The First Law dh-8

by John Lescroart

  He reached over and cupped her breast and she moved her hand over his, holding him there, never stopping her reading. He went back to the paper and turned the page. Some tension must have translated over to her.

  "What is it, John? Are you all right?"

  His hand had left her breast. He read on for another few seconds, making sure it confirmed what the headline seemed to promise. It did. He looked up at her, concern etching his features into something very much older. He hesitated, knowing that his ownership and management of the Ark was not her favorite thing about him. When he'd gotten home from work last night, he had started to tell her about Clint and Panos's people, to say nothing of the actual police. As usual, it hadn't sparked her interest, and he'd let it drop in favor of her query letters to Gourmet, Sunset and Bon Appetit to see if any of them would be interested in a story on the glories of grilled fruit.

  He'd already told her the story about how he'd come to own the Ark. He'd known the owner, Joey Lament, pretty well. Joey was pushing seventy and Holiday had had a pocketful of cash from the sale of the pharmacy, so they made a deal and the thing never even went on the open market. But now, like it or not, his bar was about to become the topic again.

  "Somebody killed Matt Creed," he said.

  "Do you know him?"

  "Yeah, I did. He's the patrol guy. Kind of a cop. Private security."

  "And somebody killed him?"

  "Shot him." He was picking up details, scanning the small article. "Point blank, or close enough."

  She pulled some covers up around her shoulders. "Tell me this has nothing to do with you or your bar."

  He said nothing, eyes down on the printed page.

  "John?"

  Finally, a sigh. "He's the kid who found Silverman. It was in the paper Saturday. The thing they came and talked to Clint about."

  "What do you mean, kid?"

  "It says here he was twenty-two."

  Michelle pulled her blanket more closely around her and got out of the bed. She walked over to the picture window and stood before it, looking out. "I don't want to have this in our life, if we're going to have a life," she said. "People you know getting killed. They're related aren't they?"

  He sat up, his voice defensive. "It doesn't say that here. There's no sign of it."

  But he might as well not have spoken. "I guess I don't understand why you don't just sell the damn bar. Or if it's really important to you, at least fix it up?"

  "It's not that important, really. It keeps my money working so I don't have to, that's all. I could sell it today for twice what I paid for it and then retire." Trying to inject some lightness, he added, "But then what would I do?"

  "I've got a wild idea."

  "What?"

  "How about something worthwhile?"

  A jolt of anger shot through him and he fought to control it. "I guess I don't remember," he said. "Were we having a fight?"

  She lowered herself onto the ottoman by her reading chair. Her head went down so that he couldn't see her face.

  "Would you be happier if we broke up?" he asked. "The last thing I want to do is cause you pain."

  When she looked up, she was close to tears. "You know two people who have been shot to death in the last week. Do you know how scary that is to someone who loves you? And then you say-you apparently believe-that they're not related, to you or each other." She shook her head back and forth with great sadness. "Of course they are, John. Of course they are."

  Roy Panos was buying. He insisted.

  He cut into his steak and met the eyes of both inspectors across the table. He put a bite of meat into his face, then put his utensils down and held up his right hand. "I swear to God. Terry was off. I stopped in around eight…"

  "I thought they'd quit paying you guys," Russell said.

  Roy nodded. "Yeah, but since Silverman, I figured it can't hurt to keep up on 'em, am I right?"

  "You're right." Cuneo was having petrale with capers and lemon sauce, humming as he chewed. "So Holiday worked the night shift last night?"

  "Yep."

  "You talk to him?" Russell asked. He was having the special-lamb chops with asparagus and garlic mashed potatoes.

  "Said hi when I looked in. I bought a coffee. He asked me where Mattie was."

  "Creed?" Cuneo put down his fork. "Why'd he ask that?"

  Roy shrugged. " 'Cause normally Mattie walked the north beat first. But last night I took it."

  "Why? "Russell asked.

  "No reason, really. Change of pace."

  "He say anything else? Holiday?"

  Panos had had a rye on the rocks before lunch. Now he finished his second glass of wine and started pouring the next. He drank some more, put the wineglass down, twisted the stem of it pensively. When he spoke, it was almost apologetically. "I didn't want to spook him. I wanted to let you guys get him fresh."

  "So you didn't mention anything about Creed?" Cuneo asked.

  "Anything like what?"

  "Like he pointed the finger in their direction."

  Roy gave this some more thought. "I didn't go anywhere near there, but now you mention it, Holiday did say if I talked to Mattie, would I ask him to stop in? He wanted to ask him something."

  The two inspectors exchanged a look.

  Suddenly, Roy's heavy eyes lit up with the significance of what he'd revealed. "He wanted to make sure Mattie was on, didn't he? Son of a bitch. And I told him. Shit." For a moment, it looked as though Roy would cry.

  Russell reached out and patted the table between them. "It would have been another night, that's all. It's nothing you did."

  "The sons of bitches," Panos repeated. "And now, without Mattie's ID…"

  "Don't worry about that," Cuneo said. "They made some mistakes last night. We're close."

  "How close?"

  He was one of them, another cop, so the inspectors told him.

  11

  The night before, Hardy drove twice around the downtown neighborhood and could not find a place to park even quasilegally. Nearly out of his mind with frustration and worry, he had finally given up and driven the extra few blocks to his own office, where he had his own spot under the building. Back up on the street, he'd run back to the emergency room entrance of St. Francis Memorial Hospital, where Gina Roake had stood waiting by the admitting station.

  "How is he?"

  Her face was blotched, but she held it now under tight control. "Not good. He's been in there for two hours. He's still unconscious. They won't let me in."

  "What happened?"

  "Somebody beat him up, Dismas. I'd been home an hour and some policemen knocked at the door. He had his wallet on him, which had his driver's license with the address, and…"

  "He had his wallet? Was there still money in it?"

  "I don't know. I didn't even…"

  She caught Hardy's shift of focus and turned. A young woman in green scrubs had come out into the waiting room. Roake touched his arm and went to her. He followed, noting with a sinking heart the grave look on her face.

  "We've done all we can for the moment," she was saying. "We'll be bringing him to the ICU, where we can keep a close eye on him."

  "But how is he?" Gina asked.

  The young doctor's eyes quickly went to Hardy, came back to Gina. "He's taken quite a beating. He's got severe head trauma and internal bleeding and he hasn't regained consciousness." She took in a deep breath and let it out. "I'd have to call his condition critical."

  Roake closed her eyes. Her shoulders seemed to collapse. After a short moment, she opened her eyes and nodded. "Is there anything at all I can do?"

  There wasn't. The doctor said she had to go and supervise the transfer to the ICU, and she went back behind the door to the ER.

  Without a word, Roake and Hardy sat down next to one another on the waiting room chairs. To his surprise, Hardy realized that they weren't alone in the room-a young black woman rocked a baby across the room and stared into empty space in front of her. An elderly
Asian man was reading a newspaper.

  A young person let out an agonizing moan somewhere behind them, and sirens cried somewhere close in the night.

  After a minute, an orderly came out holding a large plastic sack. He looked around and came over to them. "Are you with Mr. Freeman? I've got some of his personal effects that you might want to take."

  Roake reached out for the bag, and for the first time Hardy noticed the ring-twice the size of Frannie's diamond, newly mounted and bright. She opened the bag and looked inside, then closed it back up. "His good suit," she said as though to herself. "I bought it for him." Turning to Hardy, her lip quivered for an instant. She bit down on it. "How could this happen?" she asked. "Who could have done this to him?"

  After a sleepless night, Hardy's first stop at a little after 6:00 a.m. this morning had been the hospital again. It was still long before visiting hours and though he believed he had no chance to get in and see Freeman, he knew he'd get more information talking to a human being than to a voice on the telephone.

  Sure enough, at the nurse's station, he had learned that Freeman's condition was unchanged from the night before, but that at least there had been no deterioration. He was no more critical than he'd been. Armed with that news, he walked down the hallway and looked in on the ICU waiting room, where the nurse had told him another of Freeman's visitors had spent the night.

  Roake clearly hadn't spent it sleeping either. Alone in the room at this time of the morning, she'd aged five years in the past six hours. Her eyes were heavy, red-rimmed, her hair all over the place. As Hardy got to the door, she was running her hands through it as though trying to still the ravages of a severe headache.

  Seeing him, she stood and walked over, put her arms around his neck and sagged for an instant. He saw the plastic bag that held Freeman's suit on the floor next to the couch where Roake had been sitting-she really hadn't gone home.

  After they'd sat, Hardy delivered the latest prognosis in the best possible light, then asked if he could do something for her, drive her home, anything.

  Her first reaction was to shake her head as though she didn't understand the question. A random syllable escaped, stopped again. She ran a hand through her hair again, squeezed at her temples. "I suppose I've got to get to my clients. I know there's something this morning, but… but that's not you, is it? I'd better leave a message for Betsy." She looked out beyond Hardy. "It's morning already, isn't it?"

  "Getting there," Hardy said. "You ought to go home and get some sleep, Gina." It was hard advice but she had to hear it. "Nothing's happening here. The nurse told me this could go on for a while."

  "I know." Then, again, "I know. I just wanted to stay. I thought

  …"

  He waited, but no further words came. "I can drive you to David's now," he said. "You get a little sleep, call your office when they open. If they need you here, you can be back in five minutes. How's that sound?"

  She was perfectly immobile for half a minute or more, then finally let out a heavy breath, reached for the plastic bag, stood up. "You're right. You talked me into it."

  Fifteen minutes later, he couldn't believe the amount of legal curb that was available just around the corner from the Hall of Justice. Then he remembered, of course, the time. But he'd wanted to get down here if he could while someone from the night shift might still be in the building.

  Miraculously, he was talking to Inspector Hector Blanca within ten minutes, Blanca was a dark-skinned Hispanic sergeant with the General Work Detail and he'd pulled the call on the Freeman beating. It was not only fresh in his mind, he was reviewing the incident report, written by the patrolman who found Freeman, as Hardy got to his desk. After the introductions, and Hardy's reassurance that he was a friend of Abe Glitsky and used to be a cop himself, that he wasn't some ambulance-chasing dick of an attorney looking to make trouble, Blanca must have decided it was okay to talk. "So, this man Freeman. He was your partner?"

  Technically David wasn't, but Hardy didn't think it mattered. "I hope he still is."

  The sergeant grimaced. "Sorry. I didn't mean that. What's the word at the hospital?"

  Hardy told him, but he'd come to Blanca to get information, not give it. "His fiancee, Gina Roake, told me he still had his wallet. That's how you guys knew to come to his house."

  "That's right. Beat him near to death, but didn't take his wallet, his watch, nothing."

  "Was there money in it?"

  Blanca tried to keep his face neutral, but it wanted to react. "Six hundred fourteen dollars, right there in the regular section."

  Hardy sat with that a minute. "So it wasn't any kind of robbery. You saw him. What was it about?"

  "I've got no idea. It was about as brutal as I've seen. He fucking somebody's wife, anything like that?"

  "No," Hardy said.

  "What I mean is, maybe if it was personal…"

  "Yeah, I know. I can't think of anything-" He stopped.

  "What?" Blanca asked.

  "I just thought about this pretty ugly lawsuit we're working on. But I've never seen anything like that before and I've been practicing twenty years."

  Blanca gave him another chance. "You sure? I'll grab at anything."

  But after another minute with it, Hardy shook his head. "No. Couldn't be."

  "All right. But whatever it was, let me tell you, this was deliberate damage. Boots and blunt objects. Not just fists."

  Hardy didn't want to think about Freeman lying helpless, curled on himself, as a group of vicious assailants worked him over. "So there was more than one guy?"

  A shrug. "I can't say for sure, but I'd bet on it." He drummed his ringers on his typewriter keys, then met Hardy's eye. "I guess there's no nice way to put it, sir. Whoever it was, these guys left him for dead."

  "But took nothing?"

  He shook his head. "Nothing obvious, at least."

  "So what's that leave?"

  Blanca frowned in concentration. "It leaves the whole universe, to tell you the truth. People nowadays, you wouldn't believe how many are just nuts."

  "I bet I would. You think it was just some kind of rage?"

  "It looked like that, but who knows? It might have been just for the thrill." Something seemed to nag at him. "An old guy like this, though? It doesn't make any sense, not that it has to. Tell you what I'll do. I'll pull some other reports from the general vicinity. Maybe come up with something similar. MO. Something."

  "Thanks," Hardy said. "I'd appreciate it."

  Okay, Hardy told himself. He'd done his little bit with detective work, and without any conclusive results, but the real reason the hospital and the Hall had had to come first and early this Wednesday morning was because he had to get to his office.

  Freeman amp; Associates kept formal hours, from 8:30 to 5:30. Like most law firms, F amp;A expected its associates to bill two thousand hours every year. With a two-week vacation, that computed to forty billable hours every single week, even weeks where there was a holiday or two. Working at perfect efficiency, the best attorneys could perhaps get all their administrative and other unbillable work, such as lunch for example, done in two hours every day. This meant that, if they did not double-bill-if discovered, a firing offense at Freeman's-associates averaged about ten hours at their desks every single day, often working weekends to make up for holidays or the rare day off when they needed to bill but the office was closed.

  The awesome burden of billing two thousand hours was perhaps the main reason Hardy had never joined Freeman's, or any other, firm. Not that he didn't work round the clock and then some when he needed to, but at least in theory-though meeting his monthly nut kept it from being his common practice-he could make his own decision to put in fewer hours and therefore make less money. This wasn't an option for Freeman's full-time associates. But since it was the norm everywhere else, what were they going to do?

  So although it was still a few minutes short of 8:00 a.m. when Hardy walked up the stairway and entered the lobby, the place
wasn't deserted, but the somber tone was decidedly unusual. Word must have gotten out.

  At the receptionist's desk, although Phyllis wasn't in yet, they had the radio tuned to the all-news station. A group of maybe ten associates stood around, listening, murmuring. Hardy knew three of them quite well-Amy Wu, Jon In-galls and Graham Russo-and Russo broke from the knot when he saw Hardy. All the other eyes followed him. "Do you know anything about David?" he asked. "Amy heard the end of something in her car, but…"

  Russo and everyone else could tell from Hardy's expression that what Wu had heard was both true and bad. The knot coalesced around him and Hardy gave them the very short version and answered as many questions as he could. While he was in the middle of one of them, Phyllis came up the stairs behind him-her usual grim-lipped, uptight self. She stood behind Hardy for a moment, clearly perplexed at the gathering.

  Hardy stopped midsentence and, cued by his audience, turned. "What's the matter?" she asked. "What is this about?"

  "David's in the hospital," Hardy said simply. "Somebody beat him."

  "What do you mean, beat him? He's not in trial."

  "Not that kind of beat. Somebody mugged him, beat him up."

  For a long moment, she still appeared not to comprehend. Finally, she backed up a step and put a hand over her heart. "Why? I mean, is he all right?"

  "I was just telling the folks here. It's bad. He's unconscious."

  Phyllis looked down to Freeman's office door as though she expected him to appear from behind it. One of the associates yelled from back at reception. "Here it is, here it is!" And as a body, the mass of people turned and fell silent.

  "… flamboyant and famous attorneys in the city was found beaten last night a few blocks from his home. Police have no known motive yet in the brutal attack, which has left Mr. Freeman in critical condition at St. Francis Memorial Hospital. Robbery doesn't seem to have been a factor, although police are refusing…"