The receptionist was a young black woman with big hair that had been styled into heavily gelled ribbons that flipped and curled like a miniature roller coaster from one ear to the other. Her long fingernails were painted bright yellow. She kept her back to him while playing solitaire on her computer screen and talking on her telephone headset. Her conversation was limited to "Get out!" and "You go, girl!" Had her name been Margaret, he wouldn't have stayed. Fortunately, according to the nameplate on her desk, her name was LaTisha, so Mason decided to gut it out and stand at her desk until she gave in and noticed him.

Their standoff lasted until eleven-fifteen. LaTisha muttered, "Damn this piece of shit!" She shook her head. "Not you, girl," she said into her headset. "This damn computer. Beats me every damn time. I give up."

Mason didn't mind waiting since that meant that Leonard Campbell and Patrick Ortiz were waiting as well. The odds were that they would be more annoyed than he was, since they would assume that he was late. It wouldn't occur to them that the taxpayers were not getting their money's worth from LaTisha.

Mason cleared his throat and LaTisha turned around. "How long you been standing there?" she asked him.

"Just a minute or two," he assured her. "I'm Lou Mason. I've got an appointment with Leonard Campbell and Patrick Ortiz."

LaTisha grabbed the sign-in sheet and saw that Mason had written his arrival time down as eleven o'clock. She gave him a big smile, appreciating that he hadn't given her a hard time for being on the phone. Maybe, Mason thought, she liked keeping Campbell waiting as much as he did.

"He'll be right with you, sir." Mason thought she even meant it.

Moments later, Campbell 's secretary, an attractive Hispanic woman with dark hair and a lavender skirt that had been spray-painted onto her tight hips, appeared and told him to follow her. He wanted to tell her to slow down, but didn't think it was a good idea to make Campbell wait any longer. She ushered him into Campbell 's office with a small flourish of her hand, and held his eyes as he nodded his thanks.

Patrick Ortiz was seated in a chair on the visitors' side of Campbell 's ornate, walnut desk. Campbell stood behind his desk, the phone to his ear. He motioned to Mason to take the chair next to Ortiz and squeezed his thumb and forefinger together to indicate that the conversation would be a short one.

Mason remained standing, smiled at Ortiz, and shook his hand. They didn't speak. Mason had nothing to say, and Ortiz was being deferential to his boss. Mason looked around the office. There were law books on one wall that Mason was confident Leonard Campbell had never opened; pictures of Campbell with various local dignitaries on another; and Campbell 's framed law school diploma on a third. Mason examined it closely to be certain that Campbell 's degree wasn't from the Columbia School of Broadcasting. He was annoyed to learn that he and Campbell had gone to the same law school, though Campbell had graduated twenty-five years earlier.

Campbell finished his phone call, hung up the phone, and greeted Mason. "Good to see you, Lou!" he exclaimed.

He was a trim, well-kept man nearing retirement, a neat white mustache penciled in above his upper lip. His hair was cut short to the scalp and combed slightly forward to cover more ground without looking too obvious. He was wearing a charcoal-brown suit, bone-colored shirt, a necktie with olive and copper rectangles alternating on a black background, and chocolate-colored suspenders. His suit jacket was carefully draped on a valet standing at one end of the credenza behind his desk. Mason wanted to ask him if his middle name was Dapper.

Campbell reached across his desk and shook Mason's hand with both of his, the left clamped over the right in a firm commitment of fellowship. Mason took it as a sign that Campbell was about to screw his lights out. Mason's aunt Claire had once warned him that the two-handed shake was the male equivalent of a woman's air kiss. It was, she insisted, a gesture of phony intimacy that was nothing more than a warning to be on guard.

Mason withdrew his hand and sat down next to Ortiz. He smiled politely, waiting for Campbell to tee it up, determined to avoid small talk.

"So, how's your practice these days, Lou? You've got such a high profile, I imagine you've got to use a club to keep the clients away!"

"What do you want, Leonard?" Mason asked. He phrased the question with such a neutral tone, it was impossible for Campbell to be offended or ask him another idiot question. Ortiz stifled a small chuckle with a hand over his mouth, converting it to a cough.

"Very well," Campbell answered. "Let's get to it then, shall we?"

"Let's get to it indeed," Mason concurred.

"Patrick tells me we've got your man dead to rights. No sense in putting the taxpayers through an expensive trial. We've got a proposal for you. Let your client put this whole thing behind him, do his time, and start over while he still has something to look forward to."

Mason thought Campbell was entertaining, but only to a point that had come and gone. "Patrick is too good a lawyer to have told you that you've got my client dead to anything, Leonard. Your case sucks. You've got two guys pissing at each other in a bar. All of your forensics evidence got under Cullan's fingernails when he scratched my client's hands while my client was stopping him from beating up Beth Harrell. That's all you've got. You can't even put my client at the murder scene. The only deal you should be offering me is a dismissal and an apology in return for a promise not to sue your ass."

"We can put him at the scene," Ortiz said.

Mason looked at Ortiz, ready to call him a bullshitter, but he stopped when he saw the determined confidence in Ortiz's dark eyes. Ortiz wasn't a dandy. He was a bulldog. He wouldn't bluff Mason with something that Mason could so easily call him on.

"What have you got, Patrick?"

"Your client's fingerprints. On Cullan's desk in the study where the maid found his body. Still think my case sucks?"

Mason refused to be baited. He needed to talk to Blues. "I'm obligated to convey any offer you make to my client. You're still a long way from home on this case and we all know that."

Campbell flashed Mason his most sincere smile. Mason wanted to sew his lips shut.

"We'll accept a plea to second-degree murder and we won't make any recommendation on the sentence. Your man will probably be sentenced to twenty years to life and be paroled in seven years."

"That's not much of a deal. Even with the fingerprints, second degree is the worst that he's likely to be convicted of on your best day in court. This isn't the kind of deal that makes anybody lose any sleep if we turn it down."

Campbell unleashed another smile. "This is our best deal, Lou. It's on the table until the preliminary hearing. After that, it's off the table and there won't be any other deals offered. This deal is in everyone's best interests."

"Does that include your best interests too, Leonard? Why don't you check back with Ed Fiora and ask him if he wants to reconsider? I'll take this to my client but, if I were you, I'd plan on working New Year's."

Twenty minutes later Mason was in a visitors' room at the county jail with Blues.

"They found your fingerprints in Cullan's study. On his desk," Mason told him.

Blues showed no emotion at the news. He didn't curse and he didn't deny.

"Did you hear what I said?" Mason asked him. "Patrick Ortiz told me they found your fingerprints. They can put you in Cullan's house the night he was killed."

"I wasn't there," Blues told Mason.

"Fine. I'll tell them that. I'm sure they'll just throw the fingerprints out. That will take care of everything."