John Lescroart: Hard Evidence

‘Ms Aiella!’

‘I don’t believe you asked her a question, Your Honor.’

Fowler glared at Aaron Jaans, threw a glance at Dismas Hardy, who was standing to Jaans’ right, then spoke again, looking directly at Esme. ‘Ms Aiella, the court directs you to speak up. Can you hear me clearly?’

The woman nodded.

‘Would you please use words? Can you hear me clearly?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Your Honor, my client -’

Fowler held up his palm. ‘Mr Jaans, I am speaking to your client directly, is that clear?’ Without waiting for a response, the judge continued. ‘Now, Ms Aiella, you are in a bad situation here. I must tell you that the charge of grand theft is very serious. If you are convicted, there will not just be a fine, there is the possibility – the very real possibility – of going to prison. Do you understand?’

The hand came away from her mouth. ‘Yes, sir.’

‘Do you care about that?’

She shrugged. ‘It don’t matter.’

‘Going to prison doesn’t matter?’

Esme shrugged again.

Fowler looked over at Hardy. Clearly, it didn’t matter. Lecturing, arguing or threatening wasn’t going to make any difference. The judge’s eyes roamed the back of the courtroom for a moment, then he brought down his gavel. He indicated that Hardy follow him to his chambers. The court will take a brief recess.‘

‘There’s no hope,’ the judge said. It was a statement so atypical of Andrew Bryan Fowler that Hardy couldn’t immediately reply. There was nothing about the judge that suggested he could ever think there was no hope. He looked, as always, terrific. His thick black hair was peppered with enough gray to suggest wisdom, but not at the expense of advanced age. As a teenager he’d modeled for the Sears catalog, and his tanned face still had those fine All-American lines. His gray-blue eyes were penetrating, chin strong, teeth perfect, nose straight.

Andy’s handmade blue dress shirt was wrinkle-free, even under his robes, and the gold cufflinks customized with his initials, ABF, provided just the right tone for a judge.

The cufflinks were often visible as Fowler sat on the bench, his fingers templed at his lips, listening to an argument he would later recall nearly verbatim. The cufflinks added to what the Romans had called gravitas - the nearly indescribable quality that rendered a man’s acts and judgments significant. On the bench, His Honor Andy Fowler possessed gravitas in spades.

Here, in his chambers or at home, it was different, but not so very different. Hardy hung out around the house in jeans and a sweatshirt – in his bartending days, he’d been happy in tennis shoes, old corduroys, t-shirts. Even now, in one of his three new suits, Hardy was aware of the knot of his tie at his Adam’s apple. Andy, by contrast, would arrive at a Sunday barbeque in pressed khakis, tasseled cordovan loafers, dress shirt and blazer, sometimes with a tie. When Andy played tennis, which he did well and often at the Olympic Club, he wore whites. Hardy guessed he slept in tailored pyjamas and wore a bathrobe and slippers to have his coffee alone in his kitchen.

Hardy picked the paperweight off the desk. It was a strange and beautiful piece of light-green jade, nearly translucent, oddly shaped, with sea birds and whales etched in light relief on the highly polished surface.

Fowler was hanging his robe in the corner. He turned around. ‘I don’t like to do this to you, but even without this girl’s cooperation, we’re not going with felony grand theft on this.’

‘We’re not? Why not?’

‘Because this kind of entrapment will not wash in my department, Diz. Chris Locke knows this. Art Drysdale knows it. I don’t know why they keep sending these turkeys up here to Superior Court.’

The judge was getting to be infamous around the Hall for his views on entrapment. His popularity, once very high, had suffered for it, but he was opposed to putting people away for crimes he thought they wouldn’t have committed without a push from the police.

‘The woman,’ he said, ‘picks up a John in Union Square and they go to his hotel room. The television set in the room is, surprise, really a video camera, and when our boy goes out of the room to the bathroom, we get a lovely picture of Esme Aiella taking his wallet, which happens to contain just enough American dollars to constitute what the law calls grand theft.’ He shook his head in disgust. ‘Because I like you, I run a bluff like I just did. Who knows, maybe she’ll give up her pimp. But she’s not going to give up her pimp – there’s no way. So now this goes back to what it is – a misdemeanor prostitution that should not take up time in my courtroom.’

‘She did steal the money, Andy.’

‘Diz, they all steal. Why do you think prostitution’s illegal in the first place?’

‘So we just fine her and forget it?’

Fowler’s shoulders sagged. ‘Every single day of the year we fine ’em and forget ‘em. There’s just no hope,’ he repeated.

The heft and balance of the paperweight felt incredibly good. Hardy sat down with it, passing it back and forth in his hands. The judge walked to one of the two windows behind his desk and crossed his hands behind his back.

Hardy got up, put the paperweight back in its spot and went and stood next to the man who’d been his father-in-law for five years. ‘Andy, are you all right?’

The judge sighed. ‘Sure, I’m fine.’ He flicked his smile back on. ‘See?’

Fowler didn’t talk about there being no hope, but if he didn’t want to talk at the moment, Hardy wasn’t going to push it. ‘So what about next time with Esme Aiella? Don’t we ever get the hammer?’

The judge stared at nothing out his grimy window. ‘Cure her, you mean?’ His laugh was more a bitter snort. Fowler parted the shades of his window as if looking for something. Not seeing it, he moved back to his desk, into his red leather chair. ‘A girl like Esme, all the girls like Esme, they’re turning tricks because nothing matters anyway. Their pimp is their father. He beats them and sleeps with them.’

‘You think Esme’s father was sleeping with her?’

Fowler reached for the paperweight now himself, nodding. ‘Or her brother, or uncle, or all of the above. Women in the trade, they were broken in at home. And on the flip side, if their daddy was screwing them, even if they don’t go into it full-time, they’ll turn a trick or two. It’s cheap psychology, but it’s in every profile.’

Hardy knew it was true. He remembered the interview he’d read where some reporter had asked a prostitute whether she had been abused as a child. And the woman had laughed. That was her response – laughter that the guy could be so dumb as to even ask that question. ‘Honey,’ she’d replied, ‘not “abused”. Fucked, hit, messed with, and that’s everybody I know. Every single girl in the trade.’

‘So there’s no hope,’ Hardy said.

‘I wouldn’t hold my breath.’ The judge absently cupped the paperweight in his hand, bouncing it with a dull thump on the desktop.

A minute had passed. Fowler continued to tap the paperweight against the desk. Then, as if they’d been talking about it all along, he said. ‘Yeah, something’s eating me, I suppose.’ He put the jade down, swiveled in his chair. ‘I’m not myself, Diz. I feel like an old clock who’s run out of spring.’

‘How long’s it been since you’ve had a vacation?’

Fowler snorted. ‘A real vacation? A year ago August. But I just spent last weekend in the Sierras, put some miles on the hiking boots, didn’t see a soul.’ Fowler put the paperweight down. ‘Here I am back in civilization and it doesn’t seem to have helped a bit.’