By the same token, common scuttlebutt at the Hall had made Glitsky realize back when he was still in homicide that Panos was a bad egg, his organization fairly corrupt. His "rate increase" of the year before had been nothing more than a thinly disguised protection racket. Glitsky knew that several businesses had at first elected to drop out of Thirty-two only to sign back up after windows had been broken or goods stolen. Two men had been mugged. One storefront cat killed. All of them had filed complaints with the PD, only to drop them. Glitsky, up in payroll, found it entertaining to chase these paper trails and identify potential plaintiffs for his friend Diz. Was he doing anything else worthwhile? Eventually, he had turned all of these names over to Hardy, and most had joined the other plaintiffs in the lawsuit.
Hardy thought it was starting to look pretty solid for the good guys. "So what did Mr. Kroll want?" he asked.
"He wants to talk some more before the next round of depositions."
Hardy shrugged. "Did you tell him that that's what depositions are all about, everybody getting to talk?"
"I believe I did. Told him we could talk all we wanted starting Tuesday, but he wants to put it off, maybe till early next year."
"If I were him, I'd want that, too. What'd you tell him?"
"No, of course." Freeman cleaned out his ear for a minute, his eyes somewhere in the middle distance. He picked up his glass and swirled it, then took a sip. "My gut is he's feeling us out for a separate settlement."
Hardy was about to take a sip himself, but he stopped midway to his mouth, put the glass back down. "We're asking for thirty million dollars, David. Rodney King got six and he was one guy. We've got fourteen plaintiffs. Two million and change each. What could Kroll possibly offer that would get our attention?"
"I think he was having a small problem with that question as well. I got the feeling he'd been chatting with his insurance company, which won't pay for intentional misconduct. To say nothing of punitives, which we'll get to the tune of say six or eight mil, and again there's no coverage. So if we win, Panos is bankrupt."
"Which was the idea."
"And still a good one."
"Did he actually mention a number?"
"Not in so many words."
"But?"
"But he's going to propose we amend the filing so Panos gets named only for negligence, no intentional tort. This leaves his insurance company on the hook for any damages we get awarded."
"And why do we want to do this? To help them out?"
"That's what he wanted to talk about before the depositions. I predict he's going to suggest that he rat out the city, give us chapter and verse on the PD and their criminally negligent supervision of his people, which strengthens our case, and in return he gets insurance coverage on any judgment we get."
"What a sleazeball."
"True. But not stupid," Freeman said. "If we were equally sleazy, it's actually a pretty good trick."
"Let's not be, though. Sleazy. What do you say?"
"I'm with you. But still, it's not bad strategy. And it could be even better if he thinks to suggest settling directly with us for say a quarter mil per plaintiff, which puts three and a half mil in the pot, a third of which comes to you and me, and his insurance pays for all of it. Panos comes out smelling like a rose. We make a bundle. The city's self-insured so they're covered. Everybody wins."
Hardy liked it, but shook his head. "I don't think so, though. His insurance would have to agree, and why would they?"
"Maybe Panos has got it himself. In cash."
"That's not coming out smelling like a rose. That's down three plus mil."
"But at least then he's still in business. We settle, sign a confidentiality statement, he raises his rates, he still wins."
Hardy nodded grimly. "It's so beautiful it almost makes me want to cry. And all we have to do is change a word or two?"
"Correct."
"Just like guilty to not guilty. One word." For a brief instant, Hardy wondered if Freeman were actually considering the proposal, which Kroll had never actually voiced and may not even have thought of. "Are you tempted?" he asked.
Freeman sloshed his wine around, put his nose in the bowl, took it out, and nodded. "Sure. It wouldn't be a worthwhile moral dilemma if I wasn't tempted. But it's half your case and I'm duty bound to admit that I believe it's a solid, pragmatic strategy, and not overtly illegal. If we don't do it, it'll be way harder to win."
Hardy took the cue from Freeman and swirled his own glass for a minute. "So it's my decision, too?"
"Got to be," Freeman admitted.
"Give me a minute," Hardy said. "How much do I clear?"
"Well, Kroll never gave me a specific number. But if I'm even close to what he's thinking at three and half million, say, and I bet I am, you personally bring in close to a half million before taxes."
Silence gathered in the room. "Couple of years work," Hardy said.
"At least."
Hardy's mouth twitched. He blew out heavily. "For the record, I'm officially tempted." He put his glass down, walked to the window, pulled the blinds apart and stared a minute outside at the street. When he turned again, his face was set. "Okay," he said, "now that that's out of the way, fuck these guys."
5
For a wealthy man, Wade Panos kept a relatively low profile.
He didn't need flashy clothes, since he wore a Patrol Special uniform every day at work. The Toyota 4Runner got him wherever he needed to go. The three-bedroom house on Rivera that he shared with Claire blended with the others in the lower Richmond District. He mowed his own lawn every Saturday, took out the garbage, talked over the fence with his neighbors. To all outward appearances, Wade was a regular guy.
He'd started working as an assistant patrol special in Thirty-two when he was just out of high school. It was his father's beat. George ran a tight ship in those days, providing basic security for his two hundred clients, patrolling the beat on foot.
It didn't take Wade long to realize that his father was missing a substantial opportunity-big money could be made in this field. People wanted protection, especially once they came to understand that without it, bad things could happen. More importantly, Wade was adept at identifying enterprises-prostitution, the drug trade, gambling dens-that operated outside the protection of the law. These businesses couldn't survive in his beats without his protection, and rather than roust them out or turn them over to the regular police, he found most of them willing to enter into partnership with him.
By the time Wade was twenty-five, he'd made enough on his own to buy his first beat from the city. Ten years later, when he inherited Thirty-two after his father's death, he had six of them and a payroll of nearly ninety assistants. He was fortunate that his timing was so good. About five years ago, the city had limited the number of beats to three for any one individual, but his holdings were grandfathered and allowed to stand. His books showed that he was pulling down close to a million dollars a year.
Until relatively recently, the actual figure was about twice that. And in the last three years, the profits had become nearly obscene. Not that he was complaining.
Since so much of his income was in cash, Wade had had to become skilled at laundering it, and to this end he formed a holding company that owned four bars in various parts of the city, each of which pulled down a tidy legitimate profit and substantially more in dirty money. Being a good businessman, Wade always kept his eyes open for rundown watering holes that he could scoop up at bargain prices, then renovate to a veneer of respectability. He'd also found that, once a property appealed to him, his connections, associates and business practices could often help a struggling bar along on its journey to bankruptcy.