The 13th Juror [antikvár]

For forty-three workdays in a row Dismas Hardy hadput on his suit and tie and made a point of coming down-town to the office that he had rented. The office was an interim step, not a commitment. He wasn't quite ready to go to work for a corporate law firmnot yet, at least, not without first seeing if he could work for himself and make a decent living doing something involving the law.He was beginning to doubt if he could.His landlord was Dávid Freeman, another attorney who had hung up a shingle to make a go of itexcept Freeman had done it. Sixty years old and crustier than San Francisco's famed sourdough bread, the old man had become a legend in the city. His shingle now was a burnished brass plateDávid Freeman & Associatesriveted to the front of the Freeman Building, a gracious four-story structure on Sutter Street in the heart of the financial district.Freeman and Hardy had met as adversaries in a murder case a year before. Before it was over, they had begun grudgingly to admire one another for the traits they shared a certain relentless doggedness, a rogue streak regarding how the law game was played, a passión for details, a per-sonal need for independence. The admiration had gradually turnéd to friendship.Over the next months Freeman had courted Hardy, sub-tly, counseling him on the perils of life in the big corporate firms. Oh sure, the money was great but there was alsó the tedium of the paperwork, the burden of having to find forty billable hours week after week after week, the dependence on somé partner you'd have to kiss up to (who was proba-bly younger than Hardy's forty-one). You lived in a beehive and every decision you madeírom where you indented the paragraphs in your briefs to what you were going to plead for your clientswas subject to somé committee's approval. Did Hardy want all thatlWhy didn't he give his real dream and instincts aa'Yv