‘But you didn’t tell the truth.’

Graham shrugged. ‘I guessed wrong.’

‘About what?’

‘About whether she cared about the truth, I guess. I thought she’d believe me, not the words so much.’

This was close enough to how Hardy felt to make him feel uncomfortable. ‘So what about now?’

‘What about now?’

‘You and me, the truth, all that silly stuff.’

‘I haven’t lied to you.’

‘As a matter of fact, you did. You said you weren’t close to your father.’

‘But I’d already told the police that. I… it didn’t seem like a big thing. I wanted you to help me out, and if I came across as inconsistent, you’d doubt me from the git-go. I screwed up, I guess. I’m sorry.’

Hardy closed his eyes for a moment. ‘Okay, so let’s get clear on this. Despite what you told me and the police – the police two times – you were close to your father?’

Graham nodded. ‘I figured it would be easier to just say I wasn’t.’

‘Easier how?’

‘That’s obvious, isn’t it? What everyone would think.’

Hardy stopped pacing. ‘You know what Mark Twain said? He said the best part about telling the truth is you don’t have to remember when you lied.’

‘I know. All this just came at me, Diz. I didn’t have any time to think about it. I said I’m sorry.’

‘I’m sorry too.’ Hardy wanted to get it straight. ‘So you were afraid that if you admitted you and your father had reconciled, people would draw the conclusion that you helped him kill himself?’

‘Yeah.’

‘But you didn’t? Help him kill himself?’

Graham had his huge hands folded on the table. He looked down at them, then back up at Hardy. ‘No. I’ve told you that.’

Hardy came up to the table, laid a palm down on it. ‘Okay, you told me that. But at this point, how am I supposed to know when you’re telling the truth?’

‘This one isn’t a lie.’

‘You didn’t kill your father?’

‘No.’

‘You didn’t help him kill himself? Talk him through it? Sit there with him? Any of that? Because if you did, it’s going to make a big difference. We’ve got a whole ’nother ball game.‘

‘No, I didn’t do that.’

‘You weren’t there on Friday at all?’

Again, the maddening hesitation.

‘Graham?’ Hardy slammed the table and his client jerked backward. ‘Jesus, what’s to think about? You were there or you weren’t.’

‘I was thinking about something else.’

‘Don’t. Keep your mind on what I’m asking you about. You think you can do that?’

Hardy pulled his chair out again and sat in it. ‘Okay.’ He modulated his voice. He wasn’t here to rebuke his client, but he had to get a handle on the truth. ‘Okay, Graham, let’s talk a minute about you and me. You’re a lawyer, so you know this stuff, but when you hired me the other day, I became your attorney. After that, anything we say to each other is privileged. Like now. Clear?’

‘Right.’

‘So I’ve got to know what happened with you and your dad. All of it. I’ll take it with me to my grave, but I’ve got to know so I can help you.’

Graham slid his chair back a few inches and folded his arms across his chest, his sculpted face impassive. His eyes scanned the room, came back to Hardy. ‘How long am I going to be here?’ he finally asked.

The abrupt segue – frustrating as it might be – was no surprise. Hardy’s experience with people who unexpectedly found themselves in jail was that their attention span lost a lot of linkage. ‘I don’t know.’

This was the exact truth. In spite of Glitsky’s warning the previous evening, nobody had arrested Graham until this morning. Evans and Lanier had discovered the safe-deposit money late in the afternoon – too late, according to Glitsky, to go to the district attorney and get an arrest warrant.

Then, last night Graham had neither been home nor at his paramedic job. Concerned that he might flee, the two inspectors had arrested him without a warrant when he opened his door to say hello. So the DA wasn’t yet involved in the case, and this meant that the exact charge – beyond simple murder – had yet to be determined.

Hardy went on with the explanation. ‘Your arraignment is tomorrow and we can’t get bail set until then, so you’re here at least overnight. Assuming I can get you reasonable bail, which maybe I can’t, you could be out tomorrow.’ He paused. ‘And if they’re not going for special circumstances.’

This got Graham’s complete attention. ‘What do you mean?’ The fingers spiked at his hair. ‘Jesus Christ, what are you talking about?’

‘I’m talking about murder for profit or during a robbery. That’s specials.’

‘I didn’t-’ He stopped. ‘What robbery?’

Keeping it matter-of-fact, Hardy told him. ‘Fifty thousand dollars in cash. Another twenty or thirty in mint-condition baseball cards. That’s a lot of money, Graham. You kill somebody, you take their stuff or their money. That’s robbery.’

Arms crossed again, Graham was chewing his cheek.

‘So from an outsider’s point of view, including the inspectors who arrested you, and not to mention yours truly, let’s see how it looks. You make – what? – fifteen bucks an hour as a paramedic.’

‘Give or take.’

‘And you live in the nicest neighborhood in the city – what’s your rent up there?’

Graham sighed deeply, answered reluctantly. ‘Fifteen.’

‘Okay, your rent is fifteen hundred dollars in this place a judge would probably salivate over. You’ve got beautiful furniture, more fine wine than you can drink in a month, what kind of car do you drive?’

‘Beemer.’

Another fifty grand, Hardy thought. He should have guessed. ‘I don’t suppose it’s paid for.’

‘You’re kidding, right?’

‘So what’s the hit on that?’

‘Six hundred eighty.’

The hard numbers didn’t matter so much – of course there would be other expenses, probably moving Graham’s monthly nut up into the range of four to five thousand dollars. He wasn’t making this riding in an ambulance.

‘So the picture, Graham, is that you quit your incredible job as a federal law clerk, then you got laid off by the Dodgers, now you work part time. You see a question developing here?’

Graham came forward, elbows on the table. He pulled at the neck of his jumpsuit. ‘I get at least fifty a game. That’s if we lose. A hundred if we win. Bonuses in tournaments, for home runs, like that. Last Saturday I made four hundred.’ He must have read Hardy’s blank look. ‘For softball,’ he explained.

‘Who pays you to play softball?’

‘Craig Ising.’

‘Who is?’

‘Some rich guy, he owns the Hornets. That’s my team.’ Hardy still wasn’t seeing it. Graham went on patiently. ‘When I made the big club, during the strike, there were a couple of articles in the papers about us – the replacement players – and Ising kept his eyes open and waited. When the Dodgers cut me and I got back home, he looked me up.’

Hardy heard the words, but felt he was missing some crucial point. ‘We’re talking slo-pitch softball? You’re saying there’s a professional league?’

‘No. It’s all under the table. It’s all gambling. These rich guys stack the teams and bet on the games.’

‘How much do they bet?’

Graham shrugged. ‘I don’t know for sure. I hear numbers. Ten grand, twenty. Per game.’

Hardy was shaking his head. ‘You’re kidding me.’

‘I don’t think so. It’s big business. The hitch is, I can’t declare any of the money – no taxes, no nothing.’

‘So how much do you really make?’

Attorney-client privilege or not, Graham didn’t want to say. ‘I don’t know. Some weeks I play three games, tournaments on weekends.’

‘And how many games are in a tournament?’

‘Usually five if you go all the way.’

Hardy was scribbling some numbers on his legal pad. ‘A grand a week?’ he asked.

Another shrug. ‘Sometimes.’ Then, suddenly, he spoke with the first real urgency Hardy had heard. ‘But this can’t come out. They get me for tax evasion, they’ll yank my bar card. I’ll really never work again.’