"No. You?"

Hardy nodded. "Thirty-seven mobile units, if you can believe it. You can't even get onto Bryant. They're diverting traffic around before you get within three blocks." Hardy glanced at his watch. "And we don't even start for an hour and a half. It's going to be a circus."

Farrell sat on the couch, doing up his tie. "You probably shouldn't have dated her. I mean, if you wanted to keep all these scurrilous lies out of the paper."

"Where were you when I was seventeen?"

"I didn't date until I was much older than that, so I couldn't have advised you very well."

"Funny. Frannie says the same thing."

A quick glance. Serious. "She okay with it?"

"Great. Peachy." He settled into his chair. "Although I can't say she's been totally thrilled with the Romeo lawyer angle everybody in the news seems to like so much. But the news jocks don't like it as much as my kids. Vincent's even taken to calling me Romeo in private, which of course just cracks me up. And then if the Beck hears him, she goes ballistic. It's a great time. Or how about last week, our 'Passion Pit' in the jail? Did you see that?"

"I thought it was pretty cool, an old guy like you."

"Yeah. Those Enquirer guys are talented."

"I wondered where that was exactly, the Passion Pit, to tell you the truth. But I was afraid you'd had so many intimate moments there that you didn't want to talk about it. Too private."

"So many. So many. Actually, it's the visiting room downstairs at the jail," Hardy said, referring to the antiseptic, brightly lit, glass-block-enclosed bullpen off the admitting area where lawyers got to meet with their incarcerated clients. "That's where we've 'consummated our love.' But to get to feeling really passionate in there, you've got to use some serious imagination, believe me. More than the Enquirer guys, even."

Wes had his tie on now and stood up, grabbing his coat. "And now it begins in earnest, huh? Can I do anything to help at home? Maybe Sam…"

Hardy shook his head. "No, I told you, we're fine. In fact, it's added a whole new dimension to our marriage, where she pretends it doesn't bother her and I pretend that I appreciate her understanding. It's special, but what am I supposed to do? It's a little late now."

"You could pray for a short trial."

"Prayer is always a solace," Hardy said. "I might go for that."

Twenty minutes later, he left his office to a gaggle of well-wishers in the lobby. This was a major case for the firm, and everyone was aware of its importance. It was still bitter cold outside, but Hardy was damned if he was going to hassle first with the impossible parking around the Hall of Justice, which for twenty-some bucks a day would not get him appreciably closer to the courtroom than he was in his office, and then with the gauntlet of the TV cameras and Minicams. No, wrapped in his long heavy coat and wearing gloves, he would walk the twelve blocks carrying his twenty-pound briefcase and sneak in past at least most of the jackals through the back door by the jail.

First though, there was the jail itself, and the pretrial meeting with his client. Over the months, he'd grown accustomed to seeing Catherine in the familiar orange jumpsuit that was her garb in the lockup, so this morning when she entered the "Passion Pit" in low heels, a stylish green skirt and complementary blouse, earrings, eye shadow and lipstick, he boosted himself off the table where he'd been sitting. He met her eyes and nodded in appreciation. "Okay, then," he said, "that works."

The female guard who'd escorted Catherine from the changing room closed the door behind her. Now the client took a step or two into the room, toward him, and stopped. There was something in her stillness that struck him as a falsely brave front, but she summoned what passed for a smile. "You ever get tired of being a lawyer," she said, "I think you've got a career in women's fashion."

Hardy had pulled a bit of a break with the judge when she'd allowed Catherine the dignity of changing into normal clothes upstairs instead of in a holding cell next to the courtroom. Hardy had contacted the good husband, Will, and he'd sent over three boxes of clothes and underwear, none of which fit her anymore because she'd lost so much weight in jail. So Hardy had her take her measurements and write down her sizes, then had spent the better part of a day a few weeks before buying a wardrobe for her at Neiman Marcus.

As it turned out, this straightforward and practical move had backfired in a number of ways. First off, Hardy really didn't know all that much about women's fashion, but his ex-wife, Jane Fowler, happened to still work in the field-she'd been a buyer at I. Magnin for years. The two weren't exactly close anymore, but they had lunch together a couple of times a year just to keep up. When he asked if she would do him a favor and accompany him on the shopping expedition, she'd agreed.

What happened next he might have guessed if he'd thought about it. But he really wasn't sufficiently paranoid yet, and maybe never would be, to fully appreciate what appeared to be happening around this case. Several tabloid reporters shadowed him on this shopping trip. Not only did someone snap a picture of him holding up a sexy bra, but the article followed up with the news that Hardy had bought the clothes with the firm's credit card, implying that he was paying for it. Although of course he'd just be listing the clothes in his regular bill to Will

Hanover for his hours and expenses, the article made the purchase look suspect.

And the icing on the cake was that Jane appeared behind him in the bra picture. The Romeo not just fooling around with his client, but now caught with his ex-wife. Frannie liked that part almost as much as the picture of her-wearing formless jogging clothes, with her hair in disarray and a somehow distracted and worried look on her face as she carried a couple of bags of groceries. The caption under that one: "Brave But Clueless."

Hardy shook his head to clear the memory. In front of him, Catherine did a little self-conscious pirouette. "I really look okay?"

"Better than okay."

She sighed, then threw a second sigh at the ceiling. When she came back to him, she was blinking. "I'm not going to cry and ruin these eyes today."

"No. Don't do that. That would be wrong."

Nixon's famous line from the Watergate era brought a smile, enough to stem the immediate threat of tears. "It's just," she sighed, "I thought I'd never wear anything like this again."

"You'll do that all the time, Catherine. You wait."

"Do you really think so?"

With more conviction than he felt, Hardy nodded. "You didn't do this. The jury won't convict you. You'll see. The system really does work."

"I want to believe that, but if that's the case, I keep wondering how it got me to here."

Now Hardy feigned his own brave smile. "One little teeny tiny design flaw. A bad cop. This is the version where he gets edited out. You ready?"

"I'm ready."

"All right. I've got to remind you that the next time I see you, we're in front of the jury. Some of them are going to think you and I have something going on, courtesy of our ever-vigilant media. So it's important that you and I appear to have a professional distance. Frannie's going to be out there. So is Will… no, don't look like that. He's got to be there. It's critical that the jury sees that your husband is supporting you through all this, that in spite of everything, he must believe that you're innocent."

"In spite of everything he's said about me. And what he's done."

Hardy nodded. "In spite of all that, he's our witness. He's got nothing to say about the crime itself. He's your husband. They can't make him testify against you."

"I hate him."

"I believe you've mentioned that, but it doesn't matter. He's out there, and it's good for the jury to see him and see that you're with him."