As soon as Sims left the room to talk to the assistant district attorney standing behind the mirror, Hanratty walked to the table and leaned over me. I could feel his hulking presence, smell the bad cop coffee on his breath. He placed his hand on the back of my head and pressed gently.

“I think Sims is missing half the story here.”

“Maybe,” I said without turning around, “but I’m not the half he’s missing.”

“I think you been slipping it to her for a good long time. I think, drunk on love, you both decided the easiest way to keep the fireworks going was to kill the husband. I think you and she hatched the whole damn thing.”

“Don’t think so much, Detective, you might strain something.”

“Anything you want to tell me right now? Anything you want to get off your chest?”

“I have nothing else to say.”

“Oh, you’ve got plenty to say, baby. And you’re going to spill it, all of it, before this is over. I’m not going to rest until I get the whole truth from you.”

“Then you’re going to be very tired,” I said.

A few minutes later, when Sims came back into the room, I was wiping off a thin line of blood from my brow. My head had accidentally rammed into the tabletop, imagine that. I guess Detective Hanratty didn’t like the crack about his mother.

“Had an accident?” said Sims as he placed the affidavit before me.

I read it carefully, made a few minor changes, signed it. And with that, I believed I had signed my way out of the whole damn thing. Julia now was on her own.

“Very good,” said Sims. “By the way, you ever hear of a guy named Cave?”

“Cave?”

“That’s it. Miles Cave?”

“No.”

“You sure, Victor?”

“I’m sure.”

“Okay, fine. Wait here just a moment, and then we’ll take you back to your apartment and conduct the search. And, Victor, take my advice, why don’t you. From here on in, stay the hell away from old girlfriends. Nothing but trouble. It’s like my grandmother always said.”

“What’s that, Detective?”

“Old flames burn deadly.”

6

I was half blind and bleary with weariness when I arrived at the courthouse the next morning. There wasn’t much on my docket, a young man’s future was all. His name was Derek Moats, and Derek was in trouble.

“Where you been, bo?” he said when he spotted me outside the Criminal Justice Building. “You told me to get here a half hour ago, and here you are, stumbling up with your tie all awry.”

“I knew I’d show, Derek,” I said as I adjusted my knot. “It was you I was worried about.”

“I was here from when you said, and I’m the one looking sweet, not like I just stepped out the crapper. Late night with the ladies, bo?”

“Let’s call it a late night and leave it at that.” I gave him a quick inspection. “Nice hair.”

“Combed it out just for the judge. And I wore what you told me to.”

“You look fine. Are you ready?”

“I was born ready.”

“You were born, we know that for sure, the rest we’ll figure on the run. Remember what I said, how to play it?”

“Course I do.”

“Good. Now go on in there and sit where I told you. I have someone I have to meet first.”

Commonwealth v. Derek Moats. It wasn’t much of a case, one of a long series of short trials arising from a simple roundup at a crowded drug corner in North Philly. After a number of undercover buys, the uniforms had swarmed in from all sides, forming a ring and herding a group of suspects into the center. The undercover cops then identified the young men who had been doing the selling. It was an effective way to clean out a corner, but a scattershot form of justice. Derek was caught in the hoop and pointed out by one of the undercovers, but he claimed he wasn’t doing the selling.

“So what were you doing there?” I had asked him.

“Hanging,” was his answer.

“Hanging?”

“There’s girls on that corner you would not believe,” he had said, “and every one of them just waiting for a little bit of Derek.”

The little-bit-of-Derek argument wasn’t much of a closing, but it was about all I had, unless I could discredit the identification. Because of the ID, I had opted for a bench trial. Juries are always taken in by clear identifications – he’s the one, yes, him – but judges know that the simple identification is often the most unreliable part of a criminal case. That was the knowledge I was banking on.

Half an hour later, I was sitting at the counsel table, leaning back with a quiet little smirk on my face as A.D.A. Johnstone, a fierce young prosecutor, came to the crucial part of her direct examination.

“What time was it,” she asked, “when you made the purchase?”

“About two o’clock in the morning,” said Detective Pritzker, a burly man with a long, shaggy beard, looking quite awkward in his suit and tie. He obviously would have been more at home in the motorcycle leathers he was wearing the night of the arrest.

“Was it dark?”

“The sun wasn’t out, if that’s what you’re asking, ma’am. But at that location there are plenty of streetlamps, and with all the headlights from the traffic, it was more than bright enough for me to see who I was dealing with.”

“And so you had a clear view of the man who sold you the heroin in People’s Exhibit One.”

“Objection,” I said. “There is no testimony yet as to the actual contents within that glassine envelope.”

“Are you contesting the contents, Mr. Carl?” said the judge.

“I’m contesting everything, Your Honor.”

“I’ll sustain the objection for the time being,” said the judge. “Let’s get on with it.”

“And so, Officer Pritzker,” said A.D.A. Johnstone with annoyance now in her voice, “you had a clear view of the man who sold you the alleged heroin in People’s Exhibit One.”

“Yes, I did,” he said.

“And do you see him in the courtroom today?”

“Yes, I do,” said Officer Pritzker, staring now straight at me as if he were preparing to steal my lunch money.

“Can you point him out, please?”

He reached out his arm and pointed his finger at the man sitting next to me at the counsel table, the man in the usual defendant’s seat, and then he swiveled his arm until his finger was aimed at a different man in a suit and tie sitting in the last row of the courtroom.

“He’s right there,” said Pritzker. “Sitting in the back row, in the gray. That’s him.”

A murmur went though the courtroom. I swiveled in my seat, seemingly stunned at the revelation.

“Officer Pritzker,” said A.D.A. Johnstone, “are you sure?”

“The lawyer is trying to trick me, is all,” said the witness. “I heard that’s the way he works. He’s got a reputation. But I’m a step ahead. The guy I bought from is him in the back.”

The judge leaned forward on the bench and hissed down at me. “Mr. Carl, are you playing games in my courtroom?”

“Would I do something like that, Judge?”

“Unfortunately, yes, you would. But not without consequences. Who is the man sitting next to you at counsel table?”

I looked at the young man next to me, hands clasped before him, eyes staring down. “Your Honor,” I said, “the young man sitting next to me at counsel table is the defendant, my client, Derek Moats.”

Officer Pritzker, on the stand, snarled at me and then said to the A.D.A. in a harsh whisper loud enough for the whole courtroom to hear, “He’s lying.”

“Your Honor,” said the A.D.A., “this is highly irregular.”

“Yes it is,” said the judge. “Mr. Carl, if I may ask, who is the man in the suit whom the officer identified?”

“I believe the man in the suit,” I said, “is an intern with the public defender’s office.”

“What is he doing in my courtroom?”

“I invited him, Judge. He’s trying to learn about the criminal justice system, I told him this could be an instructive case.”