Meanwhile, he did have other clients who needed consistent, if perhaps low-level, effort. He tried to leave Friday afternoons open for the motions and correspondence that covered a decent part of the overhead of a small commercial practice like his own. He was just finishing up a memo for one of these clients, when he looked up and saw Abe Glitsky standing in his open doorway.
Momentarily startled, Hardy sat back. ‘Now I know how you must feel. People turning up in your office without any warning. Hey, wasn’t today the day? Tell me your door’s been installed.’
‘It’s in.’ Glitsky nodded, but there was a set to his features. He wasn’t here to talk about his door.
‘What’s the matter?’
The lieutenant took a step into the room. ‘I tell you something in confidence as a friend, and you take it to the DA and try to make your own juice out of it, I feel kind of like you’re a sack-of-shit lawyer instead of my old pal.’
Any profanity from Glitsky was unusual, but a directed vulgar insult was unheard of, serious. ‘You want to come in? I’m sorry. I was wrong.’
Glitsky didn’t move. ‘I don’t think I do. I’m just here with the message, so you’d know I knew.’
Dan Tosca was allowing himself to be treated to a nice dinner at Firenze by Night. Lanier had wanted the information sooner if he could have gotten it, and now, technically, it was too late; the attorney general had already got its indictment on Graham Russo, though he and his partner hadn’t been able to serve the warrant.
Lanier didn’t really think there would be anything with Sal Russo’s business dealings that might complicate the investigation into his death. But, as it turned out, he was wrong.
Tosca was eating coniglio con pancetta - Lanier called it bunny and bacon – and Marcel was having spaghetti and meatballs. ‘… so I was surprised, mostly because I hadn’t heard a word about it.’
‘But it was a heart attack, you’re sure?’
Tosca shrugged, pushing sauce around his plate with a piece of bread. ‘Nobody’s sure of anything, come right down to it, but Pio gets a pain in his chest, he goes to the hospital, he dies.’
‘Pio?’
‘Pio, yeah. Ermenigeldo Pio. He ran the fish operation.’
‘For who?’
Tosca lowered his voice. ‘It was his shop. He built it up.’
‘And how big was it? Not just Russo’s, the whole thing?’
‘Dollar volume? Thirty, thirty-five.’
‘A month?’
Tosca shrugged, agreeing. ‘People like fish. Everybody’s worried about cholesterol. Me’ – he pointed down at his plate – ‘I like this. I don’t worry about it.’
Marcel put his fork down. ‘I don’t feel good about Pio dying just now.’
A smile. ‘I bet he don’t either. And it’s not now. It was last week.’
This really set off warning bells. Like all veteran cops Lanier set little store in coincidence. ‘They do an autopsy?’
‘Why? It was a heart attack. Guy’s sixty-two. Probably didn’t eat enough fish.’ Tosca speared some meat. ‘But you ask me, it’s all genes anyway. You get your time, then you’re dead.’
‘You’re a philosopher, aren’t you, Dan?’
Another shrug. ‘Part time. Look, if it makes you feel better, I can tell you, this has nothing to do with Sal Russo and his one truck of fish. Pio was doing vans, he’s got a fleet. He’s doing Half Moon Bay up to Tomales seven days a week.’
‘So who’s doing that now? Who’s taking that over?’
Tosca’s eyes twinkled. ‘I don’t think that’s all settled yet.’ He reached over the table and patted Lanier’s arm. ‘A vacuum like this comes up, there’s always a little power struggle. It’ll work itself out. But I guarantee you this has nothing to do with Sal Russo.’
If it was all fish, Lanier could believe that, even at the enormous volumes they were discussing. But if it was anything else… ‘You would tell me if you’d run into drugs, wouldn’t you?’
Tosca put his fork down. ‘Marcel, this is not how dope is handled. You know this. You got your Koreans, your Vietnamese, the Chinatown tongs, your longhairs. Bunch of guinea Pescadores go up against these hard-ons? I don’t think so. Besides, I thought you told me you were arresting the boy, his son.’
‘We are.’
‘And wasn’t there some magazine story he admitted it?’
‘Yeah.’
Tosca spread his hands. ‘So what’s the problem?’
18
Sarah wasn’t sure whether it had been her idea or Graham’s, but somehow they’d decided they would spend a last weekend together, after which Graham would turn himself in.
But it wouldn’t be in San Francisco, where the risk was too great. Sarah already felt so compromised that she barely considered what difference another day or two would make, especially over a weekend.
Graham had a Saturday tournament across the Bay. If his team won, he would have more money for his defense, which he would need. So at nine-fifteen Saturday morning they parked at the tournament site, a multidiamond complex in a valley surrounded by oak-strewn rolling green foothills. Graham was pulling his bat bag from his trunk when a trim man in a designer sweatsuit, gold chain, sunglasses, came jogging up. ‘I can’t believe it, I can’t believe you’re here.’
Graham turned. ‘Hey, Craig, how you doin’?‘ A bounce of the shoulders. ’We got games, I’m here.‘ Graham’s macho pose was kicking back in. Sarah saw little sign of the man she’d been with for the past week, for whom she was sacrificing everything. This untouchable athlete needed no one. It was an unsettling moment.
But this man, Craig, was going on. ‘You’re having some week, aren’t you? I know some important people, let me tell you, and I don’t know anybody who’s ever been on the cover of Time.’
‘It’s just stuff around me,’ Graham said. ‘I’m here to play ball, that’s all.’ He put out his hand to include Sarah, bring her up to them. ‘This is a friend of mine, Sarah Evans. Sarah, Craig Ising, our sponsor.’
Shaking hands with him, Sarah was struck by his relative youth. He wasn’t much older than they were, certainly not over forty. From Graham’s description of him – really from what she knew he must be worth – she had expected someone in his fifties, at least.
Half an hour later Sarah was eating a Sno-Kone, watching the teams warm up. Ising appeared from somewhere and sat next to her. ‘So, you been seeing my star a long time?’
‘Couple of weeks,’ she said.
‘You live in the city?’
‘Yeah.’ She glanced out the side of her sunglasses. ‘How’d you find Graham?’
‘I knew his dad.’
‘Sal?’
‘You knew him too?’
‘Graham talks about him a lot.’
‘Yeah. Hell of a funny guy. Was, I mean. Shame about that. He had some great jokes. Anyway, Graham was in Triple A and got cut, and Sal told me I ought to try him out. I’m glad I did. Kid’s made me a bundle.’
‘That’s nice.’
‘He’s mature, you know, a leader.’
She smiled. ‘I like him already, Craig. So what was it? You bought fish from Sal?’
‘Naw.’ He lowered his voice. ‘He had protection, you know? He was good luck.’
Sarah felt the hairs rise on the back of her neck. ‘What do you mean, protection?’
The game had started and the shortstop for the Hornets took a hit away from the first batter, going deep into the hole. When Ising sat down again, Sarah repeated her question.
‘I’m just curious. Protection from what? This kind of thing fascinates me.’
Ising, impressing the pretty girl, unraveled the mystery for her. ‘He was connected, I don’t know. Somebody way up there. He looked like a bum and nobody touched him.’
‘So how did you meet him?’
‘One of my friends. I do a little betting, maybe Graham told you, these games, other things. So sometimes cash moves around downtown.’
�
�You’re saying Sal carried this cash?’
He playfully hit her lightly on the knee. ‘Hey, you got a knack for this, Sarah, I’m not kidding you. Yeah, you give Sal a paper bag and a bill and off he goes. He stopped lately. He must have known he was getting forgetful, didn’t want to lose track of anybody’s money.’
All those names, she was thinking, all those numbers. They weren’t the people who supplied his fish to him. Could it be they were gamblers – high-stakes gamblers? ‘Did Graham know about this?’
‘I don’t know, you ought to ask him. Hey, by the way.’ He was fishing in his pockets for something and came out with a business card – his name and a number. ‘Don’t take this wrong, but it wasn’t real clear. Are you and Graham an item?’
She shrugged. ‘Close. Kind of.’
‘Well’ – he handed her the card – ‘if it doesn’t work out, give me a call. I have a pretty good time.’
‘I can see that,’ she said, smiling at him. ‘I’ll keep it in mind.’
Right after Hardy got up Saturday, he’d called Glitsky to apologize again and the nanny told him the lieutenant was busy. She didn’t know when he’d be available. He asked her to make sure and give him the message that his friend Hardy was a horse’s ass, but he wasn’t sure she’d deliver it verbatim.
Then, while he was telephoning, he’d tried Graham Russo’s home for the fun of it and gotten the expected result. Nothing.
Then Frannie reminded him that the kids had arranged for some school chums to come over and play, and Frannie was going to her Saturday jazzercize class, so Hardy was in charge.
She’d told him! Didn’t he remember? Of course he did, he had told her, although this was a lie. He said he was just teasing her.
So for three hours Hardy had baby-sat. Although, as his wife never tired of telling him, he shouldn’t think of it as baby-sitting. They were his children. He wasn’t merely watching them. He was their father, responsible for their guidance and development.
Too true, he admitted every time this topic surfaced. He even believed it. But there were moments – as for example when five pre-ten-year-olds were playing some kind of parade game with every pillow, blanket, cushion, and stuffed animal in the entire house on the living-room floor – that his parental role seemed limited, more or less, to just baby-sitting. Neither his kids nor their friends really cried out to have old Dad guiding their development at that particular moment.
This was not to say there was not a great deal of crying out in general – and screaming and giggling and fighting and running around – and Hardy never for a moment doubted that if he wasn’t in baby-sitting mode, they would destroy the house as surely and as efficiently as Vesuvius had destroyed Pompeii.
Finally, Frannie came home. Hardy, nearly insane with enduring the kid stuff, asked her if she minded if he took a little break. He’d be back in a while – going for a jog.
Until three years before, Hardy had been religious about running a four-mile circle from his house on 34th Avenue, out to the beach, south as far as Lincoln, then back east along Lincoln to Park Presidio, up through Golden Gate Park, and back home.
Frannie warned him that maybe he should warm up for a week or so, get back in some aerobic condition before tackling four miles. To which he’d beaten his chest like Tarzan, getting a big laugh from the kids – their dad was funny – and told his wife he’d be home in forty-five minutes. He was still in shape.
He had never given the workout much thought; it had been part of his daily routine. Today, before he’d even made the fifteen or so downhill blocks to the beach, he was truly winded. But never one to let a little physical discomfort stand in his way, especially when he thought it could be overcome by an act of will, he turned south and kept jogging.
Frustrated by the burning in his lungs and leg muscles, he decided he’d just show his uncooperative body who was boss and run in the soft sand, not the hard pack by the breakers.
When he finally realized that the cramp that stopped him a mile farther on was not a fatal heart attack, he was in a real pickle. He hadn’t brought either his wallet or keys.
So now, at the farthest possible point from his house, he was stopped in agony, without cab fare or ID. He was going to have to walk, or limp, home.
He’d better start walking. Getting back home wasn’t going to be quick. It was sometime after noon and the wind off the ocean had picked up. His sweat glands worked fine, and the dampness of the sweats he wore made it even colder.
He wasn’t going to make it home. He would die here, limping on the beach. The fine-blowing sand would imbed itself into his damp sweatsuit, his very pores, and turn to cement, and leave him permanently frozen in place.
He could see it clearly: generations hence, tourists would flock to San Francisco, to the binoculars at the Cliff House, and pay a quarter to look down the beach and marvel in wonder at the origins of the manlike form that had magically appeared one day in the late nineties, an eternal sandstone monument to middle-aged flabbiness and stupidity.
It took him nearly an hour and a half to get home from the beach. He had a bath, tried Glitsky and Graham again to no avail, got in a twenty-minute nap. He was going to survive, although the next few days might not be much fun.
That night, he and Rebecca were having their own ‘date.’ The word had a lot of emotional resonance in the family due to the traditional Wednesday ‘Date Night.’ They’d instituted something of the sort with their kids – Hardy with the Beck, Frannie with Vincent.
He and his daughter got to North Beach with time to kill before their dinner reservation, so they strolled the neighborhood together. The Beck’s dress was a flounced floral print in pinks and greens. She wore black patent leather shoes and white tights. Holding hands, flushed with excitement to be in the grown-up world with her dad, Rebecca chartered her way through the tail end of Chinatown with its ducks hanging whole in the windows, its bushels of strange green vegetables and even stranger brown tubers on the sidewalks, its fish in tanks, live poultry in cages.
‘Can we go in one?’
‘Sure.’
In front of them a tiny Asian woman ordered something and the man behind the counter took a turtle from a tank and a cleaver from the butcher block, eviscerating and cleaning it as he would have any other foodstuff.
‘I didn’t know people ate turtles,’ she whispered as they left.
Hardy bought an orchid from a street vendor and leaned down to arrange it under his daughter’s hair band.
They quickly passed – Rebecca silent, holding Hardy’s hand tightly – through the gaudy tourist Saturday-night gauntlet of strip shows and adult theaters, the hawkers and gawkers and rubes from out of town, and then up Broadway by the tunnel to the quiet serenity of Alfred’s.
At their banquette the Beck smiled at her father with an adoring radiance. Her strawberry-blond hair was pulled back off her broad, unlined forehead, usually hidden by bangs. It made her look three or four years older. Her manners were flawless.
‘What a little doll!’ ‘Such a charming child!’ ‘You are one lucky man!’ ‘You must be so proud of her!’
The two of them – Rebecca was meant to hear – took the compliments in stride, modestly, graciously. ‘Thanks.’ ‘She is a gem, isn’t she?’ ‘I know – her dad is so proud of her.’
It was difficult to reconcile the sophisticated daughter who sat across from him now, dazzling the waiters and staff, with the jelly-covered dervish of the morning. But then Hardy realized it would be equally difficult to recognize the well-groomed man in the dark suit as the limping, teeth-chattering hunchback of Ocean Beach he’d been only a few hours ago.
‘And for the lady?’ the waiter asked.
She ordered a Shirley Temple in a martini glass to go with her father’s Bombay. After the drinks arrived, they clinked their glasses. ‘To you,’ Hardy said. ‘I’m so glad we do this.’
Rebecca looked down demurely. ‘Me too.’ She sipped and put the glass down carefully, then l
ooked back up at him. ‘Daddy? That man you’re helping, why did he kill his father?’
Out of the mouths of babes, he thought.
‘Well, I don’t know if he did.’
‘They said at school he did.’
‘They did, huh?’
She nodded solemnly. ‘Because he was sick – the dad, I mean. We had a big talk about it, if it was okay. They said he killed him because he was so sick, but I know I wouldn’t want to kill you, even if you were sick. Then I wouldn’t have you anymore.’
‘No, that’s true, you wouldn’t.’ Hardy searched for an approach. ‘Have you been thinking about this a lot?’
She shrugged. ‘A little. I mean, I know you’re helping him, right? So you must think it’s all right.’
‘I don’t think it’s bad, hon, not necessarily. It depends on the person who’s sick, I think, if he wants to die.’
‘But that would mean he’d want to leave his son too.’
‘Well’ – Hardy rubbed at the table with his fingertip – ‘not that he’d want to. But what if he was hurting all the time? What if I was? You wouldn’t want me to spend my life suffering, would you?’
‘But I wouldn’t want you to die!’
He reached across the table and put his hand on top of hers. ‘This is just something we’re talking about, Beck. I’m not going to die, okay? We’re talking about my client’s dad, and he was old and really really sick. I think he wanted to die and he needed his son to help him. He couldn’t trust anybody else to do it right.’
‘Well, then, why is there going to be a trial if it was the right thing?’
‘Because the law says it’s wrong. But sometimes things that are against the law aren’t really wrong. They’re just against the law.’ He heard himself uttering these words and wondered if he really believed them. When he’d been a prosecutor, the distinction wouldn’t have mattered a fig to him. He wondered if he was beginning to even think like a defense attorney, and, for the millionth time, wasn’t sure if he was comfortable with it.
The Mercy Rule Page 23