I think I was a little hard on him.' Hardy clinked his martini glass against David Freeman's.
In theory, he'd given up martinis at lunch about ten years before, but he always made an exception at Sam's. He'd walk through the door, there would be the old, tiny dark-wood bar, the male waiters in tuxedos, the buzz of busy people fortifying themselves with honest food for a productive afternoon. And suddenly the thought of not having one martini would always seem to be an unnecessary denial of one of his life's great pleasures.
Hardy hadn't missed a day of work because of alcohol in half a dozen years, and a martini wasn't going to slow him down this afternoon. So he ordered – Bombay Sapphire gin, up, very dry, one olive, and ice cold in a chilled glass.
Freeman didn't agonize half as much as Hardy. Hell, he didn't agonize at all. He was standing, waiting at the bar when Hardy entered. Nodding in approval at the order, he said he'd have the same, and raised his glass when Hardy raised his own. 'I'm sure he had it coming.'
Hardy broke a cragged grin. 'So here's to tough love, huh?'
'Or failing that, just plain tough.'
Both men sipped appreciatively. A waiter informed them that their booth was ready. He would carry their drinks for them.
Sam's was already a popular San Francisco lunch spot by the turn of the twentieth century, and though it had changed some, it still retained a bit of the feel of a private men's club, with a public dining area in the main room. A side room provided more privacy, with booths along both walls that could be closed off by curtains, and it was to one of these that the men repaired.
McNeil hadn't arrived yet. It was possible that he might not show up at all, although Hardy had kept his invitation vague enough to whet his client's curiosity – had Manny Gait agreed to a settlement already? McNeil had been so anxious for it that he'd called a post-dawn meeting yesterday. He would want to know right away, but he might also wonder why Hardy couldn't just leave a message. He would make the meeting if he could.
But in the meantime, there was plenty to talk about, and Hardy tried to keep the excitement out of his voice as he filled Freeman in on the unexpected appearance of Dash Logan again, this time in his murder case.
The old man, pensive, twirled the stem of his glass. 'Russian insurance fraud?' He was frowning. 'Sounds like the kind of work he'd like.'
'The guy is everywhere. I find it pretty intriguing.'
'Depressing is more like it.'
'Maybe more than that.' Hardy sipped gin, put his glass down. 'I can't shake the feeling he's going to show up around Cole Burgess.'
Freeman was shaking his head from side to side. 'I doubt it.'
'I'll give you a scenario. Logan wasn't being cooperative – the judge told me this – when Elaine came to do her special master work. Dash wouldn't show her where the files she needed were. If she wanted to pull them, she'd have to find them first.'
'Have I already called him an asshole?' Freeman muttered.
Hardy nodded. 'Several times. So Elaine just turned herself loose in his office, going through everything. And she found something she wasn't supposed to see.'
Freeman almost choked on his drink. 'You're saying you think Logan killed Elaine because of that?'
'Or one of the Russians. Or another of his clients.'
'You've been watching too many movies.'
'All I'm saying is we can make the argument and drag our friend Dash through the mud pretty good, and I know that would make some people at this table very happy.' He shrugged. 'At least it's somebody to point at, David. Something the jury might want to think about.'
Freeman wasn't convinced. 'Don't get me wrong, Diz, I love the concept,' he said, 'but it's pure speculation. Maybe she saw something and then maybe somebody killed her because of it. I don't think so. No judge would let you introduce it at trial.'
Hardy didn't pursue it further, though – his client had arrived. As McNeil slid in beside him in the booth, it was clear he was both surprised and unhappy to find another guest at the table. Freeman had no real business being there, and when McNeil realized that he wasn't one of Hardy's old friends that he'd spontaneously asked to lunch – no, he wanted to talk about McNeil's case! – he was as close to hostile as Hardy had ever seen him.
As always at Sam's, the waiter came by immediately. McNeil saw the other two glasses and ordered a martini, too, vodka. If not for that – the brief defusing hiatus -Hardy thought he might not have stayed. The pressure he'd been under recently threatened to escape in an explosion – the blood was up in his face. When he turned to Hardy, there was nothing but anger. 'You're trying to bring somebody else into my case at this stage? What kind of bullshit is this? I thought I told you it was over. We were settling. And whatever, it was all confidential.'
'It is, Rich. David knows nothing about the facts of the case itself.'
'He'd better not.'
Freeman wasn't inclined to stop himself from jumping in, and jump in he did. 'I'm here to tell you about one of my cases. Not the facts. The way it's being handled.'
'And I'm going to care?'
'Yes, sir, I believe you will.'
McNeil's florid face showed no sign of softening. He shot a glare again at Hardy, then took in Freeman with his rheumy basset eyes, his rumpled brown suit, the shaving stains on his shirt collar, the tufts of hair growing from the tops of his earlobes. 'This pisses me off,' he said. Unexpectedly, he grabbed at the curtain and violently pulled it closed. 'All right, I'm listening.'
Hardy let Freeman talk and as always he was impressed by the man's brilliance. Although Hardy had tried to leave out specific facts in his recital of McNeil's problems to David, he was sure he'd let a few slip out in the telling. By contrast, Freeman told his own client's story completely without reference to the details of the case.
It was a masterly performance. Freeman told Rich that he had a client with both civil and criminal cases pending. The leverage of one against the other. The offer to drop the criminal charges in return for a cash settlement. Finally, the name Dash Logan. The similarities in the logistics, not the facts, of his – McNeil's – case. And Hardy, by the way, would never have mentioned anything at all about Rich if Freeman hadn't first acquainted him with everything he had just recounted.
By the time the story ended, McNeil had cooled. A long silence followed, during which the waiter returned, drew back the curtain, delivered Rich's drink and took their lunch orders – sweetbreads for Freeman, sand dabs for Hardy and McNeil.
'Wine?' Freeman asked. 'ABC? Everybody OK with that?'
'Don't know it,' McNeil said.
'Anything but chardonnay,' Hardy explained.
And finally his client smiled, Hardy thinking Freeman the goddamned genius. 'Yeah,' Rich said, 'sure, sounds good.'
'Is one of you gentlemen a Mr Hardy?'
He looked up. 'Yes.' He hated this – someone tracking him down at lunch. It could only be bad news, an emergency, a disaster. And he wondered where the Beck got it.
The waiter was the soul of professional deference. 'Your office called. Do you know someone at St Mary's Hospital? They're trying to get in touch with you. You left your pager at the office, and evidently your cell phone is turned off.'
'Thanks.' He used his napkin. There was no need to panic. 'I'll be right back.'
Hardy followed the waiter through the main dining room – empty tables now for the most part – up to the bar. A large delivery truck had pulled into the alley by the front door, blocking any view, casting the room in shadow. As they handed him the phone, a large pallet of something fell outside with a tremendous crash. Even the bartender jumped.
Glitsky was dead. He knew it.
He called information for the number, let them connect it for him for an extra thirty-five cents. He didn't trust his brain to hold the number for the time it would take him to punch it in. 'You have a patient named Abraham Glitsky.'
'One moment, please. He's in the ICU. I'm not sure he'll be able to take your call. Please hold.'
His heart was clogging his throat. He cleared it. It made no difference. They were playing 'Feelings' in his ear while he was on hold. It didn't make the wait any shorter.
The operator came back on. 'I'm sorry, sir, what was the name again?'
'Dismas Hardy,' he said, tempted to add, 'What's yours, Phyllis?'
'No,' she said, 'the patient?'
'Abe Glitsky. He wasn't in the ICU last night. He had a room with another man.'
She couldn't have cared less. 'The computer has him in the ICU. It doesn't say he's left it.'
'Do you think you could maybe call the nurses' station there and check? Maybe someone would remember where they moved him if he's not still there.'
'Oh, that's a good idea,' she said brightly. 'Please hold again. Sorry.'
… feelings, oh, oh, oh…
Then, finally, a tone, a ring. Someone picking it up. 'Glitsky. Hello.'
For a minute, he felt light-headed with the rush of relief. 'Did you call me?'
'Yeah.'
'I thought you were having all kinds of tests and stuff today.'
'That was this morning. It all went like a top, in case you were wondering.'
'I haven't thought about anything else all day,' he said. 'Except just now I was sure you were dead.'
'Nope,' he said. 'But somebody else is.'
'Who's that?'
'Cullen Leon Alsop, former famous snitch. Diz, you still there?'
'Yeah. How?'
'OD. Uncut heroin. He got OR'd' – released on his own recognizance – 'yesterday afternoon and I guess he thought it'd be fun to go out and celebrate.'
'How did you find out?'
'Ridley Banks called me here. He was slightly upset. This kind of majorly complicates Cole Burgess for him and it's been a mess from the beginning. He didn't like it when Cullen came up with the gun story before and he doesn't like this even more.'
'I don't either.'
'I didn't think you would. Which is why I wanted you to know right away.'
'Would he talk to me? Banks?'
'He's a public servant. I don't see why not.'
'Perhaps because the last cop who talked to me got himself suspended? That would be one reason.'
'Maybe you can wear a disguise?'
'Or fake a heart attack, appear feeble and harmless. Speaking of which, I appreciate the call, but are you sure you should be working already?'
Glitsky didn't say anything for a long while. Then, 'Maybe somebody else did kill her, Diz. I'm going to find out.'
'Not if you die first.'
'Then I'll make sure I don't.'
The thing about Freeman that Hardy found so continually impressive was not only that his personal arsenal was so huge, but that he could pull out any weapon from it at the moment of its peak effectiveness. At the precise instant, he'd managed to become both Rich McNeil's drinking buddy and his father confessor, even going so far as to pull the curtain again to shield them.
After Hardy pulled it back, he saw that Freeman had ordered a second bottle of Pinot Grigio and they'd already put a significant dent in it, the two of them having moved from hostility to something approaching intimacy in about a quarter of an hour. McNeil was leaning back into the wall of the booth, the earlier tomato-red flush of anger having softened to a rosy glow. He'd loosened his tie, undone his top button.
Hardy got settled in next to him and poured himself some ice water.
'Rich was just telling me an interesting story,' Freeman said. 'Do you know Gene Visser?'
'Used to be a cop? Sure, though I don't know what he's doing lately.'
'Now he's a private eye. You'll never guess who he works with.'
Hardy could figure it out. His eyebrows went up. He turned to Rich. 'How did you meet him?'
McNeil lifted his glass, drank off another half inch. 'He came to me one day last week at the office. Said he'd been doing some work for Mr Logan, didn't want to see us get involved in a lot of ugly accusations.'
Freeman chuckled without mirth. 'We can bring this to the bar, and I'm going to. But I'm sorry, Rich, you go on.'
The expression was apologetic. 'I should have told you, Diz. I just thought it would be easiest to bail out. I'm just so tired of all this.'
'What?'
McNeil sighed from his shoes. 'Fifteen, eighteen years ago, I fucked up, got involved with another woman. My secretary. Stupid, stupid, stupid.' Pure disgust. He sipped wine. 'Anyway, I did it. She got pregnant, had the child. Sally found out. It was awful, but we worked it out. It was awful,' he repeated. 'And the girl, Linda… hell, it wasn't her fault… anyway, I wound up having to let her go, essentially paid her off out of our own savings, got her set up with another job…'
'And now she's blackmailing you?'
McNeil shook his head. 'Not her, Diz. But the main thing Sally and I wanted to do was keep it from the kids, you know. I'd made a mistake and I was paying. Believe me, I was paying. But it wasn't going to ruin our family.'
'And Visser found out about it?'
A nod. 'He must have gone digging around in my old company for dirt on me. There had been rumors, probably some resentment. I left a couple of years afterward, but people remembered. And now…' He shrugged helplessly.
'So Visser threatened to tell your kids and drag Linda and her kid through it if you didn't settle.' Hardy sat back, considering. 'You know, Rich, it's not as though this kind of thing is going to make headlines. You had an affair, you and your wife worked it out, you're sorry.'
McNeil looked across the table. 'I know. That's what David was saying, too. It was just that after all this time, hearing it from Visser, knowing the kind of person Manny Gait is, what else he might do… I panicked, I guess.'
'Totally understandable,' Freeman was controlling the moment and this was precisely where he wanted McNeil. 'Anyway, Diz, I suggested that he and Sally just gather the family together – maybe not the grandchildren, but the kids. They should just – simply, honestly, humbly – lay it all out for them.' He poured out his heart across the table. 'They'll understand, Rich, I promise you.'
'You know. I see it now. I think they would.'
'Of course they would.'
McNeil had his hand on his forehead as though rubbing away a headache. He wore his feelings like a billboard – it was all going to work out at last. Finally he looked up. 'So both of you guys, you think I should just wait?'
'A few weeks, that's all,' Freeman said.
Hardy added, 'You can always settle. It never has to get to the criminal trial.'
'That I really don't want. I'd sell the building before that.'
'That's the right decision,' Freeman said forcefully. 'Nobody could blame you. But let's not breathe a word of it until when… let's say March first? Three weeks. How's that sound?'
McNeil gave the decision its due, then nodded. 'I can do that.'
Images, smells, feelings were beginning to break through the fog. Cole didn't remember the last time he'd felt any kind of hunger except the craving for g. But after this morning's meeting with his hard-ass lawyer, they took him back to his cell and he realized he was ravenous. He'd gotten his pill from the orderly, then had his four slices of white bread, glass of milk, orange juice, two sausages, two eggs for breakfast only three hours before, but now he was counting the minutes until eleven thirty, when they'd bring up lunch.
As a capital murder defendant, he was still separated from the general population, in a sort of wing with six cells, three on each side of a ten by twenty foot common area which they were rarely permitted to use. He was in front right, with only one 'neighbor'. Cole didn't know his name. He thought of him as Jose, a tattooed rail of Mexican steel who spent all of his time doing push-ups, then watching the public television which was left on sixteen hours a day above the common area in the center of the pod of cells.
There was some game show on now, and he stood at the bars for one of the segments between commercials, then gave that up. Jose was doing push-ups again, and Cole watched him for a while before deciding that this wouldn't be the worst way to spend some time. He dropped himself and ripped off ten before it got a little difficult. By twenty he was done, his biceps and chest muscles, such as they were, screaming at the exertion. He looked over and Jose was still methodically pumping, his head craned up to the side to follow the TV.
Cole lay on the cold concrete, catching his breath. Loathing what he'd become.
It didn't even feel like a memory. He could close his eyes and recall it perfectly, the sense that he was sixteen -yesterday – he and Steve Polacek in his garage, their huge twenty dollar bet over who'd be the first to press his weight. A hundred thirty-one pounds, that was Cole. Polacek was seven pounds heavier, wanted a handicap.
For a while, he remembered, their warm-up had been fifty push-ups. Fifty! He couldn't bring back who'd won the bet -if either of them had ever made it to their weight. Probably both – that was the way they were back then.
But he remembered the garage. They never parked cars in it, not even in the winter. Just his dad's tools on the wall, the workbench, the ping-pong table in the middle. Bikes and skates, skis and balls and sports equipment all over the place. Pretty good jock family up till his dad died. His sister Dorothy training with him that whole last summer she was home before she went to college. They were going to ski cross-country from Des Moines to Iowa City when she came back on Christmas break.
Cole lifted his cheek off the floor, pulled his arms up to beside his shoulders, pushed. This time, even the first few were hard. Eight.
Turning onto his side, he sat up, then pulled his mattress off its concrete pad, onto the floor. He rolled onto it, hooked his hands behind his head, tried a sit-up. Once upon a time he could really do sit-ups – sixty in a minute. Polacek couldn't touch him.
Again he started fast. Again he faded quickly, but he forced himself through fifteen and on to twenty. He wasn't going to accept less than twenty, although the last couple felt like they ripped something inside him. But he got to it, turned on his side away from Jose, gulped for breath, closed his eyes.
The clang of the outer door to the common room jolted him up. Cole had dozed through the twenty minutes that inmates were allowed out into the common room every morning. Two guards with the trolley holding the lunches banged again on the outer door. 'Back in your rooms, girls!'
When everyone was back where they belonged, the guard entered his code into the box outside and all the cell bolts slammed into place. Seeing the mattress on the floor with Cole cross-legged now on it, the guard distributing the trays couldn't resist a little moment of clever repartee. 'Having a picnic, Alice?' he asked. 'Nice day for it.' He slid the tray under the door.
Cole barely heard and didn't care.
Eric was the social worker who passed out the pills -he stopped at the door. This was the first dose Cole had told him he was going to miss – he'd get his usual come dinnertime again – and Eric wanted to check to make sure Cole was comfortable with the idea. He was.
Then, finally, the food. If Cole thought he'd felt a jab of hunger before, it was nothing compared to now, with another of the jail's full-fledged meals actually in front of him. All the meals he'd had so far included four slices of white bread and four pats of butter. The butter was soft, warm, and he smeared one of the pats onto a piece of the bread, folded it over, and put it all, whole, into his mouth. While he chewed, he looked down at the tray. Today, lunch was two thick slabs of meatloaf with gravy, mixed peas and carrots, mashed potatoes and more gravy, canned peaches in a plastic bowl, milk and two chocolate chip cookies.
The bread went down. Cole stabbed at the meatloaf so hard that he broke his plastic fork. It didn't matter. He used his spoon, shoveled in a few more bites, began to savor, to taste – prodded by the mnemonic smell of the gravy, to remember.
Polacek's kitchen. A winter day, later afternoon, snow outside. An after-school snack before hockey, Polacek's mom pouring reheated gravy over bread and cold meatloaf.
Polacek. He hadn't thought of him in years, and now he found himself wondering where his old best friend was. Certainly no place like here. He probably had a job someplace, maybe even was married. Polacek with kids? Imagine.
The last year of high school they had stopped being friends over the dope – marijuana, then. Polacek really believing it was the killer weed. Didn't want any part of it. So Cole started hanging with the other guys – Reece, Baugh, Neillsen, Parducci.
Baugh was the best of them. He had even been friends with Polacek before, as Cole had. The good students through grade school, Little League, Boy Scouts. Then, after Cole's dad died, when Cole had been trying to get through that darkness, Baugh turning him on the first time. No doubt he had good intentions – that was who Baugh was – trying to make Cole feel better about life with his sister gone away to college, his dad gone for good. Hey, life isn't easy. People need to laugh, get high, forget themselves. It was an unbelievable bummer his dad dying.
'Marijuana, bfd. Come on, Cole, it's totally harmless. Marijuana never killed anybody.'
Baugh was dead now four years though.
Polacek trying to get him to stop a few times, coming around the house, worried about how much Cole was changing.
Yeah? Well, people change. Cole wasn't hooked on anything. He could stop anytime he wanted. The other guys – Reece, Neillsen, Parducci – his mom kept up with their moms. Last Cole heard, Reece had become a cop back home. He knew Neillsen worked at GM. Parducci was still playing ball, second year in Triple A, might make the bigs.
Telling himself, soaking up his gravy, 'Didn't hook any of them. Didn't hook me either. Not the marijuana.'
Another flash – the last time he saw Polacek. A party at Notre Dame. Cole had dropped out after a semester and his mom sent him up to visit his old friend, subliminal message that maybe he'd see how great Steve was doing and clean his own act up. Subtle as a cherry bomb. But he'd gone. Cole in his own mind nowhere near any kind of junkie. This is recreation, that's all – the only kind he knows anymore, constant doping. But he can quit anytime.
He's shocked at Steve, in a frat now, with his alligator shirt, drinking beer, dancing to Hootie. Just like so unaware, so naive. Whereas Cole that night, he was the king…
There was this girl, somebody somebody. By now he was into cocaine whenever he could get it, dealing a little to cover costs. So he and this girl, they're upstairs in the bathroom. They've got lines laid out and one of the dorks comes in and next thing there's Polacek, angry but calm, laying some trip about him being a guest and abusing their friendship. Cole's got to leave right now! They can't have cocaine in their house. The college could close them down. They could lose their charter.
Cole' s temper out the window – half the blow wasted now, scattered in the commotion. 'Who gives a shit, Steve? About any of this?' Screaming at him.
'Everybody here, Cole. Everybody who's trying to make a life.'
Polacek, the dweeb. Never saw him again, and good damn riddance. The best friend, though, that he'd ever had.
'Hey, Alice! You done? What's a matter? They put too much pepper in that for you?'