John Lescroart - A Plague of Secrets

It wasn’t exactly what the rest of California was eating under the name Pacific Rim fusion, but within her rather limited universe, Chiu for years had been inventing meal after adventurous meal featuring often-bizarre combinations of wontons, bao dumplings, grape leaves, tsatsiki, cilantro, duck, squid, olives, yogurt-some of which were tasty, many not. It didn’t seem to matter-the crowds kept coming, packing the place for lunch five days a week.

Today the Special, sweet and sour spanakopita with five-spice lemon chicken, had Hardy thinking about passing on that selection and walking uptown to Sam’s Grill after his meeting, ordering some sand dabs and a nice glass of Gavi. If she’d only left out the sweet and sour, he was thinking…

“Hey, Diz.”

Hardy, caught unawares in his daydreaming, pushed his chair back and stood to shake hands with Harlen Fisk, a member of San Francisco ’s Board of Supervisors and nephew of the mayor, Kathy West. Fisk, at a couple of inches over six feet, weighed in at around two hundred and fifty pounds and cut an impressive figure in his tailored Italian suit.

Hardy had first met him when Harlen had partnered with Darrel Bracco and worked for a time as a hit-and-run inspector in the homicide detail. The cop phase had been just another step in the man’s political grooming-he was going to be West’s handpicked successor and everybody knew it. At forty-one he was getting to be the right age now, but if he was impatient with the wait to become mayor, he didn’t show it.

Now, sitting down, he glanced at the Special card and grimaced. “You know,” he said, “spanakopita by itself is a fine dish. Why’s it have to be sweet and sour?”

Hardy broke his grin. “I just was thinking the exact same thought. And here’s another one-if it’s five-spice lemon chicken, doesn’t the lemon make it six spices? And what are the other five?”

“I think five-spice is more or less considered one spice. Like curry.”

“I thought curry was one spice.”

“No. It’s a mixture. That’s why you have different flavors and heats of curries. Different mixtures of stuff.”

“Dang. Just when you think you’ve got it all figured out,” Hardy said. His eyes brightened. “Maybe they’d hold the sweet and sour if we asked.”

Fisk nodded. “We could always try, though history argues against it.”

Ten minutes later, they were served. It turned out that, as expected, the sweet and sour was integral to this particular version of spinach in filo dough and couldn’t be substituted out; less expectedly, when Fisk took his first bite, he discovered that it tasted pretty good. He told a still-skeptical and reluctant Hardy, “My kids like ketchup on spinach. This is kind of similar.”

Hardy took his own small bite, chewed, shook his head in admiration. “The woman’s a genius.” He forked a larger portion. “So,” he said when he’d swallowed, “what’s up?”

“My sister,” Harlen said. “My little sister, actually. Maya. Her last name’s Townshend now. She wants to talk to a lawyer and I thought I’d recommend you, if you were interested.”

“In all probability,” Hardy said, “if it’s not a divorce. I don’t do divorce.”

“I don’t blame you,” Fisk said. “It’s not that. What it is, is she owns Bay Beans West, a coffee shop out on Haight. You know it?”

“I’ve driven past, sure.” But then Hardy’s brain caught up, and he pointed a finger. “Somebody got shot there over the weekend. The manager?”

“Right. Dylan Vogler.”

“Is she a suspect?”

Fisk had a rich two-note laugh and he used it. “No, no, no way. You’ve got to know Maya. Little Miss Junior League, mother of two, sweetest thing you ever met. No, what happened is she just got a visit from homicide yesterday-actually, in the small-world department, it was Darrel and his new partner. A woman.”

“Debra Schiff.”

“Must be, if you say so. Anyway, they came and talked to her and after they left she called and said maybe she ought to have a lawyer if she was going to be talking to the police.”

“I love people who think like she does. And she’s not all wrong.”

“That’s what I told her. You can’t be too careful on that front, although in her case, knowing her, I’d say it’s a bit of a stretch.”

“What’d they ask her about? She tell you?”

Fisk shrugged. “It all sounded general to me. Her guy gets shot outside her store, they’re going to want to talk to her, right? It turns out, evidently, that Dylan was selling dope out of the shop, and she thinks because she owned it, that might get her in trouble.”

“She might be right. What kind of dope?”

“Just weed, I think.”

“How much weed?”

“I don’t know. Does it matter?”

“It might if it was a major warehouse for distribution.”

“I don’t think it was that. It was mostly a happening coffee shop. But say it was.”

“What?”

“A major warehouse or something.”

Hardy fixed him with a wary look. “You know something you’re not telling me?”

“No, no. Just to know so I can tell Maya if she asks. What if this guy Dylan was moving large quantities? What would be Maya’s exposure as the owner?”

“I’m not sure,” Hardy said. “I’d have to look it up. Offhand, I’d say she’s probably okay if she can prove she didn’t know anything about it. But landlords in crack neighborhoods-I mean, where they’re selling out of every second apartment-they’ve been known to get their property forfeited.”

The word jacked Harlen right up. “Forfeited! You mean the whole building?”

Hardy held up a palm to calm him. “Sometimes, but usually this is with bad guys, knee-deep in the business. If the feds get involved, they can take the whole property.” Hardy knew that, actually, the city’s own DA could try to take the property too; but they never would in this situation. He took a bite of his Special. “But that’s usually, as I say, when they know they’ve got a live one they’re trying to hassle. And that doesn’t sound much like your sister’s situation.”

“Not even close, Diz. She didn’t know much, if anything, about this, I’m sure. She’s a Goody Two-shoes and would never have taken that risk. Her husband is Joel Townshend-Townshend Real Estate, struggling by on a couple of mil a year. Believe me, they don’t need more money.”

“I hate them already,” Hardy said.

“Me too. But there you go. Anyway, the point is, the cops surprised her and got her nervous. You know how that is. So would you mind talking to her?”

Hardy told Harlen that that went without saying, then pulled a small grimace. “But it’s just a shame she’s already talked to them. That’s all I was thinking. You know how long they were there, Darrel and Debra?”

“She didn’t say. Half hour or so, I gathered.”

“Well, probably not too much damage done. As long as she didn’t lie to them.”

Fisk nodded comfortably. “I don’t think you have to worry on that score,” he said. “She wouldn’t have done that. That’s just not who she is.”

After telling Fisk to have his sister give him a call to make an appointment, Hardy crossed the street and walked into the massive gray stucco block that was San Francisco ’s Hall of Justice. He’d worked there as an assistant DA for a couple of years after law school, and then for most of another year when he’d started practicing law again after he’d woken up from his own grief-induced decade following Michael’s death.

He thought it said something about the building’s load of negative karma that after all the time he’d spent in it-it was also where he’d tried the great majority of his cases as a defense attorney-he still found the place oppressive. Back in the day the front doors at least had lent an air of expansiveness to the front lobby area. But since 9/11 the terrorism experts had closed all but one doorway, covering the rest of the front window glass with plywood.