Brandt nodded, satisfied. "Then we want him certified today, your honor, unless the plan all along was to get him to juvenile court by misrepresenting his intention to admit."
Wu, holding her temper in check, talked to the judge. "Your honor, I promise you, I don't know what he's talking about. I had no such plan. I didn't want Andrew to have to run the risk of an adult trial. An admission, to me, seemed like the right thing."
Johnson's face remained grave, his color high. "I'm just wondering if it's possible that you are actually this ill-prepared, Ms. Wu. Agreeing to plead out a case before securing the client's agreement?" But he didn't wait for her to answer. "It doesn't matter. The point is that Mr. Bartlett, as you undoubtedly must be aware, is already in the juvenile system, you see. Now he can't be tried as an adult without a seven-oh-seven hearing first. Do you expect me to believe you didn't know that?"
Suddenly the enormity of her miscalculation came into much clearer focus. Wu had been acting as though she needed Andrew's admission to secure his place in the juvenile system. But this was not, strictly speaking, the case. What she needed his admission for was merely so that the sentencing could proceed. In fact, Boscacci's initial filing had assured that, legally, Andrew was already in the juvenile system, and hence protected from LWOP as long as he stayed there. "I didn't think…, " she stammered.
"All right," Johnson snapped at her. "You didn't think. So can I now assume that you will agree to waive the seven-oh-seven hearing and have Mr. Bartlett recertified an adult today, as Mr. Brandt here has requested?"
"I… I can't do that, your honor."
"No," Brandt exploded. "No, of course you can't." He obviously, justifiably, thought she'd planned to have her client deny the petition all along. This would not only delay Andrew's eventual trial as an adult, but place another administrative hurdle- the 707 hearing- in the middle of his path. He appealed to Johnson. "I don't believe for a moment, your honor, that this wasn't her plan all along."
"That's not true. That's just not true, your honor."
Brandt ignored her. "Your honor, the only way to read this is she set it up so that she could stall down here for months. But I'm certain that the district attorney is going to want to get this matter back into adult court, so I'd like to ask that the seven-oh-seven be calendared at the earliest possible time."
Johnson gave a last withering look at Wu, then nodded. "I'm inclined to agree with you, Counselor. Let's go out and put it on the record."
11
Look at the bright side," Wes Farrell was saying. "She's convinced the clients that she did it on purpose. She planned it all along. Now the kid catches a break in the seven-oh-seven, maybe he never has to go to trial as an adult, and everybody wins."
"Except the DA never trusts anybody from the firm again."
"Picky, picky." Farrell, on the couch across the room, shrugged. "They probably didn't trust us all that much anyway. Remember, we're defense attorneys, a bare evolutionary step above pond scum."
"That much, you think?" Hardy could joke, but he wasn't amused.
"Maybe not, if you want to get technical. The thing is, though, we're going to help get Jackman elected again, so we're his pals, or will be again soon. It'll all blow over in a few months, and they'll be trusting us as much as they ever did, which- don't kid yourself- is not close to the world record anyway. Meanwhile, Amy's got the Norths thinking she's a latter-day Clara Darrow, snatching victory from the jaws of defeat."
"Swell." Hardy pushed his chair back from his desk. His elbows rested on the arms of the chair, fingers templed at his lips. "So she spins it to deceive the people who are paying her?"
"Paying us, you mean. Just keep repeating the paying part and you'll feel better."
"I won't feel better. I don't want to get paid to lie to my clients."
"Well, fortunately, they're not your clients, they're Amy's."
Hardy straightened himself up in his chair. "Precisely the opposite point you made about one sentence ago, you notice. When the Norths were paying, they were our clients; when they're being lied to, they're Amy's."
"You've stumbled upon my specialty, honed in years of debate. Answers tailored to justify any course of action." Farrell broke a smile. "It's a modest enough talent, but it's seen me through some dark days. And what do you mean, you don't want to get paid to lie? I thought that's what we got paid for."
But Hardy held up a hand. "Wes. Enough. Okay?"
The smile faded. "Okay. So what's she going to do? Amy?"
"First thing, I had her go down to Boscacci and apologize in person. Tell him the truth, which is that the kid decided on his own not to admit."
Farrell sat back and crossed a leg. "And why do you think he did that?"
Hardy gave it a minute. "He's young. Eight years sounds like the rest of his life. But for now, I guess he'd rather take bad odds at pulling life than no odds at eight years." He sighed. "He's going to find out."
Inspector Sergeant Pat Belou stepped out of the elevator on the fourth floor of the Hall of Justice. She had ridden up from the lobby with her partner Lincoln Russell, a well-dressed mid-thirties black inspector. Also in the small enclosed elevator had been about ten other citizens, at least one of whom badly needed a shower, some new clothes, a toothbrush, maybe industrial disinfectant and certainly deodorant. Lots of deodorant.
"That was the longest elevator ride I've ever taken," Belou said when the door closed behind her. "We ought to arrest that guy as a health hazard."
"Not till he kills somebody," Russell said. "We're homicide. He's got to kill somebody first. Those are the rules."
"Well, he almost killed me. That ought to count. Anybody goes with him all the way to the top, their life's in danger."
"Maybe we catch him on the way down," Russell said.
Belou blew out through her mouth, waving the air in front of her nose. She was a thirty-year-old, tall and rangy woman with an outdoorsy look, a bit of a heavy jaw, some old, faded acne scars on her face. But her large mouth smiled easily, she laughed as though she meant it, and her shoulder-length hair, a shade lighter than dirty blond and with a perennially windblown look, set off lovely blue eyes.
The inspectors turned into the hallway, and Belou stopped suddenly, hit her partner on the arm. "Glitsky," she said. "Good a time as any."
Russell said he'd see her in the homicide detail, and she turned around and came back to the double doors by the elevator lobby that led to the admin offices. She was just asking the receptionist at the outside desk if she could have a word with the deputy chief when the man himself appeared from somewhere in the back. He wore a deep frown and was accompanied by a sergeant in uniform, Paganucci by his name tag.
She spoke right up. "Sir? Sergeant Belou. Homicide."
Glitsky, obvious frazzled, came to a full stop. "I'm running to a meeting," he told her. "If you'd like to leave a message with Melissa here, I'll get back to you as soon as I can."
"Yes, sir. But this is short. Ted Reed."
"Ted Reed?"
"Elizabeth Cary's brother. Lake Elsinore."
"What about him?"
"He's been in custody on an arson charge down in Escondido for most of the last month. The public defender down there told me he must have decided he liked the food in jail, didn't want to waste his money on bail. His trial's in a couple of months. Bottom line is he didn't kill his sister."
Glitsky nodded. Something else was distracting him, but he said, "Okay. Thanks. Good job."