He agrees. A social call, he insists. “A trial doesn’t suspend the First Amendment, does it?” he says. “Freedom of association?”

I tell him that these are lofty notions, unfamiliar to Armando Acosta, whose ancestors perfected the thumb screw and found use for molten lead in the human ear.

Despite his protestations of basic rights, Coop is sufficiently sensitive that he comes here, to my house, a place where people won’t see us.

“Coffee?” I ask.

“Not if you have to make it.” After getting me out of bed, he’s too polite to put me to any trouble.

“Believe me, I have to make it.” In the kitchen, under the flat fluorescent light, my face is a forest of black stubble.

“Doin’ the midnight oil?” he says.

“Harry wanted to celebrate,” I tell him. “He’s feeling good about the trial.”

We finished the week on a high note. Nelson put on his ballistics expert. The witness confirmed that tests on the little handgun found at Talia’s were inconclusive in any match to the jacket fragment found in Ben. The state was forced to do this, to prevent us from scoring points on this issue in our case for the defense. It would not look good to hide this from the jury.

The best Nelson could do with his army of ballistics experts was to let the jury know that such a gun was available to the defendant. His problem with this is that there are enough guns in this city capable of having fired the bullet and fragment to arm the foreign legion, a point we hammered home on cross.

After court, Harry and I trekked to the Cloakroom, where we ended up under a table come closing hour. I don’t know that it was so much a celebration as just letting off some steam. Both of us had been on the wagon since the trial started.

“I take it things are going well, then?”

Coop’s been cloistered from the trial, locked out. Percipient witnesses and experts are excluded from the courtroom by order of the judge. This to keep them from contaminating each other with their testimony. In the stress of a trial, suggestion is a powerful force.

I let him know that it’s going better than we have any right to expect, but no details, nothing that might compromise me, give him an edge when we have to confront each other in court.

It is clear that Coop is not comfortable with this thought, the fact that we must do battle before judge and jury. He tells me that friends who do this risk chilling their relationship.

“It’s professional,” I tell him. “You do your job; I do mine. When it’s over, we forget about it. Simple as that.”

He makes a face at this, like he’s heard this from friends before. This morning Coop seems morose, out of sorts. I attribute this to the reason for his visit, Sharon’s probate.

He has a rolled-up newspaper stuffed in the pocket of his raincoat. I motion toward it. This looks better than crawling around in a wet juniper.

“Today’s paper?” I’m thinking about Nikki’s phone call.

“The shopping news,” he says. He’s got the envelope on the countertop now.

I will have to go on safari after all, in the bushes.

I’m filling the little paper filter with ground coffee. Black and muddy, Jo Ann Campanelli’s own recipe.

“I think I’ve got everything,” he says. Coop’s opening the envelope. It’s filled to overflowing with receipts, the papers for Peggie Conrad to finish Sharon’s final tax return.

“Anything new in the investigation?” I ask him.

He shakes his head. “Nothing,” he says. Coop is curt. He doesn’t want to talk about this, but the message is clear. The forensics man loaned to him by the cops to comb Sharon’s car has struck out. This means the case is at a dead end. The average taxpayer would never believe the number of unsolved cases plaguing most police departments in this country. Sharon’s driver, by all accounts, may skate.

“The other thing,” he says, “the claim check. I looked. No sign of it. So I called the hardware store. An old toaster. Sharon must have dropped it off for repairs. Don’t worry about it.” Coop already has too many pieces of Sharon around him, reminding him of this pain. I take him at his word.

The Mr. Coffee is making noxious sounds, the little port at the top gagging on the glue that’s dripping into the carafe.

Coop’s mucking around in the kitchen now, looking for some little tidbit, something to chew on. He breaks off an edge of bread from the end piece of a stale loaf on the counter and starts to gnaw.

“Tell me about the case,” he says, “your little victories?”

I look at him askance.

“Why don’t you ask me what I intend to do when Nelson puts you up?” I say.

“OK. What do you intend to do?”

I flash him a big smile. I can’t tell whether he is joking, or just shameless.

“Do yourself a favor,” he says. “Plead her out.”

“Fat chance,” I tell him. “I didn’t sweat blood over the jury to cut and run now. Nelson’s in disarray. If you were there, you would know. It has all the signs of a rout,” I tell him.

He’s pulling the newspaper from his pocket, the tabloid shopper, flattening it out on my kitchen table to read.

“How about some breakfast?” I ask.

“No, thanks. I think you may want to look at this first; you may lose your appetite,” says Coop. He’s got the paper, holding it flat with the loaf of bread on top.

The only thing I can see is the masthead and a byline. The Camp Town News is a local throwaway used by supermarkets to advertise sales on tuna and mayonnaise. The byline belongs to Eli Walker. This is one of the local rags that still buys Walker’s “syndicated” column, running it on the front page, like hard news. The reputable general-circulation press have all dropped him. Seems Eli kept getting lost in a bottle on his way to deadline.

Coop takes a slice of bread and puts the loaf near the sink. My gaze is hit by the four-column banner like Moses getting the fiery finger of God on Sinai:

LAWYERIMPLICATEDINPOTTERKILLING

The story is copyrighted. Coop looks at me, stone-faced, like “Read on.” I catch the lead, the first graph:

CAPITOL

CITY-In an exclusive to this reporter, sources close to the investigation in the Talia Potter murder trial have identified Paul Madriani, Potter’s defense attorney, as one of the men with whom Mrs. Potter carried on a lengthy and involved extramarital affair in the period preceding her husband’s death.

The police have for months been looking for an elusive accomplice who they believe acted with Talia Potter to kill Benjamin G. Potter, the noted lawyer. Sources in Washington have indicated that before his death Potter was an odds- on favorite for appointment to the United States Supreme Court.

There is a rush of adrenaline, a silly smile on my face, the kind you see in movies an instant after the thwop of an arrow cuts through the character’s chest. “Jesus,” I say. It is all I can think of.

“Then it’s true?” he says. I have not said this, but Coop has drawn his own conclusions. There’s no surprise here. For George Cooper, Eli Walker’s column holds no revelations. Unless I am wrong, he has harbored suspicions for some time that my relationship with Talia, while now purely business, may have been something more in the recent past.

“This came out last night?” I ask him.

He nods.

“What kind of play is it getting?”

I can hope that, since it comes from Walker, the serious press is treating this like food delivered by some pariah.

“The Journal and the Trib ran it this morning-both on the front page. It should hit the tube tonight, the six-o’clock news,” he says.

Eli Walker must be off on the biggest drunk of his life, dreaming of attribution on the networks, his name in lights.

I pull back to the table and read more. It is blistering, a dizzying series of shots, all taken by people hunkering down under the moniker of “highly placed sources.” The only thing more stinging is the fact that Walker, by design or destiny, has come remarkably close to the truth.