Maury threw him a bone and nodded, blowing more smoke.
‘So if I’ve got bail of half a million, I give you fifty thousand.’
Maury nodded. ‘That would be the fee, yes.’
Was the smoke getting thicker, the light worse? Maybe he was just getting dizzy. He squirmed in his chair, got the blood flowing a little. Then you pay that to the court?‘ It still wasn’t clear. Jeff knew, or thought he knew, this stuff, but suddenly it wasn’t making any sense.
‘No, I pay the court the half million. All of it. Not the fifty thousand, the full half mil.’ Maury pulled his feet down and pulled himself up to the desk. ‘Look, I keep the fifty no matter what. That’s my fee for incurring the risk.
Let’s face it, these guys – my clients – call a spade a spade, they got lousy credit. Hey, are you okay?‘
Jeff heard Maury’s chair move back. It was funny – it felt as though he just closed his eyes a minute, then he’d opened them again. But if his eyes were open, how come he couldn’t see anything? He guessed he was moving his head, trying to scan the room and find a flicker of light.
The panic was taking over. He had to get out of here. He went to reach for where his crutches were, but missed, and knocked them to the ground, now grabbing wildly at nothing, pushing himself from the chair, falling, falling.
Over the ringing that filled his head, he heard Maury yelling, ‘Dorothy! Dorothy, get in here!’
After Farris left, Hardy had put in what he thought was a pretty good afternoon’s work. He pleaded out three assaults – a purse snatching and two robberies. A couple of dope cases were going to prelim. A teenage gang member had ‘tagged’ – graffitied – six police cars, doing $9,000 worth of damage. Hardy was moving toward the opinion that possession of a can of spray paint ought to be punishable, like carrying a concealed weapon, by mandatory jail time. At four-thirty, he left the office and went down to the Youth Guidance Center, where he talked a pregnant sixteen-year-old girl into giving up the name of her thirty-year-old boyfriend who was letting her take the fall for a little friendly welfare fraud.
But, like to a hole in a tooth, Hardy kept coming back to Owen and May Shinn.
The drive back home from the YGC, top down on the Samurai, was over Twin Peaks, down Stanyan Street -and other sorrows – by the Shamrock, then the Aquarium, Golden Gate Park, out Arguello through the Avenues. It gave him enough time to worry it.
The motive thing was a real problem. If they couldn’t sell it to a jury, they didn’t have capital murder, and Hardy couldn’t think of a rebuttal to his own argument: if May had killed Owen for the money, did it make sense for her to leave it to chance that his body would be found? He thought the answer had to be no. Resonantly, obviously, absolutely, no.
So the strategic issue became whether they could keep Freeman from asking the question. He didn’t see how.
But more immediately, and this was what occupied him as he ran the red light on 28th, once that initial chink in the motive worked its way around, would the jury start losing faith in May’s guilt altogether?
He heard the siren and pulled over to the right. It was not yet six o’clock, a glorious night, the warm spell miraculously hanging on. He was surprised when the patrol car pulled in behind him and the cop got out.
‘How you doin’?‘ Hardy asked.
The cop nodded. ‘May I see your license and registration please?’
Hardy reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. He opened it to where he had his D.A.‘s badge pinned in across from his driver’s license. He was reaching across into the glove box to get his registration when he felt the cop’s hand on his arm.
‘Sorry to bother you, sir, but you ran a red light back there.’
Hardy half-turned. He must have. He didn’t even remember seeing it. He apologized. Besides, he had no intention of failing the attitude test.
The cop handed him his wallet. ‘Eyes on the road, huh.’
‘Gotcha.’
He waited until the cop was back in his car, then started up again, getting into the traffic with a nice signal, turning right off Geary at his first opportunity.
Hardy pulled up in front of his house still feeling foolish and a little guilty. It was the first time he’d experienced that particular professional courtesy – getting a break on a ticket – and he wasn’t sure how he felt about it.
Rebecca was in her stroller next to Frannie, who was sitting on the front-porch steps, wearing sandals, Dolphin shorts and a tank top. The sun hit her hair just right, like a burning halo around her.
‘You ought to get prettier,’ Hardy said, coming through the gate. ‘It’s hell coming home to an ugly woman. And try to look a little younger while you’re at it.’
He was almost to her when she jumped with an animal growl. She hit him high, wrapping her legs around his waist, her arms around his neck, kissing him, then biting his ear, hard. He held her, marveling at her tininess, her smell, her fit to him. ‘Okay, okay, I guess you don’t have to look younger.’
She clung to him. ‘Wet willie,’ she said.
Hardy bore up under the torture. ‘See, you’re making the baby cry.’ He took the last step to the porch and made a face at the baby. ‘It’s all right, Beck, your mother’s just a little bit insane. I’m sure it’s not hereditary.’ Rebecca kept crying and Hardy kissed Frannie, then let her down and reached into the stroller. ‘I’ll carry this neglected child,’ he said. ‘You push the stroller.’
They walked east on Clement, past the Safeway and the little Russian piroshki houses and Oriental restaurants, the antique shops, Rebecca now happy in the baby seat, Frannie’s arm through Hardy’s, his coat hung over the stroller’s handles.
They caught up on everything – Rebecca’s spots mostly gone now; the decision about the second car they were considering buying as soon as the Shamrock profit payment came in, which ought to be when the fiscal year closed this week; Pico’s weight, which led to Frannie’s own weight gain (monitored daily); the Fourth of July picnic this weekend. The pregnancy was going smoothly. Boys’ names. Girls’ names. The ticket Hardy almost got for running a red light.
They walked as far as Park Presidio – over a mile -before they turned around and started back home. Hardy told Frannie about Pullios and her decision to get an indictment before the grand jury, move the proceedings to Superior Court.
‘Why does she want to do that? What’s the problem with a delay? I thought all trials took forever.’
Hardy walked on a few steps, strolling really, relaxed, squinting into the sun. ‘This is a hot story. She’s not going to let it cool off.’
‘Jeff Elliot,’ Frannie said.
‘Exactly, but we’ve got a real problem.’ Hardy briefed her on it, moving on to what had concerned him when he’d gotten pulled over. ‘The thing is, once you start asking about the motive, you open another can of worms.’
‘If she did it for the money, why did she dump the body? But if she didn’t do it for the money, why didn’t she burn the will or something?’
‘Right.’
They walked along, pondering it. The sun had gotten behind the buildings. It was not cold, but there was a nip in the shade, and Hardy stopped and tucked his jacket around Rebecca. ‘Another thing, too,’ he said, ‘although I hate to mention it.’
‘What?’
‘The ring. May’s ring.’
‘What about it?’
‘He was wearing it. Owen was wearing it.’
‘Does that mean something?’
‘I don’t know what it means, but it could mean that he put it on, that he left it on, that they had a relationship, that he wasn’t leaving her. And if that’s the case, and if she wasn’t killing him for money, bye-bye motive.’
That’s a lot of ifs.‘
True, but they don’t start with an if. He was wearing the ring.‘
‘Couldn’t they just have had a fight, got to arguing, the gun was there…?’