John Lescroart - The First Law

McGuire was tending, working hard keeping up with the orders. Hardy filled a pint glass with ice, a squeeze of lime, and gunned it full of club soda. After he drank half of it off in a gulp, he jumped in to help, and for most of an hour, didn't stop moving. It wasn't just a large crowd, but a remarkably friendly, patient and orderly one. They were mostly locals-thirsty but not belligerent. The jukebox kept cranking out the hits, although at one point Hardy realized that most of them weren't hits anymore-they were oldies. But then again, he thought, so was he, pouring his drinks, pulling his drafts, ringing up the charges, shooting the bull in five-second sound bites since it was far too busy for conversation. He and McGuire worked back into the rhythms they'd perfected back in the days twenty years before when Hardy had been the lead man behind the bar, before his marriage, before kids and his career.

Nowadays, and for a long while, all the other parts of his life had felt so different from this. Nowhere was there this simple busyness, the pleasure of doing something uncomplicated, good and well. Here, if somebody ordered a drink, he could be pretty sure that they weren't lying to him. That was the drink they wanted. He gave it to them, they paid him, he gave them their change. Maybe they tipped him. End of transaction.

When he looked up, surprised, to find that he finally had a minute, that most of the customers had left, he was sweating with the exertion and activity, but something had given inside him, the tremendous pressure, almost as though he'd taken a week's vacation on a warm beach. He realized that the ache in his back had at last subsided. He could still feel his injured hand when he squeezed it, but he'd been using it with a natural ease all night. He allowed himself to hope for a minute that with Paul Thieu's information, his enemies would be thwarted and with them, the threats to his family ended.

McGuire muted the televisions, turned the volume down on the jukebox, then came down from the other end of the bar. He put a heavy hand on Hardy's shoulder and sincerely thanked him for his work. "Where did that come from?" he asked, meaning the crowd.

"The word must have gotten out that I'd be here. Damn celebrity seekers." But Hardy was grinning, first time in a week or so. Almost directly over his head, and behind him, Paul Thieu's picture showed up on the television for a minute, the late news, and McGuire glanced up, but he didn't know who Thieu was, so he never mentioned it.

Not that it would have made any difference.

They'd made last call a little early, shagged out the stragglers, locked up by 12:30, and restocked. They counted the money-$1,428, unheard of on a Tuesday night. Moses didn't ask, but poured Hardy a stiff Macallan to match his own and the two of them sat at the dark end of the bar, away from the windows, kitty-corner to each other. Hardy never needed to sleep again, but then again two days ago, he was never going to drink alcohol again, and here he was. The night-light above the register worked with the reflected streetlights outside to illuminate the place with about the intensity of a full moon.

While they'd been pulling bottles and rolling kegs, Hardy had been trying to convey some sense of his guarded optimism to McGuire, but now they were able to really talk and his brother-in-law wasn't buying. "Yeah," he said, "all that's great, but what if they don't get to Panos and his people soon enough, and in the meantime they decide to come after everybody anyway? You willing to take that chance?"

"I don't know what my other option would be, Mose."

"I do."

"I know. Go out and shoot them first. You've already told me. Have another drink."

"You think I'm kidding?"

Hardy took his first sip of the scotch, a small one. "No, but you're not thinking. You go out after them, you're a murderer. That's the whole story."

"I'd argue self-defense."

"How would you do that? Nobody's threatening you."

McGuire grunted. "I'm not letting anybody kill Frannie, Diz. Never, no how, no way."

"If it's any consolation, Mose, I'm not either."

"But you're not doing anything to stop it."

Hardy put his glass down slowly. "As a matter of fact, I've been doing quite a lot, which is why I now have some reason to suspect that this threat is less now than it was even three or four hours ago. They're going to bring these guys in."

"And then they're going to put them on trial, or maybe cop some lesser plea…"

"This is multiple murder, Mose. That's special circumstances. Life without."

"So you're safe?"

"Right."

"They'll get them all? You're sure? And they don't have family? They don't have people who'll know you're behind it?" McGuire put his glass down. "I guess what I don't understand, Diz, is why, after you've seen all the ways the law doesn't protect you for squat-I'm talking in the past couple of weeks alone-you still think it's something you can count on."

"Maybe because that's the deal we make. We don't break the law and in return the law protects us."

"And you believe that? You got any poor, black friends, Diz? You got any cabrons?"

Hardy rolled his eyes. "Here we go."

"Here we go is right. You ever think about why there's so much more violence in the barrios, huh? Or the projects?"

"No, Mose, that's never crossed my mind. I never think about anything like that 'cause I'm a rich, white guy."

"Hey, you said it."

"Hey, yourself!" Hardy pointed a ringer in McGuire's face. "It turns out you're arguing my point exactly. You know why there's so much violence in the hoods? Because the people there have lost their faith in the law. And you know why that is? Because it doesn't protect them. They feel like they've got to do it themselves."

"Right. Exactly my fucking point."

"But what I'm saying is take a look at what you get once you decide that's your position. You're taking your protection into your own hands, outside the law."

"At least you're alive."

"Actually, no. Probably not. You've got a much better chance at getting to be dead in fact. Why? 'Cause Pablo threatens to kill you if you mess with his dope business. You don't want dope around your kids, but you can't go to the law, so you decide you've got to kill Pablo. Then Pablo's brother Jose, who also doesn't think the law is going to punish you, comes and shoots your ass. So then your brother, or father, or mother… Anyway, you see where this is going."

"Except look at you right now. Your family's driven out of your house. Where's your law there? Who's protecting you now?"

"Still, the law. Look, Mose, if Panos wasn't worried about somebody doing something about it, he would have come for me long ago. He could have grabbed the kids, or shot them, when he took the picture."

"Maybe you're forgetting he did shoot some people."

"Maybe I'm not. But if I believe that the whole purpose of law is to take violence out of the hands of individuals, like you and me, and Panos for that matter, how am I supposed to justify going after him myself? As soon as I do that, I am so fundamentally like him that there's no moral distinction between us."

"Oh, no shit. He hits you, you can't hit him back? Are you giving me that?"

"I'm saying that if I go outside the law, then I can't expect anything from it anymore. And I'm not willing to give that up. It's pretty basic."

"It's pretty bullshit, you ask me."

"Oh yeah? So what happens, then, after one of the shots you fire at Panos or Sephia misses them completely, but kills the poor old lady eating her Cheerios three houses down? Or the mom pushing her baby half a mile away? You don't think that happens? You don't think that's the main thing that happens with every fucked-up drive-by shooting you ever heard of? Once these things start, there's no controlling what happens next. People get killed who had nothing to do with it. And then, guess what? Those innocent people want to see the law punish you. And they've got every reason to expect that it will. Whether or not you started the whole thing. Once you're in it, you're the bad guy. Period."