Glitsky found the paper he’d been looking for, making sure of what he had written under ‘Reason for Leaving Present Employment.’ He wondered if it was strong enough.
Hardy had fond feelings for the Sir Francis Drake Hotel. When his father returned from the Pacific Theater after World War II he had spent his first night back in the States in a VIP room the hotel had reserved for returning POWs. Later he and Hardy’s mother had the honeymoon suite; it was possible that Hardy had been conceived there.
But the great hotel, a block north of Union Square in the heart of downtown, had not so much fallen upon hard times as it had been victimized by the boom times.
The San Francisco Hardy’s father had returned to had been the City That Knew How. It had a vital port, a refreshing year-round climate, great food, neighborhoods, a tiny downtown with an accessible feel. In fact, it had much of what corporate America wanted. Men who had been in the war and passed through the city on their way home were now running businesses and did not see why they had to slave away, freeze in the winter, sweat the summers out in Cleveland or Detroit or Omaha when they could have a corner building on Russian Hill.
And these men, the first generation, knew what they had and did not much want to mess with it. San Francisco’s lack of a skyline was part of its charm. The city did not need big buildings to make a big statement. If you wanted to take a moment to look around at this twinkling clear gem of a city spreading before you, you could go to the Redwood Room high atop the Fairmont Hotel. You could hit the Top of the Mark, or Coit Tower. Or, downtown, you could go to the Starlight Room of the Sir Francis Drake Hotel. Forty years ago.
Hardy sat there now, at the bar. It was just after eleven in the morning, and he looked through the streaked windows to the other Francis across the way-the Saint Francis Hotel, which dwarfed the Drake. A few blocks further north, the Bankamerica building threw its fifty-six stories’ worth of shade around the surrounding ten blocks of downtown; the Transamerica Pyramid, the Embarcadero Center Towers-in their fashion as symbolic, Hardy thought, as the spires of medieval cathedrals. Just a different god.
Hardy took his coffee and walked across the faded rug of the nearly empty Starlight Room. Except for due south, which afforded a view of the shipyards and Hunter’s Point, every direction was blocked by highrises.
Hardy had danced up here with Jane, had stood with his arm around her at the floor-to-ceiling windows, looking down all around them at their city. It had been a genteel place, a spot to touch base or regroup, out of step with the hipness of the rest of the city. Even then it had been, from Hardy’s and Jane’s perspective, where ‘old people’ of forty or fifty drank Happy Hour doubles and danced to a combo, not a rock band.
Now Hardy felt like one of the old people himself. A voice behind him said, “They gotta get to these windows.”
Hardy spun around, jittery. For a moment he had almost forgotten he was being hunted. “It doesn’t really matter,” he said, “there’s not much to see anymore.”
Hector Medina was a short, squat man with a square face and thinning hair. He wore a brown business suit and black shoes, which were not shined. He showed Hardy his security-cop’s badge and they went back to the bar, where Hardy had his coffee refilled and Medina ordered a glass of plain water, no ice, no lime. “
“This must be my week for cops,” he said. “Memory lane.”
“I’m not on the force anymore,” Hardy said. “The message I left…”
“Yeah I got it. Ex-cop, cop. I’m an ex-cop. I still feel like a cop.”
“You’re chief of security here, aren’t you?”
Medina coughed. “Yeah. Some Japanese tour lady loses her purse and I get to investigate and find it under her bed. A farmer from Kansas finds out the hooker he picked up is a guy and has a fit. Tough cases.” He sipped at his water. “Shit, what am I talking about? It’s a good job. But don’t mistake it for real police work.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “So how can I help you?”
Hardy wasn’t sure how Medina could help him. It wasn’t entirely clear to him why he’d even come down here, but it was better than sitting at Frannie’s with a loaded gun and a head full of questions. He’d thought he might as well get some of them answered. “It’s about Rusty Ingraham.”
Medina picked up his glass again, then put it down. “You know, I had a feeling.”
“Why’s that?”
“You know Clarence Raines?”
The name sounded familiar but Hardy shook his head.
“The department is fucking him over. Him and his partner.”
“Is he one of the guys they’re bringing up-”
“Yeah, yeah. Those guys. So Clarence came to see me to ask about…”
“… because something like this happened to you?”
“Something exactly like this. Except they didn’t wind up killing their suspect, what’s his name, Treadwell. They should have. At least my guy couldn’t talk.”
“So what’d you tell Clarence?”
“My advice? I told him, him and his partner both, to go into business.”
Hardy didn’t get that.
“Business, you know. Sporting goods, insurance, something out of the line, ’cause their police careers are over right now. Once you’re charged…” He finished his water.
“That’s what happened to you?”
“Ingraham,” Medina said.
“He brought the charges?”
“No, no. He’s too clean for that. Too hands off. He just pointed the finger and sicced the dogs on me.”
“But you got off.”
“Cause the D.A. knew a good cop when he saw one. He knew the asshole I killed was a dirtbag. Scum of the earth.”
“Who’d tried to kill you anyway, right?”
Medina looked over Hardy’s shoulder, silent. Then, “There was a gun in his hand. It never went to trial.”
Hardy fiddled with his coffee cup. A man could say a lot saying nothing, admitting nothing. Hardy might never know the story, but it was becoming clear to him that maybe Ingraham had been onto something with Medina-the accusation might not have been all air.
“So you wouldn’t say Ingraham and you were close?”
Medina grunted, smiled. “You could say I’d like to kill the son of a bitch, frankly.”
“You won’t have to.”
Medina blinked, his look going over Hardy’s shoulder, then back. He seemed to settle back on his stool, as though some tension he had been holding in a long time was finally releasing its grip. “My luck keeps holding,” he said.
“What does that mean?”
“It means I haven’t seen Ingraham or talked to him in maybe five years, and last week I called him up and this week he’s killed. Somebody will probably check his phone records, put it together and want to talk to me about it.”
“You called him up?”
Medina sighed. “Clarence coming to see me, talking about his situation, it got me stirred up.”
“So what did you say to him?”
Again that guttural grunt. “That’s what’s funny. I didn’t say a damn thing. I heard his voice and realized I didn’t want to prove it, that’s all. It was over. If I want to do something, I’ll work with Clarence’s hand. Mine’s folded.”
Medina lifted the glass to his mouth, saw it was empty and still tried to suck the last drops from it. “I gotta get back to work. Nice talking to you.”
He got to the elevator button, pushed it, then walked back to Hardy. “If I wanted to kill Ingraham, and believe me, I thought about it, I would’ve done it seven years ago when it would’ve done some good, and there wouldn’t have been any evidence there, either.”
The elevator door opened and Medina turned a half-step toward it.
“Nobody says you killed Ingraham,” Hardy said.