The First Law

by John T Lescroart

  "But you've got no proof?"

  "Zero."

  Elliot was clicking his pen.

  "What?" Hardy asked.

  Elliott shook his head. "I'm trying to understand the connection between your lawsuit and all these murders, beginning with Silverman. They don't seem related."

  "They're both Panos, Jeff."

  "I'm not saying they're not. I'm perfectly willing to believe that they are. Just tell me how, that's all."

  Hardy slumped back in the chair, drew a heavy breath and started at the beginning. Ten minutes later, he'd laid it all out. He brought his right hand up to his forehead and squeezed at his temples, sighed a last time, looked across at Elliott. "Don't think I don't realize how bad this sounds, Jeff. But it's not John. He didn't break my windshield. He didn't hire some stooges to take shots at both of us. This is Panos and his gang." He lifted himself from his slump, came forward urgently. "And I can't get a soul to believe me. How am I going to stop them before they try it again?"

  Elliot held his coffee still on the arm of his wheelchair.

  He'd given up all pretense of note-taking. Now, to buy himself another few seconds, he sipped at the cup. "Here's the thing, Diz. I believe you. Just so that's out of the way between you and me. Okay? Okay. Absolute belief. You say it, I buy it. Good enough?"

  Hardy nodded.

  "Good. But that said, the question now becomes what can I do to help you? Which I would love to do if for no other reason than it's a terrific story."

  "So write it up. Crime boss bamboozles city hall. You'll win the Pulitzer Prize."

  "That'll be fun," Jeff said. "But first I need one little thing that an objective party, such as my editor, might take as evidence that there is something real here, and not just the wild conjecture of a defense attorney who wants to get his client off. No offense."

  "No. Of course not. None taken."

  "But we're talking murder here, Diz. Multiple and very ugly murder. And Wade Panos isn't some small-time gangster. If I print any part of this without some show of proof ... well, you know this."

  "What do you need?"

  "Not much," Elliot said. "But you've got an enormous big edifice going here. It's going to need at least a little tiny foundation in unassailable fact."

  Hardy took another run at it, pointing out the various holes in the police case—the planted rings at Holiday's, along with Sadie's testimony and Cuneo's interpretation of it; the slightly off-size, fashionable Italian shoe; Thieu's checkup on and belief in Holiday's alibi.

  At the end of it, Elliot was frowning. "None of which, I'm sad to say, rises to the level of proof."

  Hardy had gotten out of his chair, was creaking around the office. Elliott's words stopped him over by the dartboard. "They can't have done this so well. If somebody searched their places ..."

  But Elliot was shaking his head. "Who? And why? You need something to start with." He closed his notepad.

  "Maybe next time they'll make a mistake."

  "Maybe next time will be me, Jeff. Or Abe. And maybe next time they won't miss. I don't want any next time."

  "I hear you." Elliot looked toward the window. Dusk had settled. He looked at his watch. "I don't mean to run, but I've got to go. Dorothy batters me horribly if dinner's done and I'm not home."

  Out at the elevator, Hardy pushed the button for the basement, then stepped out in the hall. As the door started to close, Jeff wheeled forward a couple of inches and stopped it. He looked up at Hardy. "The first thing you do, the first bit of real evidence you find, you call me, hear?"

  Thirty people, more or less, had gathered in the Solarium.

  Some, like Graham Russo and Amy Wu, were Hardy's friends. Some of the others—Phyllis and Norma, for example—had been at best politely adversarial. The rest comprised a pretty decent microcosm of the adult world.

  The ages ranged from perhaps twenty to Phyllis's sixty-something. A quick glance around revealed every major ethnic configuration, about half men and half women.

  Hardy thought it ironic that Freeman, who found San Francisco's endemic, runaway political correctness as offensive as affirmative action of any kind, had staffed his own firm with such an incredibly diverse talent pool.

  As Hardy came into the conference area, stooped and drained, he gathered some sense of the room's expectation.

  He might be an outcast in the other professional aspect of his life, but here he felt a strong and unexpected acceptance, mixed with a real pride that he was affiliated with this quality group of individuals. He wasn't really part of them, yet clearly he had their respect—everyone had gathered to hear him. Someone closed the door behind them all and after a minute, the room was silent. Hardy stood at the head of the oblong table, made eye contact with Norma, Graham, Amy, some others, and in his natural voice, began.

  "We've all been attacked," he said. "We feel violated, angry and victimized. We're all of us afraid of what's going to happen next, whether it's tomorrow or next week, or even beyond that. We've all been working hard on projects and cases that may now have to be abandoned, and we're wondering what will have been the point of all those hours and all that work. All I can say is that the value of the things we do lies in doing them as well as we can, and that what we continue to do does matter.

  "I know that we are all hoping and praying that things here will return to normal. But we must face the possibility that they may not.

  "So the real question is how we, all of us, deal with this uncertainty and this changing order. My only suggestion is that we take solace and comfort in our families and friends, our faiths if we have them, and our work. If it all ends here tomorrow—and it might—then we'll at least have had the satisfaction of knowing that we've done everything we can to preserve a great legacy with integrity and class. If things do change, we'll be no less ready to deal with that change for having kept up our spirits. If on the other hand life here returns to normal, how proud we'll all be of the fact that when everything looked the darkest, we held our course."

  24

  Treya and Abe Glitsky sat in their car where she'd parked it near their place. Her last few comments sounded like she was defending Clarence Jackman and Abe wasn't much in the mood to hear it. "So he accuses me and Diz instead?"

  "He's not under the impression that he did that."

  "Then he wasn't paying attention."

  "Well," she said, "he's politically bound. Don't look at me like that; I'm completely with you on this. I'm just explaining his position. And for the record, I think it stinks.

  I'm well into serious anger myself. What else does he expect you to do?"

  "That's easy. Stay completely out of it."

  "Can you do that? Do you want to?"

  "I don't know," he said. "I keep telling myself it isn't my case. It has nothing to do with me."

  "Except that they shot at Diz."

  "And beat up Freeman. And maybe had something to do with this prostitute who hanged herself. And nobody seems to be trying to stop them."

  "Which still doesn't make it your job, does it?" She reached over and touched his leg. "That's not a criticism.

  It's a real question."

  He put his hand over hers. "Okay, here's where we are then, it seems to me: Diz tells me the lawsuit is pretty much over. The attacks on Freeman and Aretha and maybe Diz worked. Let's say it is Nick Sephia and his pals. They're done on that score, right? Nobody caught them, but the threat's over. They don't need to do anything else. So I can let that go, clear conscience, not my job. You with me?"

  "All right."

  "But the other side, where's Holiday in the picture? That part's not over, not even close. Even leaving out whoever killed everybody in the line leading from Silverman, meaning Creed and Wills and Terry, they've still got to take out Holiday if they want to be able to rest easy. And maybe knock off Diz."

  "And maybe you, too."

  Glitsky pulled at an ear. "Okay, maybe that. But it doesn't change the fact. They're going to have to try
to get to Holiday. And maybe Diz after him. So, given that, if there's some way I can help stop them, I don't see how I can keep out of it."

  "No." She sighed. "I don't see how you can, either."

  "Which leaves what? Play by the rules? Whose rules?"

  "I know," she said. "I know."

  "Jesus Christ, Roy, this was originally going to be one of the famous quick and dirties, you remember that? Bang bang bang bang and it's all over. Now, shit." They were in Wade's enclosed patio, where he was finishing another jigsaw puzzle. He'd summoned his brother to his home after Liz had told him about this new wrinkle she'd found out from her boyfriend—that some lieutenant named Glitsky who used to run homicide and now was somehow tight with Silverman's widow had put it together that the ring hadn't been taken during the Silverman robbery. "What kind of stupidity made 'em think up taking some rings? Nobody needed the rings. And without 'em it's foolproof. What were they thinkin'?"

  Roy, straight in from his shift, was still in uniform. A jumpy wariness clung about him as it often did when he had to confront his intelligent and powerful older brother.

  "I told 'em that, Wade, the same thing. The money and the pouch, that's all. But Julio thought the ring locked it up tighter."

  Wade grimaced. "Julio's an idiot. A psychopathic idiot."

  "He's not so bad. He was trying to help."

  "Don't give me that," Wade said. "You see what the little fuck did to Freeman? I say go out and put the old man off his feed a few days, maybe get him thinking about his workload, and what's he do? Fucking kills him."

  "I didn't hear that. Freeman's dead?"

  "Not literally. Not yet anyway. But not because Rez didn't try." He shook his head with disgust. "I tell you, that guy scares the shit out of me. I don't know why Nicky's got to hang with such an animal. What he did to those two faggots, Jesus, when a couple of quick shots would have done it as well. Better. Then the two of them get their chance to finish it up, and they miss Holiday, for Christ's sake. And again, once he's dead, it's all over." He saw something on the table in front of him and placed a large piece he'd already connected into a corner of the puzzle. "So now it's the loaves and fucking fishes. We get rid of everybody we need to and we've still got three more, and one of 'em's a lieutenant.

  Christ! When's it gonna end, Roy? How's it gonna end?"

  Roy wiped his palms on the arms of his chair. "Same as always, Wade. Same plan. It's going to end with Holiday.

  He'll turn up, maybe at his house, maybe with his lawyer again, maybe jail, but someplace. Then he goes, and after that nobody's going to worry about whether he's guilty or not anymore."

  "What about the lawyer?"

  "With Holiday gone, who's going to pay him? Why would he care?"

  "But if he does? If this guy Glitsky does?"

  "They won't. Stop worrying."

  "Worrying's what I do."

  Roy forced a grin. "Come on, Wade, you know how it is. Holiday's a job to these guys, something they do to get paid. Hardy and Glitsky, they both have families, for Christ's sake. On the off chance one of 'em might get a wild hair around this, we give 'em a nudge and they drop the thing like a hot potato. Maybe we even do that soon, get them out of the way now."

  "What kind of nudge? You hurt them, you're asking for more trouble. And if Rez is part of that, you'll be covering up for what he does the rest of your life."

  "I'm not thinking about hurting anybody. Just make 'em think."

  Wade held up a hand. "Don't tell me. I don't want to know how. Just make it happen."

  Hardy was on his way out of his evening hospital visit when Roake was coming in. She was professionally dressed and told him she'd had to be in court all afternoon. Life was going on since it had to. How were things here? Any change?

  There wasn't any news and the two found themselves again in the gift shop, sitting at the one table. Roake in the nicest, most concerned way imaginable commented on how terrible Hardy looked, how lousy he sounded. Was he eating? Getting any sleep? He should try to take better care of himself.

  "I'm working on it," he told her. "But in the meanwhile, I've got a problem maybe you can help me with."

  She nodded. "If I can."

  He took a deep breath and came out with it. "I know who beat up David. Does the name Nick Sephia ring a bell?"

  It did. Roake remembered the earlier "mistaken" battery when Sephia had turned and knocked Freeman to the floor outside the courtroom during the summer. "You're sure it's him?"

  Hardy considered for a second. "Beyond a reasonable doubt, and you would be, too."

  "Okay. So what's your problem?"

  He gave her a truncated version of his own interaction with Blanca, backfilled through Jackman and Glitsky, then brought it around to Silverman and Holiday. "In any event," he concluded, "Blanca started out fine, but recently hasn't been too inclined to bust any hump for me.

  Somebody convinced him I'm just scamming to get Holiday off."

  "But somebody shot at you."

  "If you happen to believe that." He shrugged. "I can't explain all this, Gina. I don't think, though, that you have the stink that Abe and I have somehow developed. You're Freeman's fiancée. You've seen Blanca here. He'll talk to you."

  "And what do you want me to say? Or do?"

  At this, Hardy tried to smile. "First, just deliver a message. When I originally told Blanca I thought I knew who'd shot at me—this was like two hours after it happened—he checked on Sephia and found out he was in Nevada, at least four hours away."

  Roake's brow furrowed in thought. "Which leaves him out."

  "That's what Blanca thought, too. And that seemed right, even to me, until John Holiday pointed out that Nick's got the use of the Diamond Center's helicopter. Forty-five minutes to state line."

  Roake seemed to be waiting for more. At last she said, "Excuse me for thinking like a defense attorney, but since that's what I've been my whole life, Nick having access to a helicopter doesn't mean he shot at you."

  "No, of course not. But at least it means that my accusation wasn't whole cloth. I wasn't just getting in a random dig at Panos and his people, which is apparently what Blanca has been thinking. The thing is, I believe that both Jackman and Blanca really do want to find who did this thing to David. I'm telling you it was Sephia. If you mention this incident between David and Sephia last summer, or maybe Kroll's threat to David the night before ... before this happened, maybe they'll listen at least enough to call Sephia in to talk. If there's a god, it's not even impossible Blanca could be convinced to pull a search warrant."

  Roake's eyes had taken on a faraway cast.

  "What are you thinking?" he asked.

  "What? Oh." She lifted her left hand, displaying the diamond ring. "Just imagining what I thought I'd be feeling like today. Married to him, I mean." Her smile didn't come any more easily than Hardy's had. "Not like this." Then, abruptly, "But the answer is yes, of course I'll go see Blanca, or anybody else you suggest. He's on in the morning?"

  "Yes."

  "All right." Again, her focus shifted. "Can I ask you another question? How do you know?"

  "Know what?"

  "That it was this Sephia person. Do you have any proof?" The question obviously struck a nerve—Hardy visibly reigned in a rising tide of temper. She put out a hand and touched his. "Don't get mad at me, Diz. I'm on your side, but it's a legitimate question."

  "I'm sure it is. Jeff Elliot had the same one."

  "Well?"

  "Well, I'm getting damn tired of it, to tell you the truth.

  I know it was Nick. What am I supposed to do, let him kill more people while I try to find proof that he's killed others?"

  She drew a deep breath. "The short answer to that, I'm afraid, is yes. If he did kill somebody else, or even beat up David, and God knows I want pure, sweet revenge for that.

  But still, you need ..."

  Hardy cut her off. "So he shoots at you, you don't fire back?"

  "No. Somebody shoots at
you, you fire back at where the shot came from. That, as you know better than anyone, is self-defense. If you happen to kill the shooter, two things, you've proven he was behind the gun, and you get your revenge. But you don't get shot at, decide who it must have been, then go to his house and shoot him back two days later. Because what if it could have been, even should have been your guy, but it wasn't?"

  "That didn't happen here."

  "No? What's different?" Again she touched his hand.

  "My only point is you'll hurt yourself, Diz." After a minute of silence, she added, "You've got to find something, that's all. At least for yourself, if not for the law. You've got to know. Really know."

  Hardy shook his head and swore under his breath. Another silence built. Broken finally again by Gina. "Here's a terrible thought," she said.

  "Terrible is my favorite. What is it?"

  "Just that I've got the key to David's apartment." She started running with the fantasy. "If something David owned found its way into Sephia's, say, pocket, and Blanca happened to see it, that might get to probable cause for a search. I can't believe I'm saying this."

  "They do a search of his place, they got him," Hardy said, rising to the idea. "The plant would only get them inside. It would take some real evidence after that—say blood splatter on his clothes, and my guess is that there would be plenty—to arrest him."

  "Right. We'd just be facilitating a legal search."

  They looked at each other with a thrill almost of illicit love, both of them wondering how it would be to play outside the rules. To beat these criminals at their own game.

  Finally Hardy pulled out of it. "It's a beautiful idea, Gina, but maybe we won't need it."

  "I couldn't do it anyway," she said.

  "I don't know if I could either."

  "Probably that's a good thing," she said. "It's why they're them and we're us."

  "Right," Hardy said. "If we don't do it by the book we're as bad as they are. Does something seem wrong with this picture somehow?"

  Hardy and Frannie hadn't had the best night of their lives so far, and now with Glitsky's urgent and atypical call inviting himself and Treya over to talk about their options, it didn't look as though it was going to improve. They were in the kitchen, an hour after a dinner that had featured a meltdown of sorts from the kids, who had finally processed the reality that their father had been shot at and badly hurt in the bargain.