John Lescroart - The Mercy Rule

‘I’m talking about murder for profit or during a robbery. That’s specials.’

‘I didn’t-’ He stopped. ‘What robbery?’

Keeping it matter-of-fact, Hardy told him. ‘Fifty thousand dollars in cash. Another twenty or thirty in mint-condition baseball cards. That’s a lot of money, Graham. You kill somebody, you take their stuff or their money. That’s robbery.’

Arms crossed again, Graham was chewing his cheek.

‘So from an outsider’s point of view, including the inspectors who arrested you, and not to mention yours truly, let’s see how it looks. You make – what? – fifteen bucks an hour as a paramedic.’

‘Give or take.’

‘And you live in the nicest neighborhood in the city – what’s your rent up there?’

Graham sighed deeply, answered reluctantly. ‘Fifteen.’

‘Okay, your rent is fifteen hundred dollars in this place a judge would probably salivate over. You’ve got beautiful furniture, more fine wine than you can drink in a month, what kind of car do you drive?’

‘Beemer.’

Another fifty grand, Hardy thought. He should have guessed. ‘I don’t suppose it’s paid for.’

‘You’re kidding, right?’

‘So what’s the hit on that?’

‘Six hundred eighty.’

The hard numbers didn’t matter so much – of course there would be other expenses, probably moving Graham’s monthly nut up into the range of four to five thousand dollars. He wasn’t making this riding in an ambulance.

‘So the picture, Graham, is that you quit your incredible job as a federal law clerk, then you got laid off by the Dodgers, now you work part time. You see a question developing here?’

Graham came forward, elbows on the table. He pulled at the neck of his jumpsuit. ‘I get at least fifty a game. That’s if we lose. A hundred if we win. Bonuses in tournaments, for home runs, like that. Last Saturday I made four hundred.’ He must have read Hardy’s blank look. ‘For softball,’ he explained.

‘Who pays you to play softball?’

‘Craig Ising.’

‘Who is?’

‘Some rich guy, he owns the Hornets. That’s my team.’ Hardy still wasn’t seeing it. Graham went on patiently. ‘When I made the big club, during the strike, there were a couple of articles in the papers about us – the replacement players – and Ising kept his eyes open and waited. When the Dodgers cut me and I got back home, he looked me up.’

Hardy heard the words, but felt he was missing some crucial point. ‘We’re talking slo-pitch softball? You’re saying there’s a professional league?’

‘No. It’s all under the table. It’s all gambling. These rich guys stack the teams and bet on the games.’

‘How much do they bet?’

Graham shrugged. ‘I don’t know for sure. I hear numbers. Ten grand, twenty. Per game.’

Hardy was shaking his head. ‘You’re kidding me.’

‘I don’t think so. It’s big business. The hitch is, I can’t declare any of the money – no taxes, no nothing.’

‘So how much do you really make?’

Attorney-client privilege or not, Graham didn’t want to say. ‘I don’t know. Some weeks I play three games, tournaments on weekends.’

‘And how many games are in a tournament?’

‘Usually five if you go all the way.’

Hardy was scribbling some numbers on his legal pad. ‘A grand a week?’ he asked.

Another shrug. ‘Sometimes.’ Then, suddenly, he spoke with the first real urgency Hardy had heard. ‘But this can’t come out. They get me for tax evasion, they’ll yank my bar card. I’ll really never work again.’

‘They get you for murder, that’ll be the least of your problems.’ This was inarguable, but Graham leaned back in his chair, pondering it. ‘I thought you didn’t want to be a lawyer anyway.’

‘Come on, Diz. Why do you think I went to law school? Of course I want to be a lawyer.’

‘But you-’

‘I just wanted one last chance to play ball. I figured I’d play a few years, make my millions, then go back and practice law. Then imagine my surprise when I came back to the city and found I wasn’t hirable. Good old Judge Draper had blackballed me, called everybody he knew, though of course he denies it.’

‘You asked him?’

‘I didn’t have to. The word got out. I’m untouchable.’ Another scan of the room. ‘And now this.’

‘Couldn’t Giotti help you? He was a friend of your father’s. Wouldn’t he…?’

But Graham was shaking his head before Hardy could finish. ‘No chance. Federal judges hang together. You’ve got to understand that I quit these guys, quit the court, rejected their whole lives. They’re never going to forgive me. Maybe I could find some work in Alaska, but I’m dead in this town. I’ve looked, believe me. I must have sent out five hundred resumes. I’m in the top of my class at Boalt. Not even an interview.’

‘So why didn’t you move to Alaska?’

The maddening hesitation suddenly reappeared. ‘I might,’ he said at last. The ambiguity seemed intentional. Whether he meant ‘I might have except for…’ or ‘I might now someday,’ Hardy couldn’t say. But either way, for Hardy the light came on. ‘Your father. He needed you. That’s why you came back and stayed on.’

But immediately Hardy regretted what he’d said – he might have given his client an idea.

Graham stood up, got to the wall, and stood facing the window. Finally, he spoke without turning. ‘I don’t know. I really don’t know. I didn’t plan it. It just happened. He wrote me the letter – the one you saw yesterday – and I got in touch with him, and we just’ – a pause – ‘I just…’

Graham was silent so long that Hardy rose and crossed over to him. It shocked him to see tears, but in spite of himself, or wanting to, he wasn’t sure he believed them. Not anymore. Graham had already been too duplicitous. His admission about trying to charm Sarah. Maybe now he was playing for his attorney’s sympathy. Hardy put a hand on his client’s shoulder and felt the tension break, the shoulders give.

Graham hung his head, the weight of holding it up apparently too much to bear. ‘I loved him. He was my dad. He needed me.’ His voice went down a notch. ‘I needed him too.’

There was still the money.

Ten minutes later they were both back at the table. Hardy had been there for over an hour and had nothing substantive to show for it. He had to find out about the money.

‘My dad wanted me to take it, to give it to somebody else. He didn’t want anybody in the family to have it, didn’t want it to be part of the estate.’

Hardy took that in. Like nearly everything else to come from the mouth of Graham Russo, the response raised more questions than it answered. ‘Who did he want to give it to?’

‘The children of a woman named Joan Singleterry.’

‘Okay,’ Hardy said. ‘I’ll bite. Who’s she?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Didn’t your father tell you?’

‘He started. Then the phone rang. When I brought it up again when he came back, he looks at me like I’m from Mars. No memory. Just not there. That’s the way he got.’

‘And you didn’t press him?’

Graham spread his palms. ‘That was my dad. He wouldn’t tell me, even if he remembered that he wanted me to know.’

‘The time he did mention her – what was that story?’

He shrugged. ‘He didn’t know where she lived, but he wanted me to find her after he was dead and give her the money.’

‘So he knew he was going to be dead?’

‘He knew he was going to kill himself, sure.’ Graham held up a hand. ‘I know what that sounds like, but it’s the truth.’

‘Why wouldn’t I believe it’s the truth?’ Hardy asked with heavy irony. ‘This happens all the time. Some guy’s father gives him fifty grand to give to somebody he doesn’t know.’ Hardy leaned across the table, punched up his voice. ‘Listen up, Graham, you’ve got to start telling me something I can believe pretty soon or I’m going to be out of here.’