he'd had increased access since Freeman had been mugged. Jackman had stopped far short of a glowing character reference. 'He's a good lawyer.' Then, 'Defense lawyer, I should say.' In fact, when Blanca first mentioned the name Dismas Hardy, Jackman's tone had unmistakably cooled, then changed by degrees until Blanca concluded he was furious about something, about Hardy.
After that conversation, he was trying to locate Jakes and Warren to get the story on the events at Coit Tower and was suitably stunned when their sergeant at Central Station told him that, even as they spoke, the two officers were possibly reporting to the Homicide Detail on the fourth floor of the Hall of Justice, just upstairs from him. Maybe he could catch them there, get their report in person.
So Blanca was with them as well, the last one to arrive. For some not exactly rational reason, when he'd first heard the word homicide, he'd imagined that David Freeman must have died-although of course Freeman had nothing to do with Jakes and Warren. But it was the only even remotely related homicide that came to his mind, and so for the first few minutes after Gerson-somewhat grudgingly- admitted him to his office, he stood against the door, trying to pick up the gist of things as they went along. Finally, he had to interrupt.
'Excuse me, I keep hearing the name Holiday,' he said. 'I thought we were here about Hardy and maybe Freeman.'
'Who's Freeman?' Gerson asked.
'Hardy's partner,' Blanca said. 'He's in the ICU over at St. Francis right now. Somebody beat him up. Bad. But who's Holiday?'
'Hardy's client,' Gerson said. 'Arrest warrant out on him for murder. For four murders, to be more precise.'
'Wait a minute, excuse me,' Blanca said. 'This guy Holiday, he was with Hardy today? When?'
'When they got shot at,' Warren said. 'About noon.'
'Maybe,' said Jakes.
Russell decided to get into the discussion. 'Maybe what? Maybe Holiday was there, you mean?' he asked.
'No. Maybe they got shot at,' Jakes answered. 'Or, alternatively, maybe it was just Hardy.'
'No, that's wrong!' Obviously Warren and Jakes had discussed it between themselves and didn't agree. 'Jakes watches too many movies.'
'Hey!' Jakes said. It wasn't playful. 'You show me anything proves it happened.'
'I saw the guy, Hardy, is what proves it happened. He was beat to shit.'
'Doesn't prove squat. He could have done it to himself.'
'Yeah, but why?' Warren shook his head. 'People just don't do this shit.'
'Hold it, hold it, hold it!' Gerson had the rank, and he pulled it. 'Officer Jakes, what are you trying to say?'
The young man gathered himself. 'Only, sir, that we examined the area pretty carefully, and several aspects of Mr. Hardy's story seemed, well, a little questionable.'
'Like what?'
'Like first, his story is nobody else was there. We're talking Coit Tower. Noon…'
'It was foggy, Doug, get it?'
Gerson snapped at Warren. 'Button it! Go on, Jakes.'
'All right, it was foggy. Like it's never foggy? Hello? This is San Francisco, people have heard of fog. They still go to Coit Tower. So anyway, the first thing is he and Holiday are all alone up there, except when we arrive twenty minutes later, it's a car lot, plus buses. Okay, so then he talked about screeching tires. Except no tire marks. Then some chipped concrete where a slug hit it, or maybe not. Oh, and finally six shots fired, just about point blank…'
'Moving car,' Warren blurted, held up a hand to Gerson. 'Sorry, sir.'
'Okay, moving car, but nobody even scratched. We then interviewed down on Lombard, right below. Seven people home. Nobody heard a shot.'
The only sound was a low musical note-Cuneo. No one seemed to notice.
'All right,' Gerson said. 'And all this means what?'
'He doesn't think it happened,' Cuneo said. 'He thinks Hardy faked it.'
'That's right, sir. I do.'
Warren raised his hand. Gerson pointed at him and nodded. 'Go ahead.'
'I saw the man, sir. Hardy. He was ripped head to toe. Brand new nice suit. Cuts and scratches all over.'
This didn't bother Jakes. 'That hill's a monster. You roll down it in a suit, you'll ruin it, too. You'll get scratched up.'
'Okay, maybe, but why would anybody-anybody, much less a successful lawyer-want to do that?'
Blanca had gradually found himself growing astounded that Hardy had spent so much time with him earlier in the day, discussing the Coit Tower incident in some detail and never once seeing fit to mention his representation of the murderer John Holiday, or the fact of Holiday's presence at that scene. Deciding he had to speak up, he cleared his throat, raised his hand, addressed himself to Gerson. 'If I may, Lieutenant. I might have something to say to that.'
'All right.' Gerson looked around. 'We're all listening.'
Blanca, still by the door, held up some paper. 'This is a report about another incident that happened Wednesday night in North Beach, also involving Hardy. While he and his wife were at a dinner at Fior d'Italia that they didn't eat, supposedly somebody smashed the windshield of his car. He first told the officers he suspected who it might have been, but didn't think they needed to investigate. The vandals, he said, wouldn't have left any sign. He admitted that he'd hurt his hand and that his own blood was on the hood of the car-he'd lost his temper when he saw the damage and slammed the windshield, he said.'
'All right,' Gerson said, 'what's the point?'
'There are two points, Lieutenant. First, maybe it happened the way it looked, but maybe he hurt his hand trying to break the window himself before he went to a tire iron or whatever got used. Again, just like this incident today, there seems to be no evidence that anything happened the way he said it did.'
Every man in the room was locked into Blanca's narrative. He went on, 'The second point goes back to Officer Warren's question of why anyone would do this kind of thing, and the answer is that in both these incidents, Hardy accused a man named Wade Panos as…'
'Wade Panos!' Cuneo exploded out of his trance. 'Wade Panos isn't going around breaking car windows. That's the stupidest thing I ever heard.'
Russell was just as outraged. 'You mean to say that Hardy actually told you Wade was the person shooting at him?' He was looking for corroboration from Warren and Jakes, and they were both nodding.
But Blanca answered, 'Not exactly. He said it probably wasn't Panos himself. He has a nephew named Sephia…'
'Sure,' Cuneo said, 'Nick.'
'Except Nick was up at Incline Village today,' Blanca said. 'Since last night. Roy Panos gave me his number and I checked. So he didn't shoot at anybody.'
'Roy's a good guy,' Cuneo said.
'You know him?' Blanca asked. 'Either of them?'
'Both,' Russell said. 'They gave us the list of names that led straight to Holiday.'
The room, this time, went completely silent. Jakes said, 'Shit.'
After a long beat, Blanca picked up the thread again. 'So here's the missing piece of this puzzle. Hardy's suing Panos right now, damages in the millions for abuses in his Patrol Special beats. And guess who else?' Nobody offered. 'The San Francisco Police Department. For negligent supervision.'
The room grew blue with the obscenity of comrades. When it had run its course, Warren was the first to get back to the issue. 'So he faked all this to… what?'
'I'm hearing two reasons,' Gerson said. 'First, to ruin Panos and give himself more ammo in court. But even more, and this really sucks, to maybe try to get a jury to think this Nick Sephia's got something to do with the people Holiday offed. The old Soddit defense.'
'What's that?' Jakes asked.
