It was all a mess.

He checked his watch. After eleven o'clock already.

And today was his last day to get it done. Frannie had told him that the best thing would be if she didn't have to tell, and the only way that would happen was if Hardy provided some answers before they questioned Frannie tomorrow again in front of the grand jury.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, with his mind vacant and receptive, he came to understand precisely what Frannie had meant by her last cryptic, challenging remark. Hardy had been telling her he'd listen to her. They'd work things out. He'd try to care more about what she did, what she cared about. So she'd heard him out and turned at the door, telling him OK, this is what is truly important to me.

Fish or cut bait.

31.

'Your honor, if I may.'

J. Marian Braun looked up from her desk in her chambers. She wore wire-rimmed half-gla.s.ses under a barely controlled riot of gray hair and made no effort at all to conceal her displeasure at the interruption, or at the ident.i.ty of the caller. 'You may not. I'm at lunch. I'll be back at my bench in forty-five minutes, counsellor. Talk to my clerk.'

Hardy didn't budge. He was taking a chance, but felt he had no choice. 'Your honor. Please. Time is short.'

Her scowl deepened. The mayor's outrageous effrontery and reprimand, the DA's arrogance and political posturing - all of this before she'd finished her morning coffee - still galled her deeply. To say nothing of the potential legal ramifications to which she'd exposed herself by allowing the mayor to bully her into staying for the duration of his meeting. She'd committed a serious ethical breach in this Frannie Hardy matter, and could only hope it wouldn't come back to bite her.

And now here was the d.a.m.n woman's own husband, no doubt wanting more ex parte communication. Well, at least here was someone far beneath her on the pecking order. She could chew him up and spit him out with impunity and probably feel a little better after she did. If they were all trying to double-team her to subvert her ruling, she would pick them off one by one, starting with this meddling lawyer.

'Time is short, Mr Hardy. You're d.a.m.n right. What do you want? And I'd better not hear one word of whining about the situation your wife put herself in.' She ostentatiously consulted her wrist.w.a.tch. 'You have three minutes and I'm counting.'

Hardy wanted to strangle Marian Braun where she sat. At the very least he longed to try to make her understand the staggering difficulties to which she had subjected his entire family. But neither of those served his purpose here this morning. This would remain impersonal, a legal matter, nothing more.

He moved forward rapidly, placed his briefcase on the chair before her desk, and opened it. 'I have here,' he said, 'a writ for a habeas hearing on my wife. I'd like you to grant an alternative writ for tomorrow morning.'

The frown remained, but Braun laughed harshly through it. 'Are you joking? What are you doing here with that? If you've got grounds to vacate the contempt, submit your motion in the normal fashion.'

'Your honor...'

The judge wasn't listening. 'And a.s.suming you had grounds for this writ at all, do you expect the DA's office to answer by tomorrow morning? What do you hope to accomplish by this?'

'Quash the contempt charge before the grand jury.'

The judge drummed her pencil against the desktop. She observed him over the tops of her gla.s.ses. 'I admire your nerve, Mr Hardy, although I can't say the same for your wife's.'

Hardy nearly had to bite his tongue off, but he wasn't going to get drawn into a discussion about Frannie. 'I am specifically not addressing the judicial contempt, your honor. No one is arguing that. Only the grand jury citation.'

'Well, there's a rare and welcome display of good judgment.' She drew Hardy's piece of paper over to her, scanned it quickly, and repeated her initial response. 'You don't say she'll talk and you don't say why she doesn't have to. All you say is it would be nice to let her go. This belongs with the DA. They make this decision, not me.' She pushed the paper back over to him. He was dismissed.

But he didn't move. Braun glared up at him, and pushed the doc.u.ment another time. 'I'm going to lose my temper if you don't...'

'I don't trust the DA,' Hardy said. 'I can't take it there.'

Braun's eyes narrowed.

Hardy pressed on. 'It's been my experience that this particular administration will take a convenient position in their offices, and when it's on the record, suddenly it changes. In this case, they've abused the grand jury process-'

'That's a strong charge. How have they done that?'

'Your honor, with all respect, you know as well as I do. The grand jury is a prosecutor's tool. But it's not supposed to be a blunt instrument.'

'And that means?'

'It means Scott Randall's trying to make a high-profile case out of whole cloth and he's using my wife to do it. How many times did you see his name in the paper this weekend?'

'Not flatteringly.'

'What does he care? In six months it's all forgotten except the name recognition.' Hardy was surprised Braun had let him argue even this much - he must have struck a chord with her. She knew that this DA's administration had mostly a political, not a legal, agenda. As a judge, she'd no doubt run across her own examples of dishonesty and sleaze. Hardy played another variation on this theme.

'Your honor, we'd all like to believe the DA is going to do the right thing. But even if they were convinced this wasn't going anywhere with Ron Beaumont, there are folks down the Hall who would leave my wife in jail just to prove that they can.'

'Except my understanding is that Ron Beaumont is likely to be indicted.'

'If he is, there won't be enough evidence to bring him to trial.'

Braun had just about reached her limit. 'Well, that's the system, Mr Hardy. Get used to it.'

'The system's broken, your honor. If they're going to keep my wife in jail, at least make them do it out in the open.'

Braun put her elbows on her desk. 'You know, Mr Hardy, this morning I had the mayor himself try to circ.u.mvent the judicial process. I'm tired of people who want to keep making this stuff up as they go along.' She straightened up, pushing the paper away from her a last time. 'You got your pitch; take it to the DA. Your three minutes are up.'

Hardy had one last shot and he hadn't wanted to take it unless there was no alternative. But now he'd gotten to that. Still, it was a tremendous gamble. If it didn't succeed, the consequences would be devastating to his credibility, to his entire career. 'What if I can produce Beaumont at the hearing?'

Braun stared at him. 'I'd understood he'd fled.'

Hardy elected not to answer directly. 'Scott Randall doesn't have anything, your honor. He jailed my wife to save his own face. If he's got a case, let him make it in open court if he can.'

'You're telling me Ron Beaumont will testify at this habeas hearing tomorrow?'

Hardy nodded. His heart was stuck in his throat. 'If he's not in the courtroom, there's no hearing.'

He saw her wrestling with it. Braun had a temper, and he was personally enraged at what she'd done to Frannie. But like most Superior Court judges, she prided herself on her basic sense of fairness. Hardy counted on that now.

It was no secret that this particular DA administration systematically abused the grand jury process. Finally, because of Scott Randall's arrogance and grandstanding, Braun herself had just been squeezed and humiliatingly dressed down by the mayor.

She peered over her gla.s.ses, her mouth a grim pencil stroke. 'I want you to understand that if I wasn't so p.i.s.sed off at your wife, I wouldn't give you this hearing. But I'm not supposed to let my personal feelings get in the way, and if I don't give you this hearing, I'm not going to be sure it wasn't personal.'

She pulled the writ over and scratched an angry signature at the bottom. As Hardy reached for it, she held it back one last second. 'If I take the bench tomorrow and Ron Beaumont isn't in the courtroom, you don't even get three minutes.'

Lou the Greek's had a kind of Chinese version of paella as the special. Chunks of octopus (perhaps tire), sausage, maybe chicken - it was hard to tell - and some red stuff, all mixed into the rice with soy sauce. Since every day the special was the only item on the menu, Hardy ordered it. A wave of hunger had hit him in Glitsky's office and he would gladly have ordered even some variant of spam musabi if it had been offered. It probably would have been better than the paella which, he had to admit, didn't quite sing.

But he ate most of it, sitting in one of the window booths which, at the underground Lou's, began at the level of the alley outside. As it was, he could have been eating tires for all he cared about the food.

Something far more compelling commanded his attention - the love letters of Jim Pierce to Bree Beaumont, the ones she'd saved in the back of her high-school yearbook. There were a dozen of them, all of them relatively short - half a page or a little more - and painfully, adolescently pa.s.sionate. Hallmark poetry that made him wince: 'Never have/I touched or felt/Never/Even knew/Oh, the craving/Touching/Wanting/ Only you.'

Three were on Caloco stationery. None were dated, although all of the paper had grown brittle, leading Hardy to conclude that the last of them had been written several years before.

So David Freeman had been right again, Hardy thought with awe when he put down the last letter. And why should that have been a surprise? Pierce might be married to a world-cla.s.s beauty, as President Kennedy had been, but this was no guarantee that he wouldn't have affairs. Human nature, Freeman had said. Men want a lot; women want the best one.

Just as Hardy felt they were finally closing in on some kind of Kerry/Thorne connection to Bree's death, he didn't need this complication. He could understand Pierce's denials, especially in the presence of his wife. And judging from the age of these letters, the relationship might have ended years before, possibly before either of them were even married. But the discovery was unwelcome - he was trying to narrow his list of suspects, not expand it. And if Pierce and Bree had ever been lovers - now a foregone conclusion - it put the oilman back in the picture, at least tangentially.

'How was it today, Diz?'

Lou the Greek himself hovered over the table, breaking Hardy out of his reverie. He smiled, indicating his nearly cleaned plate. 'Maybe the best ever, Lou.'

The proprietor showed a lot of teeth under his thick gray mustache. 'People been saying that all morning. I'm thinking we might go regular with it.' He slid into the booth across the way. The dark eyes were not smiling anymore. 'Hey, I hear some things. You, your wife, the house? You OK?'

Hardy shrugged. 'Getting by, Lou, getting by.'

'You need anything, you let me know.' He brushed at his mustache, embarra.s.sed. Lou hesitated another moment, then nodded. 'OK, then.' He extended his hand and Hardy took it. 'Good luck,' he said. 'And today's on me.'

Hardy thanked Lou and, struck by the unexpected kindness, watched him as he began to schmooze another table. It was one of the few personal interactions he'd ever had with the man in twenty-some years and he wasn't at all sure where it had come from.

Their common humanity?

The thought brought him up short. Unexpectedly, the urge to goodness was still in the world. It wasn't him alone, or Frannie alone. He came back to Ron Beaumont - if he was innocent, and Hardy was now willing to believe he was, he was living a nightmare as h.e.l.lish as Hardy's own, or Frannie's.

And his wife was right - 'the best thing,' she'd said. The options were endless, but the best thing was if she didn't have to tell. And for that to happen, they were all depending on him. On his judgment and skill, yes. But more than those, really, at the base of it, on his humanity.

Turning back to Pierce's letters, he realized with surprise that he wasn't going to go anywhere with them. At least not today. There was no time. For the moment, he knew all he needed about Pierce. He'd lied under duress. He had loved Bree. Maybe he'd even killed her - out of jealousy, rejection, his own despair.

But the trail to the truth did not lead through Pierce from where Hardy sat now. He had to choose his best course, and that led him back to Carl Griffin, who had died pursuing the same thing.

32.

Heritage Cleaners ran its business out of an upstairs office overlooking a grimy, wet and - today - windswept alley in Chinatown. Hardy turned off Grant and into the narrow pa.s.sageway. A thin trickle of some kind of effluent flowed down a narrow and shallow concrete trough that bisected the way. He pa.s.sed several dumpsters rich with the odors of cabbage, rotten meat, and urine. The body of a small brown puppy lay pitiably against one of the buildings. Hardy couldn't help himself - he bent over, closer, to be sure it couldn't be saved. Then he gathered some newspaper, wrapped up the bundle, and placed it in one of the smelly dumpsters.

Checking the address, Hardy ascended the dark flight of stairs. If he were going to take his shirts to the cleaners, he thought this would be his last choice. But once inside, the office was a surprise. Though still a far cry from the modern antiseptic bustle of FMC's headquarters, Heritage was well lit, apparently organized, a couple of computers at some workstations.

And - the big surprise - it wasn't a laundry.

A frail-looking, elderly Chinese man sporting bifocals and a starched, white collarless shirt looked up and rose from one of the fours desks when the door opened. He spoke good if accented English. 'I am Mr Lee. How may we help you?'

Hardy handed him a business card. 'I am helping to investigate the death of a police officer and I wonder if I could have few minutes of your time.'

Mr Lee checked the card again. 'Are you with the police?'

'No.' At the man's frown, Hardy pressed ahead. 'But I believe the officer may have come here and spoken to someone about a woman's death.'

The man did the math in his head. 'Two deaths now?'

'Actually, three or more.' He paused to let the fact sink in. 'I'm working with the police.' This wasn't precisely true, and Hardy was about to tell Mr Lee he could call Abe to smooth things over, but saw that he was nodding, accepting. 'The inspector was Carl Griffin.'

Again, a frown. Deeper this time. 'A big gentleman, wasn't he? Not too clean? He's dead?'

Hardy felt a spark of hope. 'Yes. He was killed a few weeks ago. I was hoping to find out what he questioned you about.'

The nodding continued, then Mr Lee motioned for Hardy to follow, and led him over to the desk he'd lately abandoned. The old man worked with the keyboard, nodded, and pointed at the screen. 'Twelve oh six Broadway,' he said. 'Our customers.'

'Do you clean the whole building?'

'No. There are, I believe twenty-three or four units, all individually owned. We contract through the superintendent for the public areas, and many residents are happy with our service.'

'And Bree Beaumont was one of them?'

'Yes.' Mr Lee shot a glance at Hardy, and ventured a personal comment. 'It was very sad about her.'

'Yes it was,' he said. Sadness was all over this case. He gave the sentiment a moment. 'So what is your schedule there, for cleaning? I gather you go on Tuesday and Thursday - is that correct?'

'Yes.'

'So you do each place twice a week?'

'No. Generally, we clean once. Half the units on one day, the other half on the other.'

'And which was Bree?'

'Thursday. Every Thursday.'

Hardy saw the reason for Griffin's earlier visit. If Heritage had come on Tuesday, possibly within an hour or two of Bree's death and before the crime scene unit had arrived, then trace evidence might be found among the cleaning supplies, in the vacuum cleaner bags and so on. But evidently this had not happened.

Still, he wanted to be certain. 'So you didn't go to her apartment on the day of her death?'

'No. That's what Sergeant Griffin asked us.'

'Did he ask if any of your staff saw anybody unusual in the hallways? Anything strange that they noticed?'

'Yes, of course.' Mr Lee was still seated, and now sat back, folding his arms patiently. 'But - have you been there? Yes? - then you know. It's really not that type of apartment building. There's only two units on each floor, except for the penthouse, where there is one.'

Hardy remembered. At Bree's twelfth floor, there was simply a landing with a window and a door. Residents weren't exactly out wandering in the halls, loitering about in the locked lobby. 'So there was really nothing to be found in any of your supplies. The crime scene had already been there by the time you came on Thursday?'