“Schiff. Stier wanted her first.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. DA strategy. Maybe she’s a better witness.”

“In what way?”

“I don’t know, Abe. More passionate, maybe.”

The corner of Glitsky’s mouth turned up. “With Jerry Glass, you mean?”

“Maybe a little of that.” Bracco stood up and stretched, now closer to eye-to-eye with his lieutenant. “She’s probably more convincing than I’d be anyway. I don’t blame Stier putting her on. I would too.”

“And not you?”

“As I said, maybe later. But maybe not at all.” He hesitated, then shrugged. “Either way, it doesn’t matter. She’ll do fine. She’s a true believer.”

“I hope you’re not telling me at this stage, after the trial’s started, that you don’t believe in the case you guys have built.”

“It’s not so much that…”

“That sounds like it’s still some part of it.”

Bracco’s eyes scanned the large room, over Glitsky’s shoulder, around behind them. Nobody else was around. It was safe to talk. “I don’t have any real doubt she did it, Abe. Maya, I mean. But from the time Debra went out and talked to Glass…” Hesitating, Bracco made a face.

“What?”

“You ever notice there’s this mind-set among certain law enforcement people-I mean we’ve all seen it a hundred times-I just haven’t had it run into one of my cases before. Where anybody who has money and knows a criminal, then that person’s a criminal too.”

“Yeah, I’ve seen that. In fact, I’ve thought it. You know why?”

“Because it’s true?”

“Maybe more than you’d think, Darrel.”

Bracco rolled his shoulders. “But not always, huh?”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying what I started with. That Debra’s probably a better witness. Hardy might be able to eat me up on cross, whereas he won’t touch Debra, who buys everything Jerry Glass is selling. So does Stier.”

“And you don’t?”

Another pause. Then, in a more quiet register, “I don’t want to rat my partner, Abe. She got the collar.”

“I thought you both got the collar.”

“If you get technical, okay.”

“I don’t care about technical. Was there something wrong with the arrest?”

“No. I was there. It was righteous enough. I just… if it was me, I think I would have waited a little, that’s all. Maybe go to a DA and see if he’d fly it for the grand jury. But Debra just got the news about the fingerprint ID on the doorknob and stepped in.”

Glitsky had seen this before too. A relatively inexperienced cop would sometimes arrest a suspect before he or she had built a solid case based on the evidence. Occasionally, this was warranted, as when the suspect was a danger to witnesses or an immediate flight risk and had to be detained until someone could check more facts. Or when someone flat out confessed.

But more often, the best case protocol was as Bracco suggested-build the case and present it to the district attorney, who then-if the evidence was compelling-would get a warrant or get it in front of the grand jury. The alternative was that an inspector could simply go and make the arrest. And only then would the DA’s office review the case to see if it would be charged.

“So what happened on this one?” Glitsky asked.

“I didn’t think it was enough at the time,” Darrel said, “and Debra and I had words about it, but what could we do? It was a done deal. And then, hey, of course Maya gets held to answer at the prelim, right? So we got it. It was going to trial. We had other cases. I stopped thinking about it.”

“But you’ve still got questions?”

“Not really questions, no.” Bracco shook his head. “And not really about whether Maya’s guilty. I mean, who else? And with her motive and connections to both these guys? Just that she knew both of them, they were squeezing her. She’s a liar. It just totally works.”

“But?”

“But I think we could have built Stier a better case. Now it’s all this other stuff with the forfeitures and political heat. So Maya’s a rich person who knows criminals, therefore she’s a criminal, and if she’s a criminal, then she probably did these guys. I just don’t want to have to hold all that together on the stand, that’s all, when I don’t think we’ve got the evidence to back it up. Debra’ll be way better at it.”

That same morning in Chinatown the mood was strained at The Hunt Club.

Tamara Dade sat red-eyed at her computer, unspeaking, unsmiling. Wyatt Hunt had stopped by one of the local bakeries on the way in and had brought a bag of hot, fresh-from-the-oven cha sui bao, the delicious pork-filled buns that were a rare treat and Tamara’s favorite food on earth, and she told him she wasn’t hungry.

After twenty minutes back in his office Hunt stood and opened the door back to the reception area. “Tam,” he said gently, “have you heard from Craig?”

She half turned to face him. “He called in sick.”

“Sick?” This was decidedly unusual. Sickness wasn’t really an acceptable part of the culture of Hunt’s business. “What’s he got? Tam? Hey. Are you okay?”

Clearly, she wasn’t. After the merest glance at her boss, and again without a word or a look back, she rose from her chair and walked out the main door. This led both down to Grant Street outside and to the bathroom, and Hunt wasn’t at all sure whether she’d be back until he realized she hadn’t taken her purse.

So leaving the door between reception and his office open in case she wanted to come in and talk to him, he went back to his desk, picked up his telephone, and punched some numbers.

“Hey, Wes.”

“Hey yourself.”

“You talk to Diz this morning?”

“No. He’s at trial. He’s been going straight in.”

“I know. But he stopped by my place last night.”

“What’d he want?”

“He wants me to put a press on who killed his victims.”

This brought a pause. Farrell was the firm’s resident adviser on never believing that your client was innocent. This was because the celebrated case that had made his bones in the city’s legal community was one involving his best friend, another attorney named Mark Dooher, who’d been charged with murdering his wife. Farrell had gotten him off, cleanly acquitted. That turned out to have been a bad mistake that almost cost Farrell his own life a while later. “You mean Maya Townshend’s victims?”

“Diz doesn’t think so. Or at least he isn’t sure anymore.”

“Since when?”

“Since yesterday afternoon when he talked to her.”

“Denied it, did she?”

“Ambiguously, at least. Enough to make him think he might be neglecting or ignoring something important.”

“He always thinks that. That’s why we made him managing partner. Nothing gets through.” Hunt heard a breath in the phone. “Anyway, you’re calling me about this because…?”

“Because you knew Vogler.”

Another hesitation. “If Diz told you that, I’m going to have to have a talk with him.”

“It wasn’t Diz. I did some Net searching back when I first heard about this list of Vogler’s customers.”

“How’d you even hear about that?”

“You know Craig, who works here?”

“Sure.”

“He’s on it too. Told me about it right up-front in case it was a problem for me. I told him it was nothing I couldn’t handle, but he’d be smarter if he didn’t do anything overtly against the law while he was trying to get his license. Anyway, I got curious after that, found it in a blog somewhere. Nothing’s sacred anymore, in case you hadn’t heard. Good news for the PI trade; not so much for everybody else.”

“Tell me about it. So, okay, I knew Vogler. So did your Craig. Ask him.”

“I would, but he’s out sick today. I thought I’d start with you.”

“I have no idea, Wyatt, what I could tell you. That’s the honest truth.”

“I believe you, and that makes us about even. I don’t know what I want to know. Not exactly, anyway. I just figured the weed side of the equation’s been left out, I mean if somebody on that side killed him. So nobody’s talked about how that whole thing worked. How often, for example, did you buy from him?”