The First Law

11

The night before, Hardy drove twice around the downtown neighborhood and could not find a place to park even quasilegally. Nearly out of his mind with frustration and worry, he had finally given up and driven the extra few blocks to his own office, where he had his own spot under the building. Back up on the street, he'd run back to the emergency room entrance of St. Francis Memorial Hospital, where Gina Roake had stood waiting by the admitting station.

"How is he?"

Her face was blotched, but she held it now under tight control. "Not good. He's been in there for two hours. He's still unconscious. They won't let me in."

"What happened?"

"Somebody beat him up, Dismas. I'd been home an hour and some policemen knocked at the door. He had his wallet on him, which had his driver's license with the address, and…"

"He had his wallet? Was there still money in it?"

"I don't know. I didn't even…"

She caught Hardy's shift of focus and turned. A young woman in green scrubs had come out into the waiting room. Roake touched his arm and went to her. He followed, noting with a sinking heart the grave look on her face.

"We've done all we can for the moment," she was saying. "We'll be bringing him to the ICU, where we can keep a close eye on him."

"But how is he?" Gina asked.

The young doctor's eyes quickly went to Hardy, came back to Gina. "He's taken quite a beating. He's got severe head trauma and internal bleeding and he hasn't regained consciousness." She took in a deep breath and let it out. "I'd have to call his condition critical."

Roake closed her eyes. Her shoulders seemed to collapse. After a short moment, she opened her eyes and nodded. "Is there anything at all I can do?"

There wasn't. The doctor said she had to go and supervise the transfer to the ICU, and she went back behind the door to the ER.

Without a word, Roake and Hardy sat down next to one another on the waiting room chairs. To his surprise, Hardy realized that they weren't alone in the room-a young black woman rocked a baby across the room and stared into empty space in front of her. An elderly Asian man was reading a newspaper.

A young person let out an agonizing moan somewhere behind them, and sirens cried somewhere close in the night.

After a minute, an orderly came out holding a large plastic sack. He looked around and came over to them. "Are you with Mr. Freeman? I've got some of his personal effects that you might want to take."

Roake reached out for the bag, and for the first time Hardy noticed the ring-twice the size of Frannie's diamond, newly mounted and bright. She opened the bag and looked inside, then closed it back up. "His good suit," she said as though to herself. "I bought it for him." Turning to Hardy, her lip quivered for an instant. She bit down on it. "How could this happen?" she asked. "Who could have done this to him?"

After a sleepless night, Hardy's first stop at a little after 6:00 a.m. this morning had been the hospital again. It was still long before visiting hours and though he believed he had no chance to get in and see Freeman, he knew he'd get more information talking to a human being than to a voice on the telephone.

Sure enough, at the nurse's station, he had learned that Freeman's condition was unchanged from the night before, but that at least there had been no deterioration. He was no more critical than he'd been. Armed with that news, he walked down the hallway and looked in on the ICU waiting room, where the nurse had told him another of Freeman's visitors had spent the night.

Roake clearly hadn't spent it sleeping either. Alone in the room at this time of the morning, she'd aged five years in the past six hours. Her eyes were heavy, red-rimmed, her hair all over the place. As Hardy got to the door, she was running her hands through it as though trying to still the ravages of a severe headache.

Seeing him, she stood and walked over, put her arms around his neck and sagged for an instant. He saw the plastic bag that held Freeman's suit on the floor next to the couch where Roake had been sitting-she really hadn't gone home.

After they'd sat, Hardy delivered the latest prognosis in the best possible light, then asked if he could do something for her, drive her home, anything.

Her first reaction was to shake her head as though she didn't understand the question. A random syllable escaped, stopped again. She ran a hand through her hair again, squeezed at her temples. "I suppose I've got to get to my clients. I know there's something this morning, but… but that's not you, is it? I'd better leave a message for Betsy." She looked out beyond Hardy. "It's morning already, isn't it?"

"Getting there," Hardy said. "You ought to go home and get some sleep, Gina." It was hard advice but she had to hear it. "Nothing's happening here. The nurse told me this could go on for a while."

"I know." Then, again, "I know. I just wanted to stay. I thought

…"

He waited, but no further words came. "I can drive you to David's now," he said. "You get a little sleep, call your office when they open. If they need you here, you can be back in five minutes. How's that sound?"

She was perfectly immobile for half a minute or more, then finally let out a heavy breath, reached for the plastic bag, stood up. "You're right. You talked me into it."

Fifteen minutes later, he couldn't believe the amount of legal curb that was available just around the corner from the Hall of Justice. Then he remembered, of course, the time. But he'd wanted to get down here if he could while someone from the night shift might still be in the building.

Miraculously, he was talking to Inspector Hector Blanca within ten minutes, Blanca was a dark-skinned Hispanic sergeant with the General Work Detail and he'd pulled the call on the Freeman beating. It was not only fresh in his mind, he was reviewing the incident report, written by the patrolman who found Freeman, as Hardy got to his desk. After the introductions, and Hardy's reassurance that he was a friend of Abe Glitsky and used to be a cop himself, that he wasn't some ambulance-chasing dick of an attorney looking to make trouble, Blanca must have decided it was okay to talk. "So, this man Freeman. He was your partner?"

Technically David wasn't, but Hardy didn't think it mattered. "I hope he still is."

The sergeant grimaced. "Sorry. I didn't mean that. What's the word at the hospital?"

Hardy told him, but he'd come to Blanca to get information, not give it. "His fiancee, Gina Roake, told me he still had his wallet. That's how you guys knew to come to his house."

"That's right. Beat him near to death, but didn't take his wallet, his watch, nothing."

"Was there money in it?"

Blanca tried to keep his face neutral, but it wanted to react. "Six hundred fourteen dollars, right there in the regular section."

Hardy sat with that a minute. "So it wasn't any kind of robbery. You saw him. What was it about?"

"I've got no idea. It was about as brutal as I've seen. He fucking somebody's wife, anything like that?"

"No," Hardy said.

"What I mean is, maybe if it was personal…"

"Yeah, I know. I can't think of anything-" He stopped.

"What?" Blanca asked.

"I just thought about this pretty ugly lawsuit we're working on. But I've never seen anything like that before and I've been practicing twenty years."

Blanca gave him another chance. "You sure? I'll grab at anything."

But after another minute with it, Hardy shook his head. "No. Couldn't be."

"All right. But whatever it was, let me tell you, this was deliberate damage. Boots and blunt objects. Not just fists."

Hardy didn't want to think about Freeman lying helpless, curled on himself, as a group of vicious assailants worked him over. "So there was more than one guy?"

A shrug. "I can't say for sure, but I'd bet on it." He drummed his ringers on his typewriter keys, then met Hardy's eye. "I guess there's no nice way to put it, sir. Whoever it was, these guys left him for dead."

"But took nothing?"

He shook his head. "Nothing obvious, at least."

"So what's that leave?"

Blanca frowned in concentration. "It leaves the whole universe, to tell you the truth. People nowadays, you wouldn't believe how many are just nuts."

"I bet I would. You think it was just some kind of rage?"

"It looked like that, but who knows? It might have been just for the thrill." Something seemed to nag at him. "An old guy like this, though? It doesn't make any sense, not that it has to. Tell you what I'll do. I'll pull some other reports from the general vicinity. Maybe come up with something similar. MO. Something."

"Thanks," Hardy said. "I'd appreciate it."

Okay, Hardy told himself. He'd done his little bit with detective work, and without any conclusive results, but the real reason the hospital and the Hall had had to come first and early this Wednesday morning was because he had to get to his office.

Freeman amp; Associates kept formal hours, from 8:30 to 5:30. Like most law firms, F amp;A expected its associates to bill two thousand hours every year. With a two-week vacation, that computed to forty billable hours every single week, even weeks where there was a holiday or two. Working at perfect efficiency, the best attorneys could perhaps get all their administrative and other unbillable work, such as lunch for example, done in two hours every day. This meant that, if they did not double-bill-if discovered, a firing offense at Freeman's-associates averaged about ten hours at their desks every single day, often working weekends to make up for holidays or the rare day off when they needed to bill but the office was closed.

The awesome burden of billing two thousand hours was perhaps the main reason Hardy had never joined Freeman's, or any other, firm. Not that he didn't work round the clock and then some when he needed to, but at least in theory-though meeting his monthly nut kept it from being his common practice-he could make his own decision to put in fewer hours and therefore make less money. This wasn't an option for Freeman's full-time associates. But since it was the norm everywhere else, what were they going to do?

So although it was still a few minutes short of 8:00 a.m. when Hardy walked up the stairway and entered the lobby, the place wasn't deserted, but the somber tone was decidedly unusual. Word must have gotten out.

At the receptionist's desk, although Phyllis wasn't in yet, they had the radio tuned to the all-news station. A group of maybe ten associates stood around, listening, murmuring. Hardy knew three of them quite well-Amy Wu, Jon In-galls and Graham Russo-and Russo broke from the knot when he saw Hardy. All the other eyes followed him. "Do you know anything about David?" he asked. "Amy heard the end of something in her car, but…"

Russo and everyone else could tell from Hardy's expression that what Wu had heard was both true and bad. The knot coalesced around him and Hardy gave them the very short version and answered as many questions as he could. While he was in the middle of one of them, Phyllis came up the stairs behind him-her usual grim-lipped, uptight self. She stood behind Hardy for a moment, clearly perplexed at the gathering.

Hardy stopped midsentence and, cued by his audience, turned. "What's the matter?" she asked. "What is this about?"

"David's in the hospital," Hardy said simply. "Somebody beat him."

"What do you mean, beat him? He's not in trial."

"Not that kind of beat. Somebody mugged him, beat him up."

For a long moment, she still appeared not to comprehend. Finally, she backed up a step and put a hand over her heart. "Why? I mean, is he all right?"

"I was just telling the folks here. It's bad. He's unconscious."

Phyllis looked down to Freeman's office door as though she expected him to appear from behind it. One of the associates yelled from back at reception. "Here it is, here it is!" And as a body, the mass of people turned and fell silent.

"… flamboyant and famous attorneys in the city was found beaten last night a few blocks from his home. Police have no known motive yet in the brutal attack, which has left Mr. Freeman in critical condition at St. Francis Memorial Hospital. Robbery doesn't seem to have been a factor, although police are refusing…"

Hardy and the rest of the associates all missed the rest of the report. At the word "critical," Phyllis had uttered a small cry and crumpled to the ground.

In his office, Hardy had three voice mails from Jeff Elliot, his friend and the writer of the "CityTalk" daily column for the Chronicle. They shared the basic information that each had independently gathered; then Elliot asked, "So where does this leave you?"

"You mean me personally or the firm here?"

"Both."

"Well, he's the rainmaker here, so people are freaked. If he's even out for a couple of weeks, the work dries up. Phyllis fainted. You know he'd just asked Gina to marry him?"

A short silence. Elliot, Hardy knew, trying to digest it. "What'd she say?"

"She said yes. He gave her a ring."

Another pause. "Was she seeing anybody else?"

"Who'd want to kill David and thereby eliminate the competition? I don't think so. She was at the hospital all night."

"Still…"

"I think it's a dry well, Jeff, but you can ask her if you want."

Elliot seemed to accept that. "So how are you doing?"

"I'm worried. Unconscious isn't good. They're saying critical, and the nurse this morning wasn't what you'd call optimistic. Blanca-you know Blanca-he seemed to think that whoever did it meant to hurt him bad at least."

"What for?"

"No theories. Not robbery, unless he was carrying something unusual with him, which he never did. But not his wallet, not his watch-a Rolex by the way."

"So what do you think?"

"I'm totally stumped. At the moment, I'm tempted to think it might even have been random. Easy target. Cheap thrills. It's been known to happen. Hey, I'm getting another call. You want to wait?"

"No thanks. I'm crankin' here. I hear anything, I'll let you know."

"Dismas Hardy," he said, punching into his call waiting.

"Diz. Dick Kroll. I just heard about David. My God…"

"Yeah. I don't know what's happening yet. Did we have a depo today? We do, don't we?" Hardy brought his hand to his forehead, squeezed his temples.

Kroll was sympathetic. "We can put that off as long as you need. The important thing now is David. How's it look?"

For the hundredth time, Hardy ran down what he knew. Answered the same questions. No robbery. No motive. No clues. A senseless beating of an old and defenseless gentleman. When he finished, the line hummed open for a long beat.

"I don't know what to say, Diz. I'm in shock, really. Is there anything I can do?"

Hardy gave it an instant's thought. "Maybe see if any of your client's men noticed or heard something. Or will. It wasn't one of Wade's beats, though, was it?"

"I don't know. Where did it happen exactly?"

"Two blocks north of here. Right around the corner, actually."

"No, then. Thirty-two ends down at Post."

Hardy kept on. "It was his usual route home, which he always walked because he was bullet proof. Jesus…"

"What?"

Hardy blew out. "Nothing. I just remembered I offered to drive him." He swore.

"Don't blame yourself. It wasn't anything you did." Kroll cleared his throat. "So listen, I don't want to add to your troubles today. Why don't you dig out, call me when you want to start up on these depos again. I'm assuming if David's out, you'll be taking the lead."

"It's too early, Dick, okay? I don't want to go there yet."

"Fine, fine. I'll wait till you call me. Meanwhile, is there anything else I can do? Anything at all?"

"I can't think of anything, but thanks."

"I'll pray for him. How about that?"

Hardy hadn't ever considered Kroll much of a religious man-certainly he was an unscrupulous attorney and dirty fighter, but you never knew. "Couldn't hurt," he said. "Thanks." Yet another call was coming in on the heels of the last. He looked at his watch-the regular workday still wouldn't begin for seven minutes and he'd already been going for two hours. He punched the button on his phone, stifled a weary sigh. "Dismas Hardy," he said.

It was the first time Hardy had been to Glitsky's new domain on the fifth floor. The lieutenant was leaning over a computer terminal in a claustrophobic room occupied by two women, one of them with an enormous girth. Glitsky was saying something to her about the new software they should be getting sometime in the next decade that would do it all faster and better. Hardy, in low enough spirits already, found the moment nearly unbearably sad.

Perhaps sensing a shadow behind him, Glitsky stopped in midsentence, straightened up and turned around quickly. Everything from his stance to his fierce glare announced his readiness to fight whoever it might be. When he saw it was Hardy, something went out of him. For an instant, he seemed almost disappointed, but immediately the expression shifted to concern. "You all right?" he asked. "Is everybody all right?"

By this he meant, of course, their families. Hardy showing up unannounced in the middle of a Wednesday afternoon, looking shell-shocked and drawn, set off every alarm in Glitsky's head.

Hardy's reply didn't ease his mind. "Got a minute?"

Excusing himself to his staff, he led his friend to the next office and closed the door behind them. "What?"

"You haven't heard about David?"

Glitsky read his friend's face and his gaze went flat. "Don't tell me he's dead."

"Not yet, but it doesn't look good." The telling took less than a minute, during which Glitsky took a seat behind his desk. Hardy remained standing, drained, hands in his pockets. "I've just come from the hospital. Again. Gina's back down there, too."

Glitsky slouched in his chair, ringers templed at his lips. Hardy was rambling on. "I don't even know why I'm here, to tell you the truth. I answered calls all morning at the office, but the thought of work…" He shrugged. "Sorry to just barge in."

"If memory serves," Glitsky said, "I've done it to you a few times."

But the usual banter couldn't find a toehold, and the two men filled the space managing their silent emotions. Finally, Hardy pulled a chair around and sat heavily. "I really don't know why I'm here," he repeated.

Glitsky let another minute pass. "He was walking home? That's it?"

Hardy nodded. He was wrestling with something, and finally came out with it. "I almost told Blanca I thought it was Panos."

At this, Glitsky's eyes sharpened. He stirred in his chair. "Do you?"

He shook his head. "I can't see it. Kroll called me up this morning as soon as he heard. He seemed genuinely upset."

"And that rules out Panos? That he didn't inform his lawyer? I wouldn't tell my lawyer if I was planning to beat up or kill somebody. Not before, not after. But what was David to Panos? I know you've got that lawsuit, but…"

"Just keep repeating thirty million dollars, Abe, and everything will become clear. If we win all the way large, say, it's not impossible Panos is on the street." Talking about specifics somehow took Hardy's mind off the big picture, and he too became more animated. "Kroll offered David four the other day to settle."

"Four million? What'd the old man say?"

"He laughed at him. Kroll then got huffy and said he was going to go around David and talk to me directly, I guess on the theory that I'm a wuss and I'd cave. David said he was welcome to try, but I'd probably just send it back to him, which was true. Anyway, Kroll got a little mad and told him he'd better watch out."

"For what?"

"Maybe for what happened."

Glitsky cocked his head. "You really think that?"

"I'm not really thinking anything, yet, Abe. We're talking boots and clubs, maybe nightsticks. Your average street banger doesn't have a sap."

"But you said 'maybe' nightsticks."

"True. But we're also talking downtown. Unless you're walking around with lumber, you're not going to find a club lying on the street, are you?"

"Maybe a tire iron. Or the butt of a gun."

Hardy shook his head, disagreeing. "A couple of whacks on the head with a tire iron and you're dead directly, wouldn't you think? Maybe a gun, though."

"So what are you saying?"

"It's coming to me as we're talking, so I'm not sure. Whoever did it didn't come to rob him. They showed up carrying heavy tools and ambushed him."

The phone rang twice. The answering machine picked up with its warm and sunny greeting. "Glitsky, payroll. Leave a message." Some sergeant left his number and asked if he could get a call back about his accumulated comp time.

Neither Glitsky nor Hardy acknowledged the interruption. As soon as the sergeant had rung off, Hardy continued. "You might as well know the other thing that happened yesterday. Both Blanca and Jeff Elliot thought it might have something to do with it, but I just came from talking to Gina, and it doesn't."

"Okay. What?"

He told Glitsky about the engagement, the ring, the remote question about Gina's possible involvement with another man. "Anyway, I asked. I don't know whether it set our friendship back two years or if she was flattered that I could think she was somehow keeping a stable of men on the side, but either way, she wasn't lying. Enough for me, anyway."

"I'd take that."

"So. There we are." Suddenly he found he had talked it all out. And again, it left him exhausted. "And so what, huh? Nobody's even looking."

Glitsky almost said that if Freeman came to, he would be able to tell them what happened; if he died, the case would go to homicide and maybe Paul Thieu would get it and discover something, but he realized this wouldn't be a consoling thought. And if anybody else besides Thieu picked up a case like this, an old man who lingered, no clues, it would remain a mystery forever. So he shrugged. "Blanca's okay," he said. "Maybe he'll get something."

"Yeah." Hardy dragged his old bones up and stood. "Well…"

The phone rang again. Glitsky glared at it, then got up himself, making no move to answer it. He was coming around to let Hardy out when he heard the voice of Marcel Lanier. He stopped and picked up the receiver.

"Talk to me," he said.

Hardy was at the door and raised a hand in silent farewell. Glitsky, listening with one ear, snapped his ringers, got his attention, waved him back in. "Yeah, I'm here," he said into the mouthpiece. He listened intently for almost a full minute, then said, "I appreciate it, Marcel. Thanks."

Hardy stood right at the door. "What was that about?"

Glitsky raised a hand and settled a haunch on the corner of his desk, his face hardened in concentration.

Hardy couldn't take it. "What, for Christ's sake?"

Glitsky expelled a lot of air. "One of Panos's guys got shot last night. The kid who found Silverman. Creed. Matt Creed."

"You knew him?"

"I only met him once, Monday night, a couple of hours after I left you, in fact. But he made an impression. Remember I told my dad it was a bad idea to go to Silverman's when nobody in homicide called him back?"

Hardy nodded. "Sure."

"Well, he went that night anyway and I had to pull him out. Creed was there."

"Doing what?"

"Just walking the beat. He saw the light and stopped. Then I showed up. We had a little party together. But a nice kid."

"And somebody shot him?"

Glitsky's head dropped, came back up. "Last night. On the beat." He paused to let Hardy digest it. "Marcel was just talking to Paul Thieu and heard about the connection to Panos. He thought I'd want to know."

"Why's that?"

"We had a talk about Wade recently, Marcel and I. I thought maybe he could pass a message along to Gerson. Save him some trouble." A shrug. "Turns out he couldn't."

"What was the message?"

"That maybe Panos wasn't the guy to help out homicide on Silverman. Or anything else, for that matter."

"And he'd been doing that?"

"Trying. He'd given them some names, among them your friend Holiday, who Creed originally ID'd as one of the guys who broke into Silverman's, by the way."

"Well, that's wrong. John had…"

Glitsky held up a hand. "Relax. Creed changed his mind. No ID. He was calling the case inspectors and letting them know."

"Did he?"

"I don't know. I'd assume so. Besides, what does it matter? You said Holiday has an alibi, and you'd never lie for a client."

Hardy declined to comment, found his chair, and was sitting again. Finally, he said, "Suddenly I'm willing to believe that Panos had something to do with David."

Glitsky nodded slowly, the professional cop in him less than completely willing to commit. "It does invite inquiry."

"So how do we do it?"

"Do what?"

"Inquire."

Glitsky scratched his cheek. "You might profitably mention something to Blanca. Maybe something got left at the scene. David's. But this could be nothing. Just a coincidence."

"Theoretically, I agree with you. I'll keep it in mind."

"Just so we're on the same page. And also, so you're clear, I'm not going anywhere near it. The latest poll results are in, and the consensus is it's not my job."