Singh smiled his sad gentle smile again. 'No need, I have done it. One hundred forty-two dollars and eighty- six cents. Per share.'
Hardy whistled.
'Fifty-two thousand, five hundred seventy-two dollars and forty-eight cents,' Singh said.
'What's that?'
'That's what you have now if you bought your three hundred and sixty-eight shares for eighteen dollars and forty cents.'
'Interesting, if true. But so what?'
Freeman was on his own turf. Unlike his austere apartment, the surroundings in his office were sumptuous. A twelve-by-eighteen-foot Persian rug covered the center of the dark hardwood floors; fine leaded crystal was on display on the mirrored shelves behind the fully stocked bar; two original Bufanos and a Bateman hung on the sponge-painted walls. The corner room was large – three times the size of Hardy's – with full bookshelves, two full-size couches, several armchairs. There were drapes – not the ubiquitous louvered blinds – on the three sets of windows. Freeman's desk was a five-by-seven-foot expanse of spotless shining rosewood.
It was six o'clock and Hardy was sitting in one of the armchairs. After his discussion with Ali Singh, he had tried unsuccessfully to reach Donna Bellows again. He had also left a message with Jody Bachman at Crane amp; Crane. Then he had spent an hour or so going over the YBMG offering circular in some detail. In light of what he had discovered with Singh, it didn't read the same way it had.
'So what?' Hardy replied. 'So something, at least.'
Freeman grunted, handed Hardy a cold beer and went back to the bar, rummaging around down behind it.
'It's a lot of money,' Hardy persisted. 'It's a hell of a lot of money.'
Freeman came up with a bottle of red wine. 'I agree.' He was taking the foil off. 'But again, so what? So a bunch of doctors made a lot of money. Happens every day.'
'Not a bunch. Only a few. This accountant, Singh, said he didn't think more than fifteen, twenty guys bought in.'
Freeman pulled the cork, sniffed it and laid it on the bar's surface.
He lifted one of the large-bowled crystal wine glasses from behind him and poured himself a quarter of the bottle, holding it up to the window to check its color, its clarity, its legs.
Hardy crossed a leg. 'Let me know if I'm bothering you, David.'
He sipped at the wine. 'Not at all,' he said, taking another mouthful, flushing it around his mouth, gargling, finally swallowing. He came around the bar. 'The '82 Bordeaux are not overrated. You really ought to try a glass.'
Choosing an armchair, placing the glass on a marble-topped end table, he sat down. Hardy defiantly pulled at his beer.
Freeman sat forward. 'I would love to put something together here, Dismas, believe me. I'm not seeing it.'
Hardy sat back, trying to formulate his position. It would be good practice if he had to present it to Villars, or a jury. Maybe it wasn't as clear as it seemed to him. 'Let's be generous. Say a maximum of fifty doctors bought the stock. There are about four hundred doctors in the Group.'
Freeman waited, hearing him out, sipping his wine. 'Okay?'
'Okay, so from my perspective, and I admit it's almost a year later, the cover letter looks like an outright deception.'
'A year ago you hadn't started your first trial,' Freeman reminded him. 'You didn't work here. You didn't have two children. You'd never met Jennifer Witt, and Larry and Matt Witt were alive.' He swirled more wine. 'A lot can happen in a year. Perspectives change.'
'I think the reason Larry got in touch with his lawyer, and then this guy down in LA, was because he thought something was fishy – back then, and he was calling them on it.'
'Calling who?'
'The Board, the attorneys, I don't know. Whoever drew up this thing, whoever concocted the scam.'
The bushy eyebrows went up. 'Now it's a scam?'
Now Freeman sat all the way back into his chair. 'Don't hang your hopes on the way you want something to be, Dismas.'
'I don't think I'm doing that.'
Freeman shook his head. 'You want it to be a scam because if it is a scam – and you can prove it – then, maybe, you can help Jennifer with it. Although how you plan to do even that eludes me.' He leaned forward again. 'All you can do this round is get the death penalty mitigated. She's already guilty. You can't get her retried.'
'If I can get Villars-'
'You're talking about Joan Villars, the Superior Court judge, I presume? Get serious. The woman's about as flexible as concrete. You're not going to convince Villars to do anything.'
'So let me try to convince you.'
Freeman sat back again. 'I've been listening. I think you said fifty doctors bought stock. Continue.'
'The reason the other three hundred and fifty did not was because of the wording of this cover-letter and the offering circular. Together, they made this dumb nickel investment sound like a waste of time. Then they sent it out to their doctors during the holidays, when only a few of the guys would be likely to take the time to read it, and limited the option period to about three weeks.'
'I'm with you so far. Did Larry buy or not buy?'
'Larry smelled a rat.'
'And then?'
'And then he threatened to blow the whistle on this multi-million-dollar scam. That was the call to LA.'
Fingers pressed to his eyes, Freeman sighed. 'I was afraid that's where you were going.'
Hardy had been talked out of enough good ideas by David Freeman over the past weeks. He was not in his most receptive mode. 'David, the managing partner in the LA firm handling this was shot to death within a month of Larry Witt.'
Freeman tipped his glass. 'You said that. I fail to see, though, how any of this is going to mitigate Jennifer's sentence, even if you could get Villars to listen to it, which you can't. You're saying now, I take it, that there was in fact some mysterious hit man, the existence of whom, by the way, the defense – that's us – never hinted at during the trial, and of whom there is no physical evidence.'
'That doesn't mean he doesn't exist.'
'Do you think he does? You think Jennifer is telling the truth?'
Hardy said he still didn't entirely think that, but the jury might. 'I'll let them decide.'
'Villars won't let you introduce the theory. And if she'd be inclined to, which she won't, Powell will object and win unless you've got some shred of evidence, which doesn't exist, no doubt because this didn't happen this way.'
'Which leaves Jennifer hanging,' Hardy said.
Freeman noisily sipped the rest of his wine. 'It always has,' he muttered.
But he wasn't going to take any more of Freeman's advice, even if it was right. He still had four days, and he thought if he did succeed in finding that shred of evidence Freeman had talked about, he could get Villars at least to listen.
After all, this was a capital case. This was life and death, not some moot-court discussion, not petty politics. If he got something real, he had to believe she would listen to it.
Of course, this did beg the question of whether or not anything real in fact existed, but Hardy had nothing else – he had to assume it did. Somewhere.
