The Ophelia Cut

by John Lescroart

  Hardy had learned his lesson. You waited as long as it took.

  His stomach growled at him. Moses’s phone call at the Pacific Café had brought to an end the dinner portion of the night, before it began, and portended a lengthy next portion.

  Finally, he stopped pacing and sat down on one of the chairs. Several minutes after that, the knock sounded, the door opened, and Moses came in wearing an orange jumpsuit. This was always a depressing moment, especially when the client was a friend who’d never been in jail garb. Hardy’s heart went out to his brother-in-law as the guard gave Hardy an all’s-well nod, then left and closed the door behind him.

  “I’ve got to be honest,” Hardy said. “I’m getting a little tired of your shit. When did they pick you up?”

  “Four. Somewhere around there.”

  “Did it occur to you to ask them to let you call me then?”

  “No, and they didn’t offer. They just packed me up, put handcuffs on me, and threw me in the back of their car. By the time anybody was listening to me wanting my phone call, it was kind of moot.” Moses came closer, pulled around a chair, and straddled it backward. “Meanwhile, look at this, my skin’s all scraped off. Those things are cruel and unusual punishment all by themselves.”

  Hardy wasn’t looking at McGuire’s wrists. He was staring at his face. “Have you been drinking?”

  “What?”

  “It’s not a trick question. And you just answered it.”

  “Hair of the dog, that’s all. A few drops.”

  Hardy lowered his head, rubbed his eyes with the thumb and index finger of his right hand. After he stopped, he looked across at his brother-in-law. “Mose,” he said wearily. “We’re all pissed off at what happened to Brittany. Nobody’s crying over Jessup being dead. But you being dead or drunk isn’t going to help her get over it. It’s only going to make it worse because she’ll think it’s her fault. You’re a smart guy. You’re telling me you don’t see that?”

  “No, you’re right.”

  “I know I’m right. The question is, what are you going to do? What are you even trying to do? If you’re not going to suck it up and deal with this like a grown-up, maybe we need to get you a lawyer who wants to live with the aggravation, which there will be plenty of even if you’re at your best. So answer me, what the hell is going on with you? Is this it? Are you just giving up? Is your life over?”

  McGuire stared at the wall behind Hardy’s head. He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing a couple of times. “I can’t seem to find a place to put it, Diz. I mean, what he did to her. I start thinking about it, and before I know what’s happening, there’s this, this rage . . . it’s just overwhelming. I can’t get a handle on it, so I’ve got to black it out, I mean obliterate myself. And we know what works for that.”

  “Yeah, except it doesn’t.”

  “I know.”

  “Really, Mose. It doesn’t.”

  “I know.”

  “But you keep pushing it? And please don’t tell me you can’t help yourself. That’s not you.”

  McGuire hung his head, barely whispered, “That’s what it feels like this time. Like it’s all too much to handle.”

  “Spare me,” Hardy said, his own outrage kicking in a bit. “Grow the fuck up. This didn’t happen to you. It happened to Brittany. You’ve still got Susan and both of your girls, and you’re trading them in for a bottle. Is that what you want, who you’re going to be? Because if it is, I’m done and out of here before we even start.”

  Hardy surprised himself by standing up, heading for the door, knocking for the guard.

  “What are you doing?” McGuire was up, too, standing back by the desk.

  “I’m letting you make some decisions. Or really, only one. I’ll see you tomorrow morning. I assume you’re getting arraigned.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’ll find out, and they’ll tell you and bring you down, so we ought to meet up sometime.”

  “Until then, what?”

  “Same drill,” Hardy said. “Keep your mouth shut.”

  23

  MASSAGING THE SKIN over his heart, Abe Glitsky stared down through the plantation shutters that covered his living room’s picture window. Though it was not yet nine o’clock, darkness had come on rapidly with the approaching storm, and already the west-facing window thrummed with the lashing rain. In the back of the flat, he was vaguely aware of Treya’s bedtime rituals with the kids, who had stayed up later than usual because the family was preparing for tomorrow’s seder, a good reason to amend the nighttime schedule if ever there was one.

  Five minutes ago, Abe had been in with them all, the furthest cry from a hard-ass lieutenant of Homicide as could be imagined. With his second family, Glitsky was in many ways a different human being than he’d been on the first go-round, with his cancer-stricken wife and his three boys, now all grown up. When he married Treya, she’d brought a lovely teenage daughter, Raney, with her. In short order, they’d had Rachel and Zachary. For some reason—Glitsky attributed it to the two girls when he thought about it at all—he had discovered a spark of, if not true goofiness, than at least levity, that he loved sharing with his children.

  He made faces, told jokes, worked the occasional pun, waxed sarcastic. He found that he loved slapstick—tonight at dinner they’d had one of those everybody-spills-milk moments. Zach’s went first, and when Treya reached to catch it, she knocked over her own glass, pretty much into the lap of Rachel, who jumped up and—yes—knocked over her own glass. Glitsky, facing an imminent meltdown, remained calm, looked around the table at the stricken faces, and said, “Let’s not have a meltdown. Let’s have a milkdown.” He picked up his glass and slowly poured it on the table. Crisis averted, and probably a story for the kids for the rest of their lives, one that their older half brothers would never believe. Rachel and Zach were already reliving the moment, laughing, loving the idea of a milkdown as Glitsky was helping to tuck them in.

  Then the landline rang on the kitchen wall, and since he remained the kind of guy who always answered the phone, he excused himself with a final quick tickle of his son and went in and picked up.

  Whereupon he got the news from his best friend that his two inspectors had arrested Moses McGuire, and what did he know about that?

  As he watched the rain, it was as though he felt the darkness trying to get inside his house and to invade his soul. In a bad mood, Dismas Hardy nevertheless had been his usual confident self, assuring Abe that Moses posed no real risk. At least in terms of what they’d all been through in the past.

  Glitsky knew Hardy as well as he knew anybody, and understood that he was capable of self-deception sometimes. He did not want to see the bad in people, whereas Glitsky, outside of his home, tended to see it more than anything else.

  How could Brady and Sher have made an arrest without telling him? And wouldn’t Farrell have told him or at least tried? Potentially even more worrisome, neither of his two inspectors had called to bring him up-to-date on this rather huge development in a case.

  Had McGuire, in his cups, already said something to his inspectors, not about Jessup but about what had happened six years ago?

  He was so deep in his thoughts that he wasn’t aware of Treya coming up behind him until she put her hand on his shoulder. He nearly levitated with the surprise.

  “Whoa! Are you okay?”

  “I just didn’t hear you coming up.” He reached his hand back and touched hers. “They arrested McGuire and didn’t tell me anything. Did you get any word of that at Farrell’s office?”

  “No. How could they do that?”

  “A few ways, none of them normal. I can’t believe I haven’t heard from either of my people.”

  “Maybe he resisted. Maybe they got hurt.”

  He shook his head. “Diz would have told me.”

  “What’s he got to do with it?”

  “Guess.”

  “I think I can, now that you mention it. What are you going to do?
”

  “I don’t know. I’d say call Paul or Lee, except I’m thinking they already should have called me. But they haven’t, and what’s that about?”

  “It had to be something unusual. Maybe Moses was trying to get out of town or something.”

  “All the more reason to tell me, wouldn’t you think?”

  “You’ll worry it until you know. Call one of them, at least get the story.”

  “You think?”

  “I do.”

  ONCE HIS DINNER plans got ruined, Hardy had thought he’d stay down talking to his brother-in-law until well into the night, getting his version of things, formulating a defense plan. But after his temper had sabotaged that idea and ridden him out of the jail’s visiting room on a wave of frustration and disgust, he found himself sitting in his car across the street from the Hall of Justice, rain pouring down, trying to decide upon an outlet, almost any outlet, for his rage.

  Calling Glitsky hadn’t helped, since—astoundingly—he seemed to know nothing about the arrest. It wasn’t the kind of thing he would kid about. This meant that he hadn’t kept the news from Hardy in some misguided attempt to intimidate Mose by letting him rot in jail overnight. Which was about the only thing Hardy thought it could have been, if Glitsky had been involved. That left him nothing to berate his friend with. Besides which, Abe was clearly worried enough for both of them—it would serve no purpose to add to that concern by spouting some self-righteous horseshit about due process in the service of alleviating Hardy’s own fury.

  Who else, he wondered, could he spew some of this venom at? To bring all this negative energy home to Frannie would be thoughtless and unfair.

  He punched in another number. “Where are you?”

  “In my home, such as it is, reading. Why? You need me to pull a shift? I could be there in fifteen.”

  “No. The bar’s closed down. Moses got himself arrested today.”

  “Shit. Really?”

  “Really. I just saw him in jail. You feel like a drink?”

  SAN FRANCISCO IS a bar town. You’ve got your fancy Burning Rome–type hip places and your neighborhood haunts such as the Shamrock. You’ve got biker bars and gay bars, restaurant bars, sports bars, pop-up bars, and hotel bars. Then there are the old-timey traditional bars, the nightclubs, the theme bars. A bar for every time and place, every mood and every person. If you live in the city’s Tenderloin District, you can find any number of bars that are more or less invisible even as you walk right in front of them. If they had a name once, the paint has faded or the neon has blown out. You push at the door, surprised that it gives. You walk inside, and if the smell doesn’t drive you right back out, you’re in a small dark room with no more than a dozen tables, maybe the same number of stools at the bar, behind which is one middle-aged or older bartender. Male or female, it really doesn’t matter. A small television drones in the far corner, up by the ceiling.

  TONIGHT THREE PEOPLE sat at the bar at the corner closest to Tony’s apartment. The Giants game was on, but Hardy and Tony took two adjacent stools at the end away from the television. The bartender threw a couple of napkins down on the bar in front of them. “Gentlemen,” he said. “Wet enough for you?”

  “Just about,” Hardy said. “You got Beck’s?”

  “Heineken, Bud, Miller Lite.”

  “Heineken.”

  “Double Crown Royal,” Tony said. “Rocks.”

  Hardy had been husbanding his anger since he left Moses. During his call to Glitsky. On the short drive out to Tony’s, on the walk from Tony’s dive here with the rain in his face, the two of them catching up on the news, such as it was, about Moses. Now Hardy took a careful slow sip of his beer and waited for the bartender to revert to the neutral corner at the other end.

  “You think he did it?” Tony asked.

  Hardy put down his glass. “I don’t know. I don’t want to know. That way I can believe anything I want and defend him in good faith.”

  “What if you knew he did it?”

  “I’d still defend him. My heart wouldn’t be in it as much, that’s all. Do you think he did it?”

  “I haven’t really thought about it.”

  “Really?” Hardy gave him a sideways glance. “I’d have thought once he got arrested, you’d assume he did it.” He paused. “That’s the usual cop take, isn’t it?”

  Tony twirled his glass on the bar, glanced at the television, brought his drink up to his lips. “Rebecca tell you?”

  “As much as she knew. What I’d like to know is why you didn’t tell me way back when, once I became your attorney. What was I, some kind of mark for you? Or was the Beck just a better audience?”

  “I don’t blame you for being pissed off.”

  “There’s a relief. I certainly wouldn’t want you mad at me. What’s your real name?”

  “Tony.”

  “You’re playing wise with me? I don’t recommend it. I’m not really in such a good place right now.”

  “Spataro. Tony Spataro.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “Manhattan.”

  “And you were a cop?”

  “Vice. Everything I told Rebecca was true, you know.”

  “Leaving aside the little niggling identity issue of who you actually are.”

  Tony shrugged. “What am I gonna do? I’m in witness protection. They find out where I am, they come and get me.”

  “Who’s they?”

  “I can’t tell you that. Bad people.”

  “But you’re not one of them? You weren’t with them and then sold them out for immunity? ’Cause that’s mostly how it works, you know.”

  “Not in this case.” Tony tipped his glass up, finishing, then signaled the bartender for another round. When that was poured, he went back to the slow twirl. “You’re pissed at me because of Rebecca.”

  “Why, yes, as a matter of fact, since you put it like that. I bring you into my house as a guest, and you hit on my daughter and then dump her for her cousin. How do you think that makes a father feel?”

  “I’m not with Brittany yet.”

  “Yet.” Hardy could barely get the syllable out through his teeth. “I like that.”

  “Is that why you wanted to see me tonight? Kick my ass?”

  “Mostly. Yeah. I’m feeling a little abused lately and wanted to take it out on somebody who deserved it.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Let me ask you one. What are you going to do after they call you back to testify or whatever it is you’re doing? Are you coming back to San Francisco and staying here? This is your new life? Or when your bad guys back there are in jail, you go back to your old life as a Manhattan cop?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t thought it out that far. My marshal tells me if I go back, the program can’t be responsible for me anymore. But I’ve got family, cousins, friends, a whole life back there, and I haven’t been able to contact any of them, let ’em know I’m even alive. I don’t know how long this will go on, and it sucks, believe me.”

  “My heart’s breaking for you. But you know what really sucks, Tony? Leading these girls on. Making them think you’ll be here when you’re planning on going back. Making them think you’re somebody they can count on.”

  “I don’t know if I’m going back. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

  “Well, then why don’t you figure that out before you get other people involved in your drama and your bullshit. And other people’s daughters.”

  “I never planned to stop seeing Rebecca. It just—”

  Hardy held up a hand, his face a slab of dark marble. “Don’t go there, Tony, I know what it just was.” He took a pull at his beer, made a face, pushed the bottle out to the lip at the edge of the bar. He stood up. “I’ll be passing your case off to one of my associates. Whoever it is will call you.”

  AT 10:42, HE picked up the kitchen telephone on the first ring. “This is Glitsky.”

  “Lieutenant.” Vi Lapeer’s voice
was firm, commanding. “I’m sorry to be getting back to you so late, but your call said to try at any time. I was going to let this wait until tomorrow, but I gather you’ve already spoken to some of your people regarding the Ramey warrant we served on Moses McGuire this afternoon.”

  “That’s right. Paul Brady said you’d ordered him and Lee to report directly to you on this case. I don’t understand why you thought that was necessary.”

  “I would have thought that was obvious. You are friends with Mr. McGuire.”

  “I know him, yes. I would not say we are close friends. I had instructed my inspectors to treat him exactly like any other suspect.”

  “In fact,” the chief said, “when they went to interview him, he was evidently aware that he was under suspicion and had already retained a lawyer.”

  “The lawyer is his brother-in-law, ma’am.”

  “And your good friend, is he not?”

  “I did not contact him regarding this on any level. I didn’t know he was representing McGuire and don’t know when he began. Do you?”

  “Of course not. Nevertheless, in a case with substantial visibility such as this one, we sometimes have to go to some lengths to avoid the appearance of impropriety or conflict of interest.”

  “I understand that. But in this case—”

  “Lieutenant.” Her repetition of his rank struck him as ominous. As recently as this morning, he had rarely been anything but Abe. She went on. “I really don’t feel that now is the appropriate time to air this matter completely. In the past several hours, I have heard several allegations—unsubstantiated, to be sure, but bothersome nonetheless—regarding your relationships with Mr. Hardy, Mr. Farrell, and some other members of their law firm, which, I must say in a police officer, are at best unusual. I was hoping that tomorrow you and I could set aside a little time to discuss these matters privately and determine to what extent you will still have my confidence as a department head. Am I making myself clear?”