‘I just feel sorry for Andy. I mean, if the Shinn woman really is innocent, then he just gave up everything for nothing.’
‘That’s right,’ Hardy said. ‘People do that all the time.’
He stopped by Glitsky’s before going to his own office, but the sergeant wasn’t in. He wrote him a short note about the discrepancy in Ken Farris’s recollection of when Nash had last been seen, and figured that was the end of his active involvement with Owen Nash.
Then, taped to the center of his desk, he read the summons from Drysdale to see him as soon as he got in and to bring all of his binders on the Nash matter.
It was getting to be a habit, the walk down to Locke’s office, although this time with the bulging, special ‘lawyer’s briefcase.’ Hardy sat in the anteroom, listening to muffled sounds through the closed door. The secretary seemed unusually preoccupied, typing away, filing. The intercom buzzed and she punched it and said yes, he was out here.
Another few minutes and Hardy sat back, relaxed, crossed his legs and picked up the sports page from the low end table next to his chair.
In the day’s latest, Bob Lurie was trying to move the Giants to either Sacramento, San Jose, or Portland, although he mentioned Honolulu – the great baseball tradition in Hawaii. Talk about a homeless problem, he thought. This is the team nobody wants to take home. He turned to the standings. Halfway through the year – nine games out, third place. Not terrible, not great. How could they have traded Kevin Mitchell?
The door opened and Elizabeth Pullios came out. She didn’t appear to be in any particular hurry, yet she walked by Hardy, ignoring his greeting as if she’d never seen him before. ‘Have a nice day,’ he said to her back.
Drysdale was at the door, gesturing with his forefinger.
‘Why do I get the feeling this isn’t a hundred-percent social?’ Hardy asked.
Locke got down to it immediately. ‘Did you tell this reporter Elliot that our office subpoenaed Andy Fowler’s financial records?’
‘No. Somebody tell you I did?’
‘We’ve had a discussion about leaks and so on before, right?’
‘Yes, sir. Somebody tell you I was the leak? Did we subpoena his records?’
‘I want you to tell me everything you know about Andy Fowler.’
‘Was it Pullios? If it was, she’s a liar.’
Drysdale, who’d been standing halfway behind Hardy, hands in his pockets, stepped forward. ‘We’ve got a problem, Diz. A real problem. You’ve got a problem.’
‘Fowler.’ Locke didn’t want to leave the issue.
‘How is Fowler my problem?’
‘You were seen entering the witness’s waiting room the other day with Jeff Elliot.’
‘Can I ask who saw me? Or rather, who thought it was important to tell you?’
‘It’s irrelevant,’ Locke said. ‘What’s relevant is that you knew something critical to a murder case and withheld it from us.’
Hardy found himself getting pretty hot. ‘Like hell it’s irrelevant! You accuse me of something and you don’t let me face my accuser. I thought perhaps in an office practicing law we’d give a nod to the niceties of getting to the truth.’
‘We already know the truth. Fowler was your father-in-law, wasn’t he?’
‘That came from Pullios. Deny it.’
‘I don’t have to deny anything. Pullios, unlike you, is a damn good lawyer.’
‘Oh, that’s right. She really did a great job with May Shinn, locked her up tight.’
Drysdale tried to slow it down. ‘Guys…’
‘If Elizabeth knew that Andy Fowler had gone the bail for May Shinn, she would have come to me with it, not the newspaper.’
‘Well, isn’t she the nice little Gestapet.’
Drysdale butted in. ‘When did you know about Fowler, Diz?’
Hardy stopped and took a breath. ‘You know, Art, it’s funny, but I don’t believe we’ve established that I did know about Fowler yet. We have some unnamed source finking me into a room with Jeff Elliot. Although I’m beginning to suspect that in Mr Locke’s little fiefdom here, if you’re accused, you’re guilty.’
The district attorney was on his feet. ‘Don’t get any smarter with me, Hardy.’
‘It’s too late for that.’ He paused, then added, ‘Chris. From what I’ve seen, I’m already smarter than you.’
‘What you are, is out of a job.’
‘And what you are, Chris…’ Hardy slowed down, pulling out of it. He looked him in the eye. ‘What you are, Chris, is a total flaming asshole.’
He thought about it at Lou’s over his third black-and-tan. They’d planned to fire him all along. They didn’t want any new information out of him, anything incriminating. That had been a front.
Figure it out – before they’d asked him question one they’d told him to bring all the Nash files down to the office. They were planning on taking them from him. Which they’d done.
Ha, guys. Guess what?
The funny thing was he had withheld information from them. But he really hadn’t leaked the news about Fowler and bail. He’d only found that out this morning when he’d read the newspaper. Jeff Elliot had discovered it and used the information Hardy had given him about subpoena policy to make it appear it had been a D.A. leak. He was a clever guy, Jeff Elliot, and he’d cost Hardy his job, though at the moment Hardy was thinking that fell more into the category of a favor.
So maybe Locke and Drysdale had had grounds to fire him after all – he had known about Andy Fowler’s relationship with May Shinn and hadn’t come forward with it immediately. That wasn’t being a team player. But, he told himself, even if they had reasons they didn’t have the right reasons.
It still wasn’t noon. He thought he’d call Frannie, see if she was home, take her and the Beck out for a nice lunch.
37
Of the three men A.D.A. Elizabeth Pullios slept with on a fairly regular basis, two were married and two worked in the district attorney’s office.
There was District Attorney Chris Locke, who called her Pullios. She had him for the rush and the control -intimacy with your superior might be a double-edged sword, but so far it had cut only one way. Actually, in this case, Locke was the one who had most to lose if it came out. She knew not only the law on workplace harassment but the implications, if played right, and she knew how to play them. If a strong man who happened to be your boss had a relationship with you, it was his problem. You were the employee, he was the boss. And he could – and often did – fire you if you weren’t cooperative. The true vulnerability of many women in the workplace was something that played into the hands of someone like Pullios. Further, the odds of a backlash were long in her favor. For example, the way she had pushed and manipulated to get May Shinn indicted after lifting the file from another prosecutor… most any other assistant D.A. would have been stripped and flayed by Locke. Instead, since Locke knew Pullios was a damn good prosecutor, as well as ‘one helluva squeeze,’ diverting his gaze and rage to a junior scapegoat like Hardy had been so easy it was almost unfair. Except that nothing was unfair. If you won, fairness was a concept that didn’t apply.
Her second lover was Brian Powell, to whom she was Elizabeth. Brian had been her ‘boyfriend’ for three years. Forty-five, handsome, politically correct, he was a divorced, childless stockbroker who made six figures and did not hassle her. He understood when she was busy. She considered getting engaged to him (he hadn’t asked yet but she could lead him to it if she wanted) when it was time to run for D.A. and a mate would be helpful; until then he was someone pleasant to be with and be seen with.
The other man in the office – and in some ways the only one personally dangerous to her, called her Molly. That was Peter Struler, married and the father of three. He gave her the impression that he could take her or leave her, though he’d been taking her with some regularity for the past four or five months. With a law degree from Duke and three years in the FBI, Struler was both brain-smart and street-smart. He was also irreverent and funny. As an investigator for the district attorney’s office he worked under a separate jurisdiction from both the SFPD and the sheriffs department. It was the private police arm of the district attorney’s office and was used to protect attorneys going out to see witnesses in bad areas, to deliver subpoenas and, occasionally, to carry on its own investigations.