‘It’s that element of surprise that makes me such a fascinating guy to know. Tonight I needed a real drink.’
‘My father told me that the secret to controlling alcohol is never to take a drink when you feel like you need one.’
‘Those are noble words,’ Hardy said. ‘Aphorism night has come to the Shamrock. Hit me again, though, would you?’
Moses sighed, turned and grabbed the Bushmills from the back bar and poured. ‘We’re never heeded in our own countries, you know. It’s the tragedy of genius.’
‘Leave the Guinness,’ Hardy said. ‘I’ll drink it, too.’
Moses pulled over his stool. Hardy had often said that Moses’s face probably resembled the way God’s would look after He got old. His brother-in-law was only a few years older than Hardy, but they had been heavy-weather years. He had long, brown hair with some gray, pony-tailed in the back, an oft-broken nose. There were character lines everywhere – laugh lines, worry lines, crow’s-feet. He was clean-shaven this month, although that varied. ‘So why’d she want to see you in the first place – Celine?’
Hardy shrugged. ‘Hold her hand, I don’t know. She seemed to be hurting. I thought I might be able to help her out. Now I’m thinking we ought to get some protection for May Shinn.’
‘You don’t really think she’d do anything to her, do you?’
‘I don’t know what she’ll do. I don’t think she knows what she’ll do.’
Moses took a sip of his own Scotch, a fixture in the bar’s gutter. ‘She’s upset, can’t exactly blame her. She probably won’t do anything,’ he said.
‘It’s the “probably” that worries me.’ He took his dart case out of his jacket pocket and started fitting his hand-tooled flights into the shafts. ‘I think I’ll go shoot a few bull’s-eyes,’ he said. ‘Do something I’m good at.’
David Freeman picked up his telephone. It was after work hours, but he was still at his desk, back after dinner to the place he loved best. He didn’t have any particular work to do, so he was doing some light reading – catching up on recent California appellate court decisions for fun.
‘Mr Freeman, this is Nick Strauss. I got your card from a neighbor of mine, Mrs Streletski. How can I help you?’
‘Mr Strauss, it’s good of you to call. As Mrs Streletski may have mentioned, I’m working for a client who needs to establish what she was doing during the daytime on Saturday, June twentieth. The woman in question happens to live directly across the street from you on the same level – that other turreted apartment?’
‘Sure, I know it, but I can’t say I’d know any particular person who lives there.’
‘She’s an Oriental woman. Quite attractive.’
‘I’d like to meet her. I could use a little attractive in my life.’ A little manly chuckle, then Strauss was quiet a moment. ‘Sorry. June twentieth, you say?’
‘That’s the date. I know it’s a while ago now.’
‘No, it’s not that. Normally I probably wouldn’t remember. It’s just that’s the day I picked up my kids. They’d been traveling in Europe with their mother -we’re divorced – and I picked them up at the crack of dawn at the airport.’
‘And they didn’t mention anything, seeing anything?’
‘I don’t know how they could. They’d slept on the plane and were ready to go, so we just stopped in to have a bite and drop their luggage. Then we took off, exploring the city. It was a great day really, they’re good kids.’
‘I’m sure. But you saw nothing?’
‘No, sorry. What did she do, this attractive Oriental woman?’
‘She’s being charged with killing someone, although the case is weak. If anyone saw her at home during that day, we can make a case that there is no case.’
‘I’ll talk to the boys, double-check, but I really doubt it. Who’d she kill, by the way?’
Freeman kept himself in check. This was the natural question. ‘She didn’t kill anyone, Mr Strauss.’
‘Oh yeah, that’s right. Sorry.’
‘It’s all right. Thanks for the call.’
‘Sure.’
Freeman sat back with his hands crossed behind his head. So the alibi wouldn’t hold up. It was no great surprise.
27
The grand jury convened at ten A.M., Thursday, July 2, 1992. It was Hardy’s first appearance there. He wore a brand-new dark suit with nearly-invisible maroon pinstripes, a maroon silk tie, black shoes. When Pullios saw him outside the grand-jury room door, she whistled, looked him up and down. ‘You’ll do.’
Hardy thought she didn’t look so bad herself in a tailored red suit of conservative cut. Instead of a briefcase, she carried a black sling purse.
‘No notes?’
She tapped her temple. ‘Right here.’
At her knock, the door was opened by a uniformed policeman. This was light years from the bustling informality of one of the Municipal or Superior Court courtrooms.
The grand jury was a deck so heavily stacked in favor of the prosecution that Hardy thought a case could be made against its constitutionality. The fact that no one had brought such an appeal was probably a reflection of the reality that nobody representing the accused was allowed in the room. He thought the prosecution winning on an indictment before the grand jury was kind of like a Buick winning the Buick Economy Run.
Hardy sat next to Pullios at the prosecution desk and studied the faces of the twenty jurors arranged in three ascending rows behind long tables.
He couldn’t remember ever having seen such a balanced jury of twelve. These twenty were comprised of ten men and ten women. Three of them – two women and a man – were probably over sixty. Four more – two and two- were, he guessed, under twenty-five. There were six blacks, two Orientals, he thought two Hispanics. Most were decently dressed – sports coats and a few ties for the men, dresses or skirts for the women. But one of the white guys looked like a biker – short sleeves, tattoos on his forearms, long unkempt hair. One woman was knitting. Three people were reading paperbacks and one of the young women appeared to be reading a comic book.
The room wasn’t large. It smelled like coffee. At what would have been the defense table – if there had been one- was a large box full of donuts and sweet rolls that about half the jurors had dipped into.
The grand jury wasn’t chosen like a regular jury – if a trial jury was a time commitment and minor inconvenience for the average taxpayer, selection to the grand jury was more like a vocation. You sat one day a week for six months, essentially cloistered, and the only kinds of crimes you discussed were felonies. And if you mentioned anything about the proceedings outside of this room, you were committing a felony yourself. There were stories -impossible to verify – that D.A.s had come in and said, ‘Off the record, I don’t believe our eyewitness either. We’ve got no credible evidence at this time. But I’ve been doing homicides now for twenty years and I tell you unequivocally that John Doe, on the afternoon of whatever it is, did kill four Jane Does. Now we’ve got to get this guy off the street before he kills someone else. And he will, ladies and gentlemen, he will. You can count on it. I will stake my reputation and career upon a conviction, but we’ve got to get this man indicted and behind bars and we’ve got to do it now.’ Of course they were only stories. Whatever, the grand jury was a cornerstone of the criminal system, and it behooved prosecutors to take it seriously, which Elizabeth did, in spite of her ‘ham sandwich’ rhetoric. She stood up, greeted the jurors pleasantly and began her attack.
‘Ladies and gentleman of the jury, this morning the people of the State of California present the most serious charge in the matter of the capital murder of Owen Nash. You may have read in the newspapers something about this case, and specifically you may be aware that the defendant, May Shintaka, has already been scheduled for a preliminary hearing in Municipal Court in this jurisdiction. However, the delay proposed by the Municipal Court is, in the opinion of the district attorney, terribly excessive. No doubt many of you are aware of the legal axiom that justice delayed is justice denied. It is the contention of the people in this instance that the proposed delay would in fact constitute a denial of justice for this most heinous crime – the crime of cold-blooded, premeditated murder for financial gain, a crime that calls for the death penalty in the State of California.’