I just love it when somebody hasn’t got a clue what you’re doing, yet still insists that what they’re doing is more important. Maybe I was tying a tourniquet around a severed artery in my leg. I obviously wasn’t, but how in the hell did she know that?

Anyway, like a good soldier, I locked my room and headed up to the hair parlor with the HOMOS sign over the door. As before, I looked around and checked carefully to make sure nobody was watching.

Imelda was again ensconced on one of the big rotating chairs in the middle of the floor. A stack of legal documents rested on her stomach. Her nose was tucked inside a thick folder. I heard her snort with disapproval at something as I walked by.

I entered Carlson’s office, where Keith, Allie, and Maria were seated and listening to their boss jabbering to somebody on the phone.

“Uh-huh,” she was saying. “Good. The sooner the better.”

She listened for a moment, then said, “CNN today, then NBC and ABC in the morning. That’s the best order. CNN always presents flat news without editorial twist. Give ABC and NBC enough time and they’ll make it look like a minidrama.”

I listened as she continued coordinating details. I developed this real queasy feeling.

Finally Carlson finished. She triumphantly hung up the phone and then shared quick, satisfied nods with the other three.

“What’s going on here?” I asked.

Before she could answer, the door swung open and in came a big, dykish-looking woman wearing way too much makeup, and hauling a microrecorder from a strap on her shoulder. She hugged Katherine, then they kissed. Uh-huh, I got that. Then a man with a big camera slung on his shoulder barged his way into the overcrowded office.

“Where do you want to do it?” the woman asked.

“Outside,” Carlson answered, standing up.

“What is this?” I stupidly asked. I mean, it was damned obvious what it was. A catastrophically bad idea was what it was.

The other three happily followed the camera crew out the door while I threw my arm across the sill and blocked Carlson. I gave her a hard look. “I don’t like being ignored. I’m going to ask one more time. What the hell is this?”

“Isn’t it obvious? We’ve got a one-minute spot on CNN.”

“Don’t.”

“It’s already scheduled.”

“Don’t,” I pleaded. “It’s a really bad idea.”

“Nonsense,” she said with an apathetic shrug. “It’s perfectly harmless. All they want is a quick puff piece on the defense team. Follow me. You’ll see.”

Some inner sense told me I shouldn’t. But to my everlasting regret, I ignored it. I put my arm down and she squeezed past me. I shuffled a few steps behind her. She preceded me out the front entrance and then mysteriously paused till I was walking beside her. To my immense surprise, she put her tiny right hand on the crook of my elbow, started waving her left hand in the air, and began flapping her jaw.

I didn’t pay any attention to what she was saying, though. I was too busy gawking at the cameraman, who had his lens pointed at the two of us. I felt like a spastic deer staring at the headlights of the thirty-wheeled semi roaring down on him. About five awkward seconds passed before I swiftly disengaged my arm and spun on her.

“What the hell-” I blurted.

“Major Drummond,” the CNN reporter asked, jamming her microphone in my face. “Is it true your client was beaten by the South Korean police?”

I gave Carlson a blistering stare, and she tilted her head in a challenging cant.

I looked at the reporter, my face clouded with anger, my jaws tightly clenched. “No comment,” I growled.

She paused, apparently confused, then asked, “Is that all you have to say?”

“No damned comment to that, either,” I roared, this time saying it with enough emphasis in all the right places that she had to get the message.

Carlson then took the reporter’s arm and the two of them casually strolled to a shaded spot underneath a big tree. The cameraman followed them and Carlson gave a three-minute impromptu interview. I watched and smoldered. You could tell Carlson was very practiced in the art of interviews, because she even helped arrange the cameraman to get the best angle – away from the sun – and her movements in front of his lens had that theatrical, picturesque quality of a born actress.

When she finally finished, she and the CNN crew warmly shook hands and parted ways. My hands were shaking, too, only in anticipation of getting themselves clenched firmly around her tiny neck.

She ignored me as she walked by. I didn’t ignore her, though. I moved like a lion going after its prey. Her trio of co-counsels kept their distance, because it was pretty damned obvious that Chernobyl was about to bleed radioactive dust all over the countryside.

When we got to Carlson’s office, I slammed the door shut behind me. There was a thunderous bang. The whole building reverberated.

“You’ve got a problem, lady!” I yelled.

She fell into her chair and looked up at me. Her expression was anything but receptive. “I’ve got a problem?” she yelled right back.

“Yeah. A big one.”

“No, Drummond, you’re the one with the problem.”

“Yeah?”

She nearly exploded. “You still don’t get it, do you? My job is to protect my client. That’s supposed to be your priority, too.”

“You don’t protect your client by yammering in front of a camera every chance you get.”

“When it comes to homosexuals, it’s the only way you protect them. You have no idea how despised they are. No, that’s not right. Maybe you do.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Come on, Drummond. I’ve seen how you look at Keith and Maria and Allie. What in the hell did they ever do to you to provoke that kind of disgust?”

There really was no way to answer that. She had me dead in the crosshairs. So instead I took the first resort of every able attorney: When caught with your hand in the cookie jar, point at the refrigerator.

“Look,” I said, “you won’t do our client any good by running your mouth on TV. You don’t know the Koreans. Don’t piss them off. Don’t back these guys into a corner.”

“You’re acting like I started this. Don’t tell me you didn’t notice those cameras at the prison this morning? They were publicly humiliating our client. I’m fighting fire with fire.”

Again, she was right. Only this time, she was also wrong. Horribly wrong.

“That was just for public consumption. They gave up jurisdiction so they had to save some face. This is Asia, lady. That’s how the game’s played over here.”

“They beat him,” she said, and her green eyes sizzled like tiny little hornet’s nests with thousands of furious insects buzzing around.

“Did you see them beat him?” I demanded.

“I saw them shove him. And I saw him come flying out the back of that van.”

“Maybe he tripped,” I countered. “I’ll ask you once again. Did you witness anyone beating him?”

“I didn’t have to witness it. I saw the look on his face.”

“You’re supposed to be a lawyer. You’re supposed to distinguish between assumptions and facts. You just told an international network that our client was beaten. Can you prove it? Can you back it up?”

She ran a hand through her hair. She knew I had her.

I said, “Call CNN and tell them not to run it.”

She swallowed once, hard. “I won’t.”

“Do it. You were talking out your ass. We both know it.”

“If I was, the Koreans can take it as a warning shot. They’ll keep their hands off my client or I’ll publicly pillory them every day of this trial.”

We stared at each other for a long, fruitless moment. I finally spun around and left. I went back to my room. I paced around like a big, grouchy bear in his cave. Eventually I got tired of that, but I was too emotionally worked up to return to my reading, so I flipped on the TV.

Say this for those CNN clowns: They’re damned quick.