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There was a pause. Then Glitsky asked, "Are you calling for any real reason?"

"Not exactly. You were on the news just now. I thought you'd enjoy the sound of a friendly voice. Also, for the record, Vin's on your side."

At his side, Hardy's wife said, "Frannie, too."

"I heard that," Glitsky said. "Tell them both thanks."

Frannie squeezed Hardy's leg. "Ask him… No, wait, let me." She grabbed the phone. "Abe, what are you and Treya doing tonight? I've got a big pot of spaghetti sauce going. Why don't all of you come over here? Get away from these people who don't love you like we do."

Wu had planned all along to get back to Andrew, get the plea locked up, before tomorrow. She wasn't about to enter Arvid Johnson's courtroom in the morning with any sort of question still hanging about her client's disposition. But before she went in to see Andrew again, she found that she still needed some time to gather herself.

She sat at a table in the street window of what had probably once been a nice little boutique espresso shop half a block from the YGC. But the place had been servicing the juvenile hall clientele for so long that it had given up hope and lost whatever charm it may have once possessed. Now the bulletin board by the door bristled with lawyers' business cards, photos of missing kids, ads for bail bondmen and private investigators. Stacks of assorted newspapers lay piled on a table by the sugar and cream. A pit bull, chained, slept on the floor in the back of the shop. Behind the counter, a young woman with a peg in her tongue and a ring in each eyebrow was wiping down the back counter, putting things away.

Outside, long shadows stretched up the hill, but the faces of buildings across the street glowed in the last blast of blinding evening sunlight. The wind had picked up and was all but howling, flinging any trash that weighed less than a pound along the nearly deserted street.

Wu's day- from waking up hungover and alone, to her meeting with the Norths, then Andrew, then the fight with Jason Brandt- seemed to have lasted about a week so far, and the hardest few moments were no doubt still ahead of her.

Well, maybe not the hardest. For a combination of guilt, anger and shame, she knew that it would be tough to top the half hour or so after Brandt had stormed away from her. What made it even worse was that she found she couldn't even blame him. For it was true. Even when she'd first begun flirting with him the night before, she had known that her deal with Andrew wasn't consummated. If she wanted to have any claim to calling herself an ethical attorney, she would have disclosed her conflict about Andrew to Brandt first thing. You simply did not have sex with your courtroom opposite number.

Sipping her coffee, she was still sick with herself, appalled at what she'd done and at the situation in which she and Brandt now found themselves, a situation that she had orchestrated.

She had risked both of their jobs- still risked them, if the truth came out- to satisfy some undefined and pathetic need to connect. It was beneath her, she knew, or at least beneath the person she had been until her father's death had kicked the foundation out from under her, turned her into the kind of unstable, needy, manipulative, dangerous woman she'd always hated and resolved never to become. And the scariest thing was that the lapse with Brandt had completely broadsided her- she'd never even considered discussing Andrew's case with him. There had been that spark, the attraction, and lubricated by drink, she'd just gone for it.

Never mind that he was a colleague, a good guy, a no-bullshit attorney she felt she could really come to like and admire someday. Maybe more than that. Of course, now all of that possible future was out of the question. And that, too- the waste of it, the sheer stupidity- made her sick.

And now- she looked at her watch-right now, she had to face her young client and wrest a final agonizing decision from him, one that shouldn't have been his to make in the first place. She should have left the original disposition to fall where it would- with Andrew filed as an adult. Then there would have been an adult trial and he'd all but certainly have been convicted of some degree of murder, but it all would have been according to the system. Now, because of her arrogance, stupidity, blindness, she had placed the entire burden of choice on an unhappy, miserable kid. She wondered if it was a burden he would have the strength to bear. Earlier, when he'd broken down, she'd even viewed that as a positive thing- he'd be persuaded to do what she wanted. But what if he simply couldn't deal with it?

She shook her head, finished the last of her coffee and left the mug on the table.

As was the case with Jason Brandt, this was yet another example of where she'd acted- committed herself, really- before she'd considered the implications of what she was setting in motion. She could only pray that Andrew was in fact guilty, as she'd assumed and believed all along. As she'd convinced his parents. That would make Andrew's admission, though still difficult, acceptable, even preferable, as a strategy.

As she turned up the walkway to the cabins, she stopped and looked up at the razor-wire fence. After she got Andrew's admission sewed up tonight, she vowed she would change and never put a client in such a position again. But first she had to get his admission. First that. Then begin work on fixing herself.

But she couldn't lose sight of her objective in the short term. Too much was already riding on Andrew's admission. She couldn't let the accumulation of this day's terrible events weaken her resolve or blind her to her first duty.

"Don't wimp out now," she said aloud to herself, and started up to the cabins.

"Who was that?"

Frannie took off her reading glasses and put down her P.D. James. She was in bed, propped against her reading pillow. She had let her red hair down and now it hung to her shoulders and shone in the room's light.

Hardy turned from his desk by the room's door. "Amy."

Frannie checked the clock by the bed. "At eleven-fifteen?"

"She didn't want me to worry and lose any of those precious minutes of sleep that are so important to men of a certain age."

"What were you going to be worried about? That now you're not, I presume."

He spent a minute filling her in on his concern that Wu might find herself having to renege with Boscacci. "But she just got back home from what must have been a marathon session with Andrew down at YGC. She wanted me to know that she had nailed down the plea."

"Well, there's a relief. I would have tossed all night." Frannie went to pick up her book, stopped. "It took her twenty minutes to tell you that?"

"To do it justice."

"And how old is this boy?"

"Seventeen."

Frannie made a sad face. "Seventeen."

A nod. "And, unfortunately, a killer. A double killer, actually. Eventually, apparently, he gave that up to Amy."

"Confessed, you mean?"

"Well, agreed to admit the petition, which is pleading guilty. And since that's the deal Amy cut with Boscacci, I'm glad he finally got religion around it."

"So what was the deal with Boscacci?"

Hardy filled in the particulars for his wife, concluding with the comment that Amy had been smart to keep Andrew's parents away while she put the pressure on the kid.

"Why is that?" Frannie asked.

"Because he'd been telling Mom and Dad he didn't do it."

"But he did?"

"Yep, if he's pleading, which he is."

"So then tell me again why he wouldn't agree to plead guilty if his parents were there."

Hardy stopped and turned by the closet. "Because, my love, he continues to scam them. The dad's paying the bills. First he can be a good boy and assure them to their face that he's innocent, then he can save his own skin by telling Amy the truth. And- the real beauty of it all- he can then go back to his parents and tell them that Amy talked him into the whole thing. She coerced him. It wasn't his fault. He didn't really kill anybody. He's a good boy."