“No. Of course I was upset. But more at myself than at Allan.”
“All right. And after that, after this heated interview with Mr. Boscacci, what did you do?”
She gave him the details, as much as she remembered them, of the rest of her afternoon and early evening at Lou the Greek’s.
“And you were there continuously? You never left the premises?”
“No, sir. Not until about eight, eight-fifteen, something like that.”
“Accompanied by Mr. Barry Hess, is that right?”
“I think so. I mean, I think that was his name. Whatever it is, he was with me when I walked out of Lou’s and went to the All-Day.”
“So what is your relationship with Mr. Hess?”
“We don’t have one. He picked me up at Lou’s and I may have let him kiss me once or twice on the way to the parking lot. I really don’t remember too clearly.”
“Okay. To get to the place he was killed from the Hall, Mr. Boscacci very probably walked by Lou’s. Did you by any chance notice him walking by?”
“No.”
“Do you recall hearing a gunshot?”
“No.”
“All right. After you discovered the body, what did you do?”
“We called nine one one on Barry’s cellphone, and got the police.”
“And then what? Did you call anyone else?”
“I called Mr. Hardy at his home, but he wasn’t there. His kids told me where he was, and I reached him at a restaurant.”
“And why did you call him?”
“Because he’s my boss and I thought he’d want to know about Allan right away.”
“Is he also acting as your personal attorney in this matter?”
“My personal attorney?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry. In what matter?”
“Mr. Boscacci’s death.”
“No. Why would I need . . .” She stopped.
“He pretty effectively protected you from having to do this interview with me or someone else last night. Did you discuss that between you?”
“No. I was drunk. That’s why I didn’t talk last night. You were there. I talked to you, remember? We said today would be fine.”
“Right. Did you talk to Mr. Hardy about your statement today?”
“Just that I ought to get down here and give it.”
“Nothing about its substance?”
“No.”
“So last night, you didn’t call Mr. Hardy to come down to the crime scene to act as your attorney?”
“No. No, of course not. I didn’t need an attorney.”
“All right, Ms. Wu. Thanks for your cooperation.”
The bailiff wanted Linda to meet Andrew in the general visitors’ room, which was much larger than the other room they’d used the last couple of times, but far less private. She told the bailiff that she’d really prefer the smaller room, as she wanted to have a sensitive conversation with her son. But there was nothing the bailiff could do. The smaller attorneys’ visiting room was currently in use. There were a lot of kids here, and all of them had lawyers and parents.
So she waited, and waited—there were only twelve stations—until she got to the front of the line in the gymnasium, and then until a chair cleared. Sitting between two other women, one Hispanic and one African-American, she was hyper-aware of being the only Caucasian visitor.
Eyes down, Andrew entered in his protective shuffling teen gait, exaggerated shoulder movement, his feet kind of sliding along. She wondered why teenage guys considered it so cool to be sullen and silent, then tried to remember when Andrew had begun to adopt that walk. She thought it was about the time he’d stopped talking to her—to anyone in the family, really—three or four years ago.
But what could she do? It wasn’t as though parents could control their children or exert any discipline. Not in today’s world when everyone grew up so fast, when between television, the movies and the internet all kids were plugged into the same culture, the same clothes, the same slang, even the same walk. Linda believed that there was no way that she could have any impact against such a relentless and ubiquitous force. If you tried to teach them manners, discipline them, influence their behavior at all, they just shut you out. It didn’t even make sense to try; they’d just resent you for it. The thing to do was be their friend when they let you and otherwise leave them alone. The best you could hope for is that they’d eventually grow out of it, and somehow turn out okay. But that sure wasn’t anything over which she had any control.
The partition prevented her from giving him a hug. She missed the contact. It might embarrass him, but thank God he still let her hug him sometimes. Not that it wasn’t somehow grudging, not that he hugged her back with any enthusiasm. But he was still her baby, and she didn’t know any other way to reach him.
Andrew pulled out his chair and sat down across from her. They didn’t have him in handcuffs. They could reach across the counter and hold hands if they wanted, although she knew that Andrew probably wouldn’t go there.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey.”
Silence.
“Aren’t you glad to see me?”
“Sure.” A pause. “Thanks for coming down.”
“Hal and Alicia say hi.”
“I’m sure.”
“Don’t you want to tell them hi back?”
His eyes were flat. “Sure.”
For a minute, she feared that neither of them would find anything else to say.
She forced herself to keep trying. “How are you holding up?”
“Okay.”
“Really?”
A shrug.
Another silence.
“You look a little tired. Are they feeding you all right?”
“Yeah.” He drew a heavy breath, finally said something. “My lawyer was by earlier.”
“I know. She called us, too.”
“What’d she tell you?”
Linda tried to sound upbeat, but the news didn’t lend itself much to that. “That she was bringing on another lawyer from her firm to help with your case. Supposedly he’s really good.”
“What else is she going to say? That he’s shit?”
“Well.” She wished he wouldn’t use that kind of language, but she wasn’t going to say anything he might take as a reprimand. Not with everything else he was going through. “She also told Hal about these criteria to keep you here.”
“Yeah,” he said. “The Ritz.”
Linda sighed. “Do you like her?”
“Who?”
“Amy. I mean, Hal and I feel she’s doing a really good job, and now she’s brought on this senior partner to help. But if you didn’t feel good about her . . .”
“I don’t really care. She’s all right. It doesn’t really matter.”
“Of course it does, Andrew. Don’t lose hope now.”
“Okay.”
“Really,” she said. “Don’t.”
He shook his head. “Okay, sure, good idea, Mom. Except that it’s starting to look I’m never going to get out of custody.”
“Don’t say that.” She reached out over the counter. “Here, hold my hand,” she said.
“That’s not going to help anything.”
“Please,” she said. “Humor me, okay?”
He sighed again and put his hand in hers. “So there’s this hearing on Tuesday to see if I stay here. Did she tell you it doesn’t look too good?”
“Not really so much that. She said it was kind of like a dress rehearsal for the trial, where we get to see what they’ve got. Which is really an advantage.”
“I bet.”
“It is.”
He shrugged again. “Either way, Mom, I didn’t do this and still they got me in here. If they can do that, I don’t think they’re ever going to let me get out.”
Linda didn’t want to argue with him. “Well,” she said, “let’s just wait for Tuesday and hope for the best.”
“Mom, the
best, even if we win on Tuesday, is eight years.”
“No. If they have the trial down here, then the worst is eight years.”
“Great,” he said, “maybe we should throw a party.”
“Andrew.”
“All right, all right.”
“Let’s just see, okay. Keep your chin up.” She gave him a quick buck-up smile, squeezed his hand.
“Sure.”
A longish silence settled. Finally, she said, “I want to ask you something.”
“Okay.”
“And I want to know how you really feel.”
“All right.”
She took in a lungful of air. “Well, you know the Newport Open . . .” This was a tennis tournament in Southern California that they’d attended for the past several years. “It starts tomorrow and—”
He pulled his hand out of hers. “Go.”
“You’re sure?” She searched his face for any sign of wavering, and saw none. “You won’t mind?”
“Why would I mind?”
“It’s just we won’t be able to visit you.”
“That’s all right. I’m going to be working with Amy most of the days anyway. It doesn’t matter.”
“You keep saying that.”
“That’s ’cause it’s true. It doesn’t matter.”
“We’d stay here if it made any difference to you at all, you know. At all, even the tiniest little bit. No question.”
“I know that.”
“But we’ve had these tickets for months. They’re really expensive, you know, but we’d give them up gladly. We would.”
“You don’t need to.”
“And even if we do go, we’ll be back by Monday, in plenty of time for the hearing. We’d be there for you for that.”
“Mom, I said go. I mean it. It’s no big deal.”
“You’re sure? I mean completely positive?”
“Completely,” he said. “A hundred percent. Go. Have a good time.”
It wasn’t yet completely dark out, but Wu had drawn the blinds in her apartment and turned out the lights. She was completely wrung out and badly shaken by the thought that Glitsky might actually entertain the thought that she could have killed Allan. When she had at last gotten home after the interview, she’d swallowed more aspirin, brushed her teeth twice, then taken a shower.
Her head still throbbed, but she let herself believe that it was marginally better. By the time she woke up in the morning, she might be halfway to human again. Collapsing into bed, she had just pulled the covers up over her head, turned onto her side and closed her eyes when the doorbell sounded. This time she was going to ignore it. She’d already had the day from hell and all she wanted it to do was end, which it would when she slept. Whoever it was would go away.
Another ring.
Leave me alone! She pulled the covers tighter around her.
The knock, when it came, was authoritative. Three sharp raps. “Amy! Come on, open up.” Brandt.
She threw her blankets off and padded over the hardwood to the door, spoke through it. “What do you want, Jason? I’m trying to sleep. I don’t feel good.”
“I want to talk to you.”
“Talk to me in the morning.”
“Two minutes, that’s all.”
“You can apologize through the door.”
“It’s not just that.”
“No? Well, it should be.” She hesitated another moment, then sighed. “All right, let me get some clothes on.” Hitting the light switch by the door, she grabbed her jeans, stepped into them, then tucked in the yellow spaghetti strap cotton blouse she’d gone to bed in.
She considered taking thirty extra seconds and putting on a bra—she didn’t want to send any kind of sexual signal—but if it was going to be two minutes, she might as well hear it and then get back in bed. Besides, she wore no makeup, her hair was still damp, her eyes must be ravaged. She was a train wreck.
She opened the door.
In a gray business suit, white shirt, rep tie, Brandt stood awkwardly. Hands in his pockets. He cleared his throat. “Can I come in?”
Stepping back without a word, she let him pass, closed the door behind them.
He crossed over to her all-purpose table, pulled a chair around and sat in it, looking around, getting his bearings, really seeing the room for the first time. The other night they hadn’t paused for the grand tour before dragging each other into bed. Afterward she didn’t think he’d even turned on the lights, just pulled his clothes on and let himself out.
Arms crossed, waiting, she leaned against the counter by the sink.
“I was down in the street for a while and saw your shadow moving up here, then the lights went out. I thought if I was going to get you, it had to be now.”
“Okay, you got me.” Then his phrase caught her. “You were down in the street for a while? Doing what?”
“Just standing there.” He shrugged again. “Deciding whether to come up and try to talk to you.”
Something in his tone stopped what would have been another harsh reply. She cocked her head. “All right. Talk.”
“First,” he began, “I wanted to apologize.”
“Okay.”
“But beyond that, I guess I’m having trouble figuring you out.” He took a breath, pushed on. “I don’t understand what’s happening exactly, first the other night with us, then the next morning at my office—”
She cut him off. “Then you accuse me of murder. Talk about not understanding what’s happening.”
“Amy, I swear to God. I never accused you of anything like murder. I didn’t accuse you of anything at all.”
“That’s funny. I just got back from the Hall of Justice, where Abe Glitsky said you told him there was bad blood between me and Allan. He seemed to think I was some kind of a suspect.”
“That couldn’t have been me.”
“You’re saying you didn’t talk to him?”
“No. I talked to him. But just telling him about what’s happened with Bartlett—”
“And me and Allan.”
“Okay. But never even implying . . . I mean, come on. If Glitsky came to that on his own . . . If you want, I’ll call him tomorrow. I never meant anything like that. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean . . .” He looked up at her. “I’m sorry,” he said again.
Her tone softened. She was too exhausted for another round. “All right, apology accepted, okay? Now if you don’t mind, I’m exhausted and your two minutes are up.”
But he didn’t move. “I didn’t just want to apologize.” He scratched at the table, took a quick breath. “I wanted to ask you about you and me.”
“You and me?” She pulled a chair around and sat on it. “First you accuse me of screwing you for advantage in a case, then you go to Glitsky and somehow give him the idea I might have killed Allan. I don’t see any ‘you and me’ in this picture.” She paused, let out a breath. “Look, I don’t expect anything from you, Jason. That night was that night. I’m not telling anybody about it, so our jobs are both safe. So now you can go. In fact, you really should go now.”
“That’s not it,” he said.
“No? Then tell me what it is.” Sighing again, she shook her head. “Look, if it makes you feel any better, I thought it was a game to you, too.”
“No. Okay, maybe it started that way at first.” He walked over to one of the windows, turned back to her. “For a minute, I thought we had something going. I mean personally.” He tapped his chest. “In here.” He waited, eyes on her. “I guess not.”
She didn’t contradict him. Did he really think she was going to fall for this line now? If he would have said something that night, maybe. Because he was right. There had been a real moment between them. They’d both realized it. Beyond the physical stuff, something that had felt to her like a deeper connection. Then in the morning, he’d been gone.
Fool me once, okay. But twice? She didn’t think so.
A tense silence gathered, until she finally broke i
t. “I think you’d better get out of here right now. I mean it.”
15
Hardy didn’t want to go out after dinner at home, but with the 707 hearing looming, he felt he had no choice. Since Frannie had suggested he put his heart into his work again, she couldn’t very well object. They both knew the strains that Hardy’s work ethic had placed on their marriage in the past, and both saw the irony in her position. If Hardy was going to care, he was going to put in the hours. That was who he was. That was the trade-off. So when he told her he had to go out and have a talk with Mike Mooney’s neighbor, she kissed him with a tolerant humor. “Husbands,” she said. “Can’t live with ’em, can’t kill ’em.”
He had conceived of a strategic idea that he thought stood a long shot, but still possible, chance to play at the 707 hearing if all the stars lined up just right. He’d already told Wu that she could confidently call any witnesses she wanted. Jackman’s insouciant attitude notwithstanding, Judge Johnson would be concerned about the risk of having the case reversed on appeal. He wouldn’t hurt the defense any more than he already had done. And it would be greatly to Wu’s advantage if she knew how some of the witnesses were going to testify at trial.
But it had occurred to Hardy that he might be able to take it a step further, and convince Johnson that justice demanded he allow witnesses to the crime itself. This would be decidedly unusual, since in this type of hearing, the prosecution only had to make a prima facie case that the crime had been committed, and there wasn’t any doubt that somebody had killed Mooney and Laura. But Clarence Jackman had never practiced as a criminal lawyer in his pre-DA career, and even after three years in office, he was sometimes embarrassingly inexperienced in the nuts and bolts of how things really worked. And Hardy’s hope was that Brandt, young and relatively green himself, by pushing the supercharged rush to the 707 after Boscacci’s murder, had goaded Jackman to a tactical blunder.
Judge Johnson would be nervous that the defense had only been given five days to prepare for the hearing. No doubt feeling angry and abused himself, he would be inclined to grant the DA’s wish to get Andrew moved downtown—he’d want to slap Wu as badly as either Brandt or Jackman did—but Hardy and Wu would file motions by Monday making sure the judge knew that the defense considered this unseemly hurry an appealable issue. After that, if Johnson let the hearing proceed as planned, he’d be extra sensitive to the threat of appeal, and might let the defense get away with calling witnesses related to the case in chief as a function of the fifth amenability criterion—the gravity of the offense.
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