The Second Chair

by John Lescroart

  She sat at a table in the street window of what had probably once been a nice little boutique espresso shop half a block from the YGC. But the place had been servicing the juvenile hall clientele for so long that it had given up hope and lost whatever charm it may have once possessed. Now the bulletin board by the door bristled with lawyers’ business cards, photos of missing kids, ads for bail bondmen and private investigators. Stacks of assorted newspapers lay piled on a table by the sugar and cream. A pit bull, chained, slept on the floor in the back of the shop. Behind the counter, a young woman with a peg in her tongue and a ring in each eyebrow was wiping down the back counter, putting things away.

  Outside, long shadows stretched up the hill, but the faces of buildings across the street glowed in the last blast of blinding evening sunlight. The wind had picked up and was all but howling, flinging any trash that weighed less than a pound along the nearly deserted street.

  Wu’s day—from waking up hungover and alone, to her meeting with the Norths, then Andrew, then the fight with Jason Brandt—seemed to have lasted about a week so far, and the hardest few moments were no doubt still ahead of her.

  Well, maybe not the hardest. For a combination of guilt, anger and shame, she knew that it would be tough to top the half hour or so after Brandt had stormed away from her. What made it even worse was that she found she couldn’t even blame him. For it was true. Even when she’d first begun flirting with him the night before, she had known that her deal with Andrew wasn’t consummated. If she wanted to have any claim to calling herself an ethical attorney, she would have disclosed her conflict about Andrew to Brandt first thing. You simply did not have sex with your courtroom opposite number.

  Sipping her coffee, she was still sick with herself, appalled at what she’d done and at the situation in which she and Brandt now found themselves, a situation that she had orchestrated.

  She had risked both of their jobs—still risked them, if the truth came out—to satisfy some undefined and pathetic need to connect. It was beneath her, she knew, or at least beneath the person she had been until her father’s death had kicked the foundation out from under her, turned her into the kind of unstable, needy, manipulative, dangerous woman she’d always hated and resolved never to become. And the scariest thing was that the lapse with Brandt had completely broadsided her—she’d never even considered discussing Andrew’s case with him. There had been that spark, the attraction, and lubricated by drink, she’d just gone for it.

  Never mind that he was a colleague, a good guy, a no-bullshit attorney she felt she could really come to like and admire someday. Maybe more than that. Of course, now all of that possible future was out of the question. And that, too—the waste of it, the sheer stupidity—made her sick.

  And now—she looked at her watch—right now, she had to face her young client and wrest a final agonizing decision from him, one that shouldn’t have been his to make in the first place. She should have left the original disposition to fall where it would—with Andrew filed as an adult. Then there would have been an adult trial and he’d all but certainly have been convicted of some degree of murder, but it all would have been according to the system. Now, because of her arrogance, stupidity, blindness, she had placed the entire burden of choice on an unhappy, miserable kid. She wondered if it was a burden he would have the strength to bear. Earlier, when he’d broken down, she’d even viewed that as a positive thing—he’d be persuaded to do what she wanted. But what if he simply couldn’t deal with it?

  She shook her head, finished the last of her coffee and left the mug on the table.

  As was the case with Jason Brandt, this was yet another example of where she’d acted—committed herself, really—before she’d considered the implications of what she was setting in motion. She could only pray that Andrew was in fact guilty, as she’d assumed and believed all along. As she’d convinced his parents. That would make Andrew’s admission, though still difficult, acceptable, even preferable, as a strategy.

  As she turned up the walkway to the cabins, she stopped and looked up at the razor-wire fence. After she got Andrew’s admission sewed up tonight, she vowed she would change and never put a client in such a position again. But first she had to get his admission. First that. Then begin work on fixing herself.

  But she couldn’t lose sight of her objective in the short term. Too much was already riding on Andrew’s admission. She couldn’t let the accumulation of this day’s terrible events weaken her resolve or blind her to her first duty.

  “Don’t wimp out now,” she said aloud to herself, and started up to the cabins.

  “Who was that?”

  Frannie took off her reading glasses and put down her P.D. James. She was in bed, propped against her reading pillow. She had let her red hair down and now it hung to her shoulders and shone in the room’s light.

  Hardy turned from his desk by the room’s door. “Amy.”

  Frannie checked the clock by the bed. “At eleven-fifteen?”

  “She didn’t want me to worry and lose any of those precious minutes of sleep that are so important to men of a certain age.”

  “What were you going to be worried about? That now you’re not, I presume.”

  He spent a minute filling her in on his concern that Wu might find herself having to renege with Boscacci. “But she just got back home from what must have been a marathon session with Andrew down at YGC. She wanted me to know that she had nailed down the plea.”

  “Well, there’s a relief. I would have tossed all night.” Frannie went to pick up her book, stopped. “It took her twenty minutes to tell you that?”

  “To do it justice.”

  “And how old is this boy?”

  “Seventeen.”

  Frannie made a sad face. “Seventeen.”

  A nod. “And, unfortunately, a killer. A double killer, actually. Eventually, apparently, he gave that up to Amy.”

  “Confessed, you mean?”

  “Well, agreed to admit the petition, which is pleading guilty. And since that’s the deal Amy cut with Boscacci, I’m glad he finally got religion around it.”

  “So what was the deal with Boscacci?”

  Hardy filled in the particulars for his wife, concluding with the comment that Amy had been smart to keep Andrew’s parents away while she put the pressure on the kid.

  “Why is that?” Frannie asked.

  “Because he’d been telling Mom and Dad he didn’t do it.”

  “But he did?”

  “Yep, if he’s pleading, which he is.”

  “So then tell me again why he wouldn’t agree to plead guilty if his parents were there.”

  Hardy stopped and turned by the closet. “Because, my love, he continues to scam them. The dad’s paying the bills. First he can be a good boy and assure them to their face that he’s innocent, then he can save his own skin by telling Amy the truth. And—the real beauty of it all—he can then go back to his parents and tell them that Amy talked him into the whole thing. She coerced him. It wasn’t his fault. He didn’t really kill anybody. He’s a good boy.”

  A long moment passed, his wife staring into the empty space in front of her. “You are so cynical.”

  “Life makes smart people cynical,” he said. “It’s a sad but true fact.”

  “Not all of them.” Frannie let out a deep sigh. A shadow of distaste crossed her face.

  “Cynical’s not so bad,” Hardy said. “It saves a lot of heartache down the line.”

  “Right. I know. That’s what you think.” She closed her eyes for a second, drew a heavy breath, weariness bleeding out of her. “I guess I’m just worried about you.”

  “Me? Moi? I?”

  Tightening her lips, biting down against some strong emotion, she said, “Never mind,” and turned away from him.

  “That was a little humor, Frannie. Just trying to lighten it up.”

  Her chest rose and fell twice. Finally, she faced him. “That’s what I’m worried about. Everything be
ing a joke.”

  He tried to keep it light, josh her out of whatever it was. “That’s funny,” he said, “I wish more things were jokes.”

  When suddenly, none of it was a joke at all anymore. She threw off the covers and was out of bed, nearly running across to the bathroom, closing the door behind her. The lock clicked.

  Hardy stood stock-still, his head down. After ten seconds, he went over and knocked. Whispered. “Fran? Are you all right?”

  He thought he heard a sob.

  “Whatever it is, I’m sorry.” He waited a moment. “No more joking if you come out. Promise.”

  Finally. “In a minute.”

  It was more like ten.

  He was lying on the bed, hands behind his head. He barely dared look at her, afraid he might scare her off. The two of them hadn’t had a cross word since before the shoot-out nearly a year and half ago. He didn’t want anything to be wrong between them now. He said nothing while she got into her side of the bed, pulled the blankets up over her. “I didn’t mean to be so dramatic,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  “You can be dramatic anytime you want.”

  He waited for another minute, perhaps two. A very long time.

  Finally, she sighed. “I don’t mean to be critical of you,” she said. “It’s just that I am so worried about you.”

  “You don’t need to be. I’m fine.”

  “Maybe you are, but you’re not the same person you always said you wanted to be.” She shook her head. “I’m not saying this right.”

  “Okay. Take your time. I’m not going anywhere.”

  She wrestled with it for another minute or more. Finally, she sighed. “I just don’t know if there’s anything you care about anymore.”

  “I care about you. And the kids.”

  “No. I know you love us, but I mean with yourself, with your life. Are you happy with your life?”

  A million glib answers, the usual grab bag, sprung to his mind. But that, of course, was what she was getting at. He sat up and half turned away from her. “Am I happy? What makes you think I’m not?”

  “It’s not what I think.”

  “But something, just now, made you ask.”

  She reached over and touched his back. “It’s not just now. And maybe it’s the same something that’s making you not answer.”

  He shifted to face her. “I honestly don’t know what that is, Frannie.” Then: “I don’t feel like I’m doing anything different.”

  “You don’t?”

  “No. Not consciously anyway.”

  “No? What about this boy Amy just called you about? Andrew?”

  “What about him?”

  “You’re happy with him going to jail for eight years?”

  Another shrug. “It beats the alternative, which is life in prison. It’s also the deal Amy made. It seemed like a good one.”

  “If he’s guilty.”

  Hardy shrugged. “Amy says he’s admitting, so he probably is. Either way, though, the deal gets him out not much later than if he went to trial and got acquitted anyway.”

  “So eight years for an innocent person is okay with you?”

  “Well, first, as I said, he’s probably not innocent. And second, he’s already in the system. So he’s looking at a year or two, minimum, before anything shakes out anyway.”

  “Which leaves six years. In six years, your own little boy is twenty.”

  Hardy ran a palm over his cheek. “So this is about Andrew Bartlett?”

  Frannie shook her head. “It’s about . . .” She started over. “It just seems everything you do nowadays has to do with manipulating the rules somehow. It’s all just cynicism, and money, and cutting the deal.”

  Hardy’s voice hardened perceptibly. “Maybe you don’t remember last year too well, Frannie. When you and I tried to play by the rules, and got Polaroids with gunsights drawn on over our kids. The experience hasn’t quite paled on me. So yeah, I guess I’ve gotten a little jaded on the whole play-by-the-rules concept. If I’m good at bending them and that makes life easy, I’m a sap if I don’t.”

  “That’s what you tell yourself?”

  He turned now, frankly glaring. “Yes, it is. And I do very well at it.”

  Frannie glared back. “And that’s also why you drink all the time now? Because it helps you forget how you’re living?”

  “What I’m doing is supporting this family, Frannie. The best way I know how.”

  Frannie watched a muscle twitch in his jaw. “Look,” she said, “you cut a deal on this child molester guy the other morning, when you know there was a time you wouldn’t have gotten within a mile of him.”

  “That was fifty thousand dollars’ worth of—”

  “Stop. Then you go to lunch, have a few drinks, and make a deal for your firm to help elect the DA. Then you have some wine at your partners meeting and try to cut a deal to make poor Gina come back to work when you know that her heart’s gone out of it . . .”

  “Let me ask you this, Frannie—tell me someone whose heart hasn’t gone out of it, especially after . . .” He let it hang.

  Frannie waited until he met her eyes again. “I don’t mean to make you mad. I just don’t believe that the person cutting all these deals is who you really are.”

  “Who I am.” His laugh rang dry and empty. “Who I am is a guy who’s lost faith in the process. But the bills keep on coming, the kids’ college is around the corner. What am I supposed to do? Just stop?”

  “Maybe you could do something you care about.” She moved over toward him, put her arms around his shoulders. “Here,” she said, “lie down with me. Close your eyes. You don’t have to make any decisions right now, tonight. But a blind person can see how unhappy you are, how it’s all frantic and manic and going going going just to keep busy.”

  “Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die.”

  She kissed him. “You’re not going to die tomorrow.”

  She felt him growing calmer next to her, his breathing more regular. He put his arm around her and she lay up against him. After another minute, he said, “I think maybe I am drinking a little too much.”

  She noted the repetition of the disclaiming qualifiers—“I think,” “maybe,” “a little.” But it was nevertheless an admission of sorts and, she hoped, a start.

  After another couple of minutes, his body seemed to settle next to her. Sleep trying to claim him. “I’m tired,” he said. Then, “I’m worried about Abe, too.” The words were a barely audible mumble.

  Then he was asleep.

  Back at her apartment, Wu changed out of her lawyer clothes and chose a black leather miniskirt, a diaphanous red shirt over a skin-colored bra, a heavy leather jacket against the cold wind. Fifteen minutes after she’d hung up with Dismas Hardy, she was among the packed bodies at Indigo’s, another bar at the triangle. At a dinner-plate-sized table, twirling her first cosmopolitan of the night with a well-manicured hand, she perched herself on a high stool and showed a lot of leg. The volume of the music—an endless bass and drum loop—made conversation impossible, but she didn’t mind.

  She didn’t want to talk. She didn’t want to think about Jason Brandt, either. Or Andrew Bartlett.

  Wu shrugged out of her jacket, put it across her lap, straightened her back and turned to survey the groups of men who were drinking and laughing all around her. She caught one of the guys—good-looking in a grungy way, long blond hair, couple of earrings—checking the assets she so artfully displayed.

  He was very much interested.

  She smiled, slipped off the stool, got her drink in one hand and her jacket in the other, and moved in to cut him out.

  10

  The wind blew itself out overnight, but it was still unseasonably cold. A high, clear sky, bright sun. A rare city frost bloomed on every patch of green—admittedly not many of them—that Wu passed as she drove up Market Street.

  Her hands shook and her eyes burned, but she was still thankful about the timing of the hearin
g this morning. The ten o’clock call meant she didn’t have to go by the office and check in before driving to the YGC, and this had allowed her to grab an extra hour or two of sleep, badly needed after all the cocktails that had gone with last night’s adventure. She hadn’t made it back to her apartment until sometime after 3:00 A.M. She hadn’t fallen asleep until nearly dawn, and was jarred awake by the alarm two hours later—disoriented, depleted, wrung out.

  Still, by the time she entered the holding cell behind Arvid Johnson’s courtroom, the mixed jolt from the Dexedrine and the espresso had kicked in. Handcuffed, Andrew sat on a cement bench built against the wall. He seemed subdued and nervous, shrugging a greeting of sorts, then going back to studying the pattern in the floor between his feet.

  Wu put on a brave face, sat up close next to him. He smelled of disinfectant and soap. “Are you holding up all right? Did you get some sleep? How do you feel now? Are you still comfortable with our decision?” To each question, she got a shrug, a nod.

  She tried a few more conversational gambits, telling him that the judge was going to want to hear him admit the petition himelf. All he had to do was follow her lead and it would all be over before he knew it. He nodded some more, then at last shut her up with a curt “I know what I’ve got to do.”

  She had to take that as an assurance. He was going to be okay.

  Hal and Linda North were at their place in the first row, holding hands. Wu nodded to them, got a response from Hal, nothing from Linda but a blank stare. On the opposite side of the room, Jason Brandt directed his complete attention to the contents of some binders that were open in front of him. He avoided any eye contact with Wu. The two “rays of sunshine” had taken their respective positions again, Nelson by the back door to the holding cell, Cottrell in the otherwise-empty jury box. The court reporter and probation officer chatted amiably, and then suddenly the door to Arvid Johnson’s chambers opened and the judge, in his robes, was on the bench.