"There's nothing for you to do. I'll pay for it, but first I'll negotiate with myself to cut my hourly rate."
"This case will cost a fortune."
"Then we're really lucky, because I happen to have a fortune," I say. "Look, we bring different things to our relationship, to our friendship. One of the things I bring is money. It's never been that important to either of us, but right now we need it, and there it is. If we spend every penny of it, that's fine."
"Andy--" she starts, but I cut her off.
"I know how you feel, Laurie, but every minute we spend thinking about this is a minute we're not thinking about what's really important. And that is winning this case."
"So this is something I'm going to have to deal with?" she asks.
I nod, and even though she still seems uncertain about her ability to do that, she hugs me. "I love you," she says.
"I love you too." As I said, it's not a response we consider automatic, and there's no obligation to say it, but sometimes it feels right.
I head back into the den, and by that time Edna has worked out phone arrangements. The phone company will be there within the hour to install our office line separate from my home line. Laurie wants to take personal calls on her cell phone, so as not to interfere with our activities. Edna is by now already on another project, though I have no idea what she could be working on. It's possible that some body-snatching work-pod took over Edna's body while she slept last night. Not wanting to disrupt whatever the Edna-pod is doing, and even though I'm still picking pieces of pancake out of my teeth, I go to lunch.
This lunch is with FBI Special Agent Robert Hastings. Pete Stanton, who set it up, told me that Hastings's friends call him Robbie, but that since I'm a defense attorney, I should call him Special Agent Hastings. Pete knows him from a few cases where their paths intersected, and he describes him as a stand-up guy.
The stand-up guy is already sitting at a table when I get there. At least I think he's sitting. Right now he's about half a foot taller than I am when I'm standing. I had asked Pete how I'd recognize him, and he described Hastings as dressing conservatively and balding slightly. Apparently, Pete considered these more distinctive features than the fact that Hastings is in the neighborhood of six foot nine, three hundred pounds.
Hastings is looking at his watch when I arrive. The lunch was called for noon, and a quick check of my own watch shows it to be one minute after.
I reach the table and introduce myself, and then say, "I'm not late, am I?" I say this with the full knowledge that I'm not.
"Yeah, you are," he says.
"Didn't we say twelve o'clock?" I ask.
A slight nod of his massive head. "Yeah."
I decide not to pursue the time issue any further, and I quietly let him take the lead in the conversation. It turns out that conversation-leading is not a specialty of his.
After about five silent and excruciatingly uncomfortable minutes, he says, "Pete tells me you're a pain in the ass."
I smile. "I've been called worse."
"Yeah," he says. "I'm sure."
Hastings goes on to tell me that Pete also said that even though I'm a little runt, there's not a lunch check ever made that's too heavy for me to pick up. He picked this really expensive restaurant to test out that theory.
He's in the middle of ordering enough food to feed the Green Bay Packers when it hits me. "Hey, you're not Dead End Hastings, are you?"
It turns out that he is, in fact, Dead End Hastings, who spent two years playing for the Denver Broncos and who was so named because when running backs came into his area, they were entering a dead end with no way out. An untimely knee injury cut a very promising career short.
The transformation is immediate. He goes from quiet and surly to affable and gregarious. Fortunately, his mouth is large enough that simultaneous talking and eating presents no difficulty for him at all. He regales me with stories of his playing days and is impressed with my knowledge of rather arcane pieces of football trivia. I always knew that all those Sunday afternoons in front of the television set would turn out to be worthwhile.
We're having dessert when I bring up the reason I wanted to have this lunch in the first place. "I need to know everything there is to know about Alex Dorsey. I'm representing the person accused in his murder."
His nod confirms my expectation that Pete had alerted him to at least this general subject matter. "And why exactly did you come to me?" he asks.
"Because I know the Bureau conducted an investigation that somehow involved Dorsey and that it got him at least temporarily off the hook when Internal Affairs was coming after him. That's all part of the public record."
I'm stretching the truth some: FBI involvement with Dorsey was never publicly confirmed. Hastings doesn't seem to care one way or the other. "It's not my case," he says, "so all I can do is tell you whose case it is."
"That's a start," I say.
"Darrin Hobbs. He's number two man in the eastern region, heading for number one."
"Thanks," I say. "Any chance you can set up a meeting for me with him?"
He shrugs. "I can tell him you want to talk to him. I wouldn't count on it, though. He's a busy guy."
"I understand," I say. "By the way, you said 'is.'"
"What's that?"
"You said it is his case. I thought the federal investigation involving Dorsey ended a long time ago. Did you just make a bad choice of words?"
He looks across the table at me with a stare that makes me glad I was never an offensive lineman. "I'm even better at choosing words than I am at eating." That is a significant statement, because based on the size of the check when I get it, Winston Churchill wasn't better at choosing words than Hastings is at eating.
Driving home, I try to focus on that which makes this case unique. In most cases, my view is that my client is wrongly accused and that the real criminal is out there. While that is certainly true here as well, the twist is that Laurie's arrest is not just the result of police error. Stynes's involvement makes it crystal clear that she was set up from the very beginning. It is likely, but not absolutely definite, that the person behind the setup and the murderer are one and the same.
I find it very helpful to sit down with Kevin to just bounce ideas off each other. He has a sharp mind, and while he's emotionally involved in this case, he's far more dispassionate than I am.
We have one of those talks this afternoon, though it's a little hard to hear because Edna is typing like a maniac in the background. Kevin points out that my instinct about Stynes not being disappointed when I turned down his case was right on target. He wasn't in my office for the purpose of hiring an attorney; he was there to plant information in my head. He was betting that my belief in his guilt would cause me to defend Garcia.
"So two people got framed," I say. "First Garcia and then Laurie. But Garcia was always meant to be temporary; he was never meant to take the ultimate fall. He was just there to get me into the case."
Kevin shakes his head. "I don't think so. I think he was there to get Laurie into the case. She works for you, so they had to bring you in first."
In an instant I realize that he is right and that what he is saying has a logical extension. "Which means Garcia was not picked at random; he was chosen because Laurie had a long-standing grudge against him. And now Dylan will use that to say she murdered Dorsey and framed Garcia, thereby removing two people she hated."
He nods. "We're up against somebody pretty smart."
"Lucky we've got Edna the dynamo on our side."
After a while Kevin is about to leave, and together we persuade Edna to leave with him. She vows to be back early in the morning, and I tell her that I'll set the alarm.
Laurie and I have a quiet dinner, trying our best not to talk about the case, while knowing we're each thinking about nothing else. We haven't really had a full-blown attorney-client discussion yet, and I ask her if it's okay if we start the process tonight. She agrees, and we sit on the couch in the den, soft music in the background, sharing a bottle of wine. In terms of the atmosphere for attorney-client conferences, I've experienced a hell of a lot worse.
I start off by telling her that it is important for us to put our personal relationship aside in working her case; that is how we can be most objective and effective. She has to be prepared for me to treat her like any other client. She nods. "So we won't be sleeping together?"
"Sure we will," I say. "I sleep with all my clients."
That dispensed with, we get down to business. Laurie knows the importance of total honesty in speaking to one's lawyer, but since knowing it in the abstract and living it are two different things, I take pains to remind her.