Hardy 05 - Mercy Rule, The Read Online Free PDF Page A

counseling? Hardy would ask) so that in ten years…
    This was the downsized American nineties. You tightened the belt and everybody pitched in and worked all the time and maybe someday your kids would have it only a little worse than you did now.
    Hardy knew he wasn’t ever going back to his little bar where he could get by on tips. He was going to keep his nose at his desk and bill a hundred and fifty hours every month — which meant he actually worked two hundred — until he died.
    Adulthood. He was developing a theory that it might be one of the country’s leading causes of death. Someone, he thought, ought to do a study.
    Life was too short as it was. He wasn’t doing any more murder cases.
     
    *      *      *      *      *
     
    He did, however, follow Glitsky back across Bryant Street and into the familiar unpleasantness of the Hall of Justice, a huge, square, faceless, blue-gray monstrosity. Its address, seven increasingly depressing blocks south of Market, did not begin to convey the light-years of distance between the Hall and the sophisticated center of culture that it served.
    Since Hardy’s last visit the huge glass-front doors had been backed by graffitied plywood — a less-than-inspired design solution, if part of the building’s visual statement was to make the citizenry feel safe. A cattle chute led through a metal detector into the lobby.
    At the elevator banks, frothing with vulgarity, Glitsky was stopped by a young Hispanic man who started talking to him about a case. The kid seemed to be an assistant DA, as Hardy had once been. Had he been that young?
    Hardy contemplated as the elevators came and went. The DA’s office had truly undergone a sea change if this youngster had made it to prosecuting homicides already. But he was talking to Glitsky, so that’s what it had to be about. Glitsky wasn’t exactly Mr Idle Chitchat.
    Abe finally got around to introductions, pointing a finger around. ‘New guy, Eric Franco. Old guy, Dismas Hardy. Hardy doesn’t work here anymore. He’s moved on to greener pastures. Private practice. Franco’s got his first one eighty-seven’ — a murder case — ‘he’s a little nervous.’ From Glitsky this qualified as an oration.
    The doors opened. The elevator was empty. They all moved. Eric took up the patter, at Hardy. ‘You on a homicide here, talking to the lieutenant?’
    Hardy shook his head. ‘Social.’ Followed it with, ‘Hard to believe, I know.’
    The doors opened on three and Hardy nearly got out from force of habit. This was the floor for the DA’s office, where he once had worked. Glitsky and the homicide detail were on four. When the doors closed on Franco, Hardy looked over at Glitsky. ‘How old is Eric?’
    ‘I don’t know. Twenty-five, thirty?’
    ‘And he’s pulled a murder?’
    A shrug. ‘Probably a no-brainer.’
    ‘Still,’ Hardy persisted, ‘how many trials can he have done?’
    The doors opened. ‘I don’t know, Diz. I didn’t hire him. The DA hired him. You want his resumé, it’s downstairs. Check it out.’ Without looking back he led the way down the hallway to the homicide detail.
    Hardy followed, wondering how a man of Eric Franco’s age and experience could have been assigned to try a murder case in superior court and be expected to win even a no-brainer.
    ‘He’s not, is the simple answer,’ Glitsky said. ‘It’s politics.’
    Hardy was standing in the doorless cubicle Glitsky used for an office. Outside in the detail, fourteen paired desks vied for floor space in the big open room. There were a couple of structural columns poking up here and there, festooned with wanted posters and yellowing memos, joined to water coolers or coffee machines. Years before, forty square feet in the corner had been drywalled off and an ‘office’ created for the lieutenant. Some years after that the door had been removed for painting and never replaced.
    Glitsky was behind his big, cluttered desk, catching up