John Lescroart: The Mercy Rule

A nod. ‘That’s right. You knew him?’

‘Who he was, of course. The name’s forever burned into my memory. It was a tragedy. How could I not know it?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t suppose you could. But then, by the same token, I’m afraid I don’t understand how you could forget the name Singleterry.’

‘But Singleterry wasn’t her name. How would I-?’

Hardy couldn’t make himself listen to it anymore. He had to cut him off. ‘Because, Judge, your trust – the BGG, that’s your trust, isn’t it? Bruno Giotti’s Grotto Memorial Trust? It sent her money for seventeen years. I’m just having a hard time seeing how that could have slipped your mind.’

Giotti was nodding repeatedly, his eyes on the middle distance between them. After a long minute he got up and crossed the room back to his desk, stared above it out the window into the gray mist. ‘I remember thinking I liked the way your mind worked, Mr Hardy. Maybe that was misguided. Now you’re implying I had something to do with that fire, aren’t you? With arson and murder.’ Finally he turned around. ‘I’m afraid I’m too busy for this. It’s arrant nonsense.’

‘I’d be glad to hear your explanation.’

Giotti’s nostrils flared. ‘I don’t need to give you any explanation, Mr Hardy. Like everyone else in America I am innocent until proven guilty. If you’ve got some proof of these outrageous accusations, why don’t you bring it to the attention of the police? Right now this interview is over.’ He pointed at the door. ‘You know your way.’

Hardy stood up, but instead of moving toward the door, he assumed an at-ease position in front of his chair. ‘I don’t think so.’

Clearly unaccustomed to anything less than immediate obedience at any display of his authority, Giotti stiffened. ‘I said get the hell out of here!’ He reached for the telephone. ‘I’ll have you removed.’

‘You don’t want to do that,’ Hardy said calmly. ‘I’m not talking about a twenty-year-old fire. I’m talking about Sal Russo.’

Giotti gently replaced the receiver. ‘What about him?’

‘The fifty thousand dollars.’

The judge waited.

‘Somehow it came from the fire. I don’t know exactly how it got into Sal’s hands, but the police are going to want to find out. They’re going to see a connection between you and Sal’s death. Maybe a motive for you to have killed Sal. I don’t have to tell you this.’

‘You think I killed Sal?’

‘I don’t think Sal was ready to die when you injected him. That makes it murder.’

‘You’re out of your mind.’

Hardy didn’t care about the judge’s transparent denial. ‘I want to know what happened. I don’t have to go to the police. This is for me. I’m not going away until I find out.’

‘No, I don’t suppose you would.’ Giotti went around behind his desk, pulled out his chair, and sat down on it. ‘This Palmieri person died in a fire at my father’s restaurant. We’ve helped take care of the family.’

‘You denied knowing the name. That’s consciousness of guilt.’

The judge shrugged. ‘We like to keep our charity anonymous. Perhaps you see a crime there. I don’t think many other people would. Certainly not the police.’ He picked up the telephone again. ‘Now do I call security or do you leave on your own?’

This was high-stakes poker and the judge was calling his bluff. But Giotti had already tipped his hand – Hardy wouldn’t still be here if he didn’t have winning cards. He did, and he knew it. Now he was going to raise. ‘You’d better call in the troops,’ he said. ‘I’m not going anywhere. Not on my own power. After everything you’ve already put me through, you think I’m going to let this go?’

Giotti’s eyes were a black glare. ‘You son of a bitch.’ His hand was still on the telephone.

Hardy kept his voice low, calm. ‘Security comes here, they’ll have to file a report. It all gets official. We’re not there yet, though, are we?’

The glare never wavered. ‘What’s stopping it?’

‘Me, that’s all.’

‘And you’re offering me some kind of… what?’

‘I’m not offering you anything, Judge. I want to know what happened. I’m an officer of the court. If I have to go to the police, I will. If I don’t have to…’ He left it unsaid.

Giotti glowered another moment, then picked up his telephone, and Hardy feared he had lost. Giotti would call in some political chits among the honchos, the police would at best cursorily look into Hardy’s information and decide that a respected federal judge had done no wrong. Hardy was yet another unscrupulous, meddling defense attorney looking for more headlines, ready to slander a beacon of the legal community if it would get him a few more clients.

‘And then, of course, there’s the newspaper,’ he said.

Giotti took in the last warning, made his decision, and pushed a button on the telephone.

He waited, then asked his secretary to hold his calls. Replacing the receiver, he looked across at Hardy. ‘Do you want to know what happened, or do you want to go to homicide? You’re not going to get both, not from me. And whatever happens, it looks as though I’m going to need some legal counsel.’ Giotti reached under his robes, took out his wallet, and pulled a bill from it. ‘Do you want to be my lawyer, Mr Hardy?’

Giotti was offering him a five-dollar retainer. If Hardy accepted it, every word between them would then be subject to the attorney-client privilege. He could never take it to the police.

This was, Hardy thought, truly Faustian. He reminded himself, though, that in the eyes of the law, justice had already been done. No one else was looking for the murderer of Sal Russo. He had to know.

Still, he hesitated.

Giotti’s voice, though he never raised it, cut at him. ‘Do you honestly think you’re going to find physical proof of a fire that occurred almost eighteen years ago? Proof that would stand up at trial? The insurance company looked pretty hard before they paid out, you can believe me.’

Again, the tone shifted. Impatience? Command? ‘Now, you can come over and take this bill or you can walk out of here. One way you’ll know and the other you won’t. It’s your call.’

Hardy crossed the room. Giotti, still seated, watched him all the way. The bill was lying on the desk between them and Hardy picked it up and put it into his pocket.

‘All right, counselor,’ said the judge. ‘Now sit down and let me tell you a story.’

‘Let’s say the Grotto was having a tough time, tourism was down, the restaurant business is always skin of your teeth anyway. Then let’s say one day we get a notice from the state about inadequate handicap access. We’ve got to build a ramp, renovate the lobby… to make a long story short, we’ve got to lay out, say, forty-five thousand dollars to bring the place to code or they’re going to shut us down.

‘Now let’s also say the owner’s son is a young attorney with political aspirations. But he still works in the kitchen sometimes – he loves it back there. He’s all conflicted about his career, where it’s going, what he’s doing. So he keeps his hand in at the restaurant, and then suddenly it looks like the business is going belly up, because there’s no place the owners are going to find thirty or forty thousand dollars for handicap upgrading.

‘So this smart kid, he comes up with this smart idea. If there’s a small fire – controlled – starts, say, in the kitchen, does a little damage, but basically it’s so the insurance can cover the renovation. Let’s say the young attorney has a good friend – his oldest and best friend – call him Sal, who owns a boat moored right out behind the place. And these guys are out fishing together – night fishing, they do it all the time – when the fire starts. They don’t get back in till the skyline’s ablaze.