32

Hardy smelled bacon and felt the soft touch of his wife’s lips against his cheek. ‘I turned off the alarm and gave you an extra half hour.’

‘You’re my savior.’

‘I know. Come eat and get dressed after.’

It was five forty-five. He stepped into a pair of jeans and threw a jersey over his head. Out their bedroom window he could discern the outline of the Oakland hills, so the sun must have been somewhere behind them, but it hadn’t marched into the sky yet.

His coffee was poured in an oversized mug. Eggs were scrambled and steaming on his plate with six fat strips of bacon, English muffins, and marmalade. He loved marmalade and for some reason never thought to eat it.

He sat down. ‘Did I already mention the savior thing?’

She smiled. ‘What time did you get in?’

‘Twelve-thirty, one, something like that. I finished the motion. Salter might-’

She stopped him, putting her hand over his. ‘Later. Trial later.’ She pointed. ‘Breakfast now. Eat.’

He closed his eyes and nodded, smiling. She was so right. ‘Good plan,’ he said.

‘Everybody needs one.’

At seven-thirty A.M. the sturdy jogging figure appeared in his running clothes at the end of the alley. Hardy, waiting at the automatic gate to the parking lot behind the federal courthouse, was dressed for court in a dark suit and blue tie.

With a good sweat worked up, Giotti didn’t stop until he was almost upon him. He didn’t expect any interruptions on his morning run through the downtown alleys, certainly not from a lawyer on business.

‘Morning, Judge.’

Giotti was breathing heavily, but managed a half-smile of welcome. He took a moment – recognition not quite there. ‘Mr Hardy. You’re up early.’

To Hardy it felt like high noon. ‘I’ve got to deliver a motion at the Hall before eight. I wanted to catch you first. I remember you said you jogged most mornings.’

‘Not enough.’ He indicated the gate behind them, which had somehow swung open – a guard watching for the judge? a remote switch in his pocket? ‘You want to go inside?’

‘No. Here’s fine. I’ve only got a minute.’

‘Okay, how can I help you?’

‘Do you know if Sal knew anybody named Singleterry? Joan Singleterry?’

This was the cog that had slipped for Hardy last night. He and Graham had spent hours in the past months surmising about Sal’s early life, the mysterious Singleterry woman, and had come up with nothing. But suddenly, in his open-vessel state at his office, Hardy remembered that Giotti had actually known Sal Russo during those early days, had fished and worked with him, played ball and partied with him.

Hardy was starting to have a feeling that Joan Singleterry might have a bigger role here than he’d understood, and Giotti could be the key to her identity.

Did he imagine it? The judge’s clear gaze seemed to flicker for an instant. But then he was back as he’d been, still catching some breath, thinking about it. Dashing Hardy’s hopes. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘She wasn’t an old girlfriend, before Helen, maybe?’

Giotti pondered some more, shook his head no. ‘I’m sorry. Is it important? What’s this about?’

Keeping it vague, Hardy said it was just a name in discovery that led nowhere. He was starting his defense today and needed everything he could lay his hands on. If this Singleterry woman was a source of the money – something like that – it might lead to another suspect.

He must have betrayed a little of his disappointment. The judge gave him a manly pat on the shoulder. ‘I don’t know if you’re going to need any suspects. I’ve been following the trial pretty closely. It seems to me it’s going pretty well.’

‘It’d go better if I could produce a killer.’

Giotti appreciated the sentiment. ‘Well, that, sure. But you kept the struggle out pretty good, I thought.’

‘I meant to thank you for that. The idea.’

The judge shrugged. ‘I just told the truth. There was no physical proof of any struggle. Since I know your strategy, I’ve got an inside track, but I get the feeling Soma and Drysdale don’t have a clue what you’re up to.’

Hardy allowed himself a small smile. ‘Well, wouldn’t it be pretty to think so?’

Giotti broke a true grin. ‘Hemingway allusions, yet. You’re a well-rounded human being for an attorney, Mr Hardy. When this is all over, if you don’t appeal’ – again, the reminder – ‘we ought to have a drink sometime.’

‘You could probably twist my arm.’

The judge nodded. ‘I might do that.’ A kind of wistful look came over him. ‘I just remembered how I miss Sal. Isn’t that funny?’

‘How is that?’

Perhaps he shouldn’t say. His mouth tightened, his body language briefly saying ‘No, never mind,’ but then that pose broke and he smiled sheepishly. ‘Do you have a lot of good friends, Mr Hardy?’

Hardy shrugged. ‘A few. I’m lucky with that, I suppose.’

‘I used to be too. That’s what they don’t tell you about this job.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Well, to get it – and don’t get me wrong, it’s all I’ve ever wanted. But to get it you’ve got to – how can I put it? – develop friendships. You make real friends when you’re on the rise, some would say on the make. You give parties, go to them, hobnob. You impress people with your brains – your legal knowledge and learned opinions and quick wit. It’s heady.’

‘I’d imagine it would be.’ Though Hardy had no idea where Giotti was going with this, or why he was divulging these intimacies to him.

‘Then you get appointed.’ Giotti’s expression said a lot about disappointment, the alternate roads not taken. ‘It all ends. You’re cut off. Some of the more cerebral judges, they do fine. Others miss the friendships, but friendships aren’t on the docket. Too much opportunity for conflict of interest, see? And these are the very people who put you here. Suddenly you can’t fraternize anymore, certainly not the same way. You wind up pretty much alone.’

Hardy suddenly understood. ‘Except Sal?’

‘The last one of my old friends. I could go up and just’ – he instinctively looked around for other people, other ears – ‘and just bullshit with him. I think it must have been you digging up that Hemingway just now. That was Sal. He knew a lot, he was funny, I could be who I was around him.’

Hardy motioned behind him, toward the federal courthouse. ‘You brethren don’t play a lot of practical jokes on each other in there, huh?’

The judge’s voice rasped. ‘It’s a serious life, Mr Hardy. Don’t let ’em tell you different.‘ Giotti gave himself a last beat of reflection, then put it behind him. He was too busy for any more of this. ’So someday maybe you and I, we’ll go have a drink somewhere. I’ll call you Dismas, how’s that sound?‘

‘I’ll still call you “Your Honor.” ’

Giotti laughed out loud. ‘That’s what I mean,’ he said. ‘That’s just what I mean.’

Hardy handed his directed-verdict motion over to Salter in his chambers and sat in exquisite suspense while the judge read over the five pages.

This was a murder case. Discussion of Hardy’s motion would be on the record. So over by the judge’s window, Soma, Drysdale, and Freeman quietly kept up the flow in the mighty stream of law gossip. They’d all previously read Hardy’s motion out in the hall and made informal small talk about it before the judge had them come into his chambers.

The court reporter sat in the chair next to Hardy, ready to catch any precious pearl, should one fall.

Hardy thought he had done a more than competent job on his motion, clearly laying out each factual allegation made by the prosecution, and then demonstrating in turn how they had failed to prove any of them: they hadn’t placed Graham at the apartment, they couldn’t prove a struggle, they couldn’t even get the coroner to state unequivocally that it had been a homicide. There was no temporal connection or relevance to the money or the baseball cards. Alison Li’s testimony was meaningless.