Before he moved forward to pull the round from the board, he went over to the counter, picked up the coffee cup and poured it down the sink.
It was nearly four o'clock by the time he knocked on Gina Roake's door.
She had the corner office, an altogether different work space than Hardy's. There were a few stuffed chairs and a sofa, an old wooden coffee table, a computer table and chair, but no formal desk to speak of. Instead of hardwood floors, Gina went with wall-to-wall carpet, a shade darker than champagne. Cheaply framed posters of old movies-Giant, Casablanca, Gone With the Wind, Citizen Kane- decorated the one big wall. The other, by the door, mostly held her law books, although there was one shelf of David Freeman memorabilia- an empty bottle of La Grande Dame champagne (from the day he'd proposed to her); a picture of the two of them outside on the deck at the Alta Mira in Sausalito, the bay shimmering in the background; a hand-blown blue and red glass perfume bottle; some erotic if not frankly obscene porcelains from Chinatown; a clean ashtray with an unlit cigar and a book of matches from the Crown Room at the Fairmont. Then there were the windows, six of them to Hardy's two. In the afternoon, now, the light suffused the room with a golden glow.
He stopped just inside, carefully closed the door behind him. "You busy?"
She was at the computer, work showing on the screen. "I decided you were at least a little bit right. If I'm going to have my name on the door, I should pull some of the weight."
He drew around one of the folding chairs, flipped it open and sat on it. "That's funny, I decided I was at least mostly wrong. The firm's making a fortune. I was a horse's ass. Am." He gestured vaguely around the room. "If you don't want to work, you've earned the right not to." He waited a moment. "So how are you?"
She turned to face him. Thought a moment. "I'm all right. I think if I exercised any more, I'd self-destruct. Which is maybe what I was trying to do. I'm damn sure already the strongest woman my age I know, if any man has the guts to want to find out." But the smile faded. "But it wasn't physical strength, though, after all, was it? It was bullets."
"It was bullets," Hardy agreed.
A silence ensued. In only a few seconds, Gina's face tracked through several variations on the themes of grief, revenge and regret. Last year she'd killed a man, and the experience had scarred her. "So what brings you down to this neck of the woods? If it was just your apology- unnecessary, but nice."
"It wasn't just that. It's Amy."
He gave Gina a brief recap of the events leading up to this morning's fiasco in juvenile court, and by the time he finished, Gina had turned and was facing him, her face set with worry. "She made the deal before she had the client's consent?"
"Right." Then he added, "It's possible she thought he had given it."
"How's that? Did she have him sign a statement?"
"I don't think so, no. She called me last night and said it was locked up. Solid."
"But didn't get his John Hancock? And then he went sideways?"
"Last minute, in the courtroom." Hardy shrugged. "It happens."
"Not as often as you might think if you do it right. So. What do you want me to do?"
A pause. "For Amy? Nothing. For me, I could use some guidance. I'm the managing partner, and I've managed this whole thing wrong up until now. I knew her client hadn't signed off. I kept convincing myself that I should trust her judgment that he'd come around. That was irresponsible enough, but it was more than that, really."
Roake cocked her head. "What, though, exactly?"
Hardy took a minute deciding what he should say. "You may remember, Amy's father died a few months ago. Since then she's been… distracted. And her work's been suffering, today's problem being the best of several good examples." Again, he paused. "I can't help but feel that a lot of where this has gotten to is my fault. I should have stepped in at the git-go, and three or four other stops along the way. But the point is, she's been playing fast and loose with this boy's life and it probably feels relatively okay to her because she's playing fast and loose with her own."
Roake leaned back into her chair, let out a heavy breath. "People are going to do what they're going to do, Diz. Do you think she's competent? Legally?"
"I don't know. She's got a good mind. But the only bright spot right now, if you want to call it that, is that she's somehow conned the parents, who are paying the bills, that this has been her plan all along, to pretend to go along with the deal to get Andrew declared a juvenile."
"Which, I take it, isn't true?"
"Right."
"So she's still lying to her clients?"
Hardy tried a weak grin. " 'Spinning' is the preferred term of art, I believe. But it's going to unravel fast enough, you watch. Boscacci's going to demand a seven-oh-seven before she knows what hit her. And if she loses there, which is a good bet because not only does she have the burden of proof, but the judge already hates her, then her boy's looking at adult murder with specials." Hardy found a chair and sat. "I'm thinking I have to step in, take her off it. That would mitigate the personal issues with Boscacci and the judge anyway. Although the paying customers currently think Amy is a genius. If I yank her, they quit. Maybe she quits, too. Did I mention the fees here? It's going to go adult murder, and that's six figures, high profile. We don't want to lose it."
Roake crossed her arms over her chest, whirled halfway around in her chair, and stared out toward one of the windows. Finally: "If memory serves, the seven-oh-seven's not about evidence, is it? It's only a question of whether the child can be rehabilitated in the juvenile system or should be punished in the adult. Isn't that about right?"
Hardy nodded.
"Okay, then. And how is Andrew's record otherwise?"
"Nothing to speak of. One joyride, community service and a fine. Expunged."
"Well, then." Roake considered a moment. "In that case, she might have a shot. The court can't say that the boy's already a hardened criminal and needs to spend the rest of his life locked away. She might pull it off."
"Maybe." Hardy had his doubts. He knew perhaps better than Roake that the last of the five criteria in determining whether a defendant was legally a juvenile or an adult was the gravity of the offense, and there was nothing more serious than murder. On that alone, Hardy thought, the 707 hearing was doomed to failure.
He ran a hand down his cheek. "I don't want to step on her, Gina, or God knows, fire her. But her focus has been off on this since the beginning, and now, especially after she reneged on Boscacci, he's going to want to take her down." He sat back, crossed his arms in a pensive mode, looked from window to window around the room. Suddenly, he came back to Roake, his eyes bright with an idea. "How about if I tell her I'd like to sit second chair?"
Roake gave it some thought. "She might resent that, too. She might even quit. And your hours on top of hers? Would the clients go for that?"
"I don't care about my hours," Hardy said. "I wouldn't charge for them. Long term, getting Amy straight and on track is worth more to the firm than I'd bill, don't you think?"
Roake smiled, spoke gently. "You don't have to ask me, but that doesn't sound like the managing partner I know and love. He's been pretty tough on billing lately, even with some of our partners."
"Touché," Hardy said, smiling.
But Roake was back to business. "She still might quit, though. Take it as a vote of no-confidence."
"Except that she knows she's screwed up. I think it might be more likely, especially with the other pressures she's feeling, that she'll be grateful she's not fired."
Roake, warming to the idea, was nodding. "Okay. You could certainly say you've got every right as managing partner to demand a closer accountability. You can't let another mistake happen on your watch. What's she going to say? No?"
"She could. She might."
But Roake shook her head. "Sure, but I don't think so. I think she'll thank you for offering. So, assuming she'd be okay with it, how would you handle it logistically?"