“Yeah,” says Leo, “before they finish puttin’ type to newsprint on this one, they’ll kill half the trees in North America.”

“They’re that close?” I say.

He nods. “If you can believe ’em.”

Kerns has a secret. He’s like a man with hot embers in his pockets, and it’s killing him.

“You were pretty close to Potter, weren’t you?” He tries to tilt the burden of conversation to me.

“We were friends,” I say.

But he can’t resist.

“Let me tell you, Duane’s been a busy boy lately. In the office ‘til the wee hours burning the midnight oil with the brain trust three nights runnin’.” He leans over the table a little closer and drops several decibels in volume. “He’s callin’ a press conference for the morning. Seems they have an indictment.” He thumps the table with two fingers as if to make his point.

At this I am surprised. Grand juries in this state usually issue indictments only in cases involving prominent defendants, where prosecutors want to spread the political accountability for their actions.

I arch an eyebrow.

The coals burn hotter. He’s fidgeting in his chair.

“He’s got this theory, Nelson has. Since he got started it seems to be pointing in one direction, one suspect, like the needle on a compass with a constant north.”

“Who?” I ask.

“The merry widow-Potter’s wife.” He looks around the room to make sure nobody’s tuned in to our conversation, and then: “Grand jury handed down an indictment against Talia Potter just after two this afternoon, one count, first-degree murder.”

This statement seems to move me-propel me away from the table and Leo Kerns. I lose eye contact with him for a moment, stunned by what I’m hearing. I make a face-like “Fancy that.” It is all I can do, for if I open my mouth, it will utter only incredulity. I’m speechless, unable to move, even to inquire further. Kerns’s words have frozen me in place.

“With special circumstances,” he says. This latter means that Talia may be bound over for trial on a charge of murder-and if convicted could face the death penalty.

My mind is flooded by images of Brian Danley and his last fleeting moments of life in that little green room, my trip to San Quentin and death at the hands of the state.

“Looks like the lady’s got a lover. More to the point, it looks like she’s got a string of ’em, you know, like the polo set keep ponies, this broad collects hunks,” he says. “Nelson thinks she got bored with the old man early on, and she and one of the boyfriends popped him for the money. The old man was worth a bundle.”

“There’s easier ways to be rid of a husband than killing him.” With some difficulty, I’ve scrambled mentally out of my hole, enough to throw a little water on this theory, the thought that Talia might kill to rid herself of Ben.

“Not if there’s a prenuptial agreement,” he says.

I look at him as if to say, “Is this true?”

He nods. “Seems the hormones didn’t completely kill the old man’s sense of business.”

This is Ben, I think, ever the lawyer.

“Ironclad,” Leo says of this agreement.

He stops to look at the hooker, who’s now been joined by one of the lobbyists at her table. Kerns says nothing for several seconds. He’s studying the two with an intense scrutiny, as if he’s overheard something. Perhaps the price of commerce. They rise together and walk toward the bar and the three legislators, Trumble, and his contingent.

“Some more fringe benefits, I think,” says Kerns. He appraises the woman’s long legs with an obvious leer. It’s a special expression, I think, not the open stare of your usual lecher, but the kind reserved by short men for tall women. It has a comic side that saves it from the lascivious.

“Ironclad.” I remind him where he was.

“Humm?”

“The prenuptial agreement.”

“Oh yeah.” Kerns runs a single hand through thinning hair, then straightens his tie a little, leaving the knot halfway down his chest, as if that part doesn’t matter. He’s primping himself a little for the lady, who doesn’t know he exists.

“Yeah.” He brings himself back to me for the moment. “This agreement may not ensure marital bliss, but it’d make you think twice about divorce.” Leo stretches himself across the table a little, moving closer to me as if he’s about to impart the whereabouts of the golden fleece. “You see, the only way she takes is if they’re married when he dies. Then she gets it all. Otherwise”-he winks at me-“she’d better open a fruit stand.”

I’m dazed. Neither Talia nor Ben ever mentioned a word about a prenuptial agreement. But why should they, I think. This is something of marital intimacy, like the frequency of sex and the ways they liked it. Talia, even in her most indiscreet moments, would never discuss such things. As for Ben, it would be a matter of business, a commercial confidence to be treated like the rituals of papal succession.

“Nelson’s movin’ on the theory that the wife got a little too serious with one of the lovers. One-night stands were no longer enough. So she and the boyfriend popped the victim and tried to make it look like suicide.” Leo waffles one hand a little over the table like this may wash or not, he’ll have to wait and see.

In this moment of revelation I am struck cold. I tell myself in sobering mental tones, notwithstanding her chronic inattention to the mundane minutiae of life, the harsh reality of such a contract is not one of those obscure details that is likely to escape the Talia I know.

I remember Coop’s analysis. Whoever did Ben was an amateur. Talia never planned a thing in her life. It was her calling card. These facts begin to play upon me as I listen to the continuing ruminations of Leo Kerns, his words seeming to erupt from some hellish pit beneath the table.

He laughs, that wicked high-pitched snicker. “We’ll know more when we get the boyfriend,” he says. “Sucker’s either gonna cooperate, or take some real gas.”

CHAPTER 12

“So can we entice you?” he asks. Gilbert Cheetam has one of my resumes pilfered from the files of the firm. “Impressive,” he says. “I must say, I agree with Tony-Mr. Skarpellos. You would indeed make excellent Keenan counsel. A strong addition to our team.” From what I can observe at the moment, Talia’s defense team is composed of Cheetam as lead counsel and Ron Brown as his gofer.

“As for Mrs. Potter, well,” says Cheetam, “you were her choice from the beginning. Need I say more?” He talks of Talia as if she were the queen mother, instead of a defendant indicted on a charge of murder.

Cheetam is polished, his diction manicured and well clipped like his fingernails. But he has the wary, searching eyes of a debt collector, dark pupils constantly cruising on a pool of white in search of some hidden opportunity. His eyebrows are thick forests of dark hair streaked with threads of silver, like the generous waves of hair on his head.

He drops my resume on the desk and toys with one of the starch-stiffened French cuffs extending an inch from the sleeve of each arm of his charcoal worsted suit.

I know him only by reputation. Gilbert Cheetam is a charter member of the silk-stocking set. Two years ago he grabbed national headlines when a jury awarded $125 million against a major automaker for a manufacturing defect-a seat belt that allowed passengers to explore the regions beyond the windshield before restraining them. The headlines were smaller and lost in a sea of newsprint on the inside pages when a few weeks later the trial judge reduced the award to eight million. Such is the ability of Gilbert Cheetam to inflame the passions of a jury and to mesmerize the media.

His call came late last night. It was after ten when the phone rang at my house. I assume, since I have an unlisted number, that either Talia or Skarpellos had given it to Cheetam. He wanted to see me early this morning, here, at Potter, Skarpellos.