Hardy 03 - Hard Evidence

by John Lescroart

  He dismounted the cable car at the Fairmont and decided to prolong the night and the mood, take a walk, reflect. May Shinn was constantly referring to Owen Nash and always managed to mention his cigars. Freeman found it had given him the taste for one, and he stopped in at the smoke shop and picked up a Macanudo. Outside, while he was lighting up by the valet station, a well-dressed man tried to sell him a genuine Rolex Presidential watch for three hundred dollars. Freeman declined.

  He strolled west, over the crest of the hill, craving another sight of the Bay at night. The cigar was full-flavored, delicious.

  After the conference he’d had today with Andy Fowler, he was sure he was going to win.

  Fowler shouldn’t have gotten the trial. Certainly, when he’d hired Freeman, that couldn’t have been contemplated. May was in Municipal Court and there was no possible way it could wind up in Andy’s courtroom.

  Even after the grand-jury indictment had moved it into Superior Court, the odds were still six to one against Fowler getting it. But, even at those odds, Fowler should have gone to Leo Chomorro, spoken to him privately, and taken himself out of the line.

  Except that feelings between Andy Fowler and Leo Chomorro were strained, to say the least. Forgetting their philosophical differences, and they were substantial, on a personal level Fowler had been one of the few judges singled out by name in Chomorro’s report to the governor on the ‘candy-ass’ nature of the San Francisco bench. Fowler, in turn, had been an outspoken critic of Chomorro’s appointment to the court. More, Freeman knew through legal community scuttlebutt that Fowler was the man most responsible for Chomorro’s extended sojourn on Calendar. So, for any and all of these reasons, Fowler hadn’t gone to Chomorro, and that’s when he’d cut himself off at the pass.

  Because he’d gone on the assumption that he had a fallback, fail-safe position even if the trial came up in his department. Freeman smiled, thinking of it — not unkindly, it was consistent with his view of the folly of man, even judges. Fowler had thought that of course, without a doubt, there was no question that if the Shinn trial came to his courtroom, David Freeman, defense counsel, would exercise his option to challenge the presiding judge, not having to give a reason, and that would be the end of that — the trial would go to another judge.

  But Freeman hadn’t challenged, which, of course, was what had prompted the conference.

  * * * * *

  Fowler, arms crossed, stood just inside the door to his chambers. ‘David, what the hell are you doing?’

  ‘I’m defending my client. That’s what you hired me to do.’

  ‘I certainly didn’t think she would get to this courtroom.’

  ‘No, neither did I.’

  ‘Well, you have to challenge. I can’t hear this case.’

  Freeman hadn’t answered. His hands were in his pockets. He knew he looked rumpled, mournful, sympathetic. Two weeks before he’d been Andy Fowler’s savior, now he was his enemy.

  He loved the drama of it.

  Fowler had turned, walking to the window. ‘What am I supposed to do, David?’

  ‘You could recuse yourself, cite conflict.’

  ‘I can’t do that now.’

  Freeman knew he couldn’t.

  ‘I can’t have my relationship with her come out.’

  Chomorro, even Fowler’s allies, would eat him alive for that. It was bad form for judges to go with prostitutes. But sometimes the best argument was silence. Freeman walked up to the judge’s desk and straightened some pencils.

  ‘David, you’ve got to challenge.’

  Freeman shook his head. ‘You hired me to do the best job defending my client. A trial in your courtroom is clearly to her advantage. I’m sorry if it is inconvenient to you.’

  ‘Inconvenient? This is a disaster. It’s totally unethical. I can’t let this happen.’

  ‘That, Judge, is your decision.’ He was matter-of-fact. ‘If it’s any consolation, I have no intention of betraying your confidence.’

  Fowler’s eyes seemed glazed. ‘Does May know?’

  ‘I’d bet against it. I told her it was free advertising for me. It seemed to go down.’

  ‘Jesus.’ He ran a hand through his hair. Suddenly he looked haggard and old. ‘Jesus Christ.’ He walked around in little circles, then stopped. ‘Do you think I could give her a fair trial, David?’

  There it was, the rationality kicking in. That’s what people did, Freeman knew. They made their own actions, however wrong, somehow justified.

  Fowler continued, ‘If it ever comes out, I’m truly ruined. Would she say anything?’

  ‘Why would she, especially since I’m going to get her off? It wouldn’t be to her advantage. Now or ever.’

  ‘You’re going to get her off?’

  ‘Of course. There’s no evidence, Andy.’

  The judge lowered his voice. ‘But she did it, David.’

  ‘No one can prove my client killed anybody. If the prosecution can be kept from sexual innuendo and racial slurs, she will be acquitted. It will be essential to control the tone in the courtroom.’

  The cigar had gone out and he chewed happily on the butt. It had been a satisfying performance, its outcome so sweet he almost wanted to dance a little jig when he left chambers.

  Of course, on the downside, Andy Fowler, with whom he’d always gotten along, had his neck on the block. Andy couldn’t recuse himself without admitting his relationship with May, and he wasn’t going to do that. He was right, it would end his career, and the revelation at this late date in the proceedings would be particularly damning.

  But he’d gotten himself in this position. You made your own luck. Good or bad. Andy was a big boy. He should have known better.

  * * * * *

  The walk had taken Freeman across the top of Nob Hill and back down its north side. He became subliminally aware that his steps were leading him somewhere, and he let them. Slowly, no hurry. He still chewed the cigar.

  By night, the corner that May lived on was quiet. The cable cars had stopped running. The surrounding hills were steep, and people heading for North Beach or back out to the Avenues would take one of the larger thoroughfares, Broadway or Van Ness, Gough or Geary. He crossed the street and stood leaning against the window of the French deli, looking up. There was a light on in what he knew to be May’s kitchen. The front of the apartment, the turreted window, was dark.

  Across the street in Mrs Streletski’s building shadows danced across the turret, and suddenly Freeman remembered a fourteen-year-old boy named Wayne Allred who’d been hiding in a closet when his mother ran from their apartment, who’d come out to shoot his father dead.

  He threw his cigar butt into the gutter. He wasn’t quite disgusted with himself for being less than completely thorough earlier. It had been the end of another long day and he hadn’t been holding out any hope that May was innocent. In fact, he still didn’t.

  But his feet, his subconscious — something — had taken him here, and now he knew why. He crossed the street and rang the bell to number 17, Strauss. The speaker squawked by his ear.

  ‘Who is it?’

  Freeman apologized and explained briefly.

  ‘It’s ten o’clock at night. Can’t this wait until morning?’

  He apologized again, and for a moment it appeared that he was going to strike out. But then the buzzer sounded and he was quietly climbing the carpeted steps. The door stood ajar and Nick Strauss leaned against the jamb, wearing white socks and a terrycloth robe. He was a big man, far bigger than Freeman, his black hair still wet from the shower.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Freeman repeated. ‘But a person’s life is at stake here.’

  ‘Could I see some ID?’

  The lawyer smiled. ‘Of course.’ It was the standard first line of protection, as foolish, Freeman thought, as most human endeavor. As if — were he a burglar or a murderer — possession of a driver’s license would make him any safer, as if all IDs weren’t routinely, expertly, forged or altered.r />
  But he took out his wallet and offered it. He had a business card in his jacket breast pocket and he gave Strauss one of those too.

  The man opened the door further. Freeman saw two boys — teenagers or a little younger — sitting together on the couch, trying to get a look at him. He gave them a little friendly wave, and Strauss said to come on in. ‘But I’ve already told you we didn’t see anything.’

  ‘Well, Mr Strauss, actually you told me you didn’t see anything. You said you’d ask the boys and get back to me.’

  ‘If they saw anything —’

  ‘What, Dad?’

  ‘Just a second, Nick. I’m talking to this man. This is Mr Freeman, guys. These are my boys — Alex, the big guy, and Nick, the big little guy. Aren’t you, Nick?’

  The younger boy, Nick, seemed an echo not only of his father’s name but of the attitude — cautious, watchful. Freeman kept his hands in his pockets, the supplicant. ‘I don’t mean to push. People forget these things all the time. It’s just so terribly important.’

  Strauss made some motion that Freeman took for acquiescence; he looked to the boys, then back to Strauss. ‘Would you guys like to show me your room, if it’s okay with your dad?’

  The older boy, Alex, said ‘sure’ and jumped up. This was an adventure.

  ‘How about you, Nick?’

  ‘Naw. I’ll just wait here.’

  Freeman said fine, but Alex was all over him. ‘Come on, you wimp, chicken-liver, baby.’

  ‘Alex!’

  But that did it. Nick got up. ‘It’s all right, Dad. Alex is such a nerd.’ Then, to his brother, ‘you jerkoff,’ remembering the last time he had seen the Chinese woman through the telescope…

  * * * * *

  Nick Strauss loved his dad’s apartment at the corner of Hyde and Union, especially after the month of traveling with his mom and Alex, staying in those tiny stuffy rooms in Europe. First of all, Dad’s place was humongous, twice the size of his mom’s in Van Nuys, rickety-rackety pink stucco with peeling paint and cars parked all over the place where there should have been grass. Then, at Dad’s, nobody was above them — no Mrs Cutler and her two sons and the bass and drums coming down through the ceiling all day and night like in the Valley. No adjoining hotel rooms with people staying up all the time.

  Plus the cable cars; it was a snap to get on and off without paying. And hills for skateboarding like you couldn’t believe, and no damn palm trees. In fact, no trees.

  And finally this glassed-in turret in the front upstairs corner of the apartment, which was part of his and Alex’s bedroom when they came to visit on Saturday. And this time, since they’d been with Mom so steadily with school and then Europe and all, they were staying three weeks.

  So after the lights went out you could take out the telescope and spy on anybody in the neighborhood, nobody noticing a thing. Or in the daytime, just drawing the drapes and making it all dark in there, looking all around, checking it all out.

  And since they’d gotten here, checking her out.

  Alex saw her first — across the street, upstairs just like them, probably figuring nobody could see her. It was supremely worth the fifty cents Nick had to pay for the first look — he wondered what Chinese custom it was to walk around your house naked, but he wasn’t complaining. Except for Mom (and she didn’t count anyway), he’d never seen a live naked woman. Even Playboy was hard to get when you were eleven.

  And he thought this woman looked as good — at least —as anybody in Playboy, except for the smaller boobs. And being Chinese was a little funny at first. He kind of wished she was a regular American — he wondered if it really counted as seeing a naked woman if she was Chinese, but he asked Alex and Alex said it sure counted for him, and he was thirteen so he ought to know.

  She hadn’t been there for a few days; the last time had been a couple nights ago. It had been almost eleven o’clock. He couldn’t get his weenie to go down and he couldn’t get to sleep. He also didn’t want to waste a minute when her lights were on. He put his eye to the telescope. It looked like she was doing some kind of exercise taking things down off shelves, reaching up, then bending over. She turned toward him, her face so full in the telescope he almost jumped back. It looked like she was crying, and that made him feel guilty, spying on her and all.

  ‘See anything?’ Alex had whispered.

  Darn. Nick thought Alex had been asleep. He quickly stuffed a blanket down over his hard little weenie. He took a last look, thinking about the way boobs changed shapes when women moved around, leaned over, stretched up. His brother had called him a ‘boob man’ last week. Well, he guessed he was, if that’s what interested him, and he wore that knowledge like a badge of honor. A man, not a boy.

  He pulled the drapes closed in front of the telescope. He’d keep the crying a secret between just him and her. ‘Naw,’ he had told Alex, ‘I think she went to sleep.’

  * * * * *

  David Freeman, Nick, Alex and their father walked through the living room, Mr Strauss saying he was sorry about his sons’ language, referring to Nick calling Alex a jerkoff. Their mother wasn’t very strict with them and the language thing was impossible to correct in the six weeks or so he had them every year. You had to pick your fights.

  Freeman saw the telescope as soon as he entered the room, and walked over to it. ‘This is pretty cool,’ he said. ‘This looks like a real telescope.’

  ‘It is a real telescope,’ Alex said.

  Freeman put his eye to the glass. ‘What can you see through it?’ What he was looking at, what it had been set on, was the turret across the street, the room beyond. He saw May at her kitchen table, drinking something, so close he could see the steam rising off her cup.

  There was a knack to putting a little twinkle in your eye, to sounding conspiratorial and friendly. ‘You ever spy on people?’

  Alex answered quickly, too quickly. ‘No way.’

  ‘How about you, Nick?’

  Nick pulled himself further behind his father’s robe. Big Nick broke in. ‘What are you getting at here?’

  ‘Take a look.’

  Freeman moved aside and Big Nick came over and lowered his eye to the eyepiece. He stayed that way a minute.

  ‘That’s her,’ Freeman said. ‘My client.’

  Big Nick was angry, turning on his boys. ‘You guys have got to —’

  ‘Mr Strauss, please. Just a minute.’ The stentorian voice stopped everything. The boys stood transfixed. Freeman muted it, sat on the bed, and gave them Gentle and Soothing. ‘You guys are not in trouble, no matter what. I guarantee it.’

  He explained the situation then, slowly, calmly, no judgments. He told them what their father had said about the Saturday they’d first come here, that they’d only changed and had lunch and then gone out for the day. He just wanted to know if that was all they’d done, and were they sure? He didn’t want to lead them.

  The two boys looked at each other. ‘I think so,’ Nick said.

  ‘Alex?’

  His eyes went back to his brother, to his father. ‘It’s all right, Alex, just tell the truth.’

  ‘Well, you know, the telescope was up, so I started looking around a little, just looking at things.’

  ‘And did you see anything? Anything interesting or unusual, maybe across the street there?’

  Alex looked at Nick, shrugged, and gave it up. ‘She was naked. She was walking around naked.’

  ‘When was that, Alex?’

  ‘Just before we had to go, when Dad called us, just before lunchtime.’

  ‘And you’re sure it was that day, the very first day you were here, the Saturday?’

  The boys checked each other again. Both of them nodded and said yeah, it was.

  33

  Hardy picked up the phone on the kitchen wall on the third ring. He’d gotten out of his warm bed from deep sleep.

  ‘Dismas, this is Andy Fowler. Did I wake you up?’ The kitchen clock said 10:45.

  ‘That’s okay,
Andy.’

  ‘I just got your message. What’s so urgent?’

  Hardy was coming out of his fog but he wasn’t yet awake enough to beat around the bush. ‘May Shinn.’

  A pause. ‘Since you’re on the case, Diz, I don’t think we should discuss it.’ As bluffs went, Hardy thought, except for the pause it wasn’t too bad.

  ‘I think we have to, Andy. I think you know what I’m talking about.’

  In the silence Hardy thought he could hear Fowler’s breathing get heavier. Then he said, ‘Where can I meet you?’

  * * * * *

  They met at a fern bar on Fillmore, half a mile from Andy Fowler’s house on Clay near Embassy Row. When it was not happy hour it was the local watering hole for doctors and nurses at the local medical center. It wasn’t Hardy’s type of bar but he wasn’t here for the ambience.

  He was wearing his prelawyer clothes — an old corduroy sports jacket over a misshapen white fisherman’s sweater, jeans, hiking boots — and felt better for it. At a place like this, at this time of night, those clothes put out the message that he wasn’t a yuppie looking to get laid with the accepted props of elegant threads and the attitude that went with them.

  The music was some New Age stuff that was supposed to make you believe real people played it — bass pops, synthesized everything, music that eliminated the strain of having to listen to words or follow a melody. It was just There, like the ubiquitous television blaring in the corner, like the National Enquirer at checkout stands, like McDonald’s.

  Surprised that the judge hadn’t arrived yet, he pulled up a stool at the corner of the bar in the back. He ordered a Guinness, which they didn’t have on tap, so he went with Anchor porter, an excellent second choice.