“I’d like to speak to him.”

“That would be quite difficult, Victor.”

“Excuse me?”

“He drowned.”

“My God.”

“Just a few weeks ago. In his pool. He took a swim every morning, a few dives, a few laps. But I suppose he took one dive too many. They found him floating facedown.”

“Did the police investigate?”

“Ruled it an accident. Apparently he had a heart attack, right in the pool. So it goes. You know, Victor, cracking that case was the highlight of my career, the highlight, actually, of my professional life. I worked on many white-collar cases, tax cases, fraud, but that was the biggest win. And all from a careful examination of the books. I guess I’m not so different from Rockefeller after all.”

“Give or take a billion dollars.”

“Yes, I suppose,” he said, at a loss for a moment before his unctuous smile returned and he gestured me toward the door. “If there is anything else I can help you with, please let me know.”

“Oh I will,” I said, still thinking of Babbage, floating facedown in the water.

“By the way, Victor, one thing you might want to know.” His eyebrows rose and his face took on the expression of self-delight that seemed to be his trademark. “Our Tommy Greeley. Believe it or not, his best friend in college and in law school was not his business partner, that Cooper Prod. It was someone else. We couldn’t link him with any of the wrongdoing, and he was never indicted, but still it is quite an interesting association.”

I looked at him. He wanted me to help him out, to pressure it out of him for some reason, as if that would put us further in league together, but I knew if I waited long enough he would spill, he couldn’t help himself. He smile was expectant for a moment before it turned exasperated and then he couldn’t hold it in any longer.

“Straczynski. Jackson Straczynski. They were the best of friends. Isn’t that something?”

“Yes,” I said, and it was. I swallowed with surprise at the name, but I tried not to show it.

His hand moved solicitously to my back, like he was pushing me out now that he had told me exactly what he had wanted to tell me, led me exactly where he had wanted me to go. I didn’t mind leaving, but I didn’t like being pushed the way he was pushing me.

At the doorway I stopped, turned around. “Thank you so much for your help.”

“It was nothing. Nothing at all. I was glad to be of service.”

“I suppose he was, wasn’t he?”

“Who?”

“Tommy. You said he got away, never paid the piper. So I suppose maybe he was too smart for you after all.”

His puckish expression dropped for just a moment and what was left was all the arrogance and intolerance that I had heard beneath his jovial voice, and then the smile returned. “Good day, Mr. Carl,” he said, closing the door before I had the chance to turn away.

It was all a swirl for me as I walked back down the hall toward the elevator. The squirrelly FBI special agent who brought down an empire, the money launderer who did a spectacularly bad job of laundering Tommy Greeley’s cash, the grand jury investigation, the sixty-million-dollar-a-year cocaine enterprise, the indictments, the dead informant, the dead informant who died in a strange swimming accident not two weeks before Joey Parma got his throat slashed. All of it swirled around me as I tried to make sense of it, but then a name popped out of the swirl, a name that Telushkin had made sure to tell me for reasons I could guess, oh yes.

Jackson Straczynski.

I knew the name, every lawyer in the city, in the country, knew the name. Jackson Straczynski, State Supreme Court Justice Jackson Straczynski, one of the most respected conservative legal scholars in the country and the first name on a very short list to fill the next open seat on the United States Supreme Court.

Whatever I had thought I had been getting myself into before, I had just fallen into the big leagues.

Chapter 20

“WHAT I HEARD, ” said my private investigator Phil Skink, “is this Edward Dean, he made his money out on the Coast in some Internet con job what he sold afore the bubble burst. Or he was involved in some complicated investment scam the coppers are still trying to unravel. Or he invented the thingamajig what goes in the whatchubob what they stick into every computer comes off the line.”

“In other words,” I said, “you’ve learned nothing.”

“This is crucial data, it is, culled from the most respected sources nationwide.”

“Zilch.”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

It was approaching midnight in Rittenhouse Square, the residential heart of Philadelphia’s high society. The park was dark, deserted except for the occasional couple strolling home from the bars and clubs on the east side of the square, or the occasional cop strolling from bench to bench to roust the homeless. Beth and I had arrived at the park first. Skink came after, assuring us that we hadn’t been tailed by Dante’s boys. Now we three sat on a bench in the middle of the square, staring at an imposing town house just to the west of the Ethical Society, with a curving stone staircase and granite pediments and wrought-iron grates over its first-floor windows.

The town house, dark now except for a bright light falling from the third-floor window, was currently home to the various and sundry Jacopo businesses, along with their principal shareholder.

“You pick up any other useless information about him?” I asked.

“He’s a charitable sort, so long as his name’s prominent on the donor list. Gives to plastic surgeons what are curing hair lips in China. Gives to groups pushing literacy in the inner city. Gives to an organization committed to saving some old boat on the waterfront.”

“Excuse me,” I said.

“Some old oceangoing liner.”

“With the two huge red funnels?”

“That’s the one. The owner wants to scrap it. This group is trying to save it, turn it into something like a hotel, or a floating museum, anything to keep it intact.”

“That’s peculiar,” I said, remembering the sight of that same boat, looming not far from the pier where Joey Parma’s lifeless body was tossed. “So, is he inside?”

“The limo pulled around back at nine, most likely with this Dean inside. The hard-act what keeps watch and runs errands, name of Colfax, he showed up around nine-thirty. And then she showed up a little after ten.”

“Kimberly Blue.”

“That’s right, our Kimberly.”

“So you think…”

“I ain’t thinking nothing.”

“Why did we wait until so late?” said Beth.

“Knocking at a reasonable hour would be expected,” I said. “I’d rather shake him up a bit.”

“Are we treating him like a client or a suspect?” said Beth.

I thought on that one for a moment. We had, after all, taken Jacopo’s money and paid our bills with it and we were, after all, pursuing Jacopo’s claim against Derek Manley. And yet, there was something about that old rotting boat and its proximity to Joey’s corpse that convinced me.

“Suspect,” I said.

“Attaboy,” said Skink. “You sure you don’t want me inside with you?”

“The law firm of Derringer and Carl can handle this for now. No need to show Mr. Dean everything we have. I’m saving you for later. You’re sure about that Eldorado being at the club?”

“I ain’t seen it with my own eyes, but it’s somewheres there. You just might have to poke around a bit. When you getting it?”

“The sheriff is scheduled for day after tomorrow,” I said. “All right. You ready, Beth?”

“Ready,” she said.

“If we’re not out in half an hour,” I told Skink as I pushed myself off the bench, “send in the dancing girls. Not that I’m worried or anything, but I always like a good show.”

We walked together, Beth and I, south through the park and then west to the town house and our meeting with the mysterious Eddie Dean. Who was he? Where did he come from? Why had he magically appeared in Philadelphia? And why did an apparent high roller like Edward Dean have any interest in the death of a four-time loser like Joseph Parma? It was those very questions that impelled us up that curving stone staircase toward the ornate wooden door.