‘Hardy, you better get to Drysdale’s,’ he said.
It was five minutes to three. Drysdale had gotten a tip from one of his connections at KRON, and now Pullios, Chris Locke himself and a third of the rest of the staff were gathered in front of the television set. Hardy squeezed himself into the doorway, reminded of other gatherings like this – the day Dan White had killed Harvey Milk and Mayor Moscone at City Hall, the Reagan assassination attempt. He wondered who’d been shot.
Somebody called out. ‘Okay, okay, it’s on, turn it up.’ The room went quiet, except for the anchor’s voice, talking about an exceptional development in the Owen Nash murder case, and in a minute there was David Freeman on the screen in front of a bunch of microphones, May Shinn beside him.
‘He’s paying those kids, or the father. It’s a setup.’ Pullios didn’t believe it, or she was pretending she didn’t believe it.
‘Two kids?’ Drysdale shook his head. ‘What about the naked part? He wouldn’t have made that up.’
Locke was silent, standing by the window, looking out.
‘It is for sure going to play,’ Hardy said.
Everyone else had gone. Ironically, the room seemed smaller with only four of them in it.
‘How could they be sure it was the same day?’ said Pullios.
Drysdale picked up his baseballs and began to juggle.
‘Would you please not do that!’ The exasperation of Elizabeth Pullios. Hardy didn’t mind seeing it, thought she’d earned it. It was, after all, her case.
‘Sorry,’ Drysdale said. He caught the balls and palmed them all in one hand. ‘I think they covered that pretty well. It was the day they came back from Europe, they’d just gotten off the plane. It’s pretty solid documentation.’
‘Maybe they’re just plain lying. He’s paying them -’
‘Pretty risky. Cross-exam would kill them and Freeman knows it.’
‘I want to interview them.’
‘I would think so,’ said Drysdale.
She stood flat-footed in front of his desk. She kept looking over at Locke’s back, but he wasn’t turning around. Freeman’s hammering of Christopher Locke wasn’t lost on any of them. Locke was the district attorney, they weren’t. So far as the public was concerned, Christopher Locke – personally – had screwed this one up. He, a black man, was a racist. He had picked on a woman. An ethnic. It was a disaster.
‘Goddamn it!’ Pullios said.
Drysdale nodded. ‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said.
When Jeff Elliot discovered at the title office that the owner of the collateralized apartment was Superior Court Judge Andrew Fowler, he was pretty sure he had hit the jackpot.
Then, finding out he’d missed Freeman’s press conference – ‘Why didn’t somebody call me?’ – he saw it all slip away.
Finally, hearing the news about Fowler’s retirement, he knew he had himself the story of his career. There was only one person who held in his hand all the elements to this thing, and he was it.
To Glitsky it meant something else entirely – he’d arrested the wrong person, and they still had a live homicide. He was in the office of his Lieutenant, Frank Batiste, after five, chewing on the ice that was left in his styrofoam cup.
Though one outranked the other, the two men had come up together and knew that politics outside of either of their control had dictated Batiste’s promotion – they still viewed themselves more as partners than anything else.
‘You’re lucky the grand jury indicted,’ Batiste said. ‘It takes the heat off.’
‘I’ll probably still get sued.’ Glitsky found a spot for his cup on Batiste’s cluttered desk. ‘Let’s see, false arrest, sex discrimination, race discrimination… I might as well give you my badge now.’ It wasn’t funny, but they both were smiling. Cop humor. ‘Maybe Locke won’t drop it.’
Batiste looked hard at him. ‘Maybe it’ll snow tomorrow.’
‘The kids could be mistaken.’
‘There could be peace in our time.’
‘You know, Frank, you are solace to a troubled soul.’
‘I try to be.’ Batiste had his feet up on his desk, a legal pad on his lap. He started doodling. ‘So what do you think we’ve got here, the perfect crime? I hope not, because I’ve got a feeling this one isn’t going to go away. Anybody else could have done it?’
‘Maybe. Nobody looks near as good as Shinn did.’ Glitsky told his lieutenant that he’d take another look at the business side, Mr Silicon Valley, somebody else who might benefit, but the evidence was slim and none if it wasn’t Shinn. He flicked ice into his mouth and chewed. ‘You know, this one time I thought I might have a case with, you know, witnesses who weren’t already in jail, maybe a motive aside from lack of imagination.’
‘Maybe next year,’ Batiste said. ‘And in the meantime we still have a very important dead person.’
Hardy called Celine after he returned from Drysdale’s office – he told himself that she at least deserved to be among the first to know that her father’s killer was still on the streets.
He reached her at Hardbodies!, where she’d been working out again. After he told her, he listened to the background noise in the phone – the throbbing music, the torture machines. Finally she asked him what he meant.
‘I mean May’s alibi checks out. She wasn’t out on the Eloise with your father.’
‘But what does that mean’?‘
‘It means she didn’t kill him, Celine.’ He waited, not pushing, for another minute. ‘Celine?’
Okay, he thought, you’ve done your duty. Now tell her you’ll keep her informed of developments and hang up. Just hang up, go home and have a date night with Frannie.
‘So what do we do now?’ Celine asked him quietly, shock in her voice. ‘Can I see you?’
No, I’m busy. How about coming by the office tomorrow‘? ’All right,‘ he said.
He met her at Perry’s on Union, a meat market in the classic sense – fine food, big drinks, good vibes.
Though her hair was still damp, pulled back by a turquoise band, she’d found time to make herself up. But somehow Hardy found her physical presence not quite so overpowering as before. It was the first time he’d seen her since their original meeting that the contours of her body – under the baggy purple sweater, the black and blousy pants – weren’t immediately evident. He was grateful for that.
It was early dusk but the place was already jammed. She was standing near the entrance, which was on the side down an alley, an orange juice in her hand, talking to another man who was about Hardy’s age, though taller, broader and better dressed. When Hardy came in, her face lit up and she moved to him, kissing him briefly on the lips. She took his hand and turned; the man had already started for the bar.
‘I told him my boyfriend was on his way,’ she said, ‘but you know this place. A woman alone is fair game.’ She didn’t let go of his hand. ‘Come, let’s see if we can get a table.’
‘I can’t eat, Celine. I’m just on my way home.’
She stopped pulling him along, still didn’t let go of his hand. ‘You mean you’re going to leave me here alone? I won’t last five minutes.’
‘Oh, you will if you decide to.’
Another side of her, a little more humanity, a trace of humor. She did have a real life he knew nothing about.
A couple vacated their table two feet from them and Hardy let go of Celine’s hand and guided her to it. A waitress appeared and he ordered a club soda. He could feel the heat of her thigh where it pressed against his.
‘Are you always alone?’ Hardy asked her. ‘Every time I see you, you’re alone.’
‘Wrong. Every time you see me, I’m with you.’ She leaned away from him. ‘Why do you want to know? You’re married.’
‘Yes, I am,’ he said. ‘I just wonder.’
She accepted that. ‘Not right now. Does this have to do with my father?’
He tried and failed to find some connection. ‘No, I don’t suppose so.’