Jeff lowered himself into the chair.
“Where have you been lately? You don’t look too well.”
“Just some new medication. Makes me puff up and get light sensitive. Prednisone.”
“Steroids?”
Jeff smiled. “That’s what they use. It’s okay, I wasn’t going for the Olympics anyway.”
Hardy liked him, no getting around it. “Okay, so what’s off the record?” He pointed a finger. “And it is off the record.”
Did Hardy remember last week, after the Municipal Court arraignment, standing in the hallway with Elliot and Glitsky, talking about the bail, the money connection?
“Sure, of course, what about it? You find something?”
The reporter shook his head. “No, not yet, maybe. But you guys said, didn’t you, there were ways to subpoena the bail bondsman for his records.”
Hardy shook his head. “Not in this case. Only if we think the money for the bail came from criminal activity.”
“Well, how would May Shinn get half a million dollars?”
“What half a million? She only needed fifty thousand for a fee.”
Jeff Elliot shook his head. “I thought that at first, too. She still needs collateral on the loan.”
Hardy nodded. “Yeah, we’ve gone over that.” He chewed it around again. “I don’t know, investments? Maybe she inherited it? We don’t have any sign of anything. Drugs. Like that.”
“How about prostitution? That’s illegal, isn’t it?”
It was something to wonder about, but that, too, had already been discussed. “Maybe. Technically. But there’s no judge going to give us a warrant to seize records on that.” He shrugged. “Maybe the bondsman accepted Owen Nash’s will.”
“Even if she killed him? Could she collect on that?”
“That,” Hardy said, “is another legal battle. Fortunately it’s not mine. Whichever way it goes, even if she gets the whole two million, lawyers will wind up with most of it. What do you have that’s so off the record?”
Elliot leaned forward and took off his sunglasses. There was something clearly unfocused there, dark rings in sockets deepened by swelling. Hardy couldn’t conceal his reaction and interrupted Jeff’s response. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
Jeff smiled and the bags seemed to lift a bit. “It looks worse than it is. Actually I’m feeling much better.” He put on the glasses again. “The chipmunk cheeks go away after a while.”
“You getting any sleep?”
Now the grin was wide. “Not enough.” Then, slyly proud. “I’m seeing somebody. First time.” He lifted his shoulders with exaggerated nonchalance. “Sleep’s not a big issue.”
“You dog!”
“Yes, well . . .” Suddenly Jeff didn’t want to be talking about it, reducing it, bragging as though it were some casual victory. This wasn’t a conquest, it was Dorothy. “Anyway, about the bail, I don’t have any names yet, nothing I can print, but before I even move ahead at all, I want to protect my source.”
“So how do you do that?”
“I provide a plausible explanation of how I came to look at some records. Maybe I shouldn’t tell you this?”
Hardy passed over that. “Have you seen some records?”
“No.” Jeff leaned forward. Hardy thought if he took off his glasses he was lying. But he didn’t. “Really, no.”
“Okay. And I’m the leak?”
“Unnamed, of course. Off the record.”
Hardy found himself reminded of Freeman’s advice to him in the courtroom, of Pullios’s insistence that there were no rules. This was high-stakes poker, and if Jeff could provide Hardy—oops, the prosecution—with the source of May’s bail, it would only help his, their, case.
“If anything comes out of this and I can’t explain how I got my information, my source loses her job, so I thought I’d cover that up front.”
“But we’re not subpoenaing the records.”
“I know, but that doesn’t matter. I just need an answer if the question comes up.”
“I’m not giving you an answer to anything, Jeff. I’m just telling you a procedure, you got that? The way the D.A. would do it if certain criteria were met, which they have not been.”
“I got it.”
“Clearly?”
“Clearly.”
Hardy picked up a tall pile of blue chips and dropped them into the pot. “Okay then.”
Hardy thought he might be getting paranoid, but he took the file home with him anyway. In it was everything they had to date, including the phone records on May Shinn. He stopped out by Arguello and Geary and spent forty-five minutes copying it. He couldn’t have said exactly why it seemed like such a good idea—Pullios might be taking it away from him, maybe he wanted to be able to check up on her in the privacy of his office.
Maybe he was trying to protect Andy Fowler.
No. There was a fine line between the backstabbing, gamesmanship and duplicity that seemed to be the norm and downright unethical conduct. He was going to find out about Andy Fowler’s relationship with May Shinn. Then he would deal with it. He thought.
But first, and in the meanwhile, what he didn’t want was some D.A.’s investigator, spurred on by Pullios’s zeal, to discover this apparent connection and ruin Andy’s life. And in fact, there might be no connection, or an innocent one. Although Hardy couldn’t imagine what it might be.
Nevertheless, the Boy Scout in him deemed it best to be prepared. He copied the file.
David Freeman thought it had been a long day, but not without its rewards.
The trial falling to Andy Fowler had been a godsend, one that he, Freeman, had never given up hope on but one which he couldn’t possibly have counted on.
He had finished a decent meal and a couple of solid drinks at the Buena Vista Bar—not the birthplace but the American foster home of Irish Coffee—and was taking the cable car up toward Nob Hill, named for the Nobs who had originally claimed it as their own: Leland Stanford, Mark Hopkins, Charles Crocker and Collis P. Huntington. Freeman lived there himself in a penthouse apartment a block from the Fairmont Hotel, just above the Rue Lepic, one of his favorite restaurants.
But tonight he didn’t want to go straight home. It was full dark, surprisingly warm again. He sat on the cable car’s hard bench, cantered against the steep grade, rocking with the motion, surrounded by the tourists. It was all right.
He was a man of the people and yet, somehow, above the people. He looked on them tolerantly, with few illusions. They were capable of anything—thirty-five years practicing criminal law had shown him that—but there was something he sometimes felt in a bustling rush of humanity that brought him back to himself, to who he was.
He remembered why he had chosen defense work— and there hadn’t been much glamor, and even less money, in the beginning. The field had attracted him because he knew that everyone made mistakes, everyone was guilty of something. What the world needed, what people needed, was forgiveness and understanding, at least to have their side heard. He described himself, to himself, as a cynical romantic. And he had to admit he was seldom bored.
He dismounted the cable car at the Fairmont and decided to prolong the night and the mood, take a walk, reflect. May Shinn was constantly referring to Owen Nash and always managed to mention his cigars. Freemanfound it had given him the taste for one, and he stopped in at the smoke shop and picked up a Macanudo. Outside, while he was lighting up by the valet station, a well-dressed man tried to sell him a genuine Rolex Presidential watch for three hundred dollars. Freeman declined.
He strolled west, over the crest of the hill, craving another sight of the Bay at night. The cigar was full-flavored, delicious.
After the conference he’d had today with Andy Fowler, he was sure he was going to win.
Fowler shouldn’t have gotten the trial. Certainly, when he’d hired Freeman, that couldn’t have been contemplated. May was in Municipal Court and there was no possible way it could wind up in Andy’s co
urtroom.
Even after the grand-jury indictment had moved it into Superior Court, the odds were still six to one against Fowler getting it. But, even at those odds, Fowler should have gone to Leo Chomorro, spoken to him privately, and taken himself out of the line.
Except that feelings between Andy Fowler and Leo Chomorro were strained, to say the least. Forgetting their philosophical differences, and they were substantial, on a personal level Fowler had been one of the few judges singled out by name in Chomorro’s report to the governor on the “candy-ass” nature of the San Francisco bench. Fowler, in turn, had been an outspoken critic of Chomorro’s appointment to the court. More, Freeman knew through legal community scuttlebutt that Fowler was the man most responsible for Chomorro’s extended sojourn on Calendar. So, for any and all of these reasons, Fowler hadn’t gone to Chomorro, and that’s when he’d cut himself off at the pass.
Because he’d gone on the assumption that he had a fallback, fail-safe position even if the trial came up in his department. Freeman smiled, thinking of it—not unkindly, it was consistent with his view of the folly of man, even judges. Fowler had thought that of course, without a doubt, there was no question that if the Shinn trial came to his courtroom, David Freeman, defense counsel, would exercise his option to challenge the presiding judge, not having to give a reason, and that would be the end of that—the trial would go to another judge.
But Freeman hadn’t challenged, which, of course, was what had prompted the conference.
Fowler, arms crossed, stood just inside the door to his chambers. “David, what the hell are you doing?”
“I’m defending my client. That’s what you hired me to do.”
“I certainly didn’t think she would get to this courtroom.”
“No, neither did I.”
“Well, you have to challenge. I can’t hear this case.” Freeman hadn’t answered. His hands were in his pockets. He knew he looked rumpled, mournful, sympathetic. Two weeks before he’d been Andy Fowler’s savior, now he was his enemy.
He loved the drama of it.
Fowler had turned, walking to the window. “What am I supposed to do, David?”
“You could recuse yourself, cite conflict.”
“I can’t do that now.”
Freeman knew he couldn’t.
“I can’t have my relationship with her come out.”
Chomorro, even Fowler’s allies, would eat him alive for that. It was bad form for judges to go with prostitutes. But sometimes the best argument was silence. Freeman walked up to the judge’s desk and straightened some pencils.
“David, you’ve got to challenge.”
Freeman shook his head. “You hired me to do the best job defending my client. A trial in your courtroom is clearly to her advantage. I’m sorry if it is inconvenient to you.”
“Inconvenient? This is a disaster. It’s totally unethical. I can’t let this happen.”
“That, Judge, is your decision.” He was matter-of-fact. “If it’s any consolation, I have no intention of betraying your confidence.”
Fowler’s eyes seemed glazed. “Does May know?”
“I’d bet against it. I told her it was free advertising for me. It seemed to go down.”
“Jesus.” He ran a hand through his hair. Suddenly he looked haggard and old. “Jesus Christ.” He walked around in little circles, then stopped. “Do you think I could give her a fair trial, David?”
There it was, the rationality kicking in. That’s what people did, Freeman knew. They made their own actions, however wrong, somehow justified.
Fowler continued, “If it ever comes out, I’m truly ruined. Would she say anything?”
“Why would she, especially since I’m going to get her off? It wouldn’t be to her advantage. Now or ever.”
“You’re going to get her off?”
“Of course. There’s no evidence, Andy.”
The judge lowered his voice. “But she did it, David.”
“No one can prove my client killed anybody. If the prosecution can be kept from sexual innuendo and racial slurs, she will be acquitted. It will be essential to control the tone in the courtroom.”
The cigar had gone out and he chewed happily on the butt. It had been a satisfying performance, its outcome so sweet he almost wanted to dance a little jig when he left chambers.
Of course, on the downside, Andy Fowler, with whom he’d always gotten along, had his neck on the block. Andy couldn’t recuse himself without admitting his relationship with May, and he wasn’t going to do that. He was right, it would end his career, and the revelation at this late date in the proceedings would be particularly damning.
But he’d gotten himself in this position. You made your own luck. Good or bad. Andy was a big boy. He should have known better.
The walk had taken Freeman across the top of Nob Hill and back down its north side. He became subliminally aware that his steps were leading him somewhere, and he let them. Slowly, no hurry. He still chewed the cigar.
By night, the corner that May lived on was quiet. The cable cars had stopped running. The surrounding hills were steep, and people heading for North Beach or back out to the Avenues would take one of the larger thoroughfares, Broadway or Van Ness, Gough or Geary. He crossed the street and stood leaning against the window of the French deli, looking up. There was a light on in what he knew to be May’s kitchen. The front of the apartment, the turreted window, was dark.
Across the street in Mrs. Streletski’s building shadowsdanced across the turret, and suddenly Freeman remembered a fourteen-year-old boy named Wayne Allred who’d been hiding in a closet when his mother ran from his apartment, who’d come out to shoot his father dead.
He threw his cigar butt into the gutter. He wasn’t quite disgusted with himself for being less than completely thorough earlier. It had been the end of another long day and he hadn’t been holding out any hope that May was innocent. In fact, he still didn’t.
But his feet, his subconscious—something—had taken him here, and now he knew why. He crossed the street and rang the bell to number 17, Strauss. The speaker squawked by his ear.
“Who is it?”
Freeman apologized and explained briefly.
“It’s ten o’clock at night. Can’t this wait until morning?”
He apologized again, and for a moment it appeared that he was going to strike out. But then the buzzer sounded and he was quietly climbing the carpeted steps. The door stood ajar and Nick Strauss leaned against the jamb, wearing white socks and a terrycloth robe. He was a big man, far bigger than Freeman, his black hair still wet from the shower.
“I’m sorry,” Freeman repeated. “But a person’s life is at stake here.”
“Could I see some ID?”
The lawyer smiled. “Of course.” It was the standard first line of protection, as foolish, Freeman thought, as most human endeavors. As if—were he a burglar or a murderer—possession of a driver’s license would make him any safer, as if all IDs weren’t routinely, expertly, forged or altered.
But he took out his wallet and offered it. He had a business card in his jacket breast pocket and he gave Strauss one of those too.
The man opened the door further. Freeman saw two boys—teenagers or a little younger—sitting together on the couch, trying to get a look at him. He gave them a little friendly wave, and Strauss said to come in. “But I’ve already told you we didn’t see anything.”
“Well, Mr. Strauss, actually you told me you didn’t see anything. You said you’d ask the boys and get back to me.”
“If they saw anything—”
“What, Dad?”
“Just a second, Nick. I’m talking to this man. This is Mr. Freeman, guys. These are my boys—Alex, the big guy, and Nick, the big little guy. Aren’t you, Nick?”
The younger boy, Nick, seemed an echo not only of his father’s name but of the attitude—cautious, watchful. Freeman kept his hands in his pockets, the supplicant. “I don’t mean to push. People fo
rget these things all the time. It’s just so terribly important.”
Strauss made some motion that Freeman took for acquiescence; he looked to the boys, then back to Strauss. “Would you guys like to show me your room, if it’s okay with your dad?”
The older boy, Alex, said “sure” and jumped up. This was an adventure.
“How about you, Nick?”
“Naw. I’ll just wait here.”
Freeman said fine, but Alex was all over him. “Come on, you wimp, chicken-liver, baby.”
“Alex!”
But that did it. Nick got up. “It’s all right, Dad. Alex is such a nerd.” Then, to his brother, “You jerkoff,” remembering the last time he had seen the Chinese woman through the telescope . . .
Nick Strauss loved his dad’s apartment at the corner of Hyde and Union, especially after the month of traveling with his mom and Alex, staying in those tiny stuffy rooms in Europe. First of all, Dad’s place was humongous, twice the size of his mom’s in Van Nuys, rickety-rackety pink stucco with peeling paint and cars parked all over the place where there should have been grass. Then, at Dad’s, nobody was above them—no Mrs. Cutler and her two sons and the bass and drums coming down through the ceiling all day and night like in the Valley. No adjoining hotel rooms with people staying up all the time.
Plus the cable cars; it was a snap to get on and off without paying. And hills for skateboarding like you couldn’t believe, and no damn palm trees. In fact, no trees.
And finally this glassed-in turret in the front upstairs corner of the apartment, which was part of his and Alex’s bedroom when they came to visit on Saturday. And this time, since they’d been with Mom so steadily with school and then Europe and all, they were staying three weeks.
So after the lights went out you could take out the telescope and spy on anybody in the neighborhood, nobody noticing a thing. Or in the daytime, just drawing the drapes and making it all dark in there, looking all around, checking it all out.
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