“No word on Eugene?”
Walker shook his head. “Not a thing.”
Reacher said nothing.
“We were such a threesome,” Walker said. “And you know how that goes. Isolated place like this, you get to be more than friends. It was us against the world.”
“Was Sloop his real name?”
Walker looked up. “Why do you ask?”
“Because I thought yours was Hack. But I see from the sign on your door it’s Henry.”
Walker nodded, and smiled a tired smile. “It’s Henry on my birth certificate. My folks call me Hank. Always did. But I couldn’t say it as a youngster, when I was learning to talk. It came out Hack. It kind of stuck.”
“But Sloop was for real?”
Walker nodded again. “It was Sloop Greer, plain and simple.”
“So what can I do for you?” Reacher asked for the third time.
“I don’t know, really,” Walker said. “Maybe just listen awhile, maybe clarify some things for me.”
“What kind of things?”
“I don’t know, really,” Walker said again. “Like, when you look at me, what do you see?”
“A district attorney.”
“And?”
“I’m not sure.”
Walker was quiet for a spell.
“You like what you see?” he asked.
Reacher shrugged. “Less and less, to be honest.”
“Why?”
“Because I come in here and find you getting all misty-eyed over your boyhood friendship with a crooked lawyer and a wife-beater.”
Walker looked away. “You certainly come straight to the point.”
“Life’s too short not to.”
There was silence for a second. Just the dull roar of all the air conditioner motors, rising and falling as they slipped in and out of phase with each other.
“Actually I’m three things,” Walker said. “I’m a man, I’m a DA, and I’m running for judge.”
“So?”
“Al Eugene isn’t a crooked lawyer. Far from it. He’s a good man. He’s a campaigner. And he needs to be. Fact is, structurally, the state of Texas is not big on protecting the rights of the accused. The indigent accused, even worse. You know that, because you had to find a lawyer for Carmen yourself, and that can only be because you were told she wouldn’t get a court appointment for months. And the lawyer you found must have told you she’s still looking at months and months of delay. It’s a bad system, and I’m aware of it, and Al is aware of it. The Constitution guarantees access to counsel, and Al takes that promise very seriously. He makes himself available to anybody who can find his door. He gives them fair representation, whoever they are. Inevitably some of them are bad guys, but don’t forget the Constitution applies to bad guys too. But most of his clients are O.K. Most of them are just poor, is all, black or white or Hispanic.”
Reacher said nothing.
“So let me take a guess,” Walker said. “I don’t know where you heard Al called crooked, but a buck gets ten it was from an older white person with money or position.”
It was Rusty Greer, Reacher thought.
“Don’t tell me who,” Walker said. “But ten gets a hundred I’m right. A person like that sees a lawyer sticking up for poor people or colored people, and they regard it as a nuisance, or as an unpleasantness, and then as some of kind of treachery against their race or their class, and from there on it’s a pretty easy jump to calling it crooked.”
“O.K.,” Reacher said. “Maybe I’m wrong about Eugene.”
“I guarantee you’re wrong about him. I guarantee you could go back to the very day he passed the bar exam and not find any crooked behavior, anywhere at all.”
He placed his fingernail on the photograph, just below Al Eugene’s chin.
“He’s my friend,” he said. “And I’m happy about that. As a man, and as a DA.”
“What about Sloop Greer?”
Walker nodded. “We’ll get to that. But first let me tell you about being a DA.”
“What’s to tell?”
“Same kind of stuff. I’m like Al. I believe in the Constitution, and the rule of law, and impartiality, and fairness. I can absolutely guarantee you could turn this office upside down and never find one single case where I’ve been less than fair and impartial. I’ve been tough, sure, and I’ve sent lots of people to prison, and some of them to death row, but I’ve never done anything if I wasn’t absolutely convinced it was right.”