So Fowler’s ruling had alienated Locke, the sixteen officers who’d taken part in the operation, Chief of Police Dan Rigby and the mayor, in whose brain the original germ of the idea had hatched in the first place.

For a short while Fowler became somewhat the darling of the media – the Sunday Chronicle’s Calendar/Style section did a piece on him, further alienating the Hall. Esquire liked his wardrobe. Rolling Stone asked his opinion on Roe v. Wade. People had a little squib on him in ‘End-Notes’, calling him a ‘crusading justice.’

Fowler laughed it off as his allotted twenty minutes of fame, and most of it blew over after a while. But it did leave a bitter residue, especially on a young female D.A. named Elizabeth Pullios, who didn’t like to lose and who’d been prosecuting Blakemore.

Now, on this sweltering morning, Fowler had listened to a half-hour of opening statements by Chief Assistant District Attorney Art Drysdale, making a rare personal appearance in a courtroom. The case was The People v. Charles Hendrix, and Drysdale was here because Locke had asked him to be.

There were eight sitting judges in San Francisco, their cases assigned by one of their number, a rotating calendar judge, in Department 22, starting at nine-thirty every Monday morning. When People v. Hendrix went to Fowler, Locke knew he was in trouble – Hendrix was another entrapment. In this case, the SFPD had set up a phony fence, a warehouse to receive stolen goods. After word got out, they had videotaped twenty to thirty suspects a day, waiting for a big score or a connection to a major dope deal, before they’d make some arrests. This, Locke suspected, wasn’t going to fly in Andy Fowler’s courtroom.

‘…And I want to see prosecuting counsel in my chambers immediately.’

Fowler, recovered from his illness of the previous day, left the bench and had his robe off before he left the courtroom. He told the bailiff to bring one of the fans into his office.

A minute later, Drysdale was knocking at his open door. ‘Your Honor.’

The bailiff brushed by Drysdale with the fan and plugged it in so it blew across Fowler’s desk.

‘How many of these turkeys are we likely to be seeing here? Come in, Art. Sit down. Hot enough?’

Drysdale crossed a leg. ‘With all respect, Your Honor, I think a flat dismissal is out of line as a matter of law.’ Fowler’s eyes narrowed, but Drysdale ignored the obvious signs, reaching into his briefcase. ‘I’ve got a brief here -’

‘You’ve got a brief already? Before you knew my ruling?’

‘Mr Locke had an… intuition.’

Fowler did not smile. ‘I’ll bet he did.’ He laced his fingers and brought them up to his mouth. ‘Why don’t you just give me the sense of it?’

Drysdale hadn’t written a ‘memorandum of points and authorities’ – a paper laying out current law based on past decisions in other courts, law-review articles, recognized lawbooks – in about eight years, and when Locke asked him to figure out a way to get by Fowler he thought this was as good a time as any to try one.

Entrapment was generally frowned upon in the 1st District Court of Appeal, San Francisco’s district, but there was a lot of leeway granted police depending on how the sting was set up. In this case, Hendrix, and in the many others sure to follow from the phony warehouse, the police were not arresting the suspect at the scene. Rather, they were using information gathered by videotape at the scene to identify the suspect, after which they tailed him to see what he was up to. This approach had resulted in righteous convictions that held up under appeal in several states, and Drysdale laid it all out in a nutshell while Fowler sat back in his chair, eyes closed, letting the fan blow over him.

When Drysdale had finished, Fowler opened his eyes. ‘Let me tell you a story, Art. This kid is sitting on his front lawn, minding his own business, and one of his neighbors comes by and tells him there’s a warehouse down the street paying top dollar for any goods brought to it, no questions asked. The neighbor shows him a roll he just got for a car stereo and two bicycles. Another neighbor comes by, flashes another wad of dough. This goes on for a week, and pretty soon our boy is thinking he’d be some kind of fool not to take advantage of this opportunity like all of his neighbors.

‘See? There’s two parts to stealing – taking and fencing – and both are risky, but now one half the risk is eliminated. So, and this is important’ – Fowler leaned forward over his desk, out of the flow of air from the fan -‘it is the impetus of this sting operation that causes our boy to go and commit a crime.’

‘Excuse me, Your Honor, but these people are already committing crimes. They’re going to fence them somewhere.’

‘But by making it easy to fence them, Counselor, we are encouraging them to steal more.’

Drysdale sat back. He knew Fowler’s argument. He just didn’t agree with it. But he was only the running footman. ‘Mr Locke doesn’t agree with you, Judge. Neither does Mr Rigby.’

Fowler allowed himself a tight smile. ‘Well, now, that’s what makes this country great, isn’t it?’

Drysdale leaned forward himself. ‘The cops have put in a lot of time and money on this already, Judge. So have we. We’re taking these guys off the street -’

‘Shooting them would also take them off the street. Art. And shooting them is also illegal.

‘This isn’t illegal.’

Fowler finally sat back, breaking the eye contact. ‘You know, it’s funny, but I’m the judge. It’s my courtroom and if I say it’s illegal, you and Mr Locke and Mr Rigby and anybody else will just have to live with it.’

Now Drysdale sat back. He realized that he was sweating and wiped a hand across his forehead. ‘I’d like to at least leave the brief,’ he said.

‘Fine, leave the brief. I’ll read it if I get the chance.’

‘The son of a bitch! The arrogant, pompous, liberal son of a bitch!’

‘Yes, sir.’ Drysdale stood by the window in Locke’s office, hands held behind his back. The air conditioner seemed to be working better on the third floor.

‘This was a righteous bust. We didn’t take Hendrix in dumping the goods – we caught him in the act.’

Drysdale turned around. ‘An act he would not have been drawn to commit had we not set up our fence.’

‘Oh bullshit!’

Art shrugged. ‘It’s not my argument.’

‘Hendrix does this for a fucking living. He steals things. You know that as well as I do. He breaks into your house or my house or his fucking Honor Andy Fowler’s house and takes things that aren’t fucking his. He is not coerced into doing this by finding a good place to unload it.’

‘Yes, sir, I know.’

The warehouse was an ongoing operation that had been in business for about four months. The police department had already brought in over forty suspects and had collected some $2.5 million worth of contraband, a good portion of which they had returned to its owners. It was a successful tool that they felt was working. Arrests were up, convictions should follow. And Locke was damned if he was going to let some commie judge screw it up for everybody.

He sat down now, played drums with a pencil on his desk. Shave and a haircut, six bits. Shave and a haircut, six bits. ‘Who’s on Calendar this month? Maybe we’ll get lucky in another department.’

‘I think Leo Chomorro’s taken up permanent residence.’

‘Poor bastard.’

Art lifted his shoulders. ‘He asked for it. If he rides with us, maybe we can ease him out of there. Maybe he’s ready.’

‘Find out, would you? Find out if he’ll play, keep any of these away from Fowler. Rigby’s going to have a shit-fit.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Art said.

Locke looked at his watch. ‘God, how could it be lunchtime already? I just got here. I’ve got an appointment in ten minutes, Art. You want to fill Rigby in? No, I’ll do it. He’s gonna shit! What are we going to do about Fowler?’