John Lescroart - The Mercy Rule

Freeman remembered his glass of wine and took a hit of it. ‘It was your choice having the kids, am I right?’ ‘Sure.’

‘So it’s your choice how you want to live with them.’ Hardy found himself getting a little hot. ‘That’s a fine and learned opinion, David, but you don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘You need this case, a murder case, something you can care about,’ Freeman said. ‘You’re burning out.’

Hardy didn’t need to hear this – it was too close to the truth. He hit the lights and closed the door behind them. ‘Well, thanks for the input.’

The short corridor was dark and ended in a stairwell down which the two men walked in silence. On the second floor Phyllis, the receptionist, had her station – deserted now – in the center of a spacious and extravagantly appointed lobby. The main lights had been turned down. Dim recessed pinpoints in the ceiling kept the space from blackness, but only just. Freeman grumbled a good-night and was nearly to his office when Hardy stopped at the top of the main circular stairwell. He sighed and put down his briefcase. ‘David.’

‘Yeah.’

‘ You ought to take this Russo case.’

‘I’ll be honest with you. I would kill for this case.’

Hardy smiled in the gloom. ‘You don’t have to kill anybody. It’s yours. I mean it. From right now Graham’s your client. You can introduce yourself when they book him, which could happen in the next five minutes. If you hurry, you can beat him down to the jail.’

The old man wrestled with it for a few seconds. ‘It’s tempting, but I can’t take it. He can’t afford me.’

‘Do it pro bono. He can’t afford anybody, and it would be great advertising.’

‘It’s your case, Diz. He’s your client.’

‘I don’t want him, David. Forget hum not being able to afford me, I can’t afford him .’

Freeman’s voice cut into the darkness. ‘You want my opinion, or probably you don’t, you can’t afford not . All I’ve heard from you for years now is how my clients – my guilty clients – they’re the scum of the earth. They deserve the best defense the law allows, but it’s not going to be Dismas Hardy who gives it to them. No, sir. You’ve got higher standards, right? You’ve got to believe in your clients, in their essential goodness. But you know, I’ve got news for you about the nature of humanity – it fails all the time. Good people do bad things. That’s why we have the beautiful law.’

The old attorney moved a step closer, all wound up now. ‘You think the work you’re doing with Tryptech is cleaner than what I do. Well, my ass. Dyson Brunei is at best a liar and at worst a crook, and you don’t seem to have any problem doing his grunt work for a fee.’ Freeman lowered his voice even further, his anger building. ‘Graham Russo walks in because he needs you, and you tell me he didn’t kill his father for his money. You believe in him, don’t you? But you won’t help him. You can’t afford to. All right, but spare me the rationalizations and the self-righteous bullshit from now on, would you? I don’t have the time.’

Freeman whirled and stalked into his office, slamming the door closed behind him.

In his living room a line of tiny elephants marched tail to trunk in a caravan across the mantel above his fireplace. They were made of blown Venetian glass.

Frannie had seen them at Gump’s and fallen in love, though she knew there was no way she would ever have them. They were too expensive, too fragile. An unnecessary luxury back when they’d had nothing. But Hardy had bought six of them for her and then one each year on their anniversary.

Now, finally home a little after nine o’clock, he stood in front of them, wondering if he could hear what they might be saying to him.

The elephants were part of their history. When they had decided to get married, he and Frannie had had many discussions about where they would live together. Finally she said she’d move out of her duplex into this house – Hardy’s house. He thought the gift would begin to make the place her own home, and he’d been right. She rearranged the elephants every couple of days, circling them, lining them up, facing them all in one direction or another. Mood stones.

(Her brother, Moses, did the same thing – rearranged the elephants – almost every time he came to visit. Hardy thought it must be genetic.)

It was a night for shadows. The living room, as the lobby in his building had been, was dimly lit, in this case from one light over the telephone in the tiny sitting area off the dining room. The house was eerily quiet. It was a ‘railroad-style’ Victorian with a long hallway, living and dining rooms up front. In the back the house widened with the kitchen and, behind that, three bedrooms. j The kids were asleep and Frannie had gone to bed, apparently;to sleep. He microwaved the leftovers of macaroni and cheese, mixing in a can of tuna for the protein, or taste, or something. At the dining-room table he started to review some of the Tryptech pages from his briefcase, but he didn’t have the energy.

He poured an inch of Bushmills into one of the jelly glasses the kids used. Returning to the living room, he lit a fire and drank his drink. When it was finished, he showered and slid in beside his wife’s possibly sleeping form.

The elephants were dancing in an amber glow.

A naked man stood in front of the dying embers, watching the beasts. There were fourteen of them, in a line, perhaps preparing to caravan. The wind howled outside.

Outside the fire’s perimeter the night was pitch, and out of its shadow a woman appeared. She was dressed in something white and flowing. Red highlights shimmered in long hair, worn down. She was barefoot.

The man half turned, afraid to step toward her lest he stumble. Twice already he had free-poured Irish whiskey into the Tom and Jerry drinking glass, too thick to break.

‘Are you coming back to bed?’

‘I couldn’t sleep.’

‘I guessed that.’ She laid a hand lightly on his shoulder. ‘Don’t hurt yourself.’ A reference to the drinking. When he’d been younger, before this marriage or their children, he had a personal rule forbidding hard spirits in his house. Now he sometimes thought they could open a liquor store.

‘I love these elephants,’ he said. It appealed to him to see one of the strongest animals in the world rendered in the most fragile of substances. ‘They look like they’re dancing, don’t they? Excited about going somewhere, doing something.’

‘Come on back to bed,’ she said. ‘I’ll rub your back.’

‘What time is it?’ he asked.

‘Two. The kids’ll be up in five hours, Dismas. It’s going to seem like five minutes.’

His hand was around the glass, on the mantel over the fire. He was aware that he was leaning on it for balance.

Frannie was right. Tomorrow – another in the seemingly endless procession of them – would come too soon. Freeman was right too. He was burning out.

He sighed, left the half-empty glass where it was on the mantel, let her lead him back down the long hallway to their bedroom.

Hardy wasn’t going to acknowledge the fatigue, the slight headache, the buzz behind his eyes. He had set his internal alarm for six-thirty, and it didn’t fail him.

Of David Freeman’s words the night before, the ones that had the most impact were those concerning the children – Hardy had chosen to have them, and he could choose how he lived with them.

He was failing there, with his kids, lost in some downward spiral he didn’t quite understand. He wasn’t taking any joy in them, in Frannie, in his life. Certainly not in his work. He didn’t know if it was only a function of attitude, but he knew he’d recognized it at last.