John Lescroart - The Mercy Rule

‘What do you mean, private?’

‘I mean between the involved parties and no one else. Private.’

‘How about doctor-assisted suicide? Kevorkian, all these guys. I hear half the doctors in the city do it all the time.’

‘And this means?’

‘Well, if you’re going after Sal Russo’s kid, shouldn’t you also be going after these doctors? Isn’t it the same thing?’

Glitsky appeared to be having trouble swallowing. He was the only adult at the table drinking water and now he took his glass and drank from it. ‘No, it’s not.’

‘How’s it different?’

Cornered, Glitsky let out a quick breath. ‘It’s different because somebody killed Sal Russo. Murdered him, and not out of mercy…’

‘I don’t think so,’ Hardy said.

Seated between his wife and his sister, Moses McGuire had been relatively quiet throughout the meal. An Irish brawler, a doctor of philosophy turned bartender, Moses usually tended to be a presence. But he’d sat without comment on this discussion up to now, drinking steadily from his glass of Scotch.

McGuire knew that Glitsky and Hardy were friends. Moses also considered himself Hardy’s best friend. This did not mean that Glitsky and McGuire were especially close. Now McGuire laid a proprietary hand on his wife’s arm. ‘Didn’t the dead guy, Sal, didn’t he have cancer?’

Glitsky nodded again. ‘Yeah.’

‘Inoperable, from what I hear? Right?’

Susan popped in. ‘So how can you write off the idea that somebody helped him kill himself, that that’s what he wanted?’

‘We don’t just write it off, Susan.’ Glitsky was still striving for the patient tone. ‘We collect evidence, see what it looks like, go from there.’

But McGuire was now warming to the argument, or from the Scotch, one of the two. ‘You’re going to have to go a hell of a long way from there to get around the fact that the guy was dying in a couple of weeks, anyway. Why in the world would somebody want to kill him?’

Frannie joined in, answering for the lieutenant. ‘Abe’s going to say it was money. Graham had a lot of his dad’s money – fifty thousand dollars.’

‘So what?’ Susan said. ‘That means he killed him?’

‘No,’ Abe replied, ‘it means he might have. That’s all we’re looking at.’

Hardy spoke up. ‘The reason he had the money was in case his dad had to go into a home.’

Though he knew Graham’s story about the children of Joan Singleterry, he wasn’t at all certain that he believed it. In any case, he didn’t want to muddy the waters, and he’d come up with his own theory over the past day or two. He thought it had a more credible ring. ‘His dad had it in a safe under his bed and Graham didn’t think that was the most brilliant idea…’

Glitsky turned to Hardy. ‘He tell you that?’

‘He didn’t have to.’

‘I wonder why didn’t he tell us?’

‘Abe.’ Frannie put down her fork. ‘We don’t mean to pick on you, but this just doesn’t make sense. Susan’s right. This kind of thing is happening every day. Why are you going after this boy?’

Glitsky clipped it out. ‘Because he lied about everything we asked him. Lying makes us law-enforcement types suspicious.’

‘But it was all of a piece, Abe.’ Hardy, the voice of reason. ‘Graham’s already blackballed for legal work in town, he was afraid he’d lose his bar card if it came out he helped kill his dad, even with the best of intentions.’

Frannie picked it up. ‘So he made up the story that he and his dad didn’t see each other. He didn’t think you guys would look so hard.’

‘So it sounds like he didn’t lie a lot.’ Susan joined the chorus. ‘He just told one lie and then had to make up a bunch of other stuff to support that one.’

A ghost of a smile flickering around his mouth, Glitsky sat back and crossed his arms. ‘Just bad luck we happened to catch him at the big one, huh?’ He came forward and picked up his fork. ‘Maybe it’s just me, but does anybody else think it’s funny that he still had the money after his father was dead, then kind of forgot to tell his family about it?’

‘Maybe he was going to,’ Susan said. ‘Maybe he just didn’t have time yet, you arrested him so fast.’

‘Maybe. More bad luck.’ Glitsky’s voice dripped with sarcasm. ‘Graham Russo,’ he said, ‘the original bad-luck kid.’

Playing up front in mixed doubles, and standing too close to the net, Mario Giotti didn’t even see the vicious forehand his opponent launched at his head.

One second he was on his toes, poised for a volley, following the flight of the ball his wife had just returned, and the next moment he was on the ground, flat on his back, the wind knocked out of him, conscious only of pain.

Sunday evening, and they were playing indoors at the Mountain View Racquet Club, located on the crest of the escarpment in Pacific Heights, where Divisadero Street began its cascade down from Broadway to Lombard – eight hundred vertical feet in six blocks.

The judge was aware of people gathered over him, then his head on his wife’s thigh. Someone brought over a white towel, then another one – wet and cool. He had an impression of blood, blotches of red on white in his vision, the brassy taste in the back of his throat.

Pat was taking control, as she always did. After satisfying herself that it was true, she assured one and all that Giotti was fine. She came down close and whispered into his ear. ‘It’s all right,’ she assured him, ‘you’re okay.’ She wiped the wet towel over his face again, gently.

Then they were up, he and Pat, walking together. The judge held the stained, wet towel to his face, aware of the stares of the other patrons. Their opponents, another couple a decade younger than they were, tagged along – extras, without any role – a few steps behind them. Giotti felt the sturdiness of his wife’s shoulders, the weight they could bear. ‘Just lean on me,’ she said. He noticed some streaks of red on her short tennis skirt.

By the time they got to the juice bar, his breath was returning. He felt sure that his nose was broken, but the pressure he’d applied with the towel seemed to have stanched the flow of blood. The other couple – Joe and Dana – insisted on buying something, and Pat ordered large bottles of water for them both. They went off together, stricken and solemn.

Giotti watched after them. ‘What’s he think, we’re in the goddamn French Open? This is supposed to be a friendly little workout, and we get Agassi and Evert. What is this shit?’

‘Shh.’ Pat put a hand on his knee, leaning in toward him, whispering. ‘Somebody might hear, Mario.’

‘Let ’em,‘ he snapped back at her, but his eyes, following hers, surveyed the nearby tables. No one was within earshot. He turned back to her. ’This public court nonsense. They should have installed one at the courthouse. You know your opponents. They know you. You can be civilized.‘

The judge worked and had his chambers in the newly redone U.S. courthouse, the building that had gone unnoticed by Lanier and Evans two days before. The recent renovation, over eight years and at a cost of nearly $100 million, had restored the building to its original opulence, and that was saying something. Nicknamed the Federal Palace, it was widely considered, after the Library of Congress, to be the most beautiful government building in the United States.

The Palace had originally been built by Italian artisans. Completed just in time for San Francisco’s Great Earthquake of 1906, it had miraculously survived that catastrophe because the postal clerks who worked in the new building at the time had refused to leave, choosing instead to fight the fires that threatened it.