“So,” Sammy said, “can you help me?”

It was a question I literally couldn’t answer, which, I suppose, was an answer in itself. I’d been back on my feet for six weeks, and I’d gotten some good results for some clients, but this was a first-degree homicide with all kinds of complications and little time to prepare. The cases I’d handled were mostly bench trials with only a witness or two, and the truth was, I was mostly winging it, hoping to take advantage of less experienced prosecutors and looking for a lucky break here or there with a missing witness or lost documents. I could do that. That was easy. This case would require dedication, consistency, and full work days, and the price of fucking it up would be my old friend Sammy Cutler spending his life in jail.

So of course I said, “Sure, Sammy,” and shook his hand.

6

HALF PAST THREE in the morning. We navigated the bar, my brother and I, a place that opened six months ago, a series of rooms belowground, like a trendy coal mine, everything bathed in artificial blue light, the bass thumping like a migraine through the club, smoke and cologne and alcohol reaching a gag in my throat as beautiful people glided past us, trying their best to look intriguing and glamorous.

Pete wasn’t as drunk as I was because he actually gave a shit about making an impression. He was looking to meet someone, which put him in company with the other five hundred people crammed into this fire-code violation. Pete was five years younger; he drew the longer straw in the charm and looks department, while I got the athleticism and ambition.

“Two o’clock,” he said, turning back to me in what passed for a whisper among the pandemonium, which meant it was just short of screaming into my ear.

I started to correct him when I realized he wasn’t informing me of the hour but directing me through the stampede to a gaggle of young ladies sitting around a small circular high table. I stifled an objection, because I could hardly expect Pete not to be looking. He was young, handsome, and single. Why the hell shouldn’t he be hitting on women?

And what had remained unspoken these last few months was that, while Pete was on the make and I was anything but, it was actually my idea to kill most of these nights out at the clubs. I still hadn’t grown comfortable spending time in the house where Talia and Emily and I lived together, nor could I bring myself to sell the place.

So I found myself playing wingman as Pete made his approach. By the time I was close enough to hear what little brother was saying, two gals were already laughing. The kid had a gift for it, something he got from our dad. Then again, these women seemed like their inhibitions had been loosened by alcohol a good three or four hours ago. There were four of them, young and shapely, in revealing outfits, their hair done up. Two were white, one Asian and one African American. They looked like they came out of a sitcom on NBC.

“Which one of you is Phoebe?” I asked, but none of them could hear me.

“This is Jason,” Pete said. “My brother.”

They seemed to think that was cute, at least the Asian one did. They seemed generally interested in Pete’s banter, though their eyes moved about the room, too, scoping the place for other men. Or maybe women. I know if I were a female, I’d be a lesbian.

“Be right back,” Pete said. “Gotta take a leak.”

I gave Pete a look. I didn’t typically inquire of my brother’s scatological needs, but Pete had a history here. Before I could say anything to him, things turned even worse: the music changed to that song by Fergie, not the Dutchess of York, but the one who is booty-licious or something like that. And I didn’t think I could feel worse.

“What do you do?”

The good thing about intoxication is I can get lost for a while, but the downside is that Talia always finds me again, and this is when it’s the worst, when the defenses are down, the emotions the rawest. I heard, in my head, that little vocalization Emily used to make, once she hit three months, something between a moan and a squeal, capping off at a delightful, high-pitched squeak—

“What do you do?”

I directed back to one of the white girls, who was leaning over the table at me. Based on her outfit and posture, it seemed important to her that I take note of her cleavage, so I made a point of not doing so.

“I’m a fortune-teller,” I answered.

“You are not.”

“I knew you were going to say that.”

I caught eyes with a woman up near the bar, a woman in a green dress, the Lady in Green, who broke eye contact in an easy way, as if she hadn’t been looking at me. I suppose I should have been flattered but it made me feel uneasy, for some reason. Or maybe it was the five vodkas I had drunk. I pondered for the twentieth time tonight what I was still doing here, why I had come here to begin with, why I still feared God.

I also wondered who had hired me to defend Sammy Cutler.

“—a doctor or a lawyer or something.”

I watched the Lady in Green’s eyes tour the bar again as she waited for her drink. She had a narrow, sculpted face. Her head angled upward, revealing a vulnerability that belied her confident appearance.

“I’m a police detective,” I told the lady trying to converse with me. I say trying because she’d had more to drink than I had.

“A cop.” She said it like a cuss word. Lot of people feel that way about our city’s finest. Sometimes I’m one of them.

Now I had the attention of the entire tribe of women at the table. What kinds of cases did I handle? Did I ever shoot someone?

“You don’t seem like a cop. You seem like a Wall Street banker.” This from the black woman, or I guess I’m supposed to say African American, but she had a British accent so did that make her English American? African British? I thought of asking her but I would need a bullhorn to communicate with her across the table, and no matter how I tried to phrase the question it would probably sound politically incorrect. Why bother? Why bother with any of this?

“When I was a boy,” I said, “my parents were killed in front of me by an armed robber. I swore, that day, that I would devote my life to fighting crime.”

Pete returned from the bathroom, wearing an enthusiastic grin, rejoining the conversation with renewed vigor. I doubted that taking a piss could have put him in that good a mood. I trained my stare on him and he knew it, but he avoided my look and the question it raised.

“Jason’s a lawyer,” Pete chimed in. “One of the best in the city.”

“That explains how he lies so easily.”

I laughed, for the only time that night. I looked back at the Lady in Green who, yes, was checking me out again. The logical part of my brain, when it was functioning, told me that at some point in my life I would be interested in women again, but it seemed beyond comprehension thus far.

I watched Pete work the ladies. The kid had been through some rough patches. He got it a lot worse at home than I did, growing up. My father could look you in the eye and convince you he was heir to the British throne, but in his soul he was not an enlightened man. He was bitter and temperamental and opted, instead of a psychiatrist’s couch, to relieve tension by taking swats at his boys. I went through a pretty good spell of it myself, though I spent more time working up a sweat dodging my father’s punches than actually receiving them. I would juke right, fake left, hit the floor, anything to make him miss, only heightening his drunken rage, but in the end usually exhausting him, until he finally turned his ire on an inanimate object like my bedroom door, sometimes a chair. The wall of my bedroom looked like a Beirut stronghold.

Looking back, it was probably comical, my father swatting at air, cursing me out, while I danced around him or crawled beneath him. I probably should have hung one of those punching bags in my room. My dad could have gotten in a pretty good workout, maybe even turned pro on the welterweight circuit. But he wouldn’t have enjoyed people hitting back.