The Ophelia Cut (6 page)

“Especially with you being a bartender and all.”

“Damn straight,” Hardy said.

L
IKE HUNDREDS OF
other law entities across the country, Hardy’s firm had changed dramatically over the past few years. The commercial real estate market and all of its ancillary parts had ceased to be a meaningful source of income, and in its wake, dozens of other businesses failed. Construction and development money, business money, money that had been the lifeblood of the firm, had almost completely dried up. From a high of nineteen lawyers four years ago, Freeman Hardy & Roake was down to seven, mostly those who did plaintiff litigation, along with a mixed bag of criminal defense, including DUIs, shoplifting, minor drug busts—bottom-rung legal work. Not helping matters was the fact that of the firm’s four original name partners, Freeman was dead; Farrell had to remove his name after being elected San Francisco’s district attorney; and Roake was pursuing a more than halftime career as an author.

That left Hardy.

And wouldn’t you know it, he often thought, the cuts in staff had not extended to his receptionist/secretary, the perennially sour, long-suffering, humorless Phyllis. She’d been with David Freeman before he’d established the firm, and there was no way Hardy could get rid of her in good conscience. Which did not stop him from contemplating new scenarios for her murder on a regular basis.

Such as this morning, when he came in at eleven-thirty after his swim and she greeted him at the elevator door, arms crossed over her chest, tapping one foot, doing her best imitation of a schoolmarm cornering a child who was unconscionably late for school.

Hardy dredged up a hopeful smile. “Good morning, Phyllis. And how are you this fine morning?”

“It’s barely still morning, sir,” she said. “Several calls have come in for you.”

“Important calls?”

“I’m sure I couldn’t say, sir. This being a law firm, people who call us sometimes want to bring us some business, and that would seem important in the general scheme of things. To me, at least. Ed Benson was one of the calls.”

Benson was the chief clerk of the Superior Court, and his name got Hardy’s attention. “Ed Benson called for me? Did he say what he wanted?”

“Something about a glut of conflicts cases that they’re trying to clear. He said he’d consider it a personal favor if you could come down to the courtroom this morning . . .” She paused, sighed, continued. “By now it’s too late for that. I left the message on your cell phone, too.”

Hardy pulled his phone from its holster, glanced at it, and gave her a sheepish grin. “Sometimes I forget to turn the darn thing on.” He pushed down on the top of the instrument. “There. And oops, look at that. Here’s your message. I’d better go call him before it gets any later.”

I
T WAS A
classic conflicts case. The public defender could defend only one of the bartenders because whenever two people get arrested together, it is overwhelmingly likely that one will end up pointing the finger at the other. One lawyer, or one firm (in this case, the public defender), cannot represent both defendants. Or, in this case, more than one of the dozen or so defendants. The court would have to appoint a private lawyer for every defendant after the first one. It wasn’t just a conflict, it was a cluster.

When business otherwise was slow, these cases could be something of a godsend, since attorneys’ fees were paid reliably, if not promptly, by the court. So the judges had no problem having a lawyer in court every day to pick up a conflicts case if there happened to be one. But there wasn’t a contingency for a dozen conflicts at once, so Ed Benson was on the phone explaining. “You read about the ABC sweep last night, Diz? Putting the word out on the scourge of underage drinking the city’s experiencing right now.”

“Better yet,” Hardy said, “I was part of it. Dumbest thing I ever saw.”

“Tell me about it,” Benson replied. “So now we have a dozen felony arrests, all of them set for arraignment this morning, most of them first offenders, none of them remotely happy, and few if any lawyers down here answering the conflicts call.”

“You want me to make a couple of calls,” Hardy asked, “see who’s around?”

“The more the merrier.”

“I’ll see what I can do, Ed. Give me about fifteen.”

A
FTER SPENDING THE
night awake in the slammer and getting booked for felony conspiracy to distribute alcohol to minors, then released on his own recognizance along with the other mixologists, Tony Solaia didn’t bear much resemblance to the dashing young swimmer from the Dolphin Club or the dervish from Burning Rome. Now, a little after two
P.M.
, he slid into a booth across from Hardy at Lou the Greek’s, an ancient semisubterranean establishment across the street from the Hall of Justice that served the legal community—cops, attorneys, clients, relatives, jurors, secretaries, social workers, reporters. The place opened at six
A.M.
for the hard-drinking crowd and didn’t slow down much until it closed at two
A.M.

They both ordered Anchor Steam on tap.

“How am I supposed to thank you for this, much less pay you?” Tony asked.

“You don’t,” Hardy replied. “The city’s going to pay us. If these cases go all the way to trial, which I doubt, my firm could bill a few grand. If anything, I’m in debt to you. But my real feeling is these turkeys aren’t going anywhere.”

“You don’t think so?”

Their beers arrived and Hardy drank. “We can’t guarantee results, but I can’t imagine the DA playing hardball. At most, he’ll reduce to misdemeanors, you’ll do some community service. Case dismissed. End of story.”

“So why did all this happen?”

“That’s the question. Somebody trying to make political hay. One of our supervisors, I’m thinking probably Liam Goodman, on his way to the mayor’s office. Stupid.” Hardy lifted his glass. “You look like you could use a little sleep.”

Tony nodded. “You’re an observant guy.” He sighed. “The good news is I don’t have a job anymore, so I can sleep all I want.”

“I wouldn’t worry about that,” Hardy said. “If your bar doesn’t open
again soon, I can get you a couple of shifts at the place I own. Keep you in cash, anyway, until Burning Rome reopens.”

“If it reopens.” Solaia swirled his glass. “You own a bar?”

Hardy shrugged, broke a small grin. “I like to think we’re a full-service firm. But yeah, I own a bar. A quarter of it, anyway. The Little Shamrock. Out in the Avenues.”

A
FTER
T
ONY
S
OLAIA
caught a cab home outside the Hall of Justice, Hardy entered the building, passed through the metal detector, and debated whether he wanted to visit Abe Glitsky on five or the DA on three. Deciding to let fate make the call, he boarded the always crowded elevator in the lobby. If somebody pushed three, he’d stop off and see Wes Farrell. Otherwise, he’d ride up to Glitsky’s floor.

A minute later, he was walking down the long hallway past the offices where he’d first worked as an assistant district attorney almost forty years earlier. As usual, he was astounded to find that the hallway still looked, smelled, and felt exactly the same.

When the clerk at the window announced his arrival to Farrell’s secretary, Treya Glitsky gave the order to let him right in, and the door to his left buzzed. Hardy went through it and stopped again.

This hallway, with its heavy doors leading off to tiny cramped offices on either side, carried an even larger mnemonic charge than the walk down from the elevators. Halfway down, two earnest young women who couldn’t possibly be old enough to be working here whispered like conspirators, and perhaps they were. A guy in a business suit stood in one of the doorways and suddenly laughed and just as suddenly cut it off. Behind Hardy, the door opened again, and when he half turned, he was facing Paul Stier, a tough adversary whom he’d trounced in their two trials opposing each other, the most recent only two months before.

Stier pulled up in his tracks, failing to conceal his surprise and displeasure. “Mr. Hardy.”

Hardy inclined his head. “Paul. How are you?” He held out his hand, and the other man took it perfunctorily.

“Can I help you?” Obviously, it bothered Stier that Hardy, a defense attorney, was standing unaccompanied in the prosecutor’s hallway. Probably spying.

“I’m just on my way in to talk to Mr. Farrell. We used to be partners.”

“Yes, I know. You can find your way, then?” Meaning: move it along and quit loitering here where you don’t belong, polluting our sacred hallway.

Hardy tried to keep traces of apology out of his voice. He had every right to be here, and if Stier didn’t like it, that was his problem. Pointing, he said, “On my way.”

A chilly smile. “Nice seeing you.”

When he stood in front of Treya’s desk in Farrell’s anteroom, she looked up from her keyboard, flashed him a genuine smile—“Diz!”—pushed out her chair, and came around to give him a quick hug. Regarding him at arm’s length, she asked him if he was all right.

“Fine, except I just ran into Paul Stier. I think he took our last trial together a little personally.”

Treya tsked. “How does he think that helps anything?”

“I bet it keeps him motivated. But still . . .”

“They don’t call him ‘The Big Ugly’ for nothing, Diz. Don’t let him get inside your head.”

“No, of course not. Nothing gets to me. I’m a defense attorney. I have no inner life.” Hardy inclined his head toward Farrell’s door. “Is His Majesty in?”

She lowered her voice. “I just woke him up and told him you were here.”

“Fantastic.”

“He said to show you right in.”

“Really?”

“His exact words.”

“I’m feeling better already.” Hardy stopped at the door and turned back to her. “On the wildly improbable assumption that I have feelings at all.”

A
FTER ALMOST TWO
years in his official position, Wes Farrell had acquired enough furniture to imprint on his physical office the stamp of his personality. He had never been a believer in the desk, for example, feeling that it created an unnecessary barrier between people. Instead, Farrell had installed a couple of wooden library tables on the room’s periphery. Randomly arranged on the table over by the Bryant Street windows were his computer and printer/fax, his landline telephone, and several thick
stacks of folders. The table on the back wall held his enormous flat-screen television, with a dozen or so folding chairs in front of it, theater-style. The office was also large into the game theme, with a foosball table smack in the center of the room, a Nerf basketball net hung from the bookshelves, and a chessboard on a small table next to the door, right under the dartboard—the latter a gift from Hardy. Farrell had converted the counter under the bookshelves into a well-stocked, completely illegal (alcohol was forbidden everywhere in the Hall of Justice) wet bar complete with a minifridge, sink, and hot plate, and with spirits, wine, beers, a high-end espresso machine, and an assortment of teas. A few weeks into his administration, Treya had convinced him to bring in some real chairs, a couch, and a coffee table to create two well-defined seating areas—one in chrome and one in leather—in the event that guests wanted to sit down at any point.

When Hardy entered, Farrell was drying his face over the sink. He was wearing brown slacks over worn-down, scuffed-looking brogues, no jacket, and no tie. His white dress shirt had its top buttons undone over his T-shirt, and this Hardy took as a cue. “Drum roll, please, for today’s secret message,” he said by way of hello.

Farrell hesitated only a moment before he put down his towel, nodded agreeably, undid two more buttons, and opened his shirt, under which his T-shirt read:
SMITH & WESSON: THE ORIGINAL POINT-AND-CLICK
.

Hardy, a longtime fan of Wes’s T-shirt fetish, nodded in appreciation. “What happens when you run out of those things?”

Farrell shook his head. “Couldn’t happen. The themed T-shirt market is unending. I get six or eight a day from my legions of fans. If it stops tomorrow, I’m good till I’m seventy-five.” He started buttoning up his dress shirt. “So how’ve you been? How’re things at the old office?”

“Good and good. Phyllis sends her love.”

“Ah, Phyllis. The things we never thought we’d miss.”

“You miss Phyllis?”

“Actually, no, not specifically. I think I was talking about those carefree days of yesteryear back when Phyllis was the worst thing we were likely to encounter on any given day. Here, every fifteen minutes, we get people who make Phyllis look like Mother Teresa.”

“So you take naps to avoid them?”

“Hey.” Farrell pointed a warning finger. “I deserve some rest when I get up at four-fifteen, as I did today. And even with the nap, trust me, I’ve already filled the asshole quotient for the whole day.”

“Having to do, by any chance, with the bar busts last night?”

Farrell squinted. “As a matter of fact, exactly. Are you on that?”

Hardy nodded. “Ed Benson called me a few hours ago, begging for conflicts attorneys. Naturally, I volunteered to do my public duty.”

“For which I, public servant extraordinaire, am deeply grateful.”

“But really. You charged these turkeys? Underage drinking?”

“It wasn’t my idea, trust me.”

“So who do we both have to thank, then?”

“You are aware, I presume, of our esteemed supervisor, Liam Goodman?”

Hardy sat on the arm of the couch. “I thought it might’ve been him. I’m just a little surprised you okayed the warrants.”

Farrell waved him off. “Don’t get me started on politics. Goodman wanted felony arrests, Diz. I’ll spare you the conversation we had. As for people knowing it was Goodman behind it, there won’t be any doubt by tonight. He’s going to be all over the news, local and national, taking whatever credit he can.” Farrell had come over to the foosball table. He took the ball from its spot under the goal and dropped it on the table, lined up a shot, and viciously spun the handle. Score.

Farrell looked over at Hardy. “As though the city doesn’t have enough problems. We had three murders last night, you know that? Three. I don’t even know how many assaults and break-ins and drug deals and muggings and random mayhem, all of it more or less serious, and what do I get a call about? The scourge of underage drinking. Are you kidding me?”