“No.”

“Did you try to find out Dent’s situation at all?”

“Well, he wasn’t a sweet Leilani, if that’s what you’re saying. Look, we did what we needed to do. We investigated what we needed to investigate, we found the shooter, we took care of it. Now, I appreciate the visit, but I got work to do. In the time I wasted with you, another two cars were stolen off the street.”

“It’s nice to see they keep you busy.”

“If any other questions come up,” said Beth, “would you mind terribly, Detective, if we give you a call?”

“Do me a favor, little sister,” he said, “and don’t.”

15

It was the last sentence of Detective Gleason’s that stuck in my mind for some reason. His voice, like I said, was deep and southern, and he gave that last word a melodious lilt that struck me as something strangely familiar.

I let it rattle around in my head as I drove Beth back to the office. She wasn’t so encouraged by our outing, Beth, and not so happy with me, I could tell, and I could tell why, too. She was like my seventh-grade gym teacher who told me, when I refused to climb the rope, that he didn’t like my altitude. Well, Beth didn’t like my altitude either.

“Dent’s dead,” she said, “his killer is killed, that line of inquiry is buried. It was a wild-goose chase from the start.”

“I like wild goose. A nice pudding and some cranberry sauce and it’s like we’re in the middle of a Dickens novel.”

“Not to mention the billable hours.”

“Not to mention.”

“We don’t have anything, do we?”

“I told you at the start it was useless.”

“But still you took his money.”

“It wasn’t his, but yeah, I took the money. And if it’s hopeless, it’s not our fault. He’s the one who killed his wife.”

“Did he? Are you sure?”

“In the eyes of the law and jury, that’s just what he did. But see, look at me, I can cheerfully say I don’t give a damn. I don’t have to believe in my client; I just have to believe in the legal tender he’s tendering. A lawyer is really nothing more than a mechanic. Bring in your life, with all its troubles, and I’ll open the hood, poke around, see if any of the legal tricks at my disposal can fix the problem. It isn’t personal, I don’t make judgments about the quality of the car. I just roll up my sleeves. When was the last time your auto mechanic took it personally when your engine needed a valve job? He shakes his head, sure, clucks his tongue, and says all the right things when he tells you the bad news, like an oncologist with really dirty hands, but trust me, he doesn’t take it personally. Instead he takes Visa or MasterCard.”

“I didn’t go to law school to be a mechanic.”

“Yeah, but Atticus Finch was fiction and Darrow is dead. Ow.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Your self-righteous whining is starting my tooth to aching.”

“Good. Want me to give it a twist?”

That’s how we left it, with my tooth throbbing and the cracks in our relationship starting to show. And the truth was, I didn’t understand for certain where the new tension was coming from. I was the same cynical, opportunistic asshole I had always been. Since when had it bugged her so?

I thought about that some, and then, back in my office, I thought some more about Detective Gleason. There was something in the story he had told, in that desolate building and futile department in which now he worked, something in the way he defended the killing of Red Rover, something in the way he protested Beth’s insinuations about Seamus Dent’s sexuality. And somehow it was all contained in that last sentence, in that very last word.

Do me a favor, little sister, he had said, and don’t. Don’t. That’s what he said. Each time I held that word in my mind, it seemed to sing to me. And then, quick as a “Hey, baby,” I listened, and the raw possibility came clear.

So I called up Torricelli. Tommy Torricelli was a lunkhead, absolutely, and we weren’t exactly buddy-buddy, but he was the homicide detective who had investigated the Leesa Dubé murder, who had found the bloodied shirt and gun, who had concluded that François Dubé was the killer, who had testified convincingly at the trial in which François Dubé was convicted. He would be oh so delighted to learn that I was looking into his case. But before I told him that little gem, perfectly designed to make his day, I had a few other questions.

“How you doing there, Detective?” I said.

He wasn’t inclined to tell me. He wasn’t inclined to tell me anything except to get lost, which is exactly what he did. I had never worked one of Torricelli’s cases before, but we knew each other enough to be wary. I was acriminal defense attorney with sharp teeth and a well-honed shamelessness. He was a cop known to cross a line or three in order to get the results he was looking for. Not quite oil and vinegar, more like fertilizer and diesel fuel.

“I only called to say hello,” I lied, “and to give you some news that might interest you. But first I thought we’d gossip a bit.”

Torricelli lied back when he said he wasn’t one to traffic in gossip. Torricelli trafficked in gossip like I-95 trafficked in cars.

“I was just at the auto squad on Macalester,” I said. “Ran into Detective Gleason. How’d he end up in that backwater?”

He told me.

“Wow,” I said, acting surprised. “But they didn’t pull his badge?”

He told me that they hadn’t, that everything had checked out, but still the transfer.

“Well,” I said. “At least it turned out okay. What’s with those sideburns, though? Yeah, and that southern twang in his voice?”

He laughed and made a snide comment.

“Right,” I said, “more like South Street. You have any idea where he drinks?”

He gave me the name and a description of the place.

“You’re kidding,” I said. “I didn’t know they had a place like that outside of Memphis. You ever go down there, have a drink with him?”

He said no, he said they couldn’t drag his fat Italian ass into a place like that with a team of horses.

“I don’t doubt it,” I said.

He growled something at me.

“You know, Detective, I’ve been thinking about you. We ought to have dinner sometime. Someplace nice. Candles and violin music. Someplace romantic that makes up a nice pasta fazool. My treat.”

He was quiet for a long moment and then let out an expletive I have tactfully deleted.

“And maybe we can talk about a new client I’ve just been hired to represent. François Dubé. Remember him?”

I held the handset away from my ear to save my eardrum the wear and tear as he told me, in his own way, that yes, he did remember François Dubé and how delighted he was that I had decided to take up his cause. That was one of my favorite things about my job as a defense attorney, the way I was able to create pleasant and meaningful relationships with the noble members of the city’s police department. But even as I suffered the detective’s abuse, I still felt the shivery thrill of discovery, the same thrill you get when you slide in the final pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. It was coming clear for me, the story of Seamus Dent, not all of it, I would learn more in the course of my investigation, but now maybe just enough was coming clear to get François Dubé that new trial he so desperately sought.

It was late already by the time I figured it out. Beth was gone, my secretary, Ellie, was gone, it was just me in the office, the sole representative of the law firm of Derringer and Carl, but I was enough. I sat in Ellie’s chair, took out a blue-backed document, rolled it into the typewriter my secretary used to fill the blanks in preprinted documents, hunted and pecked, whited out the mistakes, hunted and pecked some more.

And then I put on my jacket, stuffed the document into my jacket pocket, and drove out to the Great Northeast to have myself a drink in the shadow of the King.