John Lescroart - The Mercy Rule

But then they’d found the tumor and would be doing the tests on that. That was today, the first of these tests. The tumor, if it wasn’t fatal, might be affecting the Alzheimer’s, moving its schedule forward. Although that, too, wasn’t more than informed conjecture. It was possible that arresting the tumor’s growth might inhibit Sal’s memory loss for a time.

‘Come on, Dad. Dr Cutler’s going to be waiting for us. He’s a good guy.’

But Sal’s eyes were closed now. He had collapsed to one side on the couch. His pants were wet at the crotch – either alcohol or urine.

God! Graham couldn’t keep doing this for long. He wished the old man would have the good grace to go and die.

The ritual of a cup of coffee over the newspaper had fallen victim on most days to the mad rush of getting the kids washed, dressed, fed, teeth brushed, hair combed, lunches made, out the door to school. But Sundays still had some of that old charm.

Hardy and Frannie were still in their bed with the Sunday paper spread out all around them. They had their mugs of coffee. Last night, before he’d left North Beach with Rebecca, he stopped and picked up some cannoli and biscotti, and the crumbs in the sheets would have to be dealt with, but later.

Vincent and Rebecca hadn’t slept in – on a weekend? don’t be absurd – but for the moment were cooperating in building the world’s largest Lego castle, both of them quiet and happy.

Hardy had cracked one of the windows two inches to let in some fresh air. Sunshine filled the whole room.

The telephone rang. The portable phone by their bed had disappeared, so someone was going to have to get up and answer at the kitchen extension. Frannie flashed a smile at Hardy. ‘The walk might do you some good after your jog yesterday.’ But she was up, answering it. Reappearing a moment later, she stood in the doorway, her hand up through her long red hair, one foot resting on the other one. ‘It’s Graham Russo,’ she said.

It was also Bay to Breakers Sunday.

Every year upward of a hundred thousand people flock to the City by the Bay to run approximately seven miles from the Ferry Building on the Bay to Ocean Beach. Although only about one tenth of one percent of these people come to compete in any meaningful way, the event has evolved into a party of significant proportions.

There are running teams outfitted as caterpillars, barefoot teams, naked runners, participants who sprint for the first three blocks and then duck into bars to watch themselves on television, grandmothers, children, dogs, snakes, marching – no, jogging – bands. A party.

Graham Russo called Hardy from Jack London Square in Oakland. He told his attorney he’d gone into hiding for a few days to make some decisions, to consider his options.

Now it was time. If Hardy would like to take the Alameda ferry over and meet him, Graham was ready to turn himself in. They could talk strategy and Graham would answer Hardy’s questions as they chugged back across the Bay.

As a plan it wouldn’t have been bad on most days. But it left the race out of the equation. Hardy hadn’t even gotten to his car when the crowds and traffic around his house told him something was going on.

After a minute’s reflection – even before yesterday’s painful reminder of his lack of conditioning, Hardy had never been a Bay to Breakers kind of guy – he realized what he was dealing with. He knew it was going to be iffy taking a ferry anywhere in the next several hours. Even getting to the Ferry Building was going to be a challenge.

But he tried. He’d told Graham he’d be there in an hour, maybe a little more, though he had been hoping for less. Clients about to turn themselves in on murder charges had been known to change their minds.

Since the route of the race was along the edge of Golden Gate Park, which was several blocks south of the main east-west corridor, Geary Boulevard, he thought he might have some hope of making it. He vaguely knew that the race began at about eight o’clock, and it wasn’t yet ten. It was possible, he knew, that some of the participants still hadn’t crossed the starting line; they queued up for miles along the Embarcadero before the gun that started the race. So maybe the outbound arteries wouldn’t be clogged yet with people who’d finished and were leaving the city to go to their post-race parties.

And indeed, he got nearly to Van Ness, the western edge of downtown, before things stopped. Dead.

After ten minutes at one corner he got out of his car and looked around him. The honking was in full blare. Lines of cars, glaring in the bright sunlight, stretched out in all directions. A river of humanity – waving, singing, high-fiving, having a great old time on that fabled runner’s high, although few were actually running – flowed by. There was no place even to pull over and park, after which he could try to walk it. He wasn’t going anywhere for at least a couple of hours.

Vincent had a birthday party to attend in the early afternoon, and while that went on, Frannie and Rebecca met her grandmother – Frannie’s first husband’s mother, Erin – for a picnic on the cliffs just outside the Legion of Honor. So no one was home to answer Graham’s next couple of calls, though Hardy did hear them on his answering machine, progressively angry and frustrated, when he finally arrived back at the house a little after four.

He was somewhat angry and frustrated himself.

The last incoming ferry was at the dock in Alameda. Graham sat in a windbreaker next to his duffel bag on one of the pilings by the gangplank where it tied up.

Sarah, as she had when the last four boats had docked, hung back by the shops. When Graham’s lawyer came up to him, she was planning to leave and go home. But they both agreed there was no sense in Graham waiting all afternoon alone until Hardy showed.

And now it looked like he wasn’t going to. Sarah was really unhappy that Hardy hadn’t found a way to get to Graham. What the hell kind of lawyer was he, anyway?

‘He’s a good guy,’ he said. ‘Something must have happened.’

‘What could have happened?’

He shrugged. ‘Maybe he was on an earlier ferry and we just missed each other.’

‘With you sitting here on a piling that everybody has to walk past? No. You’re visible. He wouldn’t have missed you.’

A last group of passengers disembarked and started up the gangplank – four couples in their twenties and face paint, not sober, laughing a lot, wearing Bay to Breakers T-shirts over the body armor they’d evidently run in.

Graham and Sarah had spent the whole day here, saying goodbye, preparing themselves for what was to come. Every time a ferry had arrived, the tension had overwhelmed them. Where was Hardy? What was going to happen to Graham now? To them? Everything else was invisible.

Now, suddenly, together, they both realized what they were looking at. ‘Bay to Breakers,’ Sarah said. ‘Smart of us to pick today.’

Graham picked up his duffel bag. ‘I think our timing’s off.’

‘That must be it.’

They were stopped in the middle of the Bay Bridge when she brought it up to him. It had been haunting her since she’d been so thoroughly uncharmed by Craig Ising the day before. She had to get it clear.

‘You know, your friend Craig Ising-’

He interrupted her. ‘He’s not my friend. He pays me. That’s our entire relationship.’

This, while gratifying, was not the point. ‘Well, whatever he is, he told me your dad used to deliver money around the city for him and some other gamblers.’

‘Yeah, he did. So what?’

‘Don’t get mad. I’m trying to get a handle on your father, that’s all. Who he was.’