Unlucky in Law

“I love this office,” Alan said, his eyes roving around, stopping on his paintings, his plants, his barrister’s case with old leather volumes of California cases. “I love being a lawyer. It’s just that in my work you come across things that other people won’t miss, beautiful things. I hardly ever sold things, Nina. I only stole a few times, precious things that nobody else would miss. I mean, it’s been twenty-five years! Nobody cared about having that egg, except me.”

“And then Gabe came.”

“He probably wanted to screw Christina and Alex. His motives were selfish, like mine. He told me Christina was going to send out some kind of press release a

“So you decided to kill Christina and implicate Gabe.”

“I never decided to kill her. It just happened. And then I thought Gabe would be arrested, not his brother. Stefan ran into some bad luck there.”

“It just happened?”

“I was excited, not thinking too straight. I went in to tell her she was a fool,” Alan said. “My fingers went around her neck. In a way she committed suicide. The Romanov heir? She was a nobody who got carried away wanting to be somebody.”

Nina breathed fast. She got up, but Alan held her wrist. “Now give me my chance,” he said. “Your client got his acquittal.”

She couldn’t escape his viselike grip. Cravenly, she said, “I told you it’s a deal.”

Alan let go and she took off, throwing open the door, ru

They heard Klaus behind them. “Let her go!” he said in the high voice he used when he was distressed and angry. Alan didn’t even turn around. He had the front door covered.

Now he would have to kill Klaus, too. Sickened, Nina struggled for her life, but he lifted her clear off the ground.

Alan was still holding Nina when an explosion tore through the room. He turned around so that she stood in front of him, both of them looking at Klaus, who held a large pistol in his hand.

“I have a safe, too,” Klaus said. “I never trusted you enough to tell you.”

“Shoot and she dies.” Alan held Nina tight. Her body blocked him from Klaus. Only part of his curly black hair showed.

“Tch, tch,” Klaus said, appearing to be thinking. Raising the gun, he shot Alan’s ear off. Nina felt the bullet whiz past an inch from her own head. With a scream, Alan slapped his hand over his bleeding ear. Nina ran behind Klaus.

“Nine-one-one,” Klaus said matter-of-factly.

Nina called and offered details. “Klaus,” she said, finding her voice, “what on earth are you doing with a gun?”

“Handy for shooting myself. I decided it was that or retire.”

29

Tuesday 9/30

THE NEXT MORNING, FIRST THING, JUDGE SALAS DISMISSED THE charges against Stefan Wyatt. A rumpled Alex Zhukovsky had reappeared in the hallway, apologizing for his absence without explaining. Jaime had spent the night interviewing Alan Turk, and had the amazing grace to join in the motion.

Paul tried to catch up with Nina after court, but after answering just a few questions for the press and posing with Stefan as two big smiles, she lit out and had probably hit Highway 68 going west toward her office in Carmel before he could work his way through the crowd. She was smaller, and had her little ways of avoiding traffic, human and otherwise.

The reporters engaged in an orderly feeding frenzy, sticking huge microphones into any face that happened nearby. Salinas was an interesting town, sleepy and quiet as aromatic fields growing on the one hand, and full of boisterous, drunken, sometimes fatal trouble on the other. It must be a slow news night because everyone plus his uncle Dave was looking for action at the courthouse that afternoon.

When he got to the Mustang, Paul considered going back to Carmel, too, but he didn’t want to go back to Carmel. In Nina’s book, Alan’s confession ended things. He, however, had some unfinished business.

He drove up Highway 101. From Salinas, in unobstructed traffic, the trip took a little over two hours to San Francisco, and he got lucky, spotting no highway patrols, catching the tailwind of a harebrained Mack truck driver who was illegally hogging the left lane most of the way up. He cut over to 280, wound through Golden Gate Park, and found a spot for the Mustang on Twenty-fifth Avenue.

Father Giorgi, wearing clean, fresh bandages on his face and neck, working in his office in a side wing off the main cathedral, was not glad to see him, but he was astonished to hear the news about the resolution of the case.

“Congratulations on your rapid recovery,” Paul said. The priest looked much improved.

Giorgi touched his neck. “A few stitches. A broken finger. A lot of blood and fright, though. I never really believed it was Stefan,” he said. “Do you know that a lawyer from Monterey contacted me? Christina had been doing some fund-raising for a nonprofit. She requested that I be left in charge in her stead.” He couldn’t hide his pleasure at the news. “There’s a board, and they’ve agreed.”

“The money she raised at the conference?”

“Yes. It’s been sitting in a bank, losing capital, I might add. These days, they charge you to hold your money and invest it for their own profit.”

Paul didn’t want to get into that particular conversation with Giorgi, who had quite an interest in money and its interest, he also noticed. “What will you do with it?”

“Christina had a lot of ideas, some not so realistic. Universal health care, a true democracy in Russia. I think the money should be used to promote the Mother Church.”

Paul didn’t doubt Giorgi would do what he wanted with the money. In fact, he had many ideas, and wanted to expound on them to Paul. He wanted to justify his shift in philosophy from Christina’s way of thinking to his. Paul listened for several minutes, then said, “I’m here for Krilov.”

Giorgi sighed. “It’s a matter of honor?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t intend to kill him?”

“Only if necessary.”

“Ah. Hmm. I don’t like the sound of that.” Nevertheless, he reached into his drawer, pulled out a book, and began to make a few calls. “I know everybody,” he said, “and most of them owe me favors.”

Paul wondered if he had the favors marked in there, too. It wasn’t long before they had the information he needed.

Krilov was holed up in a single room in the Tenderloin, a nasty San Francisco neighborhood full of theaters, strip joints, bums, and all the other colorful creatures of the earth that thrived under an alternative value system. Paul arrived in the afternoon, when the early birds were scratching and hitting the streets and the late ones continued to slumber. This sun-filled day exposed all the globs of gum on the sidewalk and the shabbiness of clothing. Transformation would come with the darkness, when neon signs splashed the streets with colorful illusions.

He told the clerk where he was going, and after the man assured himself Paul was not the cop he appeared to be, he let Paul go up without calling ahead.

Krilov opened on the first knock, bleary-eyed, coughing like a cat with a hairball, obviously just coming off a drunken binge. Paul didn’t wait to be greeted. He punched him twice, once in the stomach, and next in the ribs. Unprepared, and without the spark of battle lust to inflame him, Sergey crumpled to the floor, not letting out a sound.