Hardy 05 - Mercy Rule, The (57 page)

He was still billing far less than he needed to live on, although he had a few months’ reprieve. Hardy had a second time broken the first rule of defense law with Leland Taylor. Confident that he would win with Graham, and therefore that Leland would be favorably disposed to pay, he’d allowed him, after a generous retainer up front, to make monthly payments for Graham’s defense. His trust had been justified and the checks had been coming in every month. There was no reason to suspect that the next one wouldn’t arrive in a couple of weeks.

Since Hardy made three times his normal hourly rate when he was in court (though he’d told Graham it was only double), it looked to be a substantial payment, able to hold him over for a while. But Leland’s payment would come to an end after that, and he’d need more steady work lined up by the time it did. Freeman would probably try to throw something his way again, but all in all he’d prefer now to go it alone, get his own practice into high gear. It was about time, and perhaps some of that work was waiting upstairs.

But his feet took him to Graham’s. He knocked once and tried the door; associates didn’t lock doors in the Freeman Building.

Graham wore a light blue suit and had cut his hair so it just brushed his ears. He looked absurdly young, fit, and handsome, obviously sleeping better than he had for the past six months. The bags had disappeared from under his eyes. But close up Hardy could still discern a sallowness, leftovers from the jail pallor. And something else — a sense of lingering fatigue, or a new worry.

Hardy closed the door behind him. ‘Our dear Phyllis said you wanted to see me.’

‘Oh. Yeah.’ Two separate words. He blew out sharply. ‘Sal’s stuff is ready to get picked up.’

He gestured meaninglessly, but Hardy thought he knew what he meant. Sal’s ‘stuff,’ both from the evidence locker and the storage bin where the city had moved it, was another emotional hurdle in the marathon that was the aftermath of a murder trial.

Picking up the last of his father’s remains, going back to the Hall of Justice, where for so long he’d been in chains.

Hardy considered for about two seconds. It would probably take him most of the afternoon, but this personal stuff was more important than business. At least, he thought so — he was sure it was among his greatest failings. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Give me five minutes to check my messages.’

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His voice mail had seven calls.

The third one was from a Jeanne Walsh, who said she was calling about the Joan Singleterry advertisement. She left her number, which Hardy tried immediately, although no one replied.

One of Graham’s first concerns after the verdict — and it endeared him to Hardy — was the distribution of the money to Joan Singleterry’s children if they could find her with one last advertising blitz.

George and Debra had been as skeptical as Hardy would have predicted about the existence of a Joan Singleterry, and Sal’s directive to give her his money.

But realizing that it was probably their best chance to get their hands on Sal’s money without a legal battle, the siblings had told Graham they would let him give Joan Singleterry one last good try if he would split up the funds should it fail. Graham knew that any litigation to preserve the money after that would only eat up most of it, so he finally agreed.

But their last run at Singleterry was to be a good one. Instead of going nationwide with a tiny classified ad in the personals column of thirty or forty publications — Hardy’s earlier strategy —they decided to take out a three-inch box in the sports sections of five of California’s largest newspapers and, for good measure, a two-inch box in
The Wall Street Journal
. The advertisement, paid for by most of the money Graham had stashed with Craig Ising, would run for one full week. That week had passed on Sunday, two days before.

For Hardy, getting a call on the Singleterry question did not automatically give rise to soaring hopes. He’d received half a dozen similar replies that had proven worthless before the trial. Nevertheless, it did get his blood going. The trial was over, but the failure to achieve any sense of closure had kept him up several nights since the verdict had come in.

Someone had killed Sal Russo and gotten away with it. He couldn’t shake the feeling that this connected somehow to Joan Singleterry. And, of course, it didn’t escape him that if Singleterry were connected to a murderer, she herself might already be dead, murdered. The advertisement itself might, in fact, subject her to mortal danger. For this reason they had kept the ad as simple as possible. The name Joan Singleterry, Hardy’s phone number, reward. No mention of Graham, Hardy, Sal. It would either work or it wouldn’t.

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Since it was on the way to the Hall of Justice and its evidence lockup, Hardy and Graham stopped off at the facility where the city had put up the rest of Sal’s goods — what there was of them.

Now, within the past few years, with the Moscone Center and plans for the new Giants Stadium in China Basin, the South of Market area had developed pockets of hope, change, life. But a great deal of the real estate between Market Street and the Hall of Justice, and this included the Lions Arms, remained as it had been for decades: seedy, scabrous, and sad.

Graham punched his combination into the box by the cyclone fence and they pulled into the forlorn and soulless monthly storage rental facility. Peeling yellow stucco walls, rust-red corrugated iron doors. They drove slowly down one long row, around a corner, back up another one.

‘Nice place for a party,’ Hardy said. ‘Couple of balloons, maybe a tuba band. A little imagination and you could really have a good time here.’

Hardy had picked up the key to the unit from the city custodian over a week ago. He was to return it when they’d finished cleaning it out. Sal’s leftover goods from his apartment were in it, and Graham hesitated one last minute in the car — perhaps steeling himself against the weather, perhaps against a more powerful psychic storm — before opening his door. The wind was up in the midafternoon, sending grimy clouds of dust, soot, flotsam, swirling around the car. ‘Gotta do it,’ he said, almost to himself.

Hardy waited in the car while Graham worked the heavy padlock and threw the door all the way up.

The unit was tiny — six feet deep and maybe four feet wide, and even so it wasn’t nearly filled. With a minimum of talk they started a chain gang, lifting things and putting them into the open trunk of the BMW. Five or six boxes of books and bric-a-brac, kitchen and bathroom utensils, photo albums, a small closet’s worth of Salvation Army clothes. None of this had been tagged as evidence or figured as part of discovery, and Hardy realized with a stab that he’d never before seen any of it.

Not that he’d needed it, he consoled himself. He’d won. But still, it rankled. Graham reached down and passed him a rectangular piece of plywood.

‘Why’d they throw this in?’ Hardy asked. ‘I think I saw a Dumpster by the gate.’

Graham’s expression went from hurt to anger, then dissolved when he realized that Hardy was looking at the back, obviously thinking that one of the movers had thrown a random board onto Sal’s pile of junk. ‘Other side.’

Hardy turned it over.

The light was right and the painting leapt out at him through the grain of the plywood: the boat by the wharf with the small boy fishing with a broken pole from the flying bridge. ‘What is this?’ he asked.

Graham shrugged. He was holding another box, waiting for Hardy to put the painting into the trunk and resume loading. ‘One of Sal’s.’

‘Your dad painted this?’

Graham put his box down and came over, looking at the painting. ‘He was pretty good, wasn’t he?’

Hardy thought so. But more, he was interested in the background. ‘Where was this?’

‘His berth at the Wharf. When he still had the
Signing Bonus
— that’s his boat, there. You can still make out the name. See?’

‘What’s this, then?’ Hardy was pointing at the burned-out building in the background.

‘The old Grotto. Right after it burned down.’

‘Is that when he lost his boat? Did it get caught in the fire or something?’

‘No. I think he sold it for parts a long time later. It just wore out.’

‘But it looks worn out here, in this picture. Which would have been at the same time.’

A gust of wind came up, nearly pulling the board out of Hardy’s hands. Graham was shaking his head, placing something. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I know he painted it after the fire. We were in the Manor. He did it out in the garage.’ He stared at it for another beat. ‘He always loved that painting.’

‘And obviously it was hanging in his apartment?’

A nod. ‘Over the couch.’ Hardy was still mesmerized. ‘What?’ Graham asked.

‘It’s just a powerful image.’

Graham agreed. ‘Sal was pretty good. Maybe I’ll hang it in my place. You want to grab that last box?’

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The evidence lockup was in the bowels of the Hall, a huge room that smelled like an old library where people would occasionally change their oil. With its gray-green paint and interior cyclone fence, its bare-bulb lighting and cacophonous resonance, it had all of the building’s usual institutional charm and then some.

Sarah was waiting by the sign-out counter. Out of force of habit Hardy had brought along his lawyer’s briefcase and leaned over to place it at his feet. When he looked up, he was initially shocked by the casual kiss of greeting that she and Graham gave each other. Then he realized that the duty officer down here probably wouldn’t recognize Graham anyway, and even if he did, why would he care? Graham was a free citizen again — he could kiss a cop if he wanted to.

It only took a couple of minutes. There was some paperwork that Sarah, as arresting inspector of record, had to sign.

‘So where’s Marcel?’ Hardy asked.

Sarah gave him the bad eye. ‘I took the afternoon off,’ she said, which answered his question. The ostracism over her involvement with a murder suspect was, he suspected, just beginning. In the week after the trial the story about her and Graham had hit the press with a fury.

Hardy didn’t think anyone here today wanted to pursue it, so he turned back to the counter. There were three cardboard boxes: two filled with the miscellaneous papers from Sal’s apartment, and the third, the smallest one, with the contents of the safe, carefully labeled
S. Russo. #97-0101254, Safe. Evans/Lainer, Homicide
in indelible black marker.

Graham opened this last one first and peered inside, then looked up and nodded, a shaky smile in place.

‘Still there?’ Sarah asked.

‘Most of it, at least.’

Sarah spoke to Hardy. ‘I told him it wouldn’t get stolen out of evidence. He didn’t believe me.’

‘She has a trusting heart,’ Graham said.

‘Lucky for you.’ Hardy pulled back the flaps and started laying the money out on the counter — stacks of hundred-dollar bills. ‘But it couldn’t hurt to check before we leave.’

Under the bulging eyes of the duty officer, who asked if they had arranged for a guard out of the building, Hardy took out the tightly wrapped bundles, ten of them.

Next he reached back in and pulled out a shoe box, blew the dust off, opened it. The baseball cards didn’t even fill it; newspaper was stuffed in at the end and on the sides to keep them from shaking around. Hardy reached in again and picked up the second shoe box and Graham put his hand in and rummaged around.

‘How about if we put the money back in?’ Sarah asked.

Hardy nodded. ‘How about if we put everything back in? It’s all here. Take it somewhere safe.’

‘That’s our plan,’ Graham said. He lifted out the old belt and dropped one end to let it hang, then put it around his waist. ‘You think I could find somebody to put a new buckle on this thing?’

Obviously, Graham was thinking of a memento of his father, although perhaps this belt wasn’t his most stylish option; it was of unfinished black leather, heavy and thick. Graham held it around his waist. ‘Little big for me, though.’ He sucked in his washboard stomach. He smiled, turned to Hardy. ‘It might fit you. You want to try it?’

Hardy iced him a smile. ‘I’d respond appropriately except that there’s a woman present.’

In the back lot they loaded the boxes into the backseat of Graham’s BMW, the trunk having been filled at the storage place. With Sarah as armed escort Graham planned to get himself a new safety deposit box ASAP, then they’d take the rest of the stuff to his place up on Edgewood and decide what they’d do from there.

Graham had asked if he wanted a lift back uptown, but Hardy wanted to call his Joan Singleterry connection again. He had not told Graham about the call; no sense in getting his hopes up if it was a dead end.

The Beemer was idling and Graham and Sarah were ready to go. Hardy couldn’t stop himself from asking, ‘What have you found out about the cards?’

‘I’m checking out the trade shows. It looks like they’re going to bring in forty or fifty.’

‘And you’re splitting that with George and Debra too?’

Graham gave him a shrug. ‘Without Singleterry, I’m afraid, it’s their money. What can I do?’

Sarah leaned over from the passenger side. ‘He’s even thinking of declaring his softball earnings.’

Hardy deadpanned. ‘Whoa! Don’t get all carried away on me now.’

‘I’ve reformed.’ Graham was dead serious. ‘I’m reporting every cent of income I make for the rest of my life. I’m going back and filing amended returns. I am never ever under any circumstances spending one more night in jail.’

Hardy nodded. ‘Here’s a perfect example of the beauty of our criminal system. You go to jail for a few months, you come out a better person.’

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