The Rule of Law

by John Lescroart

  Now, as she sat down across from him, he could not find much of a trace of the young woman she’d been back then. In many ways, he had to admit, her graceful surrender to age was enviable. She was who she was: efficient, competent, tireless—a jewel, perhaps in the rough, but valuable and valued nonetheless. Even a few days working with Don Peek’s secretary Kathleen as her replacement had reassured him on that score.

  Hardy decided to get up from behind his desk and take the matching chair across from her, and as he sat down, he broke what he hoped was a welcoming smile. “So,” he began, “can I get you anything? Cup of coffee? Tea?”

  “Thank you,” she said. “I’m fine. You wanted to see me? I’ve left Kathleen at the desk. She’s holding your calls.”

  “Great. Let’s see if she does.”

  “Sir?”

  “Never mind. A bit of a lame joke, I’m afraid.”

  She sat waiting, finally clearing her throat. “I’m assuming that this is about last week.”

  “You’d be assuming right,” Hardy said. “Only in the sense, though, that we all were worried about you.”

  “I’m sorry for that, sir. I didn’t mean to upset anyone. I had a personal issue come up that I had to take care of. If I would have known beforehand, I would have given you some more warning, but there just wasn’t time. I had the vacation accrued . . . Norma said it would be all right—that I could also have charged it to sick time—so I didn’t think it would be a problem.”

  Hardy held up a hand. “There’s no problem with the time off, Phyllis. I’m sure we owe you a month or maybe two or, between vacations and sick days, probably close to a year. I don’t remember the last time you took a sick day. That’s the least of my concerns.”

  “Well, then . . .”

  “But then you didn’t pick up any of your emergency numbers, and that was disconcerting.”

  “I’m sorry about that.”

  But still, Hardy noticed, no explanation why. “Well,” he said, “I guess I’m just checking to see that you’re all right. If there’s anything we can help you with.”

  Phyllis straightened her back, coming forward in the chair. She looked down, then over at Hardy with a small smile that all but failed. “I appreciate that. Thank you. But as I said, it was a personal matter. I’m sure that things are now under control.”

  “That’s good to hear. But even if the immediate emergency has passed, or you could just use a little more time, I’m sure we could work something out. And you know the firm has resources that might be helpful if you or somebody you know is in some kind of . . . situation.”

  “No.” She shook her head with some emphasis. “It’s just something I had to take care of,” she said. “And now it’s all good. Really. All worked out.”

  Hardy, wishing now more than ever that he’d never entered her apartment and found the gun in her bedroom drawer and learned of her brother or cousin or whatever he was, spread his hands, then brought them back down to rest on his knees. “Okay, then. If anything changes, you know where to find me.”

  “I do. Thank you, sir. I’m sure nothing like this will happen again, and I’m truly sorry for any inconvenience.”

  “If you apologize to me one more time, Phyllis, I’m going to have to fire you.”

  “Yes, sir. I’m sorry.”

  “I won’t count that one.”

  “What? Oh, I’m . . .” She brought her hand up to her mouth.

  “Good catch,” Hardy said.

  • • •

  WHEN HIS LANDLINE phone jangled on his desk, Hardy jumped about a foot from the surprise and slammed his thighs into the underside of his desk. Swearing aloud, he wondered if Phyllis had left her station again and, if so, who might be out manning the phones. He reasoned that it couldn’t be Phyllis because she would have, as always, used his intercom after first vetting the caller and getting Hardy’s approval to put the call through.

  But meanwhile the phone rang again and he grabbed at it. “Dismas Hardy,” he growled.

  The voice on the phone replied, “Adam McGowan.”

  “Well, Mr. McGowan, you sound exactly like my friend Abe Glitsky.”

  “Yeah, but you’ll want to hear about Adam McGowan.”

  “What about him?”

  “Six weeks ago, guess where he got out from? Here’s a hint. Avenal State Prison.”

  “That’s kind of a big hint. What was he doing there?”

  “Twenty-five to life for armed robbery, for which he served the minimum twenty-five. He got arrested when he was twenty-one, which, if my math holds up, makes him forty-six now.”

  “And living with Phyllis upon his release.”

  “Looks like.”

  “Where did you get this?”

  “The inter-webs, with a little help from some friends in law enforcement.”

  Hardy digested that for a minute. “Well, whatever it was,” he said, “it appears to be all cleared up, and Phyllis doesn’t want to talk about it.”

  “You’ve talked to her?”

  “I have. Not that it was the most scintillating conversation of my life. But she’s back at work as of this morning and everything’s fine. She had a family crisis that’s all been taken care of. And whatever it was, it wasn’t any of my business, so that’s the end of that.”

  “I bet it’s not. The end of it, I mean.”

  “Well, you may be right, but it is for the moment, and until something else happens, she made it pretty clear that she doesn’t want anybody else involved. Like, for example, me.”

  “She’s protecting Adam from something, you realize. He’s back in trouble.”

  “Not unlikely, I grant you. But I’m not inclined to try to find out whatever it is on my own. And I think you and I have already gone about as far down that road as I’m comfortable with. In fact, quite a bit farther.”

  “You don’t have to remind me. But”—Glitsky’s voice went down a notch in volume—“since nobody interrupted us, it breaks my heart now we didn’t stay around a little longer.”

  “Oh yeah. And then we could have watched me get a real heart attack.”

  “You would have been fine. That was just a little adrenaline rush.”

  “It didn’t feel so little. It felt like a sledgehammer beating my heart to a pulp.”

  “It never would have hurt you.”

  “Maybe, but I didn’t want to find out. Besides, what would we have been staying around longer to check out that we hadn’t already seen?”

  “How about what was going on in her living room?”

  “Was something going on in her living room?”

  “Undoubtedly.”

  “You never mentioned that at the time.”

  “I didn’t? I guess I was busy with our getaway. But something was happening there besides Adam and whatever he was doing in his back room. The couches both folded out and had been slept on.”

  “And this means?”

  “Well, from what we know about Phyllis, she isn’t exactly the have-friends-over-for-a-sleepover type, is she?”

  “Probably not.”

  “To say nothing about the magazines.”

  “What about them?”

  “Half of them were in Spanish.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. So what do you suppose that means?”

  Hardy rubbed the phone against the side of his jaw. “I don’t know. But it’s a little odd, to say the least. If she speaks Spanish, I’ve never heard her, and there’s been plenty of opportunity here in the office for that over the years.”

  “See what I mean? Mysteries abound. We should have stayed awhile longer.”

  “Except for that whole unlawful entry thing. Oh, and let’s not forget her absolute right to privacy, which we’ve already pretty severely compromised.”

  “Picky, picky.”

  “Maybe, but we’re just going to have to live with the mystery. And while we’re talking, I think Treya’s right about you maybe getting a little bit bored with ret
irement.”

  “No, I love sudoku. It’s really great.”

  “I’m glad to hear it. But would you like me to keep my eyes open for the random investigator moment—maybe talk to Wyatt—just on the off chance?”

  Glitsky hesitated. Hardy heard him draw in a breath. “I don’t see how it could hurt.”

  4

  HARDY COULD BE as glib and even self-righteous as he wanted with Glitsky, but the news about Adam McGowan’s criminal record—to say nothing of the gun in Phyllis’s bedroom drawer and the fold-a-beds and the Spanish magazines in her living room—was playing havoc with his conscience. These were facts that in the normal course of his life he really shouldn’t know anything about. If he’d simply minded his own business and, by the way, not broken the law, then none of this stuff would be plaguing him the way it was.

  On the other hand, though he was sorely tempted, he couldn’t very well bring up any questions he might have with Phyllis without admitting what he’d done. And what he’d done had been unequivocally, perhaps unforgivably, wrong. For the first time in a decade or more, Hardy found himself wrestling with his childhood Catholic demons. Breaking into Phyllis’s home—and the justification for it that he’d conned himself into believing—felt in his heart like what at one time he would have called a mortal sin.

  And adding to the gravity of the situation, he was sure that Abe was right: whatever had caused Phyllis to take those days off, in spite of her protestations to the contrary, was very probably not over. She’d either volunteered or been pressured into taking into her home a relative with a serious criminal record, and regardless of which one it was—brother or cousin—the basic situation was unlikely to be a recipe for a tranquil and uneventful future. Hardy knew that it might be irrational, but he suddenly felt in his gut that some terrible thing was going to happen to Phyllis, and because of his indefensible behavior he couldn’t discuss with her that possibility and/or some strategies that might prevent it.

  He stood up, came around his desk, walked over to his door, and opened it. Phyllis was once again not at her station. While this explained Glitsky’s phone call coming directly to him at his desk rather than the normal route via his intercom, it was also a sign that all was not back to normal in Phyllis’s world. This was a woman who never even so much as went to the bathroom without making sure that someone else was covering the phones, especially Hardy’s, and access to his office.

  Off to Hardy’s left, Norma’s door yawned open, and seeing the office manager working at her desk, he crossed over and knocked on the lintel. “Sorry to bother you,” he said, “but have you seen Phyllis recently?”

  Norma leaned over to get a view of the receptionist’s area and, confirming that it was unoccupied, said, “I think she must have just gone down the hall for a minute.”

  “Would you mind checking?” Hardy asked. “After last week, I’m just a little worried about her.”

  “I am, too, to tell you the truth, sir. She’s been a little distracted all morning. I mean, for Phyllis. Plus, it’s not like her to leave without coverage.”

  “That’s what I was thinking.”

  “Okay, then.” Norma, up and moving, came around her desk. “I’ll be right back.”

  “I’ll be at Gina’s,” Hardy said, and headed out behind her.

  • • •

  ROAKE HAD GIVEN up her active law practice to pursue a second career writing novels. She’d since published three books to modest critical acclaim and much more modest financial reward. Her connection to the firm had remained strong during this time, since the original firm’s founder, David Freeman, had been her fiancé and he’d named her in his will as the inheritor of the building. After his murder, she had never even vacated her large corner office.

  Hardy knocked at her door.

  “It’s open. Come on in.”

  Hardy complied, saw Gina standing over by her bookshelves, and said hello.

  “Rats,” she said. “I thought you might have been my first real new client.”

  “On day one?”

  “The word’s out that I’m back in the fight, Diz. I was marketing like a crazy person all over town last week. I thought they’d be knocking down my door by now.”

  “You know that many active criminals with money in need of counsel?”

  “More than you’d believe, I’m afraid. Where do you think I got the grist for all of my books? You think I could have made up all that stuff?”

  “Given your imagination, absolutely.”

  “Well, actually, you’re right. I did make ’em up. My plots, I mean.” She ran a hand through her thick black hair and broke a wide smile—all white teeth and sparkling green eyes. “But I always liked to keep up connections with my clients for deep background. I’m thinking they ought to start showing up here anytime now. And between you and me, I just can’t wait to rejoin the billable world, those lovely six-minute increments where if you put in the work, there’s a pretty good chance you’re going to be compensated.”

  “As opposed to . . . ?”

  “As opposed to another industry I could mention if I were a bitter failed writer type of person, which of course I am not.”

  “Of course not. And hardly a failure. Three novels. All outstanding.”

  “And strike three you’re out, too, though you’re nice to say so.”

  “Well, in any event”—Hardy closed the door behind him—“can you spare a minute?”

  “Sure.” She boosted herself up onto some low file drawers under one of the corner windows. Unlike Phyllis, who was about the same age, Gina had no compunctions about showing off her legs or any other part of the rest of her zaftig figure. Now, getting herself comfortably arranged sitting on the table, she crossed her shapely ankles and swung them back and forth like a schoolgirl. “What’s up?”

  For all of the lighthearted bonhomie between them, Hardy and Roake had spent significant time in the legal and ethical trenches together. Each knew secrets about the other that, if revealed, would have ruined reputations and careers.

  * * *

  “Our Town”

  by Sheila Marrenas

  Perhaps the most sensational unsolved crime in the recent history of San Francisco is the so-called Dockside Massacre, which took place eleven years ago this month on Pier 70, in the industrial wasteland just north of Hunters Point. On that cold afternoon, police responded to reports of multiple gunshots only to arrive and discover five bodies, including that of Chief of Homicide Lieutenant Barry Gerson, where they had fallen after what the evidence indicated was a horrific gunfight—over two hundred spent casings from at least nine different weapons littered the pier.

  The other four dead men included John Holiday, a former pharmacist and current owner of The Ark, a seedy downtown bar, and three off-duty Patrol Specials—Nick Sephia, Julio Rez, and Roy Panos. (For those unfamiliar with the term, Patrol Specials are supplemental private security forces licensed and supervised by the city’s Police Department. They wear uniforms that, except for a small logo on the shoulder, are exactly like those of regular city policemen. They are allowed to carry weapons and to make arrests.)

  The question is: What was Barry Gerson doing on that pier, far from his normal place of business in the Hall of Justice, and what was the relationship between him and the other four men? Why were they all there? And who else had been there and apparently escaped untouched?

  For reasons that no one has ever adequately explained, it seems that Gerson had made arrangements to meet with John Holiday on the pier to arrest him for the murder, which had occurred the week before, of a pawnshop owner named Sam Silverman. After the event, speculation had it that Gerson had second thoughts about meeting Holiday by himself in such a remote location, and for some reason enlisted the aid of these Patrol Specials rather than regular city police officers as he drove down to the meeting spot. Whatever the actual reason, it is indisputable that some sort of ambush transpired.

  In the wake of the massacre, police inspe
ctors went into overtime. Then mayor Kathy West issued an Event Number that essentially guaranteed unlimited city funds and man-hours to investigate the slaughter. Three teams of homicide inspectors worked on the case for six weeks and came away empty-handed—no suspects and no arrests.

  They did, however, uncover several provocative connections between Gerson, other members of the city’s legal community, and the Patrol Special licenses controlled by Wade Panos, brother of the victim Roy Panos. Specifically:

  • Matt Creed, the Patrol Special who had discovered the theft and murder at Silverman’s pawnshop, was shot to death making his rounds within that same week.

  • Also in that same week, David Freeman, a veteran attorney involved in a lawsuit against Wade Panos, was mugged walking home from work and subsequently died from his injuries.

  • On the morning of the day of the massacre, Paul Thieu, a homicide inspector assigned to the Holiday case, apparently committed suicide by jumping off the roof of the Hall of Justice.

  • John Holiday’s lawyer, Dismas Hardy, was David Freeman’s partner.

  In spite of all of this smoke, police discovered no fire in this neighborhood. Because the Panos Patrol Special organization provided security for the Georgia AAA Diamond Center, and because massacre victims Sephia and Rez had also been part-time couriers for Georgia AAA, inspectors eventually came to concentrate on that business’s owner, Dmitri Solon, a young Russian immigrant with a luxurious lifestyle. Solon apparently was smuggling diamonds into this country from the former Soviet Union, using the proceeds to procure drugs and launder money. The dominant theory among police inspectors was that the intimate and perhaps conflicting connections between the Panos group and recruits from organized crime syndicates in Russia may have played a significant role in the shoot-out at Pier 70. Certainly, the amount of firepower expended seemed consistent with a paramilitary organization. After the gunfight—or assassinations—the perpetrators may have used diplomatic immunity, and Georgia AAA’s Russian-built helicopter, to effect their escape.