"How can they not let her get bail?" Jennifer's father, Phil DiStephano, was saying. He was in Freeman's face, not exactly belligerent but certainly not cordial.
"We could appeal," Freeman said, "but I warn you, we'll lose. And even if we won, the judge would set an outrageously high bail."
The attractive Mrs. DiStephano spoke up quietly from behind her husband. "How much, Mr. Freeman?"
Phil DiStephano turned on his wife. "It doesn't matter, Nancy. It's out of our league." From appearances, it seemed he was right. Regardless of what bail turned out to be, if in fact they won an appeal, the DiStephanos didn't look like they would be able to pay it.
Phil wore a plain black suit that showed no sign of having been recently pressed, a white shirt, ironed but not new, a thin tie. The mother's clothes, though not the rest of her, reminded Hardy of Pat Nixon during the Checkers Speech. She was attractive enough – still, some might say, even beautiful, like her daughter – but something in her bearing, in the pinch of her lips, conveyed that her life hadn't been easy. The son, perhaps twenty-three, wore jeans, work boots, longish hair, a tucked-in Pendleton, and an attitude.
A working-class family, and it surprised Hardy a little. Jennifer had never been portrayed in the media as anything less than upper class, and in Hardy's interviews yesterday she had come across – even in her prison garb and through her grief – as the comfortably off successful doctor's wife. Her family suggested different roots.
When Freeman went on to tell them they could expect bail of a million dollars, or more, if they got it at all, the son exploded. "Where the fuck she supposed to get that?"
"Tom!"
Freeman held up a calming hand. "Exactly, son. The point is they don't want her to get out. They think she'll take a long walk and disappear."
"I don't think she will. She has a very solid defense." The man who belonged to the new voice moved forward, hand out to Freeman. "Ken Lightner." As though the name explained something. He added, "I'm Jennifer's psychiatrist."
It was the other man Hardy had noticed in the gallery. Reasonably good-looking, somewhat burly even in his tailored suit, Lightner sported a well-trimmed red beard under a head of dark brown hair. It was a striking combination that Hardy thought might come out of a bottle.
"What's Jenny need a shrink for?" Tom DiStephano said.
Nancy DiStephano put a hand on her son's arm as Lightner stepped in. "You must be Tom."
"No. I'm the Queen of England."
She stepped between them. "Don't be rude, Tom."
Hardy wondered if Tom DiStephano was in enough control of himself to be anything – even rude – on purpose. Whatever the source of his anger, it was pretty clearly eating him up. He looked about, around the hallway, as though searching for an exit, an escape. His mother still held onto his arm, but he shook it off and turned to Hardy. "Are you guys trying to get her off as crazy? Is that the deal? You think she's crazy?"
"No, not at all." Lightner seemed to be striving for an understanding tone, trying to include everybody.
But this was Freeman's show and he was not about to hand the lead away. "We haven't decided on a defense," he said. "Jennifer is innocent until she's proved guilty. I trust we're all in agreement here?"
It was a multi-layered tableau – anger, positioning, concern, grief, power. Brother Tom was at the center of it, perhaps slightly defused, but Hardy hoped nobody picked that moment to push him further. He would lose it.
Now, though, with no one to direct his anger toward, Tom stood there flexing his hands, feet flat on the floor, breathing hard. "Well," he paused, looking for an answer to something in the broad and echoing linoleum hallway, in the high ceilings. "Well, just shit."
"We'll all need to handle this," Lightner said. "This is a very trying situation and it's certainly okay to get angry, we all get angry…"
Hardy glanced at Freeman. All professions had their jargon. It probably passed for normal conversation in Lightner's set. But Nancy cared neither about anger or jargon. "They're not really going to ask for the…" she couldn't say death penalty… "for my daughter, are they?" She was close to tears, gripping her husband's hand.
Hardy thought he would take some of the focus away from Freeman, spread the pressure around. "We're a long way from even getting to a trial, Mrs. DiStephano, much less a verdict and a penalty. We don't have to worry about that yet-"
"We damn well better worry about it," Tom said. "We don't take care of it now, it's going to happen."
"Tom, you know something I don't?" Hardy said.
Now with a direction, Tom let it go. "Yeah, I know something. I know people like us don't get a fair trial, that's what I know. Not against them."
"Not against who? What people like you?"
"Poor people, working people, goddamn it. Against the people who have money."
"Jennifer's got some money, Tom," Phil said.
"It's not her money, Pop, and you know it. It's Larry's money. That's what this is all about, and the rest is all just bullshit! They want their money back."
"Who does?" Hardy asked.
"They're not letting her in. She just doesn't fit, does she? Just like we don't, like Larry cut us out. Except Jen tried to crash her way in, didn't she? Married her fancy doctor. Drove her fancy car. Tried to be one of them. And they don't forgive you for that, do they? They go get you for that…"
"Nobody's trying to get her, Tom-"
"Mom, you don't see. You buy their crap. That's what's kept us down-"
"Tom, stop it!" Phil stepped between his son and his wife but Tom now turned it on him. "Oh yeah, sure. And you'll take anything, Pop, won't you?"
It happened in an instant. Phil's hand flashed and rocked his son, hard, open-palmed, high on the cheek. The noise resounded in the hallway. "Don't dare use that tone with me!"
The men were squared off, Nancy now between them. She had started crying. Tom backed up, glaring at his parents. "Aw, screw it," he said finally, turning, running off down the hallway.
His mother turned to the two attorneys. "I'm sorry for my son. He thinks the world…" She let it hang, tears in her eyes.
This was the moment. Defenses were down. Freeman figured he could use it. He went after Phil. "Did you see Jennifer often, Mr. DiStephano? I mean, do you visit each other?"
"Well, sure. She's my daughter, isn't she? We're all close, even Tom… he's just got a hot head. Like you said in there, it's why we're here today."
Freeman turned to Mrs. DiStephano.
She shook her head. "We haven't seen them in years."
Phil tried to put a face on it. "Hey, Larry was a busy man. It wasn't that he didn't-"
Nancy cut him off. "Larry wouldn't let her. We never saw any of them. Never."
Hardy, Freeman and Lightner watched Jennifer's mother walk off stiffly, a step behind her husband. A young couple emerged from one of the doors behind them, hugging and laughing – maybe Thomasino had just given one of them a break.
Freeman, Mr. Small Talk, turned to the psychiatrist Lightner: "So what's her defense, Doctor?"
Relaxed, hands in his pockets, Lightner didn't have to think about it. He nodded up the hall after Jennifer's parents. "Slightly dysfunctional, wouldn't you say? I'd kind of expect it."
"You'd kind of expect it," Hardy repeated. They started moving through the crowd, toward the elevators. Hardy and Freeman were going upstairs to see Jennifer, find out if they had a client.
Lightner was nodding. "You just saw an object lesson. It's generational, you know. Father batters mother and children. Children go on to batter their own-"
"Who's battering who?" Freeman asked.
Lightner stopped. "No, no… I mean, Larry, of course."
"Larry was battering Jennifer?" This was news to Hardy. Probably to Freeman. Perhaps not to Powell. In any event, Jennifer hadn't mentioned it.