Another hesitant defendant came forward, head bowed, license held precariously in his trembling hand.

“You’ve been a naughty boy, Mr. Dayanim,” said the judge.

The door closed behind me.

Traffic Court.

Chapter 42

I SAT IN the dinky little lockup at Traffic Court, leaning forward on the metal bench, my elbows on my knees, my head in my hands, contemplating the sorriness of my sorry life, when I looked up and was blinded by a great flash of light. Satori? No. Slocum.

“I hope you don’t mind,” said ADA Slocum, indicating the instant camera in his hand. “I just wanted to remember this moment, to savor it on those long cold nights when true justice seems elusive.”

I stood quickly, grabbed hold of my beltless pants to keep them up. “Are you here to spring me?”

“Your partner called,” he said. “I was in the middle of lunch with McDeiss. It’s not a pretty sight.”

“I’ve seen the lions being fed at the zoo, I get the idea. Are you here to spring me?”

“It pains me to say this, Carl, but yes. I am here to facilitate your release.”

“Good. I’ve got someplace I need to be.”

“Something pleasant, I hope.”

“Just a woman.”

“Nice looking?”

“She was.” Pause. “So?”

“It appears,” said Slocum slowly, “a bench warrant was issued early this year in Lackawanna County against a Vincent Carillo, a resident of the City of Philadelphia.”

“Ah,” I said. “That explains everything. A perfectly honest mistake, because my name is neither Vincent nor Carillo and so, of course, I was cuffed in public and taken into custody and made to sit in this stinking cell for three stinking hours.”

“There’s no reason to raise your voice like that.”

“Get me the hell out of here.”

“They’re finishing the paperwork. A few more minutes.”

We stood there for a moment on either side of the bars, quiet, as if nothing more needed to be said. I gave in first. “So why did they put me in here if the name on the warrant wasn’t mine?”

“There seems to have been an entry error on the computer,” he said.

“Just so happens to have been an entry error with my name on it.”

“Just so happens.”

“No idea how?”

“None.”

“Well, I have some.”

“I told you not to mess with him.”

“Son of a bitch.”

“Did you keep away from him like you promised?”

“Yes I did.”

“And his wife?”

“I tried.”

“Tried?”

“She came to me.”

“Uh huh.”

“Is that a crime?”

He looked at me for a moment through the bars. “Evidently.”

“He’s up to his neck in something.”

“Your horseshit is what he’s up to his neck in.”

“There’s a clerk here who is involved somehow too. I think he beat me up and threatened me right after you called me into your office.”

“You didn’t tell me about being beaten up.”

“Do you want to hear about all my problems? Do you want to hear about my father, my love life, the way Comcast unfairly cut off my cable?”

“No cable?”

“Don’t get me started.”

“You said you think he beat you up?”

“It was in my vestibule. I was facedown on the floor. I didn’t catch a face, but I recognized the voice. His name’s O’Brien. Geoffrey O’Brien. You might want to see if there is any connection between him and our friend.”

“I might want to,” said Slocum, “and then I might not want to get anywhere near your problems.” He tilted his head and looked behind me. There were four other men in the cell, a varied assortment ranging from well dressed to not, all in deeper trouble then they ever expected when they stepped through the Traffic Court metal detectors. “You drum up any business?”

“I was improperly placed into custody and my good name was slandered in public by some crackpot judge maliciously executing a mistakenly entered bench warrant that was not so mistakenly entered. I don’t need to drum up any business,” I said. “I’ll be too busy representing myself the next few months to take on any new clients.”

Just then a cop came to the cell with a clipboard and the thick manila envelope into which I had deposited my keys, my belt, my wallet and watch. He unlocked the barred door, slid it open, called out my name as if I were in a crowd twenty feet away.

“Yes,” I said.

“Mr. Carl, you’re free to go.”

As I stepped through the door, one of the men behind me said, “I’ll call you when I can, Mr. Carl. My mom will get that retainer to you like you told me. Maybe you can pop me out quick as you popped out you self.”

“Me too,” said another one.

I turned toward them. “That will be fine, gentlemen. You all have my number, right?”

They each waved a small business card.

“Good luck, then. I look forward to hearing from you.”

Slocum shook his head as he walked with me down the hall away from the cell.

“My prison posse,” I said.

Slocum just kept shaking his head.

“What?” I said.

Chapter 43

I STOOD AT the door of the small Mount Airy house and straightened my tie, licked my teeth, shined my wingtips on the back of my calves. I felt like I should have brought along a bouquet of red roses and a box of chocolates.

Sylvia Steinberg.

She was Tommy Greeley’s girlfriend before his murder, she was Tommy Greeley’s lover for who knows how long. If it wasn’t Chelsea in the photographs then it had to be her. The long taut body, the smooth skin, the dark hair.

Sylvia Steinberg.

I had thought it would be a difficult feat of detection to find her after all these years, probably living in a different city, probably living under a different name, probably living the suburban dream and wanting nothing to do with her misspent past when she was the girlfriend of a cocaine kingpin. But sometimes fact-finding is ludicrously easy, all it takes is an attempt. Sylvia Steinberg was listed under her own name in the Philadelphia telephone directory, with a Mount Airy address. Mount Airy, where all the hippies who had congregated on South Street in the sixties had settled into their middle age, wearing their Birkenstocks, sitting on their porches, chewing their granola, passing back and forth their recipes for tofu turkey.

“Who?” had said Sylvia Steinberg on the phone. “You want to talk about Tommy? Why? I suppose. You know where I live? That’s right. Tomorrow at two. Come about then, why don’t you?”

And about then I had come, down to a quiet leafy street, a small green house with a great sycamore in front, a neat lawn, a dainty porch, a door behind which stood a month’s worth of erotic fantasies. I took a breath, calmed myself, knocked. Waited for the door to open, smiled when it did, identified myself, stepped inside as the door closed behind me.

When I left that little house in Mount Airy and started driving back to Center City, I was horrified and excited too. On the plus side, I finally knew who the woman was in the photographs, finally had a face with which to grace the perfect body. On the other side, I didn’t like who it turned out to be, not at all, and yet my hormones were splashing, yes they were, and I could feel the arousal in my gut.

“I loved Tommy Greeley, I suppose,” had said Sylvia Steinberg. “At least I thought I did.”

We were sitting across from each other at her kitchen table when she said this. A coffeemaker burbled on the countertop, a small plate of Oreos was set between us. And she was talking about Tommy.

“What happened between you two?” I said.

“Do you know the Yeats line? ‘Things fall apart, the center cannot hold. ’Well, the center couldn’t hold and so it fell apart.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You can only hide from the truth so long.”

“You’re talking about the drugs?”