“‘What do you want?’ she says.

“‘A word, is all,’ I says.

“‘Go ahead,’ she says.

“‘Let me up first,’ I says.

“‘No,’ she says, and the dyke presses the knife a little harder at my throat.

“‘Fine,’ I says. ‘At my age I can use a little time off my feets.’

“And then I tell her, I tell her about the husband coming into my office, about the missus and the lawn boy, about the pictures of the two of them in the Bellevue. When you’re in a situation like that, it don’t pay to hold nothing back. You give it all, the whole of it, and hope they get so lost in the details they don’t know what to do. But this bird, she knows what to do. She starts to laughing.

“‘Is that all?’ she says. ‘I hope you caught my good side.’

“‘From what I could tell,’ I says, ‘that’s all you got.’

“And the bull dyke, she stares down at me and says, ‘Don’t make me puke.’

“‘All right, Tiffany,’ says the girl. ‘Let him up.’

“The bull dyke lets me up. I look at her in her leather vest, shoulders bulging, Doc Martens, and all I can say is, ‘Tiffany? You gots to be kidding.’

“The dyke snarls, the girl laughs, and the next thing I know the girl and I, we’re in that lesbo bar, downing vodka martinis, trading cigs, laughing like we was the oldest of old pals. I ask her if she wants to get married to the lawyer. All she says is ‘Please.’ I ask her why and she shows me her pinkie. Then she turns her face away and says in the saddest voice I ever heard, ‘Besides, it would end up bloody.’ I asks her to explain. She shakes her head. Then she writes a name on a napkin and tells me before I meet with either husband or wife I oughts to find out what I can about it. For her. The only requirement is that no one knows it was she what set me on the name. And right there she writes me a check for my retainer. My third retainer.

“You would think it would be a trick with just a name to go on, figuring what there was to learn. You’d think. But I look up the name and then knocks on a door and some old lady, she just invites me in, pours me a cup of herbal, puts out a plate of biscuits, and starts chatting off my ear. Nice old lady she was, old for sure, what with her skin like tissue paper and me being able to see the blue veins pulsing in her neck. Never had no children, she tells me, but she was married for forty years to Morty. I hear a lot about Morty. He fought in the war, occupied Japan, through no fault of his own came down with some tropical disease transmitted by the mosquito that left him sterile. A senseless tragedy, she says, though I’m thinking that if Morty can convince her that the clap is transmitted by the mosquito, then what couldn’t she be convinced of? So I asks about her estate and she tells me it’s all taken care of, handled by a very sweet young man who calls her every day. She’s going to give it all to the nunnery, that’s what she plans, and every day the sweet young lawyer calls and tells her how the market moved that day. It’s going to be a tidy sum, yes, it’s going to raise some eyebrows, oh, yes. There’ll be a building at the nunnery named after Morty, oh, yes, oh, yes. Won’t that be something?

“No, it won’t. Because there’s nothing left in the trust account, is there? Nothing left, the sweet young lawyer has taken it all. Except he’s not so sweet, not so young. All he is is a frigging lawyer. And, of course, he’s the husband.

“So’s I go back to the chippy, though by now I know she’s no chippy, and tell her what I found, and she’s not the least bit shocked. And here’s the tripper, she tells me to give it to the wife, the name and the story, to let the wife do with it whatever she wants. I toss her a look like she’s crazy, like she can do a lot better for herself with the information, but she just tells me to shut up and do what I’m told. Well, that’s what she’s paying me for, and so that’s what I do. I give the pictures of the wife and the lawn boy to the husband. I give the pictures of the husband and the chippy to the wife. And with those pictures I give the name, address, and story of the old lady.

“Now, I can’t say for sure what happened in the meeting with the lawyers once the husband told the missus he wanted the divorce. I wish I was there, it must have been something. But in the end the husband and wife, they stayed married after all. In fact, they went on a European holiday for three months after. The north of Italy, the South of France. They would have gone to the coast of Luxembourg, excepting Luxembourg’s got no coast. It must have been lovely, and it was quite the shopping spree if my sources were right. And funny thing, I ran into the missus a little while after she got back, and she was happy as an oyster, had even lost some pounds and was looking rather svelte. Rather svelte. I’d of done her myself, I would, but now she was happily married.

“And the chippy that wasn’t no chippy? Listen to this. The wife, she insists, insists that the chippy leave the husband’s firm. And the chippy, she balks. No way in hell she’s leaving without a little something to remember him by. The husband, now desperate to keep the wife happy, gives the chippy a slew of cases, some profitable ones, too, I might add, and some money if she’d just leave. And so she does. Starts her own place, turns those cases into cash, begins to make a name for herself. She did quite well, didn’t she? Lost a arsehole and gained a practice all in one swell foop.

“It was my kind of case, it was. Three clients, three retainers, and the outcome, in a rough sense, was just. But the best thing was meeting the chippy. We became partners of a sort. I did her investigations, working on the sly mostly, helped those fees of hers roll in. And she, she was something, she was, special, and far too smart for the likes of me. Wheels within wheels within wheels.”

“Hailey,” I said.

“She was a hell of a girl, and I miss her.”

“So do I.”

“I believe you do.”

“I thought you might have killed her,” I said.

“I knows you did. I could see it in them peepers of yours. And me, I was wondering what kind of man represents the killer of the girl what he’s doing the old Friar Tuck to every chance he gets? I thought you was going to use some insider knowledge to get him off the hook and get your face all over the papers. I didn’t like that idea, wasn’t so happy with that. I figured I owed the girl enough to not let that happen. That’s why I came on so hard over my oatmeal. But after watching you for the last couple days, I gots a different idea.”

“Go ahead.”

“This is what I thinks.” He leaned forward, lowered his voice. “I thinks at first you weren’t taking the deal because you thought it too sweet. You thought the bastard did it, and you was standing by your Guy just to be sure he paid the ultimate price. That was what your meeting with Peale was all about, wasn’t it? Setting him up to tell the coppers all about our Mr. Gonzalez. You’re taking our little murder all personal like, playing at being being the Lone Ranger.”

“And you’re not?”

I stared at him, he stared back.

“You’re a piece of work, ain’t you, Vic?” he said. “But you don’t think he did it no more, do you?”

“Nope.”

“Something switched in your head.”

“Like a light turning on.”

“What changed your mind?”

I picked up my wine, stared into the deep crimson before taking a drink. “Hailey changed my mind. I finally learned the whole sad story of her and Guy. She was in control. From the very first, when she met him in that hospital room, to the very last, on the night of her death, when she told him it was over, she was in control. Total control. Guy never had a chance.”

“Not much a one, no.”

“And you helped set him up, didn’t you? Hailey needed to know all about the man defending the Gonzalez case to lay her trap, and you gave her what she needed. And when Guy thought you were threatening her, you were really just giving her little tidbits to help her scheme.”