Hardy 05 - Mercy Rule, The (29 page)

He saw it as soon as she walked through the door, closed it carefully behind her, kept her distance from him. For the last few days she’d entered the apartment and they’d fallen into each other’s arms. He stood in the middle of the living room. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked. ‘What’s happened?’

‘The matter is you got yourself indicted this morning by the grand jury. I’m not supposed to tell you that. I’m not supposed to be in love with you. I’m supposed to arrest you right now.’

He tried a tentative smile. ‘You going to?’

‘This isn’t funny.’

‘I don’t think it’s funny.’

‘Then do me a favor. Don’t laugh about it.’

‘That ought to be easy. Not laughing, I mean.’ He couldn’t make himself move toward her. He could feel the aura from where he stood; she had to keep a distance between them. He wasn’t going to push it. ‘What do you want me to do, Sarah? I’ll go if you want, leave here if it’ll make it easier for you. Or you can take me in. Whatever you want.’

‘Don’t you understand? Shit. I don’t want to take you in!’ Her strong shoulders sagged. She bit at her lip. ‘This is wrong. This is all so wrong.’

This time he did take a step toward her, but she held out a hand. ‘Don’t!’

He stopped, waited, spoke quietly. ‘My dad and I, I didn’t—’

She interrupted him. ‘That’s not the point, Graham.’

‘So what is?’

‘The point,’ she said tightly, ‘is that I’m a cop and you’re indicted. If I was doing my job, I should have come here with Marcel in the middle of the afternoon, taken you downtown—’

‘I’m not kidding you,’ he said. ‘I’ll go. I’ll go right now. I’ll beat this, and then—’

‘No! God damn it, no! We’re not doing that.’

He waited. ‘Then what?’

She slumped onto one of the kitchen chairs. ‘I don’t know. I don’t have any idea.’ She was about to cry.

‘I’ll give you a dollar if you let me come over and hug you.’ He crossed the room, went down on a knee, and put his arms around her shoulders. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘It’s going to be all right.’

‘How?’ She was shaking against him. ‘What are we going to do? I can’t see you. You can’t even be here. If I don’t take you in, I’m committing a felony myself. In fact, I am now. How can I commit a felony?’

‘You’re right, you can’t,’ he said. ‘Look, I’ll just turn myself in. I’ll call Hardy, find out where he lives, show up at his house, and have him do it.’

‘But I don’t want to leave you to them, even to him. I want you to be here. This can’t be the only time we’re ever going to get. I can’t, I just can’t… I mean, we just started, and it’s so good, Graham. It’s so good. Don’t you feel that?’ Her cheeks were wet now and he wiped the tears gently away.

‘We’ve had a few days,’ he said. ‘We’ll hold on to them, how’s that? We won’t lose this.’

‘You don’t know that. Who knows how long you’ll be in jail, with the trial, even if you win…’

‘I’ll win.’

She shook her head, sniffling. ‘But what if you don’t?’

‘I will. Nobody’s going to be able to prove I did anything wrong. I’ll beat it. And however long it is, we’ll get through it, okay?’

She shook her head again. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know how we can,
if we
can.’

‘We will. I promise. I’ve been looking for this for too long and now we’ve got it. I’m not letting you go, and that’s all there is to it.’

*
    
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*
    
*
    
*

Hardy was intensely unhappy with Graham’s disappearance, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it now. The police would probably find him first and Hardy would get a call from jail.

Meanwhile, he did have other clients who needed consistent, if perhaps low-level, effort. He tried to leave Friday afternoons open for the motions and correspondence that covered a decent part of the overhead of a small commercial practice like his own. He was just finishing up a memo for one of these clients, when he looked up and saw Abe Glitsky standing in his open doorway.

Momentarily startled, Hardy sat back. ‘Now I know how you must feel. People turning up in your office without any warning. Hey, wasn’t today the day? Tell me your door’s been installed.’

‘It’s in.’ Glitsky nodded, but there was a set to his features. He wasn’t here to talk about his door.

‘What’s the matter?’

The lieutenant took a step into the room. ‘I tell you something in confidence as a friend, and you take it to the DA and try to make your own juice out of it, I feel kind of like you’re a sack-of-shit lawyer instead of my old pal.’

Any profanity from Glitsky was unusual, but a directed vulgar insult was unheard of, serious. ‘You want to come in? I’m sorry. I was wrong.’

Glitsky didn’t move. ‘I don’t think I do. I’m just here with the message, so you’d know I knew.’

*
    
*
    
*
    
*
    
*

Dan Tosca was allowing himself to be treated to a nice dinner at Firenze by Night. Lanier had wanted the information sooner if he could have gotten it, and now, technically, it was too late; the attorney general had already got its indictment on Graham Russo, though he and his partner hadn’t been able to serve the warrant.

Lanier didn’t really think there would be anything with Sal Russo’s business dealings that might complicate the investigation into his death. But, as it turned out, he was wrong.

Tosca was eating
coniglio con pancetta —
Lanier called it bunny and bacon — and Marcel was having spaghetti and meatballs. ‘… so I was surprised, mostly because I hadn’t heard a word about it.’

‘But it was a heart attack, you’re sure?’

Tosca shrugged, pushing sauce around his plate with a piece of bread. ‘Nobody’s sure of anything, come right down to it, but Pio gets a pain in his chest, he goes to the hospital, he dies.’

‘Pio?’

‘Pio, yeah. Ermenigeldo Pio. He ran the fish operation.’

‘For who?’

Tosca lowered his voice. ‘It was his shop. He built it up.’

‘And how big was it? Not just Russo’s, the whole thing?’

‘Dollar volume? Thirty, thirty-five.’

‘A month?’

Tosca shrugged, agreeing. ‘People like fish. Everybody’s worried about cholesterol. Me’ — he pointed down at his plate — ‘I like this. I don’t worry about it.’

Marcel put his fork down. ‘I don’t feel good about Pio dying just now.’

A smile. ‘I bet he don’t either. And it’s not now. It was last week.’

This really set off warning bells. Like all veteran cops Lanier set little store in coincidence. ‘They do an autopsy?’

‘Why? It was a heart attack. Guy’s sixty-two. Probably didn’t eat enough fish.’ Tosca speared some meat. ‘But you ask me, it’s all genes anyway. You get your time, then you’re dead.’

‘You’re a philosopher, aren’t you, Dan?’

Another shrug. ‘Part time. Look, if it makes you feel better, I can tell you, this has nothing to do with Sal Russo and his one truck of fish. Pio was doing
vans
, he’s got a fleet. He’s doing Half Moon Bay up to Tomales seven days a week.’

‘So who’s doing that now? Who’s taking that over?’

Tosca’s eyes twinkled. ‘I don’t think that’s all settled yet.’ He reached over the table and patted Lanier’s arm. ‘A vacuum like this comes up, there’s always a little power struggle. It’ll work itself out. But I guarantee you this has nothing to do with Sal Russo.’

If it was all fish, Lanier could believe that, even at the enormous volumes they were discussing. But if it was anything else… ‘You would tell me if you’d run into drugs, wouldn’t you?’

Tosca put his fork down. ‘Marcel, this is not how dope is handled. You know this. You got your Koreans, your Vietnamese, the Chinatown tongs, your longhairs. Bunch of guinea
Pescadores
go up against these hard-ons? I don’t think so. Besides, I thought you told me you were arresting the boy, his son.’

‘We are.’

‘And wasn’t there some magazine story he admitted it?’

‘Yeah.’

Tosca spread his hands. ‘So what’s the problem?’

18

Sarah wasn’t sure whether it had been her idea or Graham’s, but somehow they’d decided they would spend a last weekend together, after which Graham would turn himself in.

But it wouldn’t be in San Francisco, where the risk was too great. Sarah already felt so compromised that she barely considered what difference another day or two would make, especially over a weekend.

Graham had a Saturday tournament across the Bay. If his team won, he would have more money for his defense, which he would need. So at nine-fifteen Saturday morning they parked at the tournament site, a multidiamond complex in a valley surrounded by oak-strewn rolling green foothills. Graham was pulling his bat bag from his trunk when a trim man in a designer sweatsuit, gold chain, sunglasses, came jogging up. ‘I can’t believe it, I can’t believe you’re here.’

Graham turned. ‘Hey, Craig, how you doin’?‘ A bounce of the shoulders. ’We got games, I’m here.‘ Graham’s macho pose was kicking back in. Sarah saw little sign of the man she’d been with for the past week, for whom she was sacrificing everything. This untouchable athlete needed no one. It was an unsettling moment.

But this man, Craig, was going on. ‘You’re having some week, aren’t you? I know some important people, let me tell you, and I don’t know anybody who’s ever been on the cover of
Time
.’

‘It’s just stuff around me,’ Graham said. ‘I’m here to play ball, that’s all.’ He put out his hand to include Sarah, bring her up to them. ‘This is a friend of mine, Sarah Evans. Sarah, Craig Ising, our sponsor.’

Shaking hands with him, Sarah was struck by his relative youth. He wasn’t much older than they were, certainly not over forty. From Graham’s description of him — really from what she knew he must be worth — she had expected someone in his fifties, at least.

Half an hour later Sarah was eating a Sno-Kone, watching the teams warm up. Ising appeared from somewhere and sat next to her. ‘So, you been seeing my star a long time?’

‘Couple of weeks,’ she said.

‘You live in the city?’

‘Yeah.’ She glanced out the side of her sunglasses. ‘How’d
you
find Graham?’

‘I knew his dad.’

‘Sal?’

‘You knew him too?’

‘Graham talks about him a lot.’

‘Yeah. Hell of a funny guy. Was, I mean. Shame about that. He had some great jokes. Anyway, Graham was in Triple A and got cut, and Sal told me I ought to try him out. I’m glad I did. Kid’s made me a bundle.’

‘That’s nice.’

‘He’s mature, you know, a leader.’

She smiled. ‘I like him already, Craig. So what was it? You bought fish from Sal?’

‘Naw.’ He lowered his voice. ‘He had protection, you know? He was good luck.’

Sarah felt the hairs rise on the back of her neck. ‘What do you mean, protection?’

The game had started and the shortstop for the Hornets took a hit away from the first batter, going deep into the hole. When Ising sat down again, Sarah repeated her question.

‘I’m just curious. Protection from what? This kind of thing fascinates me.’

Ising, impressing the pretty girl, unraveled the mystery for her. ‘He was connected, I don’t know. Somebody way up there. He looked like a bum and nobody touched him.’

‘So how did you meet him?’

‘One of my friends. I do a little betting, maybe Graham told you, these games, other things. So sometimes cash moves around downtown.’

‘You’re saying Sal carried this cash?’

He playfully hit her lightly on the knee. ‘Hey, you got a knack for this, Sarah, I’m not kidding you. Yeah, you give Sal a paper bag and a bill and off he goes. He stopped lately. He must have known he was getting forgetful, didn’t want to lose track of anybody’s money.’

All those names
, she was thinking,
all those numbers
. They weren’t the people who supplied his fish to him. Could it be they were gamblers — high-stakes gamblers? ‘Did Graham know about this?’

‘I don’t know, you ought to ask him. Hey, by the way.’ He was fishing in his pockets for something and came out with a business card — his name and a number. ‘Don’t take this wrong, but it wasn’t real clear. Are you and Graham an item?’

She shrugged. ‘Close. Kind of.’

‘Well’ — he handed her the card — ‘if it doesn’t work out, give me a call. I have a pretty good time.’

‘I can see that,’ she said, smiling at him. ‘I’ll keep it in mind.’

*
    
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Right after Hardy got up Saturday, he’d called Glitsky to apologize again and the nanny told him the lieutenant was busy. She didn’t know when he’d be available. He asked her to make sure and give him the message that his friend Hardy was a horse’s ass, but he wasn’t sure she’d deliver it verbatim.

Then, while he was telephoning, he’d tried Graham Russo’s home for the fun of it and gotten the expected result. Nothing.

Then Frannie reminded him that the kids had arranged for some school chums to come over and play, and Frannie was going to her Saturday jazzercize class, so Hardy was in charge.

She’d told him! Didn’t he remember? Of course he did, he had told her, although this was a lie. He said he was just teasing her.

So for three hours Hardy had baby-sat. Although, as his wife never tired of telling him, he shouldn’t think of it as baby-sitting. They were
his
children. He wasn’t merely
watching
them. He was their father, responsible for their guidance and development.

Too true, he admitted every time this topic surfaced. He even believed it. But there were moments — as for example when five pre-ten-year-olds were playing some kind of parade game with every pillow, blanket, cushion, and stuffed animal in the entire house on the living-room floor — that his parental role seemed limited, more or less, to just baby-sitting. Neither his kids nor their friends really cried out to have old Dad guiding their development at that particular moment.