Perri O'Shaughnessy - Unfit to Practice

“Yes.”

“Hmm.” She frowned. This time, she scanned the street and then the plaza very deliberately, looking straight toward the fountain. Nina and Paul ducked back. Too late? What had she seen? Scholl whispered something to the two men, and they took off at a fast clip, heading left up Spear Street toward Market.

Paul tucked his earpiece into his pocket. “We still don’t know the whole story,” he said. They walked quickly to the silver sculpture. Paul took just a second to retrieve the bug he had placed there earlier.

“Let’s follow them,” Nina decided, taking the lead.

“Okay.” Paul quickly overtook and passed Nina, using his elbows when necessary to make his way through the energetic street crowd.

In the sunless afternoon, the San Francisco streets were filled with Hopperesque scenes of lit stools and loiterers. Three people stepped in front of them to panhandle. Paul took Nina’s arm and sidestepped them.

“Where are they going?” Nina asked, huffing, clutching her bag to prevent it from hitting people. “I thought we’d have a chance to confront them back there. Scholl really threw me off.”

“When I saw her there, I could have sworn she was about to arrest them. I wonder what she plans to do now.”

“What do we do? Just run up to them and tell them what we know?”

“No,” Paul said. “We’re outnumbered, and Officer Scholl has her weapon. Change of plans. Let’s not be stupid, but let’s not let them get away. We follow, then get the cops.”

The trio up ahead hit a red light at Mission, so they crossed over Spear to the Rincon Center and crossed again to pass Lightning Foods. Nina and Paul stayed on the opposite side of the street behind them, dodging the new concrete berms that lined the sidewalk, protecting the Federal Reserve Bank on the corner of Market Street.

“They’re going for the Hyatt,” Nina guessed. “That’s so strange. This is where we celebrated Bob’s birthday.”

A cable car sat in front of the hotel, a smattering of passengers perched on its wooden benches. The conductor let loose a clang, sang, “He-e-ere we go!” and it took off up the hill. Nobody stopped to watch. Riesner entered the hotel first from a side exit on Market Street, catching hold of an opening door and holding it for Scholl and Cruz.

Nina and Paul ducked past the valets in the parking area and into the automatic revolving door. They took escalators up to the main hotel level.

One of the world’s signature hotels, the San Francisco Hyatt was remarkable for a huge interior courtyard framed by balcony corridors that angled up from the lobby level almost to the full height of the tower. Skylights at the top cast natural light down on the busy restaurants and services that lined the courtyard, and a huge, tubular gold sculpture formed a centerpiece. Water below the sculpture gurgled in a square black pool and spilled in unreal sheets to another level, shivering like a stretch of Saran Wrap.

On one side of the courtyard, glassed-in elevators shaped like funicular mailing tubes sailed up to the hotel rooms lining the open corridors. The effect was very Blade Runner, a glimpse into a fantastic world where architecture substituted for, and sometimes outdid, nature.

Nina and Paul skulked between pillars and behind the sculpture while their three quarries repaired to the 13 Views, the main courtyard restaurant.

“They’re talking,” Nina said. “Now what?”

“Wait,” said Paul.

After a few moments, Riesner got up.

“She’s letting him go?” Nina asked, amazed.

He walked toward the rest rooms and disappeared inside. Scholl watched him go in. A minute passed. Although she continued to watch for Riesner, she and Kevin began to talk again.

A moment’s distraction was all it took.

With the swooping, invisible speed of a short-track ice skater, Riesner skidded out, ducked around behind Scholl, and headed for the elevators. Nina and Paul, trying to stay out of sight, followed as quickly as they could.

By the time they got to the nearest elevator, the doors were already closing. The elevator ascended, Riesner clearly visible through the glass. Then it stopped. Then it started up again. Nina and Paul tipped their heads back, observing it.

“The fifth floor,” she said. “He got off. Let’s go.” She pressed the elevator button.

“No, Nina. You stay down here and watch these two. And call the police. Wait for them. Direct them up to the fifth floor. I’ll hold him until they get here.”

She experienced a fear so intense in her belly she thought she would fall down with the pain. “I don’t want you to go.”

“Look, Nina, he’s a white-collar coward, not a mobster,” he said. “I’m tougher than him, and I hope you know that much. And then, I’ve got a gun, remember?” He touched the back of her neck with his finger. “You okay?”

“I’ll be fine as long as you are.”

“Got your pepper spray?”

She patted her bag.

“Keep it handy.”

He hurried down to the end of the long courtyard and took the stairs up.

Leaning against a wall near the restaurant, Nina took out her mobile phone and tried to make a call to 911. Busy. She tried again, got through, and waited on hold. Was this legal, no one answering an emergency call instantly? While she held on with growing dread, watching Scholl and Cruz with one eye, her call-waiting buzzed. She took the call.

“Hello?”

“It’s me. Wish.”

“I can’t talk.”

“Wait, Nina, this is important! I found the rest of the note from my mom. It says, ‘Received transcript of Gleb testimony. Forger is extrovert, likes money, craftsman.’ ”

“I’m sorry, Wish, I have to go.”

“And I forgot to tell you, she left a paper bag with something in it-wait a sec-” Paper rattled through the phone line and then Wish said in a puzzled voice, “Huh. It’s this wooden lazy Susan my dad uses out in the garage. She brought it home from her old office one Christmas.”

An image came to Nina of a man in a dark basement, carving for hours to make a perfect tiny puppet replica of Nina that he jerked around in private. “That’s your mom’s way of warning me it’s Riesner,” she said.

“We cracked it!”

“We sure did,” she said, clicking him off. What a trial that boy must be to his mother.

“ 911,” a woman’s voice said suddenly.

Okay, elapsed waiting time not long at all. “Yes, I’m-” A sharp poke to her back stopped her.

“I’ll take that.” A hand reached out and snapped her phone shut.

“Hello, Counselor,” Jeffrey Riesner’s voice said. “I spotted you and your knucklehead friend back there quite a while ago. Nice of him to leave you alone for me. Makes things much easier.” He yanked her bag away and tossed it on the ground, and dumped the phone after it. “Now I think we take a little walk. This way.”

He steered her along the low rectangular pond, back toward the elevators. She swallowed, trying to find her voice. “You don’t want to do this!” she said.

“Shut the hell up and get in there.” He shoved her into a waiting elevator and pushed a button. Once inside, she faced his moist face. She faced his gleaming gun.

“You won’t shoot me. You’re not a killer,” she said. “You’re a lawyer.”

“You don’t get it, do you? You will never again embarrass me in front of my colleagues. You will never win again.”

“Wait. We can make a deal, Jeff.”

The floor numbers lit up as they passed. There was no thirteenth floor, which made the fourteenth floor her unlucky alternative. The elevator stopped there. He pushed her out. “Walk.”

She walked down a long hallway, echoes of laughter and music emanating from the gaping open space beyond the balcony’s edge. She thought of screaming. But he would shoot her. He held her in a grip like iron.