The First Law Read online

  But at the moment, Hardy didn't exactly feel primed for the good fight. He brought his hand up and squeezed his temples, then exhaled slowly and completely. "It's not just a hooker case. It's going to get bigger, and delay doesn't help us. There's potentially huge money down the line, but first I've got to rip this witness a new one. If he goes down, we move forward. That's the plan."

  "Which gang aft agley, especially if your brain's mush."

  "It'll firm up. Pain concentrates the mind wonderfully.

  And I really want this guy."

  "What guy?"

  "The prosecution's chief witness. The arresting cop.

  Nick Sephia."

  Suddenly Holiday sat upright. "Nick the Prick?"

  "Sounds right."

  "What'd he do wrong this time?"

  "Planted dope on my girl."

  "Let me guess. She wasn't putting out for him or paying for protection, so he set her up."

  "You've heard the song before?"

  "It's an oldie but goodie, Diz. Everybody knows it."

  "Who's everybody?"

  A shrug. "The neighborhood. Everybody."

  Suddenly Hardy was all business. He knew that Holiday owned a bar, the Ark, smack in the middle of Thirty-two.

  Knew it, hell, he'd closed the place the night before. But somehow he'd never considered Holiday as any kind of real source for potential complainants in the Panos matter.

  Now, suddenly, he did. "You got names, John? People who might talk to me? I've talked to a lot of folks in the neighborhood in the last couple of months. People might be un-happy, but nobody's saying anything too specific."

  A little snort. "Pussies. They're scared."

  "Scared of Wade Panos?"

  Holiday pulled at the side of his mustache, and nodded slowly. "Yeah, sure, who else?"

  "That's what I'm asking you." Hardy hesitated. "Look, John, this is what Freeman and I have been looking for.

  We need witnesses who'll say that things like this Sephia bust I'm doing today are part of a pattern that the city's known about and been tolerating for years. If you know some names, I'd love to hear them."

  Holiday nodded thoughtfully. "I could get some, maybe a lot," he said. "They're out there, I'll tell you that." His eyes narrowed. "You know Nick's his nephew, don't you?

  Wade's."

  "Panos's? So his own uncle fired him?"

  "Moved him out of harm's way is more like it. Now he's working for the Diamond Center."

  "And you're keeping tabs on him?"

  "We've been known to sit at a table together. Poker."

  "Which as your lawyer I must remind you is illegal. You beat him?"

  A shrug. "I don't play to lose."

  The Wednesday night game had been going on for years now in the back room of Sam Silverman's pawnshop on O'Farrell, a block from Union Square. There were maybe twenty regulars. You reserved your chair by noon Tuesday and Silverman held it to six players on any one night. Nobody pretended that it was casual entertainment among friends. Table stakes makes easy enemies, especially when the buy-in is a thousand dollars. Twenty white chips at ten bucks each, fifteen reds at twenty, and ten blues at fifty made four or five small piles that could go away in a hurry.

  Sometimes in one hand.

  With his neat bourbon in a heavy bar glass, John Holiday sat in the first chair, to Silverman's left, and two chairs beyond him Nick Sephia now smoldered. He'd come in late an hour ago and had taken a seat between his regular companions, Wade's little brother, Roy Panos, and another Diamond Center employee named Julio Rez. The other two players at the table tonight were Fred Waring, a mid-forties black stockbroker, and Mel Fischer, who used to own four Nosh Shop locations around downtown, but was now retired.

  At thirty or so, Sephia was the youngest player there.

  He was also, by far, the biggest—six-three, maybe 220, all of it muscle. While Silverman took the young Greek's money and counted out his chips, Sephia carefully hung the coat of his exquisitely tailored light green suit over the back of his chair. The blood was up in his face, the color in his cheeks raw beef, the scowl a fixture. He'd shaved that morning but his jawline was already blue with shadow.

  After he sat, he snugged his gold silk tie up under his Adam's apple, rage flowing off him in an aura.

  The usual banter dried up. After a few hands during which no one said a word, Roy Panos pushed a cigar over in front of the late arrival. Holiday sipped his bourbon.

  Eventually Silverman, maybe hoping to ease the tension, called a bathroom break for himself, and Sephia lit up, blowing the smoke out through his nose. Waring and Fischer stood to stretch and pour themselves drinks. Holiday, quietly enjoying Sephia's pain, had a good idea of what was bothering him. Maybe the whiskey was affecting his judgment—it often did—but he couldn't resist. "Bad day, Nick?"

  Sephia took a minute deciding whether he was going to talk about it. Finally, he shook his head in disgust. "Fucking lawyers. I spent half the day in court."

  "Why? What'd you do?"

  "What'd I do?" He blew smoke angrily. "I didn't do dick."

  Roy Panos helped him with the explanation. "They suppressed his evidence on some hooker he brought in for dope a couple of months ago. Said he planted it on her."

  "So?" Holiday was all sweet reason. "If you didn't, what's the problem?"

  Sephia's dark eyes went to slits, his temper ready to flare at any indication that Holiday was having fun at his expense, but he saw no sign of it. "Guy made me look like a fucking liar, is the problem. Like I'm supposed to remember exactly what I did with this one whore? She's got junk in her purse; another one's got it in her handbag. Who gives a shit where it was? Or how it got there? It's there, she's guilty, end of story. Am I right?"

  "Fuckin' A." Julio Rez, a medium-built Latino, spoke without any accent. All wires and nerves, he'd probably been a good base stealer in his youth. He'd lost the lower half of his left ear somewhere, but it didn't bother him enough to try to cover it with his hair, which was cropped short. "She goes down."

  "But not today. Today they let her go." Panos spoke to Holiday. "They suppress the dope, there's no case."

  "Were you down at court, too?"

  Panos shook his head. "No, but Wade was. My brother?

  He is pissed off."

  "Not at me, I hope," Sephia said.

  Panos patted him on the arm. "No, no. The lawyers.

  Bastards."

  "Why would your brother be mad at Nick?" Holiday sipped again at his tumbler of bourbon.

  "He was working for him at the time, that's why. It makes Wade look bad. I mean, Nick's doing patrol for Christ sake. He busts a hooker, she ought to stay busted at least. Now maybe they start looking at the rest of the shop."

  "Judge reamed my ass," Sephia said. "This prick lawyer—he had the judge talking perjury, being snotty on the record. 'I find the arresting officer's testimony not credible as to the circumstances surrounding the arrest.' Yeah, well, Mr. Hardy, you can bite me."

  Holiday feigned surprise. "Hardy's my lawyer's name.

  Dismas Hardy?"

  Now Sephia's glare was full on. "The fuck I know? But whatever it is, I see him again, he's going to wish I didn't."

  "So he must have convinced them you did plant her?"

  Rez shot a quick glance at Sephia. But Sephia held Holiday's eyes for a long beat, as though he was figuring something out. "She wasn't paying," he finally said, his voice filled with a calm menace. "Wade wanted her out of the beat. Most of the time that's intensive care. I figured I was doing the bitch a favor."

  Dismas Hardy's wife, Frannie, cocked her head in surprise.

  They'd just sat down at a small Spanish place on Clement, not far from their house on Thirty-fourth Avenue. "You're not having wine?" she asked.

  "Not tonight."

  "Nothing to drink at all?"

  "Just water. Water's good."

  "You feel all right?"

  "Fine. Sometimes I don't feel like drinking, that
's all."

  "Oh, that's right. I remember there was that time right after Vincent was born." Their son, Vincent, was now thirteen. She reached her hand across the table and put it over one of his. "Did you hurt yourself last night?"

  Half a grin flickered then died out. "I didn't think so at the time. I'm out of shape pounding myself with alcohol."

  Frannie squeezed his hand. "Out of shape could be a good thing, you know." But she softened her tone. "How was John?"

  "Entertaining, charming, drunk. The usual. Though he came by the office this morning fresh as a daisy. He must have been pouring his drinks in the flowerpots."

  "So what time did you finally get in?"

  "One-ish? That's a guess. You were asleep, though. I think."

  "Aren't you glad you decided to take a cab when you went out?"

  "Thrilled. I guess I must have taken a cab back home then, huh?"

  "If John didn't drive you."

  Hardy pressed two fingers into his temple. "No. I think we can rule that out."

  A look of concern. "You really don't remember?"

  "No. I remember. I didn't even think I'd hurt myself until this morning when that moose in my mouth wouldn't stop kicking at my brains." He shrugged. "But you know, with John ..."

  "Maybe you don't have to keep up with him."

  "That's what they all say. But then you do."

  The waiter came by with a basket of freshly baked bread, some olives, a hard pungent cheese. Frannie ordered her usual Chardonnay. As advertised, Hardy stayed with water.

  They kept holding hands over the table. The waiter vanished and Hardy picked up where they'd been. "He's more fun than a lot of people," he said, "and more interesting than almost everybody except you."

  "What a sweet thing to say. And so sincere." She squeezed his hand. "I don't have a problem with him.

  Really. Or with you. I don't know if I understand the attraction—if you were a woman, okay—but I don't like to see you hurting."

  "I'm not so wild about it either. But you hang out with John Holiday, there's a chance you'll drink too much sometimes. And in spite of all this, by the way, today wasn't a total loss. Maybe I should have a drink, after all.

  Celebrate."

  "What?"

  "You know that motion to suppress ..."

  He told her about his afternoon in the courtoom, getting Nick Sephia's evidence kicked out, which led to Aretha LaBonte's case being dismissed. "Not that it's going to change her life in any meaningful way. She's probably back on the street even as we speak, although if she's smart she's not working one of Wade Panos's beats. But it was nice to serve notice that this stuff isn't flying anymore. When it was over, David even had a little moment of actual drama right there in the Hall of Justice."

  The curmudgeonly and unkempt seventy-seven-year-old legal powerhouse that was David Freeman wouldn't give Wade Panos or his hired thug Nick Sephia the satisfaction.

  Further, he did not believe in revealing pain or weakness under any conditions, but most especially in a professional settling. So even Dismas Hardy, who'd been there, wasn't aware of how badly he'd been hurt. How badly he still hurt.

  At first, he even tried to fake it with Roake. On her sixth full day of automatic redial, she had finally succeeded in getting dinner reservations for them both at the legendarily swank restaurant, Gary Danko. Freeman wasn't going to whine and ruin the special night she'd so painstakingly orchestrated. So after the successful hearing and the little problem he'd had with Sephia and Panos, he'd forgone any celebration with Hardy and instead had beelined home from the Hall of Justice, hailing a cab as soon as he was out of sight around the corner. In his apartment, he popped a handful of aspirin with a hefty shot of Calvados.

  Then he ran a hot bath and soaked in it before dragging himself into bed, where he slept for three and a half hours until his alarm jarred his aching body into a disoriented awareness.

  It cost him a half hour, laboring mightily through the pain, to get himself dressed. Freeman held fast to a lifelong core belief that juries didn't trust nice clothes, and so of the seven business suits he owned, six were brown and straight off the rack. But the last one was a khaki Canali that Roake had bought him last Christmas. He was wearing that one tonight, with a red silk tie over a rich, ivory, custom-made shirt. His scuffed cordovan wingtips were the only sign of the usual Freeman.

  By the time Roake had come by to pick him up at seven o'clock, he had steeled himself and thought he was ready.

  But then she surprised him, or perhaps his flashy clothes surprised her. In any event, she hung back in the doorway and whistled appreciatively, frankly admiring him for a moment, then took a little skip forward and threw her arms around him, squeezing hard.

  A cry escaped before he could stop it.

  "What is it? David? Are you all right? What's the matter?"

  He was fighting for control, his jaw set, brow contracted, blowing quick, short little breaths from his mouth.

  Now, two hours later, he awoke again from his third brief doze. He was back in bed, in his pajamas, and Roake was sitting at his side, holding his hand. "You really ought to see a doctor," she said.

  But he shook his head. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

  And nothing's broke."

  "But you're hurt."

  He started to shrug, then grimaced. "Tomorrow I'll be dancing. You wait." He put a hand to his neck and turned his head slowly from side to side a couple of times, then stopped and fixed her with a sheepish gaze. "I feel like such a fool."

  "What for? You didn't ask for this."

  "No. But I knew who I was dealing with. I should have been prepared. In the old days, I would have been."

  "Prepared for Nick Sephia to knock you over?"

  The old man, looking every year of his age, nodded wearily. "They set me up."

  "How did they do that?"

  "Child's play with a trusting soul like myself." He sighed in disgust. "I'd already had a few words with the elder Mr. Panos after Dismas beat the hell out of Sephia on the stand."

  "What in the world prompted you to do that?"

  "Hubris, plain and simple." Another sigh. "I couldn't resist the opportunity to crow a little, though I thought I'd done it subtly enough in the guise of giving him a friendly warning of what was coming."

  Roake allowed a small smile. "Hence your nickname, Mr. Subtle."

  "In any event, it didn't fool him much. So afterwards a bunch of their guys—Dick Kroll's there, too. You know Dick? Sephia's lawyer? And Panos and one of Nick's pals I'd seen in court with him before, some greaser. Anyway, all these guys are having some kind of powwow out in the hall. So Wade sees me come out with Hardy and motions to me over Nick's shoulder. Come on over."

  "And you went?"

  "What was I gonna do? I tell Diz to wait and give me a minute. I'm thinking no doubt I put the fear of God in Wade and he's talked to Kroll and decided to cave and try to cut some kind of deal right there."

  "That hubris thing again."

  Freeman raised his shoulders an inch, acknowledging the truth. "Occupational hazard if you happen to be cursed with genius. Anyway, it's here to stay." Another shrug. "So I'm like two steps away when Nick the Prick suddenly whirls around—whoops, late for a bus—and next thing I know I'm flat on my keister, stretched out on the goddamn floor, and there's Nick leaning over me, all 'Sorry, old man, didn't see you.' "Finally, his eyes got some real fire back into them. "Sorry my ass. Wade gave him some kind of sign and he turned on cue. That was his warning back at me—fuck with me and you'll get hurt." He went to straighten up in the bed, but his bones fought him and won.

  He gave it up, falling back into his pillow.

  Roake put her hand on his chest, brought it up to stroke his cheek. "You guys," she said gently. Then, in a minute, "It could have been an accident, after all, couldn't it?"

  "No. No chance."

  "So now you need to get back at them, is that it?"

  He nodded. "In the words of Ol' Bl
ue Eyes, I'll do it my way, but bet your ass I will." Reading her reaction, he added, "That's the only message they hear."

  "And how about you? Which one do you hear?"

  "What do you mean by that?"

  "I mean, you warn them, they attack you, now it's your turn again, and it all escalates, until somebody really gets hurt. Maybe it doesn't always have to be that way."

  "With some people, maybe it does. What else do you do when they're pulling shit like today? You fight back, is what."

  Roake had her hands back in her lap. "Then you're both still fighting. And what's that prove?"

  "When somebody wins, it ends. And I intend to win."

  "And that's what it's all about, is it? Who wins?"

  "Yep." Defiantly. "What else?" he asked. "What else is there?"

  Roake sat with it for a beat. She blew out in frustration.

  Finally, she looked down at him and stood up. "How very male of you."

  "There's worse ways to be, Gina. What else do you want?"

  She looked down at him. "I want you to be smart. Don't get drawn into playing their games. This doesn't have to continue being personal, especially if they believe in doing things like today, in actually hurting people. That's all I'm saying. File your papers, keep out of it, and let the law do its work."

  "That's exactly my intention. What else would I do?"

  Freeman patted the bed. "Come, sit back down. I'm not self-destructive, you know. I'm not going to fight anybody physically."

  Roake lowered herself down next to him again. "That's what I thought you were saying." She took his gnarled hand in both of hers.

  "No, no, no. I'm talking what I do. The law. That'll beat up on 'em good enough. But I will tell you one other thing."

  "What's that?"

  "Whatever else it might look like, it's going to be personal."