“OK, shoot,” Yuki said.
And then the laughs were over and the real interview began. Zac Jordan asked about her first job in corporate law and her reasons for going to the DA’s Office, and then he started drilling down on the cases she’d worked from the beginning of her time with the DA.
Yuki had lost nearly all the cases she’d prosecuted in her first three years, and Zac Jordan seemed to know each case as well as if he’d been sitting in the courtroom. He questioned her on every soft opening statement, every missed opportunity, every time opposing counsel had trampled her with superior litigation experience.
Well, yeah, she’d been outgunned in several cases, but there were usually contributing factors: faulty police work, a witness who changed her testimony, a defendant who committed suicide before Yuki made her closing argument. Depressing, deflating “not guilty” verdicts had made her even more determined to sharpen her game. Which she had done.
Meanwhile, here she sat, having to defend her fairly pathetic win/loss ratio to a man she didn’t know, who might or might not offer her a job she didn’t necessarily want.
When Zac Jordan dug into the infamous Del Norte ferry shooter’s trial, in which the defendant had killed four people and had been found legally insane, Yuki really had had enough.
By definition, the shooter was crazy.
But she had to try him for multiple homicides. That was her job.
So she forced a smile and said to the hotshot across the desk from her, “Well, gee, Zac. I have always done my best, and I’ve been promoted several times. I really don’t understand why you asked to see me. Did you just bring me in so you could stick it to me?”
“Not at all. I needed to hear your side of these cases because we’re always the underdogs. How would you feel about defending the poor, the hapless, and the hopeless?”
“I don’t know,” Yuki said, abandoning her plan to get the job offer knowing that if she didn’t want it, she could turn it down.
“See if this is of interest to you, Yuki,” Zac said, handing her a file. “I have a case that desperately needs to be tried. The victim was arrested outside a crack house where some dope slingers had been shot. He was running. He had a gun. The cops had probable cause to arrest him, but this kid was fifteen and had a low IQ and for some damned reason, his parents weren’t there. Although he maintained that he only found the gun, that it wasn’t his, the cops muscled him into waiving his rights, and then he was squeezed until he gave a confession.
“While this poor schnook was awaiting trial, maybe a week after his arrest, he was murdered in jail. If he’d had a trial, he might have proven his innocence, and I do believe he was innocent. I believe he was victimized by the cops who interrogated him and that he should never have gone to jail at all.
“I’m going to have to ask something of you, Yuki. Think about this overnight and see how you feel tomorrow morning. You’re my first choice for this job, but I’m talking to someone else, too, and I have to make a hire right away.
“Give me a call either way, OK?”
CHAPTER 14
YUKI HAD BEEN lying awake in bed since Brady got up at four and started bumping into things as he tried to dress in the dark.
“You can turn on the light,” she said.
“I’m good. My socks. I can’t tell if they’re blue or black even when the light is on.”
He came to the side of the bed, sat on the edge of it, and kissed his wife.
“Why are you up?” she asked him.
“A drug lab was shot to shit. Go back to sleep. I’ll call you later.”
Yuki thought, Later might be too late. He was checking his gun, strapping on his shoulder holster.
“Brady?”
“Hmm?”
“C’mere a sec.”
He came back to the bed and stood above her in the dark, zipping up his Windbreaker.
“I have to tell you something big,” she said. “I’m going to leave the DA’s Office.”
“What? Yuki, what are you talking about?”
“I have a job offer with a not-for-profit. The Defense League. Impeccable credentials. I’ll get the same salary, don’t worry. But I’ll be defending people with inadequate representation. They already have a case for me.”
“Can we talk about this later?” Brady said. He unhooked his phone from its charger and put it in his pocket.
“Sure. We can talk about it,” she said. “But I’ve got to give the Defense League an answer.”
“Today?”
“Yes. And I’ve got to tell Parisi before I accept, and he’s on his way out of town at the end of the day.”
Brady took his wallet off the dresser and put it in his back pocket. He was moving in a pretty herky-jerky fashion. Yuki read his body language. He was processing something he really didn’t like. She knew her timing sucked.
“Sounds like you’ve made up your mind.”
“It was sudden. I just met with the director yesterday, and I wanted to think about the offer overnight.”
“Thanks for your faith in me.”
Yuki trusted Brady with her life. This wasn’t about faith in Brady.
“OK,” he said after five or six silent seconds had elapsed. “I guess you should do what you want. I hope it works out for you.”
“Brady? Please don’t be like this.”
“People are waiting for me, hon. I’ll see you later.”
She listened to him leave the apartment, closing the door hard; she heard the door lock. And she heard her dead mother’s voice inside her head.
You hurt your husband’s pride, Yuki-eh. Why didn’t you ask him if he approved of this move?
She didn’t have to answer her mother. She felt defiant, knowing that truly, Brady would have pressured her out of the job. And he would have had valid reasons. He would have said it was good for her to work in the Hall, to be near him.
As a lifetime cop, he would have told her patiently that it was good for her to be part of the city government, where her job was secure, where she was moving up, making a reputation, and locking in a pension plan. He would have said that her hours might be long, but they were predictable. And he would have said that he wouldn’t be able to stop worrying if she was working in bad neighborhoods.
And he would have been right on all those points.
But he would also have been wrong.
Safe was good. But she had another idea about what she should be doing with her life and her abilities. She wanted to do work that would make her feel good about herself.
Yuki looked at the clock, then slipped a sleep mask over her eyes.
She tried to fall back to sleep, but there was no way.
As bad as it was fighting with her husband, she couldn’t stand thinking about what Red Dog was going to say to her. It wasn’t going to be good.
But she had to get it over with.
CHAPTER 15
YUKI SAW THAT Leonard Parisi’s office door was open and that he was at his desk, with its wide, uninspiring view of traffic and the handful of gritty low-rent businesses on Bryant Street.
Parisi’s assistant was away from her post, so Yuki rapped on her boss’s door frame. He smiled at her and waved her in, pointing to the phone at his ear.
She came inside and closed his door behind her. Then she took the chair across from him at his leather-topped desk and stared past his shoulder to the wall hanging behind him that showed the caricature of a big red dog gripping a bone in its teeth.
Yuki had thought about what she was going to say to Len; she knew that in some ways, it was as critical as an opening statement to a jury. Len was that important a person in her life. But she knew that once she’d made her speech, the meeting could go very wrong, depending on what Len said to her.
Parisi was talking to a witness for an upcoming trial. The man had just had an emergency quintuple bypass. Yuki let her mind float until Parisi hung up the phone.
“Sorry, Yuki. That was Josh Reynolds. He’s not feeling too well.”