Well, there was nothing for it now. Hardy had to make his case. He turned back. ‘Look, Graham, here’s the situation. You’re going to be arrested again in a couple of days, certainly by the end of the week. You’re going to get charged with first-degree murder, maybe even special-circumstances murder. This is going to happen. Even if it’s not your Sergeant Evans, and I think it is, somebody is going to get this done. It’s too big an issue. It’s not going to go away.’

He didn’t win him over, but at least the confident smile vanished. ‘All right. Let’s say that happens. Let’s just say. Then we’re just where we were last week anyway, right? We duke it out.’

‘That’s one approach. But I’ve got a better one.’

He came back to the low fence, handed his untouched bottle of beer to Graham, and laid it all out – his deal with Pratt, the whole strategy. When he’d finished, he waited, watching his client’s face.

It wore a dead sober expression now, conjuring with the possibilities. He blew out heavily, shook his head at something, craned his neck. ‘But I’d have to say I did it,’ he said at last.

‘But you wouldn’t serve any time. Nobody could come back and get you for it. It would be over. The deal’s already cut, Graham. Pratt’s bought it.’

‘It’s a good attorney move, I’ll give you that.’

Hardy tried a light touch. ‘Afterward, you could even call up Sergeant Evans again, ask her out.’

‘But’ – maddeningly, seemingly unable to leave it alone, Graham played his refrain – ‘I’d have to say I did it.’

There was no evading this. ‘Yeah, you would.’

‘But what if I didn’t?’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Hardy said, surprised by how much he sounded like a defense lawyer. It didn’t matter if he committed the crime? What was he saying? But he pushed at it. ‘It’s just a legal issue.’

‘And I’d be off? That would be the end of it?’

Hardy had him on the verge – he could feel it. Now was the moment. He had to close the deal. ‘You might get a couple or three years probation, but, Graham, listen to me. You’re just starting out in the business world. There’s a lot more to do than be a lawyer. I am a lawyer and I know. It’s ninety-nine percent drudge and the rest is kissing your client’s-’

This brought a smile. ‘Like now, with me? You’re kissing my ass? Somehow it doesn’t feel like you’re kissing my ass.’

‘This is an exception. What I’m saying is you could do anything. You don’t need your bar card. You don’t need to be a lawyer any more than you needed to be a baseball player. They’re just jobs.’

Finally, a heartfelt note. ‘But I’m good, Diz. I made law review. I got the clerk job with Draper. Nobody gets that job except the best.’

Hardy was shaking his head. ‘So you’ve got a good brain. Use it on something else. And if you don’t, you’re looking at prison, Graham. We’re not talking your second or third choice in your career goals, we’re talking years out of your life. Prison. Hard time.’

For nearly a full minute that seemed like an hour, Hardy waited. Birds chirped in the foliage around them, but otherwise the stillness was complete. At last Graham shook his head. ‘I’m sorry. I know you put a lot of thought into this, but I didn’t kill my dad. I can’t say that I did.’

Hardy, his stomach tight, wished Graham could simply leave it that he hadn’t killed Sal, instead of always adding that he couldn’t say he had. He gave it a last try. ‘We don’t have to call it killing him, Graham. We can say-’

‘No! Listen to me! I am not going to say I killed him.’

Hardy listened to the birds chirp for another moment, then gradually stood up. ‘I’ve got to tell Pratt your answer by the morning,’ he said.

‘You’ve got my answer. My father killed himself. He left the DNR tag for the medics. He did it. That’s what happened.’

15

A large percentage of Marcel Lanier’s working life outside of the office was spent in and around the city’s various slums and housing projects. Poverty being the wet nurse to so many crimes, this was the usual beat and homicide cops soon grew accustomed to it. Occasionally, though, the work took him on a different tour.

So while Sarah Evans was working phones at the Hall of Justice, punching the numbers that Sal Russo had written on his scraps of paper, playing connect-the-dots with the names, Lanier thought he’d grab this opportunity to take a different, more direct, approach. In spite of Glitsky’s explicit instructions Lanier forgot his tape recorder.

He knew that Danny Tosca held down the end of the bar most nights at Gino & Carlo’s. The place had been in its North Beach location forever. This was where the authentic old Italian heart of the city beat most strongly, and Danny Tosca was in some sense its unofficial pacemaker. Now in his early fifties, cue-ball bald, casually dressed in a dark sport coat, burgundy shirt, tasseled loafers, Tosca was – ostensibly – in real estate. And in fact, many of the businesses in the neighborhood made their rent checks out to his company, which brokered for the actual property owners.

Danny Tosca had never been indicted or arrested. As far as Lanier knew, he’d never even had a parking ticket, although if he had gotten one, it would have been taken care of before the ink on it had dried.

He occupied a unique niche in the sense that he did not appear to believe in physical force. He would be the first to admit that he had a knack for persuasion and negotiation, for locating the pressure point, and wasn’t averse to accepting commissions from grateful clients. He simply took a proprietary interest in his community and, like Lanier, viewed himself as one of the many checks and balances in the city by which order was maintained.

He was enjoying his inevitable demitasse of espresso when Lanier pulled up a stool and said hello.

Tosca gave every appearance of being glad to see the inspector, nodding at the bartender to set him up with whatever he’d like. Marcel had a Frangelica in a pony glass on the bar in front of him before his seat had gotten warm. The two men chatted about the beautiful night, the warm spell, the Giants, who were on television above the bar, losing to the Dodgers.

Finally, Marcel deemed the moment propitious. ‘That was a shame about Sal Russo,’ he said. ‘I guess he’d been sick a long time, though.’

Tosca sipped his espresso, waved at a couple who’d just come through the door, came back to Lanier. ‘Maybe it was better. The son, what he did.’

‘You think it was, Dan?’

A shrug. ‘That’s what the papers say.’

Lanier nodded, taking his time. ‘You see Sal recently?’

‘You know, here and there.’

‘And how’d he seem? In a lot of pain?’

‘He don’t show it, you know. Doesn’t mean it isn’t there.’

‘And what if it wasn’t about his pain? How about if it was something else?’

Lanier could see that Tosca didn’t expect this. The question slowed him. He fiddled with a sugar cube, turning it around and around on the bar. Lanier leaned in closer. ‘Somebody killed him, Dan. We don’t know why. If it wasn’t the kid, we’d like to know it before we arrest him again.’

‘You’re saying it was business?’

‘I’m saying I don’t know. Maybe somebody does. I’m wondering if there wasn’t something else in the fish.’ Meaning drugs. If the illegal fish sales – condoned as they were – were a cover, if Sal had in fact been a mule for some major dealers, there might be a motive.‘

But Tosca was shaking his head. ‘That didn’t happen,’ he said flatly. ‘He sold fish. Good fish too.’

‘A lot of it?’

Tosca eyed him carefully. ‘One day a week.’

‘Not exactly what I asked.’

The twirling had moved from the sugar cube to the cup itself. ‘I don’t think he cleared two hundred a week. What he needed to survive. There wasn’t any loan to welsh on. This was cash business – he paid when he picked up.’