John Lescroart: The Mercy Rule

In early 1994 – the year of the baseball strike – about two months after he passed the bar, he quit. He wanted, after all, to play baseball. So he went to Vero Beach, Florida, to try out as a replacement player for the Dodgers. And he made the team.

At the Shamrock he’d made it clear to Hardy that he’d never have played as a scab. All along, all he’d wanted out of the deal was for the Dodgers to take another look at him. The fuzziness had disappeared from his vision; he was still in great shape. He thought he could shine in spring training, get cut as a replacement when they all did, but at least have a shot at the minors again.

And that’s what happened. He started the ‘94 season with the Albuquerque Dukes, Triple A, farther along the path to the major leagues than he’d been seven years earlier.

But he couldn’t find the damn curveball and the new shot at his baseball career, upon which he’d risked everything, lasted only six weeks. His average was.192 when he got cut outright. He hadn’t had a hit in his last seven games. Hell, he told Hardy, he would have cut himself.

Graham had a lumberjack’s shoulders and the long legs of a high hurdler. Under a wave of golden hair his square-jawed face was clean shaven. Today he wore a gray-blue sport coat over a royal-blue dress shirt, stonewashed jeans, cowboy boots.

He was leaning forward on the front of the upholstered chair in front of Hardy’s desk, elbows on his knees. Hardy noticed the hands clasped in front of him – the kind of hands that, when he got older, people would call gnarled – workingman’s hands, huge and somehow expressive.

Graham essayed a smile. ‘I don’t even know why I’m here, tell you the truth.’

Hardy’s face creased. ‘I often feel the same way myself.’ He was sitting on the corner of his desk. ‘Your dad?’

Graham nodded.

Salvatore Russo – Herb Caen ’s column had dubbed him Salmon Sal and the name had stuck – was recent news. Despondent over poor health, his aging body, and financial ruin, Sal had apparently killed himself last Friday by having a few cocktails, then injecting himself with morphine. He’d left a Do Not Resuscitate form for the paramedics, but he was already dead when they’d arrived.

To the public at large Sal was mostly unknown. But he was well known in San Francisco ’s legal community. Every Friday Sal would make the rounds of the city’s law workshops in an old Ford pickup. Behind the Hall of Justice, where Hardy would see him, he’d park by the hydrant and sell salmon, abalone, sturgeon, caviar, and any other produce of the sea he happened to get his hands on. His customers included cops, federal, municipal, and superior-court judges, attorneys, federal marshals, sheriffs, and the staffs at both halls – Justice and City – and at the federal courthouse.

The truck appeared only one day a week, but since Sal’s seafood was always fresher and a lot cheaper than at the markets, he apparently made enough to survive, notwithstanding the fact that he did it all illegally.

His salmon had their tails clipped, which meant they had been caught for sport and couldn’t be sold. Abalone was the same story; private parties taking abalone for commercial sale had been outlawed for years. His winter-run chinooks had probably been harvested by Native Americans using gill nets. And yet year after year this stuff would appear in Sal’s truckbed.

Salmon Sal had no retail license, but it didn’t matter because he was connected. His childhood pals knew him from the days when Fisherman’s Wharf was a place where men went down to the sea in boats. Now these boys were judges and police lieutenants and heads of departments. They were not going to bust him.

Sal might live on the edge of the law, but the establishment considered him one of the good guys – a character in his yellow scarves and hip boots, the unlit stogie chomped down to its last inch, the gallon bottles from which he dispensed red and white plonk in Dixie cups along with a steady stream of the most politically incorrect jokes to be found in San Francisco.

The day Hardy had met Sal, over a decade ago, he’d been with Abe Glitsky. Glitsky was half black and half Jewish and every inch of him scary looking – a hatchet face and a glowing scar through his lips, top to bottom. Sal had seen him, raised his voice. ‘Hey, Abe, there’s this black guy and this Jew sitting on the top of this building and they both fall off at the same time. Which one hits the ground first?’

‘I don’t know, Sal,’ Glitsky answered, ‘which one?’

‘Who cares?’

Now Sal was dead and the newspapers had been rife with conjecture: early evidence indicated that someone had been in the room with him when he’d died. A chair knocked over in the kitchen. Angry sounds. Other evidence of struggle.

The police were calling the death suspicious. Maybe someone had helped Sal die – put him on an early flight.

‘I didn’t know Sal was your father,’ Hardy said. ‘Not until just now.’

‘Yeah, well. I didn’t exactly brag about him.’ Graham took a breath and looked beyond Hardy, out the window. ‘The funeral’s tomorrow.’

When no more words came, Hardy prompted him. ‘Are you in trouble?’

‘No!’ A little too quickly, too loud. Graham toned it down some. ‘No, I don’t think so. I don’t know why I would be.’

Hardy waited some more.

‘I mean, there’s a lot happening all at once. The estate – although the word estate is a joke. Dad asked me to be his executor although we never got around to drawing up the will, so where does that leave it? Your guess is as good as mine.’

‘You weren’t close, you and your dad?’

Graham took a beat before he answered. ‘Not very.’

Hardy thought the eye contact was a little overdone, but he let it go. He’d see where this all was leading. ‘So you need help with the estate? What kind of help?’

‘That’s just it. I don’t know what I need. I need help in general.’ Graham hung his head and shook it, then looked back up. ‘The cops have been around, asking questions.’

‘What kind of questions?’

‘Where was I on Friday? Did I know about my dad’s condition? Like that. It was obvious where they were going.’ Graham’s blue eyes flashed briefly in anger, maybe frustration. ‘How can they think I know anything about this? My dad killed himself for a lot of good reasons. The guy’s disoriented, losing his mind. He’s in awesome pain. I’d’ve done the same thing.‘

‘And what do the police think?’

‘I don’t know what they can be thinking.’ Another pause. ‘I hadn’t seen him in a week. First I heard of it was Saturday night. Some homicide cop is at my place when I get home.’

‘Where’d you get home from?’

‘Ball game.’ He raised his eyes again, spit out the next word. ‘ Softball . We had a tournament in Santa Clara, got eliminated in the fourth game, so I got home early, around six.’

‘So where were you Friday night?’

Graham spread his Rodin hands. ‘I didn’t kill my dad.’

‘I didn’t ask that. I asked about Friday night.’

He let out a breath, calming down. ‘After work, home.’

‘Alone?’

He smiled. ‘Just like the movie. Home alone. I love that answer. The cop liked it, too, but for different reasons. I could tell.’

Hardy nodded. ‘Cops can be tough to please.’

‘I worked till nine-thirty…’

‘What do you do, besides baseball?’

Graham corrected him. ‘Softball.’ A shrug. ‘I’ve been working as a paramedic since… well, lately.’

‘Okay. So you were riding in an ambulance Friday night?’

A nod. ‘I got home around ten-fifteen. I knew I had some games the next day – five, if we went all the way. Wanted to get some rest. Went to sleep.’