Yet it took him only two days to realize that none of those things, nor all of them combined, were going to fill the void created by the postponement Justice Hinkley had granted him. His daughter was busy with other stuff, and his granddaughters barely knew him. The Yankees were slumping, and the Giants were already suffering from training camp injuries. The park, he found, had been taken over by children, nannies, dog walkers and lovers. Reading made him fall asleep. Writing went badly. And every movie on TV seemed targeted at an audience of fourteen-year-olds. So who was he trying to kid with this Thank-God-I've-got-all-this-free-time-onmy-hands routine? The truth was, not only did he have no other cases to occupy his attention, he had no life, either.
Well, he had Amanda, a night or two a week. But while the sex was good, the guilt hovered over him like a stranger in the room. If she sensed it, and she must have, she never spoke of it, so neither did he. And while he never quite ended his visits to her apartment-for they never dared go outside-they became less frequent, and less fulfilling.
When he caught himself reaching for a bottle of Kahlua one night, he pulled his hand back no less quickly than if he'd reached into a live fire. 'Enough!' he shouted, the sound of his own voice echoing in his empty apartment startling him. 'Enough,' he repeated, more softly, but every bit as firmly. Then he took a deep breath, walked the length of the room, and stopped when he got to the door of his closet.
Procrastination might temporarily have had him in her grasp, he knew. But when it came right down to it, she was no match at all for her rival. That rival didn't have a grasp, she had a death grip. Growing up, Jaywalker had had an older cousin on his father's side, a scary-looking woman named Dorothy, who spent her days sweeping up invisible dust and rearranging the books on her shelves by color, size, alphabetical order or copyright date. He thought of her whenever he was forced to take stock of his demons. 'Old Cousin Dorothy's got a hold of me,' he used to tell his wife. Since her death, it had become his own private joke, one he never explained to anyone. The joke was in her initials, which stood for an undiagnosed but nevertheless full-blown case of obsessive-compulsive disorder. Jaywalker's particular strain of OCD was like no one else's he knew. It didn't force him to wash his hands fifty times a day, or vacuum his apartment incessantly, or repeatedly check the locks on the doors of his car before he could walk away from it. It didn't compel him to make sure each letter he inserted into a mailbox actually obeyed the laws of gravity and dropped safely downward. It would not have required him to line up the knives, forks and spoons separately and just so in a dishwasher, had he happened to own one.
No, Jaywalker's OCD manifested itself in a unique and singular way. It drove him-and drove doesn't even begin to tell the story here-to prepare and overprepare and over-overprepare, until he knew everything there was to know about a case, forwards and backwards, inside out and upside down. One colleague, who'd tried a six-week multiple-defendant case alongside him, had come away from the experience shaking his head in wonderment and disbelief. 'It's not like he walks into court better prepared than anyone else, myself included. He walks in a hundred times better prepared.'
Now Jaywalker turned the knob of the closet door, reached into the darkness and withdrew the file. It was only three inches thick at this point, and light enough to lift easily with one hand. But over time it would double in size and weight, and then spawn another dozen like it. He looked down at the label, read his own carefully printed words. The People of the State of New York vs Carter Drake III. It was time to get to work.
His procrastination had lasted all of four days.
Although he'd done little more than spend a couple of hours reading and rereading the file, the exercise had served to break the ice, always the hardest part. The rest would fall into place, Jaywalker knew; it always did. The next morning he took a drive up to New City, for another meeting with his client.
He found Drake sullen and uncommunicative. The reason soon became clear.
'Not only didn't you press for a speedy trial, you went and put my case off for five months!'
'Four and a half,' said Jaywalker. 'Actually, even a bit less than that.'
'Don't you get it? I'm going nuts in here. I've got nothing to do. And I can't make a living sitting in a c age. '
'Sorry,' said Jaywalker. He decided to spare Carter the lecture about the need for preparation and the importance of the passage of time in calming the community's anger. He realized he was beginning to truly dislike the man, and that was bad. Not in and of itself, there being no requirement that he and his client be buddies. No, it was bad because if Jaywalker didn't like Drake, chances were the jurors wouldn't, either. And a jury that disliked a defendant would find it that much easier to convict him.
'I met with the D.A.,' said Jaywalker.
'That clown?'
'He refuses to offer you anything less than the murder charge. Though he says he'd be okay with the minimum sentence.'
'Which is…?'
'Fifteen to life.'
Drake laughed. But it was a bitter, snorting laugh. A dislikable laugh. 'Who told you to ask him?' he wanted to know.
'Nobody,' said Jaywalker. 'It's part of my job. Just as it's part of my job to communicate his response to you.'
'Do me a favor?'
Jaywalker nodded tentatively.
'Don't go begging for me. Not to the D.A., not to the judge. I want a trial, T — R-I-A-L. Is there any part of that word you don't understand?'
Dislikable? Try loathsome.
'Okay,' said Jaywalker, doing his best to ignore the sarcasm. 'And at that trial, would you like to take the witness stand?'
'Of course I would. Who else is going to explain what caused the accident?'
'You mean the wasp?'
'Exactly,' said Drake.
Jaywalker filled him in on what Concepcion Testigo had told Nicolo LeGrosso, that the car had stayed in the wrong lane for quite some time. 'The wasp, in other words, may not fly.'
'He's lying,' said Drake. 'It was a momentary thing. I was there.'
'What about your wife?'
'What about her?'
'Would you like her to testify?'
'About what? What could she say?'
'That you didn't seem drunk to her? That you were able to start your car without any apparent difficulty, and pull out of the parking lot smoothly? That for as long as she followed you, you weren't speeding or weaving or anything like that?'
'I guess so.'
'And your son?' Jaywalker asked.
'Leave him out of it.'
'Why?'
'What could he add?'
'That he offered to drive your car, but you wouldn't let him.'
'He's only seventeen,' said Drake. 'All he's got is a learner's permit that's no good after dark.'
'Exactly,' said Jaywalker. 'You were protecting him. The jurors may find it in their hearts to like you a little bit for that.'
'What is this, a personality contest?'
'In a way.'
'Can't I explain those things myself?'
'You can,' Jaywalker conceded. 'But we call that kind of testimony self-serving. It means more when someone else says it.'
'Even my son?'
'Especially your son.'
Drake seemed to think about that for a few seconds, before saying, 'No, leave Eric out of it. He and I, we have issues. I don't trust him to be able to pull it off.'
