The Mercy Rule

by John Lescroart

  Glitsky nodded again. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Inoperable, from what I hear? Right?’

  Susan popped in. ‘So how can you write off the idea that somebody helped him kill himself, that that’s what he wanted?’

  ‘We don’t just write it off, Susan.’ Glitsky was still striving for the patient tone. ‘We collect evidence, see what it looks like, go from there.’

  But McGuire was now warming to the argument, or from the Scotch, one of the two. ‘You’re going to have to go a hell of a long way from there to get around the fact that the guy was dying in a couple of weeks, anyway. Why in the world would somebody want to kill him?’

  Frannie joined in, answering for the lieutenant. ‘Abe’s going to say it was money. Graham had a lot of his dad’s money – fifty thousand dollars.’

  ‘So what?’ Susan said. ‘That means he killed him?’

  ‘No,’ Abe replied, ‘it means he might have. That’s all we’re looking at.’

  Hardy spoke up. ‘The reason he had the money was in case his dad had to go into a home.’

  Though he knew Graham’s story about the children of Joan Singleterry, he wasn’t at all certain that he believed it. In any case, he didn’t want to muddy the waters, and he’d come up with his own theory over the past day or two. He thought it had a more credible ring. ‘His dad had it in a safe under his bed and Graham didn’t think that was the most brilliant idea…’

  Glitsky turned to Hardy. ‘He tell you that?’

  ‘He didn’t have to.’

  ‘I wonder why didn’t he tell us?’

  ‘Abe.’ Frannie put down her fork. ‘We don’t mean to pick on you, but this just doesn’t make sense. Susan’s right. This kind of thing is happening every day. Why are you going after this boy?’

  Glitsky clipped it out. ‘Because he lied about everything we asked him. Lying makes us law-enforcement types suspicious.’

  ‘But it was all of a piece, Abe.’ Hardy, the voice of reason. ‘Graham’s already blackballed for legal work in town, he was afraid he’d lose his bar card if it came out he helped kill his dad, even with the best of intentions.’

  Frannie picked it up. ‘So he made up the story that he and his dad didn’t see each other. He didn’t think you guys would look so hard.’

  ‘So it sounds like he didn’t lie a lot.’ Susan joined the chorus. ‘He just told one lie and then had to make up a bunch of other stuff to support that one.’

  A ghost of a smile flickering around his mouth, Glitsky sat back and crossed his arms. ‘Just bad luck we happened to catch him at the big one, huh?’ He came forward and picked up his fork. ‘Maybe it’s just me, but does anybody else think it’s funny that he still had the money after his father was dead, then kind of forgot to tell his family about it?’

  ‘Maybe he was going to,’ Susan said. ‘Maybe he just didn’t have time yet, you arrested him so fast.’

  ‘Maybe. More bad luck.’ Glitsky’s voice dripped with sarcasm. ‘Graham Russo,’ he said, ‘the original bad-luck kid.’

  Playing up front in mixed doubles, and standing too close to the net, Mario Giotti didn’t even see the vicious forehand his opponent launched at his head.

  One second he was on his toes, poised for a volley, following the flight of the ball his wife had just returned, and the next moment he was on the ground, flat on his back, the wind knocked out of him, conscious only of pain.

  Sunday evening, and they were playing indoors at the Mountain View Racquet Club, located on the crest of the escarpment in Pacific Heights, where Divisadero Street began its cascade down from Broadway to Lombard – eight hundred vertical feet in six blocks.

  The judge was aware of people gathered over him, then his head on his wife’s thigh. Someone brought over a white towel, then another one – wet and cool. He had an impression of blood, blotches of red on white in his vision, the brassy taste in the back of his throat.

  Pat was taking control, as she always did. After satisfying herself that it was true, she assured one and all that Giotti was fine. She came down close and whispered into his ear. ‘It’s all right,’ she assured him, ‘you’re okay.’ She wiped the wet towel over his face again, gently.

  Then they were up, he and Pat, walking together. The judge held the stained, wet towel to his face, aware of the stares of the other patrons. Their opponents, another couple a decade younger than they were, tagged along – extras, without any role – a few steps behind them. Giotti felt the sturdiness of his wife’s shoulders, the weight they could bear. ‘Just lean on me,’ she said. He noticed some streaks of red on her short tennis skirt.

  By the time they got to the juice bar, his breath was returning. He felt sure that his nose was broken, but the pressure he’d applied with the towel seemed to have stanched the flow of blood. The other couple – Joe and Dana – insisted on buying something, and Pat ordered large bottles of water for them both. They went off together, stricken and solemn.

  Giotti watched after them. ‘What’s he think, we’re in the goddamn French Open? This is supposed to be a friendly little workout, and we get Agassi and Evert. What is this shit?’

  ‘Shh.’ Pat put a hand on his knee, leaning in toward him, whispering. ‘Somebody might hear, Mario.’

  ‘Let ’em,‘ he snapped back at her, but his eyes, following hers, surveyed the nearby tables. No one was within earshot. He turned back to her. ’This public court nonsense. They should have installed one at the courthouse. You know your opponents. They know you. You can be civilized.‘

  The judge worked and had his chambers in the newly redone U.S. courthouse, the building that had gone unnoticed by Lanier and Evans two days before. The recent renovation, over eight years and at a cost of nearly $100 million, had restored the building to its original opulence, and that was saying something. Nicknamed the Federal Palace, it was widely considered, after the Library of Congress, to be the most beautiful government building in the United States.

  The Palace had originally been built by Italian artisans. Completed just in time for San Francisco’s Great Earthquake of 1906, it had miraculously survived that catastrophe because the postal clerks who worked in the new building at the time had refused to leave, choosing instead to fight the fires that threatened it.

  Now the elegant interior of the place – marble walls and frescoed ceilings – had a modern infrastructure. It was newly wired for computer terminals in nearly every room. Over the objections of many of the judges, including Giotti, who felt that the courts should be open and accessible to the people without hindrance, security was tight. Video cameras hovered at each entrance, with a bank of television screens overseen by uniformed deputies at a central command post by the front doors. Downstairs, a private, indoor parking area for the judges led to an equally private workout room and gym for the staff.

  But no tennis courts, for which Giotti had lobbied strenuously. According to the experts there hadn’t been room.

  This was an opportunity for the judge to remember it, and he continued raving at his wife, although quietly, to be sure. ‘We should join a private club.’

  ‘No, we can’t do that, Mario. We’ve discussed it. Let’s leave that now.’

  ‘No. I don’t agree.’

  Her eyes narrowed in resolve and her fingers tightened on his leg, just above his knee, a warning. Pat was a powerhouse, physically strong and mentally tough. The monitor of the judge’s behavior outside of the court, the guardian of his precious reputation. He rarely disagreed with her judgment in these areas, but today he did. ‘People can be discreet,’ he said. ‘We don’t need to make friends, have private dinners. But the class of people-’

  ‘Don’t use that word, please.’

  A frustrated expression. ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘And I also know we can’t refer to it. Ever.’

  So Giotti went back to his original complaint. ‘A hundred million dollars and they couldn’t figure out a way to put a court in the basement. I solve more difficult probl
ems three times a week. Fucking bureaucrats.’

  Pat was by now reassured that her husband couldn’t be heard, but his profanity when angry still was a source of frustration. Her fingers tightened around Giotti’s leg again. It made her crazy – he didn’t seem to realize who he was sometimes. Or, more truthfully, he seemed to want to forget that a federal judge was not an ordinary citizen. All of them breathed rarefied air and were accountable on a different level.

  And her husband particularly – a centrist Democrat – had to be ever vigilant. There were rumors that he was in line for the Supreme Court at the next vacancy. Surely, he’d earned it: the lifetime of sagacious decisions, published majority opinions, brilliant dissents, the millions of travel miles as he flew the circuit, the sacrifice of abandoning all their old friends, all of the city’s rich social life, on the altar of judicial purity.

  But that last wasn’t unique to the Giottis. To avoid any appearance of conflict of interest, and because of the awesome responsibility of the issues they must daily decide, most, if not all, federal judges wound up cutting off their preappointment relationships – both business and personal. That was part and parcel of the life of the federal judge, and those who didn’t know it at their appointment soon found out, sometimes to their great dismay and disappointment.

  Even despair.

  They couldn’t have friendships in the usual meaning of the word. It wasn’t so much that people couldn’t be trusted. No, it was more that if he served long enough – and the job was a lifetime appointment – sooner or later a federal judge would be called upon to make a decision that would impact nearly everyone he had ever known.

  A casual friendship, an innocent prejudice, a personal comment, an inappropriate liaison, too great an attachment even to a son or a daughter, or a wife – any of these could sully the sacred objectivity of the law.

  Pat Giotti knew that this was why all the federal judges were such a family. And in that artificial and ethereal family, where there were few real friendships and little outside influence, reputation was all.

  Of course, she knew, Mario’s profanity wasn’t going to lose him his job, but it might lower the judge in the eyes of even one citizen, and Pat Giotti, bred to the culture of the Ninth Circuit, would not abide that. She, too, had made great sacrifices to further her husband’s career – her own friendships, her fun, the intimacy of their four children, her youth. Sometimes, she thought in her dark moments, her very life.

  But these thoughts passed. They couldn’t be allowed. It had all been worth it. Mario Giotti was a federal judge now. He was someday, with luck, going to the Supreme Court, perhaps as its chief justice, the culmination of their every dream, the goal for which they had never ceased laboring. Together.

  The couple had come back and the man was blathering on. ‘I’m just so sorry,’ Joe was saying. ‘I get too competitive. I shouldn’t have-’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ Pat interrupted. ‘Spirit of the game. You don’t play if you don’t want to win, isn’t that right, Mario?’

  The judge pulled the towel down from the bridge of his nose. His eyes were mild, the smile benign. ‘It’s one of the absolute truths, Joe.’ He took a long sip of the bottled water. Then, ‘Don’t worry about me, I’m fine. Could’ve happened to anybody.’

  Helen Taylor reclined in the oversized marble bathtub, soaking in scented oils. The disastrous meeting with Graham on Friday night had exhausted the family. After her children had gone, she and Leland went out to a late supper at the Ritz-Carlton and afterward, keeping the unpleasantness at bay, they’d danced at the Top of the Mark. The rest of the weekend had been given over to society events. They’d had no private time to talk. Until now. Leland knocked at the bathroom door and she told him to come in, which he did, taking a seat in the brocaded wing chair that graced the wall opposite the bath. Crossing one leg over the other, he leaned back, enjoying the sight of his wife in the water. He was wearing the pants to one of his Savile Row suits, a white shirt and dark blue tie, black shoes, black socks with garters.

  Inhaling through his nose, he seemed to have suddenly encountered an off scent. His voice had a reedy tone, highly pitched and phlegmy. ‘I suppose we’re going to have to pay for Graham’s defense, aren’t we?’

  Helen took a moment before answering. ‘I keep hoping they’re not going to arrest him again.’

  ‘No.’ Leland was certain. ‘It’s a matter of time, but they will. I wouldn’t squander my hope there.’

  His wife sighed and moved. The water lapped gently once or twice. ‘Then I suppose we must. Pay his attorneys, I mean. I know he can’t.’

  The phantom scent wasn’t getting any better. Leland held his chin high, turning his head from one side to the other, as if trying to place it. ‘We’ll have to keep it from George.’ He paused. ‘Perhaps it should be a loan this time. A real loan.’

  ‘Through the bank? If it’s through the bank, it would be impossible to keep from George.’

  Her husband was shaking his head no. ‘I was thinking of a personal loan. We could-’

  But another thought had crowded in, and Helen interrupted. ‘You don’t really think he’ll go to jail, do you?’

  ‘I don’t know, Helen. If he did kill his father for the money-’

  ‘Graham couldn’t have done that, Leland. It’s impossible. That’s not who he is. He might have helped him die, but it wasn’t for money.’

  Her husband raised his eyebrows, a parlor trick of impressive eloquence. He lived in a world entirely circumscribed by money, and believed that to a substantial degree everything was connected to it. But there was no need to make this point to his wife, and he moved along. ‘I’m thinking, though – back to the loan now – that if he doesn’t get convicted, we might be able to get some reasonable behavior out of the boy, at least until the debt was retired.’

  ‘But if he does? Get convicted, I mean.’

  ‘I suppose then he’ll have rather a more difficult time paying us back.’ Leland seemed to savor the thought. ‘But that isn’t really the issue. When we paid for his law school – a mistake, as it turns out-’

  ‘Maybe it won’t turn out to be eventually.’

  But there was no sign he heard her. ‘Law school, if you recall, supposedly wasn’t the money either.’ He held a palm up to forestall any interruption. ‘I’m only saying that if it had been a loan instead of a gift with no strings, if he’d felt the monthly burden of paying off a debt, he might have thought twice about quitting his job.’

  ‘No, he wouldn’t have. He thought he’d be stepping up, playing in the major leagues, making multiples of his clerk’s salary at the court. That was the whole problem. He probably wouldn’t take a loan anyway, knowing he couldn’t guarantee paying it back.’

  ‘So what’s this attorney of his working for?’

  Helen shifted again, sitting up. Slipping the net from her hair, she shook it out and it fell gleaming – dyed, but gleaming – to her shoulders. Her breasts were buoyant at the water’s surface. ‘I don’t know. Advertising, maybe. I imagine there’ll be a lot of publicity.’

  ‘Of course. There always is.’ From Leland’s expression the bad smell was back. ‘Well, there’ll be time to decide. This assisted-suicide angle looks promising. Perhaps a jury will clear him on that score.’

  ‘But that would still ruin him,’ his mother said. ‘He couldn’t ever work in the law again, and I do think that eventually he intended to do just that.’

  ‘Don’t entertain these false hopes, Helen. He’s out of the law – that’s already come to pass.’ He uncrossed his legs and came forward in the chair, a great deal more urgency in his body language. He cleared his throat, his voice taking on a deeper pitch. ‘Now, I must tell you, I am worried about George.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said simply. Her younger son’s reaction to Graham had been wildly disproportionate as well as out of character. If George had any trademark, it was generally his lack of emotion, not his susceptibility to it. ‘That really wasn’
t like him.’

  ‘I wondered if he’d talked to you.’

  Her pretty face held a thoughtful frown. ‘About what?’

  ‘That Friday. Anything that might have happened that Friday.’

  She shook her head. ‘No. Not to me.’

  ‘Because, you know, he wasn’t at the bank.’

  Her eyes narrowed; apparently this was news to her. She slid back down, slightly, into the comforting water. ‘When wasn’t he at the bank?’

  Leland stroked his upper lip. ‘I don’t have it precisely fixed, but it seems between about eleven and two.’

  ‘Did you ask him?’

  ‘I did. But you know George. He said he must have been at a client’s, he couldn’t remember exactly. If it was important, he’d double-check. But he hasn’t gotten back to me. I wondered if he’d mentioned anything to you.’

  ‘No. Nothing, Leland. Honestly, nothing.’ She let out a sigh, watching as her husband resumed his old posture, his back rigid against the wing chair, one leg crossed over the other. ‘You don’t think he went to see his father?’

  ‘I’m afraid I think it’s quite possible. I don’t like to think it, but it’s almost as though I see it happening.’

  Helen shook her head. ‘We shouldn’t have had him come over when Sal was here. That last time.’

  But Leland brushed that off. ‘Well, what we should or shouldn’t have done is beside the point now. He did come. And in this one area, protecting you from Sal-’

  ‘I know. I think it was just he never got over the hurt. He continued to believe that anyone who could inflict such pain couldn’t be harmless.’

  ‘Maybe, at base, Sal wasn’t harmless after all.’

  ‘No.’ She was certain. ‘He was.’ She reached a hand out over the marble, and her husband took it. ‘He wasn’t like you, Leland. He really was a simple person. He wouldn’t ever have hurt me. He was sick and confused, that’s all.’

  The tableau froze for a long moment. At last the banker’s eyes came back into focus. ‘I just wonder if George realized that. That we’d taken steps. Maybe if we had in fact filed charges-’