The Ophelia Cut (32 page)

“And so it was.” Glitsky scratched at his stubble, grew pensive. “But I bring any of that up, and it leads . . . you know where it leads.”

“Sure. Our friendship, such as it is, and the blatant collusion among all of us. Which is so much crap. It simply never happened, as you and I well know.”

“Right, but the appearance—”

“Never mind that. It’s totally bogus.” After a pause, Hardy went on. “Look, Abe, this is also an opportunity for you to face all those rumors head-on, put them all behind you for good. Here you are, forced out of the job you loved and were good at.”

“Not good enough, evidently.”

“Bullshit. On top of that, the way it happened, your reputation took a pretty good hit as well.”

“Tell me about it.”

“That’s what I’m doing. So you get up on the stand, under oath, and you say the chief overreacted. If they go there, you swear you never called me to tell me how close they were to arresting Moses. The truth, by the way. Oh, and here’s another little something. The Ramey warrant that cut you out of the decision? It also went around Wes and his office. That is, the very office now prosecuting the case.”

“Blood, DNA, eyewitnesses,” Glitsky said.

Hardy, impatient now, shook him off. “All explainable. Plausibly explainable. And two out of three discovered after the arrest. The point is that it puts Stier in the absolutely impossible position of defending his office and his boss for their vigorous prosecution while the record shows that Lapeer believed Farrell was colluding with both of us enough that she couldn’t trust him to be in on Mose’s arrest.” Hardy broke a grin. “I might even call Wes. The DA testifying for the defense! Isn’t that fucking great? Pardon my French. I could go down in legal history. Make Wes swear to the same thing as you. The alleged collusion never happened. We all know each other, sure, but we’re professionals. We’ve all been on the opposite sides of cases before. Welcome to the big city. I really like this. Hell, I
love
this.”

“You’re delusional.”

“I’m not. If nothing else, it gets the truth about you out there. You won’t have to spend the rest of your pathetic life hiding out here in your living room, avoiding your former colleagues, to say nothing of the other blandishments of city life.”

“That’s not—”

Hardy held up a restraining hand. “Please. Find a mirror. Look at yourself. You tell me.”

An uncomfortable silence gathered.

Glitsky made a brief pass at
the glare,
but it didn’t take. In any event, Hardy had seen it too often to be cowed. Seconds ticked on. Glitsky took a breath. “When Lapeer called me in, she alluded to the other thing, too.”

“What about it?”

“Everything about it. The rumor.”

“So what? It’s a rumor. Spread mostly by people who got passed over for promotion because you were better at your job than they were at theirs. This just in—rumors get spread by jealous people who don’t like you. Absent evidence, rational people consider the source and discount the rumors.” Hardy sat back, sipped his tea. “Abe, it’s been almost seven years. If there were any evidence—and I mean the smallest scintilla of evidence—don’t you think something would have happened by now? You know what? There is no evidence. There is never going to be any evidence. Moses got rid of all of it in the deep blue sea, and only he knows exactly where.

“So what do we need to do? We need to get Moses off on this thing so he doesn’t get drunk on pruno in jail and start talking about things he should leave alone. Meanwhile, your testimony discredits Lapeer, weakens Stier and the whole prosecution side, restores your reputation, and gives the jury a passel of other theories they’ll need to consider.”

“I’d hate to go up against you in court,” Glitsky said. “You can wear a guy out.”

“I love that part. It’s why God put me here.”

“What was she thinking?” Glitsky asked.

A
FEW MINUTES
later, Hardy came back in after a pit stop and, as Glitsky was rinsing their glasses in the kitchen sink, started in again without preamble. “There’s one other thing.”

“There always is.”

“This is more in the line of a personal favor.”

“The other one wasn’t? Testifying for the defense? Do you have any idea—?”

Hardy waved him off. “We’ve gone over that. Your testifying restores the order of the universe. Hence, it’s universal. This other thing is a mere bagatelle.”

Glitsky threw his eyes to the ceiling. “Lord spare us.” Then, back across to Hardy, “What?”

“There’s another sideline player. Nothing to do with this case that I know of. You met him at my house once. You might remember. Tony Solaia.”

“Sure. He’s a player in this how, if he’s not in the case?”

“If I knew, I wouldn’t need the favor. You remember how you thought he seemed like a cop, how he talked, carried himself? It turns out you were right. He supposedly worked Vice in Manhattan.”

“That’s hard-core cop. And now he’s a bartender? That’s not the traditional career arc. How’d it happen? Did he burn out?”

“Apparently, he’s a protected witness. Big federal case. Human trafficking, sexual slavery. Huge money.”

“How did you find out?”

Hardy made a face. “He told the Beck in a moment of sensitivity and confidence just before he dumped her for her cousin Brittany.”

Glitsky was drying his hands with a dish towel. He stopped, cocked his head, mute.

Hardy went on. “He’s taken over Mose’s shifts at the Shamrock these past months. He and Brittany are at least going steady, maybe a lot more. I don’t know if you know, but she’s my goddaughter as well as my niece, and I feel a little responsible for her. Hell, a lot responsible for her, although maybe I shouldn’t. She’s a grown-up, after all. But after all she’s gone through and is still going through with this trial . . .” Hardy sighed. “At least I don’t want her to get caught up with some guy who may not be what he says he is.”

“You think that?”

“I don’t know. I was going to check him out when all this first came up, but the trial went into overdrive, and here I am, nowhere.”

“What about Wyatt Hunt? Isn’t this why you have a PI on standby? Didn’t you put him on it?”

Hardy nodded. “He tried under both names. Tony’s real name, or maybe not, is Tony Spataro, though that appears to be an alias, too. There’s no record of him—cop, foot soldier with the Mob, nothing. The case, if there is a case, is sealed back east until they’re ready to move. It’s not in any of Wyatt’s databases, and as I say, the whole environment is federal, and you know how they’re always bending over backward to be helpful, especially to defense attorneys, especially the marshals.”

“What do you think I can do if Hunt can’t get anywhere?”

“I thought you’d never ask. You, as a law enforcement person, have had professional dealings with the FBI, have you not? More than a few.”

“Yep. Bill Schuyler.”

“I thought you might ask him what he could find out.”

Abe folded the dish towel and carefully draped it over its rack. “Bill and I are not what I’d call intimate, Diz. He’s not going to give up a witness because I ask him. They invest a lot of money in these people and take pride in never having lost one. The marshal might not even tell Bill. Probably wouldn’t.”

“I love that can-do attitude. It’s kind of inspiring.”

“I’m just telling you it probably won’t happen.”

“Not unless you figure out some way it will.”

F
IRST THING THE
next morning, Saturday, Hardy was breakfasting at home and got a phone call.

“Mr. Hardy. Winston Paley here. I’m sorry to bother you on the weekend, but something’s come up that might be a bit of a problem, and I thought we might need to discuss it right away.”

Paley, a psychologist who specialized in the reliability of eyewitness testimony—a crucial element of this trial—was a professional expert witness who was charging Hardy thirty-five hundred dollars for each day of his testimony, whether or not that testimony took all day, or parts of two or three days, or indeed, whether he was used at all. If he was in the courtroom, he got paid. If he flew up to San Francisco and wasn’t used, he got paid. If he cleared his schedule and did not need to fly up, he got paid. He was a big, charming man, loud and florid, and a brilliant marketer, salesman, and—by reputation—witness. Hardy had never used him, but they’d taken a half day of prep together (two thousand dollars, not including Hardy’s flight to L.A. and back), and Paley had impressed him.

Hardy’s gut twisted as he put down his coffee cup. “Whatever it may be,” he said, “I’m sure we can work it out. What’s the problem?”

Paley said, “I had it calendared that you would be calling me starting Monday of next week, nine days from now.”

“Right.” Hardy didn’t have to look it up. “That’s what I’ve got.”

“Yes, well”—the good doctor cleared his throat—“the fact is that I’ve been invited to be the keynote speaker at an international seminar being held in Zurich all of that week. I was their second choice, but unfortunately, the colleague who was originally scheduled has suffered a stroke and will not be able to attend. I don’t want to be coy with you, Mr. Hardy, but the honorarium I’m being offered is seventy-five thousand dollars,
and I don’t see how in good conscience I can afford to turn them down.”

Hardy had no problem seeing how Dr. Paley could in good conscience turn them down. In good conscience, he had already committed to Hardy, they had a signed contract, backed up by the money that had already changed hands. That was how. And he was sorely tempted to say as much. But before he could force a word out through his shock and dismay, the man was going on, addressing that very issue. “I’ll be happy to refund you for the moneys you’ve paid me to date. I truly regret this turn of events, but this is an opportunity that I can’t pass up. I don’t suppose there’s any way you can get a continuance?”

“Unlikely,” Hardy said. “In fact, not a prayer in hell with a jury sworn. We gave opening statements yesterday. We’re already under sail.” Even on the weekend, Hardy was in trial mode, which came with a heightened sense of awareness to unimagined possibilities, and his next words fell from his lips without a moment of conscious forethought. “What are you doing this Monday? Day after tomorrow?”

A pause. “I believe I have some patients.”

“Could they be rescheduled?”

“Yes, I believe they could. Nothing’s life-threatening.”

“Would you be willing to do that if I could get permission to have you testify on Monday?”

“Certainly. That’s an elegant solution. Can you get the court to go along?”

“I’m not worried about the court. I’m worried about the DA. But I don’t see why it would matter. The jury’s going to hear your testimony one way or another. Basically, it’s background information. Why would they object to letting it in first?”

“I don’t really know. It hasn’t come up in my experience.”

“Well, give me a few hours. I’ll get back to you.”

When Hardy hung up, Frannie came in and poured some fresh coffee into his cup, then pulled out a chair and sat. “That sounded ominous.”

“That was Paley, my eyewitness expert. He got a better gig in Zurich and decided to take it.”

“In Zurich?”

“Don’t ask.”

“Can he do that? Don’t you need him?”

“I think I do need him. I’m certainly paying him as if I need him. I could probably get the judge to issue an order compelling him to appear, but what good would that do me? The whole idea is he’s supposed to be on our side, and if we take away his big paycheck—which is not the one we’re giving him—he’s going to be resentful, if not actually hostile.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“Try to get Stier to let him in on Monday. If he doesn’t object, the judge will probably let it go.”

“So you’re going to be on the phone a while?”

“Why? Do you need something?”

“No. Well, yes. It can wait. If you need to make your calls.”

“Just one,” Hardy said. “Stier.”

“What about the judge?”

Hardy shook his head. “Ex parte. Can’t do it.” In any criminal case, all discussion with the judge had to have both attorneys present. “That’s not happening until Monday morning.”

“Won’t that be too late? If the judge says no and your guy is already up here?”

“Then Paley won’t testify and I lose thirty-five hundred bucks, plus hotel plus airfare plus car rental, but who’s counting?”

“All that, and Moses won’t get his expert, either.”

“True. In which case, I’ll probably ask for a mistrial.”

“And start over? And Moses stays in jail while all that goes on again?”

Hardy sat back, leveled his gaze at his wife. He put his hand over hers and squeezed it gently, spoke in his mildest tone. “He’d better get used to being in jail, Frannie. Expert witness or not. I’m doing my damnedest to keep him out, but he’s got himself in a pretty deep hole, you must admit.”

Frannie sighed, looked around the dining area, came back to her husband. “You always say you don’t want to hear the actual truth, that it doesn’t matter. But it does.”

“Agreed. The truth matters.”

“Well.” She paused. “He didn’t do it, you know.”

Still gently, Hardy pulled his hand away from hers. Crossing his arms, he said, “We’re talking about killing Rick Jessup?”

She nodded. “He didn’t.”

“He’s never mentioned that to me.”

“You keep telling him you don’t want to know. You stop him if he starts to say. You say it doesn’t matter, that you just argue the evidence.”

“All true. I don’t want to fit his lying into my motivation to get him off.”

“What if it isn’t a lie?”

“What makes you think it wouldn’t be?”

She hesitated for a long moment. “He told Susan. Just yesterday. After the opening statements. She went to see him, and he told her he didn’t realize how bad it looked for him until he heard Stier lay it all out.”

“He should have. I’ve told him a hundred times.”

“I don’t know. Maybe it didn’t hit home before. But yesterday it finally did. So she flat-out asked him how he could have done it, put the family in that much jeopardy, risked their marriage. She told him that even if you got him off, she wasn’t sure she could be with him when he got out. And he just told her.”