Back in his office for the third separate time that day, Hardy was killing more time before the five o'clock meeting Norma had scheduled for him to address Freeman's staff in the Solarium. His shoes and jacket were off. He lay on his couch again, eyes covered, and realized that he had no other quasi-legitimate legal venue where he might be able to make his case. He hadn't swayed Jackman, had no chance with the homicide inspectors.
But he might be able to get to them through public pressure. He and Freeman had done this many times and he was a little surprised that he hadn't thought of it before now.
Jeff Elliott, his friend and the writer of the "CityTalk" column for the Chronicle, had finished his column for the day. He told Hardy that if he could save him the handicapped space under his building-Elliot had multiple sclerosis-he would be happy to drop by for an hour of gay repartee, as long as there was a story involved. Hardy went down and stood in the spot until Elliot pulled into it. In a trice, the columnist had done his magic with his wheelchair. The two men rode the back elevator up to the third floor.
While Hardy had brought over some coffee and eased himself down in one of his client chairs, Elliot watched him move. "So who beat you up?" he asked.
Hardy tried to smile. "I thought I was hiding it pretty well."
"You thought wrong. You're walking like the living dead." He put his cup down. "So what happened?"
"Leaving out the hangover, which is another story, that's what I wanted to talk to you about." He gingerly rearranged his body in the wing chair, went on to outline the high points of the situation as it had developed. "So now the whole world thinks that Abe and I are illegally conspiring to get Panos and take him."
"And why are you doing this exactly?"
"So we can win this lawsuit that David and I had been working on."
"Past tense?"
"It's starting to look like it. Although let's keep that off the record for now." With some difficulty, he changed position in his chair. "It was one of David's brilliant ideas that had some chance of success as long as he was around to pursue it, but I can't keep it going on my own. I can't even pay me, much less the associates we've been using. And that was before my witnesses started dying. In jail, no less." He filled Elliot in on Aretha LaBonte. "Although the official line is she killed herself."
"But you think, somehow, it was Panos?"
"I don't know how, but yes."
"He's got people on payroll in the jail?"
Hardy lifted a hand. "I know. It stretches credibility."
"That's a fair assessment."
"But the only thing more incredible is that all of this stuff is coincidence. David, okay. Maybe even the windshield thing with me. But the shots at me, Aretha dying. Somebody's behind all that. It's not just happening."
Elliot had a pad out and was taking notes. "Okay, we've got Freeman's lawsuit. Panos wants to drive you out of it."
"He's already done it, Jeff. He did it when he took out David."
"But you've got no proof?"
"Zero."
Elliot was clicking his pen.
"What?" Hardy asked.
Elliott shook his head. "I'm trying to understand the connection between your lawsuit and all these murders, beginning with Silverman. They don't seem related."
"They're both Panos, Jeff."
"I'm not saying they're not. I'm perfectly willing to believe that they are. Just tell me how, that's all."
Hardy slumped back in the chair, drew a heavy breath and started at the beginning. Ten minutes later, he'd laid it all out. He brought his right hand up to his forehead and squeezed at his temples, sighed a last time, looked across at Elliott. "Don't think I don't realize how bad this sounds, Jeff. But it's not John. He didn't break my windshield. He didn't hire some stooges to take shots at both of us. This is Panos and his gang." He lifted himself from his slump, came forward urgently. "And I can't get a soul to believe me. How am I going to stop them before they try it again?"
Elliot held his coffee still on the arm of his wheelchair. He'd given up all pretense of note-taking. Now, to buy himself another few seconds, he sipped at the cup. "Here's the thing, Diz. I believe you. Just so that's out of the way between you and me. Okay? Okay. Absolute belief. You say it, I buy it. Good enough?"
Hardy nodded.
"Good. But that said, the question now becomes what can I do to help you? Which I would love to do if for no other reason than it's a terrific story."
"So write it up. Crime boss bamboozles city hall. You'll win the Pulitzer Prize."
"That'll be fun," Jeff said. "But first I need one little thing that an objective party, such as my editor, might take as evidence that there is something real here, and not just the wild conjecture of a defense attorney who wants to get his client off. No offense."
"No. Of course not. None taken."
"But we're talking murder here, Diz. Multiple and very ugly murder. And Wade Panos isn't some small-time gangster. If I print any part of this without some show of proof… well, you know this."
"What do you need?"
"Not much," Elliot said. "But you've got an enormous big edifice going here. It's going to need at least a little tiny foundation in unassailable fact."
Hardy took another run at it, pointing out the various holes in the police case-the planted rings at Holiday's, along with Sadie's testimony and Cuneo's interpretation of it; the slightly off-size, fashionable Italian shoe; Thieu's checkup on and belief in Holiday's alibi.
At the end of it, Elliot was frowning. "None of which, I'm sad to say, rises to the level of proof."
Hardy had gotten out of his chair, was creaking around the office. Elliott's words stopped him over by the dart-board. "They can't have done this so well. If somebody searched their places…"
But Elliot was shaking his head. "Who? And why? You need something to start with." He closed his notepad. "Maybe next time they'll make a mistake."
"Maybe next time will be me, Jeff. Or Abe. And maybe next time they won't miss. I don't want any next time."
"I hear you." Elliot looked toward the window. Dusk had settled. He looked at his watch. "I don't mean to run, but I've got to go. Dorothy batters me horribly if dinner's done and I'm not home."
Out at the elevator, Hardy pushed the button for the basement, then stepped out in the hall. As the door started to close, Jeff wheeled forward a couple of inches and stopped it. He looked up at Hardy. "The first thing you do, the first bit of real evidence you find, you call me, hear?"
Thirty people, more or less, had gathered in the Solarium. Some, like Graham Russo and Amy Wu, were Hardy's friends. Some of the others-Phyllis and Norma, for example-had been at best politely adversarial. The rest comprised a pretty decent microcosm of the adult world. The ages ranged from perhaps twenty to Phyllis's sixty-something. A quick glance around revealed every major ethnic configuration, about half men and half women. Hardy thought it ironic that Freeman, who found San Francisco's endemic, runaway political correctness as offensive as affirmative action of any kind, had staffed his own firm with such an incredibly diverse talent pool.
As Hardy came into the conference area, stooped and drained, he gathered some sense of the room's expectation. He might be an outcast in the other professional aspect of his life, but here he felt a strong and unexpected acceptance, mixed with a real pride that he was affiliated with this quality group of individuals. He wasn't really part of them, yet clearly he had their respect-everyone had gathered to hear him. Someone closed the door behind them all and after a minute, the room was silent. Hardy stood at the head of the oblong table, made eye contact with Norma, Graham, Amy, some others, and in his natural voice, began.
"We've all been attacked," he said. "We feel violated, angry and victimized. We're all of us afraid of what's going to happen next, whether it's tomorrow or next week, or even beyond that. We've all been working hard on projects and cases that may now have to be abandoned, and we're wondering what will have been the point of all those hours and all that work. All I can say is that the value of the things we do lies in doing them as well as we can, and that what we continue to do does matter.
"I know that we are all hoping and praying that things here will return to normal. But we must face the possibility that they may not.
"So the real question is how we, all of us, deal with this uncertainty and this changing order. My only suggestion is that we take solace and comfort in our families and friends, our faiths if we have them, and our work. If it all ends here tomorrow-and it might-then we'll at least have had the satisfaction of knowing that we've done everything we can to preserve a great legacy with integrity and class. If things do change, we'll be no less ready to deal with that change for having kept up our spirits. If on the other hand life here returns to normal, how proud we'll all be of the fact that when everything looked the darkest, we held our course."