The Rule of Law

by John Lescroart

  Well, he was thinking, change happens. He’d just have to see how this new team worked things out, how they were going to play it.

  The bar opened for business at 3:00, and when Miguel knocked at the door at the exact time of their appointment, 2:30, it was dark inside. He put his face up against the glass and saw movement, and in another few seconds Mel turned the dead bolt and opened the door, a big smile on his face, and reached out to put his huge arm around Miguel’s shoulders. A greeting more for family and friends than for business partners. “Buenas tardes, buenas, buenas.”

  And then they were inside, the door locked again behind them, moving to a round table in the back where another guy was sitting, his back to them.

  That man turned out to be Adam, a shot glass of tequila in front of him. Miguel hadn’t expected him to be here for this meeting, and his presence was a little unnerving. But now, getting to his feet and turning, he stuck out his hand, a welcoming smile on his face as well. “How are you doing, Miguel?” Old pals shaking hands. “Good to see you again.”

  Switching to English for Adam’s benefit, Mel asked, “Can I get you something to drink? Cerveza? Tequila?”

  “Sure.” Miguel nodded. “Tequila would be nice.”

  “So”—Mel coming around with a bottle and shot glasses—“you hear the good news?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Celia,” Mel said. “The girl who shot Hector. She killed herself this morning in her jail cell.” He poured two shots and topped off Adam’s. “God rest her soul.”

  The men picked up and shot their drinks. Mel filled them all again, and everybody sat.

  “Why is that good?” Miguel asked. “Her dying.”

  “Because it ends the investigation,” Adam said. “And we can get back to business.”

  “She can’t talk anymore,” Mel said, “and so her story never changes.”

  “Trying to save herself,” Adam added, “she could have made trouble for us. Now there is no danger of that.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  The two younger men shared a glance. “Rita and the two of us,” Adam said, “we are the only ones who know what happened, what she did. And that’s what we told the police.”

  “But she might have pointed back at us,” Mel added. “And now that can’t happen.”

  “I don’t pay any attention to much of that,” Miguel said. “Hector and his girlfriends, huh? He picked the wrong one this time. That’s what I heard.”

  “That is the truth. And fortunately”—Adam raised his glass again and drank—“all that is over now.”

  “And they, the police, they know she did it?”

  “Hey,” Mel said, “she shoots him and that same day she runs. There is no doubt.”

  Adam nodded. “You don’t run if you didn’t do it.”

  Yes you do, Miguel thought. You do if you’re an undocumented alien. You do if someone like Mel or Adam makes you believe that the police will think you did it anyway. Or if they told the police you did. You’d run if you didn’t think the system is fair.

  Miguel could think of a dozen reasons—beyond that she was guilty—why the girl had run, but that was not what he was there to talk about today. Taking another sip of tequila for courage—the more he sat facing Adam, the more nervous he became—he put the glass down and said, “But the water—what do they say—is no longer muddy?”

  “Right,” Adam said. “We are ready to pick up where Hector left off. Mel manages and I help out at the bar.”

  “And Rita, too, of course,” Mel said, “with the girls.”

  “That is just a rent issue,” Miguel said. “Hector kept the upstairs rooms filled is the important thing. He had, I believe, connections. We don’t want to get behind on the rents there.”

  Mel nodded. “I know his people. I’ve been on that side of it for a year now. He was just making promises and taking money. And also, the other business at the bar.”

  Miguel shook his head. “That is also the rent. I don’t care where it comes from. But I need to clear twenty thousand from you on the first, in cash, every month. That is all that matters. Then we can do business. As Hector and I did. There is enough for everybody here to be comfortable.”

  “We can do that,” Mel said.

  “I know you can.”

  “But eighteen would be better.” Adam gave him a frigid smile. “At least until we set up a little better and get our feet on the ground.”

  “Eighteen will not work.”

  Another look from Adam that was nothing like a smile. “For Hector, I understand, because he told me, it was fifteen.”

  “That’s a lie.” The two men stared at each other until Miguel’s shoulders sagged. “For Hector it was eighteen.”

  Adam’s smile returned, his hands held wide and welcoming. “Which is all that we ask for. In all fairness.” He lifted his shot glass and drained it. “Eighteen,” he repeated.

  Miguel let out a breath. He glanced at Mel, who gave him an ambiguous nod. He then came back to Adam. Through clenched teeth he said, “Eighteen,” then pushed his chair back and got to his feet. “On the first. In cash.”

  He gave each of his two partners one more nod each. By the time he’d cleared the table on his way out, he realized that he was no longer going to be dealing with Mel but with Adam, who had arrived only a few weeks before and then, obviously, seen a situation here that he could take advantage of. He could simply convince Mel and Rita that they didn’t have to take leftovers from Hector. They could run the whole show themselves.

  Of course—and Miguel saw this clearly—Adam knew that he would go on to be in control of the business. All he had to do was get rid of Hector and then somehow make it appear that his girlfriend had killed him, when in fact . . .

  Miguel didn’t want to burden himself with these speculations. The only thing that really mattered to him was that his rent got paid.

  But he could not ignore the plausible truth.

  . . . when in fact Adam may very well have killed Hector, then convinced the poor girl that she needed to run. The police wouldn’t even listen to her denials if she tried to make them: as an undocumented person, and the girlfriend of the murder victim, she would have been seen as Hector’s killer. Adam could have told her that, even if she didn’t kill Hector, the cops would jump to that conclusion and arrest her. She had to run. She had no choice.

  Once she did that, the police wouldn’t be looking at anybody else.

  And Adam—protected by his new partners’ conspiracy, then by the young woman’s flight, and today by her death—would move into Hector’s position.

  A cold, clean, and efficient takeover by a very dangerous man.

  15

  BECAUSE IT WAS a Wednesday, which had been his and Frannie’s traditional date night for most of the past thirty years, Hardy left work early and drove out to the Little Shamrock, the bar he co-owned with his sister-in-law, at Lincoln and Ninth Avenue. Frannie would be coming over by Uber at around six, and the two of them would head out to some worthy destination in this endlessly fascinating city.

  Meanwhile, before she got there, he liked to put in a couple of hours bartending every week or so, feeling that it kept him in touch with the real world of regular people: working stiffs, teachers, musicians, construction guys, young professionals, service people, a few retirees—real human beings not involved as he was in the universe of criminal law.

  The Shamrock was in some ways a touchstone, as important as his home. He had essentially spent all his waking moments there, behind the bar, in a haze of Guinness stout and Bass ale, for the decade after he lost his first son, Michael. That tragedy had also destroyed his first marriage and detonated his first career as a young, red-hot DA ready to conquer the world and bring all criminals to justice.

  Now it wasn’t so much that he wanted to relive any of that painful time as to remind himself how fantastically well his life had turned out when it had seemed for the longest time that it would never have th
at chance.

  Two hours behind that bar with these regular good people showered him with an almost primeval sense of hope, of possibility, of the future, even as he cruised past sixty.

  Who would have thought he’d have gotten to here?

  Certainly not him.

  And now here he was, pouring drinks, his suit coat hung on the peg behind the bar, his tie off. The place was starting to fill up, and it was that magic time before it got crazy but still was busy enough to set up a nice mindless rhythm. He and his cohort Lynne worked together seamlessly, their waitress Noni appearing promptly at 5:00 and starting to place orders for the folks who didn’t have a spot at the rail.

  Hardy, in the zone, was loving it. When Frannie sidled up to the bar and ordered her Chardonnay, he checked his watch and saw that it was already 6:15.

  “Where are we going?” he asked her.

  “Locanda,” she said. “Seven thirty.”

  One of his favorite restaurants.

  “Perfect,” he said.

  • • •

  HARDY WOUND UP parking on Sixteenth Street, around the corner from the restaurant. Now sated and happy after their dinner of rigatoni alla carbonara and grilled whole trout, he and Frannie had just about gotten to his car when Hardy touched her arm, stopping her.

  “What?” she asked.

  His eyes were still focused across the street and it seemed that only reluctantly he came back to her. “That’s the El Sol.”

  “ ‘El’ means ‘the,’ Dismas,” she said. “So it’s just El Sol, not the El Sol.”

  Hardy slapped at his cheek in mock dismay. “You probably can’t see it in this dim light, Fran, but my face is red with shame and embarrassment. The El Sol indeed. What was I thinking?”

  “It must be that, just for the moment, you weren’t. Strange though that would be. What about it, though? El Sol? Why is it on your radar?”

  “It’s where Hector Valdez got himself killed last week. The case Phyllis got involved in. Or I should say is involved in.”

  “But this place is back open already? What about that whole crime scene thing? Closing the place down? Getting all the evidence?”

  “They got what they needed. One bullet in the guy. It’s a bar, so prints and DNA are useless. No security camera. So, as I understand it, the investigation wouldn’t have taken very long.”

  They stood looking for another few seconds. At last Frannie sighed. “Okay.”

  “Okay what?” Hardy said.

  “Okay, we can go in so you can check it out.”

  “I wasn’t—”

  “Shut up, Dismas. Of course you do. Since we’re already here.”

  Hardy gave it a few seconds of hesitation. “Just a couple of minutes,” he said.

  He took her hand and they walked across the street.

  • • •

  THE CROWD INSIDE El Sol extended to the doorway, salsa blaring and an overflow crowd spilling out into the street. Hardy and Frannie, still holding hands, made it to the edge of that crush and Hardy said, “This might be more productive earlier in the day.”

  “You’re sure?”

  He nodded. “And maybe not even then.”

  He had started to turn, to recross the street back to his car, when suddenly a familiar female figure materialized out of the throng and he stepped over in front of her. “Phyllis!”

  She straightened up, shocked. “Mr. Hardy. What in the world . . . ?”

  “I could ask you the same thing. How are you? And what are you doing here?”

  “Well, I was just moping around the apartment. I mean, after today and Celia and everything that has happened.” Shrugging, she forced a pathetic smile of sorts. “Anyway, Adam thought it might be good for me to get out and try to cheer up a little, although I didn’t think that was likely to happen. And certainly not here, where all these young women just remind me more of her.

  “But Adam just got what he said was a real job here, and I think he wanted to show it off to me and have me see that he was back on his feet and everything was going to work out now. But really . . . as you can probably see, this is not my kind of place. Although maybe, for Adam, especially after being in prison . . . well, you can see.” She leaned to one side. “Is that Mrs. Hardy?”

  Frannie stepped forward. “It is. How are you, Phyllis?”

  “Well, as I was just telling your husband . . .” She sighed. “It’s just been a terrible few days. I’m so sorry.”

  “Nothing for you to be sorry about,” Frannie said. “We’re sorry you have to go through all of this. And, by the way, Dismas has told me about all you’ve done helping those poor people without documentation all these years. I am so impressed.”

  Phyllis shrugged again. “Well, we all do what we can. The system is so unfair. Somebody’s got to step up and help.”

  “Yes, but not many actually do,” Frannie said.

  “Well, thank you.”

  “So,” Hardy broke in, “are you on your way back home?”

  “Yes. I was just going to get an Uber.”

  “How about if we just take you there in my car and drop you off?”

  “Oh, that’s too much trouble. I couldn’t . . .”

  “Yes you can,” Hardy said. He pointed. “We’re parked right there, across the street. We’ll have you home in ten minutes.”

  • • •

  FRANNIE INSISTED THAT Phyllis sit in the front seat, and by the time they arrived and parked at the curb in front of her apartment, she and Hardy were deep in the kind of conversation that had eluded them while she’d been in custody.

  “No,” Phyllis was saying, “Celia wasn’t Adam’s girlfriend. She was this man Hector’s, his woman, but it was more like his slave. He owned her. Evidently that was what his business was: bringing girls into the country with the promise of work—good work, clean work—and then keeping them until he could sell them to other men or put them to work in massage parlors or even just brothels. But Hector kept Celia for himself.”

  “So what happened? The day Hector got shot, what did Adam tell you?”

  “Well, it’s a little hard to understand if you haven’t seen the layout at the Sol, but after I saw it just today I got more of an idea.” Her hands were in her lap and she looked down at them and sighed. When she spoke again, it was so quietly as to be nearly inaudible. “There’s an office in the back behind the bar,” she said, “and behind that is another room, mostly for storage, but it’s also got a bed and a dresser—more like for naps, though, than a real bedroom.”

  “So somebody stayed there part-time?” Hardy asked.

  “Well, I think that’s kind of the general situation in that building. One person per tiny little room, one shared bathroom per floor, that kind of thing.”

  “And Celia lived there, in this one, downstairs?”

  Phyllis shook her head. “No. She evidently stayed with Hector at his apartment. He didn’t want to let her out of his sight. Anyway, the morning of the shooting, they came in together—Hector and Celia—and it was clear that they were having some kind of serious disagreement, so Adam and his partners gave them kind of a wide berth.”

  “I don’t think I’ve heard about Adam’s partners yet,” Hardy said.

  Phyllis nodded. “Mel and Rita. They were the couple Adam had gotten friendly with, who had kind of brought him on and given him work.”

  “Okay.” Hardy decided to prod gently. He had her talking and he wanted to keep her at it. “So Hector and Celia are having a problem and Adam and this other couple are trying to stay out of their way?”

  “Right. Then finally they disappear through the back door to the office.”

  “The one with the other room behind it?”

  “Yes.” Phyllis hesitated again. “All the rest of this, I’m afraid, is pretty much conjecture on Adam’s part. He didn’t know exactly what happened back there, but evidently Hector was threatening her—that’s what it sounded like from the bar where Adam was—and he had a gun that in the s
truggle somehow Celia must have gotten ahold of. In any event, Adam heard the shot, so he went back there and she was in the office, the gun was right on the desk, and Hector was dead or at least dying on the floor. And so he asked her what she’d done, and she told him it hadn’t been her. She’d locked herself in the back room to get away from him. It must have been one of the people from upstairs: the office also opened to a hallway and the stairs leading up. Anyway, Adam didn’t believe somebody coming from upstairs had shot Hector. It was obvious to him that Celia had killed him, and he told her that there was no way that the police wouldn’t see how it had happened. She had to run. He’d already told her about me—that if she could get to me, I could help her get away. Then he called me and said he had an emergency: I needed to be home to meet this woman.”

  • • •

  AFTER DROPPING PHYLLIS off and waiting for her to get safely inside her apartment before he started up, Hardy drove about three blocks before he asked Frannie: “On a scale of one to ten, how credible do you think that story was?”

  “Does it have to start at one?” she asked. “If it started at zero, I could get closer.”

  “Are there any parts of it you believe?”

  Frannie gave it a moment’s thought. “None of the important ones. How about you?”

  “I’m having some difficulty thinking about Adam as the good guy. I mean, Celia kills her boyfriend, and all he can think about is getting her to his sister so she can make a getaway to Canada? When, coincidentally, her disappearance just happens to be good for him in every way possible? Mostly that he’s not a murder suspect.”

  “That does seem coincidental.” She paused. “Do you think Adam killed Hector?”

  Hardy nodded. “I’m starting to think that. Let’s work this backwards. The murder weapon is at Phyllis’s home. That’s the big reason she got indicted. I don’t think there’s any doubt Adam brought it there. Now, Adam says he got it from Celia, who he says is the murderer. But if she’s not, she didn’t have the gun to give him. So where did he get it? Answer: He had it all the time. He’s the one who killed Hector. It’s the only way this fits if we assume Celia didn’t do it.”