He was in the greenhouse Solarium, alone, the bao a still-fragrant and comforting memory, the morning Chronicle open on the table in front of him. He hadn’t forgotten anything about his talk last night with Abe Glitsky. (Maybe Glitsky had stolen the toothbrushes! Aha! That was it. Even if it wasn’t, he could accuse him of it and have some fun.)
It had become pretty clear in the talk at the table that Glitsky thought Sal had been killed and, more, that Graham had murdered him. And if that was the case, then Glitsky knew more than Hardy did.
He scanned the paper, but there was nothing particularly new and exciting there. The weekend hadn’t provided any startling revelations. Even DA Pratt and AG Powell had maintained what one article called a ‘wary silence.’ Thirty-one doctors took out a full-page advertisement announcing that they had helped patients kill themselves, but this, Hardy knew, wasn’t going to have any direct impact on the Graham Russo case.
So what did Glitsky know?
Pulling the ten-button conference-room phone over to him, he started to call the homicide detail, but hung up. If the lieutenant hadn’t talked to him sixteen hours ago, he wasn’t going to start now. Nothing had changed on that front.
Suddenly, that old horse’s mouth yawed open before him again. ‘Idiot,’ he said to himself, shaking his head.
A miracle, Graham was home and picked up his telephone. But the first words out of his mouth – that he’d spent more time chatting with Sarah Evans – cut short Hardy’s happiness that he’d reached his client. ‘You’re making this up, aren’t you, Graham?’ he said. ‘Please tell me you’re making this up.’
‘No. I’m not. It was really good.’
‘It was really good,’ Hardy repeated. ‘That’s nice. I’m happy for you.’
‘It wasn’t like what you’re thinking,’ Graham protested.
Hardy could picture him, sitting framed in his splendid back window, looking out over the city, having a cup of his terrific Kona coffee, perhaps savoring a fresh croissant, bought with who knows what money. Maybe, Hardy thought, living up there in fairy-tale land colored one’s view of the rest of the world.
In any case, Graham was in serious need of a reality check. ‘What wasn’t it like? You tell me. How it could be different from what I’m thinking? Even in the best of all worlds, what other interpretation could there possibly be?’
‘If Sarah was going to arrest me, Diz, she would have done it already. She just wanted to know.’
‘We’re talking Sergeant Evans of the homicide detail, is that right? Suddenly, she’s Sarah now? Are you guys going out together, staying in, what? It would help if I knew.’
‘Nothing, Diz. Nothing like that.’
‘She just wanted to know the truth?’
‘Right.’
‘And the Time guy, what about him?’
‘He was a good guy.’
Hardy could envision the shrug, the nonchalance. He knew he was getting geared up here, and he didn’t think it would hurt his client any to realize it. ‘Graham, it’s this reporter’s job to be a good guy and get you to like him so you’ll open up and tell him the story he needs to write. It’s not personal.’
‘No.’ Graham was convinced. ‘This was different. Really. It was great to get to lay some of it out finally.’
Hardy had both of his elbows on the table, the receiver cradled against one ear, his head held up with the other one. There wasn’t any sense in going further with this. It was time to shift to damage control, if that was going to be possible. He forced some modulation into his voice. ‘So what did you tell your friend Sarah this time? I hope parts of it were close to the last version.’
He heard an amused chuckle. ‘It’s just the obvious stuff. Nothing to worry about.’
‘Obvious?’
‘You know.’
‘I don’t, really. Why don’t you humor me?’
‘Well, the truth about my dad and me. I mean, of course I helped him out. Once it was clear that we’d kind of patched things up, the rest of it just followed.’
‘What “rest,” though? That’s what I’m trying to get at.’
A pause. ‘That I’d given him morphine a bunch of times. But not that day,’ he added.
‘You told Sergeant Evans that?’
‘Yeah.’ Another hesitation, longer. ‘And that I’d gone by there, on Friday. By Sal’s. But he hadn’t been home.’
At almost precisely the same moment State Attorney General Dean Powell was reaching his own decision. He’d quietly come down from Sacramento early in the morning and spent the morning with Drysdale and Gil Soma. Now they were finishing their lunch at a back table in Jack’s – one of the city’s finest and oldest restaurants. An elderly waiter in a tuxedo was pouring coffee all round. The white linen had been cleared of crumbs.
Powell originally hailed from San Francisco. Before his election he’d been a senior attorney in the DA’s office. His habit of combing his long white hair with his fingers had been the subject of dozens of caricatures, and he was doing this as he spoke to Soma. ‘I think we’re close to settled on the basics, but I must confess, Gil, I’ve got a reservation or two about your involvement. You ever put on a murder trial before?’
Powell, of course, knew the answer to this. He was impressed with Soma’s credentials and, more, his passion, but if the young man couldn’t stand up to the pressure of his boss’s informal interrogation now, he’d melt in the crucible of a special-circumstances-case courtroom. Better to find out sooner.
Soma brought a napkin to his lips, but didn’t waste any time with the motion. He wasn’t stalling. ‘No, sir, but I can win this case.’
‘As a murder one?’
‘It is a murder one. This morning’s police reports lock that up. This wasn’t any assisted suicide.’
Powell nodded. ‘I buy that, Gil. It’s critical, though, that we have the right man.’ He leaned over the table, combed his hair back again, then pointed a finger at Soma. ‘You hate this Graham Russo, don’t you? It’s personal, isn’t it?’
Soma glanced over at his mentor, Art Drysdale, who was stirring his coffee. No help there. ‘I don’t like him, sir, that’s true.’
‘And you’re sure you’re not seeing what you want to see here? You’ve thought about this a lot?’
Now Soma did reach for his coffee. Powell thought this a well-rehearsed move. The question appeared to call for thought and even if Soma had considered every possible ramification of it, he would take a formulaic pause. Placing the cup carefully into the center of its saucer, Soma brought in Drysdale for a beat, then proceeded. ‘The original case – the DA’s here in the city – had several holes. The money alone wasn’t really enough, and we knew that, which was why we waited. Since then we’ve discovered that there was a fight, that Graham Russo was there – he’s admitted it…’
Drysdale finally spoke up. ‘That’s a little squirrely.’
But Soma didn’t think so. ‘It’s evidently not on the tape, but Glitsky guarantees we’ve got Evans’s testimony. She’ll swear to it.’
‘Then we’re back to “he said, but she said.” ’
Powell interrupted. ‘Art, play devil’s advocate a little later. I want to hear what we’ve got altogether.’ He gestured back to Soma.
‘Okay, we’ve got the fight. We put Graham there. We’ve got the morphine, plus syringes from a box traced to his ambulance company. We got a fistful of his lies on the record. We’ve got his financial position, which is horrible, and which leads us back to the money. We’ve got means, opportunity, and motive. It’s classic, sir. He did it and we can prove it.’