"Paying us, you mean. Just keep repeating the paying part and you'll feel better."
"I won't feel better. I don't want to get paid to lie to my clients."
"Well, fortunately, they're not your clients, they're Amy's."
Hardy straightened himself up in his chair. "Precisely the opposite point you made about one sentence ago, you notice. When the Norths were paying, they were our clients; when they're being lied to, they're Amy's."
"You've stumbled upon my specialty, honed in years of debate. Answers tailored to justify any course of action." Farrell broke a smile. "It's a modest enough talent, but it's seen me through some dark days. And what do you mean, you don't want to get paid to lie? I thought that's what we got paid for."
But Hardy held up a hand. "Wes. Enough. Okay?"
The smile faded. "Okay. So what's she going to do? Amy?"
"First thing, I had her go down to Boscacci and apologize in person. Tell him the truth, which is that the kid decided on his own not to admit."
Farrell sat back and crossed a leg. "And why do you think he did that?"
Hardy gave it a minute. "He's young. Eight years sounds like the rest of his life. But for now, I guess he'd rather take bad odds at pulling life than no odds at eight years." He sighed. "He's going to find out."
Inspector Sergeant Pat Belou stepped out of the elevator on the fourth floor of the Hall of Justice. She had ridden up from the lobby with her partner Lincoln Russell, a well-dressed mid-thirties black inspector. Also in the small enclosed elevator had been about ten other citizens, at least one of whom badly needed a shower, some new clothes, a toothbrush, maybe industrial disinfectant and certainly deodorant. Lots of deodorant.
"That was the longest elevator ride I've ever taken," Belou said when the door closed behind her. "We ought to arrest that guy as a health hazard."
"Not till he kills somebody," Russell said. "We're homicide. He's got to kill somebody first. Those are the rules."
"Well, he almost killed me. That ought to count. Anybody goes with him all the way to the top, their life's in danger."
"Maybe we catch him on the way down," Russell said.
Belou blew out through her mouth, waving the air in front of her nose. She was a thirty-year-old, tall and rangy woman with an outdoorsy look, a bit of a heavy jaw, some old, faded acne scars on her face. But her large mouth smiled easily, she laughed as though she meant it, and her shoulder-length hair, a shade lighter than dirty blond and with a perennially windblown look, set off lovely blue eyes.
The inspectors turned into the hallway, and Belou stopped suddenly, hit her partner on the arm. "Glitsky," she said. "Good a time as any."
Russell said he'd see her in the homicide detail, and she turned around and came back to the double doors by the elevator lobby that led to the admin offices. She was just asking the receptionist at the outside desk if she could have a word with the deputy chief when the man himself appeared from somewhere in the back. He wore a deep frown and was accompanied by a sergeant in uniform, Paganucci by his name tag.
She spoke right up. "Sir? Sergeant Belou. Homicide."
Glitsky, obvious frazzled, came to a full stop. "I'm running to a meeting," he told her. "If you'd like to leave a message with Melissa here, I'll get back to you as soon as I can."
"Yes, sir. But this is short. Ted Reed."
"Ted Reed?"
"Elizabeth Cary's brother. Lake Elsinore."
"What about him?"
"He's been in custody on an arson charge down in Escondido for most of the last month. The public defender down there told me he must have decided he liked the food in jail, didn't want to waste his money on bail. His trial's in a couple of months. Bottom line is he didn't kill his sister."
Glitsky nodded. Something else was distracting him, but he said, "Okay. Thanks. Good job."
Then, to Melissa: "I'm at the Young Community Developers ribbon cutting out on Van Ness. I won't talk to any reporters before the next scheduled press conference. Tony." He turned to the sergeant who accompanied him. "How fast can we get there? We're late already."
"Lights and sirens, five, six minutes."
"If they call," Glitsky told Melissa, "tell them we're on the way."
Then they were gone, jogging through the elevator lobby, hitting the stairs at a run.
Behind the reception desk, Melissa looked up at Belou, shook her head in commiseration. "Man don't belong doing this. Gonna make hisself sick." The phone rang and she picked it up, said without ceremony that the deputy chief wasn't available, hung up. She smiled at Belou, pointed at the telephone. "One of the reporters he didn't want to talk to. They eatin' him up."
"What about?"
"This LeShawn Brodie thing. You following that?"
"The Greyhound guy?"
"That's him, sugar."
"What about him?"
"So you ain't heard? He was headin' back this way, but they pulled him over up in Colfax. Now he's got hisself twenty hostages in some diner up there, already killed two of 'em." She pointed to the phone. "Them reporters. They wantin' his hide."
Hardy asked Phyllis to hold his calls. He locked his door, took off his shoes, loosened his tie and lay down on one of his couches. He'd had a good breakfast with the family and wasn't remotely hungry, and he decided he would start to break the bottle-of-wine-with-lunch habit by skipping lunch entirely. Eliminate the temptation.
He fell asleep instantly, and awoke nearly three hours later. Alone in his office, he threw water on his face, brewed a cup of espresso and drank it down as soon as it didn't scald.
Replaying Frannie's monologue from last night in his mind, he realized that all of his friends involved in the gunfight had been wrestling with their long-term reactions and demons ever since. He shouldn't have been surprised that he had his own issues, and that he'd been ignoring them as best he could. But from today on, he resolved that things were going to change. It was just a matter of will, and that had always been one of his strengths.
But today, after he'd finished his coffee, he got up to pour himself another cup and noticed the bottle of Rémy Martin in his bar. Without agonizing about it too much, he poured a shot into his cup and added coffee. He'd never entertained the thought that he intended to quit drinking altogether, and after all he'd not had any wine for lunch. He deserved that shot as a reward for his earlier abstinence, and one shot wasn't going to affect him adversely in any event. It would just take a little of the edge off.
Raising the cup to his mouth, though, he hesitated.
Maybe Frannie's point last night was that his normal response to conflict or inner turmoil lately had been to round off the edges. He was literally dulled, and in that state, nothing was really that serious. You could take the easiest course, ride it out, have a few drinks, and usually things tended to work out acceptably. You couldn't spend your whole life worrying about the what ifs, the small stuff. And that was counterproductive, too. At least as debilitating as drinking.
In fact, seen in that light, drinking had enabled him to function better. He came to work every day, drummed up mega-business with whoever could pay his fees, used his natural talent for schmoozing. He was good with people, that was all. And with a bit of a load on, even more charming.
Like Wu. Charming.
The thought stopped him cold.
Like Wu. Screwing up. Hiding behind that old glib shit. Ultimately failing those who might be counting on you.
Leaving the cup untouched on the counter, he instead walked over to his dart area, opened the cabinets and pulled the three tungsten customs from the board. It wasn't so long ago that he used to throw his darts to clear his mind as a relaxation technique, and now he got to the line in the floor, turned and threw. Threw again. Again. One round.