"Collateral damage. Both of 'em. The inevitable next step, that's what. What was Panos going to do, let his nephew go and take this rap? Be sued to death? I don't think so. Hell, he offered you four million dollars to just go away and you said no, remember? What'd you expect him to do, send you a Hallmark card?"
"I think we ought to just go," Michelle said.
"Where?"
"Anywhere. Away from here."
"And then what?"
"I don't know. We just live."
"We wouldn't be living. We'd be hiding."
He was on the ottoman in front of her. She was sitting in the chair by the window. She reached over, flipped the blinds open, then closed them again. "Isn't that what we're doing now?"
He smiled at that. "It won't be too much longer. My lawyer's got some ideas."
"Oh yeah, it sounded like you were great pals."
Holiday glossed over that. "Besides, if I run it looks like I'm guilty of something."
"I hate to mention it, John, but so does not turning yourself in."
"I was hoping maybe you wouldn't notice that part." He took her hands in his. "This is going to work, Michelle. All of it. Our life. I don't want to start it out on the run. I didn't do any of this."
"I believe you," she said, "but it seems like they have so much."
"It's all easily explained. A little turn of the prism. It was three other guys, and now Hardy knows who they are.
He'll get their names in front of the right people. You'll see. Another two or three days, they'll cancel the warrant and it'll be all over."
Hardy was going to write a book someday and call it Nothing Is Ever Easy, his companion volume to Nothing Easy About It—A Parent's Guide to Raising Happy and Well-Adjusted Children. The inspiration for today's chapter, after his fury at his client had ebbed slightly, came from trying to get interviews with the two names—Fred Waring and Mel Fischer—that Holiday had given him from Silverman's poker game.
Both were listed in the telephone book. In hindsight Hardy realized that he should have recognized this right off as one of nature's head-fakes, making it look as though something about these interviews might, in fact, be easy.
He could have used some easy.
The morning had already wiped him out. Waking up with the world's worst hangover hadn't helped. Then there had been David at the hospital, then the long and fruitless wait for Blanca, running into Kroll and Roy Panos, their news about Aretha. Finally, the argument with Holiday about whether he was to blame for some of this. He really didn't need that shit from his client, not today, not ever.
Even if, being honest now that his blinding anger had somewhat subsided, he admitted that it might be partly true.
For most of the past two hours, he'd been holed up in his office, lying on the couch, damp paper towels over his eyes. Finally, still hurting, he'd looked up the numbers of his two witnesses, found them, then punched up the one for Fred Waring. Hardy found himself on the Bernard Rulker & Co. broker hotline, press one if you'd like to continue in English, now press one if you'd like to open a new account, two if you're an existing Rulker client and so on. Eventually, Hardy negotiated the maze and reached the point where he foolishly thought he'd soon be speaking to an actual person, but the "Please hold until one of our brokers can assist you" was in itself merely a prelude ("We appreciate your patience, please continue to hold") to an actual timed four-minute Musak version of "Satisfaction."
When a pleasant-sounding woman finally came on, Hardy got off his speakerphone, asked for Fred Waring, and learned that he was on vacation in Hawaii this week. No, they didn't have a number where he could be reached.
Could someone else help him?
Mel Fischer had an answering machine and Hardy left three phone numbers—office, home and cell—and a message: who he was, what this was about. The matter was urgent. He considered adding that it was a matter of life and death, but didn't wish to appear too dramatic.
Twenty minutes later, he raised his head off the couch again. This was ridiculous. He was doing nothing worthwhile, and much needed to be done. The telephone book once again held the promise of good luck—Fischer's address was on Taylor, apparently only a few blocks from his office. Filled with self-loathing as he was anyway, Hardy thought that the steep climb over Nob Hill would be just the kind of torture he deserved. He fought his nausea enough to get him up and down the stairs.
At the reception area, really an ovoid island in the center of the rotunda that was Freeman's lobby, Norma the office manager, her elbows on the counter, was in deep conversation with Phyllis. Both women had been with the firm forever, certainly since before Hardy had arrived as a tenant, and neither could be said to be big fans of his. After all, he didn't work for David or the firm, and yet he took great swaths of the great man's time and used the firm's Xerox, fax and other machines, and even associate's time, according to his own idiosyncratic whims. Hardy couldn't say he was overly fond of either of the two women, either. Still, the sight of them—they turned to look at him when he emerged from the stairway—forced him to square his shoulders, put forth a positive image.
Unexpectedly, Norma straightened up and motioned him over. She was a big-boned, solid woman in her mid-fifties who exemplified the competence that Freeman demanded.
Fashionable without attempting to be glamorous, completely lacking the gene responsible for humor, she might have been the prototype for all of the legal office managers Hardy had ever encountered.
"Hello, ladies," he said, his voice a completely sincere and solemn monotone. "How is everybody holding up down here?"
"Not too well," Norma said. "Really not well at all."
Hardy had picked up the pervading malaise downstairs ever since the day after the mugging, but he couldn't really imagine what Norma would have to say to him about it. But she continued, "With all of Mr. Freeman's many talents, it appears he never really considered the possibility of anything like this happening. As long as he came in every day, things just seemed to run smoothly."
"He's always had a good manager," Hardy said.
Norma smiled, grateful for the praise. "Well, thank you, but I was just saying I'm very much out of my depth just now. I can't even sign paychecks and some of the associates need to be paid soon." She hesitated, looked to Phyllis.
"And frankly, so do we, the staff."
Phyllis, unbidden, chimed in. "Clients have been calling every day. Where's David? When's David coming back?
What am I supposed to tell them?"
The panic in the voice of Freeman's dogmatic, capable and strong gatekeeper came as something of a shock, and brought Hardy up short. "I'd just tell them that their work is in good hands, that we're hoping David will be back before too long...."
"But they want to know when and I can't tell them that."
Norma handed a Kleenex down to her, came back to Hardy. "I just don't know what to tell everyone. And we thought—Phyllis and I—that even though you're not really a member of the firm, you've got more ... Well, you're more mature than any of the associates and ... we thought maybe you could say something." Her own composure broke suddenly. "Mr. Hardy, it's all coming apart. I don't know what to do."
Hardy hung his head briefly. His head throbbed. His eyes didn't want to focus. "I'll do whatever I can, Norma, but I can't say anybody will listen to me. I just rent upstairs and everybody knows it. But if you think it might help ..."
He looked around the expanse of the floor, into the open Solarium, the empty Xerox room. A truly ominous silence reigned. "How long do you think you'll be able to hold it together? Assuming David doesn't ..." He found he couldn't finish.
"David always kept a lot in petty cash. We used to argue about that, but now maybe I could use some of that ..."
She bit at her lip, closed her eyes in thought for a second.
"The associates are still billing and we're getting payments.
Maybe I could access some of those assets ..." Again, she stopped. "Best case, Mr
. Hardy, let's say a month, if he doesn't recover."
"But he's going to, right?"
She nodded, shaky. "Of course. I didn't mean ... but it's just that no one else can do what he does."
"No. I know." He put a hand on her shoulder. "You just tell me when, I'll be there."
Much to his surprise, she stepped forward and put her arms around him, squeezing and sending fresh spasms of pain across his back. "Thank you," she said, "thank you."
After a few more words of encouragement, he crossed the lobby, then descended by way of the semicircular staircase that opened into an ornate street-level foyer. It was the middle of the workday, just after lunch hour. Normally, the place hummed with activity and even enthusiasm—Freeman might be a slave-driver, but he was also a great lawyer with an immense talent for motivating his associates.
Hardy stopped and listened again to the silence above.
In some very real way, the world seemed to be ending.
Hardy carried his cell phone with him. It didn't ring as he labored up the steep slope of Taylor Street, over Nob Hill, three blocks back down the other side. It still hadn't rung when he got to Fischer's address. Reasoning that anyone getting home and finding an urgent message would of course call right away, Hardy didn't really expect anyone when he rang the bell. But then the voice came through the intercom.
"Who is that?"
"Mr. Fischer. My name is Dismas Hardy. I called about John Holiday?"
It was turning into a cold November. The overcast had thickened again, and the breeze had freshened to a true wind that had chilled him thoroughly and now gusted around him as he waited on the stoop. A full ten seconds passed. He was about to ring the bell again—nothing was easy—when he heard the buzzer and pushed against the door.
It was a two-story building without an elevator, and when Hardy got to the second floor, Fischer was standing in his open doorway as though guarding the sanctum within. He looked like he was pushing seventy. Thick-shouldered, with a tonsure of gray hair, he wore khakis, tennis shoes and a black Oakland Raiders sweatshirt. Though he barely reached Hardy's shoulders, the old man projected a pugnaciousness and even resentment out of all proportion to the apparent situation. "All right," he said before Hardy got to the last step. "What's so urgent about John Holiday, the son of a bitch? May he rot in hell."
Still a dozen feet away, Hardy paused. He held up his hands for a second, advanced another foot or two. "I have a couple of questions, that's all."
"You're his lawyer?"
"That's right."
"Then I got a question for you. How do you live with yourself?"
"John didn't kill anybody."
"Hah! How'd Sam's stuff get in his house, then?
Aliens?"
"Maybe something like that," Hardy said. "I hear you were at that last poker game."
"Yep. What about it?"
Suddenly, Hardy found himself asking a question he hadn't even thought about. "Have the police talked to you yet?"
And gratifyingly, it slowed Fischer down. "What do you mean, talked to me?"
"You know. Taken a statement about the game, who was there, who won what?"
Fischer eyed him suspiciously. "No. Nobody's talked to me. Not the cops, I mean."
"So somebody has?"
"I didn't say that." His look was pure defiance. "Nobody talked to me."
"Doesn't that seem strange to you? That you were at this game the night before Sam got killed, and nobody from the police wanted to question you?"
"I wasn't there when he got killed. They knew who they were looking for. They didn't need me."
"So you believe that John went back and tried to get back the money he lost?"
"That's what they're saying. Yeah."
"Did anybody else lose money that night? A lot of money?"
Fischer did an overdone impression of thinking about it.
"Nope," he said with finality. Shaking his head, he repeated it. "No."
"You had to think that hard to remember?"
This riled the old man even further. "No. I remember perfectly. Holiday was the big loser that night."
"Nobody else?"
"Hey, Jesus, what do you want? I answered your question, all right? That's enough." He backed into the doorway, put his hand on the door behind him.
"You seem a little nervous, Mr. Fischer. Are you nervous? You think maybe I'm going to hurt you. Did somebody else tell you they'd hurt you if you didn't change your story?"
Now the nerves were unmistakable. "I never changed any story! They found all that stuff in John's place. There's no doubt he did it."
Hardy stepped up closer, anger in his voice. "So there's no point, then, in bringing up who else might have lost money that night, is there? They didn't kill Sam. They just don't want people asking questions that might be embarrassing, that might make the police think it looked like they had a reason, too. Isn't that it, Mr. Fischer? Isn't that it?"
For a lengthy moment, Fischer stared with wide-eyed fear at Hardy. Then, suddenly, he brought himself up straight. "I don't have to talk to you," he said, and ducked behind the door, slamming it in Hardy's face.
Hardy yelled at the door, his voice reverberating in the hallway, "You'll have to talk to me at the trial!" Breathing hard, in a fury, he waited.
Eventually he turned and walked back downstairs, out into the bitter and windswept afternoon.
Hardy called Glitsky on his cell phone walking back to his office. Maybe Abe's meeting with Jackman had gone well.
"No," Glitsky said.
"He wouldn't even listen to you?"
"Oh, he listened all right. But he didn't hear."
"Abe, this is just plain weird. Clarence knows us."
"Apparently not well enough. Apparently, you and I are conspiring to obstruct justice. I'm screwing with Gerson, going behind his back, undermining his inspectors so I can expose his incompetence and get my old job back. I'm also working with you on this Panos lawsuit so that if you win, I get to retire in style."
"You want to run by me how that's going to work exactly? How are you making anything off of my lawsuit?"
"I'm sure there's some way."
"When you find out, let me know, would you?" A pause.
"And Clarence believes this?"
"I can't say that for sure, not personally. But we're smeared enough that he can't be perceived to be involved."
"Abe," Hardy said, "these people shot at me."
"I mentioned that."
"And what did he say to that? Hell, he saw me afterward. He knows I'm not making it up."
"Not the issue. Not for Clarence."
"But he knows us. We're the good guys." Although, after his debate with Holiday on this issue, the statement nagged at him. "Relatively," he added.
"Not even that. Not today. Today the system's working as it should. As people are so fond of saying, evidence talks. And all the evidence says John Holiday's a stone killer and you're on his side. Which makes you one of the bad guys, no relativity about it. And, of course, because you and I are friends, so am I."
"Except that the evidence is no good."
"Yeah," Glitsky said, "there is that."
23
Back in his office for the third separate time that day, Hardy was killing more time before the five o'clock meeting Norma had scheduled for him to address Freeman's staff in the Solarium. His shoes and jacket were off. He lay on his couch again, eyes covered, and realized that he had no other quasilegitimate legal venue where he might be able to make his case. He hadn't swayed Jackman, had no chance with the homicide inspectors.
But he might be able to get to them through public pressure. He and Freeman had done this many times and he was a little surprised that he hadn't thought of it before now.
Jeff Elliott, his friend and the writer of the "CityTalk" column for the Chronicle, had finished his column for the day. He told Hardy that if he could save him the handicapped space under his building—Elliot had multiple sclerosis—h
e would be happy to drop by for an hour of gay repartee, as long as there was a story involved. Hardy went down and stood in the spot until Elliot pulled into it.
In a trice, the columnist had done his magic with his wheelchair. The two men rode the back elevator up to the third floor.
While Hardy had brought over some coffee and eased himself down in one of his client chairs, Elliot watched him move. "So who beat you up?" he asked.
Hardy tried to smile. "I thought I was hiding it pretty well."
"You thought wrong. You're walking like the living dead." He put his cup down. "So what happened?"
"Leaving out the hangover, which is another story, that's what I wanted to talk to you about." He gingerly rearranged his body in the wing chair, went on to outline the high points of the situation as it had developed. "So now the whole world thinks that Abe and I are illegally conspiring to get Panos and take him."
"And why are you doing this exactly?"
"So we can win this lawsuit that David and I had been working on."
"Past tense?"
"It's starting to look like it. Although let's keep that off the record for now." With some difficulty, he changed position in his chair. "It was one of David's brilliant ideas that had some chance of success as long as he was around to pursue it, but I can't keep it going on my own. I can't even pay me, much less the associates we've been using. And that was before my witnesses started dying. In jail, no less."
He filled Elliot in on Aretha LaBonte. "Although the official line is she killed herself."
"But you think, somehow, it was Panos?"
"I don't know how, but yes."
"He's got people on payroll in the jail?"
Hardy lifted a hand. "I know. It stretches credibility."
"That's a fair assessment."
"But the only thing more incredible is that all of this stuff is coincidence. David, okay. Maybe even the windshield thing with me. But the shots at me, Aretha dying.
Somebody's behind all that. It's not just happening."
Elliot had a pad out and was taking notes. "Okay, we've got Freeman's lawsuit. Panos wants to drive you out of it."
"He's already done it, Jeff. He did it when he took out David."
The First Law Page 33