Hardy 10 - Second Chair, The

by John Lescroart

  He finally checked into his office. The General Work guys had done a good job while he'd been going to meetings, and they'd compiled a neatly typed name and address list from the Ewing phone numbers, which now lay under a stapler on his desk. For lunch, he washed two rice cakes down with a Diet Coke. When his receptionist buzzed to tell him that two ATF agents were here, he felt reasonably prepared.

  But that didn't last long.

  The two of them— Aitkin and Drew— struck Glitksy as having come straight not from their offices but from the street, perhaps a bust. Both still wore their black field jackets with the oversized initials "ATF" across the back; both were packing in obvious, bulging shoulder holsters. Drew made the introductions for both of them, and they sat without any fanfare in the chairs in front of Glitsky's desk.

  Glitsky had planned to open the discussion by expressing his appreciation that they'd come down on such short notice and so on, but Drew barely gave him the chance before he interrupted. "We just wondered, sir," he began in a terse tone, "if you're familiar with the joint task force we've had working with local officers in each county and through which we're all supposed to coordinate our activities?"

  "Sure," Glitsky said. "I called Sergeant Trona last Friday and he told me he could get me hooked up with one of your agents by early next week, which is now. I'm heading up an event number force on this Allan Boscacci homicide. I didn't have that kind of time." He reached for his list. "But I think you'll be pleased with my results."

  Aitkin, who so far hadn't said a word, came forward and took the sheet of paper. Drew glanced over at it without much show of interest. "And these are what?" he asked.

  "Names and addresses of people who've bought suppressors illegally from a man named James Martin Ewing out of the Cow Palace. Or at least that's where he was working out of last Friday."

  "How did you get to him?" Drew asked. "Ewing?"

  "I had a snitch. It was easier than I thought it should be."

  Finally Aitkin spoke, turning to Drew. "Imagine that."

  "I beg your pardon." Glitsky didn't much appreciate the tone. "Do you gentlemen have some kind of a problem?"

  "Yes, sir. I'm afraid we do." Drew sat back, linked his hands over his belt.

  Aitkin had carried in with him a flat leather briefcase and now he opened it on his lap and withdrew a photograph, which he handed over to his partner. Drew, in turn, handed it to Glitsky. "I'd like to ask you, sir, if this looks familiar to you."

  The picture was of him. The photo was taken last Friday, no doubt from the camera Ewing had concealed somewhere inside his van. "Ewing is your snitch," he said.

  Drew nodded. "Didn't you wonder why it was so easy getting connected with him? You got a guy looking at twenty years if he gets caught at this stuff and you drop one name to a more or less random dealer at a gun show and you're talking to him in fifteen minutes? Any warning bells go off for you?"

  "I thought I was having a lucky day."

  The two agents' heads turned, briefly, to each other. Drew came back at Glitsky. "So what are you looking for?"

  "Background. I need to know if any of these guys are connected to Boscacci." He pointed to his list. "It's long odds, but we're not working with much."

  The problems of any local police department were of no concern to the ATF. "We've busted two-thirds of Ewing's people already," Drew said. "The others we're watching to see who they hang with, how they hook up. You know the drill, which is why we're asking you not to pursue . . . this any further."

  Glitsky passed the photo back to Drew. His stomach was doing a mariachi dance and he put a hand over it. "I'd still be interested in getting some background on anyone who has bought suppressors, see if we can get a match."

  Drew and Aitkin exchanged a glance and nodded. "We can provide that," Drew said. "Probably be a couple of days."

  "Sooner would be better."

  "Always. Of course."

  As the two men were standing up, Aitkin spoke for the second time. "It's always our intention to work with local agencies, sir. That's why we set up the joint task forces, for mutual communication and cooperation. So in future, if you plan to freelance out of your jurisdiction, you might check in with local authorities to find out what you might be getting into."

  "I get it," Glitsky said.

  When they had gone through the door and out of the office, he heard one of them say, "Fucking locals."

  * * * * *

  "I need to talk to you." Wu hadn't changed since the hospital. She still wore her blue jogging suit, tennis shoes, the Giants warm-up jacket. She stood in the doorway to Brandt's mini-cubicle at the YGC. Her mouth was dry and her palms wet. Even after the ride they'd shared to downtown, which had seemed to break the ice a little, she didn't know how he would receive her. But she felt that coming here to him could be read as an apology of sorts. She was playing straight with him now, keeping her opposite number up on developments in the case. She knew she was here with the best of intentions. "You're not going to like it."

  Brandt had his hand on the telephone receiver, halfway to his ear, but he replaced it. He wore a neutral expression. "I already heard," he said. "Did he make it?"

  "He's going to."

  "I'm glad. I really am."

  "Which leaves us some business." She leaned against the doorjamb. "I'm requesting a continuance on the hearing tomorrow. I wanted to tell you about it beforehand."

  "I figured you would," Brandt said, "when I heard about the suicide attempt. You ought to know, since we're being up front with one another, that I heard Warvid this morning talking to his clerk about that very thing. I wouldn't get my hopes up."

  "He said he wouldn't continue?"

  "That's what I hear from the clerk. If Andrew's bipedal, we go."

  "Maybe he won't be."

  "That remains to be seen then. But let me ask you something. If Warvid continues on these grounds, what's to stop everyone from feeling suicidal the day before their hearing?" Brandt leaned back in his chair, put his hands behind his head, his feet up on the desktop. "Let's be straight here, okay? This hearing is a formality. You know it, I know it, Warvid knows it."

  "My client went sideways, Jason. Hasn't that ever happened to you?"

  "Of course. All the time. But right now, the only thing Warvid wants is to restore order to the cosmos, and to do that, he's got to get Bartlett back upstairs. Which he'll do. Tomorrow."

  Wu went from one doorpost to the other, arms crossed. "I'm calling witnesses, you know. I've filed a list."

  Brandt's feet came off the desk. He straightened in his chair. "You're not fighting the criteria?"

  "Every one."

  "All I need is one, you realize that?"

  "Sure."

  Brandt sighed. "I've got to assume you've read his short story."

  "I have," she said. "I can mitigate it."

  "All right, mitigate. But you can't believe that a double homicide won't strike the court as of sufficient gravity?"

  "It isn't if he didn't do it."

  Brandt's mouth stood half-open. When he finally spoke, his voice hummed with concern. "Amy, listen. Last time we were in court, you were admitting the petition. Now you've got one of the world's fairest judges seriously upset with you. And what are you going to argue, that the homicides didn't happen? 'Cause that's all I've got to show— that they did. There's no burden of proof. You know this. I make a prima facie case and I've got gravity and circumstances. You even get a step into arguing the basic facts and Warvid's going to shut you down."

  She smiled. "Good. You're worried."

  "I'm not worried," he said. "Or rather, I'm worried for you. There's no argument to be made here. Warvid's going to walk in with his mind made up, as it should be."

  "Maybe not, after he's seen my motions."

  "But Amy . . . Bartlett isn't a juvenile!"

  "He's seventeen, Jason. He's a boy."

  Brandt threw his head back, brought his hands to his face, finally looked at her over the
m. "I don't believe you're doing this."

  Wu took a step, about the limit she could trespass without coming behind Brandt's desk. "Jason, listen to me. You know when Andrew said in court that he didn't do it? He might have been telling the truth."

  "No, he wasn't."

  "But what if he was?"

  "So go to trial downtown and get him off. But for God's sake, do yourself a favor and get it out of Warvid's courtroom first."

  But she shook her head. Intense now, she leaned in to him. "He's already suicidal, Jason. As it is now, he thinks he's going to be in prison the rest of his life."

  "That's where he should be. He killed two people, Amy."

  "Maybe, but he's innocent until—"

  Brandt barked a laugh of pure disdain. "Oh, give me a fucking break."

  "You read his stuff, Jason, you know—"

  "I know he's dangerous; that's what his writing shows me. He's a sophisticated criminal mind who thinks he can use you, and is on his way to proving it."

  "He tried to kill himself to manipulate me? Is that what you're saying?"

  Brandt shrugged. "I heard the shirt he used ripped. Maybe he tore it a little first."

  Wu reacted in a blaze of rage. "Bullshit, Jason! That's just such bullshit!"

  Suddenly, behind them in the hallway loomed the imposing and, to Wu, increasingly sinister form of bailiff Nelson, knocking on the door behind her. "Is everything going along okay with you people?" He moved in closer, lowered his voice. "The sound's traveling pretty good in the hallway here."

  Brandt spoke over Wu's shoulder, the voice relaxed and friendly. "We're fine, Ray. Just a friendly little pretrial conference between two country lawyers."

  Wu's eyes were flashing, her color high. She whirled and brushed by Nelson. "Excuse me, please." Jogging, in her tennis shoes, she disappeared around the corner of the hallway.

  * * * * *

  Brandt found her car, the last in a long line of them parked at the curb downhill from the front entrance to the YGC.

  She was in the driver's seat, sitting with both hands on the wheel, head down. From the sidewalk, Brandt hesitated, then touched the passenger window with a knuckle, leaned over so she could see who it was. She reached over and unlocked the door. When he'd closed it again behind him, they both sat in silence for the first seconds. Finally, Brandt, eyes sideways, let out a long sigh. "I shouldn't have said that in there. I don't think your boy faked it."

  She kept her own eyes forward, her hands back on the wheel. "I came down here as a courtesy to you, Jason. I wasn't playing any more games." She paused. "With this case or with you. The other night . . ." The words stopped. She looked over at him.

  "We don't have to talk about that."

  "Yes, we do, I think." Then. "You were right. There's something wrong with me."

  "I didn't say that."

  "You didn't have to." She moved her hand from the steering wheel as though she were going to touch him, but stopped, dropped it into her lap. "Can I tell you something?"

  "Sure."

  "That night, at the Balboa . . . I didn't go into that thinking about Allan or Andrew or the deal I thought I'd made. That was just us. That was real."

  "All right."

  "That's all I want to say."

  "Okay, then, I've got one. If it was so real, why'd you kick me out?"

  "I didn't kick you out. You left."

  "After you said, and this is a direct quote, 'You'd better be out of here by morning or we're in trouble.' You don't remember saying that?"

  Wu shook her head slowly from side to side. "I didn't mean legal trouble. I meant . . . I meant if this was supposed to be a one-nighter and neither of us wanted to get serious, you had to leave before we went any further."

  "But we already—"

  She turned on him. "I didn't mean the sex."

  Brandt blew out heavily. "No. I know. I know what you meant." A long silence. Then. "You figured I was playing you." He chuckled. "I love this."

  "Me, too. It's perfect."

  "A microcosm of life itself," Brandt said. "Makes me think, though, that maybe we want to go in and get out of Bartlett now."

  Wu shook her head. "We can't. I can't abandon him, and if you drop out, the seven-oh-seven gets continued, plus you'd have to give a reason, which would probably get you fired."

  Brandt suddenly saw something over Wu's shoulder, and he swore. Across the street, Ray Nelson was leaning over the roof of his car, lighting a cigarette. Seeing them both now looking at him, he raised a hand in greeting, then opened the car door and got in.

  "He saw us," Wu said.

  "Yes, he did. But so what? We're sitting in a car, having a discussion."

  "Do you think he followed us out?"

  "I don't know. Why would he?"

  "I don't know. To have something on us." Wu looked after Nelson's car, now driving away. "The guy creeps me out."

  "Ray? He's a pussycat after you get to know him," Brandt said.

  "I don't want to get to know him."

  "No, honestly, you probably don't. But maybe him seeing us out here was a good object lesson, after all."

  "In what?"

  "The wisdom of being seen together outside the courtroom."

  25

  Top down on the convertible, with coat and tie off and the top button of his shirt undone, Hardy with his headphones on might have been mistaken for a stressed-out executive zoning out to his relaxation tapes. In fact, he was waiting across the street from the murder scene, listening again to the tape of the other male actor in the play, Steve Randell, to whom he'd talked at Sutro after he'd finished with Alicia North and Jeri Croft.

  When Juan Salarco pulled into his driveway at a little after three o'clock, Hardy sat up, slipped the recorder back in his pocket, put up the car's hood and got out. Across the street, Salarco exited his truck and immediately went to the small garage and opened it. By the time he turned around, Hardy was standing by his driver's side fender. He raised a hand with an exaggerated nonchalance that he didn't come close to feeling.

  He realized that ever since he'd concluded his careful review of the tape he'd made with Juan, he'd begun to imagine that Andrew Bartlett might be innocent. But, he reminded himself now, that belief hinged on what Salarco told him in the next ten or fifteen minutes. If he had in fact heard two gunshots, or even what might be interpreted as two gunshots, Hardy's hopes and maybes would be out the window. He hadn't recognized before this moment how invested he'd become. "Hey!" he said, low-key.

  Salarco's boyish face broke into a ready smile. "Deezmus," he said, coming forward to shake his hand, crushing it effortlessly. "I try to get you this weekend, after you call, sí?"

  "Sí, but my wife had an accident skiing. She's okay, but it took up some time. Now I'm wondering if I can take up a little more of yours."

  Salarco took a minute, perhaps translating the request, then nodded. "Sure." He pointed. "First, I unload though, the truck, okay?"

  The sun was bright overhead, but a light breeze kept the day cool enough, and Hardy decided to pitch in. It seemed the natural thing to do, lifting the rakes, shovels and wire trimmer from their positions in the wooden slats on either side of the truck while Juan wheeled the mowers and heavier gear down his makeshift wooden ramp and around into the garage. When they finished, Juan locked up the garage and the truck, and then they walked up the indoor stairs together.

  At the door, Salarco called out, "Hola," got a female response and went straight through the living room, past the television with its American soap opera on the screen, to the cheerful kitchen. Hand-sewn curtains— bright yellow cotton with a red and orange floral print— cast shade over the back counter and the Formica table, but they only covered half the windows, and allowed in bright shafts of sun.

  Anna turned as they entered. Hardy saw her light a smile at her husband, then extinguish it when she saw him. She had a large pot going on the gas burner— olive oil and garlic— and was cutting more vegetables— onions,
red and green peppers, tomatoes— on the counter, while Carla, the baby, sat contentedly jailed, spinning the plastic letters on the sides of the playpen.

  Salarco picked up the baby, tucking her in his arm. He then kissed his wife, whispering something to her, and went to the refrigerator for a couple of beers. Hardy took his, pulled at it, tried with a grin to break some ice with the wife. "It smells great in here." She nodded politely and went back to her vegetables. Still holding Carla like a football under one arm, Salarco walked over to the table and sat in one of the chairs, indicating that Hardy should take another one. Moving forward, he took his tape recorder from his pants pocket and held it up, getting tacit permission.

  Salarco nodded. "So, how can I help you?"

  Hardy had been waiting so long to ask that he pushed the record button and was talking before he'd sat down. "Something we really didn't get clear last time that might be important."

  Salarco moved the baby to his knee and began bouncing her up and down. "Okay."

  "The noise of the gunshot."

  "What about it?"

  "The last time we talked, and I listened to the tape of our conversation a lot, you were talking about the noises downstairs when the fighting was going on. This is after you'd gone down the first time to ask them to be more quiet. Do you remember?"

  "Sí."

  "All right. If you don't mind, I'd like to go over those few minutes again with you. From the first noise that woke up Carla again. Do you think you can put yourself back there and try to remember exactly what things sounded like? What you thought at the time?"

  "All right."

  "We can take a minute," Hardy said. "We're in no hurry. I want you to think back to that night if you can. Carla had a high fever and she'd been crying all night, and then finally you got her to sleep. You and Anna went out to the living room and turned on the television, quietly. Do you remember all that?"