“No alibi?”

Harry nods. “The only thing going for him is that cops never questioned him, so he didn’t have the opportunity to lie for the record.”

It’s what I was afraid of. I’ve had Harry check Hamilton’s alibi, the story he gave me the night of our meeting at Talia’s, when he told me he had dinner with friends at the club the night Ben was killed.

“The club records show he had dinner there, all right,” says Harry, “three nights before the murder, and then again a week later. They have no record of him at the bar or the restaurant that night.”

“Maybe somebody else picked up the tab?” I say.

“No, they have a roster in the main hall, everybody registers on arrival and leaving, members and guests. I checked it. He never signed in that day.”

If Harry can find this, so can the cops. I’m becoming increasingly concerned by Tod’s indiscretions. The fact that he posted a king’s ransom in bail for Talia’s release now lights him up like neon for Nelson. With no alibi for the night of the murder, he is becoming too convenient.

“You think she’s lying to you?” Harry’s concerned about Talia, her relationship with Tod. He’s wondering if the cops may not be right.

“Wouldn’t be the first time that a client lied to me.” Harry’s sitting there looking at me, like maybe, just maybe we’re on the side of the devil in this one. It’s not an unusual position for Harry, or one that bothers him much. But, I tell him, she didn’t kill Ben, with Hamilton or anybody else. Whether she’s lying … I make a face, like “Who knows?”

“Tell me you’re not thinkin’ with your pecker,” he says.

I give Harry an exasperated look.

He takes umbrage at this. “Save it for the jury.” Harry’s irked. “You want me to keep you honest,” he says. “So humor me.”

I wave him on, like go ahead, play your best mind game with me.

“Think about it,” he says. “You go over to her house and this guy Tod is living there. He bails her outta jail. Sure, maybe it’s just that his dick’s run away with his head. That’s one possibility. The other is, maybe he considers this a good investment.” Harry gives me a severe look, like this is not so far-fetched. “If you popped the old man, and Talia knew about it, how secure would you feel knowing she’s in the can, locked up with a case of the screaming meemies? Mmm? How long before she says something to somebody? Wouldn’t you want to get her out of there, like now?”

I’m looking at him soberly, listening to this line.

“And the little handgun,” he says. “You did everything but carve instructions on his forehead, telling him not to handle the thing if they found it. And what does Tod do?” Harry brings one index finger to his temple to show the calculating thought process that went into Tod’s fingering this gun and smudging all the prints.

“Now we find out he has no alibi. What is worse, he lied to you about it.”

“What are you saying-they killed Ben together?”

“It’s a possibility,” he says. But there’s another theory that Harry thinks may be closer to the mark. “Maybe the boyfriend gets infatuated. He wants Talia to leave the old man. Suppose she won’t do it. Maybe she can’t give up the good life-the prenuptial thing and all. So Tod fixes it for her. Suppose, just suppose, she doesn’t know this until after it’s all over, until after Hamilton has killed Potter.”

I think about this while Harry watches me. I have my doubts about Tod. But for Talia, I have a hard time believing she would keep this from me. With the travail she has been through, I don’t buy it.

“She would have talked,” I tell him. “I know her. She would have broken. She would have told me by now.” Talia, with all of her whimsy, would never come this far, staring death or a long prison term in the face without telling me if this were so.

“Maybe,” he says. “But think about it. Now she’s in a box. What good does it do to tell you? So you know the truth. Is it likely to help her?”

I follow him on this. Harry’s right. This is not a story we could lay on a jury with much success. The fact that Talia, a married woman, had a serious love interest that could motivate murder would be enough to hang her. The best we could hope for is that they would view her as an accessory after the fact. Even this would be a long shot of sizable proportions.

“So what are you saying?” I ask him.

“That maybe the lady knows more than she says. Maybe she can meet Nelson’s terms for a plea bargain after all.”

Harry’s suggesting that we might have Talia roll over on Tod, offer him up to the prosecution as her shadowy accomplice.

“It’s too convenient,” I tell him. “There’s not a shred of evidence linking him to the crime. The fact that he paid her bail money? That’s not evidence of murder. The fact that he has no alibi? Where were you that night?” I ask him.

Harry shrugs, like “Take your best guess.”

“Like half the rest of the city,” I say. “No, it won’t wash. Unless there was hard evidence. Unless Talia could testify that Tod made admissions to her, Nelson would never bite.” This leaves me with the thought of how I would ever approach her on this, to ask Talia about Tod.

“For now,” I say, “let’s concentrate on the Greek.” It’s only a feeling, but something in my bones tells me that Skarpellos is the key.

“So what do you want me to do, subpoena the bank records for the firm’s trust account?”

“No, we’ll wait. We get ’em with enough time to study them and confirm our defense, to see if we can prove somebody was dipping into the trust. But as soon as we go after the bank records, Skarpellos will know what we’re up to. He’ll start squeezing witnesses. Subtly,” I say. “No overt tampering.” The Greek is a master of intimidation.

Harry nods, as if this is his inclination as well. He sees where I’m going, the old SODDI defense-“Some Other Dude Did It.”

Five days after Harry’s mission to the club I am again in Talia’s living room confronting her with the facts on Tod, his lack of an alibi, his generosity concerning her bail.

“You’re doing yourself a disservice,” I tell her. “I can’t defend you without the truth.”

Talia sits in one corner of the couch, looking at me as if I’ve whacked her with a two-by-four brandishing a nail in the business end. Her legs are curled under her, arms folded over her chest, the classic female defensive posture.

She doesn’t answer my questions, but instead looks at me forlorn, accusing, that I too should whip her at a time like this.

“Tomorrow,” I say, “we go to see Nelson. You can be sure he’ll offer us some kind of a deal. I’ve got to know whether we should take it. If you’re hiding things from me, critical facts that may come out during the trial, then you’re hobbling me-crucifying yourself,” I tell her.

She’s in a daze. It is often said that you can key the loss of mental faculties to a singular traumatic event, a fall, an accident, a change of habitat. With Talia, since her incarceration, there has been a conspicuous loss in the powers of concentration, a restless anxiety that is not characteristic. She is slowly unraveling.

I move to the couch and shake her a little, not with my hands, but with the tone of my voice, up close in her ear.

“Do you hear me?” I say. “It becomes more difficult the farther we go. If there’s something you haven’t told me, now is the time.” I can’t afford to coddle her.

Suddenly she turns on me, coils, and strikes. “You think I did it,” she says.

“Did you?” To this point I have never asked her this question. Not overtly. We have done little probing cotillions around it, Harry and I, but never head-on, squarely presenting the question to Talia.

“How can you believe I could do a thing like that, that I could kill Ben?” she says.

“What’s Tod’s part in all of this?” I say.

“He’s a friend.” There’s derision in her tone, as if to say “Unlike you.”