Brandt had his hand on the telephone receiver, halfway to his ear, but he replaced it. He wore a neutral expression. "I already heard," he said. "Did he make it?"
"He's going to."
"I'm glad. I really am."
"Which leaves us some business." She leaned against the doorjamb. "I'm requesting a continuance on the hearing tomorrow. I wanted to tell you about it beforehand."
"I figured you would," Brandt said, "when I heard about the suicide attempt. You ought to know, since we're being up front with one another, that I heard Warvid this morning talking to his clerk about that very thing. I wouldn't get my hopes up."
"He said he wouldn't continue?"
"That's what I hear from the clerk. If Andrew's bipedal, we go."
"Maybe he won't be."
"That remains to be seen then. But let me ask you something. If Warvid continues on these grounds, what's to stop everyone from feeling suicidal the day before their hearing?" Brandt leaned back in his chair, put his hands behind his head, his feet up on the desktop. "Let's be straight here, okay? This hearing is a formality. You know it, I know it, Warvid knows it."
"My client went sideways, Jason. Hasn't that ever happened to you?"
"Of course. All the time. But right now, the only thing Warvid wants is to restore order to the cosmos, and to do that, he's got to get Bartlett back upstairs. Which he'll do. Tomorrow."
Wu went from one doorpost to the other, arms crossed. "I'm calling witnesses, you know. I've filed a list."
Brandt's feet came off the desk. He straightened in his chair. "You're not fighting the criteria?"
"Every one."
"All I need is one, you realize that?"
"Sure."
Brandt sighed. "I've got to assume you've read his short story."
"I have," she said. "I can mitigate it."
"All right, mitigate. But you can't believe that a double homicide won't strike the court as of sufficient gravity?"
"It isn't if he didn't do it."
Brandt's mouth stood half-open. When he finally spoke, his voice hummed with concern. "Amy, listen. Last time we were in court, you were admitting the petition. Now you've got one of the world's fairest judges seriously upset with you. And what are you going to argue, that the homicides didn't happen? 'Cause that's all I've got to show- that they did. There's no burden of proof. You know this. I make a prima facie case and I've got gravity and circumstances. You even get a step into arguing the basic facts and Warvid's going to shut you down."
She smiled. "Good. You're worried."
"I'm not worried," he said. "Or rather, I'm worried for you. There's no argument to be made here. Warvid's going to walk in with his mind made up, as it should be."
"Maybe not, after he's seen my motions."
"But Amy… Bartlett isn't a juvenile!"
"He's seventeen, Jason. He's a boy."
Brandt threw his head back, brought his hands to his face, finally looked at her over them. "I don't believe you're doing this."
Wu took a step, about the limit she could trespass without coming behind Brandt's desk. "Jason, listen to me. You know when Andrew said in court that he didn't do it? He might have been telling the truth."
"No, he wasn't."
"But what if he was?"
"So go to trial downtown and get him off. But for God's sake, do yourself a favor and get it out of Warvid's courtroom first."
But she shook her head. Intense now, she leaned in to him. "He's already suicidal, Jason. As it is now, he thinks he's going to be in prison the rest of his life."
"That's where he should be. He killed two people, Amy."
"Maybe, but he's innocent until-"
Brandt barked a laugh of pure disdain. "Oh, give me a fucking break."
"You read his stuff, Jason, you know-"
"I know he's dangerous; that's what his writing shows me. He's a sophisticated criminal mind who thinks he can use you, and is on his way to proving it."
"He tried to kill himself to manipulate me? Is that what you're saying?"
Brandt shrugged. "I heard the shirt he used ripped. Maybe he tore it a little first."
Wu reacted in a blaze of rage. "Bullshit, Jason! That's just such bullshit!"
Suddenly, behind them in the hallway loomed the imposing and, to Wu, increasingly sinister form of bailiff Nelson, knocking on the door behind her. "Is everything going along okay with you people?" He moved in closer, lowered his voice. "The sound's traveling pretty good in the hallway here."
Brandt spoke over Wu's shoulder, the voice relaxed and friendly. "We're fine, Ray. Just a friendly little pretrial conference between two country lawyers."
Wu's eyes were flashing, her color high. She whirled and brushed by Nelson. "Excuse me, please." Jogging, in her tennis shoes, she disappeared around the corner of the hallway.
Brandt found her car, the last in a long line of them parked at the curb downhill from the front entrance to the YGC.
She was in the driver's seat, sitting with both hands on the wheel, head down. From the sidewalk, Brandt hesitated, then touched the passenger window with a knuckle, leaned over so she could see who it was. She reached over and unlocked the door. When he'd closed it again behind him, they both sat in silence for the first seconds. Finally, Brandt, eyes sideways, let out a long sigh. "I shouldn't have said that in there. I don't think your boy faked it."
She kept her own eyes forward, her hands back on the wheel. "I came down here as a courtesy to you, Jason. I wasn't playing any more games." She paused. "With this case or with you. The other night…" The words stopped. She looked over at him.
"We don't have to talk about that."
"Yes, we do, I think." Then. "You were right. There's something wrong with me."
"I didn't say that."
"You didn't have to." She moved her hand from the steering wheel as though she were going to touch him, but stopped, dropped it into her lap. "Can I tell you something?"
"Sure."
"That night, at the Balboa… I didn't go into that thinking about Allan or Andrew or the deal I thought I'd made. That was just us. That was real."
"All right."
"That's all I want to say."
"Okay, then, I've got one. If it was so real, why'd you kick me out?"
"I didn't kick you out. You left."
"After you said, and this is a direct quote, 'You'd better be out of here by morning or we're in trouble.' You don't remember saying that?"
Wu shook her head slowly from side to side. "I didn't mean legal trouble. I meant… I meant if this was supposed to be a one-nighter and neither of us wanted to get serious, you had to leave before we went any further."
"But we already-"
She turned on him. "I didn't mean the sex."
Brandt blew out heavily. "No. I know. I know what you meant." A long silence. Then. "You figured I was playing you." He chuckled. "I love this."
"Me, too. It's perfect."
"A microcosm of life itself," Brandt said. "Makes me think, though, that maybe we want to go in and get out of Bartlett now."
Wu shook her head. "We can't. I can't abandon him, and if you drop out, the seven-oh-seven gets continued, plus you'd have to give a reason, which would probably get you fired."
Brandt suddenly saw something over Wu's shoulder, and he swore. Across the street, Ray Nelson was leaning over the roof of his car, lighting a cigarette. Seeing them both now looking at him, he raised a hand in greeting, then opened the car door and got in.
"He saw us," Wu said.
"Yes, he did. But so what? We're sitting in a car, having a discussion."
"Do you think he followed us out?"
"I don't know. Why would he?"
"I don't know. To have something on us." Wu looked after Nelson's car, now driving away. "The guy creeps me out."
"Ray? He's a pussycat after you get to know him," Brandt said.
"I don't want to get to know him."