She raised her eyes, seeing how he took that. Perhaps emboldened, she added, ‘He… we never needed to, we were enough for each other.’
Hardy reached a hand out over his desk. ‘Those the phone things?’
Glitsky held what looked like a small booklet of yellow paper. He passed it across the desk. ‘I think some clerk got carried away. I just asked for June twentieth. I think they gave us the whole year.’
‘Well, how’s the twentieth look?’
‘Good. For us. Not so good for Shintaka.’
Hardy intended to merely glance at the printout – he had his binder open, ready to put it in. Given it was half a year, there weren’t all that many calls, maybe fifteen pages, each of them five inches long. He began flipping through quickly. ‘Look at this,’ he said.
Glitsky nodded. ‘I noticed. No calls to Japan.’
Hardy looked up. Glitsky, he knew, rarely missed a trick. ‘You’re no fun, you know that.’
If May did business in Japan, it made sense she would at least occasionally need to call there, especially if she were planning a trip. Even if she did most of her work by fax, Hardy thought he could reasonably expect one or two calls. ‘Well, it can’t hurt. You check any of these?’ Hardy was scanning the pages, turning them backward, now on March.
‘No. I checked the twentieth. I just happened to notice Japan. You want, I can assign a guy.’
‘No, I’ll…’ Suddenly Hardy’s eyes narrowed. He stopped flipping.
‘What?’ Glitsky asked.
‘Nothing.’ He closed the pages and put them on his desk. ‘I just remembered I’ve got to pick up some stuff for the Beck.’
‘You’re a good daddy.’
‘I know. I amaze myself.’ He tapped the pages, back to business. ‘I’ll go through this stuff. Thanks.’
Glitsky stood up. ‘Thank you. That is not my idea of a good time.’
Hardy kept it loose. ‘God, they say, is in the details.’
‘Wise men still seek Him. Want me to get the door?’
‘Please.’
He hoped he was wrong, but he didn’t think so.
Hardy wasn’t great at math, but he had a natural affinity for numbers, especially telephone numbers. He hadn’t called the number on the March listing recently, but as soon as he saw it, he knew that at one time he’d known it.
He grabbed the pages and looked back to the beginning. The number appeared in February, too, more frequently. Twice a week in January. Eighteen total calls.
Maybe the number had changed, but Hardy didn’t think so. He picked up the telephone on his desk and dialed the number. There were three rings.
‘This is 885-6024. Please leave your name and number and I’ll get back to you.’
Hardy’s mouth had gone dry. His left hand gripped the paperweight so tightly his knuckles were white. The paperweight!
He thought of Owen Nash’s jade ring, the distinctive filigree, the animal motif. Frannie’s early theory. For a second he couldn’t think of what to say. The tape hissed blankly in his ear. He forced himself to speak into the home answering-machine of Superior Court Judge Andrew B. Fowler.
‘Andy,’ Hardy said, ‘this is Dismas. We’ve got to talk. I’m going by your office now, but if I haven’t reached you by the time you get this, please call me immediately. It’s urgent, it’s extremely urgent.’
PART III
32
Casually as he could muster, Hardy put the paperweight into his pocket and walked out past the other suites in the D.A.‘s office. Thinking ’not now,‘ he saw Jeff Elliot coming out of the elevator and turned to duck into the criminal investigations room just outside the D.A.’s door. He wasn’t quick enough, though. He heard his name called and stopped, caught, hands in his pockets.
For a reporter Jeff had a knack of seeming to be sensitive, even reasonable. Maybe, Hardy thought, it was the crutches, that and the grin. To say nothing of today’s puffiness, the indoor sunglasses. You wanted to help the guy.
‘Bad time?’
Hardy nodded. ‘A little.’
‘You go ahead then. I’ll talk to Ms Pullios.’
There was a perverse satisfaction in Elizabeth now being the attorney of record. Naturally she would be a valuable source. But Hardy felt that, at the very least, he ought to have some control over the flow of information to the Chronicle. This wasn’t in the office hierarchy and he didn’t want to give her a freebie on what she most craved – ink. ‘I’ve got a minute, Jeff, what can I do for you?’
‘Can we talk somewhere? I need to go off the record.’
They walked back into the D.A.‘s hallway and Hardy unlocked one of the waiting rooms, provided for the families of victims, witnesses, the odd conference. There was a yellow couch – the city favored green and yellow -and matching armchair. A picture of the Golden Gate Bridge in a special limited edition of three and a half million livened up the wall space.
Jeff lowered himself into the chair.
‘Where have you been lately? You don’t look too well.’
‘Just some new medication. Makes me puff up and get light sensitive. Prednisone.’
‘Steroids?’
Jeff smiled. ‘That’s what they use. It’s okay, I wasn’t going for the Olympics anyway.’
Hardy liked him, no getting around it. ‘Okay, so what’s off the record?’ He pointed a finger. ‘And it is off the record.’
Did Hardy remember last week, after the Municipal Court arraignment, standing in the hallway with Elliot and Glitsky, talking about the bail, the money connection?
‘Sure, of course, what about it? You find something?’
The reporter shook his head. ‘No, not yet, maybe. But you guys said, didn’t you, there were ways to subpoena the bail bondsman for his records.’
Hardy shook his head. ‘Not in this case. Only if we think the money for the bail came from criminal activity.’
‘Well, how would May Shinn get half a million dollars?’
‘What half a million? She only needed fifty thousand for a fee.’
Jeff Elliot shook his head. ‘I thought that at first, too. She still needs collateral on the loan.’
Hardy nodded. ‘Yeah, we’ve gone over that.’ He chewed it around again. ‘I don’t know, investments? Maybe she inherited it? We don’t have any sign of anything. Drugs. Like that.’
‘How about prostitution? That’s illegal, isn’t it?’
It was something to wonder about, but that, too, had already been discussed. ‘Maybe. Technically. But there’s no judge going to give us a warrant to seize records on that.’ He shrugged. ‘Maybe the bondsman accepted Owen Nash’s will.’
‘Even if she killed him? Could she collect on that?’
‘That,’ Hardy said, ‘is another legal battle. Fortunately it’s not mine. Whichever way it goes, even if she gets the whole two million, lawyers will wind up with most of it. What do you have that’s so off the record?’
Elliot leaned forward and took off his sunglasses. There was something clearly unfocused there, dark rings in sockets deepened by swelling. Hardy couldn’t conceal his reaction and interrupted Jeffs response. ‘Are you sure you’re okay?’
Jeff smiled and the bags seemed to lift a bit. ‘It looks worse than it is. Actually I’m feeling much better.’ He put on the glasses again. ‘The chipmunk cheeks go away after a while.’
‘You getting any sleep?’
Now the grin was wide. ‘Not enough.’ Then, slyly proud. ‘I’m seeing somebody. First time.’ He lifted his shoulders with exaggerated nonchalance. ‘Sleep’s not a big issue.’
‘You dog!’
‘Yes, well…’ Suddenly Jeff didn’t want to be talking about it, reducing it, bragging as though it were some casual victory. This wasn’t a conquest, it was Dorothy. ‘Anyway, about the bail, I don’t have any names yet, nothing I can print, but before I even move ahead at all, I want to protect my source.’