Unfit to Practice

Jeffrey Riesner strolled into view. Kevin stood up to meet him.

“I don’t understand,” Nina said, pulling back. “I thought we were going to pin down who’s who in this. They all came. Are they in this together? I’m confused. What do we do now?”

“Nina, take a good long look at Scholl. Look at how she’s hiding. Check out the piece she’s holding.”

“It’s weird all right. She’s watching.”

“Nina, she’s investigating! She’s being a cop!”

“What?”

“She got a suspicious message and decided to check it out. Thatta girl.”

Nina’s attention dodged toward the two men, who were engaged in heated debate. She scooched in close to Paul. He took the tiny receiver out of his ear, and they both listened.

“You told me you had that judge in the bag!” they heard Kevin say, his voice rising clearly above the dull background roar of the city. “You said you could get me the kids!”

Riesner’s voice was lower, but in intermittent pieces they caught the gist. He wanted to know what the hell Kevin thought he was pulling, switching allegiance at the last minute. “I promise you won’t see your kids again until you’re drooling and senile, asshole.”

So Riesner was behind it all after all, Nina thought. He was the poison, the thin red snake slithering behind all of them, but the realization gave her no relief, no pleasure.

Apparently, Scholl had heard enough. Stepping out from behind the doorway on Spear Street where she had been hiding, she tucked her gun into a pocket and, holding it out of sight, faced the two men.

“She’ll arrest them,” Nina said. “My God, Paul. It’s finally over.”

“Maybe.”

“Hello, boys,” Officer Scholl said to Riesner and Cruz. She stood directly in front of them, looking at ease in the middle of a seething crowd of city folk.

“You?” Jeffrey Riesner said. “What brings you here?”

“Curiosity,” she said. “Then I couldn’t help overhearing,” Scholl said. “Excuse me for crashing your party, but you two have sure been cooking, and whew, does it smell.”

A hole opened around the three where they stood next to the sculpture. They looked like everyone else, but they were not. They were co

“I’ve worked out this much.” Holding her hand very near her body she exposed her gun to Riesner, who reacted with a jump back. “You,” she said to him, “got him”-she pointed at Cruz-“to lie, with the ultimate goal of pulverizing our favorite lady lawyer in return for the custody of his kids. I also have a gnawing suspicion that you stole yourself a key one fine day in court and made immediate use of it. And-” She thought, then put a finger to her chin. “The forgery. Your case last fall-the counterfeiter you defended. I’ll bet he could tell me a few things about how he paid a hotshot like you. Tinkering with Reilly’s paperwork? Or did he just show you a few tricks of the trade?”

Kevin Cruz stared at Riesner. “You did all that?”

Riesner said, “Why don’t you run on back home to Tahoe and write a few tickets, investigate a couple of nasty fender benders. Try to salvage something before you make a complete fool of yourself, Scholl. You have nothing on me. I’ve got a position in that town and powerful friends. Don’t do anything you’ll regret later.”

“And you, Kevin,” Scholl said, ignoring him. “What a shame. I’m deeply disappointed in you. He has an excuse. He’s a lawyer. It’s his business to lie and cheat to get what he wants. But you’re an officer of the law. Didn’t you tell me after that last time you’d walk a straight line? Didn’t you promise me that?”

“Welcome to real life, Jeanie,” Kevin Cruz said.

“What did he tell you? That Judge Milne was an old golf buddy who just needed a little whisper from his pal to give you what you want? Because that’s a laugh, let me tell you. Milne’s straight.”

“Why did you come here? What is this?” Riesner asked. “Some kind of lame shakedown?”

“Not exactly,” Scholl said.

“What do you want?”

“Right this minute, to get out of here. I don’t think it’s a very good idea, us sharing our feelings like this in such a public forum. We need to talk privately. You up for that? A little talk in a private place, and a lot less trouble all around?”

A smile played around Riesner’s thin lips. Talk? He was an expert. Sure, he would talk.

Tipping her sunglasses so that she could see better through the fog, Scholl’s eyes darted around, suddenly narrower. “Tell me something. You got letters?” she asked the two men.

“Yes.”

“Hmm.” She frowned. This time, she sca

Paul tucked his earpiece into his pocket. “We still don’t know the whole story,” he said. They walked quickly to the silver sculpture. Paul took just a second to retrieve the bug he had placed there earlier.

“Let’s follow them,” Nina decided, taking the lead.

“Okay.” Paul quickly overtook and passed Nina, using his elbows when necessary to make his way through the energetic street crowd.

In the sunless afternoon, the San Francisco streets were filled with Hopperesque scenes of lit stools and loiterers. Three people stepped in front of them to panhandle. Paul took Nina’s arm and sidestepped them.

“Where are they going?” Nina asked, huffing, clutching her bag to prevent it from hitting people. “I thought we’d have a chance to confront them back there. Scholl really threw me off.”

“When I saw her there, I could have sworn she was about to arrest them. I wonder what she plans to do now.”

“What do we do? Just run up to them and tell them what we know?”

“No,” Paul said. “We’re outnumbered, and Officer Scholl has her weapon. Change of plans. Let’s not be stupid, but let’s not let them get away. We follow, then get the cops.”

The trio up ahead hit a red light at Mission, so they crossed over Spear to the Rincon Center and crossed again to pass Lightning Foods. Nina and Paul stayed on the opposite side of the street behind them, dodging the new concrete berms that lined the sidewalk, protecting the Federal Reserve Bank on the corner of Market Street.

“They’re going for the Hyatt,” Nina guessed. “That’s so strange. This is where we celebrated Bob’s birthday.”

A cable car sat in front of the hotel, a smattering of passengers perched on its wooden benches. The conductor let loose a clang, sang, “He-e-ere we go!” and it took off up the hill. Nobody stopped to watch. Riesner entered the hotel first from a side exit on Market Street, catching hold of an opening door and holding it for Scholl and Cruz.

Nina and Paul ducked past the valets in the parking area and into the automatic revolving door. They took escalators up to the main hotel level.

One of the world’s signature hotels, the San Francisco Hyatt was remarkable for a huge interior courtyard framed by balcony corridors that angled up from the lobby level almost to the full height of the tower. Skylights at the top cast natural light down on the busy restaurants and services that lined the courtyard, and a huge, tubular gold sculpture formed a centerpiece. Water below the sculpture gurgled in a square black pool and spilled in unreal sheets to another level, shivering like a stretch of Saran Wrap.

On one side of the courtyard, glassed-in elevators shaped like funicular mailing tubes sailed up to the hotel rooms lining the open corridors. The effect was very Blade Ru