An older woman in a fox stole, molting tails locked in needle-sharp teeth about her shoulders, is now looking at us from the next table.

“No,” I say. “Nobody asked me to do this. I’m doing it because it’s good business. The case is worth some money.”

“Well excuse me, Lee Iacocca,” she says. She pauses for a moment to pick up her fork, to play with her salad. “What if I say no?”

This is not what I want to hear.

“I can’t refinance without your signature.”

“Ah.” The answer she wanted. “Well, then, you can’t have it.”

Now she is eating, enjoying her salad. Like this little bit of spite was just the seasoning it needed.

I explain that I will advance the costs of defense, but in doing so, I will take a note secured by Talia’s interest in the firm. “This isn’t personal, Nikki, it’s business,” I tell her.

“Business? Well, that covers a multitude of sins, doesn’t it.”

“You think I lied to you”-my tone is level and low-“that I deceived you when I got into the case. I told you I was invited in. That was true. I didn’t ask for it. I said I wasn’t lead counsel. I wasn’t. Everything I told you was true.”

I play upon Cheetam as the disaster, as if Nikki cares. “He’s pulled out-thank God,” I say. “But now I’ve got more into the case than anyone else. It would take another lawyer six months to come up to speed.”

“I see. Nobody else can do it like you. I suppose she’s counting on you too.”

“I suppose,” I say. “Like any other client faced with the gas chamber.”

This puts a sober expression on Nikki’s face. She has never considered the stakes before. Even in her current state of spite, death by cyanide gas is wholly disproportionate to her sense of revenge.

“Listen,” I say, “you don’t want to help out, I understand. I’ll just have to get it someplace else.” I’m chumming the waters now.

This thing with Talia is hard on Nikki. I would not do it if I had any other choice. She sees this, my plea for money to defend a former lover, as if I am purposefully pouring salt into an open wound-rubbing her nose in my earlier affair.

There’s a long, painful pause, awkward for Nikki as she shifts gears a little. “How much would you need,” she asks, “for this defense of yours?”

“A hundred-maybe seventy-five thousand if I watch it. It would carry the defense to the end of the case.” I tell her that Harry and I are taking only partial fees until it’s over.

The truth is, I haven’t talked to Harry about this. I figure I’ll catch him with his head in a bottle one night and get an ironclad commitment that he’ll be my Keenan counsel.

“I can collect the balance when it’s over, out of the partnership interest. I’ll pay off the second. Believe me,” I say, “I’ll take a premium on the case.”

“You’ll take a premium?”

“I will.”

“And you think that makes a difference to me? You bring me here, to this place.” Her arms are rising in a gesture to the surroundings, along with the volume of her voice. Hairy little beasts are bristling at me again, from around the neck pocked with age spots. Its owner is turning to look at Nikki.

My eyes are pleading with her: “Not so loud.”

“You take me here to this cavern of intrigue.” She is dripping with sarcasm. “You bring me here not to talk about us, about our situation, but to discuss-business.” She makes it sound like a bad word, like it ought to have four letters.

“That wasn’t the only reason. I wanted to talk about us too.”

“Yes, but first things first, huh?”

I’m only digging myself in deeper.

“Did you ever bring her here?” she asks.

I wonder whether to play stupid one more time, to give her a quick “Who?” at least for appearances. I look at the little foxes and think better of it.

“No,” I say.

“That’s something, I suppose.”

I’m chugging Johnnie Walker now and flagging the waitress for more.

“I don’t know why I’m surprised,” she says. “It’s all you ever discussed through eleven years of marriage, your career, your business.” There it is, the “B-word” again, bursting from her lips like a little bomb. “It’s all that ever mattered.”

“It’s not true, Nikki. You mattered, Sarah mattered. But some-where we got off the track.” I am never good at this. This verbal intimacy that women seem to get off on.

I consider for a moment offering her money, a return on her investment in the house, from my take in the case. But I am afraid that she will be offended. I try putting a face on it.

“We will treat my earnings from this case as community property. It’s only fair. We’re using community property to finance the case, our joint interest in the house.”

“Ever the lawyer,” she says. “It’s always another deal. If you were half the husband you are a lawyer we’d be living together. Hell, we’d be in love.”

Nikki has a way of capturing the truth and dumping it on your head like a pail of Arctic Ocean water.

There’s a long, sober silence while she pokes around her salad with her fork. Then she looks up at me. “I won’t take any money. If you want my signature, I will give it to you-because you want it,” she says, “and for no other reason than that.”

I sit there looking at her, the shame written in my eyes. I have gotten what I have come for, but she has taken everything else-a large measure of self-respect.

“How is she paying you?” she asks.

“By the hour,” I say. “But I may put a cap on it.”

“Generous,” she says.

“OK, no cap.”

“Do what you think is right.”

“If I did that, I wouldn’t be here, asking you for this,” I say.

She seems taken aback by this. Surprised, perhaps, that I should realize it.

“I will hold the costs down,” I tell her. I’ve already dispensed with thoughts of an investigator, except for Bowman. Harry and I will do most of the gumshoe ourselves. In the months before the trial we will chase loose leads and go after the facts that Cheetam ran from.

“Do you have an agreement with her on fees yet?”

“We haven’t nailed it down.”

“Were you waiting for my signature?” she asks. This is more rhetorical than real, but before I realize this I make a little face of concession.

She’s laughing at me now, inside, behind the mask that is her expression. I can see it in the little wrinkles around her eyes. She figures Talia’s playing me for a fool. Maybe she wants to be there to laugh when it’s over. I don’t know. I am having a hard time reading this woman I lived with for eleven years, the mother of my child.

Our dinner has come, braised rack of lamb. The waiter is removing our salad plates.

“I’m famished,” I say, searching for something, anything other than Talia and her case, to talk about. “It looks delicious,” I tell her.

Nikki is not even interested in her plate, but instead is staring at me, with searching eyes, an expression brimming with immense pain and a single tear on her cheek. I look away. The little foxes are now gone.

“You’ve got a guest,” Harry tells me deadpan. “In your office.” He’s in the reception area leaning over the desk talking with Dee. She’s finally learned to use the computer, when it suits her. The two of them are doodling with a crossword puzzle, a computer game Dee’s boyfriend bought for her birthday. Harry’s giving her words to fill the blanks. “Irish Gaelic, four letters, starts with an E. Erse,” says Harry. He can afford this. He’s not paying her salary.

I look at him from under arched eyebrows, scanning my telephone messages plucked from the holder on Dee’s desk.

“Did you make contact with the money changers?” I’ve left Harry in charge of getting the paperwork rolling on Talia’s mortgage, cash for the premium on her bond.

He nods. “Took the loan application over to the jail this morning. Could’ve saved myself the trip,” he says.

“Why?”

Harry reaches over with one hand, still distracted, looking over Dee’s shoulder, and swings the door to my office open, enough for me to look inside. There, in one of the client chairs across from my desk, she sits reading a magazine, Talia sans the bars and the wire mesh. She’s wearing a fresh print dress. Her hair, still lacking a fresh perm, is softer than the jail ringlets I had seen the day before, this no doubt the result of some pricey Ph-balanced shampoo and an hour soaking in the tub at her house.