John Lescroart (20 page)

Tiny windows, high up in the bare yellow walls, dripped
with condensation and gave a subterranean feel to the place. Even in the daytime, with its long and narrow shape, the bar felt like the inside of a submarine, but by night this feeling was especially pronounced. It is illegal to smoke cigarettes in eating or drinking establishments in San Francisco, yet the air was blue and acrid, thick with tobacco smoke. A few complaints had actually been filed from random walk-in do-gooders, but somehow they'd all mysteriously gotten lost.

Whatever it was that rose from the vats of french fry oil and the hamburger grills back in the kitchen added its own weight and odor to the air. Tonight at 11:51, the temperature outside was forty-four degrees.

It was eighty-six degrees—hot—in the farthest of the six booths from the front door.

In that booth, Dash Logan had removed his coat and draped it over the Naugahyde behind him. The top two buttons on his dress shirt were undone, his tie was loose. Clean-shaven, with a boyish face and perennial smile, he passed in the dim light for mid-thirties. The gold post in his left ear didn't hurt, either. He fancied that the neat, short ponytail and the subtle dye job drew attention away from the fact that the reddish hair was thinning, and he might not have been all wrong.

Certainly, tonight he was doing all right with Connie, and she couldn't have been thirty yet. He'd had his eye on her since she came in with some secretaries he knew from the federal courthouse. She was a first timer here. At least he hadn't seen her before, and he would have noticed. And in this showroom, you didn't waste time if some quality merchandise moved itself out onto the floor. He knew one of the girls with whom Connie—he loved that name even—had come in, and before they knew what had hit them, he got himself introduced and bought a round for the bunch of them.

Connie had undone some of the top buttons on her purple silk blouse, too. She was turned on the seat toward him, and the light material fell tantalizingly away from her breasts. He could just make out the black lace at the
top of her bra. She'd had four whiskey sours since she'd come in.

Just across the table at the same booth, one of Connie's friends had hooked up with another guy—Dash knew him, a young lawyer with the public defender's office, married. They had been talking, yelling over the music, about some
case
for most of the past hour, and it looked to him as though that's where they would stay—she pretending to be interested in his work, him trying to find the guts either to finish what he'd started or to call it a night. Dash thought he probably wasn't up to either.

The problem with youth these days, he thought. In spite of ads exhorting Just Do It! everywhere you turned, they couldn't seem to just
fuckin' do anything
!

This waffling right across the table with one of Connie's own friends could ruin the whole vibe. He'd seen it happen—the girlfriend hits her boredom quotient, looks at her watch and goes, “Oh, Connie, look what time it is. And we've got work tomorrow.” And then they both split.

But Dash was going pretty good here, telling funny stories, keeping Connie laughing, keeping her drink filled. He had a good feeling about tonight, but he had to act before this dweeb across the table ruined everything. He wanted to yell at the kid: “Get a clue. She's half in your lap with four drinks in her and her tits falling out of her blouse. What do you
think
she wants?”

It was time to make some magic. “Connie.” He had to lean in closer to be heard. He kissed the side of her cheek, pulled back. “Sorry,” he said, “I couldn't stand it anymore.”

“It's okay.” She was smiling at him. Perfect teeth. Great skin. One of those terrific northern Italian noses. “That was cute.”

Cute was good, he thought. He'd take cute. “So are you a little warm? You want to go outside and cool off?”

She nodded. “That does sound good, actually.”

“Here, I'll get your coat.”

Her girlfriend noticed. “Where are you going?”

Dash leaned across the table. “Back in five. Promise. Save our places, will you?”

With a light hand on her back, he guided Connie through the crowd, then outside. When the doors to the bar closed behind them, Dash came up beside her. “Loud in there.”

Connie was hugging her arms. “But cold out here.”

He had carried both their jackets out, and helped put hers on. “Better?”

“Some.” But clearly not enough.

With no hesitation, he took his own coat and draped it over her. Jupiter was in an industrial neighborhood and the street was wide, with a railroad track down the center of it. Streetlights illuminated the entire block. It was a cop bar—city services tended to work. The street, though deserted, actually looked inviting.

He held out his hand, she took it and they began to walk.

 

He'd parked two thirds down the street and they stopped to admire his BMW Z3. “Would you like to sit in it?” He opened the door, let her in, went around to his side. It was a convertible, but the top was up, and inside he turned on the motor and the heat. “Okay.” He put on an accent. “You want to kick it up a notch?”

She nearly squealed with delight. “Oh, you watch Emeril. I love him.”

Dash was shaking his head. “Nobody loves him as much as I do. I even love it that there's nobody on the Food Channel anymore except him. Except one other, what is it, the Iron Chef?”

“Something like that.” Connie was into it. “But Emeril . . . let's kick it up a notch. Bam. I love that.”

He reached over and touched her knee. The skirt had ridden up to her mid-thigh. He popped the glove compartment and took out a small vial of white powder. “Kick it up a real notch.” In half a minute, he had poured it out onto the mirror from the glove box and arranged it into four short lines. “Just good old-fashioned nose
candy. I don't want to force you to do anything.” One of the lines disappeared up his nose. “See? Harmless.” Then he made a face, and blew out comically.

She watched him. He finished the second line. “You know, some nights I'll get home all wired and turn on the tube and watch like three Emerils in a row. Now that is loving the man. What I don't understand is how come
he
doesn't get tired. I do three shows in a row at two a.m. and I'm gonna be dragging, I promise.”

“Not with that in you.”

In ten minutes, they were talking about going back to his apartment, which wasn't more than three miles up across Market. “But what about your friend?”

“Oh, she drove. We talked about it. If I'm not there, she'll just go home.”

A
t seven-fifteen on this Tuesday morning, Rich McNeil, bundled in a heavy overcoat, was looking over a guano-stained railing into the green waters of the bay. Farther along the railing, a lone Asian fisherman smoked and walked back and forth, pausing every few steps to tug at one of his lines. In the fifteen minutes McNeil had been waiting, he'd pulled up two small fish and put them in a burlap sack he had suspended into the water.

A light but steady glissando of traffic noise emanated along the Embarcadero, wheels hissing on the dew-slicked cobbles. The water vanished into a moderate fog at fifty yards and somewhere far off seals were barking. Their cries carried over the trackless distance in a symphony of desolation.

Hands deep in his pockets, McNeil shuddered against the chill.

At the sound of footsteps approaching behind him, he turned. “Hey, Diz.”

Hardy wore a raincoat over his business suit. He extended his hand and the two men shook. “This is a cheerful spot.”

McNeil turned his head as though seeing where he stood for the first time. “It is a little bleak, I guess. I've got some deliverables coming in by boat at Pier 18 and I want to be there to meet it. But I wanted to see you first, before work.” He hesitated. “Before I had any more time to change my mind.”

“About what?” Although Hardy had a pretty good idea.

“Well . . .” He took a breath, steeling himself. “I appreciate all you've done for me on this problem with Galt, but I've talked to Sally and we've pretty much
decided to just say the hell with it, sell the damn building, take our money and pay off that bastard just so he'll go away. Maybe the insurance company will cover the civil settlement.”

Hardy had his hands in the pockets of his raincoat. He cocked his head to one side. “Are you sure you want to do that, Rich? Your insurance won't cover it—they'll say the theft charge isn't covered by your policy. It's going to cost you close to what you originally paid for the whole building.”

“Well.” He sighed. “I know, I know. Sally and I were just thinking about what the trial was going to put us through, cost us, all of that. And for what?”

“To keep Manny Galt from shaking you down, Rich. How about that? You didn't do anything he's accusing you of.”

McNeil shook his head wearily. “If we lose, though, I could go to jail, Diz.”

“We won't lose. There's no case.”

A brittle smile. “But you can't guarantee that, can you? You've told me a hundred times, you just can't predict what a jury's going to do. And if they find me guilty, I go down.”

“That's a big ‘if,' though.”

“But it's my life. Why do I want to risk it?”

It was an unassailable point, and Hardy couldn't answer it. Still, it galled and upset him. He jammed his hands farther into his pockets, walked over to the railing and peered down into the waters of the bay, then turned back to his client. “You're just going to let him steal a quarter million dollars from you because he's an asshole?”

A desultory shrug. McNeil was embarrassed by the decision, although that didn't mean he was going to change it back. “The building's going to go for five and a half or six million. That's plenty to live on. I'll put it on the market like everybody's been advising for the last decade. Give the cretin his goddamn blackmail money, well worth it to get him out of my life at last.”

But Hardy just couldn't let it go. “I thought we were
going to press our own countercharges against him. Punish him because he, not you, was the one doing something wrong. If I remember, you were pretty pissed off. You wanted to fight him. So did I. So do I.”

“I know.”

Hardy waited.

His client tried another tack. “It'll cost almost the same as a trial, anyway.”

“No it won't. A quarter mil is about twice as much as a criminal trial would cost you, Rich. At least. Hell, I'll knock my own court appearance fees down to my hourly rate.” Hardy charged private clients three thousand dollars for every trial day in court, far in excess of his hourly rate of two hundred dollars. “If the trial goes a week, that alone will save you a ton.”

McNeil shook his head. “It's not about money, Diz.”

“That's kind of my point, too. Galt is the criminal here. Not you. So why are you the one being punished? After all he's put you through, don't you want to get this guy?”

No answer. McNeil pulled his own overcoat more tightly up around his neck. “So look,” he said, “what do we have to do to get the charges dropped?”

 

This morning, like most mornings, a good-sized crowd waited in a cold and sullen line that extended out the door of the jail and along the outside corridor behind the Hall of Justice.

Jody Burgess wore jeans and a down parka, hiking boots and gloves. She'd been living here now for over a year and still couldn't get used to the California weather. This morning, for example, it felt really cold, arctic cold. Which was funny, because back in Ohio when it was in the mid-forties in February, it felt almost like springtime. People would go out in shirtsleeves, crunching through the snow, commenting about how nice it was, how warm. Here, though, in the damp fog, the cold ate right through to her bones. Even bundled up, she shivered.

Finally, she got inside the lobby to the jail, where it was a little warmer anyway. She gave her name to the
guard and waited some more. She tried not to spend these interminable minutes worrying, or thinking about how all this would turn out. She would just concentrate on trying to be there for Cole, who was a good boy in his heart. He might have made some mistakes, might have some serious problems he'd have to overcome, but he would never intentionally hurt anyone. He was a good boy.

The time came and the guard escorted her down yet another hallway, to yet another dark doorway. She thought there must be at least a couple of visiting rooms—this one felt different from the last one she'd come to yesterday. The high windows let in a different light, although otherwise they were pretty much identical. Twenty-five gray metal chairs on this side of the glass, each one at its own station. All the chairs taken now, except the one to which they were directing her.

She got to the seat and sat down. Cole wasn't across from her yet. She reached out and touched the little mouthpiece embedded in the glass.

Her son.

A guard let Cole through the door on the other side and pointed to the chair opposite her. The boy nodded, shrugged, doing what he was told. He didn't even look to see her—just the chair, where he was supposed to go and sit.

Slack hair, shuffling gait, flat expression. The orange jumpsuit again. Always.

She tried to conjure an image of when he'd been younger—she still had his high school graduation picture on the dresser next to her bed at home. His hair was shorter then, neatly combed. Freckles and a wide-open smile.

Where had that boy gone? Although she knew. She knew.

“Hey, Mom.”

“Hey, Cole.” She waited to see if he had something to say, but evidently not. She leaned forward, her mouth close to the speaker. “Are you all right?”

His first answer was a humorless chuckle, but he didn't
want his mom getting upset, so softened it. “Better,” he said. “Yeah. Fine.”

“Really?”

“Well, the massage girl didn't show up last night, but other than that . . .”

“But they're taking care of you? You're eating?”

He leaned back and patted his stomach. “They're fattening me up for the kill.”

Jody frowned. “That's not funny. Don't say that.”

He came forward again, serious. “It's really not so bad. You just stay out of people's way.”

“But you're getting your . . . medicine.”

“So far.” His flat gaze challenged. “And it's not medicine, Mom. It's methadone.”

“I know that,” she answered quickly. “I know what it is. And you're doing okay with it?”

“It's all right.” He brought his own mouth closer to the glass. “I'm thinking . . .” Nervously, he ran his hand along his jawline.

“What?”

He considered it for another long moment. “Well, I don't know. You know my lawyer?”

“Yes, Cole, I know your lawyer. Mr. Hardy.”

“Yeah, well, he suggested maybe I ought to think about asking them to cut back on the dose. If I wind up being in here awhile, it might . . . I don't know.”

Jody did not dare succumb to hope, but it was the first time she'd been tempted in years. She was careful to try to phrase the reply in neutral terms. Too much enthusiasm from Mom might kill the impulse. “It might be worth a try, Cole, but you've got a lot of other issues you're dealing with through this.”

He leaned back, folded his arms across his chest. A deep sigh escaped. “I'm thinking it might be the only issue.”

She nodded carefully.

“I really do,” he said after a minute. “I mean, it'd be easy enough to try here. If it didn't work, I could just go back to where I am now.”

“Well.” Jody's voice was resigned, low-key. “It's worth thinking about.”

“They've got a program.” Then he added quickly, “I'm not sure.”

She was happy to leave it there. “If you think you could handle it.”

“I don't know,” he said. “Maybe.” He came forward again. “You don't have to come here every day, you know.”

“I know that. But I want to. I like seeing you, after all.” This admission seemed to make him uncomfortable, though, and she changed the subject. “You should know that I'm meeting with Mr. Hardy today to talk about money and things. You don't have to worry. That's all under control.” She glossed over it and kept on talking. “Has he mentioned anything to you yet about what he plans to do? In terms of your defense?”

“Not really. We haven't really talked.”

Jody frowned. “Well, I'll get something on that today, too. But did you see . . . do you get the paper in here?”

He shook his head. “No mints on the pillows before bedtime either. In fact, no pillows. But why?”

She scratched at the counter. “Because there was an article this morning about Cullen.”

“What about him?”

“Well, evidently he's saying he gave you the gun.”

Cole came forward, sat up straight. “What gun?”

“The gun that was used to kill Elaine Wager. The murder weapon.”

“Cullen?”

She nodded.

“He never gave me any gun.”

“Well, in the paper today, there's a story about Cullen giving you the gun.”

“When did he do that? Did it say?”

“Friday or Saturday.”

“Friday or Saturday?” He was trying to dredge it up. “That didn't happen.”

Jody leaned up to the glass, her mouth all but flush
up against the talk box. She whispered, “Are you telling me the truth here, Cole? I want to be able to tell Mr. Hardy . . .”

Cole was glaring, his mind engaged. “I'll tell him myself, Mom. Cullen didn't give me any gun on Friday or Saturday or any other time. I picked that gun up out of the street. It was such a little thing, at first I didn't even know what it was, just sitting in the gutter down next to her and . . .” He stopped. His mouth was open, his eyes searching somewhere within himself.

“What?” For a terrifying moment, Jody thought that her son might have had something like a stroke. “Cole? What's wrong?”

The recovery was as abrupt as its onset. His eyes snapped back into focus, and if his mother wanted to see a greater clarity in them, perhaps she wasn't entirely mistaken. “I didn't kill her,” he whispered in something like awe. “She was already dead.”