Trial Junkies

Goddamn it, Ronnie!

Why hadn't he put it on vibrate?

Scrambling to pull it from his pocket before it rang again, he fell back against the brick wall and jabbed the screen, his voice a whisper as he put the phone to his ear. 'This is not a good time.'

'Hutch?'

But it wasn't Ronnie. It was Matt Isaacs.

'Jesus, Matt. I'm in the middle of something here. I'll have to call you back.'

'Make sure you do,' Matt said, 'because I've got news.'

'What kind of news?'

'Something that'll blow your mind. In fact, it's better we don't talk about this on the phone. Where can we meet?'

'My place,' Hutch whispered. 'But wait until I call you back before you head over there.'

'You got it.'

Then the line went dead.

Hutch's heart was hammering. His side throbbing. Putting the phone on vibrate now, he pocketed it, sucked in a long breath, then turned again toward that narrow sliver of darkness.

He was about to start forward, but stopped short when a figure appeared in the mouth of alleyway, looking directly at him.

Frederick Langer.

Oh, shit.

'Why do you follow me?' Langer asked.

An accent.

Scandinavian?

Hutch took a stepped backwards. 'I… I wasn't following you,' he managed-

— But before the words were completely out of his mouth, Langer rushed forward with unexpected speed and agility. The next thing Hutch knew, his back was slamming against the wall and a switchblade snicked open in front of his face.

'Who are you?' Langer repeated, pressing the flat of the blade against Hutch's neck. 'Why do you follow me?'

His voice was darker now. More guttural. Dangerous. And as those black, soulless eyes stared at him from behind the thick lenses, Hutch felt an almost irrepressible urge to evacuate his bladder.

Yet the odd thing was, Langer didn't seem to recognize him. The darkness, coupled with the cap and the hood, must have made him difficult to identify.

'I–I swear to you,' he stuttered, 'I wasn't fo-'

Langer put more pressure on the blade and leaned in very close, his breath thick and hot and redolent of rotting, maggot-infested corpses.

'I see you again,' he said, 'I smell you… You die.'

Then the knife disappeared and he turned, moving quickly down the street toward the corner.

Hutch just stood there, trembling, heart pounding, side aching, watching him go. Happy to see him go. Joyful with relief, but surprised to be alive.

It took everything he had not to piss his pants.

— 48 -

Hutch was largely silent during the cab ride to his apartment. He was thinking about some of the parts he had played, the tough guys pushed to the limit, who, when confronted by danger, never backed down.

In such stories, everything was carefully scripted. The hero always had the right words to express himself, and when danger arose, he invariably utilized his combat training from his days in the military or his years on the police force or his upbringing among the monks who had schooled him in the deadly art of Kung fucking Fu.

But the movies weren't real life, were they? And Hutch didn't have any combat training to fall back on. His encounter with Langer had proven that he was pretty much ineffectual when confronted by danger. If the guy had decided to gut him right then and there, Hutch doubted he would've been able to stop him.

And if Langer had recognized him, had better night vision, had known Hutch was the guy who sat across from him in court, the guy he had encountered in the bathroom, the guy who seemed to be friends with the object of his obsession-or one of them, at least-Hutch would likely be lying on a sidewalk in a pool of blood.

So much for playing the hero.

Hutch didn't consider himself to be a physically weak man. Before the fall into drugs and alcohol, he had belonged to a gym and had worked out three times a week. Sometimes more. And in the first several months of his recovery, he had once again started lifting weights, this time hiring a trainer to get him back into shape. His newly developed six pack-de rigueur for any leading man these days-had been prominently displayed in several shirtless scenes in the pilot he'd shot back in April.

But physical fitness meant very little if you failed to act-and because of that failure, because he had been too spooked to even move, Hutch felt like a fool.

He had told Ronnie that he'd simply lost Langer in the maze of streets, not bothering to mention the confrontation. Yet she seemed to sense that he was holding back. That something more had happened near that alleyway.

But she said nothing. Didn't question him. Merely took his hand in hers in the back of the cab and pretended he had told the truth.

And for that, Hutch was grateful.

Silent, but grateful.

'You're not gonna believe this,' Matt said. 'Wait till you see what I've got.'

He and Andy were standing in the lobby as the night man held the door open for Hutch and Ronnie. He had a manila folder tucked under one arm and Hutch could tell that he was excited as a kid with a brand new bicycle.

He was also sporting a small, dark bruise near his jawline.

'What the hell happened to you?' Hutch asked.

Andy smirked. 'He ran into a fist.'

'One of old man Keating's pals,' Matt said. 'Apparently the bastard likes the way things are progressing and doesn't want us gumming up the works.' He looked at Ronnie. 'He doesn't think much of you, my dear.'

'And why am I not surprised?'

'I should've warned you,' Hutch said to Matt, still feeling the ache in his side. He had peed at a gas station, relieved to discover there wasn't any blood in the stream. 'They made a run at me, too.'

'I'm a big boy. And I've got a big boy lawyer that Keating'll be hearing from when this shit blows over. Never could stomach that supercilious fuck.' He patted the folder under his arm. 'What do you say we head upstairs?'

'By all means,' Hutch said.

A few minutes later, Matt dropped the folder on the dining room table. The tinny sound of audience laughter rose from the living room, where Lola Baldacci was watching Leno on Hutch's big screen, little Christopher curled up next to her on the sofa, fast asleep.

Lola ran a loving hand over the boy's head as she greeted them all with a polite 'hello' and a mild look of disapproval. And although she had never met Matt or Andy, no introductions were made, and that seemed to be just fine with her.

Hutch thought about his conversation with Ronnie on the train, the phrase Dysfunction