Moses was going on in the backseat: “Do you really think you’ve got anything at all on me? Where’s the murder weapon? I didn’t kill that little son of a bitch, although he needed killing, and I’m glad he’s dead.”
And: “I’m having a hard time believing that Glitsky let you get away with this. We’ve been buds for twenty years. There’s no way he’s going to let me get anywhere near a trial, trust me. I’ve got nothing to worry about. You’re both wasting all this time when you could be out looking for somebody to convict.”
And: “Either of you have kids? No? What do you think you’d do if you had a daughter and found out some little punk had first beat her and then raped her? You think you’d sit around wringing your hands? C’mon, you guys are cops. You’d go and handle things, wouldn’t you? Tell me you wouldn’t. Because sometimes the law doesn’t get it right. A little prison time for some fucking loser is nothing next to the time my girl’s going to take to get over what he did to her. You think that’s fair? You think that’s right?”
Downtown, while Brady walked McGuire into the Hall of Justice and upstairs to begin processing his arrest, Sher pulled the tape recorder out from under the backseat, checked to see that it had picked up everything McGuire said on the ride downtown, then double-checked that neither she nor Brady had said so much as one word to prompt him. Satisfied, she brought the tape to the transcripts pool office to be typed up for inclusion into the case record.
22
BECAUSE FOURTEEN YEARS ago Sam Duncan and Wes Farrell had met and hooked up—although that wasn’t the term used in those days—at the Little Shamrock, Wes took it as a promising sign that she had asked to meet him there after work. On the other hand, the fact that it was a public place allowed the interpretation that she wanted to avoid a scene, which would surely ensue if she broke up with him. Indeed, such an event had come to pass at least once, even twice if one counted Sam’s abrupt departure over another argument whose subject was lost in the mists of time—something about Wes’s incorrigible lack of sensitivity, no doubt.
Since that’s what the arguments were always about.
Sam had been staying at her mother’s place since their rooftop discussion about Brittany McGuire had broken down so disastrously, and the thought that he would at least get to see her again and argue his position—bolstered by Glitsky’s comments that Sam should be mad at herself—gave him a modicum of hope, mitigated slightly by her saying that she didn’t want to talk on the phone. “Some things,” she had told him, “need to be done in person.”
At just short of six o’clock, Farrell came around the corner into the teeth of the gale at Ninth Avenue and, seeing the line of patrol cars parked at the curb on Lincoln, stopped as though getting his bearings.
What the hell?
Only then did he realize—so focused had he been on his girlfriend issue—that the long-familiar hangout was the workplace of the suspect in a murder investigation. And where, judging from the police presence, something major had transpired recently. His first thought was that Moses had killed himself, and sad to say, his first instinct was a wash of relief.
The door was locked, but he could see movement inside, and he knocked. Then knocked again, tried the door again, rattling it. Inside, a figure in uniform appeared and said through the glass of the door, “This establishment is closed until further notice. Police investigation.”
Farrell reached for his back pocket, knocked again on the window, and held up his wallet with its entirely bogus badge—after his election, he’d bought the badge at a police equipment store in Daly City; district attorneys aren’t cops and are not entitled to pretend they are, but the badge tended to work wonders with people who couldn’t read an official ID and knew generally what a badge meant. For most associate DAs, the badge’s primary function was to be flashed at traffic cops to get out of speeding tickets and DUI arrests.
Sure enough, the uniformed cop stepped closer, got a good look at the badge, and proceeded to unlock the door. “Sorry, sir,” he said, “we’ve had customers coming by all day. How can I help you?”
“Wes Farrell,” he said, getting to the point. “The district attorney. Who’s running the show here?”
The cop straightened up, decided he ought to salute, then said, “Yes, sir. Sorry, sir. Just a minute,” and disappeared into the bowels of the bar. Farrell took the opportunity to glance around and realized that he’d arrived in the midst of a fairly rigorous search. All the bottles from the shelves behind the bar were on the bar. So were most of the glasses. The pillows from the couches and upholstered chairs in the back had been removed and piled against the wall. Farrell crossed over to look behind the bar and saw that everything had been cleaned out—the refrigerators were open and empty, likewise the cash register. Someone had piled the bar towels on the counter. Most startling, the sixty or eighty photographs on the “Wall of Shame” corkboard—from women baring their breasts to men posing with yards of ale or whatever else they’d consumed—had been removed.
To Farrell, this struck deep, and not only because he had made the wall after breaking the record of five Long Island iced teas on what had been a memorable night that he couldn’t remember. His record six held, although he shared it with two other guys and one woman. Paul McCartney once stopped in for a pint of Bass and played somebody’s random right-handed guitar, by common consent, perfectly.
Farrell looked over at the sound of footsteps as another uniform came out of the hallway to the dart room. “Mr. Farrell,” he said before he’d gotten close, “Sergeant Dankers. What brings you out here?”
“I was going to ask you the same thing, Sergeant. I gather you’re searching this place. I presume you’ve got a warrant and affidavit.”
The implied rebuke brought confusion to the man’s face. “Well, yes, sir. Of course. This is on the Jessup homicide. A couple of inspectors arrested the suspect here, and we came in right after. Two, three hours ago.”
“What are you looking for?”
“Pretty much the usual. Clothing, shoes, weapons or objects that could be used as weapons, obvious signs of blood or other fluids, receipts, photographs, computer records if any.”
“They arrested a suspect?”
“Yes, sir. The bartender. The owner, I think. Moses McGuire.”
“Yes. He’s the owner. But I don’t understand. Was he fleeing? Did he try to break away when they were questioning him? Did he put up a fight?”
“I don’t think so, sir. I was outside waiting, and they went in, served the warrant, then came out with him in cuffs like five minutes later.”
“They had a warrant? An arrest warrant?”
“As far as I know. Yes, sir.”
“That’s interesting.”
“Sir?”
“I say it’s interesting because it’s my office that issues warrants. I’ve been following this case very closely, and I would have imagined I’d be told, since I specifically asked to be, if they’d gotten enough to make an arrest.”
Dankers shifted from one foot to the other. He reached over and picked up a folded document sitting on one of the tables. “Would you like to inspect my search warrant, sir? It looks like legitimately signed paper to me.”
“Who was the judge?”
Dankers unfolded the paper, glanced down. “Braun.”
That brought a deep frown. “She’s not this week’s magistrate. Why did she sign off on this?”
Dankers shrugged, mystified. “I don’t know, sir. Are you saying we should call off the search? We’re almost done as it is.”
“No. You finish up. I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation. I’m just somewhat confused as to why I wasn’t informed. But that isn’t your problem. Are you also searching McGuire’s home?”
“I’d assume somebody is. My team drew the bar.”
Farrell took a last long look around the room. It seemed to him that the team had done a thorough and relatively respectful legal search. Dankers clearly had no ax to grind; he wa
s simply doing his job. Farrell saw no point in drawing more attention to his reservations. Obviously, they’d found evidence that Moses had killed Rick Jessup, although the reality of actual arrest struck Farrell as surreal. More disturbingly, he had been in his office until after five. The arrest warrant must have been signed (by Braun!) no later than two. What Homicide DA had authorized it? How had he not been told? Could it have been an oversight? That was hard to imagine, given his admitted level of interest. Had Glitsky somehow gone around him? If so, why?
None of this was Dankers’s concern. Farrell came back to the present, tried to muster a positive tone, a half smile. “Well, Sergeant, you and your men carry on. Sorry to have bothered you. I’ve obviously just fallen out of the loop a little bit. I’m sure all will be explained in good time.” He extended his hand. “Thanks again.”
“Thank you, sir. And if I may?”
Half-turned toward the door, Farrell stopped. “Yes.”
“I’m impressed to see someone in your position out walking the walk. It’s not something that happens every day.”
“I’M TAKING THAT as a vote of confidence. When you win your election by ninety votes—and that’s after your opponent dies the week before—you’ve got to take every one you can get.”
Sam sat across from Wes at a small two-top in the Pacific Café, great seafood on the way out to the beach on Geary, the backup rendezvous she’d suggested when he’d told her the Shamrock was closed. She had placed her hand over his on the table top, a good sign, he thought. A couple of sips into their first glasses of wine, Sam cleared her throat. “Thank you for saying you’d come out and see me.”
“Not just saying it. Walking the walk.”
A tolerant smile. “That, too.” Though it was the kind of response that she tended to underappreciate, she kept her hand over his. “I’ve been thinking a lot about . . . this last thing. Me telling you about Rick Jessup, dropping his name by mistake, and your guys coming out to see Brittany, and what that meant, and now it’s led to poor Moses getting arrested. All because I wanted to share what I do with you.”
“You were right. Maybe I shouldn’t—”
She squeezed his hand, stopping him. “No,” she said. “Listen. This was my fault. Not yours. You did your duty. I’m the one who ought to be able to keep secrets, especially secrets like these. And I’ve been treating them like cheap gossip, where I’ll only tell my three best girlfriends or, in my case, my one best guy friend. But it’s not gossip. It’s really and truly privileged stuff. I am privileged to hear it at all, to have somebody trust me with it, and to treat it as any less is plain irresponsible. If I can’t keep those secrets—and I mean every single time—I don’t deserve to do what I do.”
She lifted her hand to wipe a tear from her eye. Then returned it immediately. “There are actually two reasons I wanted to see you tonight. The first is to apologize—”
“Sam, you don’t—”
“Shh. I do. I am always so sure of myself, so always in the right, so stubborn and ready to pick a fight on some political or moral issue. A fight pretty much to the death, while I’m at it. But now these last couple of days, hanging with my mom, seeing how she likes living alone—which is to say not at all—I started thinking about why I do that all the time. Especially to you. Time after time, you take it and we get back together and don’t talk about it until the next one because I know you don’t want to get me going again, get me all upset, mostly over a radical interpretation of some fine abstraction.”
Farrell broke a true smile. “Radical interpretation of some fine abstraction. There’s a nice turn of phrase.”
“Yes, but it’s not a good way to live.” She took a sip of her wine and drew a breath. “Anyway, that’s the first reason I wanted to see you. To apologize and not just for this time. For all the times.”
“Okay,” he said. “And thank you. Accepted but unnecessary. I love you. I love our life together. We’re good. We just fight sometimes.”
“No. I just pick fights sometimes. And then I give you no choice; you have to wade in.”
“Yeah, but I’m a lawyer. We live to argue.”
“Let’s not now, though, okay?”
He nodded, sat back a bit in his chair. “Okay.”
“I don’t want to be that person anymore. I don’t want to fight about every little thing. We can have different opinions, I don’t have to tell you my privileged secrets. We can be together and support each other. How would that be?”
“If I said ‘weird,’ would you hit me?”
“No,” she said. “I would support your right to say ‘weird.’ ”
“In that case,” Farrell said, “I think it would be good. Very good.” He put his other hand over hers and let out his own breath. “I was thinking you were leaving. I didn’t know what I was going to do.”
“I’m not leaving, if you still want us.”
“I don’t want anything else.”
“Okay, then. Here’s the second reason I needed to talk to you, and why we needed to do it in person.”
DISMAS AND FRANNIE Hardy lived on Thirty-fourth Avenue, down near its intersection with Clement Street. The farther intersection was at Geary, and that corner was the home of the Pacific Café. Though there was often a line to get into the tiny place, tonight the drizzly cold monsoon was keeping the crowd close to a manageable level. When Hardy opened the door for his wife, he found himself looking at Wes Farrell, who said to Sam just loudly enough to be heard: “Here he is now. I’ll tell you later.” With a big phony smile, shaking hands, bussing Frannie on the cheek, “Hi, Diz. Frannie. Small world. You’ve got to have the halibut. Incredible.”
“Always,” Frannie said.
“But first,” Farrell began, stopped, spoke to Sam. “Should we tell them?”
“I believe we should.”
“What?” Hardy looked at Sam, over to Wes. “You’re pregnant,” he said to Wes.
“Good guess, but that’s not it,” Sam said, “for either of us.”
“There’s a relief,” Frannie said, “although if it were Wes, you guys could get rich.”
Farrell ran with it. “We’re already rich in spirit, but pregnant is close, in the sense that pregnant people are sometimes married.”
“But rarely male,” Frannie countered. “In fact, never, I think.”
“Except seahorses,” Hardy said. “Pregnant males. You could look it up.”
“Darn,” Farrell said. “I was thinking that could be us. The next phase, I mean. After the marriage.”
“I’m picking up a theme.”
“Dismas Hardy, thematic wizard.”
“Married? Really?” Frannie beamed at them. “After all this time. That’s great, but what happened?”
Farrell took Sam’s hand again. “She asked me five minutes ago. I caved immediately.”
“Caved,” Sam said. “There’s a sweet way to put it.”
“Bowed to formidable pressure,” Farrell explained. “Caved.” He patted her hand. “Happily.”
Hardy spun around for the waiter. “We should order some champagne.”
“We should,” Farrell said, but then a shadow crossed his face. “Wait . . . not to put a damper on things, but I’m guessing, you both being down here for a nice date, that maybe you haven’t heard about Moses.”
“Damper” was hardly the word. Frannie turned a shade lighter and reached a hand out to steady herself on Hardy’s arm. “What about Moses?”
“I just came from the Shamrock. They had a warrant and were tossing the place. They said they picked up Moses on the Jessup thing a couple of hours ago.”
“They arrested him? Who did?”
“Homicide, I presume. Although I called, and my office didn’t sign off on the warrant. I don’t know what happened.”
Hardy looked like he was trying to place an unfamiliar flavor. “They couldn’t have arrested him. I mean, that’s impossible. Abe would at least have given me a heads-up, had me deliver him downtown. Or he
would have called me first thing.”
“You’re his lawyer?”
Hardy nodded. “Couple of days now. I can’t believe he wouldn’t have—”
On his hip, his cell phone rang with Warren Zevon’s “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead.” Hardy glanced at the screen. “Here he is now.”
Frannie squeezed his arm. “Diz, you’ve got to—”
“I know,” he said, and punched to pick up. “Mose, where are you?”
MOSES WAS IN jail. In the end, Farrell’s charging decision was unfortunately simple. The crime lab found Jessup’s blood on a pair of hiking boots in McGuire’s apartment, in his car, and on his jacket.
Now Dismas Hardy paced the semicircular glass-block wall along one side of the relatively spacious attorneys’ visiting room at the county jail. He’d been here dozens if not hundreds of times, and in spite of its size and modernity, the place never failed to depress him with its vague smell of disinfectant, its ice-cold fluorescent lighting. In the middle of the room were its only furnishings—a metal desk with a pitted green surface and three folding chairs.
Hardy stopped pacing and looked at his watch. Eight-fifteen. He’d gotten to the jail exactly half an hour ago. In near-record time of only five minutes, the front desk had verified his business and admitted him to wait until Moses got delivered. It was common practice to keep defense attorneys waiting, just as the jail guards rarely took with any sense of urgency an order to produce an inmate. They’d get to it as soon as they could, but there usually was another errand or two to run first. Or a mandated break. Or another prisoner to deliver. Or a bathroom stop.
Everyone inside the jail lived with the reality that things happened when they did, at their own speed. What was five minutes, or even twenty-five? What else were these people doing?
Once, several years ago, after an hour or so cooling his heels in this very room, Hardy had grown impatient enough to go out to the admitting desk and politely inquire as to the status of his client. Were they, perchance, having trouble locating him within the jail? Was there anything Hardy could do to speed up the process? Was there some other problem? Forty minutes after that inquiry, the admitting sergeant knocked on the visiting room door and informed Hardy that there’d been an administrative error and, unfortunately, his client was on his way to County General Hospital with a group of inmates scheduled for psychiatric evaluation. The client shouldn’t have been put on that bus, but it was too late to do anything about it now, so Hardy should come back the following day, when his client would probably be back in his cell.
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