The Dismas Hardy Novels

by John Lescroart

  Getting nothing done, he went back down to his car, which was parked under the building. Paranoid, he knelt and looked under the chassis, not really knowing what he was looking for. Moses’s warnings kept replaying in his brain—the brother-in-law had not been mellow at all about Hardy getting shot at. He got into the driver’s seat, stopped himself, then pulled the lever to open the hood, got all the way out and around the front again, and lifted it. “Motor,” he said aloud. Disgusted with himself.

  At the Hall of Justice, Hector Blanca was busy; he’d be a while. Hardy waited in the outer office while time passed. A half hour. Forty-five minutes. He asked at the desk again, was told that it might still be a few minutes.

  An hour.

  The secretary finally suggested he come back another time. Sergeant Blanca really wasn’t going to be able to spare any time this morning. “Well, I wonder if you’ll be able to help me, then.” He heard himself, the clipped and impatient tone guaranteed in any bureaucracy to produce glassy-eyed, unfeeling incomprehension, if not outright hostility. He reined himself in, fooling no one, however. “Listen. Someone shot at me last Friday—shot at me!—and I was hoping to find out if Sergeant Blanca or anybody else had made any progress finding out who it might have been.”

  The secretary shook his head. “Did you make out a report? Well then, as soon as we have something, the sergeant will let you know.”

  He walked back down a long hallway to the main lobby, where the day had now progressed enough to where the familiar vulgar din reigned, maybe even louder than usual. The traffic court line stretched from the ticket window, out past the elevator banks, over to the coffee kiosk, where he waited in another line to place his order. A baby was crying up front while, closer to him, a couple of five-year-olds chased each other, screaming. In the entrance to the courtroom hallway, a man in a frock and collar was lecturing a group of fifteen or twenty people in Spanish. A shaggy young man, barefoot, fell into line behind him and hit him up for some spare change. Reaching into his pockets, he found some coins and dropped them into the man’s dirty, outstretched hand.

  The coffee line wasn’t moving, or maybe he had mistakenly wandered into the traffic line after all. Either way, he walked to the elevators and stepped into an open one, pressing 4, Glitsky’s old floor, out of habit. Six people shared the car with him—he didn’t hear a word of English. When it stopped at his floor, he got out and stood lost in the suddenly empty, almost eerily quiet, space.

  The elevator area on all the floors looked almost identical, so he’d gotten well into the hallway that should have led to Glitsky’s new digs when it struck him that something was wrong. Familiar, but wrong.

  He stopped again, looked around.

  Out of a doorway further along on the right, two men emerged and turned toward him. One—gray-haired, heavy and bespectacled—wore a well-tailored tan business suit. The other was a policeman in uniform. They were coming toward him, talking easily to one another, and at about twenty feet, recognition kicked in. Hardy moved into their path. “Richard,” he said to Kroll.

  “Diz! How you doin’? I think you know Roy Panos. Roy, Dismas Hardy.”

  “Sure.” Roy’s smile evaporated. He nodded cautiously, but neither man offered to shake hands.

  Kroll put on the proper face. “So how’s David coming along?”

  “Not well, I’m afraid.”

  “No change at all?”

  Hardy shook his head. “It doesn’t look too good, Dick.”

  He put a hand on Hardy’s arm. “I am so sorry to hear that. Is there anything I can do? Or anybody can do? Anything at all?”

  “I think they’re doing all they can.” Hardy motioned with his head. “So you been down at homicide?”

  “What? Oh, yeah.” Kroll laughed out of all context. “Following up on poor Matt Creed. Did you know Matt?”

  “No. Afraid not.”

  “Good kid. A real tragedy.”

  “Yeah,” Hardy said. “I’m aware of the case.”

  “Oh, that’s right. Sorry.”

  “No need to be. It wasn’t my client. He didn’t do it.”

  “No. Of course not. You going down now to explain about that to Gerson?”

  Hardy forced a cold grin. “Something like that.”

  “Well, good luck.”

  “Thanks.”

  Hardy started for homicide as Kroll and Panos walked toward the elevators. He heard their talking resume in modulated tones. Suddenly, Kroll’s voice pierced the silence again. “Oh, Diz!”

  Hardy turned.

  “On the other matter.” He walked a little back the way he’d come, lowered his voice. “I don’t know if you’ve heard. Your witness LaBonte?”

  “Aretha? What about her?”

  He moved two or three steps closer, started to talk, stopped, started again. “I just heard about it from Gerson. You know they hauled her in for hooking again yesterday.” He hung his head for an instant. When he looked up, he met Hardy’s gaze. “I know you’re getting a lot of bad news this week, Diz, and I hate to add to it, but I guess she couldn’t take the life anymore. Sometime last night she hanged herself in her cell.”

  Hardy never intended to go to homicide anyway, so deciding to climb to Glitsky’s floor by the inside stairs wasn’t much of a change of plans. But he didn’t go up them right away.

  When the hallway door closed behind him, he turned around and sat heavily on the second step. He leaned over, feeling sick, elbows on his knees, his pounding head resting on the heel of his one good hand.

  Hardy hadn’t been Aretha’s criminal defense attorney because, frankly, she couldn’t afford him. She was a professional girl who got busted two or three times a year. Nevertheless, in the past six months, he’d come to know Aretha fairly well. She was twenty-four years old, black, functionally illiterate. The fact that she did not have a pimp contributed to the continuing difficulties in her life because she had no street protection, but she did have a steady boyfriend, Damoan. Quiet and polite, although unkempt and gang-dressed, Damoan often accompanied her to depositions and court appearances. It seemed to Hardy that the couple was happy with each other, unlikely as that might seem.

  With Freeman, Hardy had spent several hours with her, coaching her, taking her statements. But also having coffee, joking, driving someplace or another. He’d come to know her as an honest, uncomplicated person with a surprisingly sunny disposition and outlook. Things—sometimes terrible things—seemed to roll right off her. She’d probably spent two hundred nights of her life in jail. She’d told Hardy, and he believed her, that she viewed the experience as a neutral one. On the one hand, it gave her some time off; on the other, it was a hassle and an inconvenience.

  Kroll’s statement that she must have “grown tired of the life” didn’t wash with anything Hardy knew about the woman. She hadn’t begun to lose her looks yet. Sephia’s plant on her notwithstanding, she didn’t use hard drugs. Unless she and Damoan had broken up, and he’d seen them apparently happy together within the past week, she was as unlikely a candidate for suicide as Hardy could imagine.

  He opened his eyes and raised his head, slowly got to his feet. He turned around, looked at the stairs, wondered if he could muster the strength to climb them.

  When Hardy first came in, Glitsky brought him a glass of water and four aspirin. Now the door to the office was closed. Glitsky sat behind his desk, scowling, tugging absently at a rubber band. “She must have, though.”

  “I can’t accept it. Somebody got to her.”

  “In her cell? Not as easy as it sounds, Diz.” He snapped the band a few times. “But don’t get me wrong. I’m not ruling it out entirely.” After a minute, he added, “Maybe you were right keeping Holiday outside.”

  “It wasn’t my decision,” Hardy said, “but I’d advise against it now. Not that I’ve had a chance.”

  “You haven’t talked to him?”

  “Not since Friday. I don’t even know where he is.”

  Glitsky p
ulled the rubber band apart and sighted through it.

  “You can give me that look all you want,” Hardy said, “but it’s a true story. He’s gone to ground.”

  “All right, let’s say I believe you. I’m still having trouble with Panos somehow connected to the jail.”

  “Maybe he passes the word through homicide.”

  Glitsky snorted. “Now you are dreaming.”

  Hardy lifted his shoulders and immediately regretted it. He didn’t care if Glitsky couldn’t see how it might happen. Something had happened. Aretha LaBonte was dead in jail and he didn’t believe she killed herself. And that left only one other option. “You can laugh,” Hardy said, “but I just saw them down there.”

  The laughing, if that’s what the snort had been, stopped. “Who? Down where?”

  “Roy Panos. Downstairs. One floor down.”

  “In homicide?”

  “With my close friend Dick Kroll. Evidently checking up on the Creed investigation.”

  Glitsky sat up straight. “What were they checking on, the shoes?”

  “What about the shoes?”

  It didn’t take Glitsky long to tell it.

  “So you’re saying Terry didn’t shoot Creed after all.”

  “He still might have. Half a shoe size is close.”

  “Going up, okay, but not going down. If the shoe don’t fit, you gotta acquit.”

  Glitsky frowned at the reference. “Please,” he said, “spare me. But my question is: Does Panos even know about that? Thieu hasn’t even told Gerson yet.”

  Hardy reached for his paper cup and sipped some water. He realized that the aspirin had begun to kick in. Only slightly, but he’d take it. “If it’s any help, I got the impression that they weren’t there about Creed anyway. Kroll just said the first plausible thing that came to mind.”

  “Okay. And this means what?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe nothing. But maybe they’re all pals, sharing information.”

  Glitsky was back with his rubber band, his face set. “So Panos would know what evidence they still needed? Which would tell him what to plant and where to put it?”

  “You said it, not me.”

  “It’s just what I warned Gerson about.”

  “When was that?”

  “When this whole thing started, back with Silverman. Right after Wade gave the inspectors his list of suspects.”

  A short silence settled; then Hardy said, “Somebody’s got to tell him. Gerson.”

  “He doesn’t want to know. At least not from me.”

  “How about Clarence?”

  “How about him?”

  “He’s not going to want to try this thing if the evidence is bogus. You’d be doing him a favor. Plus, he’d listen to you, as opposed to someone else in this room.”

  “Why wouldn’t he listen to you?”

  Hardy didn’t think he needed to give the complete explanation. “It’s my client, Abe,” he said. “Think about it. You’re an objective third party.”

  Glitsky knocked, got Jackman’s “Yes” and opened the door. The DA, reading something at his desk and perhaps thinking it was Treya, looked up in mild, pleasant expectancy. But as soon as he saw Glitsky, his expression hardened by a degree. His eyes went down, then came back up. Flat, controlled. He smiled in a perfunctory way.

  Feeling something in the gaze, Glitsky stopped halfway to the desk. “Sorry to bother you, Clarence, but Treya said you might be free, and this is important.”

  The smile stayed in place. Jackman gestured at the papers spread around his desk. “Freedom’s relative, Abe, and everything is important. The job is important. What can I do for you?”

  “How do you get along with Barry Gerson?”

  Jackman took a beat. “You mean professionally? About the same as I did with you when you had his job. Why?”

  “Because he’s being used. He’s going to be badly embarrassed. Somebody’s got to get the message to him, and it can’t be me.”

  “Why not?”

  “He thinks I want his job.”

  Jackman pushed himself back a bit, folded his hands on the desk. “You haven’t made that much of a secret, Abe. You’ve told me the same thing ten times in the past year and a half.”

  Glitsky took one of the chairs in front of Jackman’s desk. “True. But for some reason he’s thinking I’m interfering with one of his investigations, trying to make him look bad, get him fired or transferred so I can get back in.”

  “Why do you think that would be?”

  “That’s a long story, but essentially because I’ve asked him for some information on the Silverman homicide, which has turned out to be connected to a few other cases.”

  “You’re right.” Jackman delivered it as a surprise. “Gerson is thinking that.”

  Glitsky crossed a leg, scratched at his scar. “You’ve talked to him?”

  A nod. “Yesterday.” All trace of warmth had left Jackman’s face. “On Sunday. At home. Actually, it was both Lieutenant Gerson and Dan Rigby, conferenced in.”

  Glitsky sucked in a breath. Dan Rigby was the chief of police.

  Jackman continued. “The chief said that since you and Treya were in my inner circle, as he called it, as is Dismas, maybe I should have a word with some or all of you and see if between us we can bring some reason to bear here. So your dropping in today is fortuitous after all. And, as you say, important.”

  His formal smile appeared briefly, then vanished. “The chief mentioned the possibility of filing charges against both you and Diz for conspiracy to obstruct justice in this rash of homicides for which his client—Holiday is it?—has been accused. But the chief thought that in view of your record, your past heroism and so forth, I might be able to exert some influence and get you to stop what he called this misguided campaign to smear Wade Panos.”

  Glitsky shook his head in anger and disbelief. “This is not misguided, Clarence. This is real. They shot at Diz. You know what they’ve done to Freeman—you’ve seen him.”

  “And that was Panos?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes, sir. Absolutely.”

  “And your certainty is based upon what? Incriminating physical evidence?”

  At this, Glitsky sat back, planted his elbows on the arms of his chair. A muscle worked at the side of his jaw. “I’ve got a witness,” he said, “who gave them something that strongly indicates that their evidence is bogus. I’m assuming that’s what they called about. Sadie Silverman.”

  “That’s accurate.” Jackman inclined his head an inch. “Let me ask you this, Abe. Why did you get this witness? What’s your role here? Why are you even involved at all?”

  “She came to me, Clarence. Through my father. I didn’t seek her out.”

  “All right, grant that. Did you then speak with her about her testimony?”

  “I didn’t coach her, if that’s what you’re implying. I heard what she had to say, then told her to call homicide.”

  “You didn’t indicate to her that perhaps one of Mr. Panos’s men planted some bogus evidence?”

  Glitsky squirmed in the chair, chewed at the inside of his lip.

  “I’ll take your silence for a yes.” The DA sighed. “You know, Abe, I hate to say this, but some people seem to think you’re involved in this for your own personal gain.”

  “I won’t dignify that with—”

  Jackman held up a hand. “If you’re any part of Diz’s team in this lawsuit and he wins, some people think you’d stand to make a bundle. And at the expense of the city and the police department.”

  “But I’m not on his team.”

  “You haven’t supplied him with information about this lawsuit against Mr. Panos?”

  “Yes, but . . .”

  “Then you’ll admit there’s an appearance.”

  “Nobody’s paying me anything, Clarence. Even if they win.”

  “I don’t know if I’d brag about that if I were you,” Jackman sa
id. “It doesn’t make you look very astute.” He paused. “But I’m not getting into the truth or falsehood, or even the wisdom, of any of this. I’m simply telling you as a friend that the money motive is plausible to the point of certainty to several men of good will within the police department. You are on very, very thin ice here, Abe.”

  “Clarence—”

  The hand again. “Let me just add a personal note, if I may.” The voice was modulated, controlled, no sign of anger, but Glitsky wasn’t much fooled. This was the sound of Jackman’s purest fury—he’d heard him press for the death penalty with the same inflections. “It’s absolutely true that you and Treya, even Dismas and Gina Roake—and certainly David Freeman—are all in my ‘inner circle.’ We’re professional colleagues, but more than that, I think, we’ve developed a real bond in the years since we’ve been meeting at Lou’s. We’re friends.”

  “Yes, sir. I feel the same way.”

  “Good. So you’ll understand.” He came forward. “Can you possibly imagine that I wouldn’t do all I can to use the power of this office to help any one of you if there were facts, evidence, proof, anything at all, that could justify an investigation of Mr. Panos and his activities? Or anybody else. Of course I would. It hurts me that you could doubt that.”

  “I don’t doubt it, Clarence. It’s why I’ve come to you today.”

  “But you don’t have anything I can use, Abe. And by contrast, Lieutenant Gerson has two experienced inspectors, eyewitness testimony and lots of physical evidence. I cannot in good conscience ignore all of that. Frankly, I’m not even inclined to. And closer to home, I will not let it appear that I’m willing to manipulate the system to help my friends. My problem is not Mr. Panos. It’s you and Diz, putting me in an untenable position. Surely you can see that?”