John Lescroart - A Plague of Secrets

“Mr. Hunt?”

“That’s me.”

“My name is Jimi d’Amico. You left a message for me?”

And it started all over again.

“Nothing?” Gina Roake asked.

“Nothing.”

It was six forty-five and Gina, Dismas Hardy and Wes Farrell’s law partner and Hunt’s somewhat clandestine girlfriend, had her shapely legs curled under her on the couch in her well-appointed one-bedroom condominium on Pleasant Street just down from the peak of Nob Hill. Hunt sat across from her, in one of her matched brace of reading chairs. They’d pulled closed the drapes in the picture window behind him and she’d turned on some of the room’s lights and the gas fire-logs as the now-fierce wind rattled the panes. Gina, barefoot but otherwise still dressed for work in a tan skirt and a beige turtleneck, sipped her Oban scotch and sighed. “That sounds like a long day, Wyatt.”

Hunt sat back, shaking his head. “I don’t mind long if I get something for it. But we finally got to only five of them before I gave it up. Tamara’s still at it and I must say it’s great to have workaholic employees. But it’s a little weird. It’s like Maya almost didn’t exist after her sophomore year. And there’s no way, or at least it’s unlikely, she was involved in some kind of scandal. Whatever it was, if she was being blackmailed by Vogler, he was one of the very few who knew about whatever it was.”

“Maybe the only one. Maybe that’s why it worked. And nobody knew him either?”

“Not so far. The mystery man.”

“And you’re sure he went there? USF?”

“Diz says so.”

“Did you check the yearbook and the student paper for him too?”

“No.” Hunt made a face. “The reason I like you is that you’re so much smarter than me. But say he didn’t go to USF, so what?”

“I don’t know. You might be able to find out where he actually went, which might tell you something you don’t know about him.”

“I don’t know anything about him, except he did hard time for a robbery-which Craig’s checking out-then came back to town and ran this coffee shop and evidently moved a hell of a lot of dope.”

Pensive, Gina absently turned her scotch glass around and around on the arm of the couch. Finally, she looked up at Hunt. “You’re saying he went to prison from San Francisco?”

“Yep.”

“If he was sentenced to prison, he had a presentence report, and the background section of that is going to tell you everything they could find out about him at the time. Surely you have a close personal friend in probation.”

Hunt considered for a moment. “Have I already told you you’re way smarter than me?”

At Hardy’s house, less than twenty blocks from the ocean out in the Avenues, the approaching storm decided to get serious. A heavy, wind-driven rain raked the rooftop, turning the skylight over their kitchen into a booming kettle drum that reverberated through the rooms. Hardy, on the wall telephone, trying to hear his client over the din, stood frowning with his finger in one ear and the receiver at the other.

“The best advice,” he said, “is don’t panic. I got the impression that Mr. Glass sees a political opportunity here. He wants to get his name in the paper, and he thinks tweaking you to get at your brother and the mayor is as good a way as any.”

This, Hardy knew, was easy for him to say, but not so easy for the Townshends to live with. The truth, verified that afternoon by Art Drysdale, was that Jerry Glass was moving with an almost unheard of dispatch to bring pressure to bear on Joel and Maya. Seen in the kindest possible light, maybe Glass was motivated by a desire to help Schiff and Bracco solve their homicide.

But Hardy didn’t really buy that, and by the time they both hung up, he didn’t feel like he’d done much of a job consoling or reassuring his client. Still angry about Glass and the way he was operating, Hardy thought a beer wouldn’t hurt him and he opened an Anchor Steam and then placed a call to Harlen Fisk.

The supervisor picked up on the second ring. “Yo, Diz. What’s up?”

“Have you talked to your sister recently?”

Hardy heard a sigh.

“I talked to Joel earlier today.”

“Well, if it was before noon, it’s gotten worse since then. Now they’re looking for a court order to freeze Joel’s accounts.”

“Jesus. Why?”

“Because they can. They’re saying they’ve got a money-laundering case. But I’m thinking the real reason is so that Jerry Glass can finally get some national profile for being a good conservative prosecutor with the guts to be tough on dope. He busts the compassionate use spots, the only people who care at all think he’s wrong, and none of them are in the media. But he ties you and your aunt into a bona fide dope operation, I don’t care how obliquely, and you watch, he’s a household name in a week or so.”

“Joel and Maya aren’t running a dope operation, Diz. Guaranteed.”

“Right, but the problem is that he doesn’t have to prove it to make noise about it.”

“Can he do that? I mean just freeze assets?”

“He’s the U.S. government. He can sure try. I don’t think he’ll actually find a judge who’ll approve it, but he’s got your sister half around the bend with worry.”

“But what about the forfeiture?”

“Forfeiture is a civil case, so in essence he’s just filing a lawsuit. I haven’t turned on the TV yet, but the smart money says this gets covered tonight and tomorrow it’s in the paper.”

“Shit.”

“I agree. Which is why I called you. Maybe there’s something we can do to keep this from exploding any bigger than it has to.”

“Like what?”

“Like, the first thing is call him on it, get him back on defense a little. You and Kathy get together and make a strong public statement that this is just a political ploy, another partisan attack on liberals. Then you get the medical marijuana or compassionate use people to go nuts. It’s about politics, pure and simple. The second thing is something I’ve already got my investigator working on, but maybe you can help me with it better than anybody else.”

“If I can, I’m in. What?”

Hardy tipped up his bottle. “Well, it looks like both me and homicide have come up with the same theory, and that’s that Vogler was connected to Maya in something that happened a long time ago. The bad news would be if that connection gives her a motive to have killed him.”

“Jesus Christ, Diz. Maya didn’t kill anybody. That’s crazy.”

“I hope you’re right, but-”

“You hope ? You’re her lawyer, Diz. You’ve got to do more than hope. She’s not some kind of a murderer. She’s my little sister, for Christ’s sake.”

Hardy kept his voice modulated. “This hasn’t come out yet, but you’ve got to know that she was down there that morning, Harlen. Vogler might have been squeezing or threatening her. The homicide inspectors went to Glass to try to get Maya to start talking.”

“Darrel did that?”

“Glitsky said it was Schiff, but Darrel’s on board with her.”

“That’s bullshit. I’m going to call him.”

“Don’t do that. Please don’t do that. They haven’t arrested her yet. They don’t have enough. But if you try to pressure them not to, I guarantee it won’t help. They’ll think she ran to you for protection because she’s guilty and you could pull strings.”

“This is insane.”

“It’s the way it is, Harlen.”

“So what did you want me to do? About this connection?”

“See if you can get her to tell me what it was.”

“What, exactly?”

“What was her history with this loser, who treated her so badly? Why was she paying him ninety grand when the going rate is about half that?”