The Shamrock's bar ran along one wall halfway back to where the room widened out slightly. At the front door, it was wall-to-wall people, five or six deep. His first glance told Hardy he had no chance to claim a stool anywhere near the bar itself, and even if he was successful at that, the crowd would keep Moses too busy to talk. Nights like this, Hardy would sometimes take off his jacket, grab a bar towel and help out behind the rail. He'd been a bartender once, and a good one.
But tonight he wasn't in the mood. It was too crowded, too loud, too hot. The jukebox was cranked up with some old Marshall Tucker music. Maybe he ought to go home.
He was just turning to leave when Wes Farrell and his live-in girlfriend, Sam Duncan, pushed their way in. Sam was a petite, feisty, pretty dark-haired woman, forty-ish, who ran one of the city's rape crisis counseling centers not far away on Haight Street.
"You're not leaving?" Farrell said. "Not when we're just getting here."
"It had crossed my mind. It's going to take an hour to get a drink."
"We've got that knocked," Sam said. "We know the owner. Come on."
Sam took Hardy's hand and led the way, jostling them through the crowd. Once they'd cleared the bottleneck up front, there was adequate room to stand and even move as long as nobody wanted to polka. Hardy noticed that Farrell was his out-of-the-office casual self, wearing one of his trademark T-shirts, which read "Be More or Less Specific." At Hardy's shoulder, Sam was saying that since he was buying, she'd have a Chivas rocks and Wes would have a pint of Bass Ale. Hardy could have whatever he wanted.
"Thanks," he told her. He ducked under the bar, gave McGuire a half-salute and called down that he was getting his own drinks, Moses shouldn't worry about him.
When Hardy got back with the drinks, Farrell nudged Sam and said, "Tell him."
"Tell me what?" Hardy said.
Sam sampled her Scotch, nodded appreciatively. "I don't know how it came up," she began.
"At dinner," Farrell said. "I started telling you about this situation with Amy."
"That's it." She came back to Hardy. "Well, the point is he mentioned this boy Andrew Bartlett and I said I knew a little about it. I'd been following it in the papers. I was interested because back when I was young and foolish, I used to hang out sometimes with Linda." At Hardy's uncomprehending glance, she added, "His mother."
"What do you mean, hang out?"
A shrug. "Just that. Go to bars, meet guys. This was before I met my true love here, of course. But if you wanted to pretty much guarantee you'd get lucky of a given night, you wanted to hang with Linda if you could. She could materialize men out of a vacuum. You're thinking 'so what?' Aren't you?"
In fact, that's what Hardy was thinking. Sam could make almost any story listenable. But the wild child Linda Bartlett was now the married Linda North, and other than the fact that San Francisco continued to be a small and self-referential little world, there wasn't anything particularly fascinating about the fact that she'd hung out and picked up men with Sam Duncan when both of them had been younger. But Hardy said, "Go on."
"Well, since it's the law and by definition must be endlessly enthralling, I say to my darling here, 'I'm not surprised the little kid didn't turn out right. His dad ran off and his mother didn't give him the time of day.' "
"So Andrew was around when you and Linda were hanging out?"
"He was around in the sense that he was alive. He must have been three or so about this time. But Linda would dump him with anyone at the drop of a hat. I even kept him with me for a couple of weekends when she went away with somebody. He was the cutest little guy, if you like three-year-olds, which, you know, are not generally my favorite. But even given that, this was a woman who shouldn't ever have become a mother. The boy was nothing but inconvenient to her. She was going to have her fun and all he did was get in the way."
Sam drank more of her Scotch. "Actually, that's one of the reasons I stopped hanging out with her. It just became obvious, the kind of person she was. I like to think I'm as shallow as anybody- it's why Wes loves me, after all- but she just wasn't going to be involved with her own son, and that was that. After a while it got so I couldn't stand to see it."
Farrell jumped in. "The reason this might be important to you, Diz-"
"Hey!" Sam hit him on the arm. "It's my story, all right? I understood your point at dinner. I'm getting to it."
"I'm listening," Hardy said.
"Thank you. The point," she shot a glare at Farrell, "being that the boy really has had a difficult life, especially in his early years. So in spite of the pampered rich boy he might seem to be, he was essentially an abandoned kid, raised, if you want to call it that, by an emotionally removed if not outright abusive mother."
"She abused him, you think?"
"I don't know if she actively abused him, like beat him or anything like that, but I guarantee you he's deeply scarred. And, finally, the point is…"
"Ahh," Farrell said, "the point."
"… is that in many jurisdictions, but especially in San Francisco, the wise defense attorney, such as my esteemed roommate here, will take every opportunity to present his criminal client as the victim of something, childhood abuse being perhaps the all-time favorite."
"It is a good one," Hardy said.
"And Andrew is legitimately in that club."
"If you can get it into the record," Farrell said. "It may not get him off, but it sure as hell couldn't hurt in sentencing."
"No," Hardy said. "I don't imagine it could."
17
We've got a problem."
At his desk, Hardy motioned Wu in. She'd taken some care dressing and making up this morning. She often did, so this wasn't unusual in itself. But the two-piece pin-striped dark blue business suit she wore was such a far cry from the way she'd looked in his daughter's bathrobe, nursing the mother of all hangovers, that Hardy blinked at the transformation. He'd been listening again to the tape he'd made at Juan Salarco's- something about it bothering him- and now he removed his headphones, gave Wu his attention. "Hit me," he said.
"He's a writer."
"Who is? Andrew?"
She nodded. "On his computer. They delivered more discovery here yesterday while I was out. This disk," she held it up, "is not good. You want to see?"
"It would make my day." He took the disk from her and slipped it into his computer.
" 'Perfect Killer Dot One,' " she said.
"Love the name."
Hardy's fingers moved over the keyboard. Wu came around behind him as the document appeared on the screen. Quiet and intent, together they read Andrew's short story about a young man filled with jealous rage who kills his girlfriend and his English teacher. For over ten minutes, the only sound in the room was the tick of the computer's cursor as Hardy scrolled through the document.
When they got to the end, Hardy found his heart pounding. He had also broken a sweat. He pushed his chair back from the computer, stood and went over to open one of his windows, get some air. After a minute, he turned to Wu. "I'd better go meet the client."
"Can I ask you a question?" Wu asked. They were driving out to the YGC in Hardy's car, the top down. "Do I come across as some kind of monster?"
"Not at all." Hardy didn't know exactly what to say. He looked over at her. The light changed and he pulled out. "Why do you ask? Did somebody say that?"
"More or less. That I didn't feel anything. That there wasn't anybody real inside of me."
"Who said that? Somebody in the firm?"
"No. A colleague."
"Well, whoever it was can ask me. The other night, talking about your dad, that was real enough."
"But I was drunk then, with my guard down."