The First Law (26 page)

“It’s funny you should say that, because just this afternoon I did, and he didn’t.”

The frown grew deeper. “What did you say, exactly? Maybe he didn’t realize it was personal.”

Hardy raised his shoulders an inch. “He knew it was David. That’s close enough. He knows the lawsuit is my case now. He’s even the one who got me really considering Panos.”

“Well, that’s helping you.”

“Okay, as far as that goes. But he’s not intervening with any other cops, I’ll tell you that. It was loud and clear. Not his job.”

Frannie was swirling her own glass. “So who’s investigating what happened to David? Have you talked to him?”

Surprised, Hardy sat back in his chair for a moment. Sometimes the obvious solutions could be the most elusive. Everything he’d told Frannie about the police prejudice against defense attorneys was absolutely true, but just that morning he’d actually encountered a great deal of cooperation from Hector Blanca. Maybe the General Work inspector would be the exception that proved the rule.

In their conversation back then, Hardy hadn’t even mentioned Panos in the Freeman context because it had been the barest wild notion on his part, with nothing to support it. But since then he’d learned about Matt Creed and his undeniable connection to the Patrol Special. It wasn’t much, but if Blanca in fact wanted to find David’s assailants—not a sure bet by any means—Hardy thought that with suitable up-front disclaimers, he might get him to listen.

“What?” Frannie asked. “What are you thinking?”

“Just that sometimes you’re a genius. You’re right. Freeman’s guy—his name’s Blanca—he might look.”

“Why wouldn’t he, Dismas? It’s his job, isn’t it?”

“Yep,” Hardy said. “Sure is. And guess what? It’s still his job, whether he does it or not.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, it means he’s got a guy beating his neighbor up, let’s say, or there’s a fight in a bar. Both cases, and most of his other cases, he’s got a victim and a suspect who’s got a motive. With an apparently random mugging case like Freeman, and leaving me and my ideas out of it, the odds are good to great that they’ll never, no matter what, get to base one about who actually did it, so every minute Blanca spends looking is potentially a pure waste of his time.”

Frannie stared disconsolately at the tablecloth between them. “And even if they find him, it doesn’t help David, does it?”

At the truth of that, the futility of the entire discussion, Hardy blew out heavily.

The waiter returned with their plates to a silent table. Picking up the mood, he said nothing as he checked the basket of bread and placed the antipasto platter between them—olives, red and yellow roasted peppers, anchovies, salami, caponata. The restaurant was one of their favorite places and the antipasto a long-standing traditional beginning to their meals here, but neither Hardy nor Frannie reached for a bite. After a minute or so, Frannie sighed and took a tiny sip of her wine. “It seems a shame to come to a great place like this and not want to eat. Should we just pack it up and go home?”

But they didn’t get to go straight home.

They’d found a parking place three blocks straight up the hill, in a dark stretch of Union Street above Grant. The wind was cutting into them, even huddled together, and they leaned into it as they walked. Neither really looked up or paid much attention until they came up near their space.

Hardy drove a five-year-old Honda on which he had long ago disconnected the alarm, since alarms only went off by mistake, anyway, never to alert you of anything.

But this time it might have been worth having.

The front windshield had been completely and thoroughly smashed. There were four or five obvious impact points—two of them had pierced the safety glass. The rest of the window was a network of web-like fissures—white lines in the distant dim light from Washington Square down the street.

“Oh, God!” Frannie said, her hand over her mouth.

Hardy didn’t hear her. He was caught up in his own reaction, a veritable flash flood of unleashed obscenity. Spinning all the way round in frustration and anger, he whirled again and threw a vicious backhand fist up against the windshield, spraying more glass inside the car and onto the street. Another spasm of swearing overtook him as he was cupping his bleeding hand against himself, and again he lashed out at the windshield. The immediate anger spent now, he leaned heavily with his one good hand on the car’s hood, ragged and desperate gasps punctuated by staccato exhalations.

Frannie had found that she’d backed herself against a building. Shivering in her heavy coat, she couldn’t have said whether it was the biting wind or the chill of fear. Her husband’s reaction struck her as more upsetting and in some ways almost worse than the vandalism itself, the violence and obscenity so unlike him. Under normal circumstances, something like this—a car window smashed—would make Dismas mad, of course; he’d be scathing in his wrath for a while, and probably funny about it. But that was nothing like this, nothing close to how she’d just seen him. Whatever this was, it had rocked Dismas to his core.

Coming forward tentatively, she reached out and touched the windshield briefly—it crinkled almost like cellophane as some glass chipped off onto the dashboard inside. Involuntarily, she backed away a step, another one. “Dismas, what is this?”

His face was as grim as his words. “This,” he said, “is a warning.”

“Against what?”

“Me. The lawsuit.”

She didn’t know what to say to that. He was obviously reeling from David. Of course that would occur to him, but she didn’t think there was any way he could be certain. But this was no time to argue, or even discuss. He was too wrought up and, obviously, in pain. Moving close next to him, she put a hand on his back. “Is your hand all right?”

It was Frannie who took control, getting the passenger door for her husband, helping him inside. Eventually, they were both inside the car against the wind. They turned on the engine for the eventual heat to kick in. Now her husband sat beside her, unspeaking, cradling his injured left hand. She finally ventured a suggestion. “We ought to call the police.”

It didn’t call for a reply, and none came. Frannie got out the cell and reported their problem and location, then called her brother at home to ask if he’d like to come and get them. All the while, Hardy sat ramrod straight, well back in the passenger’s seat. He stared straight ahead through the kaleidoscope of broken glass.

Since they were patrolling in North Beach anyway, the squad car got there in under ten minutes. By the time Hardy saw the red-and-blue lights turn up at the corner, he felt he could face another human, talk with some semblance of reason. He and Frannie opened their doors and were standing out in the street as the two uniformed officers—Reyas and Simms from their name tags—approached them.

It was obvious enough what had happened, and the officers took their statements with professionalism and even sympathy. While Simms went back to his car to call the towing service, Reyas began walking around the car with his flashlight. He hadn’t gotten very far when he stopped and leaned over for a closer look at the hood. “This looks like blood here,” he said.

“It is,” Hardy said. “It’s mine. I lost my temper and popped the windshield.” He held up his hand. “Not my finest hour,” he added, “or my smartest.”

Reyas nodded, shifted his attention to Frannie. “Mrs. Hardy,” he asked, “you two haven’t been fighting, have you?”

The question surprised her and instinctively she threw a look at Hardy before coming back to Reyas. “No, sir. We were just coming back from dinner, as we said. At Fior d’Italia.”

He appeared to be considering something. Coming back around the front of the car again, he sprayed his beam over them both. “Mrs. Hardy,” he said. “Would you mind accompanying me for a minute over to the squad car?”

Again, she looked at Hardy, and though not happy about this development, he nodded once. “It’s okay.”

He turned and watched them walk away. Hardy knew what was happening here. Officer Reyas wanted to get Frannie alone so she could answer a question or two without interference or coercion from her husband. He also wanted some better light—the squad car was parked directly under a streetlamp—where he could observe her more closely to see if she had any visible bruises. If it seemed that the broken windshield was really part of a violent domestic disturbance, Hardy knew they’d handcuff him and take him downtown. As well they should, he thought.

But they wouldn’t find anything to indicate that.

His hand was throbbing now. Looking down, trying to make it into a fist, he realized that he might have broken a bone in his little finger. The blood had mostly dried by now, but even with the cold, the swelling was substantial. The pain and this inconvenience to him and to Frannie struck him as being a two-pronged and just sentence for having been such an idiot.

A fierce and quite deadly calm settled upon him. He
knew
without any doubt what this had been here tonight. It was part of David and perhaps part of Creed. His earlier explosion was the wrong use for his really unprecedented anger. The calm would serve better.

He looked again across the street. Reyas and Simms were both talking to Frannie and fortunately, Hardy thought, his fiery, redheaded wife was keeping her own famous temper in check. After perhaps three minutes, both policemen escorted her back to where he waited. Frannie had evidently explained to them that Moses was on his way to pick them up.

But they weren’t done yet. Simms had a notepad out. “Mr. Hardy. Your wife tells us you’ve got some suspicion of who might have done this?”

Hardy struggled for a genial tone. “Some,” he said. “I’m suing somebody. If I win, and I will, they’re out of business.”

“You want to give us a name?”

“I could, but it wouldn’t do you any good. He wouldn’t have done this himself. He’d have sent one of his men.” He drew a breath to maintain his control. “And there won’t be any evidence here. They wouldn’t have touched anything. The windshield looks like your traditional blunt object.” He indicated the car. “You can see where they hit it.”

“Yes, sir,” Simms said. “But if you want us to include anything specific in our report, now is the time. As you say, there’s a chance we won’t get anywhere with an actual investigation on this incident, but it would be good to have a name if something else happens later. You call us and say, ‘This is the second time,’ and somebody’s going to wonder why you didn’t report the first one.”

“What do you mean, if something else happens?” Frannie asked.

The two cops looked at each other. Surely this was clear enough. But Hardy saved them from having to answer. “Nothing’s going to happen,” he told his wife. “They see they’re not scaring me off and they’ll stop trying.”

“Like they did with David?” she asked with some asperity.

“Who’s David?” Reyas asked.

Hardy sighed. “My partner in this lawsuit. David Freeman. He got beaten up last night. He’s still hospitalized.”

“In a coma,” Frannie added. “In critical condition.”

Again, Reyas and Simms consulted silently. Finally, Simms tapped his notepad. “Maybe you better give us a name,” he said.

Moses McGuire arrived a little after the tow truck, and after the Hardys’ car was on its way, he packed the two of them into the cab of his pickup. It hadn’t been a cheerful ride back from North Beach, but Moses had talked them into stopping by his bar to eat their dinner and calm down. Now he’d plied his sister with wine and Hardy with some first aid for his hand and then a double martini. Most of the immediate tension had passed. They were eating their Fior d’Italia antipasto at one of the coffee tables at the back of the Little Shamrock.

McGuire tipped up the last of his scotch. “I’ve got an idea,” he said.

“Ideas are good,” Hardy said. “I’d take an idea.”

“Paul!” McGuire called to the bartender and held up his empty glass, pointing at it. Then, back to Hardy, “Where does Panos live?”

“Uh-uh.” Frannie shook her head. “Bad idea.”

“No, really,” Moses said.

“No really yourself. You don’t escalate things.”

“You don’t? Why not? I think it’s a fine idea. Drop by his place, pop a window or two, have a little fun.”

Hardy thoughtfully chewed an olive. “It does have a quaint sort of in-your-face appeal.”

McGuire was getting into it. “Especially if I just do it and don’t even tell you.” He smiled at his sister.

She put down her wineglass. Her face had gone hard. “Don’t even think about it. I mean it, Moses.”

She turned to her husband for support, but he just shrugged. “I can’t control him, Fran. He’s a big boy.”

“Boy is the key word.” Then, to her brother, “You just don’t do this.”

McGuire got his new drink. Service tended to be good for him at the Shamrock. But he hadn’t lost the thread. “So what do
you
recommend?”

The question seemed to fluster her. “I don’t recommend anything. The police said they were going to look into it.”

McGuire barked a deep and scathing laugh. “And then, when they find nothing, what?”

“Maybe they’ll find something,” Frannie said.

“She’s right,” Hardy said. He’d had enough discord for one night. Moses and Frannie were threatening to really go at it, and he thought he’d try to slow them down. “Maybe they will, Mose. It could happen.”

A couple of scotches now into the wind, McGuire fastened a cold eye on Hardy. “Traitor. And how, pray, is it going to happen? One of Panos’s guys leave a card in the gutter?” He took in both of them. “Get real, guys. You’ve already told me that they don’t have anything on who beat up your Mr. Freeman, and he’s a moderately important person. You think they’re even going to look with your stupid
car?
This, my naive friends, is not going to happen.”

“My car’s not stupid,” Hardy replied. “In fact, now that I think of it, it’s smarter than some of my clients.”

“Go ahead, Diz. Make a joke of it. I don’t think it’s funny.” McGuire put a spoonful of caponata on some focaccia and stuffed it into his mouth. “These guys really piss me off.”