Betrayal

his files, including yours. I got them about four months ago.'

'You a slow reader?'

Hardy's glance came up at his new client again. The guy wielded words efficiently, short punches inside. First a wave at humor, then a cutting jab. A lot going on behind unyielding eyes. Hardy figured he deserved the rebuke-four months while he decided whether or not to take on the appeal himself must have felt a lot different to him than those same four months inside the prison had to Evan.

But Hardy was here now, and that's what mattered. Evan's trial had ended nearly two years before. Charlie Bowen obviously hadn't gotten too far with the appeal in the fourteen or so months that he'd worked on it. Nobody else had done anything on it for six months after Bowen disappeared. The four more months that Hardy had taken while he made up his mind after he got the files were the least of Evan's real problems.

So Hardy ignored the question. It was irrelevant now. He pushed his chair back from the desk, crossed his legs, started in a conversational tone. 'I used to be a cop,' he said. 'Before that I was a Marine and did a tour in Vietnam. Sound familiar?'

'You enlist?'

'Marines,' Hardy repeated. 'They don't draft Marines.'

'How old were you?'

'Twenty.'

'Yeah, I was twenty when I joined the Guard, still in college.'

'That was pre-nine-eleven?'

'Pre-everything,' Evan said. 'Different world. The Guard looked like easy money at the time. A good way to keep in shape. Who knew?'

'Did you go right into the Police Academy after school?'

'Pretty much. Couple of months off, maybe. You can only drink so much beer and do nothing else before it gets old.'

'I don't know. I spent ten years doing that. I had a kid who died.'

Hardy wasn't fishing for sympathy. He wanted Evan to know a little bit about who he was, why he might be taking on this case personally. The young man's history struck a chord in him. With his life apparently over, Evan was still seven years younger than Hardy had been when he'd awakened from his own long alcohol-powered slumber after the death of his first son, Michael. Starting over from scratch at thirty-eight, Hardy had resurrected himself and his life in a way he would have been unable to predict-success, wife, kids, even happiness. So he knew it could be done. You didn't want to bet on it, but the slim possibility was there. Maybe this kid-like Hardy an ex- cop, ex-soldier-could get another chance. 'So how long,' he asked, 'did you walk a beat before they recalled you?'

'Three years, give or take. This isn't in my file?'

'How's it relate to your case?'

Perhaps unconsciously, Evan scratched with his right index finger at the surface of the desk. 'I don't see how it would.'

'That's why it's not in your file,' Hardy said. 'Not in Bowen's, anyway.'

'What about Everett Washburn's?'

'It might be there, I don't know. I haven't talked to him yet. I wanted to meet you first. See what you had to say.'

'Like what?'

'Like your own testimony at your trial. Was that Washburn's decision, or yours?'

'I don't remember, exactly. I think we agreed on it together.'

'I don't understand why, when you were on the stand, you didn't take the chance to tell the jury yourself that you didn't kill Nolan. If you didn't.'

The scratching stopped. Evan stared across at Hardy. 'Maybe I did do it.'

'Okay. That'd be a good reason. Did you?'

'You really want to know?'

'It's why I'm here.'

'Washburn never cared one way or the other. If I actually did it, I mean. Said it didn't matter.'

'That's what makes the world go 'round. I do care if you killed him. Did you?'

'I don't know,' he said.

THE SECOND OFFICE out of which Everett Washburn practiced law was the lower flat of a Victorian building on Union Street in San Francisco. It was really more of a personal refuge than a business office. Everybody in Redwood City knew Washburn; aside from his managing-partner role in his own firm, he was a fixture at the Broadway Tobacconists down there, and sometimes the constant familiarity, having to be 'on' all the time, got to be a little much for the old man. In San Francisco, he kept a secretary who came in for about ten hours every week. Her main job was to keep the plants watered. There were a lot of plants.

The place he favored most in the flat was all the way in the back. Twelve feet in diameter, octagonal in shape, with windows on four of the walls and bookcases stuffed with leisure reading-no law books-on the other four, the room was intimate and comfortable. It held his rolltop desk and slat-back chair, two small upholstered couches, a love seat, a large, square coffee table of distressed wood, and a couple of wing chairs. All of the furniture sat on a cream-colored Persian rug that had set him back twelve grand five years before.

'This is a great room,' Dismas Hardy told him as he followed him in and stopped to admire it. 'I could live in this room.'

'It has a certain feng shui, I must admit. I do love the place. Have a seat, anywhere you'd like.' Washburn plumped himself down in the middle of one of the couches, fixing Hardy with an appraising stare. 'I've heard your name come up several times over the past few years, Mr. Hardy, but seeing you, I think we've met before, haven't we?'

Hardy took one of the wing chairs. 'Yes, sir. And it's Diz, please. About five years ago in Redwood City. You put me in touch with an ex-client of yours and she wound up saving one of my associates' lives.'

'Literally?'

'Well, the information she gave me. It solved a murder case about ten minutes before the guy could do it again.'

Washburn pulled a look of pleased surprise. 'I must say I don't hear that kind of story too often. An actual solved murder? My side of things, that never happens.'

'Well, it did once. I probably should have gotten back to you, told you about it.'

'You're telling me now. It's good to hear when a case turns out well. Did I charge you for the referral to my ex-client?'

'No.'

Washburn clapped his hands together. 'So much the better. Although as we all know, no good deed goes unpunished.'

'I know,' Hardy said. 'I avoid them at every opportunity.'

'And yet you've done me the courtesy to come down here to see me.'

'That's not a good deed. I needed to talk to you and it was either my office or here. It gave me the chance to get out into the air in the middle of the day.'

'Well, regardless, I appreciate your flexibility.' And then, suddenly, as though he'd flicked a switch, Washburn shifted into business mode. He came forward to the very edge of the couch with his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped loosely. 'You said it was about Evan Scholler.'

'It is. I'm doing the appeal.'

'Ahh. So you're the guy who comes in after the battle to shoot the wounded.'

'I hope not. I've reviewed the transcripts. So far, from what I see, I'm not inclined to go with incompetence of counsel.'

'That's magnanimous of you. Though in all honesty that trial wasn't one of my finer moments, I'm afraid. But what are you going to do when your client won't plead? I know I could have gotten him a manslaughter, and he could be out by the time he's forty. Now…' He shook his head. 'Anyway, when I heard it was about Scholler, I