Freeman gave her shoulder a pat. "Crack of dawn," he said.
7
At seven o'clock Hardy was nursing a Guinness, waiting for Frannie to arrive by cab at the Little Shamrock, the bar at 9^th and Lincoln that he and Moses McGuire, his brother-in-law, owned. Wednesday, by sacred tradition, was the Hardy's date night.
Before Hardy had returned to the practice of law he had been the Shamrock's daytime bartender for a decade. Before that, he had been a you red hot with the District Attorney's office, married to a judge's daughter, starting out a family – Hardy and Jane Fowler and their boy Michael.
Michael was not supposed to be able to stand up at five months, so neither Jane nor Hardy paid close attention to whether or not the sides of the crib were pulled all the way or only halfway up. That oversight took the boy from them. He did manage to climb over the railing and fall onto his head. The fall killed him.
After Michael's death, Hardy's world gradually fell apart, within and without. Now, remarried to Frannie and with two new kids, he didn't feel like he was trying to recapture what he'd had – that was gone for good – but there was hope again, a future. A meaning? That wasn't Hardy's style, but not may days passed that he didn't reflect on how empty his life used to be, and how now it wasn't.
It wasn't clear to him where this fit into the professional turnaround he had taken in the last year, but there was some kind of a visceral bond that, he figured, had to be related. A year ago, for the first time in his life, he had found himself taking the defense side of a murder case because he'd become convinced that the defendant was innocent.
Several factors played into his hands during that trial – an inexperienced judge gave him unusual latitude in his arguments; an over-ambitious prosecutor brought a case that was not really locked up; Hardy, himself, had been angry enough at the DA's bureaucracy that his own motivation went into overdrive. For these reasons, plus the fact that it turned out someone else had done the murder, he had won. Now, after a lifetime during which he had sided with the People, he found himself, for the second time, a lawyer for the defense.
"No need to apologize," Moses McGuire said. "You've become a bleeding heart. It's okay. You're still in the family. We still like you."
Hardy checked his watch. "Where could Frannie be?"
Moses swirled his MaCallan, a fixture in the bar's gutter. "She's undoubtedly on her way, soon to arrive and save you from having to defend your basically untenable position against someone who's smarter than you."
"What's untenable?"
"Defense work." Moses held up a crooked finger. "Uh uh uh, you've said the same thing yourself. More than once."
He found himself saying he wasn't sure Jennifer was guilty.
Moses snorted. "Again I quote from a reliable source who happens to be sitting across from me at this moment: 'If they get all the way to arrested, they did it.'"
Hardy smiled. "I was but a callow youth when I said that."
"And now you're mature?"
"Of course. I've married your sister, started a family, settled down. I'm a model citizen, and sometimes people get arrested when they didn't do it."
"How often?"
Hardy thought about it. "Twice, I think."
His case won, Moses nodded to himself, then walked the length of the bar, schmoozing with the eight paying customers. Wednesday night didn't get going until after nine, when they started the darts tournaments. Hardy drank stout.
Even if he, himself, a few years ago would have said he was on the wrong side, he no longer felt that he was. He could have told Moses he had seen what could happen with an overworked and undermanned police department, a DA's office hungry for "numbers" – convictions. Mistakes got made, simple venality or laziness or incompetence snuck in – maybe not often but often enough. And he was starting to think that that's what he was in it for – when the truth needed the hurly-burly showcase of a public trial to get its face out there, and sometimes that was the only way it did, he wanted to be a part of it. Balance of power. Man against machine, and that's what the bureaucracy of prosecution was. Abe Glitsky told him he had this tragic flaw of a fundamental need to continually restore order to a chaotic cosmos. Glitsky could get fancy. He wasn't sure he'd go that far, but, maybe there was something to it.
Hardy and Frannie sat with their feet in the recess under the table at a tiny place called Hiro's on Judah Street, a couple of blocks south of the Shamrock. Frannie was drinking tea and eating tempura, avoiding the sashimi and sake because she was still breast-feeding, but the platter of ahi, oni, quail eggs and gooey-duck in front of Hardy was nearly empty.
Frannie did not need a dim light to be attractive, but the candle's shadows flattered her wondrously. Hardy couldn't take his eyes from her face. She was holding his hand across the table, talking about Vinnie's day, about Rebecca's expanding vocabulary.
He let her ramble on, feeling that if the Big One – the earthquake all of California expected at any moment – came right then and swallowed them up into the earth, he would die happy.
"Also, besides 'thumbnail,' listen to this, she said her first three-syllable word – 'gravity'."
"You want to tell me what context she used 'gravity' in?" The Beck – Rebecca – was fourteen months old. Up to this time she had shown almost no interest in physics.
"Her sippy cup fell of the table and she got all upset and I told her it was okay, it was just gravity, so she nods and stops crying immediately and repeats 'gravity'. Naturally then she wanted to experiment with it about two hundred more times."
"Of course. You wouldn't want to just let go of a concept like that. What if Newton had?"
"We didn't get into that. I just took the cup away."
Hardy pointed an accusatory finger. "Negative reinforcement, Fran. We've talked about this. If later in life she blanks on gravity, you'll have no one else to blame but yourself."
Frannie sipped at her tea. "I'm going to be able to live with that burden." Suddenly they'd talked about the kids enough – the moment was palpable. There were other items on the agenda. "So how was your day? Are you going to be working with David?"
To the tinkling background music, Hardy described his involvement with Jennifer Witt's case, the bail denial, everything – or almost everything. He did not bring up his nagging doubt that all was not completely as it seemed with his new client. He did, however, tell her about the existence of Jennifer's bank account. "So she's got the money to pay us." Then he tried to explain how she'd come by the money.
Frannie stopped sipping tea. "You're saying she… stole it? The money she's paying you with?"
"No. Not exactly stole it." Hardy pointed a finger. "I like that thing you do with your eyebrows. Scorn and rejection. It's good."
"She didn't exactly steal it? Please."
He gave up. "Okay, so she stole it. She had reasons. It doesn't mean she's a bad person." Trying for levity again, and again it soared like a tractor. "Anyway," he went on, "it's at least a year of work. Keeps my hand in. And if David gets her off, which he often does with his clients, it's a good deal all around."
"What if he doesn't?"
"Well, if he doesn't, it'll be my job to keep her out of the gas chamber."
Frannie, like most people, wasn't too clear on how capital trials were handled in California. Hardy explained that Freeman would conduct the first phase, the one that would determine Jennifer's guilt or innocence. When that was over, if Freeman lost, there would be a second phase, in effect a second trial, to determine one of two possible penalties – life in prison without the possibility of parole, or death.
Hardy was going to argue the second phase, if it came to that.