The First Law

5

For a wealthy man, Wade Panos kept a relatively low profile.

He didn't need flashy clothes, since he wore a Patrol Special uniform every day at work. The Toyota 4Runner got him wherever he needed to go. The three-bedroom house on Rivera that he shared with Claire blended with the others in the lower Richmond District. He mowed his own lawn every Saturday, took out the garbage, talked over the fence with his neighbors. To all outward appearances, Wade was a regular guy.

He'd started working as an assistant patrol special in Thirty-two when he was just out of high school. It was his father's beat. George ran a tight ship in those days, providing basic security for his two hundred clients, patrolling the beat on foot.

It didn't take Wade long to realize that his father was missing a substantial opportunity-big money could be made in this field. People wanted protection, especially once they came to understand that without it, bad things could happen. More importantly, Wade was adept at identifying enterprises-prostitution, the drug trade, gambling dens-that operated outside the protection of the law. These businesses couldn't survive in his beats without his protection, and rather than roust them out or turn them over to the regular police, he found most of them willing to enter into partnership with him.

By the time Wade was twenty-five, he'd made enough on his own to buy his first beat from the city. Ten years later, when he inherited Thirty-two after his father's death, he had six of them and a payroll of nearly ninety assistants. He was fortunate that his timing was so good. About five years ago, the city had limited the number of beats to three for any one individual, but his holdings were grandfathered and allowed to stand. His books showed that he was pulling down close to a million dollars a year.

Until relatively recently, the actual figure was about twice that. And in the last three years, the profits had become nearly obscene. Not that he was complaining.

Since so much of his income was in cash, Wade had had to become skilled at laundering it, and to this end he formed a holding company that owned four bars in various parts of the city, each of which pulled down a tidy legitimate profit and substantially more in dirty money. Being a good businessman, Wade always kept his eyes open for rundown watering holes that he could scoop up at bargain prices, then renovate to a veneer of respectability. He'd also found that, once a property appealed to him, his connections, associates and business practices could often help a struggling bar along on its journey to bankruptcy.

He'd wanted the Ark now for a couple of years, and since he'd learned of John Holiday's interference with his business in the past four months, he was more motivated than ever to take control of the place. Put the son of a bitch back on the street where he belonged. Because of its central downtown location, with any kind of attractive atmosphere it would draw heavily from the police, legal and financial communities, so it was a natural fit for his operation. But this lawsuit didn't look like it was going away anytime soon-Dick Kroll wasn't having any luck with Freeman and Hardy-and anything Wade could do to cut into their enthusiasm was to the good.

Not incidentally, if he could get his hands on the Ark, it might also finally provide a safe and comfortable living for the son of his little sister Rosie. Nick Sephia had become a trial for all of them. He'd proven his loyalty to Wade on several occasions, true, but his judgment often got him into trouble, as it had with the LaBonte girl. Wade was hoping that with seasoning, age and experience, Nick could become an asset as a bar manager, instead of a liability as muscle- he didn't have the self-discipline that muscle called for.

Also, truth be told, Wade felt guilty about Nick, who'd grown up without a father because of him. Twenty-some-odd years ago, when Wade had realized that Sol was hitting Rosie, he had beaten his brother-in-law to within an inch of his life, then given him the option of leaving town or dying. Nick's father had made the smart choice.

Now, near eight o'clock on this Friday night, Wade was in a tuxedo, waiting for Claire to finish dressing and come downstairs. He sat in a folding chair hunched over a large jigsaw puzzle that he was working on at a card table in the enclosed porch at the back of his house. A light rain still fell just outside the windows.

He usually worked on his puzzles for the half hour before dinner after he got home. It took about two weeks to finish one of these big ones, after which Claire would transfer the completed puzzle to a plywood backing and glue it down. She told him she donated the things to shelters or schools or something, but Wade couldn't really imagine anyone really wanting one of them. He thought it possible that Claire simply threw most of them away and told him the story about giving them to charity to spare his feelings.

Wade didn't really care.

The joy was in the doing of them, and this one was particularly challenging. Twelve hundred pieces. The picture on the front showed nothing but the water in a swimming pool-blues and shadows. He had most of the border now, and was about a third done. Suddenly, a five-piece segment fell into place and he sat back, pleased.

"Claire!"

"Two minutes," she chimed from upstairs.

He frowned. Two meant ten. Standing up, he pulled at his bow tie and walked back to the kitchen, where on one of the stools by the counter the paper lay open to the Metro section. And as so much did-except for his jigsaw puzzles-the story brought him back to business. And again, to Nick.

The article was about the new Russian Kamov Ka-32 helicopter that one of Wade's relatively recently acquired clients, Georgia AAA Diamond, had purchased as a gift for the San Francisco Police Department. The deal was that, in return, the jewelers could use the chopper to transport their gem imports, with police guard, directly to and from the corporate jet at the airport in south San Francisco to the city.

Here was a nice picture of Dmitri Solon, the company's thirty-four-year-old CEO. He was posing by the helicopter with Mayor Washington, Police Chief Dan Rigby, some city supervisors, and members of the California legislature. It was amazing, Wade thought with some pride, that he and Solon had been able to create such a substantial krysha- Russian for "roof"-as protection for Georgia AAA in such a short time.

Wade knew Solon well by now. He was a smooth operator who spoke nearly perfect English. The protege of Severain Grotny, head of the Ministry of Precious Metals and Gems in Russia, Solon had ostensibly come to San Francisco with a twofold mission-to open a state-of-the-art diamond cutting and distribution center and, not incidentally, to make inroads into the international monopoly of the De Beers diamond cartel.

Wade couldn't help smiling as he scanned the platitudes in the article, for he knew the truth about Georgia AAA, and this was that Solon and Grotny were using the business as a front to systematically loot nothing less than the national treasury of Russia. He knew this because about eighteen months ago, before Solon had even opened his doors, Wade had signed him up as a client in another of his beats. It hadn't taken him three months to become suspicious of some of the activity he witnessed, some of the questionable personnel on the periphery of things.

So he set up special surveillance teams and about two months later, he and his nephew Nick found a pretext to stop one of Solon's imported Russian employees as he left the building one evening. He was carrying a bag of uncut diamonds worth, Wade later discovered, approximately fourteen million dollars. Rather than report the incident to San Francisco police, Wade brought him first back to Solon.

The ensuing discussion was more than enlightening. It was breathtaking.

Once it became clear that Wade's agenda was cooperation rather than interference, Solon seemed almost relieved to be able to explain. The financing for Georgia AAA, about $170 million, had come directly from the Russian treasury in the form of diamonds, jewelry and silver, but mostly from gold, five tons of gold-and most of that investment grade commemorative coins from the 1980 Olympics. This had all come under diplomatic pouch, Grotny's pouch, on Lufthansa Airlines. After it had arrived in this country, Solon arranged for its delivery to Premier Metals, the top gold distributor on the West Coast. Premier then melted down the coins and established the Georgia AAA account, based on ounces of gold on deposit with them.

With his $170 million line of credit, Solon had gone a little wild. Although it was on the market for a mere five million dollars, he paid eleven million for the four-story building that would house his new Diamond Center. At about the same time, he spent three million dollars for his rambling mansion in the hills of Kensington; $800,000 for two cigarette boats; more than a million for a Rolls-Royce and two Aston Martins; and around eighteen million for a Gulfstream twin-engine corporate jet. There were other acquisitions as well-condos at Lake Tahoe, a small Napa winery, a chain of Bay Area gas stations. All were intended to bolster the image Solon wanted to convey-he had unlimited money and extraordinary connections.

Wade looked down at the newspaper photograph again. The young Russian entrepreneur had certainly done himself proud.

But he couldn't have done it without Wade Panos, who'd helped him build his krysha, extended Solon's connections through Wade's own to the political elite of the city and even the state. And it had all begun the night that he and Nick had busted the messenger with the bag of diamonds. Wade had asked Solon this simple question: If Georgia AAA was in the business of cutting and selling diamonds, why was he sending fourteen million dollars' worth of them away? The answer was that only a fraction of the diamonds imported from Russia ever made it to the floor of Georgia AAA's high-tech cutting room showcase. Most were sent to a sister Georgia AAA office in Antwerp, where disguised with false invoices from Angola and Zaire, they were then, ironically, sold to De Beers for cash, which was then wired either back to San Francisco or to Grotny in Moscow.

Essentially, it was a money-laundering scheme through which diamonds from the Russian National Treasury could be dumped into the world market and converted to cash. The San Francisco Georgia AAA Diamond Center, for all of its grandeur and visibility, was in fact merely a front to legitimize an immense traffic in unregulated diamonds. And, established in the center of one of his beats, it had fallen into the lap of Wade Panos.

His commission during the past year-essentially to have Nick instead of one of Solon's people carry the diamonds and guard them to and from the airport to the Diamond Center, plus a little muscle and political favor-was a little more than six million dollars, most of which Solon wired directly from the Antwerp office to Wade's account in the Caymans. The rest came back to San Francisco, where Wade used it to keep his own krysha in good repair. He loved the term-the roof that protected you. The people you paid off.

But Nick.

Even with his new job, Nick remained a problem. Because he was young, headstrong and prone to violence, he hadn't worked out at all as an assistant patrol special. Wade had thought the simple job at Georgia AAA would serve two purposes. First, it would keep his nephew out of trouble and, second, Wade would have his own man, and a relative at that, on the inside to protect his position with Solon.

But after a little more than a full year at it, neither part was working out too well. Nick had too much free time, no real job to do, and too much money. He was upping his profile all over town-getting into fights, gambling, throwing his weight around-and this was not good. When it was time for his deliveries, he would show up around the Georgia offices, self-important, well-dressed and surly, and alienate everyone from the cutters to Solon himself.

Even more disturbingly, he had somehow ended up with Julio Rez as his partner on these trips. Wade didn't know Rez well, but thought him capable of shooting Nick and stealing the diamonds they were transporting.

He needed to get Nick out of there, get him a real grownup job, maybe at the Ark, then put his brother Ray in with Solon to protect the relationship. Ray was good with people.

But suddenly he straightened up, tugging hard now at his collar, getting it loosened up. He looked at himself in the mirror on the kitchen wall-his skin color was awful, a flushed ochre that made him look both pale and flushed.

He thought he could feel his blood pressure pushing on his eardrums. He brought a hand up to his nostrils, checked it for blood.

Look at him. What the hell was he doing?

Here he was, Wade Panos, nobody's idea of a lightweight, brooding over individual strategic moves again- and again and again-when the real issue, the big issue, was that these two goddamned lawyers looked like they were going to try to shut him down. They were threatening the entire foundation of his life's work. Okay, he understood they saw their chance to clear a nice chunk of change here. He assumed that they were just businessmen like he was, looking out for opportunities. He didn't blame them for that. And maybe it was true that Wade had been pushing his luck the last couple of years, throwing his weight around too much in the beats, giving them the opening. So okay, the lawsuit was a wake-up call. Maybe he'd rein things in a little with his troops in the future. His dealings with Solon were bringing in the bulk of his income now anyway. But without the beats and Wade's presence in the field as his legitimate power base, even that relationship could erode. And that would be disaster.

So Freeman and Hardy had delivered the message that they were on to him. So he'd tone things down and they'd make a decent pile for their efforts. What more did the greedy bastards want? He'd floated the idea that he was ready to make an offer, settle this thing. He'd even provide evidence to help them fleece the city a bit.

Fuckers.

"What's the matter?" Claire stood in the door to the kitchen. He hadn't heard her come downstairs. "You're frowning," she said. "You look sick. Do you feel all right?"

"Fine." He shook his head. "It's nothing. Just business."

"I thought business was good."

"Business is all right."

"And yet you're frowning."

He shrugged, debating with himself whether he should burden her with his own worries about the lawsuit. But no. The solution came to him full-blown, all at once. He didn't have to do this Kroll's way, according to Hoyle. He wouldn't even tell Kroll. He could end his troubles with the lawsuit, or at least slow things way down, anytime he wanted. He was being reasonable, and if Freeman and Hardy and their spies and stooges didn't choose to be, then what happened after that wouldn't be Wade's fault. They would have asked for it. All of them.

"You know Wade."

He came back to his wife. "I'm afraid I'm going to have to move Nicky again, that's all."

It was her turn to frown. "Maybe you want to move him all the way out."

"I can't," he said. "Rosie-"

She held up a hand, stopping him. "Your poor sister Rosie."

"She's had it rough, Claire."

"Who hasn't? And Nicky's nothing but trouble. He's already cost us and it's going to get worse, you watch."

"He's growing up. He's going to be okay."

She shook her head. "When you were his age you had three beats already, your own business. Trying to help him is just throwing good money after bad. Anyway, where are you going to move him to?"

"I was thinking the Ark."

"Which we don't own, last time I checked."

"Not yet." The seed of an idea had sprung. "But it turns out the owner of the place was with the guys that shot Sam Silverman. After they bring him in, he's going to need all the cash he can get his hands on. I'll pick the place up for a song."

"And then give it to Nicky? There's better people, you know, Wade, even if he's family." She was a short, buxom woman and stared up at him defiantly, her arms crossed over her chest.

After a minute, he leaned down and kissed her, conciliatory, on the cheek. "Nothing's written in stone, Claire." He smiled, took her arm, started to steer her toward the front door. "Now, who are we giving our money to tonight?"

Hardy's daughter Rebecca had at last reached sweet sixteen years old and tonight she was going on her first solo date. She'd been out to the movies and the malls with mixed-gender groups of friends many times before, of course, but this was the homecoming dance and this boy, young man, whatever he was-a seventeen-year-old senior named Darren Scott-had asked her.

Frannie had done herself up somewhat, too, for the occasion. She wasn't exactly Mrs. Cleaver, but she wore a skirt and a light salmon-colored sweater. She'd pulled her red hair back into a tight bun, applied some makeup-mascara and lipstick. Vincent, their fourteen-year-old son, had gone to a football game with some of his friends.

Now Hardy was standing in the kitchen, alone with Frannie, while they awaited the Beck's grand entrance from her bedroom, into which she'd vanished after her shower about a half hour before. He was talking in that half-whisper parents sometimes adopt when their children might be within earshot. "It's just that I'm not exactly thrilled that the sum total of what I know about this guy who's taking out my daughter is his name, Darren Scott. If that's really his name."

Frannie threw a glance back over her shoulder. "Dismas. Of course it's his name. It's all I've been hearing for weeks. Darren Darren Darren."

Hardy was undeterred. "Doesn't mean he didn't make it up. Maybe he and the Beck are in on it together and are planning to run away. If I was making up a name, it would be Darren Scott. I mean it. If he honks from out on the street, she's not going."

"I'll let you tell her that."

"I will, too. Don't think I won't."

"What?" Rebecca looked unimaginably grown-up in basic black, spaghetti shoulder straps, hemline three inches above the knee. Heels and hose. Sometime in the past year or so, she'd pierced her ears and now gold teardrop earrings hung from them, matched by a thin gold necklace Hardy had bought her. Her red hair, like her mother's, was up off her neck and some kind of glitter graced her cheeks and the bare skin beneath the necklace. "What?" she asked again, worry flitting over her brow.

"Nothing," Frannie said, moving toward her. "Just your father being silly. You look beautiful."

She spun in a pirouette, beaming now with her mother's approval. "What do you think, Daddy? "

He found that he couldn't reply for a second, then cleared his throat. "I think this Darren Scott is one lucky guy. I hope we're going to get to meet him."

Mother and daughter shared an amused look, and then Rebecca skipped across and put her arms around her father. "Of course you will. I'd never go out with anybody my favorite daddy didn't know. He should be here any minute."

And as though on cue, the doorbell rang.

"That's him!" The Beck turned back to her mother. "I look all right?"

"It's not your looks…" Frannie began.

"I know, Mom. It's who I am inside. But do I look okay? Really?"

Frannie gave up on the mother lecture and hugged her. "You look perfect."

Meanwhile, Hardy walked down the hallway, geared up to be polite and yet somehow firm and even awe-inspiring. He swiped at his eyes, opened the door, and it was Abe Glitsky.

"Not with my daughter, you don't!" His voice was harsh. "Darren!" And he slammed the door in his friend's face.

A couple of seconds later, he opened it again, grinning at his cleverness. He noticed that a lanky young man in a suit was standing behind Glitsky on the stoop, looking tentatively over Glitsky's shoulder. "Excuse me," he began. He appeared to be sufficiently terrorized to last through the evening. "Is this where Rebecca Hardy lives?"

"He seemed like a nice kid," Glitsky said. "I doubt if he's even got a sheet."

"There's a consoling thought if I've ever heard one. My daughter's dating a guy who's never even been arrested."

They were at the dining room table, Abe with his tea and Hardy and Frannie finishing their wine.

"Dismas has been preparing himself for this, so he wouldn't be too harsh," Frannie said. "Imagine if it had just been sprung on him."

"I thought I was downright civil," Hardy said, "considering. That thing with Abe at the door was meant to be a joke. I had no idea Darrel was there."

"Darren," Frannie corrected him.

"Didn't I say that?"

"That was just bad timing," Abe put in deadpan. "Could've happened to anyone."

"Anyway, it'll give him something to think about later," Hardy said. "When he's wondering whether he should keep the Beck out past eleven-thirty or not."

"I don't think that'll be much of a question," Frannie said. "In fact, I don't think it will even cross his mind, especially not after the six reminders."

"Not six," Hardy said. "Not more than two. Abe was here. He heard. No way was it six, was it, Abe?"

Glitsky sipped at his tea, looked up in all innocence. "I'm sorry," he said. "I wasn't paying close attention."

Glitsky and Hardy had a chessboard set up between them on the dining room table. It wasn't much of a contest. Although Glitsky had won the vast majority of the many games they'd played over the years, they both pretended that they were fairly evenly matched.

Hardy explained his poor record by the fact that since he was more excitable than his friend, he tended to see a move and act precipitously. And it was true that Glitsky was more patient, even methodical, in his play. It was also true that Glitsky never drank alcohol and Hardy would have a beer or two and sometimes, as tonight, an after-dinner cognac or two after he'd already had his wine for dinner. Hardy felt that the mere suggestion that this had any effect on his strategy or play was, of course, ridiculous.

But Glitsky was happy to take advantage of whatever mistakes Hardy made, and he'd already made one that would be conclusive. So Glitsky made his next move, then sat back and relaxed a degree or two. He was already tired, as he'd done the wake-up call for their baby Rachel before dawn. She had a low fever and maybe a tooth was coming in as well, and Treya had basically done him the kindness of kicking him out for the night, freeing him to go talk about his father's demands and his job frustrations with his friend Dismas. It was her turn for baby duty. No need for both of them to suffer.

Hardy studied the board, raised his eyes. "You don't look good."

"Neither do you. So what?" Glitsky let out some air. "But I admit I am a little tired."

"Ha! The excuses begin."

"For what?"

"For when I beat you here."

Glitsky kept all expression out of his face. He picked up his mug of tea. "We'll see. I believe it's your move."

"See? He worries." Hardy lifted his snifter and studied the board. He understood that Glitsky thought he had an advantage, but danged if he could see what it was. After a minute, he looked up. "I'd take a teething daughter over a dating one anytime."

"You want," Glitsky said, "I'll bring Rachel over. We can trade."

"No thanks!" Frannie from the front room where she was reading.

"Okay, we'll leave daughters," Hardy said. "So moving in the other direction, what's the problem with your father? Is he all right?"

Glitsky pushed his chair back far enough from the table so that he could cross a leg. He let out a long breath. "You hear about Sam Silverman?"

Hardy shook his head. "Don't know him. What about him?"

"He was Nat's best friend. He ran a pawnshop by Union Square and somebody shot him last night in his store. It's still your move, by the way, if you don't want to concede, which you should. Anyway, Nat doesn't seem to get it that I'm not in homicide anymore. He asked me if I'd look in on the investigation and make sure they're on track. Like that. So, much against my better judgment, I went downstairs and talked to Gerson today…"

"In homicide? How'd that go over?"

"About like you'd expect. After the parade, the welcome kind of wore off pretty quick. Gerson even found a way to mention it to Batiste. Evidently, in one of those strange coincidences you read so much about, the topic just happened to come up while they were having lunch."

"Imagine that," Hardy said.

"Right. But in any event, Frank called me off. Period. Not that I was on. Are you going to move someday?"

"I'm savoring the anticipation," Hardy said. "So what about Nat?"

"Nothing, really. But I've got to tell him and he's not going to like it. He might even decide he's got to go talk to somebody himself which-no matter what-would be a disaster."

In the kitchen, the telephone rang and Frannie, although she was farther away in the living room, jumped up to answer it. "It might be one of the kids," she said by way of explanation as she passed by them. She got to it and after a short, amiable-sounding talk, she was back in the doorway. "It's John Holiday. He says it's important."

"I bet." Hardy pushed his chair back. "Two minutes," he said to Glitsky.

"You want to move first?"

He paused and pushed a pawn up one square. "You're dead very soon." Then turned toward the kitchen.

Ten minutes later, Hardy came back into the dining room, where Frannie and Abe were sitting side by side at the table. As he'd talked to Holiday, he'd heard the two of them erupt in laughter several times. This, especially from Glitsky, was a rare enough event in itself to warrant comment, but then as soon as Hardy looked, he saw the cause of it and didn't have to ask.

They were going through a stack of birthday cards that Holiday had been randomly sending Hardy now for over a year, whenever he ran across one that was particularly funny or insulting or both. The latest was a lovely, romantically out-of-focus picture of a forest of redwood trees with streams of sunlight shining through them and a gorpy poem extolling their majesty and incredible longevity, "adding to the magnificent beauty of the earth for thousands and thousands of years." When you opened the card, it read "Thanks for planting them."

"These are pretty good," Abe admitted.

Hardy nodded. "I laughed at the first seventeen of them myself."

"I wish I'd thought of this. Hey." He snapped his fingers. "Maybe it's not too late."

"It's way too late," Hardy said.

"Was it important?" Frannie asked.

Another shrug. "Everything's relative." He moved back up to his chair and hovered a moment over the chessboard, raised his eyes quickly to Glitsky. "You moved something."

"Just one little knight. It was my turn."

"That's all you moved?" He stared back down, saw it, swore under his breath.

"Tut-tut." The lieutenant wagged a ringer, then checked his watch and stood up. "But enough of this wild partying. I think I'd better go spell Treya."

"So what did you decide about Nat?" Hardy asked, somewhat unexpectedly, out of context.

The question stopped Glitsky and he considered for a minute. "He'll get used to it, I suppose. I just hate to disappoint him." They'd gotten to the door. Frannie had opened it, and Abe was putting on his jacket.

"You want," Hardy said, "you and I could do a field trip to the crime scene tomorrow. Maybe get a tidbit for your dad, make him feel better, like you're working on it. Maybe we even do some early Christmas shopping."

"I'll check my social schedule," Glitsky said, "but sounds like a good idea. You'd really do that?"

"Sure. What are friends for? Say ten, eleven?"

"I'll let you know."

When he was gone, Frannie closed the door and turned to him. "Maybe do some early Christmas shopping? Since when?"

"It could happen," Hardy said.

"Okay, but what else?"

"But that call from John? It turns out it was pretty important. The police want to talk to him about this guy Silverman's death. Abe's father's friend."

"What about him?"

"Whether he was involved somehow."

"Involved? How could John be involved? In what way?"

"In the way of whether he had something to do with killing him."