So we sit in familiar surroundings, Ben’s office, the place of his death, unless we are to believe the scenario of the state. Cheetam is using this office to assemble the defense.

He balances himself ceremoniously, his arms folded now, his buttocks against the overhanging lip of Ben’s immense desk. There’s a vacancy behind it. Ben’s leather high-back executive chair is gone. This may be an act of good taste on the part of the janitorial staff. Or I wonder if this chair now sits in the police property warehouse, along with several missing ceiling tiles overhead, pieces of physical evidence in the evolving murder case.

Cheetam looks down at me from under the heavy, hooded eyebrows. I’m seated in one of the deep client chairs not more than two feet from him. This is a little posturing. Our respective attitudes are intended to demonstrate the working relationship, should I accept his offer to become Keenan counsel, Cheetam’s number two in Talia’s defense.

It’s absurd, he says, their case against Talia. He assures me that this is a prosecution constructed of smoke and mirrors. He gives a flourish to the air with both hands above the shoulders, a swami showing the magic that the state has employed in fashioning its case. This is, I suspect, for Talia’s benefit. She sits stoically on a couch off to the side, one leg crossed over the other, her arms folded, a defensive pose to match the words of her lawyer.

Skarpellos is seated at the opposite end of the couch, chewing on one of his Italian shit sticks. At least he has the decency not to light it. Perhaps a little deference to Talia.

In this state, defendants in capital cases are entitled to two lawyers, one to defend the case in chief, the other-the so-called Keenan counsel, named for the case that laid down the rule-to handle the penalty phase of the trial should a conviction be entered. It would be my job as Keenan counsel to spare Talia from the death chamber if she’s convicted, to show mitigation, or to attack the special circumstances alleged by the state mat would carry the death penalty.

In this case, the state is charging two special circumstances: murder for financial gain and lying in wait.

But Cheetam assures me that my role in the case will be purely perfunctory, a necessary formality. He will, he says, demolish the state’s case in the preliminary hearing. Talia will never stand trial.

She smiles noticeably at this thought.

The papers are filled with copy of yesterday’s news conference: Duane Nelson telling how he solved Ben’s murder, omitting the details, but stating without much reservation that this was a calculated killing for profit. Only the Times picked up the final aside, a comment made in response to a question hurled at Nelson as he made his way to the door. The investigation continues for an unidentified accomplice.

Cheetam sits looking at me expectantly. “So,” he says, “will you join us in this little soiree?” He makes it sound like tea and crumpets.

“I take it you aren’t impressed with the state’s case?”

He makes a face. “I haven’t seen all of the evidence. But what I’ve seen”-he wrinkles an eyebrow; it moves like a mouse glued to his forehead-“all circumstantial.” He says this shaking his head. “So much smoke.”

This means that no one claims to have seen Talia pull the trigger with the muzzle in Ben’s mouth.

I remind him that juries in criminal cases regularly convict on the basis of inferences from circumstantial evidence.

“Surely you don’t believe she’s guilty.” Cheetam’s testing my loyalty to the client.

“What I believe is irrelevant.”

“Not to me.” Talia’s no longer passively sitting back on the couch. She moves her body forward to the edge. “You don’t believe it?” she says. “That I could do something like that?”

Our eyes make contact, but I ignore her and continue with my thought. “What counts is what a jury concludes from the evidence and how it’s presented. Maybe you’d like to make book?” I ask him.

“On what?”

“On the number of people who are in the penitentiaries of this state because a jury was seduced by a single piece of circumstantial evidence.”

Talia’s suddenly silent. This comment has given her new food for thought.

“I don’t think you need to lecture Mr. Cheetam on the fine points of the jury system.” Skarpellos has waded in. He’s holding the cigar between the forefinger and thumb of his right hand. One end is well chewed and saturated. A small glob of saliva drips, unnoticed by Tony, onto the arm of the couch. I’m beginning to understand how Talia’s come to know Gilbert Cheetam. I wonder if the Greek is taking another referral fee for brokering this case. To Tony the law is not a profession but a vast commodities market where warm clients are traded like wheat futures and pork bellies. He acts as if he’s never heard of the rule against lawyers’ “fee-splitting.”

“Besides,” he says, “we can make this whole thing a little package deal. We throw your girl Hawley into the pot; you play a big part in Talia’s defense. Hell, before we know it you’ll be back with the firm.” He laughs a little at this bold suggestion.

I cringe with the thought.

“Just thinking out loud, Tony, a little observation,” I say.

“And a sound one,” says Cheetam. “I like that. You’re right, of course. We agree completely-circumstantial evidence can kill us.”

I doubt if Talia takes much solace in Cheetam’s use of the plural pronoun.

“Your first assignment will be to gather all the evidence,” he says. “We hit them with discovery motions built like the Old Testament, chapter and verse. We get every scrap of paper the DA’s got in the case. We’ll blitz them. We make a paper blizzard, a tickertape parade. We keep ’em lookin’, producing paper so they can’t prepare their case. Then you and I go over everything with a fine-tooth comb.”

This rah-rah session assumes that I’m on board.

“Maybe,” I say. “But first I’d like to talk to Talia-Mrs. Potter-alone.”

“What the hell …” Skarpellos is noticeably pissed.

“No, no, that’s all right.” Cheetam has both hands up, open palms out, extended toward the Greek. “If he wants to talk, let him talk. It’s important that both Mrs. Potter and Paul are comfortable with the arrangement.”

Cheetam may be a dandy among the civil trial set, but he’s a fool to allow a lawyer who has no privileged relationship with his client to talk with her alone, without his presence. I consider for a moment that perhaps this is an indication of the representation she can expect.

* * *

We sit like two lonely beggars in the huge empty office, its windows darkened by the heavy curtains, which I have drawn. Talia will not look at me. Her gaze is cast down at the carpet.

“How did this happen?” I finally ask.

She shrugs her shoulders, like some whipped teenager home late from a date.

“I mean your lawyer. He’s a disaster.”

Finally she looks up and smiles, a little rueful. “I didn’t pick him,” she says. “Cheetam and Tony go way back.”

Seems the Greek and Cheetam went to school together. According to Talia, Tony’s been sending cases to him for years. From the bits of information I garner from Talia and my own suppositions, it appears that Skarpellos has been brokering cases and splitting fees with Cheetam. I can guess that he has probably been skimming some of the better cases from the firm and pocketing a percentage of the fee. I wonder if Ben knew about this.

“The question is how to get rid of him,” I tell her.

For this she has no answer.

“That bad?” she says.

I tell her my suspicion, that Cheetam’s interested in riding the wave of publicity her case will generate. I draw a verbal picture, a knobby-kneed surfer in baggy shorts, with all ten toes hanging over the edge of his briefcase. At this she laughs a little.

“Tony thinks he’s the best.”