A Plague of Secrets (27 page)

“Trials?”

“Not just trials. Murder trials.”

“I thought they were the fun part, when lawyers felt most alive.”

Hardy gave him a look. “Uh-huh. Only in the sense that when you’re suffering, at least you know you’re alive.”

“Well, there you go.”

“There you go,” Hardy said.

But suddenly, Hardy realized as he was driving home that the confluence of the two new facts he’d only discovered today-the two-shot scenario at the alley behind BBW, and Maya’s involvement with the death of Tess Granat-had, much against his will and inclination, pushed him not just over the line into doubt about his client’s guilt, but into a near certainty that she might in fact be innocent.

The key element regarding Tess Granat, which he and Hunt had hinted about at lunch today, was simple and yet profound. Dylan Vogler had known about the accident and had been blackmailing Maya about it since he’d gotten out of prison. Hardy could believe-and in fact had believed-that his client had all the motive in the world to have killed Dylan. She’d also had means and opportunity.

What had changed in the Tess Granat scenario, which had the rather significant advantage of being true, was that to Hardy’s mind, it completely eliminated Levon Preslee from the picture. He’d already gotten his one favor, his job, from Maya, and maybe even through Dylan. But that had evidently been enough. That job had worked for him, for a new start on a different life. And in any event, that favor, or whatever it was, had been years before. There was no record or even sniff of a record that Maya had seen or spoken to him in eight years before she suddenly went over to his apartment on the day he was killed.

Again-why?

Because Levon had called her?

In just the same way that Dylan had called her?

Or had someone else called her? Either or both times?

Someone who was connected to both Dylan and to Levon in the present, and who might have had dealings with them in the past as well?

Paco.

At ten-fifteen
, long after everyone else except the downstairs guards had left the building, Harlen Fisk sat holding a Glock.40-caliber semiautomatic weapon, the twin to his sister’s, in his office upstairs in City Hall. Harlen had bought both the guns at the same time, while he was still only a couple of years into his service with the police force. As was the custom, when Glock came out with the new model, they’d offered it at a discount to active-duty cops, in the hope that cops would come to favor the gun and entire cities would order it as the on-duty weapon for their police force. In fact, he’d insisted on buying Maya’s for her after they’d had an early robbery at BBW. You needed a weapon if you owned a store in the Haight, even if you weren’t planning to use it. It was good for peace of mind.

Back in those days Dylan’s time in prison hadn’t seemed to weigh so heavily on everyone. Not even to a cop like Harlen. They’d all known each other when Dylan and Maya had been in college, Harlen the older brother, not yet a cop. Sometimes they all smoked dope together, had some laughs. Then Dylan had done something truly dumb, and got caught. But he’d paid for it, and now he was working with Maya, doing a great job. Harlen never considered that he’d go back to crime. Why would he? He didn’t need it.

So he’d bought the guns, the Glocks. Harlen hadn’t even known or cared about the ballistics quirk-that fired bullets from this model couldn’t usually be traced back to a particular gun-until he’d heard about it at trial.

Harlen’s office wasn’t large, and most of it was filled with the old-fashioned desk and free-standing bookshelves that lined the wall to his right. To his left the view out his large windows across Van Ness included a glorious stretch of San Francisco’s somewhat grandiose architecture-the Opera House, Performing Arts Center, and War Memorial. Behind him a framed rogues gallery of himself posing with various other politicians and celebrities-his aunt Kathy, of course, Bill and Hillary, Dianne Feinstein, Robin Williams, Dusty Baker in his Giants uniform-offered mute but compelling testimony to his own popularity and success.

Harlen had made it, in a somewhat tortuous route, and in the most cutthroat of fields, almost to the very top. At least to the city’s top-and after that, who knew how far he could go? He’d been a supervisor now for seven years, after starting out as a clerk in Kathy’s office just out of college about seven years before that. Through his aunt Kathy’s tutelage and influence he’d joined the PD as a uniformed patrolman, and rose quickly, finally making it all the way to homicide for a few months before finally quitting and jumping over to the political side, starting with the low rungs of community activist work-soup kitchen and homeless shelter service on the one hand; victims’ rights advocacy, a natural with his police background, on the other. Mix in a couple of stints on various visible boards-the National Kidney Foundation, Friends of the San Francisco Public Library-and a term on the school board, and then Kathy moved up to mayor and he ran for and won her seat on the Board of Supervisors.

And now here he was, gun in hand, wondering if it was all going to end.

The immediate problem was Cheryl Zolotny. No, Biehl now. Sweet sweet girl, and hot hot hot when she’d been younger. In fact, she was still more than easy to look at, and in other circumstances he might have found himself falling into those bedroom eyes-eyes that he’d once known well-over lunch.

But not today.

Today her testimony about all those years ago with Maya simply had made Harlen realize how at risk he still was. This was a woman who’d not only known him, she’d done drugs with him. And so, okay, it had only been marijuana. Lately, and in spite of his long-term support of the medical marijuana laws and parlors in the city, he’d come to appreciate how much trouble a little pot could get people into.

If only Dylan hadn’t been wearing that backpack…

But he had.

And now Cheryl, from out of nowhere, had suddenly returned full-blown into the picture. Not that she was, so far as he knew, out to get him in trouble in any way. In fact, at lunch she’d been nothing if not inviting, even downright flirtatious, in spite of her marital status. Making noises about how flattered she was that he-a very important man now, in his exalted position-that he even remembered her from back when they’d fooled around a little, when she’d been just a kid.

But what if she talked to somebody, some reporter, anybody really? There was nothing more true about Harlen’s business than the fact that you couldn’t hide. He took it as a truism as universal as Murphy’s Law that a politician with a damaging secret somewhere out in the ozone was a finished politician. It would come out-the fact that he’d known Levon too. Hung with him.

He kept asking himself, so what? So what?

And the simple answer was that he didn’t know the consequences-from petty to profound-if the people already hounding him about these forfeiture issues got any more to chew on. No matter what, he thought, it would mean more headlines, and not the good kind. It was one thing to help a poor black kid get a job at ACT after a stretch in prison, but quite another to have partied with him and his doper friends and your own murder-suspect, dope-dealing sister. And even if it wasn’t a career-breaking matter to the general public, it would be to Kathy.

It could finish him.

And Cheryl knew all about it. And, yes, she’d told him that of course if it was important to him, she’d keep all that old stuff to herself. But what if…?

What if?

He looked down at the gun in his hand. What did he think he was doing with that? Had he come down here thinking that his career, his life, was really so close to over, that perhaps he was really going to kill himself? What about Jeannette and the kids? What would they do without him?

He had to relax. After all, nothing had happened yet. Maybe nothing ever would. And Cheryl had promised him that she’d keep it between them forever. Just like their other secrets from when they’d dated. She’d never betray him. She understood everything he’d told her and agreed that it was important.

Super important, she’d actually said. And the insipid, Valley girl adjective had brought back one of the other realities about Cheryl the ex-cheerleader. She had been hot hot hot, no doubt, but also dumb, dumb, dumb. Super dumb.

Was she too dumb to understand what she knew? Or should he try to contact her again? Set up an appointment.

Make it clearer.

Robert Tripp, in his scrubs, came out of the bathroom, peeled off his surgical gloves, and dropped them into the trash can in Jansey’s kitchen. “I think I got it all.” He started running the water in the sink, soaping up his hands. “But that was not a pretty job.”

“Thank you,” she said. She sat at the kitchen table, a glass of wine in front of her. “I owe you. I just couldn’t handle that tonight.”

Tripp turned. “What if I wouldn’t have been here?”

“I would have quarantined the bathroom and forbidden flushing until I could call the plumber.”

“You could always do it yourself.”

She made a face. “I do a lot of good-mother stuff, Robert. I really do. But putting my hands in that-”

Tripp held up his hands. “Gloves, then soap. Does wonders.”

“Did he use the whole roll, you think?”

“Most of it. Looked like it, anyway.”

“Yuck. I’m sorry. But yuck.”

“Lucky you got me.” He dried his hands and came to sit down across from her. “But other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how’d you like the play?”

She drank off about half her glass and shook her head. “It’s been a tough day, if you want to know. Tough all the way. I look at Maya sitting there across from me, and she looks so harmless, really, so pathetic almost. I think she’d been crying before she came into court. Then I feel like such a beast, somehow.”

He reached across and put his hand over hers. “She did it, hon. I thought we were pretty clear about that. No matter what she looks like.”

“I know. I know. But there’s just all this other stuff.”

“What other stuff?”

“You know. The insurance, when they’re going to pay out, whether the cops are still going to come after me for something about the business.”

“Didn’t they say not?”

“Well”-she shrugged-“if you believe them. But I never signed anything, so I guess they still could.”

Tripp stood up and came around the table, pulling up a chair next to her. He put his arm around her shoulders and drew her toward him, kissed the hollow of her neck, and held himself there for a moment. “You’re just worrying. I love you.”

“I just think what if it’s not her?”

He pulled away. “But it is her. Who else would it be?”

“I know. I know. But it was just way different actually facing her and saying all that stuff out loud. And I also know-don’t think I don’t-that once she’s convicted, it’s way better for us.”

“Hey,” he said gently, “we’re cool. We don’t have to worry about us.”

“But I do. I mean, if he calls me back again.”

“Who’s that?”

“The defense guy. Mr. Hardy.”

“What about him?”

“Well, he didn’t even ask about us.”

“Why would he?”

“Well, you know, because…”

“Because we’re an item?”

She turned to him. “Not because we’re an item, now, Robert. Because we
were
an item. I mean, then. That’s never come out, and if it does…”

“Then what?”

“I don’t know. But something, I’d think.”

“Why?”

“Because it gives me a reason…” She blinked back the starts of tears.

He pulled her again to him, his hand on her neck, whispered into her ear. “You’re just worn down, Janz. It’s been a long haul, that’s all. And it doesn’t matter if you’ve got all the reason in the world to have done him-which, by the way, you did…”

“Don’t say that!”

“All right. But the fact remains, it still doesn’t matter, since I said you were here.”

“But I
was
here.”

“Of course. But me saying it makes you really here, with an actual alibi, as they call it. You know what I mean.” He put a finger under her jaw, gently. Lifted it so that she was looking at him. “We’ve talked all about this. Lots of times.”

“I know. I’m being stupid, I guess.”

“Not so stupid.” He kissed her. “But really really cute, all upset the way you are.”

She pouted, shook her head. “I don’t feel cute.”

“I bet I could fix that in about five minutes.”

She stared past him through the window into the darkness outside. “He never asked me about us at all,” she said.

“That’s because you and me, we’re not what this is about. This is about Maya killing Dylan, and helping the prosecution prove it. That’s all it’s about.”

“You’re really sure?”

“I’m positive, hon. Absolutely positive.”

Ruiz thought it would have been downright irresponsible, since they had the program in place and working smoothly, to simply abandon the business just because Dylan was gone, along with his steady supply of quality sensimilla. The other long-term employees at BBW weren’t likely to find any other job that gave them a monthly bonus even close to what Dylan had paid them for their loyalty and cooperation and Ruiz was, of course, ready to step in almost immediately once the heat just after the shooting had dissipated.

Now, near midnight, Ruiz was in his ten-year-old Camaro crossing Golden Gate Park’s panhandle at Masonic, on his way to tonight’s meeting with his new source-actually his old friend, Jaime Gutierrez, but who knew he was dealing weed until you looked around?-and pick up some product for the upcoming week. Tuesday was always the night, and earlier on Jaime had left him a text message on his cell with the always different address, same as usual.

So Ruiz had shut down BBW at ten o’clock and swung by his apartment on Parnassus, where he’d picked up his eight thousand dollars cash, which he knew was way too much to be carrying around normally, but it was only once a week and had to be done. He also grabbed the old funky revolver, a six-shooter actually, that Jaime had sold him once they’d done the first couple of deals and it had looked like it was going to keep working.

Of course, Ruiz knew that having a gun hadn’t done any good for Dylan, but that’s because Dylan had gotten complacent over time. Everybody at BBW knew where he kept it at work and how he carried it in his jacket’s inside pocket whenever he was moving either product or money or both. And he was really, at base, such a trusting guy. Made a lot of money, gave a lot of it away, a sweetheart.

Ruiz was smarter. Nobody at BBW knew he even had this gun. Or when he moved the money in and out. Or, especially, when or where he scored his product.

Although, he had to admit, this was the area of the business where Dylan had shown a talent for organization and control, and Ruiz was planning on emulating that model once he could get himself into a bigger crib where he could grow his own in quantity, the way Dylan had done in his attic. Which had meant that Dylan didn’t have to go to these weekly buys that always felt a little sketchy. Dylan hadn’t had to buy; he only sold, and that made everything so much cleaner. Even after all their years together Ruiz never figured out where he’d stored the cash in or around the store. No one ever knew when he’d show up with the product, or leave with cash.

So, the lesson to take home from that-keep all your logistics to yourself, as Dylan had done. The thing to watch for, Ruiz knew, was one of the other guys in the shop getting ideas that he could take over if Ruiz disappeared. Just as Ruiz had. Dylan had never considered that possibility, or at least never showed it if he did.

Oh, well, times changed. Lives changed.

And now in his new life, Ruiz parked on Turk down by Divisadero-the whole area darkened now since this neighborhood, the outer Fillmore, tended to be underserved by the Department of Public Works. Streetlights were not the biggest priority here-it was hard to say if, in fact, there were any other civic priorities either.

Locking the car, checking for foot traffic-none-Ruiz heard hip-hop loud from a block or two away. The wind was light but very cold, and Ruiz pulled his parka up over his chin, hands in its pockets, around his gun in one and his money in the other, and checked doorways until he got to the address and stopped.