The Mercy Rule

by John Lescroart

  ‘I want you to arrest him again.’

  Her eyes went down to slits, then opened as an admiring smile formed. ‘Let me see if I get your meaning here.’

  She understood it perfectly. She would simply pull the rug out from under the attorney general. If she charged Graham in Sal’s death, then cut a deal with his attorney, then under double jeopardy, Graham could never be brought to trial again for the same crime.

  She locked him in her gaze again. ‘You’re afraid Powell’s going to charge murder one with specials here, aren’t you?’

  Hardy nodded. ‘Yep.’

  ‘And you’re sure he’s not indicted the son yet?’

  Thinking of Glitsky, Hardy felt a tug of guilt. They’d played the ‘no comment’ game, but Hardy knew that if they hadn’t been friends off the court, Glitsky wouldn’t even have spoken to him. In fact, Glitsky had as much as confided that the case hadn’t yet been to the grand jury, and now he was telling that to Pratt. It bothered him to do this to Abe; he should have thought about where it might go before he’d come in here, but he’d been psyched on his strategic brilliance, and now was the time. He had to go ahead. ‘No indictment. That’s what I hear.’

  ‘So what’s your offer?’

  ‘You charge him tomorrow morning, early. If the grand jury indicts first, we’re dead. I bring Graham down and the next day we plead manslaughter. The deal is probation. No time. Community service negotiable.’

  ‘And your client’s on board with this?’

  He didn’t really see how Graham could disagree. He’d called him back after their early talk to propose it to him but again, maddeningly, there’d been no answer, not even a machine. But Hardy would get to Graham before the morning if he had to camp on his front step. He nodded. ‘He will be.’

  This response, though, brought Pratt up short. ‘You don’t have your client’s approval for this?’

  ‘I wanted to get your take on it first. If you weren’t interested, what was the point?’

  Pratt obviously thought this was bass-ackwards – as indeed it was. But the idea itself played beautifully into her hands. As a vehicle for votes she could ride it for miles. Still, ‘I won’t move forward on this until I’ve heard from you.’

  ‘I understand that.’

  She nodded once. ‘Claude, give Mr Hardy one of my cards with my home number. Mr Hardy, I’ll expect to hear from you.’

  Since the business day was nearly over, Hardy drove directly from the Hall of Justice. Graham was home and cracked a bottle of beer for each of them, suggesting that they walk up and have their talk outside at the top of the Interior Park Belt, which marked the end of Edgewood.

  They were sitting on a low brick wall, looking down the canyon at the lush eucalyptus-scented greenery. The microclimate was putting on a show for them; there wasn’t even a light breeze, and the temperature was pushing eighty. Hardy had left his coat in his car, had removed his tie. Graham was barefoot, in khaki shorts and a mesh jersey.

  ‘I never asked. You play ball this weekend?’ Hardy thought he’d ease into the real reason for his visit. Get some dialogue happening before he dropped the bomb.

  ‘Luckily.’ Graham pulled at his beer. ‘I told you I got fired from the ambulance company, didn’t I?’

  Though Hardy wasn’t happy to hear this, it wasn’t any surprise.

  Things were going to get a lot worse for Graham, and anything that helped him realize it was to the good. ‘You make some money?’

  A sidelong look. ‘Is this a subtle intro to the fees discussion?’

  Hardy smiled. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll send you a bill eventually. No, I just wondered how you were getting along.’

  ‘Sorry, I’m a jerk lately. Yeah, we played a tournament down in Hayward yesterday. Five games, went all the way.’ He made some dismissive gesture. ‘I pulled down two grand.’

  ‘In one day?’

  ‘Five games. The second game we got a bonus of a thousand bucks on the mercy rule. That’s how it works.’

  ‘Two grand a day?’

  ‘Best case, if we win. If we’d have lost the first game, I would have made fifty dollars, so we’re motivated to win. The mercy rule helps.’

  ‘What’s the mercy rule?’

  Graham looked at Hardy as though he’d just stopped by from Mars. ‘If a team’s ahead by ten runs, that’s the game, they call off the slaughter. It’s called the mercy rule. The way the sponsors bet, they get double, sometimes more, if the game’s mercy-ruled. The players get a bonus.’

  ‘That happen a lot?’

  ‘Team full of ringers like us? Yeah, I’d say.’

  ‘So the guy who sponsors your team – what’s his name?’

  ‘Ising. Craig Ising.’

  ‘So Craig Ising paid your team ten grand in one day?’

  Shrugging, Graham gave it a minute. ‘I guess so, something like that.’

  Hardy whistled. ‘What did he win? Betting.’

  ‘More than that,’ Graham said. ‘These guys, they don’t get out of bed for ten grand.’ But this subject, clearly, was making him uncomfortable. He bought his bottle up, took a drink. ‘So? Something tells me you didn’t come up here to talk softball. You get some more news?’

  ‘Well, actually, I did.’ There really wasn’t going to be any way to sugarcoat it, so Hardy didn’t try.

  Graham listened patiently, shaking his head. ‘They’re not going to arrest me again,’ he said easily when Hardy had finished. ‘Sarah’s not going to arrest me. She likes me. I like her. She’s cool.’

  ‘She’s a cop,’ Hardy said. ‘She’s using the fact that you think she’s cool – that maybe there’s a buzz between you two, you talk to her – she’s using that to take you down.’

  ‘That would really surprise me,’ he said. ‘When she came by here Saturday night, that wasn’t business.’

  ‘So what was it, a date?’

  Graham laughed at that. ‘Almost. Not quite, but we might have got there.’

  Hardy shook his head. ‘Why is it, Graham, that you’re the only person in the city who doesn’t think you’re going to get arrested? You ever ask yourself that?’

  Graham shrugged, sipped his beer. ‘They already took their shot with me, Diz. What’s in it for them doing it again?’

  ‘It’s not the same people. How about that?’ He stood up and walked a few steps away. He was thinking that after all he should have come here with the appearance of panic. Maybe that would have gotten his client’s attention, made him realize the seriousness of his situation. But he hadn’t wanted to scare him off. He’d wanted to keep him talking, not to reject the plea-bargain plan out of hand, out of defensiveness.

  Well, there was nothing for it now. Hardy had to make his case. He turned back. ‘Look, Graham, here’s the situation. You’re going to be arrested again in a couple of days, certainly by the end of the week. You’re going to get charged with first-degree murder, maybe even special-circumstances murder. This is going to happen. Even if it’s not your Sergeant Evans, and I think it is, somebody is going to get this done. It’s too big an issue. It’s not going to go away.’

  He didn’t win him over, but at least the confident smile vanished. ‘All right. Let’s say that happens. Let’s just say. Then we’re just where we were last week anyway, right? We duke it out.’

  ‘That’s one approach. But I’ve got a better one.’

  He came back to the low fence, handed his untouched bottle of beer to Graham, and laid it all out – his deal with Pratt, the whole strategy. When he’d finished, he waited, watching his client’s face.

  It wore a dead sober expression now, conjuring with the possibilities. He blew out heavily, shook his head at something, craned his neck. ‘But I’d have to say I did it,’ he said at last.

  ‘But you wouldn’t serve any time. Nobody could come back and get you for it. It would be over. The deal’s already cut, Graham. Pratt’s bought it.’

  ‘It’s a good attorney move, I’ll give you that.’<
br />
  Hardy tried a light touch. ‘Afterward, you could even call up Sergeant Evans again, ask her out.’

  ‘But’ – maddeningly, seemingly unable to leave it alone, Graham played his refrain – ‘I’d have to say I did it.’

  There was no evading this. ‘Yeah, you would.’

  ‘But what if I didn’t?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Hardy said, surprised by how much he sounded like a defense lawyer. It didn’t matter if he committed the crime? What was he saying? But he pushed at it. ‘It’s just a legal issue.’

  ‘And I’d be off? That would be the end of it?’

  Hardy had him on the verge – he could feel it. Now was the moment. He had to close the deal. ‘You might get a couple or three years probation, but, Graham, listen to me. You’re just starting out in the business world. There’s a lot more to do than be a lawyer. I am a lawyer and I know. It’s ninety-nine percent drudge and the rest is kissing your client’s-’

  This brought a smile. ‘Like now, with me? You’re kissing my ass? Somehow it doesn’t feel like you’re kissing my ass.’

  ‘This is an exception. What I’m saying is you could do anything. You don’t need your bar card. You don’t need to be a lawyer any more than you needed to be a baseball player. They’re just jobs.’

  Finally, a heartfelt note. ‘But I’m good, Diz. I made law review. I got the clerk job with Draper. Nobody gets that job except the best.’

  Hardy was shaking his head. ‘So you’ve got a good brain. Use it on something else. And if you don’t, you’re looking at prison, Graham. We’re not talking your second or third choice in your career goals, we’re talking years out of your life. Prison. Hard time.’

  For nearly a full minute that seemed like an hour, Hardy waited. Birds chirped in the foliage around them, but otherwise the stillness was complete. At last Graham shook his head. ‘I’m sorry. I know you put a lot of thought into this, but I didn’t kill my dad. I can’t say that I did.’

  Hardy, his stomach tight, wished Graham could simply leave it that he hadn’t killed Sal, instead of always adding that he couldn’t say he had. He gave it a last try. ‘We don’t have to call it killing him, Graham. We can say-’

  ‘No! Listen to me! I am not going to say I killed him.’

  Hardy listened to the birds chirp for another moment, then gradually stood up. ‘I’ve got to tell Pratt your answer by the morning,’ he said.

  ‘You’ve got my answer. My father killed himself. He left the DNR tag for the medics. He did it. That’s what happened.’

  15

  A large percentage of Marcel Lanier’s working life outside of the office was spent in and around the city’s various slums and housing projects. Poverty being the wet nurse to so many crimes, this was the usual beat and homicide cops soon grew accustomed to it. Occasionally, though, the work took him on a different tour.

  So while Sarah Evans was working phones at the Hall of Justice, punching the numbers that Sal Russo had written on his scraps of paper, playing connect-the-dots with the names, Lanier thought he’d grab this opportunity to take a different, more direct, approach. In spite of Glitsky’s explicit instructions Lanier forgot his tape recorder.

  He knew that Danny Tosca held down the end of the bar most nights at Gino & Carlo’s. The place had been in its North Beach location forever. This was where the authentic old Italian heart of the city beat most strongly, and Danny Tosca was in some sense its unofficial pacemaker. Now in his early fifties, cue-ball bald, casually dressed in a dark sport coat, burgundy shirt, tasseled loafers, Tosca was – ostensibly – in real estate. And in fact, many of the businesses in the neighborhood made their rent checks out to his company, which brokered for the actual property owners.

  Danny Tosca had never been indicted or arrested. As far as Lanier knew, he’d never even had a parking ticket, although if he had gotten one, it would have been taken care of before the ink on it had dried.

  He occupied a unique niche in the sense that he did not appear to believe in physical force. He would be the first to admit that he had a knack for persuasion and negotiation, for locating the pressure point, and wasn’t averse to accepting commissions from grateful clients. He simply took a proprietary interest in his community and, like Lanier, viewed himself as one of the many checks and balances in the city by which order was maintained.

  He was enjoying his inevitable demitasse of espresso when Lanier pulled up a stool and said hello.

  Tosca gave every appearance of being glad to see the inspector, nodding at the bartender to set him up with whatever he’d like. Marcel had a Frangelica in a pony glass on the bar in front of him before his seat had gotten warm. The two men chatted about the beautiful night, the warm spell, the Giants, who were on television above the bar, losing to the Dodgers.

  Finally, Marcel deemed the moment propitious. ‘That was a shame about Sal Russo,’ he said. ‘I guess he’d been sick a long time, though.’

  Tosca sipped his espresso, waved at a couple who’d just come through the door, came back to Lanier. ‘Maybe it was better. The son, what he did.’

  ‘You think it was, Dan?’

  A shrug. ‘That’s what the papers say.’

  Lanier nodded, taking his time. ‘You see Sal recently?’

  ‘You know, here and there.’

  ‘And how’d he seem? In a lot of pain?’

  ‘He don’t show it, you know. Doesn’t mean it isn’t there.’

  ‘And what if it wasn’t about his pain? How about if it was something else?’

  Lanier could see that Tosca didn’t expect this. The question slowed him. He fiddled with a sugar cube, turning it around and around on the bar. Lanier leaned in closer. ‘Somebody killed him, Dan. We don’t know why. If it wasn’t the kid, we’d like to know it before we arrest him again.’

  ‘You’re saying it was business?’

  ‘I’m saying I don’t know. Maybe somebody does. I’m wondering if there wasn’t something else in the fish.’ Meaning drugs. If the illegal fish sales – condoned as they were – were a cover, if Sal had in fact been a mule for some major dealers, there might be a motive.‘

  But Tosca was shaking his head. ‘That didn’t happen,’ he said flatly. ‘He sold fish. Good fish too.’

  ‘A lot of it?’

  Tosca eyed him carefully. ‘One day a week.’

  ‘Not exactly what I asked.’

  The twirling had moved from the sugar cube to the cup itself. ‘I don’t think he cleared two hundred a week. What he needed to survive. There wasn’t any loan to welsh on. This was cash business – he paid when he picked up.’

  ‘Okay, but the suppliers? Some of them turn volume, am I right?’

  Tosca thought a beat. ‘You’re asking was Sal blackmailing somebody, getting some payoff? If they didn’t pay, maybe he’d fink to Fish and Game? Why would he do that? More money? What would he need more money for?’

  Lanier shrugged. ‘Suddenly he needed morphine?’

  Although not particularly convincing to Tosca, this was at least an answer. He chewed his cheek for a minute, popped a sugar cube into his mouth, and chewed some more. ‘Okay, there’s one guy,’ he said. ‘I’ll see what I can find out.’

  ‘If you give me his name,’ Lanier said, ‘I can go see him tonight.’ At Tosca’s glare, he explained. ‘We’re on deadline here, Danny. Sooner would be better.’

  The glare abated. Tosca patted Lanier’s hand on the bar. ‘I hear you, Marcel. I’ll see what I can find out.’

  Sarah was almost beginning to think Sal Russo had sat in his room for hours, making up names and telephone numbers. Certainly, not one number she reached in the first hour admitted to knowing him, or had any idea what her call could be about. She reasoned that there must be a password she didn’t know, or everybody knew that Sal Russo was the subject of a murder investigation. Either way, the well was dry.

  Until she got to the name Finer. Disheartened and ready to call it a day, she listened to five rings
and was about to hang up when a weary voice answered. ‘Who’s this? What time is it?’

  ‘Mr Finer?’

  A deep sigh. Exhaustion. ‘Doctor Finer. And I’m not on call. This isn’t right. I haven’t slept in two days. How’d you get this number?’

  ‘From Sal Russo.’

  ‘I don’t know any Sal Russo.’

  ‘Dr Finer, wait a minute. This is Sergeant Evans with San Francisco homicide. Sal Russo’s been murdered.’

  She wondered if he’d hung up anyway. There was nothing but air in her ear. Then another sigh.

  ‘Homicide? Who’s been murdered?’

  She gave him an abbreviated version and at the end of it, he seemed to have broken a bit through the fatigue. ‘Did I treat this man? I’m sorry, but I’m interning at County. It’s not like I have patients the way you’re thinking. What did he have?’

  ‘Cancer. A brain tumor,’ she said, ‘and Alzheimer’s.’

  ‘And you got my number at his house?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Well, then, I might have seen him. But I’ll tell you, it wasn’t recently. I’ve been in the ER for the past six months and if he wasn’t bleeding, I didn’t treat him.’

  ‘He wasn’t bleeding. But it might have been before that. I don’t know when it was. I’ve got your name and phone number on an old crumpled piece of paper and that’s all I know.’

  She heard, ‘I’ve got to get some sleep.’ Then, ‘What was your name again?’

  ‘Evans.’

  ‘All right, Evans, hold on. It might be a minute. Russo?’

  ‘Sal Russo,’ she said.

  It was more like five minutes, but Sarah was content to wait. At least she had someone trying to find something related to Sal Russo. It was better than punching phone numbers and getting nothing.

  Finally, he was back. ‘If he had this number, I must have seen him here.’ This didn’t mean anything to Sarah, but he was going on. ‘Salvatore Russo? He’d be near sixty now, right?’

  ‘That was him.’

  ‘All right.’ Finer was obviously reading his notes. ‘He came into the public clinic on his own and was referred to me. I was doing primary care. Said he’d gotten lost twice in the last couple of months, just suddenly couldn’t figure out where he was. He was worried he might have AD.’