The new ebook edition of The Good Fight is available at the iTunes store, Amazon's Kindle Store, and Barnes & Noble's Nook Store. A week ago, San Francisco lawyer Laura Di Palma had it all. Then she awakened to find her significant other unable to walk or speak, even to say why he was crawling out of their apartment. Now he's missing from the hospital. He's out there somewhere homeless or dead, and Laura will do anything to find him. But there couldn't be a worse time for her to ignore her work. Her old friend, political activist Danny Crosetti, has been accused of shooting his closest comrade…who turned out to be an undercover FBI agent sent to entrap him. Laura was with Danny years ago when a military truck was ordered to drive through—and in Danny's case, over—protestors blocking its path. He lost his legs that day. Laura can't bear to watch him lose his freedom, too.       The Good Fight   By Lia Matera       Copyright 1990 Lia Matera   Electronic Edition 2011 eISBN 978-1-937697-05-1     This ebook may not be re-sold, reproduced, copied or distributed for commercial or non-commercial use.   First Simon & Schuster Print Edition 1990 First Ballantine Books Print Edition 1991       The law firms, organizations, and characters depicted in this book are imaginary. Any resemblance they bear to actual individuals or organizations is coincidental.     Author's Note   This book differs in some ways from the print version, published by Simon & Schuster in 1990 and reprinted by Ballantine in 1991. The story remains the same but some details have been changed or updated.           Prologue      Hal Di Palma climbed out of bed. It took a while. His right leg was rubbery and unresponsive. He could raise his right arm and rotate it, open and close his hand. The hand still tingled and his fingers didn't register the texture of objects he touched. He had to look to make sure they curled enough to keep things from sliding out of his fist. But that was okay. Nothing anybody else would notice. He felt his way across the room. Near the partially open door, a trapezoid of linoleum glinted with soft fluorescent light. He couldn't see anyone in the corridor. His room was far from the check-in desk and reception-area couches. It was near the kitchen. He heard the clatter of trays several times a day. Not now. He'd managed to waken long before breakfast. He closed himself into the bathroom and turned on the light above the mirror, a sheet of institutional metal that made his skin look purplish. His hair stuck up in sleepy patches. He was surprised to see so much white in it. He remembered its being mostly black. The rest of him looked as bad as he'd expected. His eyes were red and watery, especially his right eye. At the veterans hospital (God, sixteen years ago?) it had been months before the eyelid closed properly. How many months would it be this time? In addition, everything on the right side of his face was a little off. The right cheek seemed hollower than the left, the corner of his mouth drooped a little. Hal rubbed the stubble on his chin. The right side still felt slightly numb. He pulled open the cabinet and looked inside. A cordless electric razor. He'd looked earlier and discovered this object but hadn't been quite sure what it was. Now, at least, he recognized it. He'd never used a cordless razor before. He fumbled with it interminably before finally hitting the "on" button. The sudden buzzing startled him so that he almost dropped it in the sink. Then he jerked the contoured head over his chin. He washed, his right hand failing to cup the water so that he splashed it over his pajamas and onto the floor. He wet his hair and fingercombed it back off his face. He searched his eyes intently in the mirror, trying to reassure himself that he was still the same man: thirty-seven, reasonably strong, emotionally tough. But Jesus, he looked scary. Gaunt and angry. He recalled a dark, smelly bar somewhere in the Southwest, a crazy husk of a drunkard who kept slamming money on the table and bellowing, "I got me a dollar says I can whip any man in the place!" Disconcerted by the physical resemblance, Hal turned away. Getting his clothes out of the cupboard was tricky in the dark. Getting himself into them was even trickier. The trek across the small room had knocked the stuffing out of him. It was hard to shuck his pajama shirt and trousers, to bend and lift his limbs into stiffer, less-yielding clothes. Hal lay back on the bed for a few minutes when he was done, his heart hammering and his skin clammy from exertion. His mouth tasted sour. He'd forgotten to brush his teeth, but the bathroom seemed miles away, and the necessary movements—holding the brush, squeezing the tube, scrubbing the teeth, even spitting so that he didn't spot his sweater—seemed far beyond him. He heard footsteps in the corridor, and because he had to, he found the energy and coordination to push back the bedsheet and then pull it over himself, all the way up to his neck to hide his cable-knit sweater. He'd barely finished when a nurse said, "Uh oh. Woke you up." They were so damn cheerful at this place. It was like being locked up in a department store. "That's okay," he croaked. She smiled. "Boy, you're sure making fast…" Something. Progress, he guessed. She said more but it slid in and out of his consciousness without reaching his understanding. She tapped the plastic bottle hooked to the side of his bed. "No." His voice was hoarse with irritation. If he had to make a wish right now it would be never again to pee into a bottle held by a stranger. He felt nauseous, the desire was so fervent. She nodded and smiled again, then held up a tiny white Dixie cup. "Medication time." Damn. If he sat up, she'd see the clothes. He forced his head forward and opened his mouth. Simultaneously she offered the cup and her arm, to raise him. With his lips and tongue, he tipped the pills into his mouth and swallowed them, opening again to show her they were gone. The nurse was clearly startled. "Gosh. Let me get you some water." He wasn't actually sure she'd said water, but it made sense that way. "No water," he replied. The pills stuck in his throat and he barely kept down the contents of his stomach. He was so damn tired. More than tired, stressed. Hot with sweat, scared. He wondered, with an edge of panic, what the pills did. Would they make him pass out somewhere? Worse yet, were they keeping him alive? Would he have some kind of attack without them? He tried to reassure himself. Think of the pharmacopoeia they'd stuffed down his gullet at the veterans hospital. Everything from antibiotics to antipsychotics. No wonder he'd lain there like a vegetable for the better part of a year. Without that crap he'd been able to get by in the world. Not exactly prosper, but get by. Pass for a human being. And this latest affliction was just some kind of seizure. Caused by… what? He remembered waking up to a mouthful of carpet. He didn't remember how he got there. Hit from behind? Whatever the hell happened, it wasn't a bullet to the head like last time. How bad off could he be? The nurse gave a cheery wave and left the room. He told himself he'd better wait until she finished her rounds, but he knew why he was lying there. Jesus, if a wash and a shave took this much out of him, how was he going to make it outside? He thought of places he'd called home—a rusted-out old van, a windy stretch of beach, every kind of woodland from sugar maple to evergreen. He'd make it the way he always made it. For a split second, a sensory trick brought him the smell of oiled wood walls and backyard gully: his boyhood room. He lay still, weathering the memory—the memory and all its associations: his mother carping at him to invite her doctor's son to dinner, his father buying him that mortifying sports car, his picture in the paper every time he won a fucking swimming certificate or spelling bee. Comfort didn't make a place home. Comfort was a cattle prod of expectations, your own and other people's. Look at Laura. Look what she had to do for her handmade rugs and her signed lithographs. Her career was an endless drill of in-cadence exercises, one two three four, and she couldn't see it wasn't worth it. Maybe do it for your flag, but not for your things. He closed his eyes tightly, trying to block tears. Laura. No, he wasn't going to get sentimental about a woman who'd kenneled him. Oh, this was an expensive kennel, to be sure—private room, garnished food, designer paper on the damned walls. The place probably had a classy name, too, Green Oaks or something. Laura always threw plenty of money at her problems. With her Mercedes and her closets full of suits—completely seduced by the trappings. Didn't she realize it wasn't important what the curtains here looked like, or whether there were flowers at the communal dinner table? Didn't she realize the place was no different in its essence, in its function, from the damn veterans hospital? Like the doctors at the vets hospital—like every doctor he'd ever met—Laura had given up on him. Well, fuck her. Fuck her. He'd been on his own before and he could do it again. And this time he wasn't going to wait for a bunch of heel draggers to give him their blessing. They told him sixteen years ago he'd need "substantial assistance" his whole life. But the minute they handed him his duffel bag, his walking papers, and (like it was some big honor) his Purple Heart, he'd struck out on his own. Completely on his own, except for a month in jail. And three years with Laura. He forced himself to sit up. His stomach was jumpy and his head ached. He felt dehydrated and disoriented in the dark room. The door was where, exactly? He stood shakily and began feeling his way around the room, his left hand skirting the cool papered wall. In a couple of hours the nurse would bring in a wheelchair. The nurses discouraged walking unless it was done in the exercise room under their chipper supervision. Laura probably approved. As a lawyer, she'd appreciate their determination to avoid liability. Suddenly his right leg gave out on him. He caught himself on the wainscoting, his heart pounding as he imagined the racket he'd have made. He massaged the leg briefly, reassured to feel hard, well-defined muscle there. His body was in good shape. The problem was his brain. It wasn't sending the right signals. The trick of it, he remembered from the vets hospital days, was to move what you could and pray for momentum. Chew off your paw and limp out of the trap. He edged closer to the door, using a Formica night-stand for support. A lot of concentration to do what once was automatic. He looked out into the corridor. His head ached, and the left side of his forehead was so tender it felt burnt. He'd been wheelchaired up and down this hall a dozen times. Why the hell couldn't he remember which direction to go? At one end, a glimpse of decorator couches. At the other, wheelchairs collapsed in an interlocking row, like supermarket carts. Nothing looked familiar. He chose to go left, past the wheelchairs. His left hand gripped his right leg, dragging it like a weight strapped to his hip. Turning the corner, he nearly collided with a young bearded man. The man blinked at him, obviously surprised. Hal stood there, feeling sweat collect in the small of his back and drip down to his waistband. He tried to remember who the man was. Someone he knew from the common room? Maybe even his doctor? His seventh or eighth month in the vets hospital, he'd had an encounter like this one, a middle-of-the-night showdown with a man in a white smock. It had ended with Hal's being forcibly returned to his bed, cast into the limbo of sedation. Then a month of Thorazine to "improve" his attitude. It was like being smothered, constantly slowly smothered. Now the bearded man said something to him. It sounded Japanese. Hal had heard a lot of Japanese when he'd done the gruntwork for a landscaper. But he supposed this man was speaking English. Hoping for the best, Hal smiled and said, "Yes, that's right." The man smiled back, then continued down the hall. Hal could feel his right leg drag as he struggled through the brightly lighted corridor. He braced his shoulder against the posy-papered wall to take some of the weight off his hip. Finally, he reached an open door. The physical therapy room looked like a hoopless basketball court. Mats were stacked along the far wall, and colored lines were painted onto a shined wood floor. He'd watched patients shuffle across it, trying to keep within lines of a certain color. He'd walked the lines himself, his arm anchored heavily around somebody's shoulder. He'd lain on his back on the mats, trying to lift his leg. Trying to endure the therapist's smarmy tape loop of encouragement. Oh God, he thought, get me out of this place. At the opposite end of the room, sliding glass doors led to a small patio. The room was empty but so vast that Hal felt dizzy looking across it. He studied the floor like a map. The white line appeared to be the shortest route. He put his left foot on the line, and dragged his right. Without a wall to lean on, he felt suddenly vertiginous. He considered going down on hands and knees. Whatever he had to do, he'd do. He'd come too far to let them keep him in this hellish bit of cotton batting. Across the room, the glass doors framed a pale dawn. He could see a small cement patio circled by a short wall. He moved toward it, trying to forget the process of walking, trying to walk the way other people did, by rote. And his body finally got him there, though he'd veered far off the white line and onto a red one. He rested his forehead on the sheet of thermal glass, heaving a sigh of thanksgiving. He happened to notice then that his pants were unzipped, but he left them that way, afraid to take the time to zip them, afraid he'd do something clumsy like smack the glass with his elbow. He was relieved to feel the door slide open as he pushed it. He supposed the staff didn't worry about their slack-faced shufflers trying to escape. The cold air felt good on his hot face. Later, he supposed, it would cool his sweat and make him miserable. But he'd survived winters of icy rain in Washington and British Columbia. And from coast to coast, more times than he cared to remember, he'd awakened to night snow freezing his cheek to a sleeping bag. He'd be okay. Judging from the scattered clusters of twiggy treetops beyond the cinderblock wall, the patio was surrounded by a newly landscaped parking lot. Hal stumbled past a rock garden full of bonsaied trees. He looked down at a stunted cypress, his chest tightening with horror. It was only a tree, not a symbol. But a panicked surge of adrenalin helped him pour himself over the wall. He landed hard on his shoulder and side, spitting out grit. For a moment he sagged in the swirl of soot where the parking lot met the wall. There were only a few cars in the lot, clustered nearby. Beyond them, where the tarmac ended, a field sprawled gently uphill, gnarled with an occasional oak or clump of coyote brush. A decidedly un-San Franciscan landscape. Where the hell was he? He began rubbing his forehead, as if to summon the genie of a reply. Then he stopped abruptly, curling his hand and burying it between his thighs. He'd been a forehead rubber at the vets hospital. The head-injury ward had been a horror show of tics—jaw scratchers, nose tappers, earlobe pullers. He stood shakily, noticing a red-brown stain on the arm of his fisherman sweater. He pulled up the sleeve. Blood was leaking from a saturated cotton ball taped to the inside of his elbow. He ripped it off. It made him feel marked, a patients' yellow star. It fell on a crushed 7-Eleven coffee cup and some dry oak leaves. He looked around. The rehabilitation center was behind him, and the parking lot stretched in front for perhaps a hundred yards. At the other end, a long two-story building was flanked by square signs, Red Cross symbols, ambulances. A hospital. Immediately beside Hal, where the parking lot ended, were hills shagged with dried grasses. In the first light of morning they were the dull manila of paper bags. He remembered driving down from the city with Laura once, passing countryside like this: low, thirsty hills dotted with oak and scrub. They'd come so Laura could shop. His mind presented him with an image: the interior of a store, Laura handing a clerk her credit card. He could smell a dozen mingled perfumes and see a flash of sequins as the clerk bagged Laura's purchase. Whatever the thing in the bag had been, he remembered calling it a waste of good money. Laura had replied that good money is the kind cheap people spend. They'd eaten frozen yogurt in a ceramic-tiled courtyard that was supposed to fool hip patrons into thinking they were nowhere so déclassé as a shopping mall. Yes, it made sense. City hospitals looked like hospitals. So Laura had taken him south (he remembered it was south), to the place where she bought her party dresses. She shopped at an ersatz park; she would kennel him at an ersatz bed-and-breakfast. He moved toward the gravel verge between the tarmac and the grass, his left arm raised as if he were on a high wire. He could brood later. Right now he had to get away from here. The grass was damply yielding, spattering fine night dew on his boots and the cuffs of his jeans. It was more difficult to walk on the uneven ground, to coax the uncooperative leg uphill. He tried to visualize a map, the map in Laura's car. It showed the curve of land around San Francisco Bay, and to the southwest, foothills colored yellow-green as they flattened into a dozen contiguous cities. There were no words (none that made sense to him) on Hal's mental projection, but his brain supplied a label: Stanford. He stopped, out of breath, his heart pounding. Thank God. He knew where he was. He'd fixed himself in space. Stanford. He recalled that it was fifty-some minutes south of the city by car. That meant six or seven hours by foot. If a man were well enough to walk it. He was lurching downhill now, beyond the horizon visible from the parking lot. Almost out of sight. Close by, in a low-limbed live oak, a scrub jay tapped and jumped from branch to branch. If Hal could make it to the tree and sit awhile, he'd be okay. He touched his forearm and felt blood still oozing from the pinprick on his inner elbow. His chest ached, and the muscles in his right leg (to the extent that he could feel them) were cramping in jerky spasms. He sank to the ground, ten feet short of the tree. He'd once known a direction-finding trick involving the sun's position in the sky. Right now, he couldn't quite get a handle on it. He lay back in the grass, letting the leg muscles twitch. The rest of him felt limp, leaden. He stared up at wispy clouds and brightening sky. Sixteen fucking years. What the hell had set him back? He'd been fighting with Laura, he remembered that. The same fight: her conspicuous consumption, her thoughtless waste, the way she relied on others—her housecleaner, her "personal shopper," her caterer—to do her sweating for her. And the next thing he remembered he was alone on the carpet, half his body dead. Oh Jesus. He and Laura had had an awful time. Fighting, stepping on each other. She called him cavalier, cynical, cruel. He didn't want to remember what he'd called her. But this couldn't be her doing. Could it? He twisted suddenly, regurgitating medication. He raised himself to hands and knees, shuddered with dry heaves. It wouldn't be the first time a woman had fucked up his life. He crawled a little closer to the oak tree, then he collapsed. His cheek scraped dry leaves and dart-sharp seeds of rye and fescue. The smell of damp ground filled his nostrils. He'd awakened face down on the carpet. Alone. No matter how angry Laura might be, no matter what she might do in anger, she wouldn't leave him like that, would she? (But Jesus, he'd said some things to her.) Hal squinted at the grass, rising in thousands of bending intersecting stalks. It was a surreal view, and a cold, paralyzing dread settled over him. Maybe he wouldn't make it this time.         Chapter One     Dan Crosetti was trying to be smart, and his so-called friends were being bastards about it. Worse, I was supposed to be his lawyer, and I was a mess, running on automatic pilot and last-minute continuances. I looked at Danny and felt guilty. Not that it helped him at all. He'd been to my office looking for me. But I'd walked out after starting my day in a showdown with Doron White, senior partner. It wasn't easy for Crosetti to get around. A National Guard truck had taken off both his legs years ago. One of Crosetti's radical gofers had driven him to my apartment and helped him teeter up two flights of stairs on crutches and a prosthesis. Crosetti's self-styled "comrade" now stood rigidly beside my bay window, hugging the crutches like Scrooge on Christmas morning. He scowled down at the eucalyptus trees and foggy lawns of the Presidio. The scruffy sliver of a man stood as far from my Baluchistan carpet and down-filled couch as he possibly could. As if my extravagance might taint him. Dan Crosetti sat in a giant cloud of a chair, his legs ending before the seat did. The artificial limb looked lumpy and overlong beside twenty inches of empty denim. With his barrel chest and bulging arms, his round face and full beard, he looked far too heavy to maneuver on a piece of molded steel and two wooden triangles. Typically Crosetti, he said, "Laura? You're not okay. What's wrong?" As if he didn't have enough damn problems, that I should burden him with mine. It didn't take a hell of a lot to make me cry these days, but I wasn't going to cry on Danny's shoulder. Not Danny's. "I'm sorry you had to come all the way across town. I thought I was going to be in the office. I…" I what? I haven't done a damn thing for you yet? "I'm really sorry." He continued looking up at me, concern crinkling the leathery skin around his eyes. I wondered if he could smell last night's vodka, where it had eaten rings into the end table and dribbled onto the floor. If he noticed, he showed no sign of it. Not like my banker clients, who'd have glanced pointedly at the two-finger run in my hose, at my untucked blouse, at the shoes I'd kicked across the floor, at hair that should have been labeled sproing! I looked as if I'd gone hand-to-hand with Doron White. Which would have been better than the politely seething "conference" that left my wings clipped to the skin. Crosetti sat forward, his belly doubling over most of his remaining lap. His eyes were milk-chocolate brown, warm with intelligence and empathy. "I thought something might be the matter. I thought we might need to talk." He extended a hand. "I mean, we're friends first, right?" Friends. I turned away. Crosetti needed advice, he needed a lawyer. He needed to think about himself and quit showing solidarity. "Do you want something to drink?" "Anything." His voice was filled with concern. "Whatever you're having." I couldn't very well hand him a Stoli, not at ten in the morning. But it would have been my first choice. Goddam hospital swore by its "limited visitation policy." It was hours yet before I could drive down to see Hal. I crossed quickly to the kitchen, trying to avoid the mental picture: the resentful bewilderment in Hal's eyes, the way he kept opening and closing his hand as if to prove to me that he was whole and well. I got out three mugs, carefully mismatched to mollify Crosetti's comrade. If I'd had any with broken handles, I'd have used them. I told myself it was for Crosetti's benefit. He didn't need more grief from his friends about me. But it was mostly guilt. They'd have found a more utilitarian use for their money than signed mugs. I filled the cups with day-old coffee and microwaved them. I wasn't up to grinding beans. Crosetti took the coffee. The other man waved his away, not deigning to look at me. I knew his rap on me: That my use of trendy new defenses to acquit mass murderers had discredited necessary and legitimate defenses. That I'd made it impossible for "politically conscious" lawyers to evolve appropriate defenses. It wasn't that different from Doron White's complaint, however much the two of them would hate having anything in common. But I'd been honest with Crosetti about one thing. Two luridly publicized murder trials had created an association in the public mind: Laura Di Palma was the hired gun for guilty clients, not innocent ones. The antithesis of Perry Mason. Crosetti had said, "Then we'll be good for each other." And maybe we would have been, if I'd kept my act together. "I've been doing a shitty job for you, Danny." Behind me, the comrade humphed. Crosetti stopped sipping the sour coffee. "Are you okay?" Crosetti's voice, deep and troubled, twisted the knife of guilt. He cared about me. He'd trusted me with his freedom. And I hadn't even taken time to make fresh coffee. "I'm okay. But another lawyer might…" I thought of the lawyer Crosetti would probably choose, a politics-first soapboxer. It would hurt, watching the case go wrong. Making a political statement was fine if you were looking at two months, or even two years, for trespass or destruction of government property. In those cases, sometimes publicity was the point. But Crosetti was charged with murdering his right-hand man—a man who'd turned out to be an FBI agent. Crosetti put the mug down on the end table. His mustache and beard came together in a grim line. "We've got time to figure things out." I sank into the couch upon which I'd spent the last six nights. I'd permanently creased wrinkles into the fat cushions. I smoothed them, not sure which way to go with Crosetti. He didn't need my excuses, he didn't deserve my problems. It would be unprofessional, and it wouldn't do anybody any good. Especially not Hal… not as long as it cost nineteen hundred dollars a day to keep competent help around him. Fish or cut bait. I looked at Crosetti. Round and legless, he looked like some bearish Humpty Dumpty. All the king's horses and all the king's men… The federal government had commanded its trucks to roll over protestors' supine bodies, and federal courts had ruled that Crosetti (the only protestor to remain in the road) had assumed that risk. The pendulum had swung back in terms of respect for returning veterans. But with that change, people forgot the atrocities of war. They didn't just forgive soldiers' misdeeds, they forgot who ordered them. They called it unpatriotic to acknowledge the gruesome, destructive, counterproductive aspects of war. Acts of conscience, of resistance or pacifism, became suspect even when a war was unpopular. Celebration of service drowned out hard truths about military missions. That's why Dan Crosetti would never appear on Sunday morning television shows. He would never be held up as a model of courage. People who'd given nothing for their facile views were snug inside the national echo chamber. A few activists might be invited in long enough to stammer apologies for not having worn the uniform. Long enough be defamed for criticizing national blunders, as if that were the same as mocking rank and file soldiers. I glanced at Crosetti's comrade. Wouldn't my politics surprise him? "One thing I have done, Danny. I've waived the speedy-trial date. There's no percentage in hurrying. The delay gives us a chance to find out what really happened." Crosetti's elbows sank into the soft arms of the chair. His face flushed. "How long?" He laced his fingers, and for a minute I thought he was going to pray. Instead, he rubbed his woolly chin over his entwined knuckles. "Is it going to be… very long?" Fear shined through his veneer of calm. I'd gone to see him in the hospital before the operation to save his legs was deemed a failure. I'd heard the same tone then, when he asked his doctor if the circulation had improved. Waiting would wear him down. The stomach cramps started again. I'd practically begged the doctor to tell me Hal would be better by a certain date, that it wouldn't drag on beyond the limit of my endurance. Crosetti closed his eyes. As if on cue, his comrade stepped forward, clammy with anger, gripping the crutches like a weapon. "What gets me?" He breathed hoarsely, scowling at Crosetti. "Danny went to a shitload of trouble to explain why it's right to think twice about going someplace and killing people. They literally rolled the fucking war right over him, because of it. Because he wouldn't pick up a gun. And now they're trying to make out that he'd shoot somebody because what, he was annoyed?" Crosetti squinted at his friend, tears leaking into his crow's feet. "I just want it over with." "It's the fucking government that should be on trial here, not—!" "Danny, look." I shifted on the couch, putting the comrade more or less out of my range of vision, and, with luck, out of the discussion. "In this case, the longer the delay, the better for you. I know it's hard to wait, but…" But trust me, even though I haven't spared you half a thought in six days? "I'll check with my detective this morning. What we need right now is more information." Crosetti seemed to waver, his gaze flicking from me to his comrade, who now leaned heavily on his mentor's crutches. "There's been some discussion about me going underground." He scraped his hands over his eyes as if to clear his thoughts. Or maybe wipe tears he hoped I hadn't noticed. "Underground? That's crazy. You don't have any reason to, not at this point." I glanced at the legless length of denim. He must realize how conspicuous he'd be, how easy to track down. "What if it came to that?" I wrapped my arms around my waist. An hour earlier, I'd scornfully assured Doron White that Crosetti would never leave us holding his bond, that Crosetti was a facer of consequences. "I'd think it was a shitty idea." Crosetti looked around the high-ceilinged flat. "Let's just say I've seen the other side of the system. The side that does this"—he tapped his prosthesis—"and gets away with it." "Danny?" "That sends a federal agent to become the best friend you ever had, and then tries to say you—" His mouth twisted into a red rectangle. I'd seen that side of the system, too. I saw it every time I visited Hal. "Danny, I'll get you through this." He was my last criminal client, Doron White had made that clear. He was also my first innocent client. The first who'd touched a raw nerve of conviction, who'd made me want to win for his sake rather than my own. "Just stick around, stick it out. Please." Crosetti slumped, round-backed, shaking soundlessly. I got up, starting toward him. But he waved me off. His eyes were tightly closed, streaming tears, but he kept his arm extended like a traffic cop's. I preferred to do my crying alone, too. I left the room, wandering down the hall to the bedroom. The one place everything had been okay for me and Hal. It could be three months, it could be two years. He could get back the full range of motion and response, or he could remain alexic, aphasic, partially paralyzed, disoriented, hostile, and depressed. Brain injuries are tricky, Ms. Di Palma. And there will always be an increased risk of stroke, seizure, and mental disorder. But let's just hope for the best. I picked up the bedroom phone ("message center"—I could hear the scorn in Hal's voice when he referred to the cordless, call-recording, call-forwarding unit by its proper name). I turned my back on the bed. The bedclothes were still wildly disheveled, comforter trailing to the floor. Usually a heavy sleeper, I'd wakened in a sudden panic. I'd dashed out to the living room, knowing in my gut something was wrong. And I'd found Hal dressed in sweater, jeans, and boots, dragging himself toward the partly open front door. I took a few deep breaths, caught a glimpse of myself in the bedroom mirror. I looked better than usual, that was the killer: sloe-eyed and tousled like some damn Italian fashion model. I averted my eyes. Seven days ago, the police had arrested Dan Crosetti for the murder of John Lefevre, and I'd assumed the week's worst problems would be tactical and evidential. I'd anticipated some friction from Doron White (but not his furious ultimatum). And I'd been a little afraid, as usual, that Hal might leave me. Only a week ago. I forced myself back to that time, back to my role as Crosetti's defender. My own problems would have to wait. I hit two buttons on the message center, and I let my phone automatically dial the right number.         Chapter Two     Sander Arkelett sounded drowsy, his voice slow and muffled. "Laura. Sorry. Let me get back on my feet here." "On your feet? What's going on?" I'd phoned him at his office, not at home. A brief pause. "I had, uh, kind of a late night. Nodded off. How's Hal doing?" "Better, I guess. They made a big production of wheeling him to the therapy room and having him walk toward me." I'd had to turn away, overwhelmed by the humiliation oh Hal's face. "I've got to get him out of there, Sandy." Silence. Then, "We've been through this, Laura. The medication." "I could get a nurse here to do that." "And if, God forbid…?" Hal had another seizure or stroke or whatever the hell happened to him. I pressed my fist into my belly. "That's not what I called about. Danny Crosetti's here. I need to know what you've found out." "Well…" A four-year association, intimately close before Hal, had taught me what "well..." meant. "He didn't do it, Sandy. I've known Danny a long time." "Non sequitur. But I'm not saying he did it, I wouldn't know. I just know it looks like it. Number one: He bought himself a rifle. Why does a pacifist buy a rifle all of a sudden?" "The gun seller identified Danny? Positively?" Last I heard, the pawnshop owner had been waffling—suffering the convenient amnesia of a merchant with a reputation for discretion. "Yuh." A note of surprise. "Yesterday." Information I should have shaken out of the police by now. I was a sorry excuse for a lawyer. "Danny never mentioned it." "You didn't ask him?" Sandy sounded incredulous. "No. I just assumed—" I'd talked to Danny once in jail, but I'd been in a rush, on my way to court for a bank client. I'd arranged bail, waived the speedy-trial date, and then forgotten everything but Hal. "Oh God. Why would he buy a rifle?" "Better ask him." "What else do you have?" "Lot of stuff about Lefevre. Born in Arkansas. Went to Ole Miss." He hesitated. "ROTC, infantry, decorated vet, did his FBI training. Worked out of Providence and Boston, then dropped undercover. That's where I draw a year and a half blank. FBI won't say what he was doing. Classic Fibbie bullshit's all I get. Then six months ago Lefevre took some kind of leave of absence—I'm working on that. And a month ago he went back on the job and started cozying up to Crosetti." Sandy tsked. "All the organized crime in this country and the white shirts piss away a month on pacifists." His tone held little admiration for either group. "What about the other people at the Clearinghouse? Lefevre was spying on them, too. Anybody with skeletons in the closet?" I could hear the two men in my living room. Crosetti's voice was low and sad, the other man's high-pitched and agitated. "I got a list as long as the Bay Bridge. To my knowledge there's something like thirty fringe groups using Crosetti's storefront to coordinate their activities. You phone, and they answer 'Peace Clearinghouse.' You tell them which group you want and they take a message." "I know." The Clearinghouse had been on the corner of Twenty-fourth and Diamond since before I'd moved to town to go to college. I'd done some staffing then, answered questioned, arranged counseling. Mostly I'd used the Clearinghouse to crawl out from under a bad teenage marriage, to escape the bell-jar conservatism of my hometown. "But it's got to have regulars. Places like that run on the energy of eight or ten people, tops." "So you want the short list. Okay, I'm on it." Any of Crosetti's committed co-workers would have been infuriated to learn about Lefevre; any of them would have considered it the most ghastly of betrayals. With luck, the short list would contain the name of Lefevre's killer. A tone sounded in my ear; another call coming in. "Hold on, Sandy." I switched to the incoming call. "Yes?" A breathless voice quavered, "Ms. Di Palma?" I felt a knot climb my windpipe. The stroke-center receptionist, I was sure of it. "Yes." "One moment. Dr. Spane would like to speak to you." She clicked off. I closed my eyes and pressed the receiver more firmly to my ear. Hal couldn't be dead. Couldn't be. In the living room, Crosetti's companion was shouting, "Should have known he was bullshitting!" Crosetti's reply was quiet at first, rising to an agitated "—on our side, and I still believe it!" "Ms. Di Palma. This is Dr. Spane. I have some disturbing news, I'm afraid." I sank onto the bed. "Mr. Di Palma seems to have left the facility." A euphemism? "'Left'?" "He appears to have changed into his street clothes and gone out through the therapy room. We, uh, found some evidence that he went over the wall—the low wall around the garden—and um, we've been over the two or three acres closest to the facility very carefully. But we haven't managed to locate him." I caught my breath. "You mean he escaped?" "Well, not to quibble with your word choice, but from whatever motivation, he seems to have removed himself—" I pushed the hang-up button, switching to my other line. "Sandy? Are you still there?" There was a clunking, as of a receiver being lifted from a hard surface. "Yuh?" "It's Hal." I couldn't seem to breathe. "He's gone. Escaped from that— Oh God, I knew he'd hate it, but they said the first two weeks are critical and that he needed— What if he has some kind of attack?" "Hey. If he got himself out of there, he's in better shape than they thought. He'll be okay till we find him. And we will." "Pick me up." "There in ten." A twenty-minute cross-town trip. "Hurry." I stood with shaky haste, shedding my work clothes and pawing through drawers for jeans and a shirt. I wasted a lot of time getting them on; couldn't seem to do anything without wasted motion. I was vaguely aware of Crosetti's voice raised in angry praise of loyalty; something about loyalty transcending its object in the same way that pacifism transcends specific wars. By the time I left the jumbled mess of my bedroom, Crosetti's comrade had begun his shocked rebuttal. "Shit, Danny—that's exactly what they said about Vietnam. 'My country, right or wrong.' And then it was exactly what they said about—" "I'm sorry," I interrupted. "I have to go. I have to take care of a family— Oh, no!" I remembered an ex parte motion I was supposed to argue at four o'clock. No use adding malpractice to my problems. I crossed to the living room phone, and called my secretary. "Rose, I can't make my four-o'clock motion, but I need the ruling. Somebody's going to have to argue it for me. See if Jerry's free. Or Hannah. Give them the file. It's not that much material." "All right." I could hear the trepidation in her tone. Doron White would explode if he learned she was shopping around my motion at the last minute. I surprised us both. "Fuck Doron!" I hung up, turning back to my guests. Dan Crosetti had tucked his crutches back under his arms, and was trying to straighten himself out of my down chair. The effort, or perhaps his argument with his companion, had left his face flushed. He clumped awkwardly toward me, crutches sinking into the deep-piled area rug. "What's wrong, Laura?" In the street, a car horn popped, three long, two short. Sandy. I didn't meet Crosetti's eye. "I'll phone you later, Danny. I need to ask you some questions." I grabbed my purse and ran downstairs.         To read the rest of The Good Fight, please go to the iTunes store, the Kindle store, or the Nook store.             Praise for Lia Matera's Laura Di Palma Series     "Di Palma is one of the smartest, most open-minded sleuths in the lawyering trade... [Matera] writes with intelligence and feeling about issues that still hurt and people who still care." New York Times "Compelling... Matera writes with passion about debts to old lovers and old causes." New York Daily News "Sharply written, brilliantly observed." John Leonard, NPR's "Fresh Air" "Absorbing... A fine, intelligent story." USA Today "Extraordinary, thought-provoking." Baltimore Sun "Tight plotting, good characterizations, and page-turning suspense... make Matera one of the best contemporary mystery novelists... Highly recommended... Matera is too good to miss." Booklist "Reading a Lia Matera novel is a lot like drinking a superb brandy: velvety, mellow, a bit dizzying and with a bite that stays with you a long time... She leaps to the forefront of the remarkable vanguard of women... who have redefined the modern mystery." Cleveland Plain Dealer "A complex and very likable detective..." Newsday "Di Palma certainly belongs in the same league as Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone and Sara Paretsky's V.I. Warshawski when it comes to brains, determination, and guts." Booklist "A welcome respite from the mystery-by-formula crowd." Kirkus Reviews "Matera has her own distinctive voice... Her off-beat plots, quirky style and hard-to-pin-down characters make for a novel both unique and entertaining." San Diego Union "More proof that some of the leanest, most tough-minded prose is coming from women... With emotional zingers throughout and no easy answers." Kirkus Reviews           Books by Lia Matera   Laura Di Palma Novels   The Smart Money The Good Fight A Hard Bargain Face Value Designer Crimes   Willa Jansson Novels   Where Lawyers Fear To Tread A Radical Departure Hidden Agenda Prior Convictions Last Chants Star Witness Havana Twist   Short Story Anthologies   Counsel for the Defense and Other Stories Irreconcilable Differences