“Yes, he called me late Monday,” Maggie finally answered.

“So why did you think he was full of shit? He’s done it before, hasn’t he? The guy’s a professional snitch, right?”

I was fishing and she knew it. She shook her head.

“I am sure you will find out all you need to know during discovery. Can we just have a friendly pint of Guinness here? I have to leave in about an hour.”

I nodded but wanted to know more.

“Tell you what,” I said. “You’ve probably had enough Guinness for one St. Patrick’s Day. How about we get out of here and get something to eat?”

“Why, so you can keep asking me about your case?”

“No, so we can talk about our daughter.”

Her eyes narrowed.

“Is something wrong?” she asked.

“Not that I know of. But I want to talk to you about her.”

“Where are you taking me to dinner?”

I mentioned an expensive Italian restaurant on Ventura in Sherman Oaks and her eyes got warm. It had been a place we had gone to celebrate anniversaries and getting pregnant. Our apartment, which she still had, was a few blocks away on Dickens.

“Think we can eat there in an hour?” she asked.

“If we leave right now and order without looking.”

“You’re on. Let me just say some quick good-byes.”

“I’ll drive.”

And it was a good thing I drove because she was unsteady on her feet. We had to walk hip to hip to the Lincoln and then I helped her get in.

I took Van Nuys south to Ventura. After a few moments Maggie reached beneath her legs and pulled out a CD case she had been uncomfortably sitting on. It was Earl’s. One of the CDs he listened to on the car stereo when I was in court. It saved juice on his iPod. The CD was by a dirty south performer named Ludacris.

“No wonder I was so uncomfortable,” she said. “Is this what you’re listening to while driving between courthouses?”

“Actually, no. That’s Earl’s. He’s been doing the driving lately. Ludacris isn’t really to my liking. I’m more of an old school guy. Tupac and Dre and people like that.”

She laughed because she thought I was kidding. A few minutes later we drove down the narrow alley that led to the door of the restaurant. A valet took the car and we went in. The hostess recognized us and acted like it had only been a couple weeks since the last time we had been in. The truth was, we had probably both been in there recently, but each with other partners.

I asked for a bottle of Singe Shiraz and we ordered pasta dishes without looking at a menu. We skipped salads and appetizers and told the waiter not to delay bringing the food out. After he left I checked my watch and saw we still had forty-five minutes. Plenty of time.

The Guinness was catching up with Maggie. She smiled in a fractured sort of way that told me she was drunk. Beautifully drunk. She never got mean under a buzz. She always got sweeter. It was probably how we’d ended up having a child together.

“You should probably lay off the wine,” I told her. “Or you’ll have a headache tomorrow.”

“Don’t worry about me. I’ll lay what I want and lay off what I want.”

She smiled at me and I smiled back.

“So how you been, Haller? I mean really.”

“Fine. You? And I mean really.”

“Never better. Are you past Lorna now?”

“Yeah, we’re even friends.”

“And what are we?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes adversaries, I guess.”

She shook her head.

“We can’t be adversaries if we can’t stay on the same case together. Besides, I’m always looking out for you. Like with that dirtbag, Corliss.”

“Thanks for trying, but he still did the damage.”

“I just have no respect for a prosecutor who would use a jailhouse snitch. Doesn’t matter that your client is an even bigger dirtbag.”

“He wouldn’t tell me exactly what Corliss said my guy said.”

“What are you talking about?”

“He just said he had a snitch. He wouldn’t reveal what he said.”

“That’s not fair.”

“That’s what I said. It’s a discovery issue but we don’t get a judge assigned until after the arraignment Monday. So there’s nobody I can really complain to yet. Minton knows that. It’s like you warned me. He doesn’t play fair.”

Her cheeks flushed. I had pushed the right buttons and she was angry. For Maggie, winning fair was the only way to win. That was why she was a good prosecutor.

We were sitting at the end of the banquette that ran along the back wall of the restaurant. We were on both sides of a corner. Maggie leaned toward me but went too far and we banged heads. She laughed but then tried again. She spoke in a low voice.

“He said that he asked your guy what he was in for and your guy said, ‘For giving a bitch exactly what she deserved.’ He said your client told him he punched her out as soon as she opened her door.”

She leaned back and I could tell she had moved too quickly, bringing on a swoon of vertigo.

“You okay?”

“Yes, but can we change the subject? I don’t want to talk about work anymore. There are too many assholes and it’s too frustrating.”

“Sure.”

Just then the waiter brought our wine and our dinners at the same time. The wine was good and the food was like home comfort. We started out eating quietly. Then Maggie hit me with a pitch right out of the blue.

“You didn’t know anything about Corliss, did you? Not till I opened my big mouth.”

“I knew Minton was hiding something. I thought it was a jailhouse -”

“Bullshit. You got me drunk so you could find out what I knew.”

“Uh, I think you were already drunk when I hooked up with you tonight.”

She was poised with her fork up over her plate, a long string of linguine with pesto sauce hanging off it. She then pointed the fork at me.

“Good point. So what about our daughter?”

I wasn’t expecting her to remember that. I shrugged.

“I think what you said last week is right. She needs her father more in her life.”

“And?”

“And I want to play a bigger part. I like watching her. Like when I took her to that movie on Saturday. I was sort of sitting sideways so I could watch her watching the movie. Watch her eyes, you know?”

“Welcome to the club.”

“So I don’t know. I was thinking maybe we should set up a schedule, you know? Like make it a regular thing. She could even stay overnight sometimes-I mean, if she wanted.”

“Are you sure about all of that? This is new from you.”

“It’s new because I didn’t know about it before. When she was smaller and I couldn’t really communicate with her, I didn’t really know what to do with her. I felt awkward. Now I don’t. I like talking to her. Being with her. I learn more from her than she does from me, that’s for sure.”

I suddenly felt her hand on my leg under the table.

“This is great,” she said. “I am so happy to hear you say that. But let’s move slow. You haven’t been around her much for four years and I am not going to let her build up her hopes only to have you pull a disappearing act.”

“I understand. We can take it any way you want. I’m just telling you I am going to be there. I promise.”

She smiled, wanting to believe. And I made the same promise I just made to her to myself.

“Well, great,” she said. “I’m really glad you want to do this. Let’s get a calendar and work out some dates and see how it goes.”

She took her hand away and we continued eating in silence until we both had almost finished. Then Maggie surprised me once again.

“I don’t think I can drive my car tonight,” she said.

I nodded.

“I was thinking the same thing.”

“You seem all right. You only had half a pint at -”

“No, I mean I was thinking the same thing about you. But don’t worry, I’ll drive you home.”

“Thank you.”

Then she reached across the table and put her hand on my wrist.

“And will you take me back to get my car in the morning?”

She smiled sweetly at me. I looked at her, trying to read this woman who had told me to hit the road four years before. The woman I had never been able to get by or get over, whose rejection sent me reeling into a relationship I knew from the beginning couldn’t go the distance.