Hard Evidence

by John Lescroart

  “I am sorry,” she said. She linked an arm through his and he felt the heat of her body where they came together.

  “It’s okay, people get upset. It happens.”

  “I don’t know what happened. I didn’t mean for anything like that to happen.”

  “It’s all right, forget it. We’ll just move ahead on the trial. It ought to go pretty quickly now.”

  He had stopped walking, waiting by the elevators. She was standing too close and his heart was beating enough that he felt it. “What do you want me to do, Celine?”

  “I just don’t want you to be mad at me.”

  “I’m not mad at you. I was out of line, it wasn’t exactly professional.”

  “I don’t care about professional.”

  “That’s our relationship,” he said, clearly as he could say it. Then, “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It does, it does matter. Do you know what it is to be completely alone?”

  Not a professional question.

  The elevators opened, jammed as usual. Hardy got in, Celine cramming next to him, thigh to thigh, arm in his. He smelled the powder she used, the same powder she’d left on him as she’d greeted him with a kiss at Hardbodies! last night—that he’d scrubbed off in the Shamrock before Frannie had come in for date night. He didn’t press the button for his floor and they rode it all the way down to the street level in silence, everyone else chattering away.

  They went outside the front doors, turned east on Bryant, away from the bright sun. A cool wind was up off the Bay. They went two blocks before Hardy said he did know what it was to be alone.

  Celine took that with no response. Then: “You must think I’m crazy.”

  He grinned tightly. “People do crazy things. It doesn’t necessarily mean they’re crazy.”

  “It doesn’t?”

  Hardy walked a couple more steps. “I don’t know, maybe it does.”

  It was a little Cuban coffee shop, unnamed, dark as a cave. The table was of finished plywood—there were seven such tables, four with people at them. A Spanish television station whispered from the back corner. The good smell had stopped their walk and brought them inside. They were drinking café con leche made with heated Carnation evaporated milk, sweet.

  If you walked in and saw them sitting across from one another, aside from knowing they didn’t belong here in their Anglo clothes and complexions, you would assume many true things about them. Though they didn’t know each other very well, there was a powerful attraction between them. They had to control it by putting the table between them. They weren’t lovers; if they were they’d have moved together. Well, maybe they were in the middle of a fight, but they weren’t acting angry. No, the first call was right. They were getting to something.

  The man was leaning forward, hands clenched around the wide, deep coffee cup. He was more than leaning, in fact, more like hunched over, rapt, mesmerized?

  She seemed more controlled, but there were give- aways, invitations. She sat sideways to him, very well put together. Her dark suit was muted but a lot of her excellent legs showed, tightly crossed and curled back under her chair. She held her cup lightly in one hand—her other extended out, subtle enough, toward him, there if he wanted it, if he dared take it.

  She was doing most of the talking. You would think this might be the day they would do it. From here they’d go to one of their places, or maybe a motel. You could feel it, even halfway across the room.

  28

  After Dorothy had gone, Jeff Elliot called Parker Whitelaw at the Chronicle and told him his sight had returned—he’d be back at work the next day.

  This wasn’t completely true, but Parker wouldn’t have to know it. Most people were ignorant about how MS worked. They could see the results—the weakened limbs, weight loss, lack of coordination—but they had no clue about the way the disease progressed. Jeff thought this was just as well. It was actually to his advantage if Parker thought that whatever had laid him up for a day had now completely passed and he could go back to being the ace reporter he’d been before.

  In reality, his sight was still very poor. Yesterday, which had begun in total blackness, had heartened him as some sight, then quite a bit, had returned. But, testing it, he found the left eye still all but worthless, the brown smudge blotting all but its extreme periphery. The right eye was a little better—the range of vision was wider, though all of it was fuzzy. But he thought that he could get by. He didn’t particularly think it would be wise to try and drive, but he could fake the rest.

  The doctor had told him that since there had been some almost immediate remission in the total blindness, there was a small chance he could expect gradual improvement with continual steroid treatment. He might even regain normal sight. Maybe.

  This morning he called Maury Carter’s office and told Dorothy he really had to go in to work, but he would like to see her tonight as they’d planned.

  “Well, how are you getting to work?”

  “I’ll just take a cab.”

  She wouldn’t hear of him taking a cab. She told him she could take some time off—“Maury feels terrible about this, too. He’s a nice man underneath”—and be down there by lunchtime. Would he please wait for her?

  “You don’t have to do this.”

  “Of course, I don’t. Who said I did?”

  They let him take a shower and shave. He still had his clothes from two days before, but they were okay, better by far than the gown. Dorothy was there by twelve-thirty and pushed him in a wheelchair out to her car. The morning fog out in the Avenues hadn’t burned off, and the daylight glared. She put his crutches in the trunk and he got himself settled on the passenger side in the front seat. His legs weren’t completely dead yet.

  They had sandwiches at Tommy’s Joynt and he got to the office close to four. She left him at the Chronicle’s front door and said she’d be back at six, he’d better be there. She’d kissed him again.

  He had a message from an Elizabeth Pullios at the district attorney’s office and the memo line said it was regarding Owen Nash. It brought everything back—the bail question, Hardy and Glitsky, Freeman’s strategy. He hoped he hadn’t missed much in his day away. He returned the call to Pullios and scanned the last two days’ newspapers, turning up his desk light, squinting at the blurry print. After the little blurb on page nine that May had made bail, the story disappeared.

  Of course they’d dropped it. Nothing had happened. The court’s decision to schedule the prelim at the end of the summer had taken the wind out of those sails. It was frustrating. Unless he found something about the Freeman/Shinn connection he was going to have to get himself another story, another scoop.

  He loved being on a hot story. It changed his whole view of the job, the world. People cared about him, asked his opinion, included him in their jokes. He wasn’t just that crippled guy anymore.

  The phone rang and it was Pullios—she didn’t know if he’d heard from Hardy or anyone else, but the grand jury had just indicted May Shinn. The case was going to Superior Court. She just thought he’d like to know.

  The grand-jury story was written and submitted. Parker had come by, impressed by the line on the grand jury. Parker said it was good to see a reporter hustling, working his connections. It might be old-fashioned reporting, but it got the best results. By the way, how were the eyes?

  Fine. The eyes were fine.

  Dorothy was at the curb at six sharp, the door opened and waiting for him. He saw flowers in the backseat, a brown grocery bag with a loaf of french bread sticking out the top.

  He lived in a first-floor studio apartment on Gough Street, where it leveled off at the top of one of San Francisco’s famous hills.

  “My, isn’t this cheery,” she said. The room featured sconced lighting, hardwood floors and a mattress on the floor in one corner. In the other corner there was a stack of old San Francisco Chronicles about three feet high. The white walls were bare except for one black-and-white poster of Albert Einste
in, daily reminding Jeff that great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. The rest of the furniture consisted of a stool pushed under the overhang of the bar that separated the cooking area from the rest of the room.

  Dorothy picked up the mail that was lying on the floor and put it on the bar along with her bag of groceries. She held up the flowers. “Any old vase will do,” she said. “Don’t break out the Steuben.”

  He loved the way she talked. Not mean, but squeezing out the drop of humor in situations. Like his apartment. He hadn’t wanted to come here, but she’d teased him into it. “Didn’t get time to call your girlfriend, huh? Afraid she’ll be mad?”

  “There’s no girlfriend, Dorothy.”

  “We’ll see about that.”

  Now here they were. She cut the top off a milk carton and poured out the four ounces of sour milk that was left in it—“It’s so neat you make your own yogurt”—and arranged the flowers, a mixed bouquet of daisies, California poppies and daffodils, setting them at the end of the bar.

  She made him chicken breasts with onions and peppers and mushrooms and some kind of wine sauce that they poured over rice. They ate on the floor, their places laid on a blanket from the bed, folded over. When they’d finished, Dorothy pulled herself up and leaned against the wall. She patted her lap.

  “Why don’t you put your head here?”

  His eyes hurt and he couldn’t see her clearly. The only light they’d eaten by was cast by the tiny bulb over the stove. He put his head down on her thigh and felt her fingers smoothing his hair.

  “Can I ask you something?” he asked.

  “I’m sorry. I’m afraid not.” Then her finger ran along his cheek. She flicked his chin lightly. “You’re a bit of a bozo. Anybody ever tell you that?”

  “No. People don’t kid with me.”

  “People are missing out,” she said. “What did you want to ask me?”

  There was no avoiding it. He had to know. “Why are you doing this? Being nice to me?”

  “Oh, I get four units for it. It’s a class project.” Now she took his cheek and gave him a hard squeeze. “Haven’t you ever had any girl like you?”

  “Sure. Well, not since . . .”

  “What? Your legs?”

  He shrugged. “You know. The whole thing.”

  “I don’t know. What whole thing? Your personality get deformed or something?”

  “It’s just a lot to ask somebody to deal with.”

  “It seems like it might just be a good crutch, no pun intended. I mean, nobody’s perfect. You get involved with somebody, you’re going to have to deal with their imperfections.”

  “Yeah, but romance doesn’t exactly bloom when you see them right out front.”

  “Sometimes it does,” she said. “Less gets hidden. It might even be better. It’s definitely better than being fooled and finding out later.”

  “I don’t see too many of yours. Imperfections, I mean.”

  “Well, that’s just a fluke. It so happens I am the one person who doesn’t have imperfections.” Her fingers were back in his hair, pulling it. “Except, I warn you now, I am pretty Type-A. I like a clean house. If you squeeze the toothpaste in the middle I go insane. I need to fill up ice trays immediately. Nothing makes me madder than a half-empty ice tray. Also I’m impatient and outspoken although I have to say I’m not really bitchy. But I’m very organized, too organized.”

  “Those are not exactly major imperfections.”

  “I’m also pushy. And pretty selfish. I think of myself first a lot, what I want.”

  “I haven’t seen any sign of that. Not with me, at least.”

  “Yes you have.” She dipped her finger into her wineglass and traced his lips with it. “If you think about it. For example, I am in a highly selfish mode right now.”

  Hardy was back where it started, at the shark tank at the Steinhart Aquarium.

  He sat on the gurney, listening to the vague bubblings and vibrations emanating from the walls around him. Although he knew the water in it wasn’t even remotely warm, a thin veil of steam rose from the circular pool in the center of the room. The walls were shiny with distillation, the light dim and somehow green-tinged. He’d let himself in with his own key.

  After dinner Frannie had been tired, and he’d felt flabby and soft, so he changed into some sweats and told her he was going for a run. Why didn’t she turn in early?

  Now it was close to nine-thirty. He hadn’t done much running, more a forced walk to no destination. In any event, it had taken him here. He’d worked up a light sweat and he sat, his elbows on his knees, his hands intertwined in front of him.

  “Do you know what it is to be completely alone?”

  He certainly did. He was there now.

  His family was at home. Some of his friends, undoubtedly, were a quarter mile away at the Shamrock. He could call Glitsky, or Pico, go out and drink a few brewskis, shoot some darts. But he knew somehow that none of that would make a difference. He was completely alone, knocked out of his orbit, trying to feel the pull of the other bodies, the old familiar gravity. He couldn’t get it, couldn’t get to it.

  The thing to do, he thought, was to go into Drysdale’s office tomorrow morning and resign. Just stop. Shut down the rockets. Go back and ask Moses for your old shift at the Shamrock and go back to that earlier life.

  He didn’t need the money. He could walk out on the law right now and the world would keep right on turning, May Shinn would still go to trial, Pullios would get another notch in whatever it was she notched.

  Stiffly, he pushed himself up off the gurney and walked up to the side of the pool, a concrete ring four feet deep. He had his hands in the front pockets of his sweatshirt, felt his keys on the right side.

  There was only one other person in his orbit right now. And she, he believed, was completely alone, too. Yesterday, he’d thought maybe she was crazy. Today he saw it differently. Celine was barely holding herself together. Her father had been her life. Whether or not you liked or admired Owen Nash, whether their relationship was good or bad—control or no control, she was left with a gaping hole. If she’d broken down around Hardy, it had been because she was strung too tightly, holding it all back. That’s why the long workouts—to loosen the coil.

  But it wasn’t working. Not yet, anyway. She was trying, and she’d get there. She knew what she needed—she needed some surcease from the emptiness, the loneliness, the pain of the fresh wound. She was trying, she just needed time.

  And one other thing, face it, she needed him. For whatever reason, he was the lifeline. Like she’d said, she didn’t care about their professional relationship. He was connected to her . . .

  Which was exactly why he should quit. This wasn’t his job. It wasn’t his concern. It couldn’t be in his life.

  But she was. He tried to tell himself it was the level he had to control. He could not allow himself to do anything to threaten Frannie; she too depended on him. And so did Rebecca and the unborn child. If he had any view of himself at all, it was, he hoped, as a man of some honor, and he’d given Frannie his absolute vow. And he loved Frannie. His life satisfied him. His own endless emptiness seemed to have vanished over the last year, thanks to her. She was his rock and he knew he had to get back to her orbit. His own salvation, he knew, lay there, with her.

  But he also knew he wasn’t going to quit—either the law or the case—and he knew why. He hoped—normally he didn’t pray but he prayed—he wasn’t going to do anything about the attraction, the connection. He told himself again that he could keep the level under control.

  But if Celine had to see him again, he would see her. He would have to see her.

  29

  “Beware of what you wish for—you just might get it.” Judge Leo Chomorro had heard it a thousand times from his father. It had always struck him as misguided advice. The way you got things was to wish for them, focus on them. It had gotten him everything he had today—a judgeship by forty
, a beautiful wife, three intelligent children, a home in St. Francis Wood.

  But lately he was beginning to think that his father’s advice might have had something to it after all. He had wished and wished that someday he could get out from under the burden of being a good administrator, which was itself something to be proud of. Leo had always been an organizer, a team player, intelligent enough to be a leader, but a subscriber to the theory that a good leader must first know how to be a good follower.

  And his talents had gotten him out of Modesto and his father’s auto shop. He always thought it was his study habits more than his brains that had pulled him through San Jose State and then gotten him into Hastings Law School in San Francisco.

  At Hastings he hadn’t made Law Review, hadn’t been in the top ten percent, hadn’t been rushed by the big firms. But he’d gotten through, passed the bar on the second try, got a job as a clerk for the State Attorney General.

  He worked hard. No one could say he wasn’t a loyal and diligent staffer, and when the Attorney General finally made it to the State House, Leo was a top aide on budgetary issues. He was the organization man, efficient and objective. Guys weren’t doing their jobs, fire them. They got families, tough—they should have worked harder, seen the ax coming.

  The numbers of the budget game appealed to him. It was pretty simple. You had so much money to spend, first you looked around at who had been good to you, then you factored in services you needed and you cut where you had to—or wanted to—make a point, where the system wasn’t working efficiently. And then you made the numbers balance. For an organized guy like Leo, it was a cakewalk.

  For example, during some budget committee meetings Leo had made a big stink about liberal judges, especially in San Francisco, getting paid a lot to do nothing—letting off people caught in stings, like that. Clip, clip. Cut back on salary adjustments, do away with judicial raises.

  Of course, to survive, yourself, you didn’t make too many friends. You really couldn’t afford to. You had allies instead—the Attorney General-turned-Governor, for example, was a damn good one. Leo’s wife also, Gina. Brilliant, much smarter than he was—and attractive. A Santa Barbara Republican, she’d been a staffer, too, but after they’d had Leo Jr., all thought of politics left her head. Now she was an ally. She was loyal and did her jobs. That was life, right?