The Hearing

He ordered Cole back to the jail and called a recess.

He stood without so much as a glance at anyone in the courtroom or gallery, and left the bench in a swirl of black robe.

Hardy realized that he had been lucky to escape without a contempt citation. And he really hadn't accomplished anything substantive for his client, though he'd certainly succeeded in getting the judge and half the courtroom mad at him. So as the disgruntled masses filed out behind him, he stalled for time, gathering his papers at the defense table. He knew he had a gauntlet to run on the other side of the bar rail and out in the hallway, but he felt oddly satisfied. He'd served notice – no one was railroading his client without a fight.

He felt a light touch on the back of his shoulder, and turned to face the DA. 'Mr Hardy.'

He straightened up and nodded, set his jaw. 'Ms Pratt.'

Hardy and Pratt had a history. A year before, he had gotten her a public reprimand from the bench for her office's cavalier abuse of the grand jury. She, in turn, had nearly filed criminal charges against Hardy for insurance fraud, and had directed her own investigators to explore Hardy's possible criminal involvement in the murder case he was defending. There was no love lost between them.

And now she had another crack at him. 'That was a fairly unprofessional and tawdry display.'

'Maybe it was.' Hardy's lips turned upward, but no one would have called it a smile. 'But I prefer that to self-righteous hypocrisy. Are you really such a political hack that you'd kill somebody for a few votes?'

Pratt turned red at the frontal assault. 'Making false accusations about my motives will get you in trouble with the bar, Mr Hardy.'

Hardy nodded again. 'I couldn't agree more, which is why I don't make them false. And while we're enjoying such a full and frank exchange of ideas, I'd be interested to hear about your decision to ask for special circumstances, much less death.'

'She doesn't have to explain anything to you, Hardy.' This was Torrey. Hardy had been 'Diz' before the arraignment had begun, but now the gloves had come off. 'You go play your cheap defense tricks and when we get to it, we'll see what a jury thinks of them.'

'What a neat idea,' Hardy said. 'That was kind of my plan, anyway. See what a jury thinks. If it ever gets to that, which I doubt.'

'Oh, it'll get there. That's what happens when you get a confession. The presumption of guilt goes way up.'

'It does? That's funny,' Hardy said. 'I'd always heard it was presumption of innocence.'

'Your man isn't innocent.'

'Well, there you go. I guess we're back to that jury thing again, aren't we?'

Torrey wore an expression of great disdain. 'You knew Elaine, didn't you?'

'Yes I did.' Hardy answered without irony. 'I thought she was great. And the idea that you'd want to kill somebody in her name, that makes me gag.'

Torrey shook his head in disgust. 'I just don't see how you can live with yourself.'

'It's easy,' Hardy replied. 'I've got a really good personality.'

'Let's go, Gabe.' Sharron Pratt all but pulled him by the arm. 'Oh, and Mr Hardy? If I were you, I'd go easy on accusing me of playing politics with a man's life.'

'So what would you like me to call it?'

She ignored that. 'If you keep it up,' she said, 'I'm not going to be disposed to drop it when this is over. And you're going to be very sorry.'

Hardy took that in soberly, then nodded thoughtfully. 'You know, that's sounds an awful lot like a threat. Are you threatening me?'

She glared at him levelly. 'You take it any way you want.'

'All right,' he said. 'I'll take it as a threat. And as such I'll be passing it along to the Bar Ethics Committee. Since we started here talking about ethics, that'll bring us around full circle.'

Torrey couldn't resist a parting remark. 'You wouldn't know an ethic if it bit you on the ass.'

For a long moment, Hardy gave him a flat stare. 'Whoa. Clever. I've got to remember that one.' He turned to gather the rest of his papers.

Hardy decided he'd just as soon forgo the excitement in the hallway outside. He was all too familiar with the back way out – it was the way he'd come in – but his client Cole had just had bail denied. Even when this was expected, and it had been, it was never an easy moment.

He caught Cole just outside the holding cell behind the courtroom. The bailiffs were busy transporting other defendants up and down from the jail, and there was another defendant and his attorney waiting in the cell itself, so they'd handcuffed Cole to the elevator bars until they could get to him, which would be when it was.

Hardy stood next to him. 'We'll keep trying on the bail,' he said. 'It still could happen.'

'So what do I do between now and the preliminary hearing?'

'We'll have to talk a lot. Maybe see if you can remember something.'

But Cole didn't seem to hear him. 'No,' he said, as though to himself.

'No what?' Hardy asked. 'You're not going to remember anything new?'

'Not that. I mean…' He rolled his eyes back and forth. 'I mean remembering something… that's not what I'm thinking about.'

Hardy knew what Cole was thinking about – his next hit. 'That's what you ought to be thinking about, Cole. Maybe you can use the time to clean up.'

A shake of the head. 'No. I don't think…' He stopped.

This was foreign soil to Hardy. He'd of course been around for much of the beginning of the drug culture in the late sixties, early seventies, but as a Marine in Vietnam, and then a cop before law school, he had grown increasingly uncomfortable with the idea of illegal substances. He'd found his excitement without resort to chemicals, and then, later – when he felt the need to escape from the pain of his failed marriage and the death of his son – he gravitated to what the Irish called the good man's weakness, drink.

But even that had never controlled him. He chose to drink, sometimes copiously, then chose when to stop.

This boy, he knew, was in a completely different world.

'Do you want to get out of it?' he asked.

Cole shrugged. 'If I do, there's a program for it.' A mirthless laugh. 'There's a program for everything, isn't there?'

'It does seem like it.' It surprised Hardy – this first moment of connection he'd felt with his client – but he felt the same way. Here in San Francisco, tolerance and understanding for every human frailty or aberration had been politicized, funded, institutionalized. Someone was being paid to help you with whatever ailed you in San Francisco, and if nothing ailed you, someone was being paid to find something that did. 'Is there anything I can do?' Hardy asked.

Cole turned his head. 'What do you mean?'

'I mean, if you decide to move the process along, get you counseling, like that.'

'Probably not.' Cole let out a breath. 'If it's going to happen, it falls to me.' He tapped his heart. 'In here.'

Hardy knew that this was true, but it was still good to hear Cole say it, to acknowledge that his fate was to some extent his own responsibility. Maybe he wasn't completely lost after all.

'So what happens next,' he asked, 'in the law world?'

'Next I file a few motions. The stuff I was talking about in there.' He pointed at the courtroom door. 'The procedural problems, these special circumstances.'

'Will that really work?'

'In what sense?'

'I mean, if they didn't read me my rights-'

Hardy narrowed his eyes. 'At the hospital the other day, you told me you didn't remember if they did. You thought not. Now you're saying if.'

He corrected himself. 'No. They told me I wasn't arrested for the murder so I didn't need a lawyer yet. They were just questioning me because I was in the alley and I ran.'

'So you do remember that?'

'That was after they'd kept me for hours. I kind of woke up halfway through things.'

Hardy wasn't thrilled with the constant shifts Cole's story took, but he saw no advantage in fighting about that now. 'Well, if that's really what they said, then you might have pulled yourself a break. We could get it tossed.'