Unfit to Practice (39 page)

“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 scanned the street and then the plaza very deliberately, looking straight toward the fountain. Nina and Paul ducked back. Too late? What had she seen? Scholl whispered something to the two men, and they took off at a fast clip, heading left up Spear Street toward Market.

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 Runner,
a glimpse into a fantastic world where architecture substituted for, and sometimes outdid, nature.

Nina and Paul skulked between pillars and behind the sculpture while their three quarries repaired to the 13 Views, the main courtyard restaurant.

“They're talking,” Nina said. “Now what?”

“Wait,” said Paul.

After a few moments, Riesner got up.

“She's letting him go?” Nina asked, amazed.

He walked toward the rest rooms and disappeared inside. Scholl watched him go in. A minute passed. Although she continued to watch for Riesner, she and Kevin began to talk again.

A moment's distraction was all it took.

With the swooping, invisible speed of a short-track ice skater, Riesner skidded out, ducked around behind Scholl, and headed for the elevators. Nina and Paul, trying to stay out of sight, followed as quickly as they could.

By the time they got to the nearest elevator, the doors were already closing. The elevator ascended, Riesner clearly visible through the glass. Then it stopped. Then it started up again. Nina and Paul tipped their heads back, observing it.

“The fifth floor,” she said. “He got off. Let's go.” She pressed the elevator button.

“No, Nina. You stay down here and watch these two. And call the police. Wait for them. Direct them up to the fifth floor. I'll hold him until they get here.”

She experienced a fear so intense in her belly she thought she would fall down with the pain. “I don't want you to go.”

“Look, Nina, he's a white-collar coward, not a mobster,” he said. “I'm tougher than him, and I hope you know that much. And then, I've got a gun, remember?” He touched the back of her neck with his finger. “You okay?”

“I'll be fine as long as you are.”

“Got your pepper spray?”

She patted her bag.

“Keep it handy.”

He hurried down to the end of the long courtyard and took the stairs up.

Leaning against a wall near the restaurant, Nina took out her mobile phone and tried to make a call to 911. Busy. She tried again, got through, and waited on hold. Was this legal, no one answering an emergency call instantly? While she held on with growing dread, watching Scholl and Cruz with one eye, her call-waiting buzzed. She took the call.

“Hello?”

“It's me. Wish.”

“I can't talk.”

“Wait, Nina, this is important! I found the rest of the note from my mom. It says, ‘Received transcript of Gleb testimony. Forger is extrovert, likes money, craftsman.' ”

“I'm sorry, Wish, I have to go.”

“And I forgot to tell you, she left a paper bag with something in it—wait a sec—” Paper rattled through the phone line and then Wish said in a puzzled voice, “Huh. It's this wooden lazy Susan my dad uses out in the garage. She brought it home from her old office one Christmas.”

An image came to Nina of a man in a dark basement, carving for hours to make a perfect tiny puppet replica of Nina that he jerked around in private. “That's your mom's way of warning me it's Riesner,” she said.

“We cracked it!”

“We sure did,” she said, clicking him off. What a trial that boy must be to his mother.

“911,” a woman's voice said suddenly.

Okay, elapsed waiting time not long at all. “Yes, I'm—” A sharp poke to her back stopped her.

“I'll take that.” A hand reached out and snapped her phone shut.

“Hello, Counselor,” Jeffrey Riesner's voice said. “I spotted you and your knucklehead friend back there quite a while ago. Nice of him to leave you alone for me. Makes things much easier.” He yanked her bag away and tossed it on the ground, and dumped the phone after it. “Now I think we take a little walk. This way.”

He steered her along the low rectangular pond, back toward the elevators. She swallowed, trying to find her voice. “You don't want to do this!” she said.

“Shut the hell up and get in there.” He shoved her into a waiting elevator and pushed a button. Once inside, she faced his moist face. She faced his gleaming gun.

“You won't shoot me. You're not a killer,” she said. “You're a lawyer.”

“You don't get it, do you? You will never again embarrass me in front of my colleagues. You will never win again.”

“Wait. We can make a deal, Jeff.”

The floor numbers lit up as they passed. There was no thirteenth floor, which made the fourteenth floor her unlucky alternative. The elevator stopped there. He pushed her out. “Walk.”

She walked down a long hallway, echoes of laughter and music emanating from the gaping open space beyond the balcony's edge. She thought of screaming. But he would shoot her. He held her in a grip like iron.

“There will be no deals,” he said. “There will be a sad death, your death, because, by God, I will not let you get away from me. If I can't see you ruined I will see you dead. Suicide, out of disgrace. Too bad it's such a crude solution.”

“Kevin Cruz won't be a party to this! And what about Scholl?”

“Cruz? He's in my pocket too deep to peep. And Scholl's an idiot.” Riesner imitated Scholl's deliberate voice. “‘Thing is, you stole the Bronco. That makes you my problem and I'm takin' you in.' All she could think about was your broken-down truck! I'll find a way to keep her quiet and happy.”

“What's this about? Why do you—hate me?”

His hand on her tightened. “Because your smelly perfume and your messy hair make me sick. Because you steal my clients. Because you despise me. But most of all because you are ruining me. They want to fire me.”

“They can't! You're a partner! Besides, you can always get another job!”

“They want to fire me and hire you to take my place.”

“What? No! But I would never take it!”

“Ever since you fucked me so completely in that casino case, ever since then, they've been riding me. I lost our biggest client that day. The casinos want me gone and you in. It's been Reilly this and Reilly that. So brilliant. Such a star in the legal firmament.” The words sputtered out of him like spit. “I won't be humiliated by a woman. By you.”

Nina struggled to say something soothing, something to save her life, but she couldn't do it. She just couldn't do it. She hated him at this moment almost too much to try to save herself. He watched her try.

“It's—just—business,” she managed finally, thickly.

“I am my business.”

Seeing they were coming to the end of the long hall, she stopped, turned, and faced him. “You don't have to kill me. You're good enough to get out of this.”

“For years now I've watched you,” Riesner said. “Clicking down the halls of the court. I detest the sound of your officious, vain little shoes.”

“Jeff—I saved your life once.”

“Your mistake.” His stony expression scared her more than anything. She had always been able to goad him before, always been able to arouse some kind of reaction. This time, the granite cold of his eyes told her everything. He meant to kill her.

He moved in closer and put a hand on her rear, pinching her buttock. “Get up there. Hmm. You'll need a life—” He caught her around the waist with his free hand.

She jerked away from him. Knocking back against the balcony's wall, she felt for her suit pocket.

He grabbed her, lifted her up to the shoulder-high railing while she struggled, and pushed. The balcony wall did not end with the usual narrow railing. Extending beyond it only a couple of inches below the edge of the balcony railing was a flat metal grid at least two feet wide, exactly like a ladder on its side, designed to prevent nasty accidents. Now, out of balance on that grid, fighting for her life, she rummaged in her pocket, turned toward Riesner, pulled out the pepper spray canister she had stuck in there on Paul's reminder, and sprayed directly at his face.

Nothing came out. The canister was empty. She had forgotten to get a new one after using it on Riesner once before!

Unable to get her loose from his position on the floor, he threw a leg up and joined her on the grid.

“Paul!” she yelled. “Help!”

Trying to get her off-balance, Riesner hit her in the face.

Her eyesight blurred on his face. She leaned back, then smashed the canister straight into his eye as hard as she could.

His hands flew up and he tumbled on top of her. She wriggled away and by some miracle did not fall. Jumping off the metal grid, she threw herself back to the safe floor of the corridor.

The empty can dropped into the void beyond the railing. When she hit him, Riesner had slipped close to the edge, and as he squirmed around, his body suddenly went over. He managed to grab for, and catch, the edge. Both hands held on. His eye bled.

Without climbing back onto the grid, Nina could not reach him. She lifted a leg up over the balcony wall, heaved herself up, wedged her legs in the gaps between the bars, and grabbed for his wrist, trying to pull him back up. Impossible. He was too large, and she too small. Calling out for help, and seeing no one nearby, she strained to hold on, she sweated, she pulled, and all the while he shouted at her, terrified words of pleading, of fear, of wrath.

Way down in the restaurant below, faces turned up toward them, pulled invisibly by the gravity of the situation. Once the people saw the dangling man, they shouted and cried out, chairs creaking, footsteps running. Down the hall from them a door opened. A hefty man, one towel around his waist, another rubbing his sopping hair, looked out and then toward Nina.

Nina cried out.

The man dropped his hand towel and ran toward her, his bare feet slapping along the rug.

He was too far away! She could feel every tendon, muscle, and bone in her arms stretched to the breaking point; through her pain she could feel them snapping, separating, and through her fingers she felt the rapid-fire beating of Jeffrey Riesner's heart in his wrist. She looked into his face, the open mouth saying things she could no longer hear, the eyes stained red. A moment passed between them.

He forgave nothing.

Suddenly from behind her, a hand thrust forward, grabbing for the wrist Nina was holding with both hands. Paul! His fully extended arm could barely reach to the edge of the safety grid. She let go and jumped off the grid and back to the floor as he climbed up over the wall toward Riesner, listening to his labored breathing as he lay down on the grid, pulling with one hand, both hands, and all his strength.

The barefoot man arrived behind Nina, wet hair dribbling down his neck, panting with fear. “What's going on?” he asked, frantic. “Can I help?”

But he could not reach Riesner, who was dangling too far away, hanging by one arm now, held aloft by Paul and nothing else. Too busy straining the muscles in his arms, his mouth stretched into a grimace of effort, Paul said nothing.