The Hearing

21

An excellent French restaurant, the Rue Charmaine, occupied the ground floor of David Freeman's apartment building. Freeman sometimes ate there as often as four times a week, after which he'd walk up the flight of stairs to his own spacious one-bedroom flat. Last night, he'd had dinner there with a forty-year-old female attorney named Gina Roake. They'd shared an extraordinary bottle of Romanee-Conti, talked law and politics, law and the theater, law and the recently-concluded football season. After dinner, Gina had asked if David would mind her staying over, and he said he thought that would be very nice.

Now, just after dawn, Freeman was whistling tunelessly, puttering about his cluttered kitchen in an ancient and threadbare maroon bathrobe and his lounging slippers. Normally, his battered and pitted kitchen table sagged with documents, law books, and files on his cases, but this morning he'd cleared all that away, covered the wood with a white linen tablecloth, and laid out a formal coffee service – sugar, cream, butter, jams and jellies, and a still warm and crusty morning baguette from the Rue Charmaine's morning delivery.

Freeman paused and smiled appreciatively as the strains of Mahler's Fifth began to emanate from his living room at a barely audible volume. A moment later, Gina made her appearance, combing out her still-damp hair, delightfully filling out the still plush bathrobe he'd once purchased from the Bel Air Hotel.

'You look lovely,' he said.

She crossed the few steps over and leaned up to kiss him. Then she withdrew to arm's length, smiling up at him. 'I feel lovely,' she said.

'For a moment there, I had this awful feeling that you were going to tell me I looked lovely too.'

She laughed. 'Actually…'

He wagged a finger. 'I don't think we want to go there. Come, sit down, coffee's hot.'

He poured for her, then for himself. When they were settled, Freeman took his first sip, nodded approvingly, and put down his spoon. 'All right,' he said, 'if you still want to talk about it, I suppose I'm as ready as I'll ever be.' The previous night during their dinner, in one of their law discussions, Gina was talking about one of her cases, and suddenly – atypically – Freeman had stopped her, saying he'd prefer not to ruin such a fine evening by talking about Dash Logan.

Now he made a face. 'This is the second time he's come up in the past two weeks. Or maybe I should say crawled out from under his rock or wherever it is that he lives. I'm taking this as a bad sign for our profession.' He sighed. 'So what's the case again? Last night my mind was on other things.'

She smiled at the compliment, then briefly sketched in to the point where he'd stopped her last night on the Oberlin proceeding. The District Attorney was bringing criminal charges against Gina's client, Abby, who had taken care of her mother for the past several years, and who had inherited the vast percentage of an eight million dollar estate. It was obvious, Gina said, that Jim the no-good brother was behind the charges, and simply was extorting his sister for a portion of the take.

Freeman listened, chewing absent-mindedly on a crust of baguette. 'So let me get this straight – the DA is filing charges. What are they alleging?'

'I gather elder abuse all the way to manslaughter. They haven't filed them yet.'

This brought a frown. 'Why not, if they've built the case?'

'I don't know for sure. I think Gabe Torrey might just be dragging his feet.' Her tone conveyed some skepticism. 'He said he didn't want to try this case, although elderly abuse is high on Pratt's agenda. Apparently he didn't like Jim, the brother.'

Freeman nodded impatiently. He'd heard the name once and of course didn't need to be reminded. 'So what's like got to do with it? Your client committed a crime, or she didn't.'

'She didn't, David.'

He held up his bread hand. 'I'm not saying she did, Gina. I'm saying that's got to be Torrey's position.'

But she was shaking her head. 'And evidently it will be. He will green light the investigation and get to the charges pretty soon, but he wanted to give me a chance to settle, maybe save Abby some grief.'

Freeman had stopped chewing, stopped all movement. His eyes bored into emptiness somewhere between himself and Gina. 'My Lord,' he said.

'What?'

He answered her with another question. 'And if memory serves, this humanitarian brother Jim is our connection to Dash Logan?'

'He's his lawyer.'

A nod. 'Right, and already on board, n'est-ce pas? You see anything wrong with this picture, Gina?'

She stalled, sipping some coffee, finally shook her head. 'To this point, not really.' She leaned forward. 'Except it felt funny somehow. It's why I brought it up to you.'

'I'll tell you why it felt funny. Because the DA doesn't do that.'

But she didn't agree. 'I think Gabe did it on his own. My take was that Gabe was trying to do the right thing off the record.'

'The right thing?'

'It does happen.'

'Not as often as you think, Gina. Not as often as you think.'

'Well, maybe this time, though.'

But he kept at it. 'And this right thing, this time, would be to make your client give away a million of her dollars?'

'That wasn't exactly the spin he put on it. He was talking about saving her half a million, a couple of years of hassle, and a lot of trouble.'

'And he just happened to find this particular case out of the blue, out of the hundreds the DA is prosecuting? And felt sorry for your client, whom his office is about to charge?'

Gina fidgeted with the crumbs on her plate. 'Maybe that's why it made me uncomfortable.'

'Because you have good instincts, that's why.' Freeman stood up, walked over to the window, looked down onto the street. 'So the next step is Gabe tells you to call this guy's lawyer, is that it?'

'Essentially.' She saw his reaction. 'What? That seemed to make sense. It still does.'

'How's that?'

'I'm a lawyer. I'm not going to talk to the brother. I'm going to go through channels, through his counsel.'

'How do you know he has one? How does Torrey know he has one?'

'He's talked to the guy, remember? That's how. He probably mentioned it.'

Freeman had paced back to the stove. He leaned back against it, arms crossed. 'OK, ask yourself this. A guy thinks a crime has been committed, he goes to the police, right? Right. Then the crime gets charged, and he's working exclusively with the DA's office, with the prosecutors. Are you with me here?'

Catching on, Gina nodded. 'He's already got an office-full of lawyers working for him, who also happen to work for the DA.'

'Exactly,' Freeman said. 'The DA's office. So what does he need his own lawyer for? I mean, handling the same case. He's not a defendant so he doesn't need a defense attorney. Hell, he's not even a plaintiff in a civil case. He's just a guy reporting a crime. He goes to the DA. He doesn't need his own attorney.'

'Well.' The light was coming on, but Gina still couldn't quite see. 'People have lawyers, David. Abby – my client – she told me they'd been fighting over the will.'

'She and her brother, or you and her brother's lawyer?'

'Well, no. The first.'

'But now dear old Jim's got a lawyer who's ready to settle.' Freeman had switched into his justly-famous flamboyant courtroom mode. He took a couple of steps forward, toward the table. His voice took on a note of urgency. 'And then Torrey says old Jim will withdraw the accusation he made. Torrey tells you he knows this. He holds it out to you as pretty much guaranteed, a done deal. Well, answer me this: how can he possibly know that unless he's talked to Jim's lawyer, who – I might add – shouldn't even be in the picture around these criminal charges? And who happens to be the most unsavory person practicing law in the great state of California?'

Freeman grabbed his breakfast napkin and wiped it across his forehead, leaving a couple of damp crumbs in its wake. Then he sat down with a satisfied expression, returned to his normal voice, spoke as though to himself. 'God, I wish just once he'd try something like this on me.' He looked across the table. 'Do me one favor, please?'

'Of course, if I can. What?'

'Don't settle. Don't talk to Logan. See what Torrey does next.'

She thought about this for a long moment. 'But what if he files the charges? He's holding all the cards here, David. If the investigation even begins, my client loses.'

'Did she do what they're alleging? Did she commit this crime?'

'No.'

He leaned back in his chair, pulled at his bushy eyebrows, scratched the corner of his mouth. 'Well, people hate me for saying this…'

'I won't hate you.'

He touched her hand. 'If I were you, what I'd do is trust in the wisdom and fairness of the law.'

She studied his face, saw he was completely sincere. 'A person could get to like you a lot,' she said. Then, a cloud crossing her visage, 'About settling… I'll try to hold out.'

Just after eight in the morning, she stopped him as he was crossing the lobby on his way to the staircase and his own office. 'Mr Hardy.'

He stopped on a dime, turned ninety degrees to his left, marched across to her station and looked her in the eyes. 'Phyllis, my love. How are we this fine morning?'

'Very well, thank you. If you're free, Mr Freeman would like to see you in his office right away.'

'Well, that makes this both of our lucky days. I wanted to see him, too, but I didn't know if you'd let me.'

'Anytime you need to, Mr Hardy. You know that.'

'As long as I have an appointment.'

'Those are Mr Freeman's rules, not mine.'

'Well, thank you, Phyllis.'

'You're welcome.'

As he closed Freeman's door behind him, Hardy was grinning. 'I've got it.'

Chewing on the nub of a pencil, the old man sat at a desk completely littered with case files. He looked up. 'Got what?'

'The automated voice on all those phone message menus. You know the ones.' He put on a voice. '"For security and training purposes, and to help us serve you better, this call may be monitored for your convenience." I especially love the convenience part. But that voice.'

Freeman put the pencil down. 'What about it?'

'It's Phyllis.' He'd put his briefcase down and was over at the side counter pouring himself a cup of coffee. 'I can't believe I didn't recognize it until this morning. I think it's probably because we don't talk as much now as we used to. But it's her, David, I'm sure of it – that same girlish enthusiasm, the clarity of purpose, the joie de vivre humming through every syllable. Why do you think she hasn't told us? A celebrity in our midst, imagine.'

Freeman let him go on in the same vein, waiting until he'd taken the seat in front of his desk, had his first sip of coffee. 'I've got a friend who's got a client,' he began without preamble. 'The client's name is Abby Oberlin.' He went on for a few more minutes, outlining the case as Gina Roake had done for him that morning, ending with a question. 'And who would be your guess for Abby's brother Jim's attorney?'

'At least I know why you wanted to talk to me,' Hardy said.

'I assumed it would occur to you. That asshole.' Freeman almost never got truly upset, although the mention of Dash Logan was one of the things that could do it. He was spinning his pencil rapidly between his fingers. 'I've been living with this thing for an hour now, and I wanted to bounce it off a decent legal mind before I decide what I'm going to do with it.'

However the phrase 'decent legal mind' sounded, Hardy knew that Freeman meant this as high praise. 'OK, hit me,' he said, and Freeman told him what was on his mind.

In his office upstairs, Hardy removed his coat and hung it over the back of his chair. The come-and-go fog had this morning gone again, so he raised the blinds in both of his windows, letting in a feeble winter light. For a few minutes, he stood looking down at the traffic on Sutler Street, then he whirled and went over to his desk, where he punched the buttons on his telephone.

Rich McNeil's secretary told him that her boss wasn't expected in until midday. Could she take a message? Hardy considered for a moment and said he'd be at Sam's at one o'clock. He had some news. If Rich couldn't make it, he should call – otherwise, he'd expect him there.

He had just hung up, intending to call next to check on Glitsky's progress, when the telephone rang. Perfect, he thought. Here's the son of a bitch now, calling him back at precisely the wrong moment. Well, he'd let his machine answer. Except it wasn't Logan. It was Glitsky himself, saying something about the Burgess case. Hardy grabbed at the receiver.

Glitsky started over. 'You'll never guess who I just talked to.'

'Don't tell me,' Hardy said. 'Joe Montana?'

'Allison Garbutt.'

'I'm proud of you. Who is she?'

'She's the inspector on the case where Elaine acted as special master. They just turned the seized documents over to Judge Thomasino.'

'OK. And this is important because…?'

'I don't know if it is.'

'And yet you're telling me about it?'

'It's a fact we don't know anything about, that's all. I know you and Thomasino get along all right.' This was true enough. Hardy and Thomasino weren't close friends by any means, but they knew each other from the courtroom and shared a mutual respect. 'There might be something there.'

Hardy wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth. Glitsky was giving him a free fact – possibly just another in the endless accretion of them surrounding a murder case – and experience had taught him that all facts were worth collecting. You simply never knew. 'You're right,' he said. 'There might be. What was the name of the case?'

'Petrof. Insurance fraud of some kind.'

'And what do you know about it?'

'Completely nothing beyond that, except that Elaine was around it, working on it the day she died. It occurred to me as I was lying here. I thought it might give you something to do to while away your many idle hours.'

'I appreciate it.'

'Don't mention it.'

The two men traded health and beauty tips for a few more minutes, talked logistics about Glitsky's eventual release from the hospital. After they hung up, Hardy paced his office for a while, unable to say why his adrenaline was flowing. He realized that it made little sense. He hadn't even been thinking about Cole Burgess, but suddenly here at least was something to do for his client, a lead to follow. Finally he picked up the telephone again and punched some numbers he knew by heart.

It wasn't yet nine o'clock, and court wouldn't be in session until nine thirty. In a perfect world, Judge Thomasino would be in his chambers right now. Or at least his clerk would be in. As it transpired, for an instant all was perfection.

'Judge,' Hardy said after their greetings, 'I understand you signed off on a warrant on an insurance fraud case. I don't even know if it's been settled or tried. People v. Sergei Petrof.'

The judge sounded weary of it. 'No. It's not been settled. Yes, they're still doing motions. Bunch of Russians faking car accidents. What about it?'

'You appointed Elaine Wager special master in connection with it.'

'Yes. And then she gets herself killed in the middle of it, as I'm sure you've heard.' The judge's tone reflected his frustration. 'That's the way the entire investigation has gone. You wouldn't believe – one delay after another. Some cases. Now it seems I'll need another special master for more warrants before we can proceed, and I don't know…' His voice brightened up. 'You wouldn't be on the list, would you, Diz?'

In fact, he was, although he hadn't been called to serve in years. He told that to the judge. 'But my plate's pretty full right now, your honor. And I've more than heard about Elaine's death. I'm representing the accused in that case. Cole Burgess.'

A dissatisfied grunt. 'So I can't use you. All right, what was your question?'

'Well, I'm afraid it's not too specific. I was curious because Elaine was involved in it. Wondered if it might somehow be related to anything I could use.'

'In your murder case?'

'Stranger things have happened, Judge. I thought you might be able to tell me a little about it. See if something might be worth pursuing.'

Thomasino gave it a beat. 'Well, all right. It isn't any secret.' He began. 'The fraud unit starts getting calls from insurance companies about a rash of similar accidents in the last six months – all Russian surnames, same doctor, same type of car, same lawyer for half of 'em. So I sign a warrant to pull the records, and Elaine's got to go along and supervise. Normally, you know, a piece of cake. Except if one of your colleagues is particularly uncooperative, won't give the special master any direction, won't even tell her where any of the files are. Says "Find ' em yourself. This whole investigation is bogus anyway." The belligerent son of a bitch.'

'What do you mean, one of my colleagues? Is this a friend of mine?'

'No. Sorry. I just mean it was another lawyer, not to lump you all together. Certainly not in this case.'

Hardy went with his hunch. 'You wouldn't be talking about Dash Logan, would you?'

'Maybe. With my apologies if he's a friend of yours.'

'He's not,' Hardy replied.

'No.' The judge sighed. 'Somehow I didn't think he would be.'

On his way down to the Hall, Hardy decided to stop by the Chronicle's main office and see if Jeff Elliot was in, a virtual certainty at this time of the morning. He'd just gotten into the reporter's office and said hello when the building began to shake. Reflexively, Hardy backed up under the door, said, 'Earthquake. Get under a beam.'

Elliot was in his wheelchair. He kept his hands on his keyboard, cast an amused, tolerant look across the room. 'OK, sure, I'm on it.'

The shaking – really no more than a quick minor jolt -passed. Hardy stayed under his beam, and Jeff held out his hands as though feeling for raindrops. 'Two on the Richter,' he said. 'I don't move till we get to six.' He indicated a chair on the other side of his desk. 'You can stay in the doorway if you want, but it might be five years before another good shake. You'll get pretty bored. The seat's more comfy.'

Hardy waited another moment for the possible next temblor. When, after a few seconds, it didn't come, he moved forward. 'It's good to see a man with no fear of nature's wrath.'

Elliot glanced out into the city room, where the small quake had pretty much passed unnoticed. 'My computer didn't even blink, Diz. I'm not going to die in an earthquake, I promise you. Way less chance than lightning, and that's the rule in our house.'

'You have a rule about lightning in your house? Us,' Hardy said, sitting down, 'we just flat don't allow it.'

'No. Not lightning, getting killed by lightning.'

'You have a rule about getting killed by lightning?'

Jeff sat back, pulled his hands off his keyboard and rested his arms on the sides of his wheelchair. 'Actually, yes. Ridiculous as it may sound, we have a rule about not worrying about something unless it's more likely than getting killed by lightning.'

'I like it,' Hardy said. 'Let me guess – your girls are plagued by the occasional random fear?'

'Ha! Occasional. I'd pay large dollars for "occasional". It's everything.' He tried a smile to make light of it, but Hardy could see it was about as funny as his own daughter's constant fears, which was not at all. 'Everything, I swear to God,' Jeff repeated. 'Plane crashes, AIDS, the hantavirus, terrorists, zits, snakes, nuclear accidents, spiders, child molesters on every street corner, the dark – Lord, the dark! – walking home alone… everything.'

'You left out heart attacks,' Hardy said. 'The Beck's afraid of getting a heart attack now since Glitsky did.'

'Don't worry,' Jeff replied. 'If Nicole hears about that, it's on the list.'

'I tell the Beck that twelve year olds rarely die of heart attacks. She doesn't care. It could happen, couldn't it? And no warning. Abe didn't have any warning. I tell her Abe isn't twelve. Ask me if she cares. This until eleven thirty last night.' Hardy was leaning back, an ankle on his opposite knee. He dragged a hand across his eyes. 'Sometimes I think it must be us, always telling them to watch out for this, watch out for that, especially the girls. So this rule – how's it work exactly?' Whatever it was, if it worked, Hardy wanted to know about it.

This time Jeff got all the way to a smile. He scratched at his beard, perhaps embarrassed that it had come to this, but it had, damn it, it had. 'Well, we finally had to come up with some lowest threshold for paranoia that we could take seriously. I mean, there are legitimate fears she should worry about once in a while, I suppose. Right?'

'Right.'

'Although I doubt if either you or me or our wives ever had them. Maybe it's a new millennium thing.'

'Maybe,' Hardy agreed. 'Although I remember worrying during the Cuban missile crisis.'

'I hate to say it, Diz, but there were adults who worried then, too. And you know why?' He raised his voice. 'Because there was some real goddamn thing to worry about!'

'Or, as it turned out, not.'

'Exactly. So, anyway, we finally had to tell Nicole that whatever she was worried about had to be more likely than getting killed by lightning, which for some reason she's not afraid of. If it was less likely, we weren't going to talk about it, especially after lights out at night.'

'And what are the odds of that, dying by lightning strike?'

'Thirty-two thousand to one in a seventy-five year life-span, more or less.'

Hardy whistled, impressed. 'That's a good statistic.'

Jeff shrugged. 'It still leaves a hell of a lot to be afraid of – you'd be surprised – but at least it gets rid of death by earthquake, spiders, snakes, plane crash, atomic bomb blast. None of them make the cut. It's really helped, actually.'

'I'm bringing it home tonight,' Hardy said. 'It's a great concept.'

'It is,' Jeff agreed, 'but I don't believe that's why you're here and if it's about Cole, he's not my topic today.' He indicated his terminal screen, half filled with words. 'Gironde again. Due in two hours. I wish they'd invent a program to actually write the words.'

'I'm sure it's on the way,' Hardy said. 'So what's new at the airport, aside from that it's never going to be finished?'

Jeff looked at his screen, fixed something, came back to Hardy. 'The way it's going, Diz, they may never even start this last phase, given all the subs who supposedly didn't have their minority quotas on board. It's been seven months and everybody and their brother has had their personnel records subpoenaed. Gironde can't start work, will probably even lose the contract, and the DA hasn't brought one charge yet. Not one. Three subs have already gone under because they've lost the work. It just sucks.'

To Hardy, this was an old song. 'That's how Pratt works, Jeff. Make a big public stink, then drag on the follow-through. Are you on Gironde's side on this? I thought they were the bad guys.'

A shrug. 'All I know is that apparently fair and square they won the biggest contract this city's seen in ten years. Now everybody hates them. The supes are asking for another round of bids. And it's all based on Pratt's office deciding to very publicly look for minority hiring irregularities, which now, it's turning out, may not exist.' He made a face. 'It smells, Diz. It really smells.' He looked back at his terminal. 'And I've got to write it. So? Cole?'

'It's not specifically about Cole.'

'Specifically. There's a good word. So more specifically, what? And we do have to make it fast.'

'All right,' Hardy said. 'You know everybody in the city, right?'

'Oh yeah,' Elliot said flatly, 'me and everybody else, we're all pals.'

'How about Dash Logan?'

The by now familiar reaction, a faint line of distaste. 'What about him?'

'That's what I was going to ask you.'

'Has he got something to do with Cole?'

'I don't know.' Hardy broke a small grin. 'Not specifically.'

But the topic had gotten Jeff's attention, and he reached for a cup on his desk, sipped some coffee, beginning to concentrate. 'The only thing that comes to mind is that Logan represents a lot of dope cases. A lot. People say he takes fees in trade.'

'Then he sells it?' This was close enough to Cole to get a rise out of Hardy. 'Heroin?'

'No. Cocaine. Evidently he's got his own…' Jeff paused. 'I was going to say habit, but I don't know if it's to that point. Probably just recreational. He functions, evidently.'

'Not well,' Hardy said, 'if returning calls is any indication.'

'Well enough to make a good living,' Jeff replied. 'He drives a Z3, wears nice clothes, keeps up an office.'

Hardy sat up straighter. 'His office? That's the other connection.'

'To Cole? What was the first one?'

Hardy glossed over that. 'Elaine was working at Logan's office the day she was killed.'

'OK.' Jeff sat back in his wheelchair. 'And this means?'

Hardy shook his head, spoke with a weary tone. 'I don't know. That's what I can't figure out. It's making me crazy.'

'Why was she there?'

Hardy briefed him on Elaine's special master duties, the Russian insurance scams, Logan's lack of cooperation on the earlier search at his place. When he finished, Jeff was still interested, but saw no point of connection. 'So these insurance scam cases, did they have drugs around them? Am I missing something?'

'We've got to be,' Hardy said. 'There's too much Logan.'

'But maybe not enough.' He sat back in his wheelchair and looked over the desk that separated them. 'You know, Diz, we run into this all the time in journalism. You're on a story and if this one last little piece falls into place, they can start printing up the Pulitzer citation for you. I mean you want it so bad. And then guess what? What you want to write didn't happen. It's not true, just coincidence. Good story, no facts.'

Hardy considered a second. His jaw was set. 'That's not this. At least I don't think so.'

'OK.'

'How about Gabe Torrey?'

'How about him? In what sense?'

'David Freeman has a theory about a connection between Torrey and Logan. What I want to know is are they old friends? Did they go to school together? Maybe they're gay, having an affair?'

Here Jeff stopped him. 'They're not gay. Logan's a notorious cocksman, in fact. And Torrey's sleeping with Pratt.'

This intelligence nearly knocked Hardy off his chair. 'What?'

Jeff laughed. 'You didn't know that? We're off the record now – they try to keep it quiet 'cause Pratt's happy to let the feminists think she's a lesbian, but the Shadow knows.'

'My God. See? You do know everything. You ought to print that.'

'In due time, say nearer the election when it might do a little more good.'

'I can't believe it.' San Francisco was a small town, but apparently not so small that there were no secrets. 'OK, so they're not gay. Maybe they're bi. Maybe their mothers were pen pals. I don't know, Jeff. You're the ace reporter, finger on the pulse of the city.'

'And if there was something, I would have heard it, right?'

'Right.' Hardy came forward expectantly.

Jeff met his gaze, a hint of humor in his eyes. 'As far as I know, they have no personal relationship.'

Hardy sat back. 'That's the wrong answer.'

'I thought it might be.'

Cole was the first person in Hardy's experience whose looks and demeanor had actually improved while he was held in the county jail. He'd asked for and received a short hair cut. Some of the scrapes and bruises from his life on the street, to say nothing of the night of his arrest, had begun to clear up. He'd shaved off the wispy, downy growth of beard. Three squares a day for only these few days had already added a visible overlay of flesh to the bones of his face, eradicating the intimations of skull. He wasn't yet anyone's idea of robust, but neither was he heroin chic.

Hardy sat across the table from him in the attorney's visiting area, the light room with the glass block walls. Cole's speech would lapse into hazy around the edges from time to time, but today it seemed more a habit than an impediment. That he spoke clearly for long periods of time meant, to Hardy, that he could do it anytime he thought about it. He had simply gotten into the habit of mumbling to fit in on the street, where he had grown used to a numb mouth and no reason to enunciate words, to communicate anything beyond his most basic needs.

Well, Hardy thought, he had a reason now and he was rising to the occasion. 'Glitsky? Are you kidding me?' His eyes were clear as well. He was on methadone and had, in fact, asked for an accelerated detoxification. All to the good if he stuck with it. But at the moment, he wasn't on that page – he was mostly angry. 'We're talking the same Glitsky that dropped me on my head.'

'He couldn't catch you in time is what I heard.'

A snort. 'He tell you that? 'Cause it's a lie.'

Hardy had a haunch on the edge of the table in the visitor's room, and now he leaned forward, hovering over where his client sat. 'How do you know what happened? You were unconscious.'

'Well…' Cole's hard gaze gradually gave way. 'But there's no way he's trying to help me.'

'No,' Hardy agreed. 'I don't think he is. Not for your sake anyway. The thing is, Cole, he's a good cop. An honorable person.'

Another dismissive grunt, the concept for him obviously difficult to believe. 'I'll tell you what it is. He's worried we'll decide to charge him with brutality after all. He's trying to cut you off on that. Figures if he pretends to be on our team, it'll all go away.'

Hardy sat back. 'You got it all worked out, huh?'

'It's not rocket science.'

'No. You're right. So we don't want his help, is that your position?'

For an instant, Cole's expression sharpened. 'He's not offering any help. He's covering his ass.'

Hardy nodded, stood up, cricked his back. When he spoke, his tone was harsh. 'See if you can wrap your brain around something, Cole. There's nobody else in the entire police department who's looking for anything about this case, let alone anybody else who might have been involved in Elaine's death. But Glitsky is. He's doing it on his own for his own reasons, and you'd be smart not to care too much about what they are. You want to know the truth, yeah, he's covering himself.' He felt his voice getting away from him, his anger building. 'Glitsky doesn't want your conviction overturned because you made a stupid, stupid confession. That's where he's coming from, Cole. He wants to nail you on righteous evidence. That's what he's about – he doesn't give a shit about your poor sorry ass.' He almost added that he didn't much either. If it wasn't a death penalty case, he'd have been long gone.

'But anything he does find is going to be against us.'

Hardy, still wound up, whirled on the boy. 'What he's trying to find, Cole, is the truth. Which, correct me if I'm wrong, is supposed to help us.'

Cole's eyes bounced around the corners of the room.

Getting his tone back under control, Hardy sat on the edge of the table again. 'Look,' he said, 'I don't care at all really what Glitsky's motives are. If he wants to convict you, that's fine by me, and it ought to be by you. He doesn't want the confession in because as soon as that happens, we've got grounds for appeal.'

'Appeal is after I'm convicted. I don't want to talk about appeal.'

'Oh, OK, let's not then.' Hardy brought a palm down sharply on the table. 'Get a clue here, Cole. You're in deep shit and Glitsky's the only one doing anything that might help you, whether helping you is his intention or not. That's assuming the truth helps you.' He'd challenged Cole a minute before with the same point, and now he waited again for a response – denial, outrage, something – but none came. He sighed. 'Now, listen, Glitsky's a fact. We'll use him if we can. If you can't live with that, then I'm gone, too.'

Cole met his gaze. 'I don't trust him.'

Hardy dropped his trump. 'Well, he's been my best friend for like thirty years, so I'd have to say I do. Now you've got two options – you can live with it, trust my instincts and talk strategy.' He threw a little edge into it. 'Or you can tell your mother to hire another lawyer.'

This brought a rise. 'It's not my mother.'

'Yeah, Cole. Yes it is. Don't kid yourself. Unless you want to take responsibility on your own. But that's not what you do, is it?' He waited, surprised that it had come to this. He hadn't intended to have any of this discussion, but now that they were in it, he'd follow it until it ended, even if it meant terminating his involvement with the case. Hardy thought that his client needed a dose of some hard life truths almost more than he needed a good attorney.

Cole swallowed rapidly, a couple of times in succession. He set his jaw, finally raised his eyes. For the first time, Hardy saw something like resolve in them. 'All right,' Cole said. 'I'm listening. We'll do it your way. What's the plan?'

Hardy felt the tension break in his shoulders. He was still angry and frustrated, he still didn't much care for his client. But for now at least they could work together. Maybe. He leaned back, arms folded over his chest. 'The strategy is two-pronged. First, if you did it-'

'Wait a minute. I said I'm not sure if… I mean I didn't-'

'You wait a minute.' Hardy came forward, fed up to here with objections and interruptions. Here, in all probability, sat the man who had killed Elaine Wager. Maybe he didn't deserve the death penalty, but Hardy didn't have to endure his self-serving excuses. 'I don't want you to tell me whether you did or didn't kill Elaine any more. Do you understand me? I don't care about your denials or your admissions. That's not why I'm defending you. And right now I'm talking. You listen, that's the deal. Maybe you'll learn something.'

Cole's eyes narrowed. Any hint of his methadone lethargy had vanished. He slumped back in the chair, his arms crossed. Pissed, dissed, and dismissed.

Hardy ignored it all. He picked up in a relaxed voice. 'Our first line of defense is unconsciousness. The facts here are going to make it very difficult, if not impossible, to even get to reasonable doubt about whether you did it.'

'I-'

Hardy held up a palm. 'Not interested. Of course we argue that you didn't do it. But what's really going to matter is if we can prove that even if you did, you were so drunk that you couldn't have realized what you were doing. With six or eight drinks in you, you're legally drunk. With twenty and in withdrawal, you're comatose.'

'What about the gun, though?'

'I was going to ask you the same thing.'

'I didn't get any gun from Cullen. He's lying.'

'Why would he lie? I thought he was your friend?'

'Yeah, right.' A shrug. 'He's out on three separate probations for selling rock. He's got three or four strike convictions – robberies. They pull him in another time, he figures this time they've got to keep him. So he makes this up and they trade. Hey. You know this stuff happens all the time. And in this case, somebody wants to see me fall more than him, so they go for the trade.'

'Who would want that? And why?'

'I don't know. Somebody with the DA. Some cop. Maybe your friend Glitsky. I don't know.'

Hardy felt his blood heating up again, but tried to ignore it. 'You know anybody either place? Have you had any run-ins I ought to know about? Screwed around with some cop's daughter, anything like that?'

'No.' He shook his head, then decided the denial wasn't strong enough. 'Hey, I swear to God, no. Nothing like that.'

Hardy was fairly sure that he was telling the truth. And the fact was, Cole didn't need to have a personal enemy in the DA's office. There might be nothing personal in it – Pratt had to win this case, that was all. To fill a hole in the prosecution's theory of the crime, a witness needed to appear to account for Cole's possession of the murder weapon.

And lo, it had come to pass.

Hardy knew he needed to have a few words with Cullen Leon Alsop, get a better feel for that situation before too long. But first he needed Cole to understand his strategy, to be on board with it. 'So Plan A is unconsciousness. You don't remember.'

'But I do remember.' He pushed ahead over Hardy's warning expression. 'Seeing the gun. I don't know why it's just that, like a snapshot. I didn't have the gun. It was in the gutter, next to her. She was already down, I swear.'

Hardy was almost tempted to believe him.

'I swear,' Cole repeated.

'All right, Cole, you swear. But moving along, I'd also like to address the point that if you didn't kill Elaine, someone else did.' Hardy didn't really think so, but mentioning it to Cole would serve as a pop-quiz for his credibility. As he sat across the table from him now, he would have given about eighty per cent odds that in the next few days his client would develop another 'snapshot' of Monday night. And this one would feature the proverbial one-armed man.

'I'm surprised Jeff would even talk to you about me.' Hardy had told him about his visit to the Chronicle that morning.

'Why's that?'

'I haven't exactly been like the perfect relative to those guys.'

'So I hear.'

'So… why?'

Hardy started gathering his documents, his legal pad, his pens. He stood up and had an acute flashback of Cole's mother in his office yesterday, the later years of her life now reduced to pain and guilt because of Cole. Even if he hadn't killed Elaine. Hardy looked across the table at him. 'Maybe with Jeff it's like your friend Cullen, Cole. Something else is going on. You're in it, but you're not it. You know what I'm saying? There's a whole universe out there, and guess what?'

'What?'

'It doesn't all revolve around you.'