurants in the space of its one block, the place was Paris.

  Sitting over his crock of mussel shells, Hardy had that feeling again. Not exactly unfettered, but alive. Energized by the tastes and smells and bustle around him, he was certain that very soon he was going to be back in the thick of what he was born to do, and it wasn’t Tryptech. He’d looked in on Michelle back at the office, up to her elbows in paper, and had left for lunch with nary a trace of guilt.

  There was one problem, though. He hadn’t been able to reach Graham. Calls hadn’t been answered. He’d left notes tacked to the front door on Edgewood. Nothing. His client had vanished without a trace. And given th
eir disagreement over the plea bargain he’d struck with Pratt, Hardy wasn’t a hundred percent sure that he still had a client at all. After what he’d been through adjusting his attitude and priorities, this was something he’d rather not consider.

  ‘This seat taken?’

  The familiar face belonged to Art Drysdale, who’d long ago been Hardy’s mentor. Art had even rehired him to the district attorney’s office, getting him back into the practice of the law after his decade-long self-imposed exile.

  Since then their professional lives had put them in different corners, but Hardy had always liked Art and was glad to see him. The other guy with him, he didn’t know. ‘Have you met Gil Soma?’

  The two shook hands. The lawyer club. It didn’t have to be personal. Not yet, at least.

  Hardy looked from one man to the other. ‘The mussels are really great,’ he said, smiling. ‘Going on the assumption that you being here with me is a coincidence.’

  Drysdale grabbed a leftover piece of bread and dipped it in Hardy’s sauce — wine, parsley, garlic. ‘Mostly. I did happen to call your office right after you’d left and Phyllis told me you were coming here.’

  ‘She’s very efficient.’ Hardy had his poker face on. It was good practice. He’d been out of the game awhile.

  ‘Then, since it was such a nice day and lunchtime to boot, we figured we’d take a walk, get out and enjoy the city.’

  ‘Good idea.’ He waited. Let them come out with it. It was what had brought them here.

  They pulled chairs and got themselves arranged. ‘Have you heard from your client today?’ Drysdale finally asked.

  ‘Which one, Art? I’ve got clients coming out of the woodwork. I can’t keep track of them all.’

  Soma didn’t appreciate all this pirouetting. He snapped it out. ‘The famous one. Graham Russo.’

  ‘Oh, your buddy? Didn’t you guys use to work together?’

  ‘Till he stiffed us.’ Soma was smiling, but Hardy was getting the feeling that it wasn’t sincere.