Hardy 05 - Mercy Rule, The (34 page)

Hardy said he thought so and the guy passed a business card over to him. ‘You need some motion work, background checks, anything, I’m available.’

Hardy nodded, friendly, but it bothered him. The hustling for clients, for work, it just never let up. He glanced at the card, then put it in his pocket. ‘I’ll keep it in mind, thanks.’

Finally, he got a chance to take in the surroundings. He hadn’t been in Superior Court for four years and it hadn’t changed in any way. High ceilings, no windows; the room was large and utterly bland. In front of the bar rail the gallery held about a hundred and twenty people on uncomfortable, theater-style seats of hard blond wood. There was also standing room for another forty or so.

Recognition was kicking in. Sharron Pratt herself was here, in the second row. At the end of the jury box Gil Soma conferred with Art Drysdale. Hardy checked for Dean Powell, but the attorney general was leaving it to his deputies.

Then the gavel came down and all eyes went to the bench.

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To the judge’s left a door at the back of the courtroom led to the defendant’s holding tank, and as the fourth line was called this morning, that door opened and Graham Russo was brought in.

There was an audible hum in the gallery that Manion stilled with a warning glare. Hardy got up from his seat and went to meet his client at the podium in the center of the bullpen.

After his night in jail Graham looked wan and tired, and the orange jumpsuit reinforced that impression, but when Hardy asked him how he was doing, he said okay. Then, leaning across his attorney, he whispered at the prosecution table, ‘Hey, Gil.’

When Soma looked over, Graham smiled at him. Keeping his hand behind the podium so the judge couldn’t see, his body blocking it from the gallery’s view, he flipped him off. Hardy, of course, saw it. He immediately covered Graham’s hand with his own. But not in time.

‘Your Honor.’ Soma was up out of his chair. ‘The defendant just made an obscene gesture to me.’

‘Not obscene enough,’ Graham whispered.

‘Shut up,’ Hardy ordered him. He didn’t know what Soma hoped to achieve by bringing this little contretemps to the judge’s attention, but Hardy knew Manion, and he wasn’t going to react well to any grandstanding, particularly if it involved whining.

He’d been rearranging his papers, and now he raised his eyes. ‘Mr Hardy,’ he said simply, ‘control your client. I don’t want any shenanigans in here, is that understood? This is a court of law.’

‘Yes, Your Honor,’ Hardy said, and decided then and there to take a gamble, ‘but for the record, Mr Soma may be mistaken.’

The judge, sensing a pissing contest, wanted to keep his busy day moving. He bobbed his head and said, ‘Noted.’

Keeping his own expression under tight control, Hardy threw a look at Soma. The message, he was sure, got delivered. From now on every word counted. To every play Soma made, no matter how small, Hardy would fashion a defense. Best let Soma know he had a fight on his hands. Hardy would kick his ass in this courtroom if he could, every time he could. That knowledge might make the boy reckless. It might make him scared. If nothing else, Hardy had rattled his cage.

But the moment was just that, a moment. Hardy knew — indeed, most of the courtroom knew — what was coming next, and a stillness settled as the judge looked straight at Graham and intoned his name. ‘Graham Russo,’ he began, ‘you are charged by indictment with a felony filed herein.’

The words were pro forma but they always had an effect on the gallery. There was a stir behind Hardy. Manion glared for quiet, but it didn’t work this time. Some members of the gallery had come to make a stand.

‘This wasn’t any felony!’

‘It wasn’t even wrong!’

‘Sal Russo had a right to die!’

The gavel. When relative quiet had resumed, the judge raised his voice so he could be heard all the way to the back of the room, but his tone was mild. ‘I know a lot of you people have gone to some trouble to get down to this courtroom today, but I’m not going to tolerate this kind of disturbance. So all of you do yourselves a favor and do not interrupt these proceedings again. I will remove every one of you all the hell out of here. Is that clear?’

Apparently it was.

‘Mr Russo.’ Manion repeated the formula, continuing, ‘… to wit, a violation of section 187 of the Penal Code in that you did, in the City and County of San Francisco, State of California, on or about the ninth of May, 1997, willfully, unlawfully, and with malice aforethought’ — and here the judge paused again, as if he himself were questioning the language. But he took a heavy breath and went ahead with it — ‘
murder
Salvatore Russo, a human being.’

Manion then had the clerk read the special circumstances alleged by the prosecution: murder in the course of a robbery. When he’d done, the judge nodded. ‘How do you plead, Mr Russo?’

Graham spoke right up. ‘Not guilty, Your Honor.’

‘All right.’ This wasn’t any surprise. Manion consulted his computer sheet again. ‘This being a special-circumstances case, bail will be denied. Mr Hardy, do you have a comment?’

‘Yes, Your Honor. There is no way the prosecution can justify this as a special-circumstances case. My client should be allowed to post bail. Mr Russo voluntarily turned himself in to the authorities yesterday—’

Soma was on his feet. ‘After hiding out for four days.’

Hardy turned to him. ‘He left town before he knew there was in indictment against him.’

‘So he says.’

The gavel came down. Manion wasn’t yet angry — sometimes Calendar was so boring that these peccadilloes in courtroom etiquette were almost a relief to a judge who had to sit through eight hours of procedure — but he didn’t want to lose any more control. ‘Gentlemen,’ he reminded them, ‘all remarks get directed to me. That’s how we do it.’

Hardy apologized. Soma sat down. Drysdale put a restraining hand on his arm and Hardy heard him whisper, ‘Just listen!’

‘All right, Mr Hardy, go ahead.’

Hardy made his case. ‘Mr Russo will surrender his passport, Your Honor. There is no risk of flight. As I’ve already said, he voluntarily turned himself in just yesterday, as soon as he’d returned to the city after a few days away.’

Manion appeared to be giving his argument some thought. ‘On the other hand,’ he said, ‘special circumstances precludes the possibility for bail. That’s the law.’

‘Yes, Your Honor, I realize that.’ Hardy took a deep breath, glanced at Graham, nodded, and waited. This was more argument than he’d expected. He suddenly wondered if Manion subscribed to
Time
.

People started coughing as time stopped for a while.

At last the judge invited counsel up to the bench. Hardy got there first and to his surprise found that Soma had remained back at his table. Drysdale was standing next to him. ‘The kid’s a little excited, Judge,’ he said quietly, referring to Soma.

‘No sweat, Art, don’t worry about it. But this bail thing.’

Drysdale nodded. ‘There’s no bail allowed. That’s the law, Judge.’ Apologetic. Really nothing Drysdale could do about it.

‘I know the law. But it seems to me what Mr Hardy says here is true. There’s very little if any flight risk, right?’

This was starting to make Drysdale uncomfortable. ‘There’s no bail allowed on specials, Your Honor,’ he repeated feebly.

‘But you do admit that this defendant is no danger to the community?’

‘We can’t be sure of that, Your Honor.’

But Manion was running out of patience. ‘So there is no public policy reason to deny bail to Mr Russo? There’s no risk of flight and he poses no danger to anybody?’

Drysdale didn’t even try to answer this time.

‘I don’t suppose the People want to drop the specials?’ Manion was giving Drysdale every opportunity to save face. Bail was permitted for non-special-circumstances murder. All Drysdale had to do was lower the charge; it would still be a murder case. But he was shaking his head. ‘I can’t do that, Your Honor.’

‘In other words, your office is simply making me deny bail to Mr Russo because it
can
? Is that what I’m hearing?’ The judge, disgusted, shook his head. ‘Next time you see Mr Powell, Art, I want you to tell him he makes me proud to be an American. Would you do that?’

He turned to Hardy and offered a sympathetic smile. ‘I guess we’ll be denying bail, Diz.’

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Hardy hadn’t planned to have lunch with the Taylors — maybe a little snack at Lou the Greek’s. But the arraignment had begun later than he’d thought and then dragged on. Getting his case called had consumed an entire hour, and before they’d finished, getting a trial date three months hence, another twenty minutes had gone away. After that it had taken Hardy the rest of the morning to see Graham in jail, where they had conferred for another twenty minutes or so.

In that time the bailiff had come up and conveyed the good news that the sheriff (no doubt at Manion’s urging) was moving Graham to an AdSeg cell for the duration of his confinement. AdSeg, short for ‘administrative segregation,’ was most often used when an inmate was in danger of being hurt among the general population of the jail. In Graham’s case, Hardy was sure, it was a courtesy.

So Hardy finally got back to the hallway outside Department 22 at a little after noon. Helen and Leland were sitting like statues, sharing a wooden bench with an Hispanic teenager who was breast-feeding her baby. As Hardy approached, they stood and made their introductions and then Leland, with the force of edict, had suggested lunch. His office was up on Market, top floor of the bank. He had his own private dining room, his own chef. They’d just take the limo.

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It was not a particularly large room, but it was beautiful, with its hardwood floor, the antique sideboard with its stunning floral arrangement of iris and gladioli. The wall covering was a soothing green silk. Water had been poured.

Hardy was seated in an amazingly comfortable upholstered armchair with a view to the northeast — Alcatraz and Angel Island. There was chop on the Bay, a high covering of cirrus. In front of him the table had been set for three: white linen, crystal, china, silver.

The setting was meant to intimidate, although of course not obviously. It simply made clear the line of command.

Leland Taylor was in touch with his inner self. He knew who he was, what he wanted, how to get it, and didn’t unduly concern himself with internal doubts or how his actions might appear to others. Hardy thought this might be one of the perks of being born to, and living a life insulated by, great wealth. Leland was in charge, an immutable fact of nature. His time was more valuable than Hardy’s, his opinions more valid. His stepson’s lawyer was, essentially, staff — a servant to do his bidding.

Evidently some unspoken rule dictated that chitchat precede business. Mrs Taylor — Helen — had been carrying the conversational ball for twenty minutes. She was good at it, but Hardy was relieved when they got down to tacks. ‘My wife was gratified to see you’d never lost a case,’ Leland said in his reedy voice.

Hardy sat back in his chair. ‘I’ve only done two murder trials. I’ve been lucky,’ he said modestly.

A dry chuckle. ‘Let’s hope it’s not that. You seemed very sure of yourself in the courtroom. That bail business, what I heard. Is the judge a friend of yours? I gather that would be to our advantage, hmm?’

Hardy explained a little about the system. Normally, cases stayed in Department 22 until the day of trial, when they were sent at random to other courtrooms and the judges who would actually preside over the case. This one was important, however, and got assigned now for trial in three months to Judge Jordan Salter in Department 27. That way the judge, who knew it was coming — as well as the lawyers — could prepare for unusual or unique issues that might arise.

Hardy did not view the choice of Salter, a Republican appointee and an old buddy of Dean Powell, as propitious.

Taylor put a hand over his wife’s. ‘Do we know him?’

Helen shook her head prettily. Everything she did was done prettily. She was very attractive, Hardy thought, nothing like what he’d imagined a wife of Sal Russo could have been. Not that he imagined Graham’s mother would be unattractive. It was more a matter of style. This woman fit her husband, Leland, to a T. Poised, confident, insincere.

‘Anyway,’ Hardy said, ‘the judge can have some influence, of course, but it boils down to the case against Graham, which fortunately has a lot of holes.’

There was no immediate response to this, although glances were exchanged, some message conveyed. Finally, Helen spoke. ‘Do you think Graham did this, Mr Hardy?’

‘Killed Sal for money? No, I don’t.’

‘It’s absurd,’ Leland said. ‘He could have all the money he wants by simply asking for it.’

‘Which of course he won’t do,’ Helen added. ‘I’m afraid he doesn’t want to feel in our debt, which is I suppose noble enough, but I’m his mother. It would not be debt. Leland and I have discussed this.’

‘But the fact remains,’ Hardy said, ‘he didn’t feel comfortable asking, did he?’ The dynamic, he saw, was transparent enough. There might not be monetary payback, but there would be strings. Lots and lots of strings. Behavior issues, how one acted. And if Hardy knew anything at all about Graham, he wasn’t a string kind of guy.

‘We did help him with law school.’ These petty details seemed distasteful to Leland, but he wanted them on the table. ‘Although that would appear to have been money ill spent.’ A tepid smile. ‘Well’ — he brought his hands together — ‘but that’s not the point, either, is it? We were just rather wondering how Graham was intending to pay you. You’re not doing this, what’s the word, pro bono, I assume?’

Hardy smiled. ‘No. Graham’s paying me. But I can’t really talk about those arrangements without his consent.’