For a minute, he felt light-headed with the rush of relief. 'Did you call me?'

'Yeah.'

'I thought you were having all kinds of tests and stuff today.'

'That was this morning. It all went like a top, in case you were wondering.'

'I haven't thought about anything else all day,' he said. 'Except just now I was sure you were dead.'

'Nope,' he said. 'But somebody else is.'

'Who's that?'

'Cullen Leon Alsop, former famous snitch. Diz, you still there?'

'Yeah. How?'

'OD. Uncut heroin. He got OR'd' – released on his own recognizance – 'yesterday afternoon and I guess he thought it'd be fun to go out and celebrate.'

'How did you find out?'

'Ridley Banks called me here. He was slightly upset. This kind of majorly complicates Cole Burgess for him and it's been a mess from the beginning. He didn't like it when Cullen came up with the gun story before and he doesn't like this even more.'

'I don't either.'

'I didn't think you would. Which is why I wanted you to know right away.'

'Would he talk to me? Banks?'

'He's a public servant. I don't see why not.'

'Perhaps because the last cop who talked to me got himself suspended? That would be one reason.'

'Maybe you can wear a disguise?'

'Or fake a heart attack, appear feeble and harmless. Speaking of which, I appreciate the call, but are you sure you should be working already?'

Glitsky didn't say anything for a long while. Then, 'Maybe somebody else did kill her, Diz. I'm going to find out.'

'Not if you die first.'

'Then I'll make sure I don't.'

The thing about Freeman that Hardy found so continually impressive was not only that his personal arsenal was so huge, but that he could pull out any weapon from it at the moment of its peak effectiveness. At the precise instant, he'd managed to become both Rich McNeil's drinking buddy and his father confessor, even going so far as to pull the curtain again to shield them.

After Hardy pulled it back, he saw that Freeman had ordered a second bottle of Pinot Grigio and they'd already put a significant dent in it, the two of them having moved from hostility to something approaching intimacy in about a quarter of an hour. McNeil was leaning back into the wall of the booth, the earlier tomato-red flush of anger having softened to a rosy glow. He'd loosened his tie, undone his top button.

Hardy got settled in next to him and poured himself some ice water.

'Rich was just telling me an interesting story,' Freeman said. 'Do you know Gene Visser?'

'Used to be a cop? Sure, though I don't know what he's doing lately.'

'Now he's a private eye. You'll never guess who he works with.'

Hardy could figure it out. His eyebrows went up. He turned to Rich. 'How did you meet him?'

McNeil lifted his glass, drank off another half inch. 'He came to me one day last week at the office. Said he'd been doing some work for Mr Logan, didn't want to see us get involved in a lot of ugly accusations.'

Freeman chuckled without mirth. 'We can bring this to the bar, and I'm going to. But I'm sorry, Rich, you go on.'

The expression was apologetic. 'I should have told you, Diz. I just thought it would be easiest to bail out. I'm just so tired of all this.'

'What?'

McNeil sighed from his shoes. 'Fifteen, eighteen years ago, I fucked up, got involved with another woman. My secretary. Stupid, stupid, stupid.' Pure disgust. He sipped wine. 'Anyway, I did it. She got pregnant, had the child. Sally found out. It was awful, but we worked it out. It was awful,' he repeated. 'And the girl, Linda… hell, it wasn't her fault… anyway, I wound up having to let her go, essentially paid her off out of our own savings, got her set up with another job…'

'And now she's blackmailing you?'

McNeil shook his head. 'Not her, Diz. But the main thing Sally and I wanted to do was keep it from the kids, you know. I'd made a mistake and I was paying. Believe me, I was paying. But it wasn't going to ruin our family.'

'And Visser found out about it?'

A nod. 'He must have gone digging around in my old company for dirt on me. There had been rumors, probably some resentment. I left a couple of years afterward, but people remembered. And now…' He shrugged helplessly.

'So Visser threatened to tell your kids and drag Linda and her kid through it if you didn't settle.' Hardy sat back, considering. 'You know, Rich, it's not as though this kind of thing is going to make headlines. You had an affair, you and your wife worked it out, you're sorry.'

McNeil looked across the table. 'I know. That's what David was saying, too. It was just that after all this time, hearing it from Visser, knowing the kind of person Manny Gait is, what else he might do… I panicked, I guess.'

'Totally understandable,' Freeman was controlling the moment and this was precisely where he wanted McNeil. 'Anyway, Diz, I suggested that he and Sally just gather the family together – maybe not the grandchildren, but the kids. They should just – simply, honestly, humbly – lay it all out for them.' He poured out his heart across the table. 'They'll understand, Rich, I promise you.'

'You know. I see it now. I think they would.'

'Of course they would.'

McNeil had his hand on his forehead as though rubbing away a headache. He wore his feelings like a billboard – it was all going to work out at last. Finally he looked up. 'So both of you guys, you think I should just wait?'

'A few weeks, that's all,' Freeman said.

Hardy added, 'You can always settle. It never has to get to the criminal trial.'

'That I really don't want. I'd sell the building before that.'

'That's the right decision,' Freeman said forcefully. 'Nobody could blame you. But let's not breathe a word of it until when… let's say March first? Three weeks. How's that sound?'

McNeil gave the decision its due, then nodded. 'I can do that.'

Images, smells, feelings were beginning to break through the fog. Cole didn't remember the last time he'd felt any kind of hunger except the craving for g. But after this morning's meeting with his hard-ass lawyer, they took him back to his cell and he realized he was ravenous. He'd gotten his pill from the orderly, then had his four slices of white bread, glass of milk, orange juice, two sausages, two eggs for breakfast only three hours before, but now he was counting the minutes until eleven thirty, when they'd bring up lunch.

As a capital murder defendant, he was still separated from the general population, in a sort of wing with six cells, three on each side of a ten by twenty foot common area which they were rarely permitted to use. He was in front right, with only one 'neighbor'. Cole didn't know his name. He thought of him as Jose, a tattooed rail of Mexican steel who spent all of his time doing push-ups, then watching the public television which was left on sixteen hours a day above the common area in the center of the pod of cells.

There was some game show on now, and he stood at the bars for one of the segments between commercials, then gave that up. Jose was doing push-ups again, and Cole watched him for a while before deciding that this wouldn't be the worst way to spend some time. He dropped himself and ripped off ten before it got a little difficult. By twenty he was done, his biceps and chest muscles, such as they were, screaming at the exertion. He looked over and Jose was still methodically pumping, his head craned up to the side to follow the TV.

Cole lay on the cold concrete, catching his breath. Loathing what he'd become.

It didn't even feel like a memory. He could close his eyes and recall it perfectly, the sense that he was sixteen -yesterday – he and Steve Polacek in his garage, their huge twenty dollar bet over who'd be the first to press his weight. A hundred thirty-one pounds, that was Cole. Polacek was seven pounds heavier, wanted a handicap.