policemen escorted her back to where he waited. Frannie had evidently explained to them that Moses was on his way to pick them up.
But they weren't done yet. Simms had a notepad out. 'Mr. Hardy. Your wife tells us you've got some suspicion of who might have done this?'
Hardy struggled for a genial tone. 'Some,' he said. 'I'm suing somebody. If I win, and I will, they're out of business.'
'You want to give us a name?'
'I could, but it wouldn't do you any good. He wouldn't have done this himself. He'd have sent one of his men.' He drew a breath to maintain his control. 'And there won't be any evidence here. They wouldn't have touched anything. The windshield looks like your traditional blunt object.' He indicated the car. 'You can see where they hit it.'
'Yes, sir,' Simms said. 'But if you want us to include anything specific in our report, now is the time. As you say, there's a chance we won't get anywhere with an actual investigation on this incident, but it would be good to have a name if something else happens later. You call us and say, 'This is the second time,' and somebody's going to wonder why you didn't report the first one.'
'What do you mean, if something else happens?' Frannie asked.
The two cops looked at each other. Surely this was clear enough. But Hardy saved them from having to answer. 'Nothing's going to happen,' he told his wife. 'They see they're not scaring me off and they'll stop trying.'
'Like they did with David?' she asked with some asperity.
'Who's David?' Reyas asked.
Hardy sighed. 'My partner in this lawsuit. David Freeman. He got beaten up last night. He's still hospitalized.'
'In a coma,' Frannie added. 'In critical condition.'
Again, Reyas and Simms consulted silently. Finally, Simms tapped his notepad. 'Maybe you better give us a name,' he said.
Moses McGuire arrived a little after the tow truck, and after the Hardys' car was on its way, he packed the two of them into the cab of his pickup. It hadn't been a cheerful ride back from North Beach, but Moses had talked them into stopping by his bar to eat their dinner and calm down. Now he'd plied his sister with wine and Hardy with some first aid for his hand and then a double martini. Most of the immediate tension had passed. They were eating their Fior d'Italia antipasto at one of the coffee tables at the back of the Little Shamrock.
McGuire tipped up the last of his scotch. 'I've got an idea,' he said.
'Ideas are good,' Hardy said. 'I'd take an idea.'
'Paul!' McGuire called to the bartender and held up his empty glass, pointing at it. Then, back to Hardy, 'Where does Panos live?'
'Uh-uh.' Frannie shook her head. 'Bad idea.'
'No, really,' Moses said.
'No really yourself. You don't escalate things.'
'You don't? Why not? I think it's a fine idea. Drop by his place, pop a window or two, have a little fun.'
Hardy thoughtfully chewed an olive. 'It does have a quaint sort of in-your-face appeal.'
McGuire was getting into it. 'Especially if I just do it and don't even tell you.' He smiled at his sister.
She put down her wineglass. Her face had gone hard. 'Don't even think about it. I mean it, Moses.'
She turned to her husband for support, but he just shrugged. 'I can't control him, Fran. He's a big boy.'
'Boy is the key word.' Then, to her brother, 'You just don't do this.'
McGuire got his new drink. Service tended to be good for him at the Shamrock. But he hadn't lost the thread. 'So what do you recommend?'
The question seemed to fluster her. 'I don't recommend anything. The police said they were going to look into it.'
McGuire barked a deep and scathing laugh. 'And then, when they find nothing, what?'
'Maybe they'll find something,' Frannie said.
'She's right,' Hardy said. He'd had enough discord for one night. Moses and Frannie were threatening to really go at it, and he thought he'd try to slow them down. 'Maybe they will, Mose. It could happen.'
A couple of scotches now into the wind, McGuire fastened a cold eye on Hardy. 'Traitor. And how, pray, is it going to happen? One of Panos's guys leave a card in the gutter?' He took in both of them. 'Get real, guys. You've already told me that they don't have anything on who beat up your Mr. Freeman, and he's a moderately important person. You think they're even going to look with your stupid car? This, my naive friends, is not going to happen.'
'My car's not stupid,' Hardy replied. 'In fact, now that I think of it, it's smarter than some of my clients.'
'Go ahead, Diz. Make a joke of it. I don't think it's funny.' McGuire put a spoonful of caponata on some focaccia and stuffed it into his mouth. 'These guys really piss me off.'
'I intuited that.' Hardy was working on his newfound calm. He put his injured hand on Frannie's knee, shot her his craggy grin. 'We're a little angry ourselves, tell the truth.'
'But you don't go breaking his windows,' she said. 'Then you're just like he is.'
'Sorry, li'l sis, but no you're not.' Before Vietnam had killed the scholar he'd been as a young man, McGuire had earned a doctorate in philosophy at Berkeley. 'There's one tiny little difference.'
'No. There's no difference. And don't 'li'l sis' me!'
'All right, strike the 'li'l sis,' but don't give me that 'no difference' bullshit.'
Hardy's efforts to defuse the sibling fireworks weren't working. The area at the back of the Shamrock was small enough to begin with-maybe ten feet across and twelve deep-and McGuire's voice reverberated off the close walls, drowning even the jukebox.
'There's a fucking huge difference. And you know what it is? They started it! How 'bout that for a concept?' He pointed at his sister, his brow knit, his eyes dark. 'They did it to you first. You don't think that makes a fundamental difference, you're dead fucking wrong.'
'Easy, Mose,' Hardy said. 'We're just talking, okay?'
McGuire whirled on him. 'What do you think that was? You see anybody throwing a punch here? I don't think so. But don't tell me we're just like them, 'cause that's just plain bullshit. We're nothing like them.'
But Frannie was evidently much more accustomed to McGuire's outbursts than even Hardy was, and he'd seen a lot of them. She got up and sat down next to her brother, put an arm around him. 'And people wonder where I got so feisty,' she said. She kissed him on the cheek. 'Okay, you're nothing like them. Just promise me you won't go shoot out anybody's windows.'
Not completely mollified, McGuire came forward heavily. He grabbed for his scotch, picked it up, then put it back down and sat back. After another moment, he leaned over and kissed his sister. 'I wasn't going to shoot them,' he said. Smiled. The fight was over. 'I was thinking maybe a slingshot,' he said.
14
The call came into homicide at 4:38 a.m. As soon as he heard the tentative identifications, Paul Thieu thought he knew what he had, but for his own reasons, not the least of which was pride in his work, he proceeded in his own ordered, methodical fashion. He had to get to the scene and make his own determination first.
Gerson wouldn't thank him for a call at this time of the morning anyway. If the crime scene was anything like what it promised to be from the dispatch-double homicide or possibly homicide with suicide-the CSI team wouldn't even have gotten a good jump by the time it was reasonable to call the lieutenant.
In the cold, dark morning, Thieu left the Hall of Justice through the front doors. A couple of black-and-whites were parked on Bryant just down the steps-the dim light of cigarettes visible in the front one. Thieu didn't want to waste even the few minutes it would take to walk to the back lot and get his assigned Ford Taurus. He walked up
