“Well, it’s all water under the bridge now,” he says. “I think we agree Talia’s fate in the preliminary hearing is pretty well sealed. The lady’s going to trial.”

Ron Brown’s been carrying reports from the courtroom. These plus the blistering news accounts have led the Greek to this breathtaking conclusion.

“Besides,” he says, “she was probably doomed from the beginning. I really don’t think Gil’s performance was a factor.”

“Gil’s performance was an embarrassment,” I say. “He owes her the favor of taking her case if for no other reason than to provide her with the ironclad appeal of incompetent counsel. It would be a dead-bang winner.”

He laughs a little at Cheetam’s expense. “Well, that’s not going to happen,” he says. “Gil’s out of the picture. And I think we agree you’re much better able to handle the defense.”

“Maybe she wants somebody else,” I say. “After all, I’ve been part of this circus.”

“I don’t think so.” He says this with confidence, like he’s been talking to an oracle.

“You must know more than I do.”

“Talk to her. She’ll listen to you.”

“Assuming I do. How do I get paid, if you’re no longer going to extend her any credit?”

He smiles now, toothy and knavish, reaching for a match. “You’re learning,” he says.

“Don’t light that,” I tell him. It’s been a long day and I am tired of suffering fools.

He makes a gesture of polite concession, dropping the match. He continues to suck on the cold cigar.

“I was getting to the money,” he says. “I’m prepared to offer Talia $200,000, up front, cash for a relinquishment of any interest she might have in the firm. That’ll carry the defense a long way. Well into appeals, if she needs them.”

“Talking appeals already-you must have a lot of confidence in me.”

He laughs, just a little. “Well, just seeing the downside.”

“Not a very generous offer, considering the fact that Ben’s interest in the firm is worth ten times that much,” I tell him.

“Only if she can get it. And she may have to wait for years. This is cash on the barrel, today.”

The conversation degenerates into a debate over figures. We sound like two Arabs in the bazaar, the Greek holding up his hands in protest, me trying to barter him higher, feigning an effort to sell something I have no authority to sell. I am interested in finding his bottom line. Talia may need to know.

In three minutes I have dragged him pissing and moaning to $300,000. I think he will go farther, but I am growing tired of this game.

“I’ll communicate your offer to my client, Tony. But I can’t recommend it.”

To this I get little slits of a look over pudgy cheeks from Skarpellos.

“Why not?”

“What’s the interest worth, Tony? Two million? Hmm-more? You know. I don’t. Only an auditor can tell us. She’d be a fool to sell under these circumstances. You know that as well as I do.”

“She’d be a bigger fool to go indigent. Does she really want the public defender representing her?”

“There are other alternatives,” I say.

“Like what?”

“Like a motion to the court to unfreeze Ben’s assets for purposes of Talia’s defense.” This is a bluff, a legal shot of long odds, but one that Skarpellos has not considered. It takes the confidence out of his eyes.

“Besides, assuming she invites me, and I do decide to take over the case, I might finance the action myself. I might take a little contingency in the firm for my efforts.”

I can tell that the thought of me sitting at Ben’s desk, a partner he hadn’t counted on, is not one that rests well with the Greek.

He laughs. Like steam from a dying boiler, it is forced.

“How would you finance it?” he asks. “You’re on a shoe string.”

“A second on the house. No big thing,” I tell him.

“You’d gamble that much?”

“Who knows. Maybe we’ll find out.”

“I thought you were learning,” he says. “But I can tell. You have a lot to learn.” His face is stern now. All the evil he can muster is focused in his eyes. “That would not be a smart move.”

“Is that a threat, Tony? I can’t tell.”

He makes a face, like “Take it any way you want.” Then says: “Just a little advice.”

“Ah. Well, then, I’ll take it in the spirit in which it’s offered.” I give him a broad, shit-eating grin. “I’ll let you know Talia’s decision when she’s made it.”

I get up and head for the door.

“By the way,” he says. “What made you so curious about the beneficiaries under Ben’s will?”

I turn and give him a soulful look.

“A little shot at me?” he says. He’s miffed at my questions to Hazeltine.

“You’re assuming I knew the answer to the question when I asked it.”

“I know you. You wouldn’t ask if you didn’t know.”

“Maybe you don’t know me well enough,” I say.

He nods. There is no warmth in this expression. The eyes are dead, cold, and there is a meanness in this face I have not seen before.

CHAPTER 19

I am anticipating a disaster, a rout on the magnitude of Napoleon at Waterloo. Cheetam sits at the counsel table between Talia and me. We are waiting for the result of a week of preliminary hearing. The judge is in chambers putting the final touches on her order.

“What do you think?” says Cheetam

I give him a blank stare. If he can’t see it for himself, I’m not going to tell him.

At the end of the prosecution’s case he’d asked for an outright dismissal of all charges. Only because legal protocol required it did the court humor him, taking this motion under submission.

That he could make such a motion under the circumstances tells me not only that Gilbert Cheetam lacks judgment, but that on a more basic plane, he is out of touch with reality. The submission to the court lasted three minutes, enough time for Nelson to make a brief argument; then O’Shaunasy gave the motion the back of her hand.

Cheetam reaches over and touches Talia on the arm. “It’ll just be a few minutes longer now,” he says. Talia smiles politely, then looks past him to me, searching for a little sanity.

The last day of hearing was the capper. Cheetam tried to build on a foundation of sand-Blumberg’s earlier testimony. He produced a janitor from the Emerald Tower, Reginald Townsend, who remembered cutting his hand, the day Ben was killed, on a jagged piece of broken glass. The man testified that he used the service elevator shortly after this and stated that he believed he may have dripped blood in the elevator. Lo and behold, the man’s blood type-the same as Potter’s-B-negative.

There was a satisfied grin in Cheetam’s voice as he said: “That’s all, Your Honor. Your witness.”

Nelson zeroed in on the man. He asked whether Townsend had a doctor attend to the wound after his ride in the elevator.

“It weren’t that bad.”

“Well, how much blood did you lose?”

“Oh, it were just a nick. A little thing.” He says this bravely, holding up two fingers to show the length of the wound, half an inch, as if he classifies anything less than a dozen stitches as a nick.

“I see, and you remember this nick, this little thing, nearly eight months later, and you can sit here and tell this court with certainty mat this wound, from which you apparently lost a single drop of blood in the elevator, occurred on the day mat Benjamin Potter was murdered?”

“Uh-huh. But I lost more blood than that. I held my hand in a towel,” said Townsend.

“Have you always had this gift?”

The man looked at Nelson with a vacant stare.

‘This ability to recall minute details and precise dates months after the event?”

“Oh, well, that’ll be a day none of us is likely to forget.” He was shaking his head as if to emphasize the momentous gravity of the events of that day.

“I see. You equate this nick, as you call it, on your hand with the day mat Mr. Potter was murdered?”