"If I can get Villars-"
"You're talking about Joan Villars, the Superior Court judge, I presume? Get serious. The woman's about as flexible as concrete. You're not going to convince Villars to do anything."
"So let me try to convince you."
Freeman sat back again. "I've been listening. I think you said fifty doctors bought stock. Continue."
"The reason the other three hundred and fifty did not was because of the wording of this cover-letter and the offering circular. Together, they made this dumb nickel investment sound like a waste of time. Then they sent it out to their doctors during the holidays, when only a few of the guys would be likely to take the time to read it, and limited the option period to about three weeks."
"I'm with you so far. Did Larry buy or not buy?"
"Larry smelled a rat."
"And then?"
"And then he threatened to blow the whistle on this multi-million-dollar scam. That was the call to LA."
Fingers pressed to his eyes, Freeman sighed. "I was afraid that's where you were going."
Hardy had been talked out of enough good ideas by David Freeman over the past weeks. He was not in his most receptive mode. "David, the managing partner in the LA firm handling this was shot to death within a month of Larry Witt."
Freeman tipped his glass. "You said that. I fail to see, though, how any of this is going to mitigate Jennifer's sentence, even if you could get Villars to listen to it, which you can't. You're saying now, I take it, that there was in fact some mysterious hit man, the existence of whom, by the way, the defense – that's us – never hinted at during the trial, and of whom there is no physical evidence."
"That doesn't mean he doesn't exist."
"Do you think he does? You think Jennifer is telling the truth?"
Hardy said he still didn't entirely think that, but the jury might. "I'll let them decide."
"Villars won't let you introduce the theory. And if she'd be inclined to, which she won't, Powell will object and win unless you've got some shred of evidence, which doesn't exist, no doubt because this didn't happen this way."
"Which leaves Jennifer hanging," Hardy said.
Freeman noisily sipped the rest of his wine. "It always has," he muttered.
But he wasn't going to take any more of Freeman's advice, even if it was right. He still had four days, and he thought if he did succeed in finding that shred of evidence Freeman had talked about, he could get Villars at least to listen.
After all, this was a capital case. This was life and death, not some moot-court discussion, not petty politics. If he got something real, he had to believe she would listen to it.
Of course, this did beg the question of whether or not anything real in fact existed, but Hardy had nothing else – he had to assume it did. Somewhere.
43
The next day he interviewed three doctors at YBMG, two of whom had not invested and one who had. The first two felt understandably snake-bit, but neither one saw a grand conspiracy at work in his bad fortune. The Group had done well and they both wished they had been more a part of it, but it was like the lottery. Who would have predicted the windfall? It was a fluke, and they'd been given their chance.
The lucky one, Dr. Seidl, was a younger member of the Group, only entitled to ninety-two shares. Paying his monthly bills in December, he had sent in his $4.60 and promptly forgot about it. Last month, when he received his payout of $13,143.12, he thought it was very nice, but after taxes it was a little under ten grand, and after all his credit cards he was back to square one. It sure beat a swan dive into a dry swimming pool, but it wasn't really going to change his life.
Hardy was starting to think it was going to be hard to sustain his conspiracy theory, even to himself, if he didn't find somebody who had made a bundle, and theoretically, at least, would have had reason to shut up a whistle blower if that's what Larry Witt had been.
In the afternoon he went to the library and looked up the members of the YBMG Board in the business reference section, but the names were all unfamiliar. He did learn that the corporation as an entity was scheduled to hold fifty-one percent of the stock, and the doctors forty-nine percent, if all of them bought in. He wondered if there was a provision for outstanding, unbought doctor stock, some kind of secondary buy-in, but he saw no mention of it in the published prospectus.
He did some figuring, realizing that if only ten percent of the doctors bought their stock, then there appeared to be a little over 125,000 shares out there somewhere – unclaimed – with a value of something like $17 million.
On Friday morning, he was in his office, talking on the phone to the Los Angeles Police Department. He still had discovered no evidence connection between YBMG's business dealings and Dr. Larry Witt. He had talked to Jennifer again last night, pressing her, but she could recall nothing Larry said or might have said regarding the proposed buy-out. Hardy was tempted to tell her to make something up just so he could get it in front of somebody, but he restrained himself.
Then it struck him – there had been an investigation. He knew that policmen got sensitive about their unsolved backlogs – their skull cases, they called them – but he might be able to drum up a little enthusiasm – tie the old crime to another one?
"Restoffer. Homicide."
It was an older voice but not a tired one. And Hardy had gotten through the huge bureaucracy faster that he'd have thought possible. Maybe it meant something.
Hardy introduced himself, trying to talk fast and still be as clear as he could be – he was a defense attorney in San Francisco and maybe had discovered a possible link between his client and the murder of Simpson Crane.
There was a longish pause. "What'd you say your name was?"
Hardy told him. Another pause. "Just a minute. Hang on, would you?"
When Restoffer came back on, there was less background noise. "You said you were in San Francisco?"
"That's right."
"I'm listening."
Hardy went through it, more slowly this time, filling in the blanks. When he'd finished, Restoffer said, "That's pretty tenuous, Mr. Hardy."
The inspector was right, of course, and Hardy admitted it. Simpson Crane ran the law firm that represented the medical group of which Larry Witt had been a member. Crane himself hadn't been YBMG's lawyer, or Witt's. For that matter, even Jody Bachman hadn't been Witt's lawyer.
Hardy knew better than to push. It was the quickest way to turn a cop off – a citizen, especially a defense lawyer, lobbying for an unsupported theory. The facts were either going to intrigue Restoffer or not. "Well," Hardy said, "I just thought I should report it to somebody, get it off my chest."
It was Restoffer's cue to hang up if he was going to, but he stayed on. "We're pretty sure it was union muscle but we couldn't find any kind of trail. They did it right…"
"Same up here. Except they've convicted my client – Witt's wife – of killing him for the insurance."
"They've convicted her already?"
"Last week. My problem is she's got no defense, other than saying she didn't do it. She says she saw somebody walking up the street. Maybe it was some kind of hit man, so I've been trying to find a reason for a hit man to want to kill Witt. This might be it."
There was a long silence. "I've got four months before I retire," Restoffer said. "I'd love to close out these two. Crane was a prominent guy. So was his wife. But I've got five live cases right now. When am I supposed to fit this in?"