‘How much does David Freeman charge? Half a million dollars? If it goes a year, it could easily come to that.’
‘How’d she get Freeman anyway?’ Hardy asked.
Glitsky shrugged. ‘If we only knew an investigative reporter or something…’
‘She’s got to have some money. What’s her house look like?’ Hardy asked.
‘Apartment,’ Glitsky answered. ‘Small. Nice, but small.’
‘Maybe Freeman is one of her clients.’ Elliot clearly liked the idea, was warming to it. That’s it! Freeman is one of her clients. Nash was another.‘
Glitsky held down his enthusiasm. ‘And the will is collateral on the come after he gets her off.’
‘What will?’
Glitsky stopped short. He took a beat, then smiled down at the reporter. ‘Did I say “will”? I don’t think I said “will.” ’
Hardy shook his head. ‘No, I’m sure I would’ve heard it. I was right here and I didn’t hear anything like “will.” ’
‘Are we on the record here or what?’ Elliot leaned into his crutches. ‘Come on, guys.’
Hardy glanced at Abe. ‘What do you think?’
‘It’s gonna come out anyway,’ Abe said, ‘but it would be sort of nice to find out how Freeman got connected to May. Pullios is really going for capital?’
Hardy nodded. ‘You heard her.’
Glitsky laid it out for Jeff — the $2 million will, the profit motive, Farris tentatively authenticating the handwriting.
‘Well, there’s the money if he gets her off,’ Elliot said.
Glitsky looked at Hardy. ‘This guy must not know any defense attorneys,’ he said. Then, explaining, ‘Jeff, listen, if there’s one thing all defense attorneys do, they get their money up front.’
‘Think about it,’ Hardy said. ‘You’re found guilty, you don’t pay your attorney ’cause he didn’t do the job. You’re not guilty, you don’t pay him ‘cause you don’t need him anymore. Either way, your attorney is stiffed. Maybe you’re grateful, but not a half million dollars’ grateful.’
‘Maybe he just gets the rights up front for the book deal. Maybe that’s his fee.’
‘Pico was telling me that we — him and me — ought to go for a book deal. We found the hand, after all.’
‘Hey!’ Rare for him, Glitsky got into it. ‘I arrested May. I ought to get the book deal.’
Elliot said, ‘Somebody is paying Freeman. You still don’t think maybe he’s one of her clients?’
Glitsky put a look on Jeff. ‘A half million dollars’ worth of ass?‘
‘Not including bail,’ Hardy put in.
Glitsky said, ‘If she makes bail.’
‘I don’t know,’ Hardy said. ‘I’ve got a feeling here. Freeman’s going for delay. He doesn’t want delay if she’s cooling her heels upstairs. Which means she makes bail.’
22
‘I think you’re innocent. That’s why.’ This was not close to true. David Freeman’s words were tools to produce the effect he desired. That’s all they were.
May Shinn was drinking Chardonnay in a booth at Tadich’s Grill. David Freeman, her rumpled genius, sat across from her. Before the arraignment, he’d gone down to her bank with power of attorney and withdrawn $50,000, just about cleaning out her life savings. He’d known exactly the amount they’d set bail for. He’d gotten the clothes they’d taken from her and got them pressed before they gave them back to her. He’d bought her new makeup.
He’d followed the story in the newspaper. When he read of her arrest on Saturday morning, he knew he had to help her, that she would need an attorney, that a Japanese mistress of a well-known and powerful man was going to have a very difficult time making a defense against the arrayed powers. Now, having talked to her, he also had the advantage of believing she was innocent.
‘But I am unable to pay.’
He lifted his shoulders, sipped lugubriously at his own wine. The curtain was pulled across the booth. They had been through this before. He had started by trying to convince her that he was taking her case pro bono. Once in a while, he had told her, you just had to do something because it was the right thing to do. Which had caused her to smile.
‘If I can’t lie to you, you should not lie to me.’
‘May, why would I lie?’
She put her glass down, twirled it around, kept her eyes on him. Finally he cracked, laughing at himself. ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘okay, but its not a terrifically flattering motive.’
‘It’s not been a very flattering few days,’ she said.
‘No, I guess not.’ Freeman drank some wine, then took a breath and began. ‘Until about ten years ago, attorneys weren’t allowed to advertise, did you know that?’
She nodded.
‘And even now, when it’s technically legal, it’s still not particularly good for business unless you’re doing divorce or DUI or ambulance chasing. I mean it kind of puts you in the low-rent market. Good attorneys don’t advertise because they don’t need to, and if they do need to, they’re not good.’ He had a good smile, a strong face. Sincere, brown eyes, a full head of dark hair. ‘It’s a vicious circle.’
‘And I am advertising?’
‘I’ve got seven associates left. I had to let three go in the last twelve months. Business is terrible. This is a high-profile case. Owen Nash was a well-known man.’
It didn’t surprise her. She was to the point where she thought nothing could surprise her. At least she knew.
But at the mention of Owen’s name, a shadow fell within her. She didn’t want to be sitting here, drinking wine, enjoying food. ‘I didn’t kill him, David.’
He patted her hand across the table. ‘Of course you didn’t.’
He didn’t believe her. He’d told her Saturday, before they’d even talked, before he’d reviewed any of the prosecution’s evidence, that it was irrelevant whether or not she’d killed Nash — he was going to get her off.
‘But I didn’t!’
He shushed her gently, index finger to his lips. ‘I must say, there is very little evidence that you did.’
‘What about the will?’
He brushed that away. ‘The will. Does the will put you on the boat? Did it give you the opportunity to kill Owen? Did it give you the means? You were home, weren’t you?’
She nodded.
‘All right, then. We will prove you were home. The will, like the rest of the so-called evidence, is completely irrelevant. What do they have? The will? The ticket to Japan?’
‘I thought the police would…’
‘Of course. Naturally.’ He emptied the bottle into their glasses and continued with the litany. ‘There is nothing physically tying you to the gun, no proof you pulled the trigger’ — he held up a finger, stopping her. ‘Uh, uh. No more denials. They don’t matter, you see? There is nothing that could prove you did it. I don’t even see a case that will get to trial. At the preliminary hearing, we point out the racial discrimination, mixed in with your profession… It’s really not going anywhere. There is simply no hard evidence.’
* * * * *
May Shinn was back in her apartment. David Freeman had driven her home, then walked up and made sure she was safe inside her door.
She ran a bath and sank into the hot water, letting the memories wash over her. She thought it might have been the closeness to death that brought her and Owen back to life.
The first couple of weeks they were inseparable — she canceled her appointments with all her clients. She didn’t know who Owen was then, didn’t know that he had money. All she knew was he made her feel things, that there was some connection between her mind and her body that she’d lost touch with long before, and now while it was back, for however short a time, she was going to keep it.
There was strange behavior — they tied each other up, blindfolded each other, tried every position and every orifice. They went outside at two in the morning and did it on the sidewalk. They shaved each other bare. He ate her with honey
and chocolate and, once, garlic, which burned hotter and longer than Spanish fly. Owen had his appetites.
The man was also in fantastic shape. Big, barrel-chested, hard everywhere. He drank Scotch and wine and brandy and took pills to get to sleep. Gradually she became aware that he was doing business from her house — phone calls in the middle of whatever they were doing, mention of the Wheel, taking care of his daughter’s problems. He had a real life somewhere out there, but it wasn’t coming between them.
She didn’t understand it exactly. She just knew that in some unspoken way they were in this together, finding something out, something essential for them both to go on. It wasn’t the sex, or at least it wasn’t only the sex.
She’d made her living from sex for fifteen years, and none of it had seriously touched her. Her life, even her professional life, had evolved into something remote. She made love with her clients, but not every time she saw them. When they needed it, predictably missionary after the first few times, then she was there. Often they couldn’t make it. More often they wanted to hug, lie there afterward and talk.
She made them dinners, too. Scampi in brandy, raw oysters, rare filet and cabernet. She’d turned into a great cook. She sang for them, played piano while they sat with their bourbon or gin, gave them the companionship or escape or a kind of romance they didn’t find in their homes.
Owen, though. Owen wasn’t like anyone else. And not just his hungers. He didn’t live a life of quiet desperation. He wasn’t looking for respite, or peace, or a sheen of culture laid on top of the vulgarity of the world. He’d seen it for what it was, or more, he’d seen himself for what he was.
No games. And she was with him. The oblivion — the sex — the sex was the only way they both knew anymore to get to it, to get underneath the crust. Something was cooking inside each of them, threatening to blow if it didn’t get some release, get through the crust.
* * * * *
It was morning, early, before dawn. The sky was gray in the east and still dark over the ocean.
May Shinn had been out of bed for an hour, walking naked in the dark. She moved away from her turret windows and went back through the kitchen to the bedroom, stopping to pick up her razor-sharp boning knife. Owen slept on the bed, breathing regularly, on his back.
She put the edge of the knife up under his throat, sitting, watching him breathe. The bedroom was darker than the rest of the apartment. Finally she laid the blade down across his collarbone and kissed him.
‘Owen.’
He woke up like no one else. He simply opened his eyes and was all the way there. ‘What?’
She moved the edge of the blade back up so it touched the skin above his Adam’s apple. ‘Do you feel this?’
‘Would this be a bad time to nod?’
‘Do you want me to kill you?’
He closed his eyes again, took a couple of breaths. ‘That’s where we’re going, isn’t it?’ He didn’t move.
‘Owen. What are we doing?’
He took a moment. Perhaps he didn’t know either. Maybe they both knew and it scared them too much. ‘What are we doing?’ she asked again.
‘We’re showing each other each other.’ He swallowed. She could feel the blade move over his skin.
‘I don’t know what I feel.’
‘You love me.’ And as soon as he said it, she knew it was true. She felt her eyes tearing and tightened her hand on the knife. ‘And I love you,’ he said, ‘but I don’t want you to put your hopes in me. I’m not saving your life, May.’
‘I’m what you want, though.’
‘That’s right. You’re what I want. But I play fair. I’m telling you straight, the best way I know how.’
‘I’m a whore, Owen. I’m nothing, but I play fair, too. You know me. I don’t know how long I’ve loathed what I am. I don’t want to care about you, but you’re my last great chance…’
Owen had closed his eyes again. She pulled the knife away from his throat. ‘I’ve warned you,’ she said.
‘And I’ve warned you.’ He pulled her down and kissed her, held her against his chest.
23
The next morning, Pullios was sitting in Hardy’s office when he walked in at 8:25. She held the morning Chronicle folded in her lap. ‘Nice story,’ she said. She opened the paper to the front-page article, in its now familiar spot lower right: ‘State To Seek Death Penalty In Nash Murder.’ And under it: ‘D.A. Claims Special Circumstances — Murder For Profit — In Tycoon’s Death.’
He came around the desk, opened his briefcase, started removing the work he’d taken home and ignored — some stuff he’d let slide while concentrating on May Shinn. Moses had come over, worried about Rebecca (and about Frannie and probably Hardy, too) and had stayed to eat with them and hang out.
‘I read it,’ he said.
‘I’m surprised Elliot didn’t get the news about the bail.’
Hardy stopped fiddling. ‘She made bail? I had a feeling she’d make bail. Freeman put it up?’
Pullios closed the paper, placed it back down on her lap. ‘I don’t know. We can subpoena her financial records if we can convince a judge that we think she got it illegally.’
‘Not Barsotti.’
‘No, I gathered that. We’ll look around.’
‘How about prostitution? Last time I checked, that was illegal.’
‘Maybe. It’s a thought, we should check it out.’ She recrossed her legs. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘I came by to apologize again. I was out of line. It should have been your case. I’m sorry.’
Hardy shrugged. ‘There’ll be other cases.’
‘Thank you.’ She didn’t try her smile or her pout. “Cause we’re going to be busy.‘
‘I don’t know,’ Hardy said. ‘We’ve got two months now and I’ve let all this stuff back up.’ He motioned around his office.
Now she was smiling, but he didn’t get the feeling it was for any effect. ‘You believe we’re going out on a prelim in two months?’
‘I got that general impression.’
Pullios shook her head. ‘We’re not letting that happen. There’s no way Freeman and Barsotti are putting this thing off until next year. I talked to Locke after the arraignment, and he okayed it — we’re taking this sucker to the grand jury on Thursday. Get an indictment there, take it into Superior Court and blindside the shit out of the slow brothers.’
‘Can we do that?’
‘We can do anything we want,’ she said. ‘We’re the good guys, remember.’
‘I don’t want to rain on this parade, but isn’t there some risk here? What if the grand jury doesn’t indict?’
Pullios rolled her eyes. ‘After you’re here awhile, you’ll understand that if the D.A. wants, the grand jury will indict a ham sandwich. Besides, the grand jury always indicts for me. We’ve got everything Glitsky had, which ought to be enough. But if it isn’t, Ballistics says the gun is the murder weapon. But one thing…“
‘Okay, but just one.’
She smiled again. They seemed to be getting along. ‘No leaks on this. This is an ambush.’
* * * * *
David Freeman knew his major character flaw — he could not delegate. He couldn’t even have his secretary type for him. He’d let Janice answer the telephones, okay, put stamps on letters if they were in the United States and less than three pages — more than that, he had to weigh them himself and make sure there was enough postage. He did his own filing, his own typing. He ran his own errands.
He was, after Melvin Belli, probably the best-known lawyer in the city. He had seven associates but no partners. None of the associates worked for him — recession or no — for more than four years. He burned ‘em out. They’d come to him for ’trial experience.‘ But if you were a client and came to David Freeman to keep you from going to jail, he wasn’t about to leave that up to Phyllis or Jon or Brian or Keiko — he was going to be there inside the rail himself, his big schlumpy presence personally making the judge and jury believe tha
t you didn’t do it.
His deepest conviction was that nobody, anywhere, was as good as he was at trial, and if you hired the firm of David Freeman & Associates, what you got was David Freeman. And you got your trial prepared — somewhat —by associates at $135 an hour. When David got to the plate — and he personally reviewed every brief, every motion, every deposition — the price went up to $500, and trial time was $1,500. Per hour.
It was his pride, and he knew he carried it to extremes. This was why private investigators existed — to do legwork. But no one did legwork as well as he did. One time, when he’d just started out, he’d hired a private investigator to talk to all possible witnesses in a neighborhood where a woman had supposedly killed her husband. The woman, Bettina Allred, had contended she’d had a fight with her husband Kevin, all right — she’d even fired a shot into the wall. Terrified of herself and her own anger, she’d run from the apartment to go out to cool off. While she was gone, she said, someone had come in and shot her husband with his own gun. So the private investigator David hired had talked to everybody in the apartment and they’d all heard the fighting and she’d obviously done it. Except the P.I. hadn’t talked to Wayne, the thirteen-year-old son who hadn’t even been home during the relevant time. When Freeman doubled-checked as he always did, he decided to be thorough — as he always was — and found that Wayne had been hiding terrified in the closet and when Mommy had run out, he’d taken the gun and shot his daddy. He’d had enough of Daddy beating up on him and Mommy.
Since then, Freeman had done his own legwork. Though it was his precious time, he only charged his clients the $65 an hour he would have paid a private eye. It was, he thought, one of the best bargains in the business.
No one in May’s building had seen or heard her on Saturday. Now he was going up the other side of the street, ringing doorbells, talking to people.
‘You see the turreted apartment on the corner, up on the top over there? Anything at all? Shades going up, blinds being pulled? How about a shadow? Yes, well, it’s confidential, but it has to do with a murder investigation, Jesus, don’t tell my boss. I shouldn’t have said anything.’
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