Hardy 05 - Mercy Rule, The

by John Lescroart

  22

  When Leland Taylor’s limo dropped him back at his office, Hardy had a message from David Freeman asking him to come down. Something had come up with Dyson Brunei and Tryptech, and they needed to talk.

  What now? Hardy thought.

  But Freeman was — no surprise — in court for the afternoon. In the meanwhile a messenger delivered another box of discovery documents on Graham. This stuff kept pulling him along until nearly five o’clock, when he realized he had better try again to see what Freeman wanted.

  The old man was buried in some legal text in the law library off the Solarium. He was chewing contentedly on the butt of a thick cigar. Three half-finished china cups of coffee told Hardy he’d been back in from court for at least an hour. But he showed no sign of impatience. Time didn’t exist for Freeman — only the beautiful law.

  Hardy pulled up a chair next to him. ‘Dyson Brunei,’ he said. ‘What’s happening?’

  Freeman finished his paragraph, made a notation in ink in the margin of the book, marked his place with his cigar, and closed it. ‘This dredging fee.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Dyson’s having trouble pulling the cash together to pay for it. Tryptech’s running a little thin. He wants to pay you and Michelle in stock options for a while.’

  Shocked, Hardy sat back in his chair. ‘In stock options? For Tryptech?’

  Freeman nodded. ‘It’s not unheard of.’

  ‘I’m not saying it is. I’m wondering what I’m supposed to live on until I can cash them in.’

  ‘I thought you’d wonder that, tell you the truth.’ Hardy didn’t need this at all right now. Tryptech was his main source of liquid income, his salary. ‘You’d tell me if you thought they were going belly up, wouldn’t you, David?’

  ‘I don’t think it’s like that, Diz. Brunei tells me the company’s still very strong. I think I believe him. It’s a cash-flow issue.’

  ‘But they don’t want to pay us in money? That’s one way to keep the rest of the old cash flowing.’

  ‘He says they’re doing some restructuring, trying to make their cash outflows look a little leaner.’ Freeman lowered his voice, implying a confidence. ‘The annual report is coming up, Diz. They’re carrying the eighteen-mil container loss forward on their books. And that, plus our legal fees…’

  ‘Not exactly the national debt, David.’

  ‘No, but all out of pocket. It directly impacts the bottom line.’ Freeman held up a palm, cutting off Hardy’s rejoinder. ‘I’m just delivering the message here. I didn’t think this up. Dyson says he’s worried about his shareholders, who tend to notice these things. He’s afraid the company won’t look as good on paper as it could. As it is.’

  Hardy heard his warning bells going off. ‘And they’re offering stock options?’

  ‘No. Actual shares. I’m inclined to accept. I think we’re looking at a large recovery down the road, and we’ll do better than all right. The problem is, I won’t be able to keep paying you for your hours, or at least not as many of them. Brunei might manage half-time hourly cash for one employee…’

  ‘I’d call that a rather substantial problem, David. If I’m not paid, I can’t work. What am I supposed to live on?’

  ‘I know, 1 know. But even for a few months?’

  ‘Jesus, I don’t know, David. If it turns out to be worthless paper…’

  ‘Yeah, well, Brunei’s story is it could work out to be a very lucrative deal.’

  ‘What else is he going to say? That it probably won’t work? We’ll all get stiffed?’ But Hardy realized he was just whining. He might as well hear the complete proposal. ‘So what’s the offer?’

  ‘They discount their shares to two and deal you twenty thousand to carry you through, say, September.’

  ‘That’s very generous.’ The ironic tone was thick. ‘What’s the stock going for now, three?’

  ‘And an eighth.’ Freeman spread his hands. ‘I know, it’s low, but Dyson says that’s all the better for us — we’d get more of them. It’s been as high as nine. Maybe it’s going there again, maybe higher. It could be worth a fortune, way beyond your billables. I’m keeping the firm in, if that’s any consolation.’

  ‘It’s not a matter of consolation.’

  And in truth — if the Tryptech ship wasn’t going down the way its container had — Hardy knew that potentially this was a great deal. At today’s price Dyson was offering him sixty thousand plus in stock, far more than he would make in the next four months. But he also knew that the operative word was could. Unfortunately, the stock market, like any given jury, was notoriously unpredictable. ‘It’s not that I don’t believe it could be lucrative,’ he said, ‘but I’m a working stiff who kind of depends on a paycheck every month.’

  Freeman was silent for a beat. ‘You really might want to do this, Diz,’ he said at last. ‘As a long-run move it could really work out.’

  Hardy’s brow creased. As a matter of course he knew that David had run a Standard & Poors on Tryptech before taking them on as clients, and if David still thought the company checked out, it would probably survive. It wasn’t the biggest manufacturer of computers and parts, but it wasn’t the smallest.

  But even David Freeman had been fooled before. And after having worked with him for the better part of a year already, Hardy was of the opinion that Dyson Brunei wasn’t America’s most honest man. The offer more than worried him. Could Tryptech have gotten to the point where it could no longer pay any of its contractors, not just its lawyers? If that was the case, they were dead, and soon.

  Plus, restructuring was a scary word; it meant they were laying off employees. Hardy knew this had been going on at Tryptech with increasing regularity. Of course, as long as the company was in business at all, it would need legal help, but this late-in-the-day finagling to get his services, essentially for nothing, in exchange for stock that had been in free fall for months, struck Hardy as desperate.

  ‘If they’re strapped for cash,’ he suggested, ‘maybe we could talk about getting the Port to settle.’ Hardy thought he could probably negotiate something like $10 million in a long weekend. Of course, Tryptech was hoping to get nearly three times that when all was said and done, but it might be bird-in-the-hand time.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ David said. ‘I suggested that to Dyson, of course. He’s not ready to go that way. Not yet.’ Another pause. ‘He said he had all his people to consider. Customers, shareholders, contractors, everybody.’

  Hardy chuckled. This, coming from a man who was laying off workers and probably dissembling — which was the lawyer word for lying — about the actual number of computers he’d lost in his container, struck Hardy as plain silly. ‘Well, thanks anyway, David, but you’ll have to tell Brunei I don’t think so.’

  A disappointed sigh. ‘All right. But if you don’t mind, I’m conveying the same offer to Michelle.’

  Hardy left the room, shaken. Suddenly his main source of income looked good to be drying up.

  * * * * *

  ‘What drives me nuts is I go into this litigation game for the security of it—’

  ‘There’s your problem,’ Frannie told him. ‘There is no such thing as security. It is a pure myth.’

  His wife knew whereof she spoke. Orphaned as a young child, she’d been raised by her brother, Moses. Then her first husband had been killed within a week of her discovery that she was pregnant with the baby who turned out to be Rebecca. ‘This is why, my poor suffering husband, we should really really try to recognize and enjoy things when life is going well. Like now, for instance. This minute.’

  There was a blanket under them and another one over them as they lay on the rug in the living room. The shades in the bay window were drawn, the kids were asleep, and the elephants on the mantel had circled and were at rest. Tony Bennett was on low, singing some Billie Holiday. A fire threw a flickering light.

  ‘This minute isn’t too bad,’ he admitted. ‘Why are we in the living room?
’

  ‘Sexual urgency,’ she said.

  ‘That was it,’ Hardy agreed. ‘I remember now.’ He leaned over and kissed her. ‘I love you.’

  ‘Well, all right, if you must.’

  ‘I must.’ Her head was on his shoulder, a leg thrown over his. A long moment passed. ‘And you’re okay with all this?’

  ‘With what?’

  ‘All these changes coming up. It’s going to be different.’

  ‘You’re still going to be here, right?’

  ‘I’m considering it.’

  ‘So nothing’s really changed. You just think it might be changing, but you’ve been dying to get out from under Tryptech anyway…’

  ‘I just worry,’ he said.

  Frannie went up onto an elbow, her red hair glowing in the firelight. ‘You? You’re kidding?’ She leaned up against him. ‘Dismas, everything changes all the time. Don’t you think life would be pretty boring if it didn’t?’

  ‘Boring would be nice,’ he said. ‘I could live with boring.’

  ‘You’d hate it. Your boredom tolerance is zero. You just want to guarantee everything.’

  ‘And what’s the matter with that?’

  ‘Nothing, except you can’t guarantee anything.’

  ‘I hate that part,’ he said.

  ‘The good news, though, is you’ve got a client you believe in whose parents seem to want to throw money at you.’

  ‘Which I’m not sure I can take.’

  She was quiet for a minute. ‘Let’s play a game,’ she said. ‘I’ll say something, and then you try to think of something positive to say about it, instead of how it could all come back and bite you on the ass.’

  ‘Sounds like fun.’

  ‘It is.’ She kissed him. ‘You should try it.’

  * * * * *

  Eventually they got to the bedroom. Hardy was in a deep sleep when the telephone rang next to the bed.

  ‘Hello?’ He looked at his digital clock — eleven-fifteen.

  ‘Mr Hardy. I’m sorry to wake you up. This is Sergeant Evans. We need to talk.’

  Adrenaline jolted in and suddenly he was awake, throwing off his blanket, grabbing a bathrobe. ‘Just a minute,’ he whispered, carrying the portable phone into the kitchen, closing the bedroom door behind him. He flicked on the light and pulled out a chair at the kitchen table. ‘Is Graham all right?’

  ‘He’s fine. I just talked to him.’

  Hardy tried to process this, but he must have been more asleep than he thought, because he couldn’t do it. ‘You just talked to him when?’

  ‘Just now. He called me.’

  ‘From jail?’ He was asking stupid questions. Of course he’d phoned her from jail. That’s where he was.

  ‘We decided we had to tell you.’

  Hardy’s first thought was that Graham had confessed to the pretty young cop. She knew he’d be at his low ebb — lonely, depressed, and scared — and had gone back to nail him on his first night in the slammer. And succeeded.

  ‘We’re together.’

  Again, Hardy’s brain didn’t seem to be accepting the data it was getting. ‘You’re together in what way?’ he asked.

  ‘I guess the usual way.’

  Hardy’s experience with murder suspects and homicide inspectors who got ‘together’ in anything like an interpersonal relationship was limited, if you didn’t include one shooting the other.

  ‘I’m in love with him.’

  ‘You’re in love with Graham?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Okay.’

  Frannie’s words came back at him. Nothing was guaranteed. Nothing was predictable. It wasn’t just the stock market or juries. It was everything. ‘Okay,’ he said again.

  ‘I know it’s a little weird.’

  ‘I’ll get used to it,’ Hardy said. ‘So does this mean you think he’s innocent?’

  ‘He didn’t kill his father.’

  ‘No, I don’t think so either.’

  ‘But somebody did.’

  ‘Do you know that for a fact?’

  ‘I’d bet on it. In fact, I am betting on it.’

  ‘Do you know who it was?’

  ‘No. If I did, I’d arrest him, get my man out of jail. But they’ve pulled us off the case. It’s all politics. If they’d let us look, I’d find him. There’s something, I know that. More than you’ve seen.’

  ‘Maybe not,’ Hardy said. ‘I got another pile of discovery today.’

  There was a brief silence, then Evans said, ‘This won’t be in any discovery.’

  She outlined the efforts of both herself and Lanier: the fish supplier, Pio, who’d died within the same week as Sal; the fact that Sal had been a cash courier for some high-stakes gamblers. ‘This guy Soma just hates Graham and decided to go get him. When he had enough for that, we got called off.’

  Hardy was silent for so long that she said his name.

  ‘I’m still here. I’m just wondering what you want to do.’

  ‘I want to help Graham,’ she said. ‘It can be on my own time, I don’t care. Find out where these other trails go. The only thing is, I can’t… I’d have to come to you, not my boss. I couldn’t go to him.’

  ‘That would be Glitsky?’

  ‘Yeah. You know him?’

  ‘Jesus,’ Hardy said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Oh, nothing. Just a little late-night humor. Yeah, I know Glitsky. You could say that.’

  ‘I think he’d fire me. No, I think he’d shoot me.’

  ‘I think you’re right.’

  ‘So can we do that, me and you? Keep it between us. And Graham, of course.’

  ‘Could I have a free investigator working with me to help my client? Could I do that? Call me crazy, but I think so.’

  * * * * *

  Sarah hung up the telephone in her kitchen and sat at the table with her hands shaking. She’d done it, joined the enemy.

  She’d told Hardy she was betting on Graham being innocent, but that was putting it mildly. In reality she was risking everything on it. Her credibility, her career.

  Over the past few days she’d tried to take the long view of the developing situation between Graham and herself. If she were a man…

  This always stopped her, for of course she wasn’t.

  But if she were, she might be able to get away with having a relationship with one of her suspects. If she were a male cop, the old boy network would close in around her and though she might take a lot of grief about it, it would never become a public issue. Sarah had known three men on the force in her career who had ‘dated’ their suspects. If memory served, one of those had even been a murder rap. One of these liaisons — not the murder — got to marriage.

  But if it came out about Graham and her, she had no illusions. She was going to be finished. Even if the Police Officers Association went to bat for her, Glitsky would see that she was reassigned out of homicide.

  She hoped that by calling Hardy she was doing the right thing. Although she was no longer sure what the right thing was anymore.

  * * * * *

  Now wide awake, Hardy sat at his own kitchen table.

  It had been an amazing day, Graham’s hidden allies appearing with no warning. The parents wanting to help pay for his defense, Sarah Evans volunteering to help with his investigation.

  Sarah’s suggestion that someone else altogether might be involved widened the scope of things dramatically. It also provided him with a tactic that always played well for a jury: the so-called ‘SODDIT’ defense, an acronym for Some Other Dude Did It. Sarah wouldn’t even have to find another suspect. If Hardy could point clearly enough to where there might be one, he might be able to churn up enough doubt to get to reasonable.

  But the thought that really refused to leave his mind was David Freeman’s magic trick with the newspaper of the other day — context, context, context.

  Today’s discovery documents included a listing of all tagged physical evidence so far in the case. Ha
rdy would have lots of time in the coming months to go to the evidence locker and physically examine every item on the list, but the list itself had provided at least one important, or potentially important, bit of context.

  He had already known that the $50,000 Sal had kept in his safe, the money in Graham’s safety deposit box, had been bank-wrapped seventeen years before. What he hadn’t really considered until now was the fact that he had an exact date: April 2, 1980.

  Fifty thousand dollars was a lot of money now, and seventeen years ago it had been a fortune. Where had it come from? Had there been a bank robbery? A kidnapping? Something that might have been in the newspapers?

  He didn’t know, but the Chronicle’s archives would be open tomorrow, and he was going to find out.

  23

  He started six months before the date the bills had been wrapped, skimming the headlines. He didn’t have to go very far. When he came to the first week of November, 1979, he figured he’d gotten what he’d come for, and stopped right there, nearly running out of the archives in his hurry to get to a telephone. ‘Judge Giotti, please. Dismas Hardy. Please tell him it relates to Graham Russo.’

  ‘This is Mario Giotti.’ Hardy had never expected the judge to pick right up. You didn’t just call a federal judge and have him come to the phone. But that’s what Giotti had done. Maybe he had some personal interest.

  Hardy introduced himself. ‘I’m representing Graham Russo. I’ve got a few questions, if you could spare some time.’

  ‘Of course. Sal was one of my oldest friends. I assume you want to talk about the condition of the scene when I found the body. I can assure you I didn’t touch anything.’

  Hardy knew there wasn’t going to be any way to finesse it. ‘Well, Your Honor, in fact what I’m curious about is the fire at your father’s restaurant, the Grotto.’

  For a long moment there was no answer. Then, ‘You said this relates to Graham Russo?’