The Second Chair (23 page)

“No,” Treya said. “She was with another guy at the Greek’s and they found him when they went to get their cars.”

“Who was the other guy?”

“I don’t know. I think just some guy. Abe’s going to talk to both of them. He’ll find out.”

Hardy came out of the elevator into the lobby at his office. In the reception area, Phyllis, with a pinched and pained expression, her hands clasped nervously in front of her, stood up and said, “I’m sorry, sir. I told him he couldn’t just walk in, but he said you wouldn’t mind. If you didn’t like it, he said, you could call the police.”

“Who are we talking about, Phyllis?”

“Lieutenant Glitsky.”

Hardy showed a bit of teeth, the ghost of a grin. “He’s a deputy chief now, Phyllis. He thinks the rules don’t apply to him anymore.”

In the office, the deputy chief was on the couch, elbows on his knees. As soon as Hardy closed the door behind him, Glitsky started in. “Why didn’t you tell me last night that Amy Wu had had a major fight with Allan Boscacci yesterday afternoon? About three hours before he died? At the Hall of Justice, which if your memory fails you is about two hundred yards from where he got shot? Did you imagine that this would not be relevant to his murder investigation? Or were you afraid that we would have sweated her on videotape last night, which we absolutely would and should have done?”

“It’s good to see you, too,” Hardy said. “How’s your morning been?”

“Long. Already.”

“You want some tea?”

“I want some answers.”

“Not mutually exclusive. I’m having some coffee.”

“Of course you are. Where’s Wu now?”

From the counter, fiddling with his ingredients, Hardy turned. “I just this minute dropped her at the Hall. I turned her in directly to Lanier so he could get the murder collar and make you look bad, not that you seem to need much help on that score lately. Who put the bee in your bonnet about her?”

“Jason Brandt told Treya about the fight. Evidently a pretty good one.”

“I don’t know him. Brandt.”

“Ask Wu; she does.”

“Oh wait,” Hardy said. “DA up at Youth Guidance? The Bartlett case?”

“Now the Boscacci case.”

“Not.” He turned, pushed the button for the espresso machine, came back around. “Look, Abe. I’m sorry I forgot to mention it last night, but if you recall, there were other things going on at the time. You saw Amy out at the lot. She could barely walk she was so drunk. Ten minutes after you let us go, she passed out on the way home in our car.”

He grabbed his cup, walked over to Glitsky and sat kitty-corner to him. “You know how she got drunk? After her fight with Allan, she went over to Lou’s and started pounding vodka, which she continued to do without pause until she left to go home with Barry or Larry or Jerry or whatever the hell his name was about five minutes before they discovered Allan. Lou’s got six, eight, ten guys who were all trying to get into her pants for four hours in a row and will severally and individually swear that she didn’t sneak out and shoot Allan. I, too, personally promise you that she didn’t either.”

“You still should have told me about this last night. Who we interview, and how, is not your call, Diz.”

Hardy sipped his coffee. “I thought I already had apologized for that, but if not, I hereby solemnly do so again.”

“I’m still going to want to talk to her. Soon. On tape.”

“And she, no doubt, will be thrilled to cooperate in any way she can. Did Mr. Brandt actually accuse her of murder? Did he give you any kind of motive?”

“No. He didn’t even know what he was telling Treya. But when I heard about the fight, I asked around at the Hall. People heard Allan yelling at her way out in the hallway. This was a couple of hours before he got hit.”

“All too true, I’m sure. But I guarantee a complete waste of your time. Wu did not kill Allan, Abe. Is that really the best you’ve got?”

Glitsky sat back, crossed a leg. “We don’t have anything yet. Nothing from the scene except the slug, too deformed for comparison, at least using the computer. Not that we have anything to compare it with. No casing. One witness says maybe a car peeled out of the lot just before it got dark, but he couldn’t even swear to the color.”

“How about Allan’s family?”

“How about them? The wife is sedated right now. Clarence broke the news to her and she dissolved on him. Two kids, eight and ten. Lost. Destroyed. Nothing there.”

A pause. “What was he working on?”

“One active case, that’s it. A murder.” At Hardy’s questioning look, Glitsky explained. “He’s been mostly assigning cases since he moved up to chief assistant.”

“Okay, what’s the murder?”

“You remember, the old guy—Matosian—who poisoned his wife and himself in a suicide pact, but miraculously survived? But the point is there’s no witnesses around that case who’d want him dead. Otherwise, Allan’s played a role in putting away a thousand people over the years. Although you know they never blame the prosecutor. He’s just doing his job.”

“Almost never.”

A weary nod. “I know. We’re going to look anyway. We’re looking at everything.”

“Then you’ll probably find it.”

“Let’s hope,” Glitsky said. “Even though it’s undoubtedly a complete waste of time for everybody, would you please tell Ms. Wu we want to see her at the Hall, as in now? Could that be arranged?”

“Probably. I really did drop her off down there an hour ago to get her car. She was planning to go home and get some sleep, but she might be in your outer office even as we speak, hoping to chat with your august personage-hood. Though you might want to ask around at Lou the Greek’s first. She was evidently the main event there last night. People will remember her.”

“I’m sure they will.” He took a beat. Then: “Do you think it could have been political?”

Hardy’s mouth went tight. “I don’t know, Abe. It’s a reach. The campaign hasn’t even begun yet. And if you want to take somebody out, you take out the candidate, not his eventual campaign manager, wouldn’t you think?” He put his cup down, looked into Glitsky’s face. “But no physical evidence, huh?”

“One deformed slug.”

“Do you ever wish you’d let yourself swear once in a while?”

Glitsky stood up, brushed some imaginary lint from his uniform. “All the time, Diz,” he said. “All the darned time.”

The pale, polished wood of the door to Hardy’s old office upstairs displayed a patchwork of bumper stickers. “Imagine Whirled Peas,” “Kill Your Television,” “Practice Random Acts of Kindness,” “Wouldn’t It Be Great If Schools Had Everything They Needed and the Government Had to Hold a Bake Sale to Build a Bomb?” “Support the Right to Arm Bears,” “Jesus Is Coming and Boy, Is He Pissed.” Perhaps twenty more in the same vein, all of them to go with Wes Farrell’s collection of T-shirts.

For not the first time, as he stared at this monument to the First Amendment right to freedom of speech and expression, Hardy wondered if they’d been smart to bring Wes Farrell aboard as one of the firm’s founding partners. As a business move, it had seemed defensible enough at the time. Farrell had come up the hard way in the legal profession, taking one bleeding heart case after another, forgiving nonpayments even while he was going broke himself.

But, almost in spite of himself, he’d built a practice with solid referrals, a few retained accounts, lots of estate and trust work. Plus, he practiced good lawyering. He helped his clients, cared about them, found his own motivation in their interests. In many ways, leaving his superficial lack of professionalism aside, he was the perfect attorney. He dressed well in court, deferred to judges, respected the clerical staff. And there was no question that now he more than carried his own weight in the firm.

But if Phyllis thought Hardy was slightly out of the lawyer mode, Farrell was well into the lunatic range, although due to his good manners, Phyllis had not yet caught on. And, fortunately for Wes and perhaps the rest of the firm, Phyllis’s entire range of migration at work consisted of the receptionist’s station and the strip of floor between that and the women’s room. She ate and took breaks in her chair in the lobby, surrounded by her phones and the waist-high, polished mahogany, circular cubby Freeman had built for her back in 1985, when he’d originally bought and renovated the building.

So far as Hardy knew, Phyllis had never walked up the fourteen steps to his old office, now Farrell’s domain. He was sure that if she had, they’d have known it because she’d have screamed in dismay before dying of chagrin and mortification on the spot.

Hardy heard Farrell talking within, a telephone call. He tapped once and opened the door. He’d worked in this space for most of a decade and the move from it had been if not traumatic, then at least portentous. A Rubicon of sorts. He’d jettisoned his old desk, his metal filing cabinets, the Sears furniture. He’d come up once after all the stuff had been taken out and stood in the empty room, turning a page in his life.

Now, with Farrell’s furnishings, the place belonged heart and soul to the new guy, and reflected some sense of who he was. The first change—the desk—was so fundamental that Hardy had never even considered it. To him, a desk obviously went in the middle of the room, facing the door. It was the podium from which you conducted business. You could use it to create a sense of distance or formality. Most simply, it held your work stuff.

Farrell didn’t think so. He had placed his in one of the room’s corners, underneath one of the Sutter Street windows. There was a chair behind it, but Farrell almost never sat in it. At the moment, the chair along with the surface of the desk was cluttered with paper—red folders, three-ring binders, yellow legal pads, mail opened and unopened, a month’s worth of newspapers—everything overflowing onto everything else.

The corner desk placement left a relatively vast open space that Farrell had essentially made into an informal living room. When Hardy came in, Farrell was stretched out—tie and shoes off—on the longer couch portion of his green, matching sectional set. In one corner, an overgrown rubber tree draped itself over an arm of his wing chair. A brass and bamboo magazine table held a small television in the other corner. On the wall, where Hardy’s dartboard had presided, Farrell had mounted a smallish hoop for his Nerf balls. Over by the bar/counter, there was still lots of room behind the couch for up to four people to play at the foosball table. On the other wall, by the desk, Farrell tended to use butcher paper on which he would draw flowcharts to track his various cases.

Farrell held up a finger, indicating he’d be a minute. Hardy crossed over behind the couch, picked up two Nerf basketballs from the floor, and took a shot, then another. He retrieved the balls, did it again. After a few rounds, Farrell said good-bye to whoever it was and sat up. “What’s up?” he asked. “Though you’ve got to be quick. I’ve got a client coming up here in ten minutes.”

“So you cleaned up for him?”

Farrell checked all around, looking for a problem, couldn’t find one. “The guy’s been in jail ten of the last twelve years and I’m afraid that in spite of my best efforts, he’s going back soon. This will be the nicest room he’s seen. I like my clients to feel comfortable. So how can I help you?”

Hardy tossed him the ball he was holding. “I can’t find my darts. I wonder if you might have carried them out inadvertently.”

Farrell shot, patted his pockets. “I don’t think so.” He went over and grabbed his jacket, made a show of a search. “Nope, not here either. When did you miss them?”

“Just now. A few minutes ago. I was going to meditate, as I like to do . . .”

“You check your desk?”

“Everywhere. I can’t understand it. I don’t know where they’d go.”

Farrell looked at his watch. “I’m sure they’ll turn up. What were you meditating on?”

Hardy rested a haunch on the back of the sectional. “Allan Boscacci, mostly. Amy a little bit. I’ve hooked up with her on this juvenile case she’s been handling, and not a minute too soon, either.”

“How’s she connected to Boscacci?” Farrell had sat down and was tying his shoes. “Hell of a thing, though, wasn’t it? I think I’m in the minority—I usually am—but I kind of liked the guy. Straight shooter, no bullshit.”

Hardy nodded soberly. “I know. I felt the same way.”

“Anybody have a clue who did it? Or why? Or anything?”

“Not yet. Abe was by here this morning. We exchanged a few bon mots.” Hardy hesitated. “He seemed to entertain the thought that it might have been Amy.”

Farrell stopped with his shoes, snapped his head up. “Get out.”

“That’s what I told him. You know the deal that went south? Allan yelled at her and people heard. But, fortunately or not, Amy was at Lou the Greek’s getting picked up and pasted about the time Allan must have walked by outside.”

“So she’s clear now, right?”

“I don’t think she ever wasn’t. But Abe will get her statement on tape anyway because that’s what he does.” He was still holding one of the Nerf balls and dropped it onto the couch. “But still, on Amy, Clarence also called. He was his usual low-key and polite self, but said that given the history of this Bartlett affair to date with Amy and Allan and all that, he was sure I’d understand why he was pushing for the seven-oh-seven to get Bartlett back into adult court as soon as possible. He couldn’t let people—even my good, well-meaning associates—get away with manipulating his office. Think of the precedent.”

“Think of it,” Farrell said. “How soon?”

“What’s today? Thursday?” Hardy asked. “Next Tuesday. Five days.”

“Five days?”

“That’s what I said.”

“He can’t do that. He’ll hand us an appeal.”

“I said that, too, but I just now checked and there’s no rule says he can’t. So he can. On the appeal, he says there can’t be one since he could have filed on the kid directly as an adult to begin with. He’s taking the position that we can’t base an appeal on some inadequacy in a hearing we should never have had to begin with.”

“But nobody can prepare for any kind of hearing in five days. It’s just not doable.”

“That was more or less his point, Wes. Clarence wants the boy back upstairs where he belongs, and he wants him there now, to remove the taint, as he so delicately phrased it. After that, we can waive time for the Px”—the preliminary hearing—“and take as long as we want preparing for trial. But Andrew’s out of juvenile next week if Clarence has anything to say about it. And then he’s looking at life without.”