“Paul,” she says. “Your professional opinion What are my chances?” Talia is now all business.

“A lot can happen between now and trial. A lot can happen during the trial. We’ll know more after we see their witnesses in the prelim,” I say. “But if I had to guess, right now, no better than fifty-fifty.” I am myself now putting a little gloss on it.

She thinks for a moment, then speaks. ‘There won’t be any deals. If I’m going down, I’m going down fighting.” Talia’s showing more sand than I would have expected.

She rises from the couch and leaves the room. It seems that our meeting is over.

I stand near the door with Tod. Talia’s not seeing me out. Before he can open it, I turn and look at him.

‘Tell me something,” I say. “You don’t have to answer this if you don’t want to.”

“If I can,” he says.

“Where were you the day Ben was killed?”

This brings a flush to his cheeks, like I’ve caught him flat-footed.

“We are getting direct, aren’t we?” he says.

“I don’t have much choice. I’m running out of time. You do understand the perilous position you’re in?” I say.

“Me?” He says this in a tone almost incredulous.

“Yes. You’re here in this house. The cops are looking for an accomplice. Someone strong enough to have helped Talia with the body To get it from wherever Ben was killed to the office. Right now you look real convenient. You could use a little more discretion,” I say.

“Perhaps,” he says. “But I’m a friend. I was raised with the notion that friends don’t cut and run.” I think that this is a little shot at me, the fact that I have been at best distant from Talia during these, her days of need. Our relationship is now pure business.

“Noble,” I say.

“No,” he says. “Just trying to do the right thing”

“But it doesn’t answer my question. Where were you the day Ben was killed?”

“At the club. Playing tennis All afternoon.” He doesn’t flinch or bat an eye as he says this. “I had dinner there, with friends. Didn’t leave until after nine o’clock.” He looks over his shoulder to see whether Talia is within earshot. “You can check it out.”

“How lucky for you.”

“Yes,” he says, as he reaches for the door. “Good night.”

CHAPTER 16

We are now four days to the preliminary hearing and I am counting the hours as if they slip away on a doomsday clock. I’ve tracked Cheetam like a shadow, trying to prep him on the evidence. Between phone calls I tell him about the theory of the monster pellet-the second shot. He waves me off. Cheetam, it seems, does not have the time.

He lives with a telephone receiver growing out of his ear. He spends his days hustling information on other cases from the far-flung reaches of the state and beyond, talking to his office in Los Angeles, his stockbroker in New York, faxing interrogatories to a half-dozen other states where minions labor under him like some multinational franchise. For Gilbert Cheetam, it seems, if it isn’t reported on a telephone, it hasn’t happened. I’ve tried reducing my thoughts to writing in hopes that our situation with Talia’s case would come home to him. But my unread memos languish with piles of other correspondence yellowing in a basket on the desk mat he is using at P amp;S.

It is zero hour minus three days when I finally corner him for lunch. I lead him to a back table of this place, a dreary little restaurant away from the downtown crowd. No one of note has darkened the door in this place in a decade. I have picked it for that reason-a place where we cannot be found or interrupted.

“How’s the veal?” he asks.

“Everything’s excellent,” I lie.

“Good, I’ll have the veal.”

We order, and I begin to talk. Seconds in, there is a high-pitched electronic tone, barely audible. It emanates from under the table.

“Excuse me for a moment,” he says.

He pops the lid on his briefcase and produces a small telephone receiver. I should have expected-Cheetam’s cellular fix.

I gnaw on celery sticks and nibble around the edges of my salad as he carries on a conference call that ranges across the northern hemisphere.

We are into the entree. He’s picking at his veal with a fork, the phone still to his ear, when suddenly he’s on hold with L.A. His dream, he tells me, is a portable fax for his car, to go with his cellular phone. I smile politely. The man’s an electronics junkie.

Over coffee he pulls the receiver away from his ear long enough to tell the waitress, “I’ll take the check.” Then we are off in his car, the phone still glued to his ear.

At an intersection he finishes business and puts the receiver beside him on the seat.

I seize the moment. “We should start preparing for trial,” I say. “How do you want to handle it?” Circling the wagons for a defense in the prelim, I tell him, is a waste of time.

“You give up too easily,” he says. “Why don’t we wait until after the preliminary hearing before we start talking trial.”

“Do me a favor,” I say. “If you’ve got a magic bullet, something that’s gonna end this thing in the prelim, let me in on it now. But don’t give me the mushroom treatment.”

He looks at me wide-eyed, questioning.

‘Turn on the lights and end with the bullshit,” I say. “Don’t waste my time. This isn’t Talia. I’m not your client. I’ve seen the evidence. And from everything I’ve seen, we are going to eat it in the preliminary hearing.” I bite off my words, precise and clipped, as if to emphasize the certainty of this matter.

“Really.” He looks over at me. And for a fleeting instant I think he is shining me on. I don’t know whether to argue with him or take the lead that his demeanor is part of a well-meaning inside joke, that in fact he has mastered the realities of our case long before this moment.

From his inside vest pocket he pulls a leather container and slides the cover off, exposing five long panatelas in shiny cellophane wrappers. He offers me one.

“No, thanks.”

“You don’t mind if I do?”

“It’s your car,” I say.

“You’re entirely too pessimistic,” he says. “But I agree, it’s a tough case. Still, I think we have a chance here.”

The man’s a dreamer.

He chews through the wrapper and slips one of the long slender things into his mouth. He uses a wooden match and the car begins to fill with a thick blue haze. I open my window a few inches.

“Tough case.” I say it like this is the understatement of the year. “As judicial process goes, the preliminary hearing is a prosecutorial exhibition bout.”

It’s true. The only purpose is to weed out groundless felony complaints, to spare wrongly accused defendants the embarrassment and cost of a full trial in the superior court.

“For starters,” I say, “the state faces a minimal burden. It’s not proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Not here. We’re not even talking a preponderance. All they have to show is probable cause. You know what that is in this state?”

From the look on his face, through a fog of smoke, I can tell he does not.

“It means a suspicion-a bare suspicion.” I say it as if these words summon up something sinister, a vestige from some howling star chamber.

“All the judge needs to send our client to the superior court on a charge of first-degree murder,” I tell him, “is a reasonable suspicion that Potter was murdered, and that Talia did it.”

He nods and smiles, blowing smoke rings toward the ceiling. “I agree,” he says. “But we’ve got a few things going for us.”

“Like what?”

“Like how a woman overpowers a much larger, stronger man, even an older man of Potter’s age. Why she would use a shotgun-you’ve got to admit this is not a woman’s weapon.” He’s back to this now.

“You’re not listening,” I say. “The cops are operating on the theory that she was helped.”

His phone rings beside him. My hand reaches it before he can pick it up. I slide it onto the floor in the well by my feet, where it rings itself to death.