The First Law

by John T Lescroart

  The area code was 775. Nevada.

  "No, this is Julio Rez, but Nick's here. Hold on."

  "This is Nick. Who's this?"

  Blanca had never spoken to Sephia before and so had no idea if this was truly him on the telephone. But it seemed an impossibly elaborate ruse for someone to cook up in the fifteen minutes or less since he'd first called Panos's office. It would never be proof in a court of law, but Blanca personally had no doubt that he was talking to Nick Sephia, and that if he'd driven where he was in no traffic, he was four hours east of where Blanca sat now.

  Which meant, conclusively, that he hadn't shot at Dismas Hardy three hours ago.

  What it meant about Hardy, Blanca couldn't quite say.

  He wanted to trust and even like the guy because of David Freeman and what had happened to him, but now suddenly he didn't have a good feeling even about that.

  Blanca looked at the receiver in his hand. He had everything he needed from Nick Sephia. He hung up.

  Strikeout.

  At the end of the day, at the end of the week, things were getting a little hot in Barry Gerson's office in the homicide detail. The small and airless place was packed with mostly large men, and all of them were standing. The two squad car officers who had responded to the Coit Tower call, Jakes and Warren, had come directly up at the end of their shift. That had started the whole thing. They knew that whatever had happened that noon at Coit Tower—and they were very skeptical—the fugitive and murder suspect John Holiday had been part of it. If they did nothing else, they felt they had to take their information to homicide. As soon as he determined what the officers' visit was about, Gerson had naturally called in both Cuneo and Russell, who were finishing up some paperwork, getting ready to go home.

  After he'd hung up on Nick Sephia, Hector Blanca had had a full and interesting afternoon looking up and noting the name Panos on the report on Dismas Hardy's broken windshield. Deciding to take Panos's advice and ask around about Hardy, he went directly to the best source he could think of—he called the District Attorney to whom he'd had increased access since Freeman had been mugged. Jackman had stopped far short of a glowing character reference.

  "He's a good lawyer." Then, "Defense lawyer, I should say." In fact, when Blanca first mentioned the name Dismas Hardy, Jackman's tone had unmistakably cooled, then changed by degrees until Blanca concluded he was furious about something, about Hardy.

  After that conversation, he was trying to locate Jakes and Warren to get the story on the events at Coit Tower and was suitably stunned when their sergeant at Central Station told him that, even as they spoke, the two officers were possibly reporting to the Homicide Detail on the fourth floor of the Hall of Justice, just upstairs from him.

  Maybe he could catch them there, get their report in person.

  So Blanca was with them as well, the last one to arrive.

  For some not exactly rational reason, when he'd first heard the word homicide, he'd imagined that David Freeman must have died—although of course Freeman had nothing to do with Jakes and Warren. But it was the only even remotely related homicide that came to his mind, and so for the first few minutes after Gerson—somewhat grudgingly—admitted him to his office, he stood against the door, trying to pick up the gist of things as they went along. Finally, he had to interrupt.

  "Excuse me, I keep hearing the name Holiday," he said.

  "I thought we were here about Hardy and maybe Freeman."

  "Who's Freeman?" Gerson asked.

  "Hardy's partner," Blanca said. "He's in the ICU over at St. Francis right now. Somebody beat him up. Bad. But who's Holiday?"

  "Hardy's client," Gerson said. "Arrest warrant out on him for murder. For four murders, to be more precise."

  "Wait a minute, excuse me," Blanca said. "This guy Holiday, he was with Hardy today? When?"

  "When they got shot at," Warren said. "About noon."

  "Maybe," said Jakes.

  Russell decided to get into the discussion. "Maybe what?

  Maybe Holiday was there, you mean?" he asked.

  "No. Maybe they got shot at," Jakes answered. "Or, alternatively, maybe it was just Hardy."

  "No, that's wrong!" Obviously Warren and Jakes had discussed it between themselves and didn't agree. "Jakes watches too many movies."

  "Hey!" Jakes said. It wasn't playful. "You show me anything proves it happened."

  "I saw the guy, Hardy, is what proves it happened. He was beat to shit."

  "Doesn't prove squat. He could have done it to himself."

  "Yeah, but why?" Warren shook his head. "People just don't do this shit."

  "Hold it, hold it, hold it!" Gerson had the rank, and he pulled it. "Officer Jakes, what are you trying to say?"

  The young man gathered himself. "Only, sir, that we examined the area pretty carefully, and several aspects of Mr. Hardy's story seemed, well, a little questionable."

  "Like what?"

  "Like first, his story is nobody else was there. We're talking Coit Tower. Noon ..."

  "It was foggy, Doug, get it?"

  Gerson snapped at Warren. "Button it! Go on, Jakes."

  "All right, it was foggy. Like it's never foggy? Hello?

  This is San Francisco, people have heard of fog. They still go to Coit Tower. So anyway, the first thing is he and Holiday are all alone up there, except when we arrive twenty minutes later, it's a car lot, plus buses. Okay, so then he talked about screeching tires. Except no tire marks. Then some chipped concrete where a slug hit it, or maybe not. Oh, and finally six shots fired, just about point blank ..."

  "Moving car," Warren blurted, held up a hand to Gerson. "Sorry, sir."

  "Okay, moving car, but nobody even scratched. We then interviewed down on Lombard, right below. Seven people home. Nobody heard a shot."

  The only sound was a low musical note—Cuneo. No one seemed to notice.

  "All right," Gerson said. "And all this means what?"

  "He doesn't think it happened," Cuneo said. "He thinks Hardy faked it."

  "That's right, sir. I do."

  Warren raised his hand. Gerson pointed at him and nodded. "Go ahead."

  "I saw the man, sir. Hardy. He was ripped head to toe.

  Brand new nice suit. Cuts and scratches all over."

  This didn't bother Jakes. "That hill's a monster. You roll down it in a suit, you'll ruin it, too. You'll get scratched up."

  "Okay, maybe, but why would anybody— anybody, much less a successful lawyer—want to do that?"

  Blanca had gradually found himself growing astounded that Hardy had spent so much time with him earlier in the day, discussing the Coit Tower incident in some detail and never once seeing fit to mention his representation of the murderer John Holiday, or the fact of Holiday's presence at that scene. Deciding he had to speak up, he cleared his throat, raised his hand, addressed himself to Gerson. "If I may, Lieutenant. I might have something to say to that."

  "All right." Gerson looked around. "We're all listening."

  Blanca, still by the door, held up some paper. "This is a report about another incident that happened Wednesday night in North Beach, also involving Hardy. While he and his wife were at a dinner at Fior d'Italia that they didn't eat, supposedly somebody smashed the windshield of his car. He first told the officers he suspected who it might have been, but didn't think they needed to investigate. The vandals, he said, wouldn't have left any sign.

  He admitted that he'd hurt his hand and that his own blood was on the hood of the car—he'd lost his temper when he saw the damage and slammed the windshield, he said."

  "All right," Gerson said, "what's the point?"

  "There are two points, Lieutenant. First, maybe it happened the way it looked, but maybe he hurt his hand trying to break the window himself before he went to a tire iron or whatever got used. Again, just like this incident today, there seems to be no evidence that anything happened the way he said it did."

  Every man in the room was locked into Blanca's narrativ
e. He went on, "The second point goes back to Officer Warren's question of why anyone would do this kind of thing, and the answer is that in both these incidents, Hardy accused a man named Wade Panos as ..."

  "Wade Panos!" Cuneo exploded out of his trance.

  "Wade Panos isn't going around breaking car windows.

  That's the stupidest thing I ever heard."

  Russell was just as outraged. "You mean to say that Hardy actually told you Wade was the person shooting at him?" He was looking for corroboration from Warren and Jakes, and they were both nodding.

  But Blanca answered, "Not exactly. He said it probably wasn't Panos himself.

  He has a nephew named Sephia ..."

  "Sure," Cuneo said, "Nick."

  "Except Nick was up at Incline Village today," Blanca said. "Since last night. Roy Panos gave me his number and I checked. So he didn't shoot at anybody."

  "Roy's a good guy," Cuneo said.

  "You know him?" Blanca asked. "Either of them?"

  "Both," Russell said. "They gave us the list of names that led straight to Holiday."

  The room, this time, went completely silent. Jakes said, "Shit."

  After a long beat, Blanca picked up the thread again.

  "So here's the missing piece of this puzzle. Hardy's suing Panos right now, damages in the millions for abuses in his Patrol Special beats. And guess who else?" Nobody offered. "The San Francisco Police Department. For negligent supervision."

  The room grew blue with the obscenity of comrades.

  When it had run its course, Warren was the first to get back to the issue. "So he faked all this to ... what?"

  "I'm hearing two reasons," Gerson said. "First, to ruin Panos and give himself more ammo in court. But even more, and this really sucks, to maybe try to get a jury to think this Nick Sephia's got something to do with the people Holiday offed. The old Soddit defense."

  "What's that?" Jakes asked.

  "Some other dude did it," Gerson said. "Hey, maybe the other dude was this guy Sephia. All Hardy needs to get to is reasonable doubt. If he can make the jury believe Sephia shot at him and his client ..."

  "Scumbag," Cuneo said. He was one man, but he spoke for the whole group.

  Unanimously.

  PART THREE

  Holiday had borrowed Michelle's car and was riding south through the city on surface streets. Hardy had ordered him that no way was he even to consider going outside until this thing had gotten settled. The arrest warrant on him was still in force. Glitsky evidently was going down to make the arrests on the others that would somehow clear Holiday; then he'd present the DA and even the homicide detail with a fait accompli. Glitsky said he had the evidence he needed. It was going to happen. Holiday just had to wait.

  Except that this was Holiday's fight, far more than it was even Giltsky's or Hardy's. Fuck if he'd let someone else fight it for him. They'd already killed two of his friends, tried to kill him, set the police on his ass. Hardy could say what he wanted, but after everything that had happened so far, nobody doubted that if Holiday got into custody, they would find a way to get to him. Panos was connected inside the system. Enormous sums of money were at stake—they had killed to protect it and they would kill again. As often as they needed to, wherever it needed to be done. Even in jail.

  Holiday looked down at the gun on the seat next to him, what was left of the box of old cartridges. Reaching over, he picked it up, felt the heft of it, put it back down. He wiped his hand across his forehead. He was sweating. He rolled the window down an inch. Outside, it was cold, overcast and windy. He lowered the window further. Kept sweating.

  He knew he could just keep driving south. Michelle wouldn't be home until late so nobody would even be looking for the car. He could zip over to the freeway and be out of the Bay Area within a couple of hours, out of the state easily by nightfall. Maybe even out of the country. It wasn't yet 1:30. If he pushed it, he could cross into Tijuana well before midnight. And, after Glitsky and Hardy had fixed things up for him, after the authorities had come to believe that it was Sephia and his friends after all, he could simply come back, reopen the Ark, continue as before. It was his fight, sure, but did that mean he had to be in it? Wasn't that the sucker play?

  And what about Michelle?

  Holiday for years had been playing himself as the tragic figure who didn't commit. He was too bruised by life, too battered by love and loss. The women had always understood, as Michelle would come to understand. He felt his pain too deeply, he was too sensitive. The idea that his broken heart would ever heal just wasn't really on the table.

  Was he really ready to abandon that charade for good?

  He was. All the running around, the scoring, the drinking, the moving on from woman to woman hadn't given him one minute of true happiness. But Michelle had. By the same token, Dismas Hardy had taken him into his life, endured his jokes and visits and hangovers, made him part of the family—God knew why. So Diz and Michelle, were they just to be more sacrifices that he'd burn on the altar of his pathetic self-pity?

  He'd come to his last turn if he wasn't going to get on the freeway. He didn't take it. Suddenly putrid with fear, he realized that he wasn't going to Mexico or anywhere else except Pier 70, where Glitsky was going to need all the help he could get. Hardy had never said anything definite about going himself—in fact, he'd outright denied he would be there. It was police business, he'd said. Civilians didn't belong, would be out of place.

  But Holiday knew Hardy. He would be there.

  When they got this cleared up, Holiday would start taking care of the Ark, of Michelle, of the rest of his business.

  His life.

  19

  On Saturday afternoon, Vincent Hardy opened the front door of his house and stood in the entrance to his living room where his father and Abe Glitsky were speaking in measured tones, having a serious discussion.

  He wore a long-sleeved Jerry Rice 49er T-shirt, tennis shoes and calf-length baggy shorts; mostly, though, what he wore was mud. Hardy looked at him with a wary expectancy, but mostly with a poorly concealed lack of patience.

  "Dad," he said without preamble, "I need a chainsaw."

  Glitsky, not really in the mood for it, nevertheless broke a rare smile. "As who does not, Vin? As who does not?"

  "A chainsaw?" Hardy's back was still sore and he was reclining, feet up, in his reading chair. "A chainsaw?"

  "Everybody needs one sometime," Glitsky said.

  Vincent didn't get the joke. "Maybe, but I need one now.

  We really do, Dad."

  "What for?" his father asked.

  "To cut stuff."

  "There," Glitsky said, the question settled for all time.

  "What did you think he wanted it for, Diz? To cut stuff.

  You can't do much else with a chainsaw, can you?"

  "I saw some guys juggle one down at Venice Beach one time," Hardy said. "A chainsaw, a bowling ball and an egg.

  It was awesome." He whipped on his son. "What do you want to cut, Vin?"

  "Some trees, over in the park." He pointed vaguely outside. "They're hanging over the sidelines at the football field."

  "What football field?"

  "Just at the end of the block. Where we practiced for Little League."

  Hardy grimaced as he came forward slightly. "There's no football field down there."

  "Yeah, there is. We're making one."

  "That's why they need the chainsaw," Glitsky said.

  "Obviously."

  Hardy knew the Little League practice area well. It was a small plot just to the left of the entrance to the elegant and majestic Palace of the Legion of Honor, one of San Francisco's premier tourist destinations. Hardy had been one of a contingent of local dads who a few years before had gone down to the Parks Commission and requested that they be allowed to bring in a backstop for baseball so that the kids could have a flat, grassy place to practice. The commission finally agreed, but only under the condition that it would be a revocable pe
rmit, good for a few months in the spring, and that the lot should otherwise remain pristine. And now, judging from his son's appearance, the place was at best a mudhole, and they needed a chainsaw to clear more land.

  After Hardy had finally, with much gnashing of teeth, made the sad truth clear to Vincent, and he'd gone down to break the news to his friends and teammates, he lay back in his chair, covered his face with his hands briefly, let out a deep breath. "So where were we?"

  "Do you realize that none of my three sons ever said those words to me?"

  "What words?"

  "Dad, I need a chainsaw. It kind of choked me up."

  "It is a beautiful phrase."

  "Every dad should hear it at least once. Well." Glitsky let out a theatrical sigh. "At least I got to hear your kid say it. That's some consolation. When the guys in Venice juggled it, was the chainsaw going?"

  "Yeah."

  "With a bowling ball and an egg? Was the egg hard-boiled?"

  "I don't know. I'd assume so."

  "But if it wasn't, imagine? I would have loved—"

  "Abe." Hardy held up a hand. "Please."

  Glitsky's mouth turned down. "Okay, but I think I've got a chainsaw in my garage, if you change your mind and want to borrow one."

  "I won't. Can we drop the chainsaw?" Then, reading Glitsky's mind, Hardy said, "Don't."

  Glitsky's frown grew more pronounced.

  Hardy took his opening. "But on this other thing ...

  I'm still trying to imagine who might have shot at us if it wasn't Sephia."

  "And you're sure it wasn't him?"

  "Blanca was sure enough when I talked to him last. Said he checked around and called Nick up in Nevada, where he'd been since last night. So it wasn't him. But who does that leave?"

  "Maybe Wade's got some other shooters on the payroll?"

  Hardy had thought of almost nothing else in the twenty-six hours that had elapsed since he'd arrived at Coit Tower.