The First Law

by John T Lescroart

  Okay, he thought. Okay.

  When Hardy pulled his car out of the garage, he saw that the day had become overcast again. Gray, with hovering wisps and banks of fog that he drove into and out of as he fought the noon traffic. He decided that the first thing he would do when he got to Holiday was have the billing conversation. Friends or no friends, he was going to get a retainer up front before doing any work for John Holiday.

  He couldn't afford to work for free anymore. He was going to charge his top defense fee and three times that for every minute he spent in the courtroom. Holiday could sell his bar or his duplex to cover his costs for all Hardy cared. He was done with charity.

  Fortunately, the phrase "Big Dick" meant something to Hardy besides the standard reading—it was Holiday's name for Coit Tower, the phallic landmark and vista point at the apex of Telegraph Hill. Hardy had worked himself up to a fine fettle by the time he serpentined up the winding streets and reached the parking lot. This spot with its mounted binoculars all along its retaining wall, was premier sightseeing turf—Alcatraz, the Golden Gate Bridge, Sausalito and the Marin headlands, seemingly a stone's throw across the Bay.

  At this time of day, normally the lot was cluttered with vacationers and tourist buses. But as Hardy pulled into one of the parking spaces and opened his car door—he'd had his windshield wipers going from halfway up the hill—he marveled at the sense of desertion. The place was wrapped in a thick, bone-chilling gauze of cloud and drizzle. He could barely make out the tower itself, looming there right behind him. He was completely alone up here today, his car the only one in the lot.

  Leave it to Holiday, he thought. Why couldn't they meet at some restaurant, or even his new girlfriend's house?

  Hell, anyplace else would be more convenient and comfortable than here. But of course, Holiday hadn't given Hardy any chance to argue, or suggest an alternative.

  And now there was no sight of him here, either. Hardy looked again back toward the tower, out over the low retaining wall into the empty fog. "John!" he yelled into the nothingness. He walked halfway through the lot, into the very middle of it, toward the tower. He called out again.

  Turned. Waited. Cupped his hands around his mouth.

  "Hey, John! Ollie, ollie oxen free!"

  "I haven't heard that in forever."

  "Jesus Christ!" When Hardy landed, he whirled around and found himself facing Holiday, who stood a foot in front of him, grinning. "Where did you just come from?"

  "Right here. Did I scare you? I did, didn't I?"

  "No. I always levitate when the fog's in." Hardy put his hand over his heart. "God!"

  "A little jolt like that's good for you. Clears the arteries."

  "Well, they're clear then. Now all I've got to do is start breathing again." He looked all around. "Great place you picked here. Especially today. Why don't we get in my car before we freeze to death? You make any decision?"

  They started moving. "About what?"

  "Oh, I don't know. How about ... ?"

  Hardy paused as out of the corner of his eye he noticed a gray sedan pulling slowly into the lot maybe fifty or sixty feet off to his right. The driver-side window, all the way down, possibly gave him some subliminal sense that something was not right, and he instinctively grabbed Holiday's arm just above the elbow. "What?"

  Before he could answer, the car suddenly accelerated and turned hard to its left, exposing them to the passenger-side window, from which an arm protruded ...

  Hardy could be wrong and look like a fool, or they could both be dead in two seconds. It wasn't a hard choice.

  "Down! Get down!" he yelled.

  Hardy crouched and pushed Holiday away, then hit the pavement rolling himself as two quick shots, then two more, exploded behind him.

  He rolled again and came up, running and stumbling—his dress shoes slipping on the wet surface under him—toward the protection of the retaining wall. Behind him, tires screeched. Two more shots, deafening, in rapid succession.

  The low wall directly in front of him pinged with a ricochet. He saw the gray mist of a shatter of concrete, felt a scratch across his cheek. Had the bullet hit him?

  But he was still moving; he had to keep moving forward.

  And then he was over the wall, rolling and sliding steeply downhill under the canopy of low evergreen and bramble.

  The thick trunk of an ancient cypress stopped his free fall and knocked the breath out of him, a murderous blow high on his ribs under his arm. But he didn't stop.

  Were they still up there? Had he heard another peal of rubber? Did it mean the car was gone?

  Whatever, he was still exposed.

  Forcing himself to roll, he half collapsed into the fall line of the slope and didn't come to rest again until he was within a first down of Lombard Street, still within the tree-line, sheltered from below and hidden from above.

  He couldn't move, never wanted to move again. His ribs.

  Was he shot? In shock?

  The silence all around him was complete, the fog enveloping but now not cold. He was sweating heavily. His breath came in gasps. The pain from his broken left finger kicked in again. Agony.

  He squeezed at the skin around his mouth, took his hand away, and saw blood. He rubbed at his cheek—a faint sting, a smear of red.

  Suddenly aware of movement behind him and to his right up the slope, he turned and saw Holiday traversing, half sliding toward him. But he was moving smoothly, quickly, unhurt. He was with Hardy in seconds.

  "Diz? You all right?"

  Hardy tried a deep breath. His ribs hurt, but he could breathe. He definitely wasn't shot. The scratch on his cheek—he'd done worse damage shaving.

  Then they were both on their feet, dusting themselves off, checking back up the hill. A car passed below them on Lombard and they both froze until they saw it was a large white SUV, nothing like the gray sedan. For a moment, neither man could find anything to say.

  The right arm of Hardy's suit coat hung by a thread and he shrugged himself out of it and rolled it into a ball. Under it, his shirt, too, was badly ripped at the sleeve.

  Holiday reached over and flicked at the tear. "I've got to get myself a real lawyer. Clothes make the man, Diz," he said. "You look like absolute shit."

  From a certain point, there was only one way up or down Telegraph Hill, and deciding they didn't like the odds of taking the only street up, where their assailants might still be lurking, they made it back to the retaining wall uphill through the trees and brush. Hardy's car was still the only one parked in the lot, right there ten feet away. Crouching, he got to the door and opened it, got his cell phone, made it back behind the retaining wall. He and Holiday moved a few yards back down the slope where they could still see any activity within the lot. But there was none.

  "Okay, you've got your phone. Now what?"

  "Now I call the police."

  "I don't think so. Not while I'm here."

  "So you go. But I'm reporting this."

  "Why? What are you going to say?"

  "I'm going to tell them what happened."

  "And then what? They're going to investigate? They're going to find something you don't already know? And thank you for it?"

  "I don't know, John. What do I already know?"

  "You know somebody followed you here and tried to kill us. Your pal Freeman's in the hospital. Put it together.

  It's Panos."

  "I'm not arguing with you, John. I'm telling you the cops need to know it, too."

  "And then they'll move right on it?"

  "That's the theory."

  Holiday shook his head. "Man. You're hopeless."

  Twenty-five long minutes passed before the patrol car showed up.

  In that time, two tour buses had pulled up into the center of the lot, the exact spot where Holiday had surprised Hardy. Additionally, several cars had arrived and parked willy-nilly all around. It had turned, Hardy was thinking, into a goddamned tourist extravaganza. A fitful breeze had blown o
ff the worst of the fog, revealing the usual stunning panorama. A knot of Japanese tourists in overcoats had gathered at the retaining wall where the bullet had chipped it near the front of Hardy's car. They were enthusiastically sharing the mounted pay binoculars and exclaiming over the view.

  Hardy didn't even see it. His ribs throbbed. He'd turned the car's heater on so he was no longer cold, but he was still shaking.

  As he opened his door and raised his hand to call the black-and-white car over, he was struck with a sense of the surreal nature of the whole afternoon, of what he'd gone through, of what he was doing now.

  When he'd first returned from Vietnam, before he'd gone to law school, Hardy had been a cop, walking a beat with Abe Glitsky. He liked cops, empathized with them, generally understood their concerns, prejudices, methods. And now here were two more, twin tight ends named Jakes and Warren, and at a glance very much like the men from the other night with his windshield in North Beach—hardworking, sincere, dedicated—and most importantly, living every day in the line of fire, which tended to breed a certain defensiveness, even cynicism.

  They pulled over and parked in the space next to him, got out of their car together, expressed their concern over Hardy's appearance, asked him if he needed medical attention, which he declined. Finally, Officer Warren took out a pad of paper, and the interview began.

  "So what happened here? Dispatch said there was a report of a shooting? You mean right here?" Checking out the tour buses around them, Warren couldn't quite picture it.

  Hardy really couldn't blame him. "This was about an hour ago, and the place was pea soup with fog. You couldn't see twenty feet. There was nobody else up here."

  "Nobody?"

  "Not a soul." The two cops looked at each other, but Warren's expression remained neutral. "Just myself and a client I'd come here to meet."

  Hardy knew this would be tricky, but once he'd decided to call the police, he had to tell them the truth. It was the only way the system worked. So he told them about Holiday.

  But the truth wasn't scoring points. Jakes broke in to ask, "You mean to say that this client of yours, he's wanted for murder? There's a warrant out?"

  "That's right."

  "So where is he now?"

  "I don't know."

  "You don't know," Jakes repeated.

  Hardy started to shrug. His ribs stopped him. "When I called you, he thought it would be smart to leave. I couldn't really argue with him."

  "You didn't try to make him stay?" Warren asked.

  "Of course," Hardy kept it low-key, "I told him he should turn himself in. He might be safer in jail after all.

  But he didn't see it that way." Hardy met their eyes in turn. "But the point is that he was here earlier with me. If you don't mind, I'd like to get back to what happened."

  Finally Jakes said, "Okay, shoot."

  Hardy gave it to them succinctly in less than five minutes.

  "We waited for a while down there at the bottom," he concluded, "then climbed back up here through the brush ..."

  "Wait a minute," Jakes said. He walked over to the retaining wall and looked down. "You came back up through that? Why didn't you use the road?"

  Hardy explained, but by now no longer felt they believed him. He walked them over to where the tour buses were parked, describing the gray sedan and its course through the then-empty parking lot. Hardy had distinctly heard the tires squeal, but the pavement had been wet, and now there was no sign of skid marks. Six shots had been fired, but no one had been hit and there were no bullet casings. The chipped cement at the retaining wall could have happened an hour or a week or six years ago.

  Back where he'd parked, he said, "I know how weird this sounds. But it happened." He indicated his own ruined clothes, his face. "I didn't do this to myself, really. And my partner David Freeman is in the ICU right now, mugged a few days ago. That's real and verifiable. So is the fact that somebody smashed my windshield a couple of days ago in North Beach. There ought to be a report of that on file."

  "So you're saying you think you know who did this? All this stuff?" Warren asked.

  "Yes, sir. His name is Wade Panos. He's a Patrol Special.

  You may know him."

  "And you're saying you think he's trying to kill you?

  And your partner?"

  "I do."

  "And what about your client? Holiday? How does he fit in with all this?"

  "That," Hardy said uneasily, "gets a little complicated."

  18

  Clarence Jackman did not normally hold open office hours for defense attorneys, nor for anyone else. After a long and successful career in the private sector, Jackman, a darkly hued African-American sixty-five-year-old, physically imposing and impeccably dressed, had been appointed to his position of District Attorney of San Francisco by the mayor about three years ago. Since then, he'd come to appreciate the power and influence that came with the job, to the extent that he was committed to running for election to his second term. He was now, even more so than when he'd been in the lofty reaches of the private sector, a true august personage.

  But Abe as well as Treya Glitsky, who was his personal secretary, considered him something of a friend. So did Dismas Hardy and, for that matter, so did David Freeman.

  All of these people, along with Gina Roake and a few others, had been regularly meeting at Lou the Greek's for a couple of years with the DA and serving as his informal kitchen cabinet.

  So when Hardy had called requesting a meeting with the DA, saying he needed a word with Jackman right away, Treya cleared it with her boss and set to work rescheduling the afternoon. When he actually arrived battered, worn and dirty, and gimped his way into the outer office, sans coat, his hands and face scratched and bloody, she ushered him directly in, closing the door behind them.

  After expressing his genuine concern and making sure Hardy was comfortable in one of the office's easy chairs, Jackman listened with his trademark intensity. He sat slumped at the near end of the couch, leaning heavily on an elbow, the thumb of his right hand under his chin, the fingers regularly caressing the side of his mouth.

  When Hardy finished, Jackman sat still for a very long while. Hardy knew better than to interrupt his thoughts, or try to prompt him. At length, the DA straightened up slightly and looked Hardy in the face. "Panos?"

  A nod. "Yes, sir." Hardy knew that Jackman couldn't take this as anything like good news. It was no secret that Panos contributed to every major political campaign in the city so that, no matter who won, he never lost influence.

  "You seriously believe he's behind these attacks?"

  "Not personally, probably not. But some of his people, yes."

  "You'll pardon me for saying so—you're obviously upset right now, Diz, and I can't say I blame you—but that seems like just one hell of a reach. Wade's not a gangster."

  "With respect, Clarence, maybe you'd like to take a look at some of my deposition testimony. He's not exactly Mr. Clean."

  Jackman shook his head. "Maybe not. He's in a tough field, where admittedly some of his tactics, especially with, let us say, not the cream of society, might have come close to crossing the line. But here you're talking attempted murder of regular citizens. There's a huge difference and frankly, I can't see Wade going there. Why would he even risk it?"

  "Maybe because David and I, we're threatening to put him out of business."

  "And how would you do that? Do you think he doesn't have insurance?"

  "No, he has insurance."

  "Well, then." A pause. "You know and I know how it works, Diz. Panos sees this as just another nuisance lawsuit.

  In all probability, he won't personally pay a dime, even if it goes to trial, which it probably won't. All parties will settle. It's not personal."

  Hardy sat back. "Take a look at me, Clarence. I'd say it's gotten personal. I'm going to try like hell to shut him down. I want the son of a bitch in jail."

  Jackman sighed. "Well ... but all right. So then, assuming
you're successful, he'd be out of business. He's close to retirement age anyway. He might even welcome the break." He came forward to the edge of the couch and spoke with a quiet intensity. "Look, Diz, there's no denying that something bad is going on. David and then you today.

  I'm willing to concede that they're related. Hell, they'd all but have to be. But related doesn't mean it has to be Wade."

  "Except that it is."

  Jackman frowned. "If it is, there are two very good and experienced inspectors investigating David's mugging and they should come up with something."

  "Two?"

  "Two." Jackman played it as a trump. "It may not be clear to you, Diz, but I myself am really, really pissed off about David. I don't think you or anybody else has any idea how angry I am. So I asked Dan Rigby"—the chief of police—"to assign another inspector to assist Hector Blanca. They had the CSI team out all morning combing the site, and you know how often that happens for a simple mugging? Never. But it happened now, and it happened because I wanted it to. And they get anything else they need, too. I've even given the investigation an event number." This was a huge commitment from Jackman. The assignment of an event number meant that all expenses related to the event were paid out of the city's general fund, and not out of any department's budget. It essentially meant unlimited resources.

  Jackman continued. "So if they find anything that points to Wade Panos—hell, I don't care if it points to the Pope—I'll charge him or whoever it is so fast it'll make your head spin." In his agitation, Jackman had stood up. He leaned back against his desk, arms crossed. "So if you've got even a small show of proof that Wade's any part of this, of you or David, I'd like to hear about it right now."

  Hardy sat silent, wrestling with how far he should push this thing. "It's not just me and David," he said. "And it's not attempted murder. It's murder. And in fact it's more than one."

  His patience clearly frayed, Jackman nevertheless nodded cautiously. "I'm listening."