The First Law dh-8

by John Lescroart

  Hardy grinned. "You should have just been honest and told him what you really thought. So what'd he say to that?"

  "He got a little put out. Said making this a personal vendetta wasn't doing either of us any good. I was being irresponsible to my clients." Freeman clucked. "He also said he was going to approach you directly."

  "Me? What for?"

  "Evidently he thinks you might be more amenable to reason. I told him to help himself. I hope you don't mind."

  "Not at all. I'll just refer him back to you."

  Freeman nodded, amused. "I told him that's probably what you'd do."

  "And he said?"

  "He said if it kept coming back to me, I was looking for trouble."

  Hardy came forward. "He threatened you? Directly?"

  But Freeman waved that off. "It wasn't even that. Cheap theatrics, that's all. That's what they do. They're cowards, basically. Wouldn't you agree?"

  "Basically. But that doesn't mean they wouldn't try something."

  "No chance. They're scared so they want to scare me. It's all just posturing, besides which, as you well know, I'm bullet proof."

  Hardy grimaced. "I hate when you say that."

  The old man grinned. "I know you do; that's half the fun. But you watch, this time next week, they come back with six, maybe eight mil. We get there, I might even start listening. But I might not." He smiled contentedly. "Have I mentioned that I love my job?"

  "Couple of times," Hardy said. "And I my family, to whose bosom I now fly. Can I drop you home?"

  "Naw." He indicated the clutter on his desk. "I've got some work here. Gina won't be home for an hour or two anyway."

  "Is she picking you up here?"

  "Are you kidding me? It's what, six blocks? I need the exercise. See you tomorrow. Drive carefully."

  *****

  At the dinner table, Rebecca was making a face of disgust. "That is just so gross," she said.

  "I think it's cool," Vincent retorted.

  "It's not gross, Beck. They love each other."

  "But he's so… I mean, you know what I mean."

  "Old?" Frannie offered. "Ancient?"

  "Not just that. I mean, yeah, he's old, but also, I mean, like.. ."

  Hardy held up a warning ringer. "Uh-uh, nice or nothing at all. This is David Freeman we're discussing. He is a great man and has every right to happiness and wedded bliss, just like I have with your mother." He gave Frannie a wink.

  "And I with your father," she said.

  "But, God." The Beck ignored them both, couldn't let the topic go. "I mean, think about Gina. She kisses him?" She shivered at the thought.

  "More than that, I bet."

  "Thank you, Vincent," Frannie said. "That's enough."

  "And since it is," Hardy said. "I've got a fun new game. The Beck can go first." He turned to his daughter. "Here it is. You try to say a whole sentence without using the words 'like' or 'mean.'"

  The Beck was a very intelligent child. She hesitated not at all before smiling cruelly at him. "Then I wouldn't be able to say that I like my daddy even though he's really mean."

  This tickled Vincent, who held up both hands as though she just scored a touchdown. "Good one, Beck. Six points for the Beck."

  Hardy grinned all around. "Six points, true, but unfortunately, grounded for life. It hardly seems worth it to me."

  After dinner, the adults adjourned to the living room with the last of their wine while the kids cleared the table and started washing the dishes, a relatively new development in the Hardys' ongoing campaign to increase the quality of their life at home. Frannie sat on the couch with a leg curled under her, Hardy in his wing chair with his feet on the ottoman. Without benefit of the kids' comments, they had returned to the subject of Freeman's upcoming nuptials. "Do you think he's all right?" Frannie asked. "I mean physically."

  "David? He's a horse. Why do you ask?"

  "Just that it seems so sudden. I wonder if he found out he's dying or something and maybe wanted to have his estate automatically go to Gina."

  "He could just as easily put her in his will." He shook his head, smiling. "I think they love each other, strange as it may be."

  "Why do you say that?"

  Hardy sipped some wine, lowered his voice. "Well, the Beck wasn't all wrong at dinner. David's not exactly Brad Pitt, you know. He's not even Wallace Shawn."

  "And this matters because…?"

  "It doesn't, I know. We should be above all that superficial stuff. Still…"

  Frannie put on her schoolteacher look. "And we wonder why the Beck worries so much about how she looks."

  Hardy was grinning broadly. "At her very worst, light-years better than David."

  "I'd hope so, but just for your information, I would take a David Freeman any day over, say, a John Holiday."

  "That's very noble of you, but I believe you'd be in the minority."

  "And fortunately," she said, "I don't have to choose. I've already got a perfectly acceptable husband."

  "Perfectly acceptable," Hardy said. "And people say the passion goes." He finished his wine, looked at the glass as though wondering where it had all gone. "But you just reminded me…" He was getting up.

  "What?"

  "I've been so swamped at work with these depos; I wanted to check in with John. The thing he called about Friday."

  "Is he in more trouble?"

  "Probably not. I hope I would have heard. I-" The telephone rang and got picked up in the kitchen on the first ring. He turned back to Frannie and made a face. "Well, if that's Darren, there goes an hour."

  But his daughter yelled back. "Dad! For you."

  Matt Creed tried the front door, then shone a light around the spacious lobby of the Luxury Box Travel Agency. Everything was as it should be, and this was not a surprise.

  This was the upscale portion of his route, close up to Union Square. In spite of the city's recent campaigns to discourage vagrancy in the high-tourist area, the vast majority of security problems this far north in Thirty-two still had to do with the homeless or mentally disabled population.

  Unlike many of his colleagues, Creed didn't try to roust these unfortunates completely out of the beat. He didn't want them sleeping, parking their shopping carts, urinating or taking care of other personal needs in the doorways or elsewhere on the property of the client buildings, but beyond that, he was happy to leave them alone.

  But tonight, late now, in the last hour of his shift, he had turned right onto Stockton and taken maybe ten steps when he saw an exaggerated movement, a shadow in the mouth of the alley across the street. Creed knew the spot pretty well. Since it ended at the delivery bay for a building on the next block over, it was more a driveway than a true alley. After the workday, in the lee of the prevailing winds and equipped with a dumpster that often doubled as a drop for leftover cooked food from some nearby restaurants, it had become a popular sleeping site for the area's homeless. Normally, Creed walked right by it on the last leg of his route.

  But when some kind of bottle came skittering up the street toward him, slamming the curb and shattering at his feet, he stopped. He would never have done so normally, but perhaps because of leftover jitters from his recent Shootout, tonight he pulled his weapon and crossed over. At the mouth of the alley, Creed could still hear the footfalls of the man running away. He stopped there, then stepped to the side against the adjacent building to catch his breath. After the excitement at Silverman's last week, he considered just guarding the opening and calling for some backup. Roy Panos was undoubtedly somewhere in the beat and could be here in ten, max.

  But then he thought about the grief Roy would give him. A homeless guy throws a bottle in Creed's direction and he can't handle the situation himself. He needs backup. It might even cost him points with Wade, who made no secret of his disdain for cowardice, or timidity of any type for that matter. If you worked for Panos, you were macho or you were soon unemployed.

  But Creed's jaw was tight, his teeth clamped
down, all of his senses on alert. One part of him knew that it was all because of last week, of getting shot at. He thought of Nick Sephia's boast last night that getting shot at made him horny, and couldn't even find a shred of humor in it. Or truth. Even thinking about it now-

  But what was he thinking of? This wasn't anything like a burglary in process. It was a homeless guy-Creed had seen him, or his shadow anyway. A homeless man who'd somehow scored a bottle of wine and got mad when it was empty. He probably hadn't even seen Creed, much less aimed at him. Shaking his head at his own demons, he realized with surprise that he still held his weapon, and he holstered it-whatever this was, he was sure it wouldn't call for a drawn gun-and turned on his flashlight.

  Taking a last deep breath, he walked into the alley.

  It wasn't much over ten feet wide, seventy or eighty feet deep. The beam on his light was strong, but at this distance still only dimly illuminated the dumpster at the end, on the left side. Normally, at this time of night, there would be a couple of guys sitting on the delivery dock, maybe three or four piles of debris that turned out to be men wrapped in their newspapers and layers of clothes at the small indentations of doorways along the alley. Tonight he saw nothing.

  But the alley had no egress except the way he'd come in. The guy who'd thrown the bottle had to be hiding in or behind the dumpster. Creed walked another ten or twelve steps. "Hey!" he yelled, his voice echoing eerily off the walls on three sides. "Come on out here. We've got to talk."

  Nothing.

  Creed swore to himself, stood a long moment shining his light on the dumpster. "Come on," he said again. "Whatever it is, we'll get it worked out, all right?" He had half a mind to forget about it, to simply turn and walk out of the alley to Stockton and back to the precinct, where he could tell the lieutenant that there was this possible problem he might want to send some guys to look at. That wouldn't even involve either of the Panoses. And what was he going to do with this guy when he came out, anyway? March him down to the precinct? Knock him upside the head? Clean him up and buy him some coffee? Not.

  Screw it, he thought. This is dumb.

  He turned around and started back toward the street. He'd gone six or eight steps when another bottle exploded a few feet behind him, the broken glass spraying the ground around him with little diamonds. Creed nearly jumped out of his shoes.

  But now, truly pissed off, he turned around. "Okay, asshole, you want to have some fun?" The beam from his flashlight preceding him, he raked the dumpster side to side and front to back. "Come on out! Don't be stupid." Ten feet back, he stopped again, gave the flashlight another pass.

  Finally, movement at the back of the dumpster. He brought the beam over, took a step in that direction, then heard a noise-a second movement, to his left, at the front of the dumpster, maybe six feet from him.

  He was turning in that direction…

  And then he was dead.

  John Lescroart

  Hardy 08 – First Law, The

  Part Two

  ^

  Sometime earlier today-time was routinely meaningless now-Gina Roake had been with them in Dismas Hardy's office, in David's building. These men, these unlikely avengers. She knew where they would be going when the meeting broke up, and why.

  Now she was back where David had asked her to marry him. The most stunning, shocking and unexpected moment of all her life. She sat straight, unmoving, at the little rickety table, now reduced to its usual state, without the linen or china or crystal. Could that lovely service have been here? When was it now, that eternity ago?

  She looked at her hands. The ring caught her short again and she held her left hand within her right and stared at it while more immeasurable time went by.

  The kitchen was in a round turret that jutted from the corner of the apartment. The glass in the curved, original windows was probably sixty-five years old. Looking through them was a wavy vision through perfect water, and now she stared downhill at the impossible world going by as though nothing had changed. Cars passed at the intersection a block down; a couple embraced and kissed against a building; a woman pushed a baby stroller up toward her.

  She hadn't dressed for work in several days, so she wore blue jeans and tennis shoes, a UOP sweatshirt, a blue band to hold her hair back. No makeup of any kind. She was rubbing her hands and looked at them again, surprised that now suddenly they struck her as the hands of an old woman. She'd been biting her nails, and the week-old red polish was chipped and pathetic. She made a fist of her right hand, let it go, made it again, and held it until it hurt. Old or not, she recognized that there was still strength in these hands.

  Perhaps the biggest shock was what it had taken her this long to process-that her old friends in Hardy's office had truly scared her. She'd been playing with the big boys in her real life for a long time now, consoling or lecturing her clients, being a goddamned equal to her male friends and lovers, kicking ass in the courtroom, taking no shit and giving no quarter. That's why she was successful. That's why David loved her.

  She thought it was who she was, but now even that wasn't clear. Nothing was clear. She didn't know who she was, who she wanted to be, what she wanted to do. But beyond everything else was raw rage. She'd never known anger like this before, nor even understood that such a thing could exist. The desire to hurt someone was almost a physical pain in her stomach. That scared her more than anything.

  Her mind returned to the men in Hardy's office. She'd known them forever, it seemed. They'd been colleagues in her life with the law. She'd clerked for Dismas at the DA's when she'd been in law school and he'd just been starting out. Glitsky always a presence, even long before the homicide years, with his passion for justice, for fairness, a stickler for procedure.

  But then this morning, these people of the law suddenly making common cause with a man like John Holiday? But Holiday, Dismas and Abe were in this all the way together now, there could be no doubt of that.

  And good lawyer that she was, where did that leave her? With them? If she didn't believe in the rule of law under all circumstances, then what kind of fraud had she been for all these years? If it seemed to these men that the law wasn't working as it should to protect them, did that give them the right to take it into their own hands? When the police didn't exactly move mountains to identify shooters in the various ghettos and barrios, did that condone or mitigate even slightly the violent retribution of a victim's relatives or friends?

  She didn't think it did. No, she knew it didn't. She knew Glitsky and Hardy and they felt the same way. Or always had, until today.

  Today everything was different.

  And Gina now found herself with them. These men had become her true allies in this. The import of the collective decision as Abe had left Diz's office had been clear. He was going down to make the arrests himself if he couldn't move his own police department to do it for him. That was the pretext.

  The subtext was that Panos and his gang would not go gently into the night. They'd proven themselves not only capable of violence, but committed to it as the way they dealt with obstruction. And the clock was running.

  So Glitsky, left without an option, had come to his decision. He gave lip service to the arrest, but she knew without doubt that he'd get down to Pier 70 early, maybe a couple of hours early to avoid an ambush-in any event long before the four o'clock appointment he'd made with Gerson. And when they showed up, he'd be prepared to fight, quite possibly to kill. He had never asked Hardy or Holiday, and certainly not Gina, to back him up in any way. In actual fact, he'd been adamant on the point, expressly reminding them that he was a police officer acting in the line of duty. Diz, Holiday, anyone else who showed up to help him would, in the eyes of the law, be vigilantes. They must not be part of it.

  To be part of it at all, if they lived, would ruin them.

  But of course, he told them exactly where he was going, and when; what he planned to do, what he believed was going to happen.

  A gust shook the ancient win
dows, then howled away down the street like the passage of the Angel of Death, the howl modulating down to a moan and finally fading to a dirge, then silence.

  Gina had kept a Beretta. 40 caliber automatic locked in her desk drawer ever since one of her early cop boyfriends had convinced her that one day she'd need it. She had often thought to get rid of it-lawyers needed to believe that they didn't have to carry guns-but could never quite make the decision. And because it really would have been the height of absurdity to keep a gun she couldn't load or shoot properly, she went to the range every few months and fired off a couple of hundred rounds of ammunition to keep herself sharp. Over the years, she'd not only become comfortable with her gun and, in the process, turned into a capable marksman, she'd come to enjoy the experience-the smell of powder, the deafening noise, the awesome kick and power so far removed from the cops-and-robbers fantasy she'd entertained when she'd started.

  She knew now. To shoot a high-caliber handgun was to taste death, in some ways to embrace the idea of it. The thing ruined flesh, obliterated bone. It snuffed out life instantly. As fast, she thought, no-faster than God could take it. The feeling was intoxicating.

  Still at David's kitchen table, she looked at her hands a last time. Her ring, again, caught her eye, and suddenly the reality of all she'd borne coursed through her body like a current.

  She nearly ran to the front door and outside to the street. She had to get to her desk, then to her car. Enough reflection. She was who she was-equal in her heart and soul and body to any man, and to her allies in particular. She'd suffered along with them, and now belonged with them. They were all in this and they would need her.

  She checked her watch and broke into a jog.

  10

  The smartest inspector in the San Francisco homicide detail if not on the planet worked solo. Paul Thieu, a six-year veteran, was on when the call came in at a little after one in the morning. A security guard named Matthew Creed had not reported back to his liaison at the Tenderloin Station at the end of his shift, and the ensuing search of his route by both city and private patrolmen had turned up his body. He'd been gunned down-two shots at very close range-and lay sprawled by a dumpster not two blocks from Union Square.