Betrayal dh-12 Read online

  Betrayal

  ( Dismas Hardy - 12 )

  John Lescroart

  John Lescroart

  Betrayal

  To Lisa M. Sawyer,

  Who shares my life and owns my heart

  "A man's death is his own business."

  Aaron Moore, First Sergeant, U.S. Marine Corps

  "Injustice is relatively easy to bear; it is justice that hurts."

  Henry Louis Mencken

  PROLOGUE. 2006

  On a Wednesday evening in early December, Dismas Hardy, standing at the thin line of dark cherry in the light hardwood floor of his office, threw a dart. It was the last in a round of three, and as soon as he let the missile go, he knew it would land where he'd aimed it, in the "20" wedge, as had the previous two. Hardy was a better-than-average player-if you were in a tournament, you'd want him on your team-so getting three twenties in a row didn't make his day. Although missing one or even, God forbid, two shots in any given round would marginally lower the level of the reservoir of his contentment, which was dangerously low as it was.

  So Hardy was playing a no-win game. If he hit his mark, it didn't make him happy; but if he missed, it really ticked him off.

  After he threw, he didn't move forward to go pull his darts from the board as he had the last thirty rounds. Instead, he let out a breath, felt his shoulders settle, unconsciously gnawed at the inside of his cheek.

  On the other side of his closed door, in the reception area, the night telephone commenced to chirrup. It was long past business hours. Phyllis, his ageless ogre of a receptionist/secretary, had looked in on him and said good night nearly three hours ago. There might still be associates or paralegals cranking away on their briefs or research in some of the other rooms and offices-after all, this was a law firm where the billable hour was the inescapable unit of currency-but for the most part, the workday was over.

  And yet, with no pressing work, Hardy remained.

  Over the last twenty years, Wednesday evenings in his home had acquired a near-sacred status as Date Night. Hardy and his wife, Frannie, would leave their two children, Rebecca and Vincent-first with baby-sitters, then alone-and would go out somewhere to dine and talk. Often they'd meet first at the Little Shamrock, about halfway between home on Thirty-fourth Avenue and his downtown office. Hardy was a part owner of the bar, with Frannie's brother, Moses McGuire, and they'd have a civilized drink and then repair to some venue of greater or lesser sophistication-San Francisco had them all-and reconnect. Or at least try.

  Tonight's original plan was to meet at Jardinière, Traci Des Jardins's top-notch restaurant, which they'd belatedly discovered only in the past year when Jacob, the second son of Hardy's friend Abe Glitsky, returned from Italy to appear in several performances at the opera house across the street. But Frannie had called him and canceled at four-thirty, leaving a message with Phyllis that she had an emergency with one of her client families.

  Hardy had been on the phone when Frannie's call had come in, but he'd been known to put people on hold to talk to his wife. She knew this. Clearly she hadn't wanted to discuss the cancellation with him. It was a done deal.

  After another minute of immobility, Hardy rolled his shoulders and went around behind his desk. Picking up the telephone, he punched a few numbers, heard the ring, waited.

  "Yellow."

  "Is the color of my true love's hair," he said. "Except that Frannie's hair is red. What kind of greeting is 'yellow'?"

  "It's hello with a little sparkle up front. Y-y-yellow. See?"

  "I liked it better when you just said 'Glitsky.'"

  "Of course you did. But you're a well-known troglodyte. Treya pointed out to me, and she was right as she is about everything, that growling out my name when I answer the phone at home was somewhat off-putting, not to say unfriendly."

  As a lifelong policeman, Glitsky had cultivated a persona that was, if nothing else, self-protectively harsh. Large, broad-shouldered, black on his mother's side-his father, Nat, was Jewish-Glitsky's favored expression combined an unnerving intensity with a disinterested neutrality that, in conjunction with anomalous ice-blue eyes and the scar that ran through both of his lips, conveyed an impression of intimidating, barely suppressed rage. Supposedly he had wrung confessions out of suspects by doing nothing more than sitting at an interrogation table, arms crossed, and staring. Even if the rumor wasn't strictly true, Glitsky had done nothing to dispel it. It felt true. It sounded true. So it was true enough for a cop's purposes.

  "You've never wanted to appear friendly before in your entire life," Hardy said.

  "False. At home, I don't want to scare the kids."

  "Actually, you do. That's the trick. It worked great with the first batch."

  "The first batch, I like that. But times change. Nowadays you want the unfriendly Glitsky, you've got to call me at work."

  "I'm not sure I can stand it."

  "You'll get over it. So what can I do for you?"

  The connection thrummed with empty air for a second. Then Hardy said, "I was wondering if you felt like going out for a drink."

  Glitsky didn't drink and few knew it better than Hardy. So the innocuous-sounding question was laden with portent. "Sure," Glitsky said after a beat. "Where and when?"

  "I'm still at work," Hardy said. "Give me ten. I'll pick you up."

  Perversely, telling himself it was because it was the first place he could think of that didn't have a television, Hardy drove them both to Jardinière, where he valeted his car and they got a table around the lee of the circular bar. It was an opera night and The Barber of Seville was probably still in its first act, so they had the place nearly all to themselves. On the drive down they'd more or less naturally fallen into a familiar topic-conditions within, and the apparently imminent rearrangement of, the police department. The discussion had carried them all the way here and wasn't over yet. Glitsky, who was the deputy chief of inspectors, had some pretty good issues of his own, mostly the fact that he neither wanted to retire nor continue in his current exalted position.

  "Which leaves what?" Hardy pulled at his beer. "No, let me guess. Back to payroll."

  Glitsky had been shot a few years before when he'd been head of homicide, and after nearly two years of medical leave from various complications related to his recovery, he got assigned to payroll, a sergeant's position, though he was a civil service lieutenant. If his mentor, Frank Batiste, hadn't been named chief of police, Glitsky would have probably still been there today. Or, more likely, he'd be out to pasture, living on his pension augmented by piecemeal security work. But Batiste had promoted him to deputy chief over several other highly ranked candidates.

  In all, Glitsky pretended that this was a good thing. He had a large and impressive office, his own car and a driver, a raise in pay, an elevated profile in the city, access to the mayor and the chief. But the rather significant, in his opinion, downside to all of this was that the job was basically political, while Glitsky was not. The often inane meetings, press conferences, public pronouncements, spin control, and interactions with community groups and their leaders that comprised the bulk of Glitsky's hours made him crazy. It wasn't his idea of police work; it wasn't what he felt he was born to do.

  Glitsky tipped up his club soda, sucked in a small ice cube, chomped it, looked across at Hardy. "Lanier"-the current head of homicide-"is retiring, you know."

  "Nobody's that dumb," Hardy said.

  "What's dumb? I'd retire myself if I could afford it."

  But Hardy was shaking his head. "I'm not talking about Lanier," he said. "I'm talking about you."

  "I'm not retiring."

  "No, I know. What you're doing is thinking about asking Batiste to put you back in homicide. Isn't that right?"

>   "And here I thought I was being subtle."

  "You and a train wreck." Hardy sipped some beer. "You talk to Treya about this?"

  "Of course."

  "What's she say?"

  "You'll just do that eye-rolling thing you do, but she says whatever makes me happy makes her happy." At Hardy's reaction, he pointed. "There you go, see?"

  "I can't help it," Hardy said. "It's eye-rolling material. Have you talked to Batiste?"

  "Not yet. He did me a favor making me deputy chief. I don't want to seem ungrateful."

  "Except that you are."

  "Well, I've already put in three years there and it's not getting any better."

  "And homicide would be?"

  Glitsky moved his glass in a little circle of condensation. "It's who I am more. That's all. It's why I'm a cop."

  Finally getting to the reason they'd come out in the first place.

  "It's just so different," Hardy said. "I mean, two years ago, I've got two kids and a wife waiting for me when I come home. We're playing Scrabble around the kitchen table, for Christ's sake. Watching videos together."

  "If memory serves, you couldn't wait for that to end. It was so boring."

  "Not that boring. And even last year, the Beck's off at BU but at least Vince was still around at home and we'd give a nod to a family dinner a few times a week. Now he's in San Diego and Frannie's a working fool and…it's just so different."

  "Empty nest," Glitsky said.

  "I thought I was going to love it."

  "Well, there you go. Wrong again." He shrugged. "You'll get used to it."

  "I don't want to get used to it. I want to love it the way it should be."

  "How's that? Should?"

  "You know, like go out on dates with my wife, and do fun nonkid things on weekends, stay over places, go back to being my carefree old self."

  "Who? I don't believe I ever met him."

  "You know what I mean. It just doesn't seem right."

  "What? That Frannie's working?"

  "No. No, she's wanted to go back to work forever after the kids moved out. I've been totally behind her. Going back to school and everything. I mean, we've been planning on it."

  "But you just didn't think it would take so much time away from you?"

  Hardy sipped beer, swallowed, blew out heavily. "She's a good woman," he said. "I'm not saying she's not."

  "Few better. If you do something stupid with her around this, I'll hunt you down and kill you."

  "I'm not going to do anything. I'm just trying to get my head around where we are now. It's like her job is her life all the sudden."

  "You ever hang out with yourself during a murder trial? Miss a few dinners, did you?"

  "That's not the-" Hardy's tone hardened. "I was bringing in all the money, Abe. I was supporting everybody. That's not the situation now."

  "Oh, okay. You're absolutely right. It was different when you did it."

  Hardy twirled his glass on the table and stared out across the dimly lit bar. Even going out with his best friend to talk about himself wasn't turning out to be such a party. Things were going to have to change, and as Glitsky said, he was going to have to get used to it. Hell, things had already changed under his nose and he'd barely seen those changes coming. "It's never easy, is it?" he said.

  Glitsky chewed some more ice. "What was your first clue?"

  After years of aggravation and frustration, Hardy had finally broken down and rented some enclosed parking space in his neighborhood. The full double garage was still a long block and a half from his home and it cost him nearly four thousand dollars a year, but its door opened when you pushed a button on your car's visor, it was closer than most of the parking spots he would wind up finding on the streets anyway, it did double duty as a storage unit, and, perhaps best of all, it removed both the family cars from the immediate threat of theft or vandalism, both of which his family had been the victim of three times in the eighteen months before Hardy had plunked down his first rent check.

  The walk home tonight wasn't bad, though. He'd stopped after the two beers with Glitsky; his caseload was light at the moment and so he was unencumbered by his usual forty-pound litigator's briefcase; the night was brisk and clear. His two-story "railroad" Victorian on Thirty-fourth Avenue up by Clement was the only stand-alone house on a blockful of apartment buildings. It sported a white picket fence and a neatly maintained, albeit tiny, lawn. A flower-bordered brick walkway hugged one side of the lawn; four steps led up to the small porch, a light on by the door. More flowers grew in window boxes.

  Hardy let himself in and flipped on the hall light. The house was called a railroad Victorian because the ground floor was laid out like a railroad car. All of the rooms-living, sitting, dining-opened off the long hallway on Hardy's right as he walked through the house to the back rooms.

  Turning on more lights in the kitchen and family room behind it-the house was dead still-he automatically checked in on his tropical fish, sprinkled some food on the water's surface, and stood in much the same attitude of passive repose he'd adopted after his last round of darts earlier that night. After a minute of that, he took a few more steps and found himself in the corner that held the doors to both Rebecca's and Vincent's rooms.

  He opened the Beck's first. She'd slept in this room only a couple of weeks before when she'd been home for Thanksgiving, but there was, of course, no sign of her now. The bed was neatly made, the bookshelves organized. Vin had been home, too, and his room was pretty much the same as his sister's, although somehow louder in his absence-it was more a boy's room, with sports and music posters and lots more junk everywhere. Mostly, now, both of the rooms just seemed empty.

  Checking the phone for messages (none), then his watch, Hardy called Frannie's cell and got her voice mail. She turned her phone off when she was with clients. He said, "Yo. It's quarter to nine and I'm just starting to cook something that I'm sure is going to be fantastic. If you get this and you're on your way home, let me know and I'll hold dinner. If not, you snooze, you lose. Love you."

  Hardy's black cast-iron frying pan hung on a marlin fishhook over the stove, and he took down the ten-pound monster and placed it over one of the stove's burners, turned the gas on, grabbed a pinch of sea salt they kept on the counter next to the stove, and flung it across the bottom of the pan. Whatever he was going to make, salt wouldn't hurt it.

  Opening the refrigerator, he rummaged and found mushrooms, an onion, a red pepper, some leftover fettucine with a white sauce he remembered as having been pretty good. He threw away one heavily mildewed tomato, but that still left two that were probably salvageable if he cut them carefully. Unawares, by now he was humming the tune to "Baby, It's Cold Outside"-driving home, he'd been listening to Steve Tyrell's standards on his CD player. The freezer held a four-pack of chicken-and-basil sausages that he loved.

  In five minutes, he'd chopped all the ingredients, put them in the pan, added some random herbs and spices and several shakes of Tabasco sauce and a half a cup or so of the Zinfandel he'd opened. He'd just turned the heat down and covered it when the phone rang. Certain that it was Frannie, he picked up on the second ring. "Bob's Beanery."

  A male voice replied. "I must have the wrong number."

  "No, wait! I'm sorry. I thought it was my wife."

  "Mr. Hardy?"

  "Speaking."

  "Mr. Hardy, this is Oscar Thomasino."

  "Your Honor, how are you?"

  "Fine, thanks. Am I bothering you at an inopportune time?"

  "No, but whatever, it's no bother. What can I do for you?"

  "Well, admittedly this is a little unusual, but you and I have known each other for a long time, and I wondered if I could presume slightly upon our professional relationship."

  This was unusual, if not to say unprecedented, but Hardy nevertheless kept his tone neutral. "Certainly, Your Honor. Anything I can do, if it's within my power." A superior court judge asking an attorney for a favor was a rare enough opport
unity, and Hardy wasn't going to let it pass him by.

  "Well, I'm sure it is," Thomasino said. "Did you know Charles Bowen? Charlie."

  "I don't think so."

  "You'd remember him. Flashy dresser, bright red hair, big beard."

  "Doesn't ring a bell. He a lawyer?"

  "Yes, he was, anyway. He disappeared six months ago."

  "Where'd he go?"

  "If I knew that, he wouldn't be disappeared, would he? He'd be someplace."

  "Everybody's someplace, Your Honor. It's one of the two main rules. Everybody loves somebody sometime, and you've got to be someplace."

  During the short pause that ensued, Hardy came to realize that he'd overstepped. His tendency to crack wise was going to be the end of him yet. But Thomasino eventually recovered to some extent, even reverting to his own stab at not-quite-cozy informality. "Thanks, Diz," he said. "I'll try to keep those in mind. Meanwhile, Charlie Bowen."

  "Okay."

  "Yes, well…the point is that he was a sole practitioner. No firm, no partners, but a reasonably robust caseload."

  "Good for him."

  "True, but his disappearance hasn't been good for the court. Or for his wife and daughter, either, to tell you the truth. His wife's hired her own lawyer to file a presumption-of-death claim, which, between you and me, has very little chance of getting recognized, in spite of the fact that it would be convenient for the court."

  "Why's that?"

  "Because when sole practitioners die and go to heaven, the bar inherits the caseload and has to dispose of it."

  "What if they don't go to heaven?"

  "Most lawyers argue themselves in, don't you think? I know you would."

  "Thanks, I think. Your Honor."

  "Anyway, I know it's just housecleaning, but Bowen had a ton of work outstanding, and that work needs to get done. And while we're not going to issue any presumption of death until he's been gone a lot longer, last month Marian Braun"-another of the city's superior court judges-"ruled that his disappearance rendered him legally incompetent, and just yesterday the state bar suspended his ticket at the court's request."