The 13th Juror

42

Hardy sensed that he and Walter Terrell weren't friends anymore. He had reached him by telephone at the homicide detail before nine the next morning, and they had had a brief discussion. After Hardy had introduced himself, saying he just had a couple of quick questions, Terrell had replied, "Why don't you take your questions to somebody who gives a shit?" And then the inspector had hung up.

Hardy held the receiver for a long minute, until it started to beep at him. Okay, he thought, I can take a hint.

He had a problem – nobody was going to talk to him. Terrell was the first indication, but as he sat flipping though the interview folders and copies of police reports on his desk, he realized that he had about run out of folks who might be willing to give him the time of day, much less a substantive interview.

Tom and Phil DiStephano – forget it. Nancy – too scared, and rightly so. The Romans – he could go get in Cecil's face, but there was no leverage even if he had a grounded suspicion, which he didn't. There was Sam, the gay receptionist at the Mission Hills Clinic, but that could get awkward and was still once removed from any even remotely potential suspect.

Hardy went downstairs again, watched more World Series action, drank a cup of coffee and schmoozed with Phyllis. David Freeman was in his office this morning but had a client with him and Phyllis wouldn't interrupt, not that Hardy wanted her to. It looked like another murder case. By the way, he'd been working while he'd been at home – she had typed the first papers on the Witt appeal this morning.

The ever-spinning wheels of the law depressing him, Hardy went back upstairs. He threw darts – 20, 19, 18. The numbers falling, the clock ticking.

The only human being left was Ali Singh, the office manager at YBMG. Hardy thought he'd take him out to lunch, see if there was any other avenue he hadn't explored regarding Larry Witt's work. Maybe he had stolen another doctor's patients? Singh's avowal that Larry had been popular with his fellow workers – on reflection – just didn't seem to be possible. The man had been difficult with everyone, and all work environments created frictions. At least it was worth a shot. Not to mention that it was the only shot Hardy had.

Except that Singh no longer worked there.

"Do you have a forwarding number?"

The efficient voice said they weren't allowed to give out that information, which Hardy had somehow known was coming.

"It's very important."

The voice was sorry. There was nothing it could do. Hardy's karma on a negative course.

"Okay, then, how about this? How about I give you my name and number and you call Mr. Singh and ask him if he'd like to call me back?"

"I may be able to do that," the voice said. "I'll check."

Assistant District Attorney (and candidate for Attorney General) Dean Powell and his boss Chris Locke were having lunch together at a corner table fifty-two floors above San Francisco in the Carnelian Room at the top of the Bank of America Building. Powell had asked for the lunch.

The special was Santa Barbara rock shrimp risotto, and both the attorney and his boss the DA had ordered it. Powell had decided he wanted a half bottle of Meursault to go with it. Locke wasn't having any until it was poured, and then he allowed himself to be talked into a glass. They did not click their glasses together.

The upcoming election was now less than two weeks away, and Powell was leading the pack of contenders in the latest poll by four percentage points. After a few minutes of chatter about that, Powell came to the point, filling Locke in on Hardy's visit to his office, the one he had promised not to talk about.

When he had finished, Locke said, "He's only been with Freeman how long and he's pulling this? 'Course, he's capable of doing it all on his own."

Powell nodded. "It's pretty transparent." He stabbed a shrimp. "He tells me his client won't let him bring it up but nevertheless it's the truth and I'm a cretin if I don't believe him."

"Still, though, Dean, this issue has been floating around since the beginning."

"Of course. There's little doubt the woman was hit a few times. But it's nowhere in the record."

"Yes, it is, Dean. At least once."

"Not with Larry. Not with the second husband."

A bit annoyed, perhaps only impatient, Locke snapped, "I know who Larry is." Then, "What's he doing with it? Hardy, I mean?"

"Well, that's just it – he says Jennifer has forbidden him to bring it up in open court."

"He say why?"

Powell shrugged. "She says it gives her a reason to have killed Larry and she didn't do it."

"She's feathering her bed for the appeal." Locke finished his short glass of wine and Powell poured him a little more, to which he did not object.

"That's how I read it, too. She's just stonewalling, and she's smart, figuring if she admits to being beaten she's admitting to the murders."

"I don't think she killed anybody because she was being beaten," Locke said.

"Right. She did it for the money. Twice." Powell looked out over the sparkling city, the view clear to Napa. He sipped at his own wine. "I just wanted to alert you. I think you can expect a personal call from Mr. Hardy, calling on you to tap those reserves of sympathy for which you are so justly famous."

Locke, never able to stand Hardy, allowed himself a small smile. He brushed his lips with his napkin. "If it's not in the record it doesn't exist, Dean. That's how I run my office. Always have."

Powell was satisfied. "Yes, sir, I know." He nodded. Locke held out his glass for the last drops of the Mersault, and Powell poured.

At least Hardy had found a couple of questions he hadn't yet asked. It gave him a glimmer of hope.

Not that this particular question – what was in the Federal Express package and/or who sent it? – appeared to have much to do with the matter. But it might. At this point, he was considering a "might" of resounding relevance.

The files were piled in a half-circle around the periphery of his desk, in places a foot high.

The other consideration that had occurred was Phil DiStephano's co-workers. Glitsky had told him about the redneck feel of the plumbers' workplace. Hardy thought it was at least possible that here, from a pool of blue-collar workers, might surface a moonlighter who augmented his hourly wage by a sub-specialty in taking people out.

Again, this was the long shot to end them all… who said blue-collar workers were disposed to professional killings – and besides, plumbers were not exactly economically depressed. But what else did he have? If he was going on the assumption that Frannie's feelings, convictions, were accurate – which he now was – then he had to have missed something.

When the telephone rang now it startled him. He had been trying to figure out a way to contact one of Phil's friends: Hi, I think one of your co-workers might be killing people on the side. Anybody talk about anything like that? Unlikely.

"Hello."

"Mr. Hardy, is it?" The welcome voice of Ali Singh, to that he was likely to know anything either.

"It's a little late," Hardy said, "but if you haven't eaten yet, I'd like to take you to lunch."

It was a different setting than the Carnelian Room.

The Independent Unicorn was one of those San Francisco coffee houses in the avenues that always seemed to be empty and yet had been operating in the same location for thirty-some years. A postere next to the front door announced poetry readings on Wednesday nights, open-mike music on a few others, randomly. The place had picture windows, but they were covered with paisley cotton sheets, keeping the room suitably dim. There was sitar music and faint smells of patchouli and curry. A shirtless bearded man and a long-haired thin young woman dressed in black were playing chess at the counter.

Singh waved tentatively from his table at the back. Hardy's eyes, not yet adjusted to the light, made out the form, and he moved toward it, knocking into one of the tables on his way. A cat meowed at Hardy's feet and jumped up to the window ledge.

Hardy studied the table, moving on. Singh shook his hand, weakly. The little efficiency expert seemed somehow diminished, beaten down, though he put on a brave smile. When Hardy thanked him for the meeting, Singh said, "It is my pleasure for you to come down. There is not, you see, much…" His voice stopped. He gestured around the room.

"Is this your place?" Hardy asked. "You own it?"

A polite laugh. "Oh, no, no." He leaned forward, confiding. "It is not expensive. They let me sit in here all day sometimes. It is better than being home. It is a place to come to, like work."

The shirtless man had put on an apron for his waiter's duties, and was at their table offering the menu. Espresso, teas, whole grain bread products, lentil soup, brown rice, tabouli. Hardy ordered hummous and a salad. Singh asked if Hardy minded if he had the vegetable curry, at $4.95 the most expensive thing on the menu. Hardy said sure, anything, lunch was on him. Hardy, the sport.

When the waiter had gone, Hardy asked Singh what had happened to his job. Singh smiled sadly. "Well, the business climate, you see…" he began, then trailed off again. He was still wearing his thin tie and his white shirt. The sportscoat was draped over the chair behind him. "No, it is not that. I think it is just greed."

"Greed?"

"No, that is not fair, not right. I suppose it is just business, but I am… I was with the Group for seven years and I thought…" He shrugged.

"What happened?"

"Well, the restructure, yes? The bottom line." Singh drank from his water glass, no ice. "I did not see this coming. It is my fault. I should have known. This is how profit is made – you trim the fat." He laughed. "I never saw myself as the fat, though. You see? I thought I was valuable, providing a service. Now, of course, I see."

Hardy, having read the offering circular three times, was by now familiar with the facts: The Yerba Buena Medical Group had been in the process of changing its status from non-profit to for-profit, for well over a year – the HMO needed to attract capital if it expected to compete for patients, and it couldn't attract capital if it didn't make a profit.

"So they just let you go?"

Singh shrugged. "Somebody else could do it more cheaply. Maybe not so well, I don't know. But I was staff, not a doctor, so…" Another shrug, the conclusion obvious. "In any case, how do I help you? You did not come to talk about me."

Hardy sat back on his chair. "That’s all right, Mr. Singh. I don't mind hearing about you. You might have heard that Dr. Witt's wife was gound guilty of killing hi…"

"No, I did not. I do not follow the news since… his wife…?"

"She's my client. I'm trying to keep her from being getting sentenced to death."

"I do not believe in that. I think execution by the State is just another form of murder."

"Then you might want to help me?"

"If I can. But as I told you, Dr. Witt was respected."

The food arrived, slightly more appetizing than its description. Hardy broke off some pita and dipped it in his hummous. Singh ate hungrily, beginning almost before the food was on the table.

"You also said that you and Dr. Witt had some problems over how money got spent."

"But that was the Board, their decisions. It never came to anything. Dr. Witt did what he did in his office, what he wanted. I think he wanted more say, more control, in how the plan worked, in the decision-making." Singh stopped eating for a second, a smile on his face. "What he would do now, I don't know."

"What do you mean, now?"

"Now there is no Ali Singh to discuss it with. Now, with the takeover."

"You mean the change to for-profit?"

Singh shook his head. "No, Mr. Hardy. That was last March. I had not bought in… almost no one did, but I think Dr. Witt, he would have arguments over this."

Hardy stopped the pretense of eating. He felt a tingling at the back of his neck. "I'm afraid you've lost me. I thought we were talking about the company going for profit."

"Yes, it did that."

Hardy waited.

"And then – this is separate, you see? Later, this summer, the Group was bought."

"Who bought it?"

Singh had finished his curry. He pushed his plate aside. "These are the people who let me go. The insurance people – PacRim. They paid $40 million in cash."

Hardy pushed his own plate away. "$40 million."

Singh was going on. "When it filed with the State for the status change – the fee is to pay the State for your worth – it came to $535,000 dollars. That was the Group's net worth. The offer of $40 million was a great surprise, you see? No one thought the Group had that kind of value."

Somebody did, Hardy thought. No business suddenly discovered its value had increased from $500,000 to $40 million in less than six months.

Yet the offering circular had described YBMG's financial future in the most conservative terms. No sale was contemplated – publicly – last Christmas. There had been no potential buyers and the market had been scoured at the time. The circular had been clear on that. The members shouldn't expect any windfall profit; it probably wasn't even worth the members' time to buy the nickel shares. They'd never be worth any more than that.

The tingling sensation was spreading.

"If I had been a member, I would have bought," Singh said. "Not many members bought but I would have. And everything now would be different."

"The members did all right?" Hardy asked. "The ones who bought in?"

Singh, the accountant, knew the figures. He couldn't help smiling bleakly in admiration. "They offered forty-nine percent to the members, the doctors. That's 140,000 shares at five cents a share. How much you could buy depended on how long you had been with the Group. The most – for any one individual, you see – was 368 shares, which would be a total investment of $18.40."

Hardy remembered that figure – "less than twenty bucks."

"I have been over these numbers so many times," Singh said, "and it is still very difficult to believe. Do you know what a nickel share is now worth?"

"I could do the math."

Singh smiled his sad gentle smile again. "No need, I have done it. One hundred forty-two dollars and eighty-six cents. Per share."

Hardy whistled.

"Fifty-two thousand, five hundred seventy-two dollars and forty-eight cents," Singh said.

"What's that?"

"That's what you have now if you bought your three hundred and sixty-eight shares for eighteen dollars and forty cents."

"Interesting, if true. But so what?"

Freeman was on his own turf. Unlike his austere apartment, the surroundings in his office were sumptuous. A twelve-by-eighteen-foot Persian rug covered the center of the dark hardwood floors; fine leaded crystal was on display on the mirrored shelves behind the fully stocked bar; two original Bufanos and a Bateman hung on the sponge-painted walls. The corner room was large – three times the size of Hardy's – with full bookshelves, two full-size couches, several armchairs. There were drapes – not the ubiquitous louvered blinds – on the three sets of windows. Freeman's desk was a five-by-seven-foot expanse of spotless shining rosewood.

It was six o'clock and Hardy was sitting in one of the armchairs. After his discussion with Ali Singh, he had tried unsuccessfully to reach Donna Bellows again. He had also left a message with Jody Bachman at Crane amp; Crane. Then he had spent an hour or so going over the YBMG offering circular in some detail. In light of what he had discovered with Singh, it didn't read the same way it had.

"So what?" Hardy replied. "So something, at least."

Freeman grunted, handed Hardy a cold beer and went back to the bar, rummaging around down behind it.

"It's a lot of money," Hardy persisted. "It's a hell of a lot of money."

Freeman came up with a bottle of red wine. "I agree." He was taking the foil off. "But again, so what? So a bunch of doctors made a lot of money. Happens every day."

"Not a bunch. Only a few. This accountant, Singh, said he didn't think more than fifteen, twenty guys bought in."

Freeman pulled the cork, sniffed it and laid it on the bar's surface.

He lifted one of the large-bowled crystal wine glasses from behind him and poured himself a quarter of the bottle, holding it up to the window to check its color, its clarity, its legs.

Hardy crossed a leg. "Let me know if I'm bothering you, David."

He sipped at the wine. "Not at all," he said, taking another mouthful, flushing it around his mouth, gargling, finally swallowing. He came around the bar. "The '82 Bordeaux are not overrated. You really ought to try a glass."

Choosing an armchair, placing the glass on a marble-topped end table, he sat down. Hardy defiantly pulled at his beer.

Freeman sat forward. "I would love to put something together here, Dismas, believe me. I'm not seeing it."

Hardy sat back, trying to formulate his position. It would be good practice if he had to present it to Villars, or a jury. Maybe it wasn't as clear as it seemed to him. "Let's be generous. Say a maximum of fifty doctors bought the stock. There are about four hundred doctors in the Group."

Freeman waited, hearing him out, sipping his wine. "Okay?"

"Okay, so from my perspective, and I admit it's almost a year later, the cover letter looks like an outright deception."

"A year ago you hadn't started your first trial," Freeman reminded him. "You didn't work here. You didn't have two children. You'd never met Jennifer Witt, and Larry and Matt Witt were alive." He swirled more wine. "A lot can happen in a year. Perspectives change."

"I think the reason Larry got in touch with his lawyer, and then this guy down in LA, was because he thought something was fishy – back then, and he was calling them on it."

"Calling who?"

"The Board, the attorneys, I don't know. Whoever drew up this thing, whoever concocted the scam."

The bushy eyebrows went up. "Now it's a scam?"

Now Freeman sat all the way back into his chair. "Don't hang your hopes on the way you want something to be, Dismas."

"I don't think I'm doing that."

Freeman shook his head. "You want it to be a scam because if it is a scam – and you can prove it – then, maybe, you can help Jennifer with it. Although how you plan to do even that eludes me." He leaned forward again. "All you can do this round is get the death penalty mitigated. She's already guilty. You can't get her retried."

"If I can get Villars-"

"You're talking about Joan Villars, the Superior Court judge, I presume? Get serious. The woman's about as flexible as concrete. You're not going to convince Villars to do anything."

"So let me try to convince you."

Freeman sat back again. "I've been listening. I think you said fifty doctors bought stock. Continue."

"The reason the other three hundred and fifty did not was because of the wording of this cover-letter and the offering circular. Together, they made this dumb nickel investment sound like a waste of time. Then they sent it out to their doctors during the holidays, when only a few of the guys would be likely to take the time to read it, and limited the option period to about three weeks."

"I'm with you so far. Did Larry buy or not buy?"

"Larry smelled a rat."

"And then?"

"And then he threatened to blow the whistle on this multi-million-dollar scam. That was the call to LA."

Fingers pressed to his eyes, Freeman sighed. "I was afraid that's where you were going."

Hardy had been talked out of enough good ideas by David Freeman over the past weeks. He was not in his most receptive mode. "David, the managing partner in the LA firm handling this was shot to death within a month of Larry Witt."

Freeman tipped his glass. "You said that. I fail to see, though, how any of this is going to mitigate Jennifer's sentence, even if you could get Villars to listen to it, which you can't. You're saying now, I take it, that there was in fact some mysterious hit man, the existence of whom, by the way, the defense – that's us – never hinted at during the trial, and of whom there is no physical evidence."

"That doesn't mean he doesn't exist."

"Do you think he does? You think Jennifer is telling the truth?"

Hardy said he still didn't entirely think that, but the jury might. "I'll let them decide."

"Villars won't let you introduce the theory. And if she'd be inclined to, which she won't, Powell will object and win unless you've got some shred of evidence, which doesn't exist, no doubt because this didn't happen this way."

"Which leaves Jennifer hanging," Hardy said.

Freeman noisily sipped the rest of his wine. "It always has," he muttered.

But he wasn't going to take any more of Freeman's advice, even if it was right. He still had four days, and he thought if he did succeed in finding that shred of evidence Freeman had talked about, he could get Villars at least to listen.

After all, this was a capital case. This was life and death, not some moot-court discussion, not petty politics. If he got something real, he had to believe she would listen to it.

Of course, this did beg the question of whether or not anything real in fact existed, but Hardy had nothing else – he had to assume it did. Somewhere.