Hard Evidence

Hardy nodded. ‘Couple of years ago, I was feeling the same way, so I went on the wagon and flew down to Cabo for two weeks.’

‘Did that make you feel better?’

‘Not at all.’

Fowler smiled. ‘Well, that’s a big help. Thanks.’

‘It did pass, though. Other stuff came up.’

‘Yeah, I know. The problem is, life keeps going on while you’re waiting for that other stuff.’ Suddenly, almost with a jolt, the judge straightened up. ‘Oh, listen to me. A little case of the blues and His Honor becomes maudlin.’

‘His Honor’s allowed to get down just like anybody else. You getting out at all? Having any fun? Want to come over and see my new family, have some di

‘I don’t think so, Diz, but thanks. I’d keep seeing you with Jane, thinking about what might have been.’ Hardy’s first marriage, to the judge’s daughter, had ended in divorce. ‘If you want to play some squash though, I’d be happy to whip you at the Olympic.’ Fowler was up now, going back to his robes.

Hardy reached over and picked up the paperweight again. ‘Deal,’ he said. Then, ‘Where’d you get this thing?’

Fowler turned. ‘What -?’ But seeing what, his face darkened, uncontrolled for a second. ‘Why don’t you take it?’ he said.

Hardy went to put it down. ‘No, I can’t -’

‘Diz, take the damn thing. Put it in your pocket. I don’t want to see it anymore.’

‘Andy -’

‘Come on, Diz, let’s pack it up. I’ve got a courtroom waiting for my august presence.’ He brushed by in a swish of robes. Stopping at the door, he held it open for Hardy. ‘I’ll call you when I get a court. For squash.’

True to his word, Locke saw that Hardy got more prelims. Five new special assignments were in his box when he got back from court. He sighed, pulled the paperweight from his pocket and picked up the telephone. The files could wait.

Jane Fowler worked as a buyer for I. Magnin. She was getting ready to go out to lunch, but she took his call. He hadn’t talked to her since his marriage to Fra

Hardy and Jane had loved each other for several years. They had had a lot of good times, then had endured the death of their son together. But after that, Hardy had lost faith in everything, and if a marriage needed anything, it was faith.

So they’d gotten divorced. Then, after nearly a decade’s separation, they’d reco

Jane sounded as she always did – refined and composed. Shades of her father.

‘I’m glad you called,’ she said. ‘I’ve missed you. It’s okay to miss you a little, isn’t it? Are you all right? Is everything okay?’

Hardy laughed. ‘I’m fine, Jane. Everything’s peachy with me, but I just got out of a meeting with your dad. Have you seen him recently?’

‘I know,’ she said, ‘I almost called you about it last week, but I didn’t know how you’d feel about that. I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable.’

‘You can call me, Jane. What’s going on with Andy?’

‘I don’t really know. I’m really a little worried. He asked me over to his house for di

‘He wasn’t any slower from the bench. It was only back in chambers, on his own time.’

‘I thought he might have had a small stroke or something.’

‘Did you ask him?’

Jane laughed. ‘You know Daddy. The Great Deny-er. He’s picking at his food, hardly talking, and I ask him if he’s all right, and of course he’s just fine, couldn’t be better. And then he got drunk.’

‘Andy got drunk?’

‘You remember the time you and Moses drank a watermelon full of gin? The answer is no, you don’t remember anything about it.’

‘I remember the hangover.’

‘Okay, that, but up till the last time I saw Daddy, I’d never seen anybody so drunk since then.’

Hardy whistled. The watermelon drunk had become part of Moses and Hardy lore. If Andy Fowler had gotten that drunk, he was not himself. Something was seriously wrong.

‘Did he give you any idea what was bothering him?’

‘No. He just said he deserved a little fun in his life. What was the matter with a judge being human too? Then he started drinking cognac, talking about Mom and when I was a baby and all the decisions he’d made not to have fun while he got to be a lawyer and a judge and now his life was almost over… Anyway, finally he just got all slurry and I put him to bed.’ The line was silent for a second. ‘I’m glad you noticed something, too. It wasn’t just me.’

‘No. I don’t think it was just you. Anyway, I’m here to help if something comes up. Just so you know. Maybe I’ll play some squash with him, feel him out a little.’

There was another pause. ‘Thanks for calling,’ she said. ‘We’re still friends?’

‘We’re still friends. We’re always friends, Jane.’

After they hung up, Hardy took the jade paperweight out of his pocket and put it on his desk. Why would Andy have just given him – hell, not just given, demanded he take – such a beautiful piece?

Well, enough about Andy Fowler, he thought. Time to go to work. He reached for the new case folders and pulled them in front of him. He opened the first one – a DUI, driving under the influence, the influence in this case being alcohol. Eleventh offense. Level of point nine, which last year wasn’t illegal. Hardy closed the file, squared the small stack on the middle of his desk, put the paperweight on top of it and decided to go to lunch.

6

Art Drysdale was juggling baseballs in his office. In his youth, he’d played a couple of weeks as a utility man for the San Francisco Giants, capping a five-year career in professional baseball before turning to the law. Now he coached a Police Athletic League teenage baseball team and played a little B-League men’s softball at nights.

He liked juggling. He could do it blindfolded if he had to. It also tended to disarm anyone watching him, such as Dismas Hardy, who was standing in the doorway in the early afternoon.

‘Pretty great stuff you threw me there,’ Hardy said. ‘There’s even one guy who might have done something wrong, as opposed to illegal.’

Art kept juggling, not looking at the balls. ‘Illegal is wrong. D.A.’s Handbook, Chapter One.‘

‘I like the woman who didn’t use her pooper scooper. We ought to really throw the book at her.’

‘Doggy doo on the street.’ Drysdale gathered the balls in, held them in one huge hand. ‘Heck of a nuisance. We’ve got to enforce those leash laws. Next thing you know packs of wild hounds are destroying our society.’

Hardy came in and sat down. ‘But seriously, Art -’

‘No, but seriously, Diz.’ He moved forward in his chair. ‘You are not making friends here. Friends is how we like to do it. I scratch your back, you scratch mine. It’s a big office, what with the police and the D.A. and the Coroner all here in one big happy building. Now, in one swell foop you have pissed off Rigby, Strout and Locke. This is not good politics.’

‘Politics is not -’

Drysdale held up a hand and three baseballs. ‘I know you’ve been out of the desk-job environment a while now, but any office, I don’t care where, call it what you want, there is politics. Cooperation gets things done. You alienate the chiefs of three departments, I guaran-goddamn-tee you, you will not have job satisfaction.’