Hard Evidence

by John Lescroart

  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.

  Maybe it was being awakened from a good sleep, but he realized he was in a foul humor.

  Andy Fowler’s appearance didn’t pick him up any. The judge hadn’t changed out of his tuxedo. He had his trim body, his thick hair, his guileless smile so different from Hardy’s weathered one.

  These good-looking older guys—who were they trying to kid? Suddenly he saw a different man than the Andy Fowler he’d known—vainer and shallower, the august presence and appearance not so much a reflection of an enviable and confident character as a costume that concealed the insecure man within.

  Coming back through the bar, the judge checked himself in the mirror. A man who checked his hair in a burning building had his priorities all wrong.

  Hardy gave a small wave, and Andy brought up the stool next to him, ordering an Anejo rum in a heated snifter. There was a moment of cheerful greeting, ritual for them both, but it subsided quickly. Hardy reached into his pocket, took out the paperweight and laid it on the bar between them. He gave it a little spin.

  There it was—Andy Fowler’s whole world in an orb of jade. There was no more avoiding it. “May Shinn gave this to you, didn’t she?”

  Fowler had his hands cupped around the amber liquid. There was no point in denial anymore. “How’d you find out?”


  “Phone records.” He told him how he’d made the discovery, put the jade jewelry—his paperweight, Nash’s ring—together. “Anyway, there were a dozen calls to your number, maybe more.”

  “That many?” Did he seem pleased?

  “What’s happening here, Andy? You can’t be on this case.”

  “It’s going to come out now, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t see how it can’t.”

  “Who else knows but you?”

  Hardy sipped his porter. It wasn’t the direction he’d expected. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean who’s put it together, Diz?” He brought his hand down on the bar, a gavel of flesh. “Goddamn it, what do you think I mean? Who else knows about this?”

  Hardy stared into the space between them. They were the first harsh words the judge had ever directed at him. Immediately Fowler put his hand over Hardy’s. “I’m sorry, Diz. I didn’t mean that.”

  But it was done. All right, he was stressed out. Hardy could let it go, forget it, almost.

  Fowler raised the snifter, took a sip, put it down. His voice was under control again. “I guess what I’m asking is, what happens now?”

  “I’d say that depends on what’s happened before.”

  Fowler nodded. “So nobody else knows.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Yes, you did.”

  Everybody was a poker player. It was all check, bet, raise. “Okay. Why don’t you tell me about it? We’ll go from there.”

  The bartender was coming down the bar toward them. “Double it up here, would you?” Fowler said. “And give my friend another pint.”

  They were at a large corner booth, nobody else within twenty feet, at right angles from each other, almost knee to knee, the older, good-looking man in a tuxedo, and the other one, maybe a construction worker, probably the man’s son. Definitely they weren’t lovers—in San Francisco two men alone were always suspect. But the body language was all wrong for that. They were close, involved in something, and it was putting a strain between them.

  “It was at one of the galleries down by Union Square. I’d had lunch at the Clift and the sun was out so I thought I’d walk a little of it off, maybe drop in at Magnin’s and visit Jane. I so rarely get to see downtown in the daylight.

  “The place was empty except for the saleswoman— she turned out to be the owner—and May. I don’t know what made me stop. They were showing some erotica—I guess that’s what got me to look, but then I saw this Japanese woman standing there, her face in profile, and I walked in. We got to talking, probably talked for half an hour, analyzing all this stuff. It was erotic, I admit, discussing all these positions and anatomies, alone with a beautiful woman you had just met.”

  “So you picked her up.”

  “If only it had been that simple. I hadn’t done anything like that in thirty years, Diz. When you’re a judge . . .”

  Hardy drank his porter, waited. “So what happened?”

  “She left, said it was nice meeting me but she had to go. I stayed around a little longer and thought that was that.” He paused. “But it wasn’t. I found I couldn’t get her out of my mind, kept picturing her in some of the positions. Sorry, I know it’s not my image.”

  Hardy shrugged. “Everybody needs love, Andy.”

  “That sounds good enough when you say it. Try denying it, though, try burying it under your work and your image and your public life until you really believe you don’t need it anymore.”

  “I did it after Michael, and Jane.”

  “So you know. You tell yourself your life is just as good, just as full. It’s not like you don’t do things, but you’re so alone. Nothing resonates.” Andy got quiet and stared outside at the empty street. “So a couple of days later,” the judge went on, “I came back to the gallery and asked the owner if she remembered the woman I’d spoken with. She said she was a regular client.”

  “So she does deal in art?”

  “Who, May? No, she collects some, but I wouldn’t say she deals in it. Anyway, the owner knew her, but she wouldn’t tell me her name, even after I told her who I was. Not that I blame her. As we know, there are a lot of nuts out there, even among my colleagues. So I gave her my card, asked her to have this lady call me. She said she would.”

  “So you got together.”

  “No. Not yet. She didn’t call.” He swirled his rum, put it back on the table untouched. “But I wanted her, I didn’t know her at all and I didn’t care. I had to see her again. I don’t know what it was.”

  The vision of Celine Nash danced up before Hardy’s eyes and he drowned it in porter. “Okay, what?”

  “I gave it a week, then I went back in and bought one of the woodcuts, forty-five hundred dollars, and told the owner to send it to May.”

  “That’ll eliminate the riffraff element.”

  “The money wasn’t important. I’ve got money. In any event it got her to call and thank me, and I told her I wanted to see her and she still said no, she couldn’t do that.

  “I asked her why, was she married, engaged, not interested in men? No? At least tell me why. So she agreed to meet me for dinner. And she told me.”

  “Her profession?”

  “What she did, yes. She was scared, me being a judge, that I’d bust her.” He laughed, clipped and short. “I had to promise her immunity up front. I did want her, Diz. What she had done made no difference to me. I told her I wasn’t interested in that kind of relationship, paying her—I liked her, I wanted to see her, take her out legitimately. She laughed. She didn’t do that. So I asked if I could see her at all, under any conditions.”

  “Jesus, Andy . . .”

  “No, it wasn’t like that. I wasn’t groveling. It was more good-natured negotiating.”

  “So what’d the negotiating get to?”

  The judge focused across the room. “Three thousand dollars.”

  Hardy swallowed, took a long drink, swallowed again. “Three thousand dollars? For one time?”

  “No, per month.”

  “You paid May Shinn three thousand dollars a month?”

  “Yes.”

  “Lord, Lord, Lord.”

  “After the first couple of months I would have paid anything. Don’t laugh. I fell in love with her, Diz. I still love her.”

  “Andy, you don’t pay somebody you love.”

  “The money was never discussed after that first night. I thought she was coming around.”

  “To what? What could she be coming around to?”

  “To loving me.”

  It was so simple, so basic, so incredibly misguided, Hardy didn’t know what to say. “What about her other clients?”

  “She dropped them all, almost immediately. That was one of the things that gave me some hope . . .”

  “That she would love you?”

  “I suppose.”

  “And then what? You marry her and have a happy little family?”

  Fowler shook his head. “No, I never thought we’d get married. She made me happy, that was all. She was there for me. She filled up that space. I thought I was doing the same for her.”

  “But you weren’t.”

  “For a while I’m sure I was. She started cooking me meals, making special dishes, giving me presents—the paperweight, for example—things like that. Then four or five months ago it just ended. She called and said we couldn’t go on.”

  “Owen Nash?”

  “I assume so. I didn’t know it then. She said to just make believe she had died. But she was happy, I shouldn’t worry. I shouldn’t worry . . .”

  Hardy sat back into the leather of the booth. All this tracked with Andy’s malaise over the past months, his explanation to Jane about a friend dying. Frannie and Jane had both, independently, been right. A woman had broken a man’s heart, the oldest story in the world.

  But now, that story told, the judge had to move on. He took a gulp of his rum. “So that’s it, Diz, now you know.”

  “I don�
�t want to know.”

  “That’s what Eve said after she ate the apple. It was too late then, too.”

  Hardy leaned forward again, arms on the table. “You can’t be on the case, Andy. I just don’t understand how it could have gotten this far.”

  The answer—the same one that Fowler had given Freeman earlier in the day—was that it had come a step at a time: the Muni-Court arraignment with no chance of getting to Fowler’s courtroom anyway, then the grand-jury indictment leaving only one chance in six it would come to him, then his decision not to go and beg off privately to Leo Chomorro because that Hispanic Nazi would use the Fowler/Shinn relationship as political ammunition against Fowler. Andy didn’t mention the ace-in-the-hole that hadn’t worked—Freeman challenging out of his courtroom. He didn’t have any intention of opening that can of worms. So far, no one else knew he had hired Freeman, and he intended to keep things that way.

  “So then I figured if, after all that, it dropped in my lap, well then, it was fate. You know there’s going to be prejudice against her being Japanese, her profession. At least I could give her an even playing field. I could have helped her. She might have come back to me. There was no reason it had to come out. There isn’t now. I wouldn’t obstruct justice, Diz. I just wouldn’t do it.”

  Hardy wanted to tell him he already had. Instead he said, “The rationalization maybe moves it out of disbarment range, Andy, but you and I both know it’s still unethical. You know the defendant—hell, you’ve been intimate with the defendant. If that’s not a conflict . . .” What could he say? Andy knew this as well as he did. “You’ve got to take yourself off the case.”

  “If I did, I’d have to give a reason and I can’t do that.”

  Hardy’s drink was gone. He picked up the glass, tried it, put it down. “You could retire.”

  “Right now, without notice?”

  “The trial isn’t tomorrow, Andy. There’s plenty of time. It’ll get reassigned. The phone records in the file aren’t strictly relevant to the murder. The police only asked for June twentieth. The rest doesn’t have to be there.”