"I'm sorry," Hardy said. The tension in these big corporate law firms must be as bad as the rumors, he thought. "I'll try back later."
"No, later won't do either. I mean…" Now a sob broke. "I'm so sorry, I mean, Mr. Simpson won't be back later. He's, he was the managing partner. He's dead. He was killed."
Mesmerized, Hardy listened as the facts trickled out. Mr. Simpson was Simpson Crane, lately managing partner of Crane amp; Crane. About a week ago he and his wife were gunned down at their home in Pacific Palisades. Simpson Crane had been an anti-labor attorney and he had been negotiating some contracts. The suspicion was, she said, that organized labor had hired someone to kill Crane, but the police didn't have many leads and said it was mostly a theory. Simpson's son, Todd, was now running the firm for the time being, but, as Hardy could imagine, it was a very difficult time.
By the time Hardy hung up it was full dark outside. He folded the sheet of paper and put it in his wallet. Leaving the light on in the study, he made his way into the hall and down the stairway, across the marble of the foyer and, blessedly, at last, outside.
"Jesus," he whispered.
Driving home, partly to escape the feeling of unease that had clung to him at the Witt's, Hardy allowed himself to be disgusted that he had used the word "document" to describe the piece of spiral notebook paper than now resided in his wallet. He distinctly remembered the first time he'd come on the word "document" in his law studies. The verbiage, the pretension, the self-conscious importance – in short, everything about the definition struck him as so ludicrous, so plain stupid that he had memorized it (the alphabetical order made it easier), vowing never to become a lawyer who would use it:
"Documents" is used herein in the broadest sense and includes all written, printed, typed, graphic or otherwise recorded matter, however produced or reproduced, including non-identical copies, preliminary, intermediate, and final drafts, writings, records, and recordings of every kind and description, whether inscribed by hand or by mechanical, electronic, microfilm, photographic or other means, as well as phonic (such as tape recordings) or visual reproductions of all statements, conversations or events, and including without limitation, abstracts; address books; advertising material; agreements; analyses of any kind; appointment books; brochures; calendars; charts; circulars; computer cards; contracts; correspondence; data books; desk calendars; diagrams; diaries; directories; discs; drawings of any type; estimates; evaluations; financial statement or calculations; graphs; guidelines; house organs or publications; instructions; inter-office or intra-office communications; invoices; job descriptions; ledgers; letters; licenses; lists; manuals; maps; memoranda of any type; microfilm; minutes; movies; notes; notebooks; opinions; organization charts; pamphlets; permits; photographs; pictures; plans; projections; promotional materials; publications; purchase orders; schedules; specifications; standards; statistical analyses; stenographers' notebooks; studies of any kind; summaries; tabulations; tapes; telegrams; teletype messages; videotapes; vouchers; and working drawings, papers and files.
And a partridge in a pear tree.
And now this piece of paper with a date, a phone number and the word "No!!!" written on it had come out of his mouth, like water through a sieve, without an editing thought, as a "document."
It didn't thrill him.
Rhea, the woman who resembled Jennifer Witt, had been yelling and swearing into the telephone at her Jimmy for so long that, finally, when the guard had come in and taken the phone from her, hanging it up, she just shook her head and walked silently back to her cell. Jennifer, in the next cell, propped herself on an elbow on her cot.
"That didn't sound too good."
"That shit!" After the thirty-second break, Rhea was getting her vocabulary back. "That cocksucker Jimmer says I've got to wait another few days, maybe a week in here! Maybe a week! Shit! If he's fucking somebody else I'll kill the son of a bitch."
"What did he say?" Jennifer hoped her calm would be contagious. That language was all right when everybody was laughing, teasing, being together. But when you mixed anger in, it reminded her of too many other times – with Larry, with others, with what came next. Even hearing Rhea like this, she was getting cramps in her stomach. She curled her legs up, trying to get comfortable on the stained mattress, trying to keep the cramp from seizing. "About bail?"
"That shit!" Rhea picked up the plastic cup that held her plastic utensils and her disposable razor blade and her toothbrush and threw it against the bars.
"Rhea, stop! Please stop."
She did stop raving, stopped swearing. But when she did it left her standing at the edge of her cell, where she crumbled to the floor, crying quietly.
After a minute or two Jennifer uncurled herself from her cot and went to the side of her cell. "He couldn't get bail?"
Rhea shook her head quietly, back and forth. "He said it would be a couple of days at the most. Now he says without me his income is down and it's taking longer. How do you like that? Without me his income is down!" She lapsed again into quiet tears.
"How much would it take?" Jennifer asked.
The crying slowed, went to sniffles, stopped. "What?"
"How much did you say your bail was? Five thousand?"
She nodded. "Why?"
Jennifer sat on the floor, knees up, arms wrapped around them. She had already learned a lot about the working of the jail. Clara knew a lot, so did Mercedes. If you had the stomach and the money for it, if you were desperate enough, guards could be bribed, things could be done. It had happened before, many times.
"I don't know for sure," Jennifer said, "but maybe I can help him get it." She spoke as quietly as she could, venturing a glance over to Rhea. If anyone else heard her, she wanted to be able to deny having said anything. But Rhea was listening, her mouth half open, disbelieving. "Of course you'd have to help me if you could."
12
Halfway out from Van Ness to the beach, Miz Carter's Mudhouse had been a landmark on California Street for half a century. The "mud" was coffee, sometimes thick as Turkish, and before espresso caught on with the yuppies in the late seventies the Mudhouse was the best place for java in the western half of the city. Miz Carter's daughter, Louanne, still made her mud the old way, loose ground beans stirred into boiling water, then strained as it was poured. The stuff could jolt you right up.
Which Hardy needed. He and Frannie had been awakened no fewer than six times by their two young darlings doing their tag-team number, Rebecca with an ear infection and low-grade fever, Vincent wanting to be fed. It was fun, but all and all, the Hardy's agreed they'd had better times.
Glitsky's description of Walter Terrell – white guy, brown hair, mustache – wasn't exactly on the money. He was swarthier, Mediterranean somehow, not like the guy Hardy had been thinking about from school. Hardy had put his briefcase on the table to identify himself, and Terrell came and slid in across from him.
He was younger than Hardy had expected, maybe thiry-two or thereabouts. At forty-one, Hardy didn't feel old, but it was disconcerting that so many people he worked with were starting to be so much younger, and that he noticed it.
Terrell wore new Reeboks, a worn pair of Levi's and an ironed dress shirt with thin maroon stripes under his Member's Only jacket that fit him neatly. In spite of Glitsky's feelings about Terrell and his theories, the guy must have put together some kind of record if he'd already made Homicide.
After he'd had his coffee poured, Terrell took a sip and shuddered, adding sugar like there was no tomorrow. "What kind of name is Dismas?" He tried the mud again. He kept stirring.