Chapter 14

   St. Andrew’s Episcopal School was located behind the church of the same name on a densely wooded and perfectly manicured five-acre estate in the middle of midtown Memphis. The white and yellow brick was occasionally visible where the ivy had for some reason turned and pursued another course. Symmetrical rows of clipped boxwoods lined the sidewalks and the small playground. It was a one-story L-shaped building sitting quietly in the shadows of a dozen ancient oaks. Cherished for its exclusivity, St. Andrew’s was the most expensive private school in Memphis for grades kindergarten through six. Affluent parents signed the waiting list shortly after birth.
   Mitch stopped the BMW in the parking lot between the church and the school. Abby’s burgundy Peugeot was three spaces down, parked innocently. He was unexpected. The plane had landed an hour earlier, and he had stopped by the house to change into something lawyerly. He would see her, then back to his desk for a few hours at one hundred and fifty per.
   He wanted to see her here, at the school, unannounced. A surprise attack. A countermove. He would say hello. He missed her. He couldn’t wait to see her, so he stopped by the school. He would be brief, the first touch and feel and words after that incident on the beach. Could she tell just by looking at him? Maybe she could read his eyes. Would she notice a slight strain in his voice? Not if she was surprised. Not if she was flattered by this visit.
   He squeezed the steering wheel and stared at her car. What an idiot! A stupid fool! Why didn’t he run? Just throw her skirt in the sand and run like hell. But, of course, he didn’t. He said what the hell, no one will ever know. So now he was supposed to shrug it off and say what the hell, everybody does it.
   On the plane he laid his plans. First, he would wait until late this night and tell her the truth. He would not lie, had no desire to live a lie. He would admit it and tell her exactly what happened. Maybe she would understand. Why, almost any man—hell, virtually every man would have taken the dive. His next move would depend on her reaction. If she was cool and showed a trace of compassion, he would tell her he was sorry, so very sorry, and that it would never happen again. If she fell all to pieces, he would beg, literally beg for forgiveness and swear on the Bible that it was a mistake and would never happen again. He would tell her how much he loved her and worshipped her, and please just give him one more chance. And if she started packing her bags, he would probably at that point realize he should not have told her.
   Deny. Deny. Deny. His criminal-law professor at Harvard had been a radical named Moskowitz, who had made a name for himself defending terrorists and assassins and child fondlers. His theory of defense was simply: Deny! Deny! Deny! Never admit one fact or one piece of evidence that would indicate guilt.
   He remembered Moskowitz as they landed in Miami, and began working on Plan B, which called for this surprise visit at the school and a late-night romantic dinner at her favorite place. And no mention of anything but hard work in the Caymans. He opened the car door, thought of her beautiful smiling, trusting face and felt nauseous. A thick, dull pain hammered deep in his stomach. He walked slowly in the late autumn breeze to the front door.
   The hallway was empty and quiet. To his right was the office of the headmaster. He waited for a moment in the hall, waited to be seen, but no one was there. He walked quietly ahead until, at the third classroom, he heard the wonderful voice of his wife. She was plowing through multiplication tables when he stuck his head in the door and smiled. She froze, then giggled. She excused herself, told them to stay in their seats and read the next page. She closed the door.
   “What’re you doing here?” she asked as he grabbed her and pinned her to the wall. She glanced nervously up and down the hall.
   “I missed you,” he said with conviction. He bear-hugged her for a good minute. He kissed her neck and tasted the sweetness of her perfume. And then the girl returned. You piece of scum, why didn’t you run?
   “When did you get in?” she asked, straightening her hair and glancing down the hall.
   “About an hour ago. You look wonderful.”
   Her eyes were wet. Those wonderfully honest eyes. “How was your trip?”
   “Okay. I missed you. It’s no fun when you’re not around.”
   Her smile widened and she looked away. “I missed you too.”
   They held hands and walked toward the front door. “I’d like a date tonight,” he said.
   “You’re not working?”
   “No. I’m not working. I’m going out with my wife to her favorite restaurant. We’ll eat and drink expensive wine and stay out late, and then get naked when we get home.”
   “You did miss me.” She kissed him again, on the lips, then looked down the hall. “But you better get out of here before someone sees you.”
   They walked quickly to the front door without being seen.
   He breathed deeply in the cool air and walked quickly to his car. He did it. He looked into those eyes, held her and kissed her like always. She suspected nothing. She was touched and even moved.


* * *

   DeVasher paced anxiously behind his desk and sucked nervously on a Roi-Tan. He sat in his worn swivel chair and tried to concentrate on a memo, then he jumped to his feet and paced again. He checked his watch. He called his secretary. He called Oliver Lambert’s secretary. He paced some more.
   Finally, seventeen minutes after he was supposed to arrive, Ollie was cleared through security and walked into DeVasher’s office.
   DeVasher stood behind his desk and glared at Ollie. “You’re late!”
   “I’m very busy,” Ollie answered as he sat in a worn Naugahyde chair. “What’s so important?”
   DeVasher’s face instantly changed into a sly, evil smile. He dramatically opened a desk drawer and proudly threw a large manila envelope across the desk into Ollie’s lap. “Some of the best work we’ve ever done.”
   Lambert opened the envelope and gaped at the eight-by-ten black-and-white photographs. He stared at each one, holding them inches from his nose, memorizing each detail. DeVasher watched proudly.
   Lambert reviewed them again and began breathing heavily. “These are incredible.”
   “Yep. We though so.”
   “Who’s the girl?” Ollie asked, still staring.
   “A local prostitute. Looks pretty good, doesn’t she? We’ve never used her before, but you can bet we’ll use her again.”
   “I want to meet her, and soon.”
   “No problem. I kinda figured you would.”
   “This is incredible. How’d she do it?”
   “It looked difficult at first. He told the first girl to get lost. Avery had the other one, but your man wanted no part of her friend. He left and went to that little bar on the beach. That’s when our girl there showed up. She’s a pro.”
   “Where were your people?”
   “All over the place. Those were shot from behind a palm tree, about eighty feet away. Pretty good, aren’t they?”
   “Very good. Give the photographer a bonus. How long did they roll in the sand?”
   “Long enough. They were very compatible.”
   “I think he really enjoyed himself.”
   “We were lucky. The beach was deserted and the timing was perfect.”
   Lambert raised a photograph toward the ceiling, in front of his eyes. “Did you make me a set?” he asked from behind it.
   “Of course, Ollie. I know how much you enjoy these things.”
   “I thought McDeere would be tougher than that.”
   “He’s tough, but he’s human. He’s no dummy either. We’re not sure, but we think he knew we were watching him the next day during lunch. He seemed suspicious and began darting around the shopping district. Then he disappeared. He was an hour late for his meeting with Avery at the bank.”
   “Where’d he go?”
   “We don’t know. We were just watching out of curiosity, nothing serious. Hell, he might’ve been in a bar downtown for all we know. But he just disappeared.”
   “Watch him carefully. He worries me.”
   DeVasher waved another manila envelope. “Quit worrying, Ollie. We own him now! He would kill for us if he knew about these.”
   “What about Tarrance?”
   “Not a sign. McDeere ain’t mentioned it to anybody, at least not to anybody we’re listening to. Tarrance is hard to trail sometimes, but I think he’s staying away.”
   “Keep your eyes open.”
   “Don’t worry about my end, Ollie. You’re the lawyer, the counselor, the esquire, and you get your eight-by-tens. You run. I run the surveillance.”
   “How are things at the McDeere house?”
   “Not too good. She was very cool to the trip.”
   “What’d she do when he was gone?”
   “Well, she ain’t one to sit around the house. Two nights she and Quin’s wife went out to eat at a couple of those yuppie joints. Then to the movies. She was out one night with a schoolteacher friend. She shopped a little.
   “She also called her mother a lot, collect. Evidently there’s no love lost between our boy and her parents, and she wants to patch things up. She and her mom are tight and it really bothers her because they can’t be a big happy family. She wants to go home to Kentucky for Christmas, and she’s afraid he won’t go for it. There’s a lot of friction. A lot of undercurrents. She tells her mom he works too much, and her mom says it’s because he wants to show them up. I don’t like the sound of it, Ollie. Bad vibes.”
   “Just keep listening. We’ve tried to slow him down, but he’s a machine.”
   “Yeah, at a hundred and fifty an hour I know you want him to slack off. Why don’t you cut all your associates back to forty hours a week so they can spend more time with their families? You could cut your salary, sell a Jag or two, hock your old lady’s diamonds, maybe sell your mansion and buy a smaller house by the country club.”
   “Shut up, DeVasher.”
   Oliver Lambert stormed out of the office. DeVasher turned red with his high-pitched laughter, then, when his office was empty, he locked the photos in a file cabinet. “Mitchell McDeere,” he said to himself with an immense smile, “now you are ours.”

Chapter 15

   On a friday, at noon, two weeks before Christmas, Abby said goodbye to her students and left St. Andrew’s for the holidays. At one, she parked in a lot full of Volvos and BMWs and Saabs and more Peugeots and walked hurriedly through the cold rain into the crowded terrarium where the young affluent gathered to eat quiche and fajitas and black bean soup among the plants. This was Kay Quin’s current hot spot of the year, and this was the second lunch they’d had in a month. Kay was late, as usual.
   It was a friendship still in the initial stages of development. Cautious by nature, Abby had never been one to rush into chumminess with a stranger. The three years at Harvard had been friendless, and she had learned a great deal of independence. In six months in Memphis she had met a handful of prospects at church and one at school, but she moved cautiously.
   At first Kay Quin had pushed hard. She was at once a tour guide, shopping consultant and even a decorator. But Abby had moved slowly, learning a little with each visit and watching her new friend carefully. They had eaten several times in the Quin home. They had seen each other at firm dinners and functions, but always in a crowd. And they had enjoyed each other’s company over four long lunches at whatever happened to be the hottest gathering place at that moment for the young and beautiful Golden MasterCard holders in Memphis. Kay noticed cars and homes and clothes, but pretended to ignore it all. Kay wanted to be a friend, a close friend, a confidante, an intimate. Abby kept the distance, slowly allowing her in.
   The reproduction of a 1950s jukebox sat below Abby’s table on the first level near the bar, where a standing-room crowd sipped and waited for tables. After ten minutes and two Roy Orbisons, Kay emerged from the crowd at the front door and looked upward to the third level. Abby smiled and waved.
   They hugged and pecked each other properly on the cheeks, without transferring lipstick.
   “Sorry I’m late,” Kay said.
   “That’s okay. I’m used to it.”
   “This place is packed,” Kay said, looking around in amazement. It was always packed. “So you’re out of school?”
   “Yes. As of an hour ago. I’m free until January 6.”
   They admired each other’s outfits and commented on how slim and in general how beautiful and young they were.
   Christmas shopping at once became the topic, and they talked of stores and sales and children until the wine arrived. Abby ordered scampi in a skillet, but Kay stuck with the old fern-bar standby of broccoli quiche.
   “What’re your plans for Christmas?’’ Kay asked.
   “None yet. I’d like to go to Kentucky to see my folks, but I’m afraid Mitch won’t go. I’ve dropped a couple of hints, both of which were ignored.”
   “He still doesn’t like your parents?”
   “There’s been no change. In fact, we don’t discuss them. I don’t know how to handle it.”
   “With great caution, I would imagine.”
   “Yeah, and great patience. My parents were wrong, but I still need them. It’s painful when the only man I’ve ever loved can’t tolerate my parents. I pray every day for a small miracle.”
   “Sounds like you need a rather large miracle. Is he working as hard as Lamar says?”
   “I don’t know how a person could work any harder. It’s eighteen hours a day Monday through Friday, eight hours on Saturday, and since Sunday is a day of rest, he puts in only five or six hours. He reserves a little time for me on Sunday.”
   “Do I hear a touch of frustration?”
   “A lot of frustration, Kay. I’ve been patient, but it’s getting worse. I’m beginning to feel like a widow. I’m tired of sleeping on the couch waiting for him to get home.”
   “You’re there for food and sex, huh?”
   “I wish. He’s too tired for sex. It’s not a priority anymore. And this is a man who could never get enough. I mean, we almost killed each other in law school. Now, once a week if I’m lucky. He comes home, eats if he has the energy and goes to bed. If I’m really lucky, he might talk to me for a few minutes before he passes out. I’m starved for adult conversation, Kay. I spend seven hours a day with eight-year-olds, and I crave words with more than three syllables. I try to explain this to him, and he’s snoring. Did you go through this with Lamar?”
   “Sort of. He worked seventy hours a week for the first year. I think they all do. It’s kind of like initiation into the fraternity. A male ritual in which you have to prove your manliness. But most of them run out of gas after a year, and cut back to sixty or sixty-five hours. They still work hard, but not the kamikaze routine of the rookie year.”
   “Does Lamar work every Saturday?”
   “Most Saturdays, for a few hours. Never on Sunday. I’ve put my foot down. Of course, if there’s a big deadline or it’s tax season, then they all work around the clock. I think Mitch has them puzzled.”
   “He’s not slowing down any. In fact, he’s possessed. Occasionally he won’t come home until dawn. Then it’s just a quick shower, and back to the office.”
   “Lamar says he’s already a legend around the office.”
   Abby sipped her wine and looked over the rail at the bar. “That’s great. I’m married to a legend.”
   “Have you thought about children?”
   “It requires sex, remember?”
   “Come on, Abby, it can’t be that bad.”
   “I’m not ready for children. I can’t handle being a single parent. I love my husband, but at this point in his life, he would probably have a terribly important meeting and leave me alone in the labor room. Eight centimeters dilated. He thinks of nothing but that damned law firm.”
   Kay reached across the table and gently took Abby’s hand. “It’ll be okay,” she said with a firm smile and a wise look. “The first year is the hardest. It gets better, I promise.”
   Abby smiled. “I’m sorry.”
   The waiter arrived with their food, and they ordered more wine. The scampi simmered in the butter-and-garlic sauce and produced a delicious aroma. The cold quiche was all alone on a bed of lettuce with a sickly tomato wedge.
   Kay picked a glob of broccoli and chewed on it. “You know, Abby, The Firm encourages children.”
   “I don’t care. Right now I don’t like. I’m competing with The Firm, and I’m losing badly. So I could care less what they want. They will not plan my family for me. I don’t understand why they are so interested in things which are none of their business. That place is eerie, Kay. I can’t put my finger on it, but those people make my skin crawl.”
   “They want happy lawyers with stable families.”
   “And I want my husband back. They’re in the process of taking him away, so the family is not so stable. If they’d get off his back, perhaps we could be normal like everyone else and have a yard full of children. But not now.”
   The wine arrived, and the scampi cooled. She ate it slowly and drank her wine. Kay searched for less sensitive areas.
   “Lamar said Mitch went to the Caymans last month.”
   “Yes. He and Avery were there for three days. Strictly business, or so he says. Have you been there?”
   “Every year. It’s a beautiful place with gorgeous beaches and warm water. We go in June of each year, when school is out. The Firm owns two huge condos right on the beach.”
   “Mitch wants to vacation there in March, during my spring break.”
   “You need to. Before we had kids, we did nothing but lie on the beach, drink rum and have sex. That’s one reason furnishes the condos and, if you’re lucky, the airplane. They work hard, but they appreciate the need for leisure.”
   “Don’t mention to me, Kay. I don’t want to hear about what they like or dislike, or what they do or don’t do, or what they encourage or discourage.”
   “It’ll get better, Abby. I promise. You must understand that your husband and my husband are both very good lawyers, but they could not earn this kind of money anywhere else. And you and I would be driving new Buicks instead of new Peugeots and Mercedes-Benzes.”
   Abby cut a shrimp in half and rolled it through the butter and garlic. She stabbed a portion with a fork, then pushed her plate away. The wineglass was empty. “I know, Kay, I know. But there is a hell of a lot more to life than a big yard and a Peugeot. No one around here seems to be aware of that. I swear, I think we were happier living in a two-room student apartment in Cambridge.”
   “You’ve only been here a few months. Mitch will slow down eventually, and you’ll get into your routine. Before long there will be little McDeeres running around the backyard, and before you know it, Mitch will be a partner. Believe me, Abby, things will get much better. You’re going through a period we’ve all been through, and we made it.”
   “Thanks, Kay, I certainly hope you’re right.”


* * *

   The park was a small one, two or three acres on a bluff above the river. A row of cannons and two bronze statues memorialized those brave Confederates who had fought to save the river and the city. Under the monument to a general and his horse a wino tucked himself away. His cardboard box and ragged quilt provided little shelter from the bitter cold and the tiny pellets of frozen rain. Fifty yards below, the evening traffic rushed along Riverside Drive. It was dark.
   Mitch walked to the row of cannons and stood gazing at the river and the bridges leading to Arkansas. He zipped his raincoat and flipped the collar around his ears. He looked at his watch. He waited.
   The Bendini Building was almost visible six blocks away. He had parked in a garage in midtown and taken a taxi back to the river. He was sure he had not been followed. He waited.
   The icy wind blowing up from the river reddened his face and reminded him of the winters in Kentucky after his parents were gone. Cold, bitter winters. Lonely, desolate winters. He had worn someone else’s coats, passed down from a cousin or a friend, and they had never been heavy enough. Secondhand clothes. He dismissed those thoughts.
   The frozen rain turned to sleet and the tiny pieces of ice stuck in his hair and bounced on the sidewalk around him. He looked at his watch.
   There were footsteps and a figure in a hurry walking toward the cannons. Whoever it was stopped, then approached slowly.
   “Mitch?” It was Eddie Lomax, dressed in jeans and a full-length rabbit coat. With his thick mustache and white cowboy hat he looked like an ad for a cigarette. The Marlboro Man.
   “Yeah, it’s me.”
   Lomax walked closer, to the other side of the cannon. They stood like Confederate sentries watching the river.
   “Have you been followed?” Mitch asked.
   “No, I don’t think so. You?”
   “No.”
   Mitch stared at the traffic on Riverside Drive, and beyond, to the river. Lomax thrust his hands deep into his pockets. “You talked to Ray, lately?” Lomax asked.
   “No.” The answer was short, as if to say, “I’m not standing here in the sleet to chitchat.”
   “What’d you find?” Mitch asked, without looking.
   Lomax lit a cigarette, and now he was the Marlboro Man. “On the three lawyers, I found a little info. Alice Knauss was killed in a car wreck in 1977. Police report said she was hit by a drunk driver, but oddly enough, no such driver was ever found. The wreck happened around midnight on a Wednesday. She had worked late down at the office and was driving home. She lived out east, in Sycamore View, and about a mile from her condo she gets hit head—on by a one-ton pickup. Happened on New London Road. She was driving a fancy little Fiat and it was blown to pieces. No witnesses. When the cops got there, the truck was empty. No sign of a driver. They ran the plates and found that the truck had been stolen in St. Louis three days earlier. No fingerprints or nothing.”
   “They dusted for prints?”
   “Yeah. I know the investigator who handled it. They were suspicious but had zero to go on. There was a broken bottle of whiskey on the floorboard, so they blamed it on a drunk driver and closed the file.”
   “Autopsy?”
   “No. It was pretty obvious how she died.”
   “Sounds suspicious.”
   “Very much so. All three of them are suspicious. Robert Lamm was the deer hunter in Arkansas. He and some friends had a deer camp in Izard County in the Ozarks. They went over two or three times a year during the season. After a morning in the woods, everyone returned to the cabin but Lamm. They searched for two weeks and found him in a ravine, partially covered with leaves. He had been shot once through the head, and that’s about all they know. They ruled out suicide, but there was simply no evidence to begin an investigation.”
   “So he was murdered?”
   “Apparently so. Autopsy showed an entry at the base of the skull and an exit wound that removed most of his face. Suicide would have been impossible.”
   “It could have been an accident.”
   “Possibly. He could have caught a bullet intended for a deer, but it’s unlikely. He was found a good distance from the camp, in an area seldom used by hunters. His friends said they neither heard nor saw other hunters the morning he disappeared. I talked to the sheriff, who is now the ex-sheriff, and he’s convinced it was murder. He claims there was evidence that the body had been covered intentionally.”
   “Is that all?”
   “Yeah, on Lamm…”
   “What about Mickel?”
   “Pretty sad. He committed suicide in 1984 at the age of thirty-four. Shot himself in the right temple with a Smith & Wesson .357. He left a lengthy farewell letter in which he told his ex-wife he hoped she would forgive him and all that crap. Said goodbye to the kids and his mother. Real touching.”
   “Was it in his handwriting?”
   “Not exactly. It was typed, which was not unusual, because he typed a good bit. He had an IBM Selectric in his office, and the letter came from it. He had a terrible handwriting.”
   “So what’s suspicious?”
   “The gun. He never bought a gun in his life. No one knows where it came from. No registration, no serial number, nothing. One of his friends in The Firm allegedly said something to the effect that Mickel had told him he had bought a gun for protection. Evidently he was having some emotional problems.”
   “What do you think?”
   Lomax threw his cigarette butt in the frozen rain on the sidewalk. He cupped his hands over his mouth and blew in them. “I don’t know. I can’t believe a tax lawyer with no knowledge of guns could obtain one without registration or serial number. If a guy like that wanted a gun, he would simply go to a gun shop, fill out the papers and buy a nice, shiny new piece. This gun was at least ten years old and had been sanitized by professionals.”
   “Did the cops investigate?”
   “Not really. It was open and shut.”
   “Did he sign the letter?”
   “Yeah, but I don’t know who verified the signature. He and his wife had been divorced for a year, and she had moved back to Baltimore.”
   Mitch buttoned the top button of his overcoat and shook the ice from his collar. The sleet was heavier, and the sidewalk was covered. Tiny icicles were beginning to form under the barrel of the cannon. The traffic slowed on Riverside as wheels began to slide and spin.
   “So what do you think of our little firm?” Mitch asked as he stared at the river in the distance.
   “It’s a dangerous place to work. They’ve lost five lawyers in the past fifteen years. That’s not a very good safety record.”
   “Five?”
   “If you include Hodge and Kozinski. I’ve got a source telling me there are some unanswered questions.”
   “I didn’t hire you to investigate those two.”
   “And I’m not charging you for it. I got curious, that’s all.”
   “How much do I owe you?”
   “Six-twenty.”
   “I’ll pay cash. No records, okay?”
   “Suits me. I prefer cash.”
   Mitch turned from the river and gazed at the tall buildings three blocks from the park. He was cold now, but in no hurry to leave. Lomax watched him from the corner of his eye.
   “You’ve got problems, don’t you, pal?”
   “Wouldn’t you say so?” Mitch answered.
   “I wouldn’t work there. I mean, I don’t know all that you do, and I suspect you know a lot you’re not telling. But we’re standing here in the sleet because we don’t want to be seen. We can’t talk on the phone. We can’t meet in your office. Now you don’t want to meet in my office. You think you’re being followed all the time. You tell me to be careful and watch my rear because they, whoever they are, may be following me. You’ve got five lawyers in that firm who’ve died under very suspicious circumstances, and you act like you may be next. Yeah, I’d say you got problems. Big problems.”
   “What about Tarrance?”
   “One of their best agents; transferred in here about two years ago.”
   “From where?”
   “New York.”
   The wino rolled from under the bronze horse and fell to the sidewalk. He grunted, staggered to his feet, retrieved his cardboard box and quilt and left in the direction of downtown. Lomax jerked around and watched anxiously. “It’s just a tramp,” Mitch said. They both relaxed.
   “Who are we hiding from?” Lomax asked.
   “I wish I knew.”
   Lomax studied his face carefully. “I think you know.”
   Mitch said nothing.
   “Look, Mitch, you’re not paying me to get involved. I realize that. But my instincts tell me you’re in trouble, and I think you need a friend, someone to trust. I can help, if you need me. I don’t know who the bad guys are, but I’m convinced they’re very dangerous.”
   “Thanks,” Mitch said softly without looking, as if it was time for Lomax to leave and let him stand there in the sleet for a while.
   “I would jump in that river for Ray McDeere, and I can certainly help his little brother.”
   Mitch nodded slightly, but said nothing. Lomax lit another cigarette and kicked the ice from his lizard-skins. “Just call me anytime. And be careful. They’re out there, and they play for keeps.”

Chapter 16

   At the intersection of Madison and Cooper in midtown, the old two-story buildings had been renovated into singles bars and watering holes and gift shops and a handful of good restaurants. The intersection was known as Overton Square, and it provided Memphis with its best nightlife. A playhouse and a bookstore added a touch of culture. Trees lined the narrow median on Madison. The weekends were rowdy with college students and sailors from the Navy base, but on weeknights the restaurants were full but quiet and uncrowded. Paulette’s, a quaint French place in a white stucco building, was noted for its wine list and desserts and the gentle voice of the man at the Steinway. With sudden affluence came a collection of credit cards, and the McDeeres had used theirs in a quest for the best restaurants in town. Paulette’s was the favorite, so far.
   Mitch sat in the corner of the bar, drinking coffee and watching the front door. He was early, and had planned it that way. He had called her three hours earlier and asked if he could have a date for seven. She asked why, and he said he would explain later. Since the Caymans he had known someone was following, watching, listening. For the past month he had spoken carefully on the phone, had caught himself watching the rearview mirror, had even chosen his words around the house. Someone was watching and listening, he was sure.
   Abby rushed in from the cold and glanced around the parlor for her husband. He met her in the front of the bar and pecked her on the cheek. She removed her coat, and they followed the maitre d’ to a small table in a row of small tables which were all full with people within earshot. Mitch glanced around for another table, but there were none. He thanked him and sat across from his wife.
   “What’s the occasion?” she asked suspiciously.
   “Do I need a reason to have dinner with my wife?”
   “Yes. It’s seven o’clock on Monday night, and you’re not at the office. This is indeed a special occasion.”
   A waiter squeezed between their table and the next, and asked if they wanted a drink. Two white wines, please. Mitch glanced around the dining room again and caught a glimpse of a gentleman sitting alone five tables away. The face looked familiar. When Mitch looked again, the face slid behind a menu.
   “What’s the matter, Mitch?”
   He laid his hand on hers and frowned. “Abby, we gotta talk.”
   Her hand flinched slightly and she stopped smiling. “About what?”
   He lowered his voice. “About something very serious.”
   She exhaled deeply and said, “Can we wait for the wine. I might need it.”
   Mitch looked again at the face behind the menu. “We can’t talk here.”
   “Then why are we here?”
   “Look, Abby, you know where the rest rooms are? Down the hall over there, to your right?”
   “Yes, I know.”
   “There’s a rear entrance at the end of the hall. It goes out to the side street behind the restaurant. I want you to go to the rest room, then out the door. I’ll be waiting next to the street.”
   She said nothing. Her eyebrows lowered and the eyes narrowed. Her head leaned slightly to the right.
   “Trust me, Abby. I can explain later. I’ll meet you outside and we’ll find another place to eat. I can’t talk in here.”
   “You’re scaring me.”
   “Please,” he said firmly, squeezing her hand. “Everything is fine. I’ll bring your coat.”
   She stood with her purse and left the room. Mitch looked over his shoulder at the man with the familiar face, who suddenly stood and welcomed an elderly lady to his table. He did not notice Abby’s exit.
   In the street behind Paulette’s, Mitch draped the coat over Abby’s shoulders and pointed eastward. “I can explain,” he said more than once. A hundred feet down the street, they walked between two buildings and came to the front entrance of the Bombay Bicycle Club, a singles bar with good food and live blues. Mitch looked at the head-waiter, then surveyed the two dining rooms, then pointed to a table in the rear corner. “That one,” he said.
   Mitch sat with his back to the wall and his face toward the dining room and the front door. The corner was dark. Candles lit the table. They ordered more wine.
   Abby sat motionless, staring at him, watching every move and waiting.
   “Do you remember a guy named Rick Acklin from Western Kentucky?”
   “No,” she said without moving her lips.
   “He played baseball, lived in the dorm. I think you may have met him once. A very nice guy, real clean-cut, good student. I think he was from Bowling Green. We weren’t good friends, but we knew each other.”
   She shook her head and waited.
   “Well, he finished a year before we did and went to law school at Wake Forest. Now he’s with the FBI. And he’s working here in Memphis.” He watched her closely to see if “FBI” would have an impact. It did not. “And today I’m eating lunch at Obleo’s hot-dog place on Main Street, when Rick walks up out of nowhere and says hello. Just like it was a real coincidence. We chat for a few minutes, and another agent, guy by the name of Tarrance, walks up and has a seat. It’s the second time Tarrance has chased me down since I passed the bar.”
   “The second…?”
   “Yes. Since August.”
   “And these are … FBI agents?”
   “Yes, with badges and everything. Tarrance is a veteran agent from New York. Been here about two years. Acklin is a rookie they brought in three months ago.”
   “What do they want?”
   The wine arrived and Mitch looked around the club. A band was tuning up on a small stage in a far corner. The bar was crowded with well-dressed professional types chitting and chatting relentlessly. The waiter pointed to the unopened menus. “Later,” Mitch said rudely.
   “Abby, I don’t know what they want. The first visit was in August, right after my name was printed in the paper for passing the bar.” He sipped his wine and detailed play by play the first Tarrance visit at Lansky’s Deli on Union, the warnings about whom not to trust and where not to talk, the meeting with Locke and Lambert and the other partners. He explained their version of why the FBI was so interested in and said that he discussed it with Lamar and believed every word Locke and Lambert had said.
   Abby hung on every word, but waited to start asking.
   “And now, today, while I’m minding my own business, eating a foot-long with onions, this guy I went to college with walks up and tells me that they, the FBI, know for a fact that my phones are bugged, my home is wired and somebody down at Bendini, Lambert & Locke knows when I sneeze and take a crap. Think of it, Abby, Rick Acklin was transferred here after I passed the bar exam. Nice coincidence, huh?”
   “But what do they want?”
   “They won’t say. They can’t tell me, yet. They want me to trust them, and all that routine. I don’t know, Abby. I have no idea what they’re after. But they’ve chosen me for some reason.”
   “Did you tell Lamar about this visit?”
   “No. I haven’t told anyone. Except you. And I don’t plan to tell anyone.”
   She gulped the wine. “Our phones are tapped?”
   “According to the FBI. But how do they know?”
   “They’re not stupid, Mitch. If the FBI told me my phones were tapped, I’d believe them. You don’t?”
   “I don’t know whom to believe. Locke and Lambert were so smooth and believable when they explained how fights with the IRS and the FBI. I want to believe them, but so much of it doesn’t add up. Look at it this way—if The Firm had a rich client who was shady and worthy of FBI scrutiny, why would the FBI pick me, the rookie, the one who knows the least, and begin following me? What do I know? I work on files someone else hands me. I have no clients of my own. I do as I’m told. Why not go after one of the partners?”
   “Maybe they want you to squeal on the clients.”
   “No way. I’m a lawyer and sworn to secrecy about the affairs of clients. Everything I know about a client is strictly confidential. The feds know that. No one expects a lawyer to talk about his clients.”
   “Have you seen any illegal deals?”
   He cracked his knuckles and gazed around the dining room. He smiled at her. The wine had settled and was taking effect. “I’m not supposed to answer that question, even from you, Abby. But the answer is No. I’ve worked on files for twenty of Avery’s clients and a few other ones here and there, and I’ve seen nothing suspicious. Maybe a couple of risky tax shelters, but nothing illegal. I’ve got a few questions about the bank accounts I saw in the Caymans, but nothing serious.” Caymans! His stomach dropped as he thought of the girl on the beach. He felt sick.
   The waiter loitered nearby and stared at the menus. “More wine,” Mitch said, pointing at the glasses.
   Abby leaned forward, near the candles, and looked bewildered. “Okay, who tapped our phones?”
   “Assuming they’re tapped, I have no idea. At the first meeting in August, Tarrance implied it was someone from. I mean, that’s the way I took it. He said not to trust anyone at The Firm, and that everything I said was subject to being heard and recorded. I assumed he meant they were doing it.”
   “And what did Mr. Locke say about that?”
   “Nothing. I didn’t tell him. I kept a few things to myself.”
   “Someone has tapped our phones and wired our house?”
   “And maybe our cars. Rick Acklin made a big deal of it today. He kept telling me not to say anything I didn’t want recorded.”
   “Mitch, this is incredible. Why would a law firm do that?”
   He shook his head slowly and looked into the empty wineglass. “I have no idea, babe. No idea.”
   The waiter set two new wineglasses on the table and stood with his hands behind him. “Will you be ordering?” he asked.
   “In a few minutes,” Abby said.
   “We’ll call you when we’re ready,” Mitch added.
   “Do you believe it, Mitch?”
   “I think something’s up. There’s more to the story.”
   She slowly folded her hands on the table and stared at him with a look of utter fear. He told the story of Hodge and Kozinski, starting with Tarrance at the deli, then to the Caymans and being followed and the meeting with Abanks. He told her everything Abanks had said. Then Eddie Lomax and the deaths of Alice Knauss, Robert Lamm and John Mickel.
   “I’ve lost my appetite,” she said when he finished.
   “So have I. But I feel better now that you know.”
   “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
   “I hoped it would go away. I hoped Tarrance would leave me alone and find someone else to torment. But he’s here to stay. That’s why Rick Acklin was transferred to Memphis. To work on me. I have been selected by the FBI for a mission I know nothing about.”
   “I feel weak.”
   “We have to be careful, Abby. We must continue to live as if we suspect nothing.”
   “I don’t believe this. I’m sitting here listening to you, but I don’t believe what you’re telling me. This is not real, Mitch. You expect me to live in a house that’s wired and the phones are tapped and someone, somewhere is listening to everything we say.”
   “Do you have a better idea?”
   “Yeah. Let’s hire this Lomax guy to inspect our house.”
   “I’ve thought of that. But what if he finds something? Think about it. What if we know for sure that the house is wired? What then? What if he breaks a device that’s been planted? They, whoever in hell they are, will know that we know. It’s too dangerous, for now anyway. Maybe later.”
   “This is crazy, Mitch. I guess we’re supposed to run out in the backyard to have a conversation.”
   “Of course not. We could use the front yard.”
   “At this moment, I don’t appreciate your sense of humor.”
   “Sorry. Look, Abby, let’s be normal and patient for a while. Tarrance has convinced me he’s serious and he’s not going to forget about me. I can’t stop him. He finds me, remember. I think they follow me and wait in ambush. For the time being, it’s important that we carry on as usual.”
   “Usual? Come to think of it, there’s not much conversation around our house these days. I sort of feel sorry for them if they’re waiting to hear meaningful dialogue. I talk to Hearsay a lot.”

Chapter 17

   The snow cleared long before Christmas, leaving the ground wet and making way for the traditional Southern holiday weather of gray skies and cold rain. Memphis had seen two white Christmases in the past ninety years, and the experts predicted no more in the century.
   There was snow in Kentucky, but the roads were clear. Abby called her parents early Christmas morning after she packed. She was coming, she said, but she would be alone. They were disappointed, they said, and suggested that perhaps she should stay if it was causing trouble. She insisted. It was a ten-hour drive. Traffic would be light, and she would be there by dark.
   Mitch said very little. He spread the morning paper on the floor next to the tree and pretended to concentrate as she loaded her car. The dog hid nearby under a chair, as if waiting for an explosion. Their gifts had been opened and arranged neatly on the couch. Clothes and perfume and albums, and for her, a full-length fox coat. For the first time in the young marriage, there was money to spend at Christmas.
   She draped the coat over her arm and walked to the paper. “I’m leaving now,” she said softly, but firmly.
   He stood slowly and looked at her.
   “I wish you would come with me,” she said.
   “Maybe next year.” It was a lie, and they knew it. But it sounded good. It was promising.
   “Please be careful.”
   “Take care of my dog.”
   “We’ll be fine.”
   He took her shoulders and kissed her on the cheek. He looked at her and smiled. She was beautiful, much more so than when they married. At twenty-four, she looked her age, but the years were becoming very generous.
   They walked to the carport, and he helped her into the car. They kissed again, and she backed down the driveway.
   Merry Christmas,he said to himself. Merry Christmas,he said to the dog.
   After an hour of watching the walls, he threw two changes of clothes in the BMW, placed Hearsay in the front seat and left town. He drove south on Interstate 55, out of Memphis, into Mississippi. The road was deserted, but he kept an eye on the rearview mirror. The dog whimpered precisely every sixty minutes, and Mitch would stop on the shoulder—if possible, just over a hill. He would find a cluster of trees where he could hide and watch the traffic while Hearsay did his business. He noticed nothing. After five stops, he was sure he was not being followed. They evidently took off Christmas Day.
   In six hours he was in Mobile, and two hours later he crossed the bay at Pensacola and headed for the Emerald Coast of Florida. Highway 98 ran through the coastal towns of Navarre, Fort Walton Beach, Destin and Sandestin. It encountered clusters of condominiums and motels, miles of shopping centers, then strings of run-down amusement parks and low rent T-shirt shops, most of which had been locked and neglected since Labor Day. Then it went for miles with no congestion, no sprawl, just an awesome view of the snowy-white beaches and brilliant emerald waters of the Gulf. East of Sandestin, the highway narrowed and left the coast, and for an hour he drove alone on the two-lane with nothing to look at but the woods and an occasional self-serve gas station or quick-shop convenience store.
   At dusk, he passed a high rise, and a sign said Panama City Beach was eight miles ahead. The highway found the coast again at a point where it forked and offered a choice between the bypass to the north and the scenic route straight ahead on what was called the Miracle Strip. He chose the scenic route next to the beach—the strip that ran for fifteen miles by the water and was lined on both sides with condos, cheap motels, trailer parks, vacation cottages, fast-food joints and T-shirt shops. This was Panama City Beach.
   Most of the ten zillion condos were empty, but there were a few cars parked about and he assumed that some families vacationed on the beach for Christmas. A hot-weather Christmas. At least they’re together, he said to himself. The dog barked, and they stopped by a pier where men from Pennsylvania and Ohio and Canada fished and watched the dark waters.
   They cruised the Miracle Strip by themselves. Hearsay stood on the door and took in the sights, barking at the occasional flashing neon of a cinder-block motel advertising its openness and cheap rates. Christmas on the Miracle Strip closed everything but a handful of diehard coffee shops and motels.
   He stopped for gas at an all-night Texaco with a clerk who seemed uncommonly friendly.
   “San Luis Street?” Mitch asked.
   “Yes, yes,” the clerk said with an accent and pointed to the west. “Second traffic light to the right. First left. That’s San Luis.”
   The neighborhood was a disorganized suburb of antique mobile homes. Mobile, yes, but it was apparent they had not moved in decades. The trailers were packed tightly together like rows of dominoes. The short, narrow driveways seemed inches apart and were filled with old pickups and rusted lawn furniture. The streets were crowded with parked cars, junk cars, abandoned cars. Motorcycles and bicycles leaned on the trailer hitches and lawn-mower handles protruded from beneath each home. A sign called the place a retirement village—“San Pedro Estates—A Half Mile from the Emerald Coast.” It was more like a slum on wheels, or a project with a trailer hitch.
   He found San Luis Street and suddenly felt nervous. It was winding and narrow with smaller trailers in worse shape than the other “retirement homes.” He drove slowly, anxiously watching street numbers and observing the multitude of out-of-state license plates. The street was empty except for the parked and abandoned cars.
   The home at 486 San Luis was one of the oldest and smallest. It was scarcely bigger than a camper. The original paint job looked to be silver, but the paint was cracked and peeling, and a dark green layer of mold covered the top and inched downward to a point just above the windows. The screens were missing. One window above the trailer hitch was badly cracked and held together with gray electrical tape. A small covered porch surrounded the only entrance. The storm door was open, and through the screen Mitch could see a small color television and the silhouette of a man walking by.
   This was not what he wanted. By choice, he had never met his mother’s second husband, and now was not the time. He drove on, wishing he had not come.
   He found on the Strip the familiar marquee of a Holiday Inn. It was empty, but open. He hid the BMW away from the highway, and registered under the name of Eddie Lomax of Danesboro, Kentucky. He paid cash for a single room with an ocean view.
   The Panama City Beach phone book listed three Waffle Huts on the Strip. He lay across the motel bed and dialed the first number. No luck. He dialed the second number, and again asked for Eva Ainsworth. Just a minute, he was told. He hung up. It was 11 P.M. He had slept for two hours.
   The taxi took twenty minutes to arrive at the Holiday Inn, and the driver began by explaining that he had been home enjoying leftover turkey with his wife and kids and kinfolks when the dispatcher called, and how it was Christmas and he hoped to be with his family all day and not worry about work for one day of the year. Mitch threw a twenty over the seat and asked him to be quiet.
   “What’s at the Waffle Hut, man?” the driver asked.
   “Just drive.”
   “Waffles, right?” He laughed and mumbled to himself. He adjusted the radio volume and found his favorite soul station. He glanced in the mirror, looked out the windows, whistled a bit, then said, “What brings you down here on Christmas?”
   “Looking for someone.”
   “Who?”
   “A woman.”
   “Ain’t we all. Anyone in particular?”
   “An old friend.”
   “She at the Waffle Hut?”
   “I think so.”
   “You some kinda private eye or something?”
   “No.”
   “Seems mighty suspicious to me.”
   “Why don’t you just drive.”
   The Waffle Hut was a small, rectangular, boxlike building with a dozen tables and a long counter facing the grill, where everything was cooked in the open. Large plate-glass windows lined one side next to the tables so the customers could take in the Strip and the condos in the distance while they enjoyed their pecan waffles and bacon. The small parking lot was almost full, and Mitch directed the driver to an empty slot near the building.
   “Ain’t you getting out?” the driver asked.
   “No. Keep the meter running.”
   “Man, this is strange.”
   “You’ll get paid.”
   “You got that right.”
   Mitch leaned forward and rested his arms on the front seat. The meter clicked softly as he studied the customers inside. The driver shook his head, slumped in the seat, but watched out of curiosity.
   In the corner next to the cigarette machine a table of fat tourists with long shirts, white legs and black socks drank coffee, and all talked at the same time while glancing at the menus. The leader, the one with an unbuttoned shirt, a heavy gold chain draped upon his chest hair, thick gray sideburns and a Phillies baseball cap, looked repeatedly toward the grill, in search of a waitress.
   “You see her?” asked the driver.
   Mitch said nothing, then leaned forward and frowned. She appeared from nowhere and stood at the table with her pen and order book. The leader said something funny, and the fat people laughed. She never smiled, just kept writing. She was frail and much thinner. Almost too thin. The black-and-white uniform fit snugly and squeezed her tiny waist. Her gray hair was pulled tightly and hidden under the Waffle Hut bonnet. She was fifty-one, and from the distance she looked her age. Nothing worse. She seemed sharp. When she finished scribbling she snatched the menus from their hands, said something polite, almost smiled, then disappeared. She moved quickly among the tables, pouring coffee, handing ketchup bottles and giving orders to the cook.
   Mitch relaxed. The meter ticked slowly.
   “Is that her?” asked the driver.
   “Yes.”
   “What now?”
   “I don’t know.”
   “Well, we found her, didn’t we?”
   Mitch followed her movements and said nothing. She poured coffee for a man sitting alone. He said something, and she smiled. A wonderful, gracious smile. A smile he had seen a thousand times in the darkness staring at the ceiling. His mother’s smile.
   A light mist began to fall and the intermittent wipers cleaned the windshield every ten seconds. It was almost midnight, Christmas Day.
   The driver tapped the wheel nervously and fidgeted. He sank lower in the seat, then changed stations. “How long we gonna sit here?”
   “Not long.”
   “Man, this is weird.”
   “You’ll be paid.”
   “Man, money ain’t everything. It’s Christmas. I got kids at home, kinfolks visiting, turkey and wine to finish off, and here I am sitting at the Waffle Hut so you can look at some old woman through the window.”
   “It’s my mother.”
   “Your what?”
   “You heard me.”
   “Man, oh man. I get all kinds.”
   “Just shut up, okay?”
   “Okay. Ain’t you gonna talk to her? I mean it’s Christmas, and you found your momma. You gotta go see her, don’t you?”
   “No. Not now.”
   Mitch sat back in the seat and looked at the dark beach across the highway. “Let’s go.”
   At daybreak, he dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, no socks or shoes, and took Hearsay for a walk on the beach. They walked east, toward the first glow of orange peeking above the horizon. The waves broke gently thirty yards out and rolled quietly onto shore. The sand was cool and wet. The sky was clear and full of sea gulls talking incessantly among themselves. Hearsay ran boldly into the sea, then retreated furiously when the next wave of white foam approached. For a house dog, the endless stretch of sand and water demanded exploration. He ran a hundred yards ahead of Mitch.
   After two miles they approached a pier, a large concrete structure running two hundred feet from the beach into the ocean. Hearsay, fearless now, darted onto it and ran to a bucket of bait next to two men standing motionless and staring down at the water. Mitch walked behind them, to the end of the pier, where a dozen fishermen talked occasionally to each other and waited for their lines to jump. The dog rubbed himself on Mitch’s leg and grew still. A brilliant return of the sun was in progress, and for miles the water glistened and turned from black to green.
   Mitch leaned on the railing and shivered in the cool wind. His bare feet were frozen and gritty. For miles along the beach in both directions, the hotels and condos sat quietly and waited for the day. There was no one on the beach. Another pier jutted into the water miles away.
   The fishermen spoke with the sharp, precise words of those from the North. Mitch listened long enough to learn the fish were not biting. He studied the sea. Looking southeast, he thought of the Caymans, and Abanks. And the girl for a moment, then she was gone. He would return to the islands in March, for a vacation with his wife. Damn the girl. Surely he would not see her. He would dive with Abanks and cultivate a friendship. They would drink Heineken and Red Stripe at his bar and talk of Hodge and Kozinski. He would follow whoever was following him. Now that Abby was an accomplice, she would assist him.


* * *

   The man waited in the dark beside the Lincoln Town Car. He nervously checked his watch and glanced at the dimly lit sidewalk that disappeared in front of the building. On the second floor a light was turned off. A minute later, the private eye walked from the building toward the car. The man walked up to him.
   “Are you Eddie Lomax?” he asked anxiously.
   Lomax slowed, then stopped. They were face-to-face. “Yeah. Who are you?”
   The man kept his hands in his pockets. It was cold and damp, and he was shaking. “Al Kilbury. I need some help, Mr. Lomax. Real bad. I’ll pay you right now in cash, whatever you want. Just help me.”
   “It’s late, pal.”
   “Please. I’ve got the money. Name the price. You gotta help, Mr. Lomax.” He pulled a roll of cash from his left pants pocket and stood ready to count.
   Lomax looked at the money, then glanced over his shoulder. “What’s the problem?”
   “My wife. In an hour she’s supposed to meet a man at a motel in South Memphis. I’ve got the room number and all. I just need you to go with me and take pictures of them coming and going.”
   “How do you know this?”
   “Phone taps. She works with the man, and I’ve been suspicious. I’m a wealthy man, Mr. Lomax, and it’s imperative I win the divorce. I’ll pay you a thousand in cash now.” He quickly peeled off ten bills and offered them.
   Lomax took the money. “Okay. Let me get my camera.”
   “Please hurry. Everything’s in cash, okay? No records.”
   “Suits me,” said Lomax as he walked toward the building.
   Twenty minutes later, the Lincoln rolled slowly through the crowded parking lot of a Days Inn. Kilbury pointed to a second-floor room on the back side of the motel, then to a parking space next to a brown Chevy van. Lomax backed carefully alongside the van and parked his Town Car. Kilbury again pointed to the room, again checked his watch and again told Lomax how much he appreciated his services. Lomax thought of the money. A thousand bucks for two hours’ work. Not bad. He unpacked a camera, loaded the film and gauged the light. Kilbury watched nervously, his eyes darting from the camera to the room across the parking lot. He looked hurt. He talked of his wife and their wonderful years together, and why, oh why was she doing this?
   Lomax listened and watched the rows of parked cars in front of him. He held his camera.
   He did not notice the door of the brown van. It quietly and slowly slid open, just three feet behind him. A man in a black turtleneck wearing black gloves crouched low in the van and waited. When the parking lot was still, he jumped from the van, yanked open the left rear door of the Lincoln and fired three times into the back of Eddie’s head. The shots, muffled with a silencer, could not be heard outside the car.
   Eddie slumped against the wheel, already dead. Kilbury bolted from the Lincoln, ran to the van and sped away with the assassin.

Chapter 18

   After three days of unbillable time, of no production, of exile from their sanctuaries, of turkey and ham and cranberry sauce and new toys that came unassembled, the rested and rejuvenated lawyers of Bendini, Lambert & Locke returned to the fortress on Front Street with a vengeance. The parking lot was full by seven-thirty. They sat fixed and comfortable behind their heavy desks, drank coffee by the gallon, meditated over mail and correspondence and documents and mumbled incoherently and furiously into their Dictaphones. They barked orders at secretaries and clerks and paralegals, and at each other. There were a few “How was your Christmas?” greetings in the halls and around the coffeepots, but small talk was cheap and unbillable. The sounds of typewriters, intercoms and secretaries all harmonized into one glorious hum as the mint recovered from the nuisance of Christmas. Oliver Lambert walked the halls, smiling with satisfaction and listening, just listening to the sounds of wealth being made by the hour.
   At noon, Lamar walked into the office and leaned across the desk. Mitch was deep into an oil and gas deal in Indonesia.
   “Lunch?” Lamar asked.
   “No, thanks. I’m behind.”
   “Aren’t we all? I thought we could run down to the Front Street Deli for a bowl of chili.”
   “I’ll pass. Thanks.”
   Lamar glanced over his shoulder at the door and leaned closer as if he had extraordinary news to share. “You know what today is, don’t you?”
   Mitch glanced at his watch. “The twenty-eighth.”
   “Right. And do you know what happens on the twenty-eighth of December of every year?”
   “You have a bowel movement.”
   “Yes. And what else?”
   “Okay. I give up. What happens?”
   “At this very moment, in the dining room on the fifth floor, all the partners are gathered for a lunch of roast duck and French wine.”
   “Wine, for lunch?”
   “Yes. It’s a very special occasion.”
   “Okay?”
   “After they eat for an hour, Roosevelt and Jessie Frances will leave and Lambert will lock the door. Then it’s all the partners, you see. Only the partners. And Lambert will hand out a financial summary for the year. It’s got all the partners listed, and beside each name is a number that represents their total billing for the year. Then on the next page is a summary of the net profits after expenses. Then, based on production, they divide the pie!”
   Mitch hung on every word. “And?”
   “And, last year the average piece of pie was three hundred and thirty thousand. And, of course, it’s expected to be even higher this year. Goes up every year.”
   “Three hundred and thirty thousand,” Mitch repeated slowly.
   “Yep. And that’s just the average. Locke will get close to a million. Victor Milligan will run a close second.”
   “And what about us?”
   “We get a piece too. A very small piece. Last year it was around nine thousand, on the average. Depends on how long you’ve been here and production.”
   “Can we go watch?”
   “They wouldn’t sell a ticket to the President. It’s supposed to be a secret meeting, but we all know about it. Word will begin drifting down late this afternoon.”
   “When do they vote on who to make the next partner?”
   “Normally, it would be done today. But, according to rumor, there may not be a new partner this year because of Marty and Joe. I think Marty was next in line, then Joe. Now, they might wait a year or two.”
   “So who’s next in line?”
   Lamar stood straight and smiled proudly. “One year from today, my friend, I will become a partner in Bendini, Lambert & Locke. I’m next in line, so don’t get in my way this year.”
   “I heard it was Massengill—a Harvard man, I might add.”
   “Massengill doesn’t have a prayer. I intend to bill a hundred and forty hours a week for the next fifty-two weeks, and those birds will beg me to become a partner. I’ll go to the fourth floor, and Massengill will go to the basement with the paralegals.”
   “I’m putting my money on Massengill.”
   “He’s a wimp. I’ll run him into the ground. Let’s go eat a bowl of chili, and I’ll reveal my strategy.”
   “Thanks, but I need to work.”
   Lamar strutted from the office and passed Nina, who was carrying a stack of papers. She laid them on a cluttered corner of the desk. “I’m going to lunch. Need anything?”
   “No. Thanks. Yes, a Diet Coke.”
   The halls quietened during lunch as the secretaries escaped the building and walked toward downtown to a dozen small cafes and delicatessens nearby. With half the lawyers on the fifth floor counting their money, the gentle roar of commerce took an intermission.
   Mitch found an apple on Nina’s desk and rubbed it clean. He opened a manual on IRS regulations, laid it on the copier behind her desk and touched the green Print button. A red warning lit up and flashed the message: Insert File Number. He backed away and looked at the copier. Yes, it was a new one. Next to the Print button was another that read Bypass. He stuck his thumb on it. A shrill siren erupted from within the machine, and the entire panel of buttons turned bright red. He looked around helplessly, saw no one and frantically grabbed the instruction manual.
   “What’s going on here?” someone demanded over the wailing of the copier.
   “I don’t know!” Mitch yelled, waving the manual.
   Lela Pointer, a secretary too old to walk from the building for lunch, reached behind the machine and flipped a switch. The siren died.
   “What the hell?” Mitch said, panting.
   “Didn’t they tell you?” she demanded, grabbing the manual and placing it back in its place. She drilled a hole in him with her tiny fierce eyes, as if she had caught him in her purse.
   “Obviously not. What’s the deal?”
   “We have a new copying system,” she lectured downward through her nose. “It was installed the day after Christmas. You must code in the file number before the machine will copy. Your secretary was supposed to tell you.”
   “You mean this thing will not copy unless I punch in a ten-digit number?”
   “That’s correct.”
   “What about copies in general, with no particular file?”
   “Can’t be done. Mr. Lambert says we lose too much money on unbilled copies. So, from now on, every copy is automatically billed to a file. You punch in the number first. The machine records the number of copies and sends it to the main terminal, where it goes on the client’s billing account.”
   “What about personal copies?”
   Lela shook her head in total frustration. “I can’t believe your secretary didn’t tell you all this.”
   “Well, she didn’t, so why don’t you help me out.”
   “You have a four-digit access number for yourself. At the end of each month you’ll be billed for your personal copies.”
   Mitch stared at the machine and shook his head. “Why the damned alarm system?”
   “Mr. Lambert says that after thirty days they will cut off the alarms. Right now, they’re needed for people like you. He’s very serious about this. Says we’ve been losing thousands on unbilled copies.”
   “Right. And I suppose every copier in the building has been replaced.”
   She smiled with satisfaction. “Yes, all seventeen.”
   “Thanks.” Mitch returned to his office in search of a file number.


* * *

   At three that afternoon, the celebration on the fifth floor came to a joyous conclusion, and the partners, now much wealthier and slightly drunker, filed out of the dining room and descended to their offices below. Avery, Oliver Lambert and Nathan Locke walked the short hallway to the security wall and pushed the button. DeVasher was waiting.
   He waved at the chairs in his office and told them to sit down. Lambert passed around hand-wrapped Hondurans, and everyone lit up.
   “Well, I see we’re all in a festive mood,” DeVasher said with a sneer. “How much was it? Three hundred and ninety thousand, average?”
   “That’s correct, DeVasher,” Lambert said. “It was a very good year.” He puffed slowly and blew smoke rings at the ceiling.
   “Did we all have a wonderful Christmas?” DeVasher asked.
   “What’s on your mind?” Locke demanded.
   “Merry Christmas to you too, Nat. Just a few things. I met with Lazarov two days ago in New Orleans. He does not celebrate the birth of Christ, you know. I brought him up to date on the situation down here, with emphasis on McDeere and the FBI. I assured him there had been no further contact since the initial meeting. He did not quite believe this and said he would check with his sources within the Bureau. I don’t know what that means, but who am I to ask questions? He instructed me to trail McDeere twenty-four hours a day for the next six months. I told him we were already doing so, sort of. He does not want another Hodge-Kozinski situation. He’s very distressed about that. McDeere is not to leave the city on firm business unless at least two of us go with him.”
   “He’s going to Washington in two weeks,” Avery said.
   “What for?”
   “American Tax Institute. It’s a four-day seminar that we require of all new associates. It’s been promised to him, and he’ll be very suspicious if it’s canceled.”
   “We made his reservations in September,” Ollie added.
   “I’ll see if I can clear it with Lazarov,” DeVasher said. “Give me the dates, flights and hotel reservations. He won’t like this.”
   “What happened Christmas?” Locke asked.
   “Not much. His wife went to her home in Kentucky. She’s still there. McDeere took the dog and drove to Panama City Beach, Florida. We think he went to see his mom, but we’re not sure. Spent one night at a Holiday Inn on the beach. Just he and the dog. Pretty boring. Then he drove to Birmingham, stayed in another Holiday Inn, then early, yesterday morning he drove to Brushy Mountain to visit his brother. Harmless trip.”
   “What’s he said to his wife?” asked Avery.
   “Nothing, as far as we can tell. It’s hard to hear everything.”
   “Who else are you watching?” asked Avery.
   “We’re listening to all of them, sort of sporadically. We have no real suspects, other than McDeere, and that’s just because of Tarrance. Right now all’s quiet.”
   “He’s got to go to Washington, DeVasher,” Avery insisted.
   “Okay, okay. I’ll get it cleared with Lazarov. He’ll make us send five men for surveillance. What an idiot!”


* * *

   Ernie’s Airport Lounge was indeed near the airport. Mitch found it after three attempts and parked between two four-wheel-drive swampmobiles with real mud caked on the tires and headlights. The parking lot was full of such vehicles. He looked around and instinctively removed his tie. It was almost eleven. The lounge was deep and long and dark with colorful beer signs flashing in the painted windows.
   He looked at the note again, just to be sure.


   Dear Mr. McDeere:
   Please meet me at Ernie’s Lounge on Winchester tonight-late. It’s about Eddie Lomax. Very important.

Tammy Hemphill, his secretary

   The note had been tacked on the door to the kitchen when he arrived home. He remembered her from the one visit to Eddie’s office, back in November. He remembered the tight leather skirt, huge breasts, bleached hair, red sticky lips and smoke billowing from her nose. And he remembered the story about her husband, Elvis.
   The door opened without incident, and he slid inside. A row of pool tables covered the left half of the room. Through the darkness and black smoke, he could make out a small dance floor in the rear. To the right was a long saloon-type bar crowded with cowboys and cowgirls, all drinking Bud longnecks. No one seemed to notice him. He walked quickly to the end of the bar and slid onto the stool. “Bud longneck,” he told the bartender.
   Tammy arrived before the beer. She was sitting and waiting on a crowded bench by the pool tables. She wore tight washed jeans, faded denim shirt and kinky red high-heels. The hair had just received a fresh bleaching.
   “Thanks for coming,” she said into his face. “I’ve been waiting for four hours. I knew of no other way to find you.”
   Mitch nodded and smiled as if to say, “It’s okay. You did the right thing.”
   “What’s up?” he said.
   She looked around. “We need to talk, but not here.”
   “Where do you suggest?”
   “Could we maybe drive around?”
   “Sure, but not in my car. It, uh, it may not be a good idea.”
   “I’ve got a car. It’s old, but it’ll do.”
   Mitch paid for the beer and followed her to the door. A cowpoke sitting near the door said, “Getta loada this. Guy shows up with a suit and picks her up in thirty seconds.” Mitch smiled at him and hurried out the door. Dwarfed in a row of massive mud-eating machinery was a well-worn Volkswagen Rabbit. She unlocked it, and Mitch doubled over and squeezed into the cluttered seat. She pumped the accelerator five times and turned the key. Mitch held his breath until it started.
   “Where would you like to go?” she asked.
   Where we can’t be seen,Mitch thought. “You’re driving.”
   “You’re married, aren’t you?” she asked.
   “Yes. You?”
   “Yes, and my husband would not understand this situation right here. That’s why I chose that dump back there. We never go there.”
   She said this as if she and her husband were discriminating critics of dark redneck dives.
   “I don’t think my wife would understand either. She’s out of town, though.”
   Tammy drove in the direction of the airport. “I’ve got an idea,” she said. She clutched the steering wheel tightly and spoke nervously.
   “What’s on your mind?” Mitch asked.
   “Well, you heard about Eddie.”
   “Yes.”
   “When did you last see him?”
   “We met ten days or so before Christmas. It was sort of a secret meeting.”
   “That’s what I thought. He kept no records of the work he was doing for you. Said you wanted it that way. He didn’t tell me much. But me and Eddie, well, we, uh, we were… close.”
   Mitch could think of no response.
   “I mean, we were very close. Know what I mean?”
   Mitch grunted and sipped the longneck.
   “And he told me things I guess he wasn’t supposed to tell me. Said you had a real strange case, that some lawyers in your firm had died under suspicious circumstances. And that you always thought somebody was following and listening. That’s pretty weird for a law firm.”
   So much for the confidentiality,thought Mitch. “That it is.”
   She turned, made the exit to the airport and headed for the acres of parked cars.
   “And after he finished his work for you, he told me once, just once, in bed, that he thought he was being followed. This was three days before Christmas. And I asked him who it was. He said he didn’t know, but mentioned your case and something about it was probably related to the same people who were following you. He didn’t say much.”
   She parked in the short-term section near the terminal.
   “Who else would follow him?” Mitch asked.
   “No one. He was a good investigator who left no trail. I mean, he was an ex-cop and an ex-con. He was very street-smart. He got paid to follow people and collect dirt. No one followed him. Never.”
   “So who killed him?”
   “Whoever was following him. The paper made like he got caught snooping on some rich guy and was wasted. It’s not true.”
   Suddenly, from out of nowhere, she produced a filter-tip 1000 and shot a flame at the end. Mitch rolled down the window.
   “Mind if I smoke?” she asked.
   “No, just blow it that way,” he said, pointing to her window.
   “Anyway, I’m scared. Eddie was convinced the people following you are extremely dangerous and extremely smart. Very sophisticated, was what he said. And if they killed him, what about me? Maybe they think I know something. I haven’t been to the office since the day he was killed. Don’t plan to go back.”
   “I wouldn’t if I were you.”
   “I’m not stupid. I worked for him for two years and learned a lot. There’s a lot of nuts out there. We saw all kinds.”
   “How did they shoot him?”
   “He’s got a friend in Homicide. Guy told me confidentially that Eddie got hit three times in the back of the head, point-blank range, with a .22 pistol. And they don’t have a clue. He told me it was a very clean, professional job.”
   Mitch finished the longneck and laid the bottle on the floorboard with a half dozen empty beer cans. A very clean, professional job.
   “It doesn’t make sense,” she repeated. “I mean, how could anyone sneak up behind Eddie, somehow get in the back seat and shoot him three times in the back of the head? And he wasn’t even supposed to be there.”
   “Maybe he fell asleep and they ambushed him.”
   “No. He took all kinds of speed when he worked late at night. Stayed wired.”
   “Are there any records at the oflice?”
   “You mean about you?”
   “Yeah, about me.”
   “I doubt it. I never saw nothing in writing. He said you wanted it that way.”
   “That’s right,” Mitch said with relief.
   They watched a 727 lift off to the north. The parking lot vibrated.
   “I’m really scared, Mitch. Can I call you Mitch?”
   “Sure. Why not?”
   “I think he got killed because of the work he did for you. That’s all it could be. And if they’d kill him because he knew something, they probably assume I know it too. What do you think?”
   “I wouldn’t take any chances.”
   “I might disappear for a while. My husband does a little nightclub work, and we can get mobile if we have to. I haven’t told him all this, but I guess I have to. What do you think?”
   “Where would you go?”
   “Little Rock, St. Louis, Nashville. He’s laid off, so we can move around, I guess.” Her words trailed off. She lit another one.
   A very clean, professional job, Mitch repeated to himself. He glanced at her and noticed a small tear on her cheek. She was not ugly, but the years in lounges and nightclubs were taking their toll. Her features were strong, and minus the bleach and heavy makeup she would be somewhat attractive for her age. About forty, he guessed.
   She took a mighty drag and sent a cloud of smoke surging from the Rabbit. “I guess we’re in the same boat, aren’t we? I mean, they’re after both of us. They’ve killed all those lawyers, now Eddie, and I guess we’re next.”
   Don’t hold back, baby, just blurt it out. “Look, let’s do this. We need to keep in touch. You can’t call me on the phone, and we can’t be seen together. My wife knows everything, and I’ll tell her about this little meeting. Don’t worry about her. Once a week, write me a note and tell me where you are. What’s your mother’s name?”
   “Doris.”
   “Good. That’s your code name. Sign the name Doris on anything you send me.”
   “Do they read your mail too?”
   “Probably so, Doris, probably so.”

Chapter 19

   At five P.M., Mitch turned off the light in his office, grabbed both briefcases and stopped at Nina’s desk. Her phone was glued to one shoulder while she typed on the IBM. She saw him and reached in a drawer for an envelope. “This is your confirmation at the Capital Hilton,” she said into the receiver.
   “The dictation is on my desk,” he said. “See you Monday.” He took the stairs to the fourth floor, to Avery’s office in the corner, where a small riot was in progress. One secretary stuffed files into a massive briefcase. Another one spoke sharply to Avery, who was yelling on the phone to someone else. A paralegal shot orders to the first secretary.
   Avery slammed the phone down. “Are you ready!” he demanded at Mitch.
   “Waiting for you,” Mitch replied.
   “I can’t find the Greenmark file,” a secretary snarled at the paralegal.
   “It was with the Rocconi file,” said the paralegal.
   “I don’t need the Greenmark file!” Avery shouted. “How many times do I have to tell you? Are you deaf?”
   The secretary glared at Avery. “No, I can hear very well. And I distinctly heard you say, Tack the Greenmark file.’ ”
   “The limousine is waiting,” said the other secretary.
   “I don’t need the damned Greenmark file!” Avery shouted.
   “How about Rocconi?” asked the paralegal.
   “Yes! Yes! For the tenth time. I need the Rocconi file!”
   “The airplane is waiting too,” said the other secretary.
   One briefcase was slammed shut and locked. Avery dug through a pile of documents on his desk. “Where’s the Fender file? Where are any of my files? Why can’t I ever find a file?”
   “Here’s Fender,” said the first secretary as she stmTed it into another briefcase.
   Avery stared at a piece of notepaper. “All right. Do I have Fender, Rocconi, Cambridge Partners, Greene Group, Sonny Capps to Otaki, Burton Brothers, Galveston Freight and McQuade?”
   “Yes, yes, yes,” said the first secretary.
   “That’s all of them,” said the paralegal.
   “I don’t believe it,” Avery said as he grabbed his jacket. “Let’s go.” He strode through the door with the secretaries, paralegal and Mitch in pursuit. Mitch carried two briefcases, the paralegal had two, and a secretary had one. The other secretary scribbled notes as Avery barked the orders and demands he wanted carried out while he was away. The entourage crowded onto the small elevator for the ride to the first floor. Outside, the chauifeur sprang into action, opening doors and loading it all in the trunk.
   Mitch and Avery fell into the back seat.
   “Relax, Avery,” Mitch said. “You’re going to the Caymans for three days. Just relax.”
   “Right, right. I’m taking with me enough work for a month. I’ve got clients screaming for my hide, threatening suits for legal malpractice. I’m two months behind, and now you’re leaving for four days of boredom at a tax seminar in Washington. Your timing is great, McDeere. Just great.”
   Avery opened a cabinet and mixed a drink. Mitch declined. The limo moved around Riverside Drive in the rush-hour traffic. After three swallows of gin, the partner breathed deeply.
   “Continuing education. What a joke,” Avery said.
   “You did it when you were a rookie. And if I’m not mistaken, you spent a week not long ago at that international tax seminar in Honolulu. Or did you forget?”
   “It was work. All work. Are you taking your files with you?”
   “Of course, Avery. I’m expected to attend the tax seminar eight hours a day, learn the latest tax revisions Congress has bestowed upon us and in my spare time bill five hours a day.”
   “Six, if you can. We’re behind, Mitch.”
   “We’re always behind, Avery. Fix another drink. You need to unwind.”
   “I plan to unwind at Rumheads.”
   Mitch thought of the bar with its Red Stripe, dominoes, darts and, yes, string bikinis. And the girl.
   “Is this your first flight on the Lear?” Avery asked, more relaxed now.
   “Yes. I’ve been here seven months, and I’m just now seeing the plane. If I had known this last March, I’d have gone to work with a Wall Street firm.”
   “You’re not Wall Street material. You know what those guys do? They’ve got three hundred lawyers in a firm, right? And each year they hire thirty new associates, maybe more. Everybody wants a job because it’s Wall Street, right? And after about a month they get all thirty of them together in one big room and inform them they’re expected to work ninety hours a week for five years, and at the end of five years, half of them will be gone. The turnover is incredible. They try to kill the rookies, bill them out at a hundred, hundred-fifty an hour, make a bundle off them, then run them off. That’s Wall Street. And the little boys never get to see plane. Or limo. You are truly lucky, Mitch. You should thank God every day that we chose to accept you here at good old Bendini, Lambert & Locke.”
   “Ninety hours sounds like fun. I could use the rest.”
   “It’ll pay off. Did you hear what my bonus was last year?”
   “No.”
   “Four-eight-five. Not bad, huh? And that’s just the bonus.”
   “I got six thousand,” Mitch said.
   “Stick with me and you’ll be in the big leagues soon enough.”
   “Yeah, but first I gotta get my continuing legal education.”
   Ten minutes later the limo turned into a drive that led to a row of hangars. Memphis Aero, the sign said. A sleek silver Lear 55 taxied slowly toward the terminal. “That’s it,” Avery said.
   The briefcases and luggage were loaded quickly onto the plane, and within minutes they were cleared for takeoff. Mitch fastened his seat belt and admired the leather-and-brass cabin. It was lavish and luxurious, and he had expected nothing less. Avery mixed another drink and buckled himself in.
   An hour and fifteen minutes later, the Lear began its descent into Baltimore—Washington International Airport. After it taxied to a stop, Avery and Mitch descended to the tarmac and opened the baggage door. Avery pointed to a man in a uniform standing near a gate. “That’s your chauffeur. The limo is in front. Just follow him. You’re about forty minutes from the Capital Hilton.”
   “Another limo?” Mitch asked.
   “Yeah. They wouldn’t do this for you on Wall Street.”
   They shook hands, and Avery climbed back on the plane. The refueling took thirty minutes, and when the Lear took off and turned south, he was asleep again.
   Three hours later, it landed in Georgetown, Grand Cayman. It taxied past the terminal to a very small hangar where it would spend the night. A security guard waited on Avery and his luggage and escorted him to the terminal and through customs. The pilot and copilot ran through the post flight ritual. They too were escorted through the terminal.
   After midnight, the lights in the hangar were extinguished and the half dozen planes sat in the darkness. A side door opened, and three men, one of them Avery, entered and walked quickly to the Lear 55. Avery opened the baggage compartment, and the three hurriedly unloaded twenty-five heavy cardboard boxes. In the muggy tropical heat, the hangar was like an oven. They sweated profusely but said nothing until all boxes were out of the plane.
   “There should be twenty-five. Count them,” Avery said to a muscle-bound native with a tank top and a pistol on his hip. The other man held a clipboard and watched intently as if he was a receiving clerk in a warehouse. The native counted quickly, sweat dripping onto the boxes.
   “Yes. Twenty-five.”
   “How much?” asked the man with the clipboard.
   “Six and a half million.”
   “All cash?”
   “All cash. U.S. dollars. Hundreds and twenties. Let’s get it loaded.”
   “Where’s it going?”
   “Quebecbanq. They’re waiting for us.”
   They each grabbed a box and walked through the dark to the side door, where a comrade was waiting with an Uzi.
   The boxes were loaded into a dilapidated van with Cayman Produce stenciled badly on the side. The armed natives sat with guns drawn as the receiving clerk drove away from the hangar in the direction of downtown Georgetown.


* * *

   Registration began at eight outside the Century Room on the mezzanine. Mitch arrived early, signed in, picked up the heavy notebook of materials with his name printed neatly on the cover and went inside. He took a seat near the center of the large room. Registration was limited to two hundred, the brochure said. A porter served coffee, and Mitch spread the Washington Post before him. The news was dominated by a dozen stories of the beloved Redskins, who were in the Super Bowl again.
   The room filled slowly as tax lawyers from around the country gathered to hear the latest developments in tax laws that changed daily. A few minutes before nine, a clean-cut, boyish attorney sat to Mitch’s left and said nothing. Mitch glanced at him and returned to the paper. When the room was packed, the moderator welcomed everyone and introduced the first speaker. Congressman something or other from Oregon, chairman of a House Ways and Means subcommittee. As he took the podium for what was supposed to be a one-hour presentation, the attorney to Mitch’s left leaned over and offered his hand.
   “Hi, Mitch,” he whispered. “I’m Grant Harbison, FBI.” He handed Mitch a card.
   The congressman started with a joke that Mitch did not hear. He studied the card, holding it near his chest. There were five people seated within three feet of him. He didn’t know anyone in the room, but it would be embarrassing if anyone knew he was holding an FBI card. After five minutes, Mitch shot a blank stare at Harbison.
   Harbison whispered, “I need to see you for a few minutes.”
   “What if I’m busy?” Mitch asked.
   The agent slid a plain white envelope from his seminar notebook and handed it to Mitch. He opened it near his chest. It was handwritten. Across the top, in small but imposing letters, the words read simply:


Office of the Director
FBI

   The note read:


   Dear Mr. McDeere:
   I would like to speak with you for a few moments during lunch. Please follow the instructions of Agent Harbison. It won’t take long. We appreciate your cooperation.
   Thanks.

F. Denton Voyles,
Director

   Mitch folded the letter in the envelope and slowly placed it in his notebook. We appreciate your cooperation. From the Director of the FBI. He realized the importance at this moment of maintaining his composure, of keeping a straight, calm face as if it was simply routine. But he rubbed his temples with both hands and stared at the floor in front of him. He closed his eyes and felt dizzy. The FBI. Sitting next to him! Waiting on him. The Director and hell knows who else. Tarrance would be close at hand.
   Suddenly, the room exploded in laughter at the congressman’s punch line. Harbison leaned quickly toward Mitch and whispered, “Meet me in the men’s room around the corner in ten minutes.” The agent left his notebooks on the table and exited amid the laughter.
   Mitch flipped to the first section of the notebook and pretended to study the materials. The congressman was detailing his courageous battle to protect tax shelters for the wealthy while at the same time easing the burden on the working class. Under his fearless guidance, the subcommittee had refused to report legislation limiting deductions for oil and gas exploration. He was a one-man army on the Hill.
   Mitch waited fifteen minutes, then another five, then began coughing. He needed water, and with hand over mouth he slid between the chairs to the back of the room and out the rear door. Harbison was in the men’s room washing his hands for the tenth time.
   Mitch walked to the basin next to him and turned on the cold water. “What are you boys up to?” Mitch asked.
   Harbison looked at Mitch in the mirror. “I’m just following orders. Director Voyles wants to personally meet you, and I was sent to get you.”
   “And what might he want?”
   “I wouldn’t want to steal his thunder, but I’m sure it’s rather important.”
   Mitch cautiously glanced around the rest room. It was empty. “And what if I’m too busy to meet with him?”
   Harbison turned off the water and shook his hands into the basin. “The meeting is inevitable, Mitch. Let’s not play games. When your little seminar breaks for lunch, you’ll find a cab, number 8667, outside to the left of the main entrance. It will take you to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, and we’ll be there. You must be careful. Two of them followed you here from Memphis.”
   “Two of whom?”
   “The boys from Memphis. Just do as we say and they’ll never know.”
   The moderator thanked the second speaker, a tax professor from New York University, and dismissed them for lunch.


* * *

   Mitch said nothing to the taxi driver. He sped away like a maniac, and they were soon lost in traffic. Fifteen minutes later, they parked near the Memorial.
   “Don’t get out yet,” the driver said with authority. Mitch did not move. For ten minutes, he did not move or speak. Finally, a white Ford Escort pulled alongside the cab and honked. It then drove away.
   The driver stared ahead and said, “Okay. Go to the Wall. They’ll find you after about five minutes.”
   Mitch stepped to the sidewalk, and the cab left. He stuck his hands deep in the pockets of his wool overcoat and walked slowly to the Memorial. Bitter wind gusts from the north scattered leaves in all directions. He shivered and flipped the collar of his coat around his ears.
   A solitary pilgrim sat rigidly in a wheelchair and stared at the Wall. He was covered with a heavy quilt. Under his oversized camouflage beret, a pair of aviator’s sunglasses covered his eyes. He sat near the end of the wall, near the names of those killed in 1972. Mitch followed the years down the sidewalk until he stopped near the wheelchair. He searched the names, suddenly oblivious of the man.
   He breathed deeply and was aware of a numbness in his legs and stomach. He looked slowly downward, and then, near the bottom, there it was. Engraved neatly, matter-of-factly, just like all the others, was the name Rusty McDeere.
   A basket of frozen and wilted flowers sat on its side next to the monument, inches under his name. Mitch gently laid them to one side and knelt before the Wall. He touched the engraved letters of Rusty’s name. Rusty McDeere. Age eighteen, forever. Seven weeks in Vietnam when he stepped on a land mine. Death was instantaneous, they said. They always said that, according to Ray. Mitch wiped a small tear and stood staring at the length of the Wall. He thought of the fifty-eight thousand families who had been told that death was instantaneous and no one suffered over there.
   “Mitch, they’re waiting.”
   He turned and looked at the man in the wheelchair, the only human in sight. The aviator’s glasses stared at the Wall and did not look up. Mitch glanced around in all directions.
   “Relax, Mitch. We’ve got the place sealed off. They’re not watching.”
   “And who are you?” Mitch asked.
   “Just one of the gang. You need to trust us, Mitch. The Director has important words, words that could save your life.”
   “Where is he?”
   The man in the wheelchair turned his head and looked down the sidewalk. “Start walking that way. They’ll find you.”
   Mitch stared for a moment longer at his brother’s name and walked behind the wheelchair. He walked past the statue of the three soldiers. He walked slowly, waiting, with hands deep in his pockets. Fifty yards past the monument, Wayne Tarrance stepped from behind a tree and walked beside him. “Keep walking,” he said.
   “Why am I not surprised to see you here?” Mitch said.
   “Just keep walking. We know of at least two goons from Memphis who were flown in ahead of you. They’re at the same hotel, next door to you. They did not follow you here. I think we lost them.”
   “What the hell’s going on, Tarrance?”
   “You’re about to find out. Keep walking. But relax, no one is watching you, except for about twenty of our agents.”
   “Twenty?”
   “Yeah. We’ve got this place sealed off. We want to make sure those bastards from Memphis don’t show up here. I don’t expect them.”
   “Who are they?”
   “The Director will explain.”
   “Why is the Director involved?”
   “You ask a lot of questions, Mitch.”
   “And you don’t have enough answers.”
   Tarrance pointed to the right. They left the sidewalk and headed for a heavy concrete bench near a footbridge leading to a small forest. The water on the pond below was frozen white.
   “Have a seat,” Tarrance instructed. They sat down. Two men walked across the footbridge. Mitch immediately recognized the shorter one as Voyles. F. Denton Voyles, Director of the FBI under three Presidents. A tough-talking, heavy-handed crime buster with a reputation for ruthlessness.
   Mitch stood out of respect when they stopped at the bench. Voyles stuck out a cold hand and stared at Mitch with the same large, round face that was famous around the world. They shook hands and exchanged names. Voyles pointed to the bench. Tarrance and the other agent walked to the footbridge and studied the horizon. Mitch glanced across the pond and saw two men, undoubtedly agents with their identical black trench coats and close haircuts, standing against a tree a hundred yards away.
   Voyles sat close to Mitch, their legs touching. A brown fedora rested to one side of his large, bald head. He was at least seventy, but the dark green eyes danced with intensity and missed nothing. Both men sat still on the cold bench with their hands stuck deep in their overcoats.
   “I appreciate you coming,” Voyles started.
   “I didn’t feel as though I had a choice. You folks have been relentless.”
   “Yes. It’s very important to us.”
   Mitch breathed deeply. “Do you have any idea how confused and scared I am? I’m totally bewildered. I would like an explanation, sir.”
   “Mr. McDeere, can I call you Mitch?”
   “Sure. Why not?”
   “Fine. Mitch, I am a man of very few words. And what I’m about to tell you will certainly shock you. You will be horrified. You may not believe me. But I assure you it’s all true, and with your help we can save your life.”
   Mitch braced himself and waited.
   “Mitch, no lawyer has ever left your law firm alive. Three have tried, and they were killed. Two were about to leave, and they died last summer. Once a lawyer joins Bendini, Lambert & Locke, he never leaves, unless he retires and keeps his mouth shut. And by the time they retire, they are a part of the conspiracy and cannot talk. The Firm has an extensive surveillance operation on the fifth floor. Your house and car are bugged. Your phones are tapped. Your desk and office are wired. Virtually every word you utter is heard and recorded on the fifth floor. They follow you, and sometimes your wife. They are here in Washington as we speak. You see, Mitch, The Firm is more than a firm. It is a division of a very large business, a very profitable business. A very illegal business. The Firm is not owned by the partners.”
   Mitch turned and watched him closely. The Director looked at the frozen pond as he spoke.
   “You see, Mitch, the law firm of Bendini, Lambert & Locke is owned by the Morolto crime family in Chicago. The Mafia. The Mob. They call the shots from up there. And that’s why we’re here.” He touched Mitch firmly on the knee and stared at him from six inches away. “It’s Mafia, Mitch, and illegal as hell.”
   “I don’t believe it,” he said, frozen with fear. His voice was weak and shrill.
   The Director smiled. “Yes you do, Mitch. Yes you do. You’ve been suspicious for some time now. That’s why you talked to Abanks in the Caymans. That’s why you hired that sleazy investigator and got him killed by those boys on the fifth floor. You know The Firm stinks, Mitch.”
   Mitch leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. He stared at the ground between his shoes. “I don’t believe it,” he mumbled weakly.
   “As far as we can tell, about twenty-five percent of their clients, or I should say your clients, are legitimate. There are some very good lawyers in that firm, and they do tax and securities work for rich clients. It’s a very good front. Most of the files you’ve worked on so far have been legit. That’s how they operate. They bring in a new rookie, throw money at him, buy the BMW, the house, all that jazz, wine and dine and go to the Caymans, and they work his ass off with what is really legitimate legal stuff. Real clients. Real lawyer stuff. That goes on for a few years, and the rookie doesn’t suspect a thing, right? It’s a great firm, great bunch of guys. Plenty of money. Hey, everything’s wonderful. Then after five or six years, when the money is really good, when they own your mortgage, when you have a wife and kids and everything is so secure, they drop the bomb and tell the truth. There’s no way out. It’s the Mafia, Mitch. Those guys don’t play games. They’ll kill one of your children or your wife, they don’t care. You’re making more money than you could possibly make anywhere else. You’re blackmailed because you’ve got a family that doesn’t mean a damned thing to the Mob, so what do you do, Mitch? You stay. You can’t leave. If you stay you make a million and retire young with your family intact. If you want to leave, you’ll wind up with your picture on the wall in the first-floor library. They’re very persuasive.”
   Mitch rubbed his temples and began shivering.
   “Look, Mitch, I know you must have a thousand questions. Okay. So I’ll just keep talking and tell you what I know. The five dead lawyers all wanted out after they learned the truth. We never talked to the first three, because, frankly, we knew nothing about until seven years ago. They’ve done an excellent job of staying quiet and leaving no trail. The first three just wanted out, probably, so they got out. In coffins. Hodge and Kozinski were different. They approached us, and over the course of a year we had several meetings. They dropped the bomb on Kozinski after he’d been there for seven years. He told Hodge. They whispered between themselves for a year. Kozinski was about to make partner and wanted out before that happened. So he and Hodge made the fatal decision to get out. They never suspected the first three were killed, or at least they never mentioned it to us. We sent Wayne Tarrance to Memphis to bring them in. Tarrance is an organized-crime specialist from New York. He and the two were getting real close when that thing happened in the Caymans. These guys in Memphis are very good, Mitch. Don’t ever forget that. They’ve got the money and they hire the best. So after Hodge and Kozinski were killed, I made the decision to get. If we can bust that firm, we can indict every significant member of the Morolto family. There could be over five hundred indictments. Tax evasion, laundering, racketeering, just whatever you want. It could destroy the Morolto family, and that would be the single most devastating blow to organized crime in the past thirty years. And, Mitch, it’s all in the files at the quiet little Bendini firm in Memphis.”
   “Why Memphis?”
   “Ah, good question. Who would suspect a small firm in Memphis, Tennessee? There’s no mob activity down there. It’s a quiet, lovely, peaceful city by the river. It could’ve been Durham or Topeka or Wichita Falls. But they chose Memphis. It’s big enough, though, to hide a forty-man firm. Perfect choice.”
   “You mean every partner…” His words trailed off.
   “Yes, every partner knows and plays by the rules. We suspect that most of the associates know, but it’s hard to tell. There’s so much we don’t know, Mitch. I can’t explain how operates and who’s in on it. But we strongly suspect a lot of criminal activity down there.”
   “Such as?”
   “Tax fraud. They do all the tax work for the Morolto bunch. They file nice, neat, proper-looking tax returns each year and report a fraction of the income. They launder money like crazy. They set up legitimate businesses with dirty money. That bank in St. Louis, big client, what is it?”
   “Commercial Guaranty.”
   “Right, that’s it. Mafia-owned. Firm does all its legal work. Morolto takes in an estimated three hundred million a year from gambling, dope, numbers—everything. All cash, right? Most of it goes to those banks in the Caymans. How does it move from Chicago to the islands? Any idea? The plane, we suspect. That gold-plated Lear you flew up here on runs about once a week to Georgetown.”
   Mitch sat straight and watched Tarrance, who was out of hearing range and standing now on the footbridge. “So why don’t you get your indictments and bust it all up?”
   “We can’t. We will, I assure you. I’ve assigned five agents to the project in Memphis and three here in Washington. I’ll get them, Mitch, I promise you. But we must have someone from the inside. They are very smart. They have plenty of money. They’re extremely careful, and they don’t make mistakes. I am convinced that we must have help from you or another member of The Firm. We need copies of files, copies of bank records, copies of a million documents that can only come from within. It’s impossible otherwise.”
   “And I have been chosen.”
   “And you have been chosen. If you decline, then you can go on your way and make plenty of money and in general be a successful lawyer. But we will keep trying. We’ll wait for the next new associate and try to pick him off. And if that doesn’t work, we’ll move in on one of the older associates. One with courage and morals and guts to do what’s right. We’ll find our man one day, Mitch, and when that happens we’ll indict you along with all the rest and ship your rich and successful ass off to prison. It will happen, son, believe me.”
   At that moment, at that place and time, Mitch believed him. “Mr. Voyles, I’m cold. Could we walk around?”
   “Sure, Mitch.”
   They walked slowly to the sidewalk and headed in the direction of the Vietnam Memorial. Mitch glanced over his shoulder. Tarrance and the other agent were following at a distance. Another agent in dark brown sat suspiciously on a park bench up the sidewalk.
   “Who was Anthony Bendini?” Mitch asked.
   “He married a Morolto in 1930. The old man’s son-in-law. They had an operation in Philadelphia back then, and he was stationed there. Then, in the forties, for some reason, he was sent to Memphis to set up shop. He was a very good lawyer, though, from what we know.”
   A thousand questions flooded his brain and fought to be asked. He tried to appear calm, under control, skeptical.
   “What about Oliver Lambert?”
   “A prince of a guy. The perfect senior partner, who just happened to know all about Hodge and Kozinski and the plans to eliminate them. The next time you see Mr. Lambert around the office, try to remember that he is a cold-blooded murderer. Of course, he has no choice. If he didn’t cooperate, they’d find him floating somewhere. They’re all like that, Mitch. They started off just like you. Young, bright, ambitious, then suddenly one day they were in over their heads with no place to go. So they play along, work hard, do a helluva job putting up a good front and looking like a real respectable little law firm. Each year or so they recruit a bright young law student from a poor background, no family money, with a wife who wants babies, and they throw money at him and sign him up.”
   Mitch thought of the money, the excessive salary from a small firm in Memphis, and the car and low-interest mortgage. He was headed for Wall Street and had been sidetracked by the money. Only the money.
   “What about Nathan Locke?”
   The Director smiled. “Locke is another story. He grew up a poor kid in Chicago and was running errands for old man Morolto by the time he was ten. He’s been a hood all his life. Scratched his way through law school, and the old man sent him South to work with Anthony Bendini in the white-collar-crime division of the family. He was always a favorite of the old man.”
   “When did Morolto die?”
   “Eleven years ago at the age of eighty-eight. He has two slimy sons, Mickey the Mouth and Joey the Priest. Mickey lives in Las Vegas and has a limited role in the family business. Joey is the boss.”
   The sidewalk reached an intersection with another one. In the distance to the left, the Washington Monument reached upward in the bitter wind. To the right, the walkway led to the Wall. A handful of people were now staring at it, searching for the names of sons and husbands and friends. Mitch headed for the Wall. They walked slowly.
   Mitch spoke softly. “I don’t understand how can do so much illegal work and keep it quiet. That place is full of secretaries and clerks and paralegals.”
   “Good point, and one I cannot fully answer. We think it operates as two firms. One is legitimate, with the new associates, most of the secretaries and support people. Then, the senior associates and partners do the dirty work. Hodge and Kozinski were about to give us plenty of information, but they never made it. Hodge told Tarrance once that there was a group of paralegals in the basement he knew little about. They worked directly for Locke and Milligan and McKnight and a few other partners, and no one was really sure what they did. Secretaries know everything, and we think that some of them are probably in on it. If so, I’m sure they’re well paid and too scared to talk. Think about it, Mitch. If you work there making great money with great benefits, and you know that if you ask too many questions or start talking you wind up in the river, what do you do? You keep your mouth shut and take the money.”
   They stopped at the beginning of the Wall, at a point where the black granite began at ground level and started its run of 246 feet until it angled into the second row of identical panels. Sixty feet away, an elderly couple stared at the wall and cried softly. They huddled together, for warmth and strength. The mother bent down and laid a framed black-and-white photo at the base of the Wall. The father laid a shoebox full of high school memorabilia next to the photo. Football programs, class pictures, love letters, key rings and a gold chain. They cried louder.
   Mitch turned his back to the Wall and looked at the Washington Monument. The Director watched his eyes.
   “So what am I supposed to do?” Mitch asked.
   “First of all, keep your mouth shut. If you start asking questions, your life could be in danger. Your wife’s also. Don’t have any kids in the near future. They’re easy targets. It’s best to play dumb, as if everything is wonderful and you still plan to be the world’s greatest lawyer. Second, you must make a decision. Not now, but soon. You must decide if you will cooperate or not. If you choose to help us, we will of course make it worth your while. If you choose not to, then we will continue to watch until we decide to approach another associate. As I said, one of these days we’ll find someone with guts and nail those bastards. And the Morolto crime family as we know it will cease to exist. We’ll protect you, Mitch, and you’ll never have to work again in your life.”
   “What life? I’ll live in fear forever, if I live. I’ve heard stories of witnesses the FBI has supposedly hidden. Ten years later, the car explodes as they back out the driveway to go to work. The body is scattered over three blocks. The Mob never forgets, Director. You know that.”
   “They never forget, Mitch. But I promise you, you and your wife will be protected.”
   The Director looked at his watch. “You’d better get back or they’ll be suspicious. Tarrance will be in touch. Trust him, Mitch. He’s trying to save your life. He has full authority to act on my behalf. If he tells you something, it’s coming from me. He can negotiate.”
   “Negotiate what?”
   “Terms, Mitch. What we give you in return for what you give us. We want the Morolto family, and you can deliver. You name your price, and this government, working through the FBI, will deliver. Within reason, of course. And that’s coming from me, Mitch.” They walked slowly along the Wall and stopped by the agent in the wheelchair. Voyles stuck out his hand. “Look, there’s a taxi waiting where you came in, number 1073. Same driver. You’d better leave now. We will not meet again, but Tarrance will contact you in a couple of weeks. Please think about what I said. Don’t convince yourself is invincible and can operate forever, because I will not allow it. We will make a move in the near future, I promise that. I just hope you’re on our side.”
   “I don’t understand what I’m supposed to do.”
   “Tarrance has the game plan. A lot will depend upon you and what you learn once you’re committed.”
   “Committed?”
   “That’s the word, Mitch. Once you commit, there’s no turning back. They can be more ruthless than any organization on earth.”
   “Why did you pick me?”
   “We had to pick someone. No, that’s not true. We picked you because you have the guts to walk away from it. You have no family except a wife. No ties, no roots. You’ve been hurt by every person you ever cared for, except Abby. You raised yourself, and in doing so became self-reliant and independent. You don’t need The Firm. You can leave it. You’re hardened and calloused beyond your years. And you’re smart enough to pull it off, Mitch. You won’t get caught. That’s why we picked you. Good day, Mitch. Thanks for coming. You’d better get back.”
   Voyles turned and walked quickly away. Tarrance waited at the end of the Wall, and gave Mitch a quick salute, as if to say, “So long—for now.”

Chapter 20

   After making the obligatory stop in Atlanta, the Delta DC-9 landed in a cold rain at Memphis International. It parked at Gate 19, and the tightly packed crowd of business travelers quickly disembarked. Mitch carried only his briefcase and an Esquire. He saw Abby waiting near the pay phones and moved quickly through the pack. He threw the briefcase and magazine against the wall and bear-hugged her. The four days in Washington seemed like a month. They kissed again and again, and whispered softly.
   “How about a date?” he asked.
   “I’ve got dinner on the table and wine in the cooler,” she said. They held hands and walked through the mob pushing down the concourse in the general direction of the luggage pickup.
   He spoke quietly. “Well, we need to talk, and we can’t do it at home.”
   She gripped his hand tighter. “Oh?”
   “Yes. In fact, we need to have a long talk.”
   “What happened?”
   “It’ll take a while.”
   “Why am I suddenly nervous?”
   “Just keep cool. Keep smiling. They’re watching.”
   She smiled and glanced to her right. “Who’s watching?”
   “I’ll explain in just a moment.”
   Mitch suddenly pulled her to his left. They cut through the wave of human traffic and darted into a dark, crowded lounge full of businessmen drinking and watching the television above the bar and waiting for their nights. A small, round table covered with empty beer mugs had just been vacated, and they sat with their backs to the wall and a view of the bar and the concourse. They sat close together, within three feet of another table. Mitch stared at the door and analyzed every face that walked in. “How long are we going to be here?” she asked.
   “Why?”
   She slid out of the full-length fox and folded it on the chair across the table. “What exactly are you looking for?”
   “Just keep smiling for a moment. Pretend you really missed me. Here, give me a kiss.” He pecked her on the lips, and they smiled into each other’s eyes. He kissed her cheek and returned to the door. A waiter rushed to the table and cleaned it off. They ordered wine.
   She smiled at him. “How was your trip?”
   “Boring. We were in class eight hours a day, for four days. After the first day, I hardly left the hotel. They crammed six months’ worth of tax revisions into thirty-two hours.”
   “Did you get to sightsee?”
   He smiled and looked dreamily at her. “I missed you, Abby. More than I’ve ever missed anyone in my life. I love you. I think you’re gorgeous, absolutely stunning. I do not enjoy traveling alone and waking up in a strange hotel bed without you. And I have something horrible to tell you.”
   She stopped smiling. He slowly looked around the room. They were three deep at the bar and yelling at the Knicks—Lakers game. The lounge was suddenly louder.
   “I’ll tell you about it,” he said. “But there’s a very good chance someone is in here right now watching us. They cannot hear, but they can observe. Just smile occasionally, although it will be hard.”
   The wine arrived, and Mitch began his story. He left nothing out. She spoke only once. He told her about Anthony Bendini and old man Morolto, and then Nathan Locke growing up in Chicago and Oliver Lambert and the boys on the fifth floor.
   Abby nervously sipped her wine and tried valiantly to appear as the normal loving wife who missed her husband and was now enjoying immensely his recollection of the tax seminar. She watched the people at the bar, sipped a little and occasionally grinned at Mitch as he told of the money laundering and the murdered lawyers. Her body ached with fear. Her breath was wildly irregular. But she listened, and pretended.
   The waiter brought more wine as the crowd thinned. An hour after he started, Mitch finished in a low whisper.
   “And Voyles said Tarrance would contact me in a couple of weeks to see if I will cooperate. He said goodbye and walked away.”
   “And this was Tuesday?” she asked.
   “Yes. The first day.”
   “What did you do the rest of the week?”
   “I slept little, ate little, walked around with a dull headache most of the time.”
   “I think I feel one coming.”
   “I’m sorry, Abby. I wanted to fly home immediately and tell you. I’ve been in shock for three days.”
   “I’m in shock now. I’m not believing this, Mitch. This is like a bad dream, only much worse.”
   “And this is only the beginning. The FBI is dead serious. Why else would the Director himself meet with me, an insignificant rookie lawyer from Memphis, in fifteen-degree weather on a concrete park bench? He’s assigned five agents in Memphis and three in Washington, and he said they’ll spend whatever it takes to get. So if I keep my mouth shut, ignore them and go about my business of being a good and faithful member of Bendini, Lambert & Locke, one day they’ll show up with arrest warrants and haul everybody away. And if I choose to cooperate, you and I will leave Memphis in the dead of the night after I hand The Firm to the feds, and we’ll go off and live in Boise, Idaho, as Mr. and Mrs. Wilbur Gates. We’ll have plenty of money, but we’ll have to work to avoid suspicion. After my plastic surgery, I’ll get a job driving a forklift in a warehouse, and you can work part-time at a day care. We’ll have two, maybe three kids and pray every night that people we’ve never met keep their mouths shut and forget about us. We’ll live every hour of every day in morbid fear of being discovered.”
   “That’s perfect, Mitch, just perfect.” She was trying hard not to cry.
   He smiled and glanced around the room. “We have a third option. We can walk out that door, buy two tickets to San Diego, sneak across the border and eat tortillas for the rest of our lives.”
   “Let’s go.”
   “But they’d probably follow us. With my luck, Oliver Lambert will be waiting in Tijuana with a squad of goons. It won’t work. Just a thought.”
   “What about Lamar?”
   “I don’t know. He’s been here six or seven years, so he probably knows. Avery’s a partner, so he’s very much a part of the conspiracy.”
   “And Kay?”
   “Who knows. It’s very likely none of the wives know. I’ve thought about it for four days, Abby, and it’s a marvelous front. looks exactly like it’s supposed to look. They could fool anyone. I mean, how would you and I or any other prospective recruit even think of such an operation. It’s perfect. Except, now the feds know about it.”
   “And now the feds expect you to do their dirty work. Why did they pick you, Mitch? There are forty lawyers in.”
   “Because I knew nothing about it. I was a sitting duck. The FBI is not sure when the partners spring the surprise on the associates, so they couldn’t take a chance with anyone else. I happened to be the new guy, so they set the trap as soon as I passed the bar exam.”
   Abby chewed her lip and held back tears. She looked blankly at the door across the dark room. “And they listen to everything we say,” she said.
   “No. Just every phone call and conversation around the house and in the cars. We’re free to meet here or in most restaurants, and there’s always the patio. But I suggest we move farther away from the sliding door. To be safe, we need to sneak behind the storage shed and whisper softly.”
   “Are you trying to be funny? I hope not. This is no time for jokes. I’m so scared, angry, confused, mad as hell and not sure where to turn. I’m afraid to speak in my own house. I watch every word I utter on the phone, even if it’s a wrong number. Every time the phone rings, I jump and stare at it. And now this.”
   “You need another drink.”
   “I need ten drinks.”
   Mitch grabbed her wrist and squeezed firmly. “Wait a minute. I see a familiar face. Don’t look around.”
   She held her breath. “Where?”
   “On the other side of the bar. Smile and look at me.”
   Sitting on a barstool and staring intently at the TV was a well-tanned blond man with a loud blue-and-white alpine sweater. Fresh from the slopes. But Mitch had seen the tan and the blond bangs and the blond mustache somewhere in Washington.Mitch watched him carefully. The blue light from the tube illuminated his face. Mitch hid in the dark. The man lifted a bottle of beer, hesitated, then, there!, shot a glance into the corner where the McDeeres huddled closely together.
   “Are you sure?” Abby asked through, clenched teeth.
   “Yes. He was in Washington, but I can’t place him. In fact, I saw him twice.”
   “Is he one of them?”
   “How am I supposed to know?”
   “Let’s get out of here.”
   Mitch laid a twenty on the table and they left the airport.
   Driving her Peugeot, he raced through the short-term parking lot, paid the attendant and sped away toward midtown. After five minutes of silence, she leaned across and whispered in his ear, “Can we talk?”
   He shook his head. “Well, how’s the weather been while I was away?”
   Abby rolled her eyes and looked through the passenger window. “Cold,” she said. “Chance of light snow tonight.”
   “It was below freezing the entire week in Washington.”
   Abby looked flabbergasted at this revelation. “Any snow?” she asked with raised eyebrows and wide eyes as if enthralled with the conversation.
   “No. Just raw cold.”
   “What a coincidence! Cold here and cold there.”
   Mitch chuckled to himself. They rode silently on the interstate loop. “So who’s gonna win the Super Bowl?” he asked.
   “Oilers.”
   “Think so, huh? I’m for the Redskins. That’s all they talked about in Washington.”
   “My, my. Must be a real fun city.”
   More silence. Abby placed the back of her hand over her mouth and concentrated on the taillights ahead. At this moment of bewilderment, she would take her chances in Tijuana. Her husband, number three in his class (at Harvard), the one with Wall Street firms rolling out the red carpet, the one who could have gone anywhere, to any firm, had signed up with the… Mafia! With five dead lawyers notched on their belts, they most surely wouldn’t hesitate with number six. Her husband! Then the many conversations with Kay Quin swirled around her brain. The Firm encourages babies. The Firm permits wives to work, but not forever. The Firm hires no one with family money. The Firm demands loyalty to. The Firm has the lowest turnover rate in the country. Small wonder.
   Mitch watched her carefully. Twenty minutes after they left the airport, the Peugeot parked in the carport next to the BMW. They held hands and walked to the end of the driveway.
   “This is crazy, Mitch.”
   “Yes, but it’s real. It will not go away.”
   “What do we do?”
   “I don’t know, babe. But we gotta do it quick, and we can’t make mistakes.”
   “I’m scared.”
   “I’m terrified.”


* * *

   Tarrance did not wait long. One week after he waved goodbye to Mitch at the Wall, he spotted him walking hurriedly in the cold in the direction of the Federal Building on North Main, eight blocks from the Bendini Building. He followed him for two blocks, then slid into a small coffee shop with a row of windows facing the street, or the mall, as it was called. Cars were prohibited on Main Street in Memphis. The asphalt had been covered with tile when the boulevard had ceased being a street and had been transformed into the Mid-America Mall. An occasional useless and desolate tree rose from the tile and stretched its barren limbs between the buildings. Winos and urban nomads drifted aimlessly from one side of the mall to the other, begging for money and food.
   Tarrance sat at a front window and watched in the distance as Mitch disappeared into the Federal Building. He ordered coffee and a chocolate doughnut. He checked his watch. It was 10 A.M. According to the docket, McDeere had a brief hearing in Tax Court at this moment. It should be very brief, the clerk of the court had informed Tarrance. He waited.
   Nothing is ever brief in court. An hour later, Tarrance moved his face closer to the window and studied the scattered bodies walking quickly in the distance. He drained his coffee cup for the third time, laid two dollars on the table and stood hidden in the door. As Mitch approached on the other side of the mall, Tarrance moved swiftly toward him.
   Mitch saw him and slowed for a second.
   “Hello, Mitch. Mind if I walk with you?”
   “Yes, I mind, Tarrance. It’s dangerous, don’t you think?”
   They walked briskly and did not look at each other. “Look at that store over there,” Tarrance said, pointing to their right. “I need a pair of shoes.” They ducked into Don Pang’s House of Shoes. Tarrance walked to the rear of the narrow store and stopped between two rows of fake Reeboks at $4.99 for two pairs. Mitch followed him and picked up a pair of size tens. Don Pang or some other Korean eyed them suspiciously but said nothing. They watched the front door through the racks.
   “The Director called me yesterday,” Tarrance said without moving his lips. “He asked about you. Said it was time you made a decision.”
   “Tell him I’m still thinking.”
   “Have you told the boys at the office?”
   “No. I’m still thinking.”
   “That’s good. I don’t think you should tell them.” He handed Mitch a business card. “Keep this. There are two numbers on the back. Use either one from a pay phone. You’ll get a recorder, so just leave a message and tell me exactly when and where to meet you.”
   Mitch put the card in his pocket.
   Suddenly, Tarrance ducked lower.
   “What is it!” Mitch demanded.
   “I think we’ve been caught. I just saw a goon walk past the store and look in. Listen to me, Mitch, and listen carefully. Walk with me out of the store right now, and the instant we get out the door, yell at me to get lost and shove me away. I’ll act like I want to fight, and you run in the direction of your office.”
   “You’re gonna get me killed, Tarrance.”
   “Just do as I say. As soon as you get to the office, report this incident to the partners. Tell them I cornered you and you got away as soon as possible.”
   Outside, Mitch shoved harder than necessary and yelled, “Get the hell away from me! And leave me alone!” He ran two blocks to Union Avenue, then walked to the Bendini Building. He stopped in the men’s room on the first floor to catch his breath. He stared at himself in the mirror and breathed deeply ten times.


* * *

   Avery was on the phone, with two lights holding and blinking. A secretary sat on the sofa, ready with a steno pad for the onslaught of commands. Mitch looked at her and said, “Would you step outside, please. I need to speak with Avery in private.” She stood and Mitch escorted her to the door. He closed it.
   Avery watched him closely and hung up. “What’s going on?” he asked.
   Mitch stood by the sofa. “The FBI just grabbed me as I was returning from Tax Court.”
   “Damn! Who was it?”
   “Same agent. Guy by the name of Tarrance.”
   Avery picked up the phone and kept talking. “Where did it happen?”
   “On the mall. North of Union. I was just walking alone, minding my own business.”
   “Is this the first contact since that other thing?”
   “Yes. I didn’t recognize the guy at first.”
   Avery spoke into the receiver. “This is Avery Tolar. I need to speak to Oliver Lambert immediately. … I don’t care if he’s on the phone. Interrupt him, and now.”
   “What’s going on, Avery?” Mitch asked.
   “Hello, Oliver. Avery here. Sorry for the interruption. Mitch McDeere is here in my office. A few minutes ago he was walking back from the Federal Building when an FBI agent approached him on the mall…. What? Yes, he just walked in my office and told me about it. … All right, we’ll be there in five minutes.” He hung up. “Relax, Mitch. We’ve been through this before.”
   “I know, Avery, but this does not make sense. Why would they bother with me? I’m the newest man in.”
   “It’s harassment, Mitch. Pure and simple. Nothing but harassment. Sit down.”
   Mitch walked to the window and looked at the river in the distance.
   Avery was a cool liar. It was now time for the “they’re just picking on us” routine. Relax, Mitch. Relax? With eight FBI agents assigned to and the Director, Mr. Denton Voyles himself, monitoring the case daily? Relax? He’d just been caught whispering to an FBI agent inside a dollar shoe store. And now he was forced to act like he was an ignorant pawn being preyed upon by the evil forces of the federal government. Harassment? Then why was the goon following him on a routine walk to the courthouse? Answer that, Avery.
   “You’re scared, aren’t you?” Avery asked as he put his arm around him and gazed out the window.
   “Not really. Locke explained it all last time. I just wish they would leave me alone.”
   “It’s a serious matter, Mitch. Don’t take it lightly. Let’s walk over and see Lambert.”
   Mitch followed Avery around the corner and down the hall. A stranger in a black suit opened the door for them, then closed it. Lambert, Nathan Locke and Royce McKnight stood near the small conference table. Again, a tape recorder sat on the table. Mitch sat across from it. Black Eyes sat at the head of the table and glared at Mitch.
   He spoke with a menacing frown. There were no smiles in the room. “Mitch, has Tarrance or anyone else from the FBI contacted you since the first meeting last August?”
   “No.”
   “Are you certain?”
   Mitch slapped the table. “Dammit! I said no! Why don’t you put me under oath?”
   Locke was startled. They were all startled. A heavy, tense silence followed for thirty seconds. Mitch glared at Black Eyes, who retreated ever so slightly with a casual movement of his head.
   Lambert, ever the diplomat, the mediator, intervened. “Look, Mitch, we know this is frightening.”
   “Damn right it is. I don’t like it at all. I’m minding my own business, working my ass off ninety hours a week, trying to be nothing but a good lawyer and member of this firm, and for some unknown reason I keep getting these little visits from the FBI. Now, sir, I would like some answers.”
   Locke pressed the red button on the recorder. “We’ll talk about that in a minute. First, you tell us everything that happened.”
   “It’s very simple, Mr. Locke. I walked to the Federal Building at ten for an appearance before Judge Kofer on the Malcolm Delaney case. I was there about an hour, and I finished my business. I left the Federal Building, and I was walking in the direction of our office—in a hurry, I might add. It’s about twenty degrees out there. A block or two north of Union, this guy Tarrance came out of nowhere, grabbed my arm and pushed me into a small store. I started to knock the hell out of him, but, after all, he is an FBI agent. And I didn’t want to make a scene. Inside, he tells me he wants to talk for a minute. I pulled away from him, and ran to the door. He followed me, tried to grab me, and I shoved him away. Then I ran here, went straight to Avery’s office, and here we are. That’s all that was said. Play by play, everything.”
   “What did he want to talk about?”
   “I didn’t give him a chance, Mr. Locke. I have no plans to talk to any FBI agent unless he has a subpoena.”
   “Are you sure it’s the same agent?”
   “I think so. I didn’t recognize him at first. I haven’t seen him since last August. Once inside the store, he pulled his badge and gave me his name again. At that point, I ran.”
   Locke pressed another button and sat back in the chair. Lambert sat behind him and smiled ever so warmly. “Listen, Mitch, we explained this last time. These guys are getting bolder and bolder. Just last month they approached Jack Aldrich while he was eating lunch in a little grill on Second Street. We’re not sure what they’re up to, but Tarrance is out of his mind. It’s nothing but harassment.”
   Mitch watched his lips but heard little. As Lambert spoke, he thought of Kozinski and Hodge and their pretty widows and children at the funerals.
   Black Eyes cleared his throat. “It’s a serious matter, Mitch. But we have nothing to hide. They could better spend their time investigating our clients if they suspect wrongdoing. We’re lawyers. We may represent people who flirt with the law, but we have done nothing wrong. This is very baffling to us.”
   Mitch smiled and opened his hands. “What do you want me to do?” he asked sincerely.
   “There’s nothing you can do, Mitch,” said Lambert. “Just stay away from this guy, and run if you see him. If he so much as looks at you, report it immediately.”
   “That’s what he did,” Avery said defensively.
   Mitch looked as pitiful as possible.
   “You can go, Mitch,” Lambert said. “And keep us posted.”
   He left the office by himself.


* * *

   DeVasher paced behind his desk and ignored the partners. “He’s lying, I tell you. He’s lying. The sonofabitch is lying. I know he’s lying.”
   “What did your man see?” asked Locke.
   “My man saw something different. Slightly different. But very different. He says McDeere and Tarrance walked sort of nonchalantly into the shoe store. No physical intimidation by Tarrance. None at all. Tarrance walks up, they talk, and both sort of duck into the store. My man says they disappear into the back of the store, and they’re back there for three, maybe four minutes. Then another one of our guys walks by the store, looks in and sees nothing. Evidently, they saw our man, because within seconds they come flying out of the store with McDeere shoving and yelling. Something ain’t right, I tell you.”
   “Did Tarrance grab his arm and force him into the store?” Nathan Locke asked slowly, precisely.
   “Hell no. And that’s the problem. McDeere went voluntarily, and when he said the guy grabbed his arm, he’s lying. My man says he thinks they would’ve stayed in there for a while if they hadn’t seen us.”
   “But you’re not sure of that,” Nathan Locke said.
   “I wasn’t sure, dammit. They didn’t invite me into the store.”
   DeVasher kept pacing while the lawyers stared at the floor. He unwrapped a Roi-Tan and crammed it into his fat mouth.
   Finally, Oliver Lambert spoke. “Look, DeVasher, it’s very possible McDeere is telling the truth and your man got the wrong signals. It’s very possible. I think McDeere is entitled to the benefit of the doubt.”
   DeVasher grunted and ignored this.
   “Do you know of any contact since last August?” asked Royce McKnight.
   “We don’t know of any, but that doesn’t mean they ain’t talked, does it now? We didn’t know about those other two until it was almost too late. It’s impossible to watch every move they make. Impossible.”
   He walked back and forth by his credenza, obviously deep in thought. “I gotta talk to him,” he finally said.
   “Who?”
   “McDeere. It’s time he and I had a little talk.”
   “About what?” Lambert asked nervously.
   “You let me handle it, okay? Just stay out of my way.”
   “I think it’s a bit premature,” Locke said.
   “And I don’t give a damn what you think. If you clowns were in charge of security, you’d all be in prison.”
   Mitch sat in his office with the door closed and stared at the walls. A migraine was forming at the base of his skull, and he felt sick. There was a knock at the door.
   “Come in,” he said softly.
   Avery peeked inside, then walked to the desk. “How about lunch?”
   “No, thanks. I’m not hungry.”
   The partner slid his hands into his trouser pockets and smiled warmly. “Look, Mitch, I know you’re worried. Let’s take a break. I’ve got to run downtown for a meeting. Why don’t you meet me at the Manhattan Club at one. We’ll have a long lunch and talk things over. I’ve reserved the limo for you. It’ll be waiting outside at a quarter till.”
   Mitch managed a weak smile, as if he was touched by this. “Sure, Avery. Why not?”
   “Good. I’ll see you at one.”
   At a quarter till, Mitch opened the front door and walked to the limo. The driver opened the door, and Mitch fell in. Company was waiting.
   A thick, bald-headed man with a huge, bulging, hanging neck sat smugly in the corner of the rear seat. He stuck out a hand. “Name’s DeVasher, Mitch. Nice to meet you.”
   “Am I in the right limo?” Mitch asked.
   “Sure. Sure. Relax.” The driver pulled away from the curb.
   “What can I do for you?” Mitch asked.
   “You can listen for a while. We need to have a little talk.” The driver turned on Riverside Drive and headed for the Hernando De Soto Bridge.
   “Where are we going?” Mitch asked.
   “For a little ride. Just relax, son.”
   So I’m number six,thought Mitch. This is it. No, wait a minute. They were much more creative than this with their killing.
   “Mitch, can I call you Mitch?”
   “Sure.”
   “Fine. Mitch, I’m in charge of security for, and—”
   “Why does The Firm need security?”
   “Just listen to me, son, and I’ll explain. The Firm has an extensive security program, thanks to old man Bendini. He was a nut about security and secrecy. My job is to protect, and quite frankly, we’re very concerned about this FBI business.”
   “So am I.”
   “Yes. We believe the FBI is determined to infiltrate our firm in hopes of collecting information on certain clients.”
   “Which clients?”
   “Some high rollers with questionable tax shelters.”
   Mitch nodded and looked at the river below. They were now in Arkansas, with the Memphis skyline fading behind them. DeVasher recessed the conversation. He sat like a frog with his hands folded across the gut. Mitch waited, until it became apparent that lapses in conversation and awkward silence did not bother DeVasher. Several miles across the river, the driver left the interstate and found a rough county road that circled and ran back to the east. Then he turned onto a gravel road that went for a mile through low-lying bean fields next to the river. Memphis was suddenly visible again, across the water.
   “Where are we going?” Mitch asked, with some alarm.
   “Relax. I want to show you something.”
   A gravesite,thought Mitch. The limo stopped on a cliff that fell ten feet to a sandbar next to the bank. The skyline stood impressively on the other side. The top of the Bendini Building was visible.
   “Let’s take a walk,” DeVasher said.
   “Where to?” Mitch asked.
   “Come on. It’s okay.” DeVasher opened his door and walked to the rear bumper. Slowly, Mitch followed him.
   “As I was saying, Mitch, we are very troubled by this contact with the FBI. If you talk to them, they will get bolder, then who knows what the fools will try. It’s imperative that you not speak to them, ever again. Understand?”
   “Yes. I’ve understood since the first visit in August.”
   Suddenly, DeVasher was in his face, nose to nose. He smiled wickedly. “I have something that will keep you honest.” He reached in his sport coat and pulled out a manila envelope.
   “Take a look at these,” he said with a sneer, and walked away.
   Mitch leaned on the limo and nervously opened the envelope. There were four photographs, black and white, eight by ten, very clear. On the beach. The girl.
   “Oh my god! Who took these?” Mitch yelled at him.
   “What difference does it make? It’s you, ain’t it?”
   There was no doubt about who it was. He ripped the photographs into small pieces and threw them in DeVasher’s direction.
   “We got plenty at the office,” DeVasher said calmly. “Bunch of them. We don’t want to use them, but one more little conversation with Mr. Tarrance or any other Fibbie and we’ll mail them to your wife. How would you like that, Mitch? Imagine your pretty little wife going to the mailbox to get her Redbook and catalogues and she sees this sftrange envelope addressed to her. Try to think of that, Mitch. The next time you and Tarrance decide to shop for plastic shoes, think about us, Mitch. Because we’ll be watching.”
   “Who knows about these?” Mitch asked.
   “Me and the photographer, and now you. Nobody in the firm knows, and I don’t plan to tell them. But if you screw up again, I suspect they’ll be passing them around at lunch. I play hardball, Mitch.”
   He sat on the trunk and rubbed his temples. DeVasher walked up next to him. “Listen, son. You’re a very bright young man, and you’re on your way to big bucks. Don’t screw it up. Just work hard, play the game, buy new cars, build bigger homes, the works. Just like all the other guys. Don’t try to be no hero. I don’t want to use the pictures.”
   “Okay, okay.”

Chapter 21

   For seventeen days and seventeen nights, the troubled lives of Mitch and Abby McDeere proceeded quietly without interference from Wayne Tarrance or any of his confederates. The routines returned. Mitch worked eighteen hours a day, every day of the week, and never left the office for any reason except to drive home. Lunch was at the desk. Avery sent other associates to run errands or file motions or appear in court. Mitch seldom left his office, the fifteen-by-fifteen sanctuary where he was certain Tarrance could not get him. If possible, he stayed out of the halls and men’s rooms and coffee room. They were watching, he was sure. He was not sure who they were, but there was no doubt that a bunch of folks were vitally interested in his movements. So he stayed at his desk, with the door shut most of the time, working diligently, billing like crazy and trying to forget that the building had a fifth floor and on the fifth floor was a nasty little bastard named DeVasher who had a collection of photographs that could ruin him.
   With each uneventful day, Mitch withdrew even more into his asylum and became even more hopeful that perhaps the last episode in the Korean shoe store had scared Tarrance or maybe gotten him fired. Maybe Voyles would just simply forget the entire operation, and Mitch could continue along his happy way of getting rich and making partner and buying everything in sight. But he knew better.
   To Abby, the house was a prison, though she could come and go at will. She worked longer hours at school, spent more time walking the malls and made at least one trip each day to the grocery store. She watched everyone, especially men in dark suits who looked at her. She wore black sunglasses so they could not see her eyes. She wore them when it was raining. Late at night, after supper alone while she waited for him, she stared at the walls and resisted the temptation to investigate. The phones could be examined with a magnifying glass. The wires and mikes could not be invisible, she told herself. More than once she thought of finding a book on such devices so she could identify them. But Mitch said No. They were in the house, he assured her, and any attempt to find them could be disastrous.
   So she moved silently around her own house, feeling violated and knowing it could not last much longer. They both knew the importance of appearing normal, of sounding normal. They tried to engage in normal talk about how the day went, about the office and her students, about the weather, about this and that. But the conversations were flat, often forced and strained. When Mitch was in law school the lovemaking had been frequent and rowdy; now it was practically nonexistent. Someone was listening.
   Midnight walks around the block became a habit. After a quick sandwich each night, they would deliver the rehearsed lines about needing exercise and head for the street. They held hands and walked in the cold, talking about The Firm and the FBI, and which way to turn; always the same conclusion: there was no way out. None. Seventeen days and seventeen nights.
   The eighteenth day brought a new twist. Mitch was exhausted by 9 P.M. and decided to go home. He had worked nonstop for fifteen and a half hours. At two hundred per hour. As usual, he walked the halls of the second floor, then took the stairs to the third floor. He casually checked each office to see who was still working. No one on the third floor. He followed the stairs to the fourth floor and walked the wide rectangular hallway as if in search of something. All lights except one were off. Royce McKnight was working late. Mitch eased by his office without being seen. Avery’s door was closed, and Mitch grabbed the doorknob. It was locked. He walked to the library down the hall, looking for a book he did not need. After two weeks of the casual late-night inspections, he had found no closed-circuit cameras above the halls or offices. They just listen, he decided. They do not see.
   He said goodbye to Dutch Hendrix at the front gate and drove home. Abby was not expecting him at such an early hour. He quietly unlocked the door from the carport and eased into the kitchen. He flipped on a light switch. She was in the bedroom. Between the kitchen and the den was a small foyer with a rolltop desk where Abby left each day’s mail. He laid his briefcase softly on the desk, then saw it. A large brown envelope addressed with a black felt marker to Abby McDeere. No return address. Scrawled in heavy black letters were the words:


Photographs—Do Not Bend

   His heart stopped first, then his breathing. He grabbed the envelope. It had been opened.
   A heavy layer of sweat broke across his forehead. His mouth was dry and he could not swallow. His heart returned with the fury of a jackhammer. The breathing was heavy and painful. He was nauseous. Slowly, he backed away from the desk, holding the envelope. She’s in the bed, he thought. Hurt, sick, devastated and mad as hell. He wiped his forehead and tried to collect himself. Face it like a man, he said.
   She was in the bed, reading a book with the television on. The dog was in the backyard. Mitch opened the bedroom door, and Abby bolted upright in horror. She almost screamed at the intruder, until she recognized him.
   “You scared me, Mitch!”
   Her eyes glowed with fear, then fun. They had not been crying. They looked fine, normal. No pain. No anger. He could not speak.
   “Why are you home?” she demanded, sitting up in bed, smiling now.
   Smiling? “I live here,” he said weakly.
   “Why didn’t you call?”
   “Do I have to call before I can come home?” His breathing was now almost normal. She was fine!
   “It would be nice. Come here and kiss me.”
   He leaned across the bed and kissed her. He handed her the envelope. “What’s this?” he asked nonchalantly.
   “You tell me. It’s addressed to me, but there was nothing inside. Not a thing.” She closed her book and laid it on the night table.
   Not a thing! He smiled at her and kissed her again. “Are you expecting photographs from anyone?” he asked in complete ignorance.
   “Not that I know of. Must be a mistake.”
   He could almost hear DeVasher laughing at this very moment on the fifth floor. The fat bastard was standing up there somewhere in some dark room full of wires and machines with a headset stretched around his massive bowling ball of a head, laughing uncontrollably.
   “That’s strange,” Mitch said. Abby pulled on a pair of jeans and pointed to the backyard. Mitch nodded. The signal was simple, just a quick point or a nod of the head in the direction of the patio.
   Mitch laid the envelope on the rolltop desk and for a second touched the scrawled markings on it. Probably DeVasher’s handwriting. He could almost hear him laughing. He could see his fat face and nasty smile. The photographs had probably been passed around during lunch in the partners’ dining room. He could see Lambert and McKnight and even Avery gawking admiringly over coffee and dessert.
   They’d better enjoy the pictures, dammit. They’d better enjoy the remaining few months of their bright and rich and happy legal careers.
   Abby walked by and he grabbed her hand. “What’s for dinner?” he asked for the benefit of those listening.
   “Why don’t we go out. We should celebrate since you’re home at a decent hour.”
   They walked through the den. “Good idea,” said Mitch. They eased through the rear door, across the patio and into the darkness.
   “What is it?” Mitch asked.
   “You got a letter today from Doris. She said she’s in Nashville, but will return to Memphis on the twenty-seventh of February. She says she needs to see you. It’s important. It was a very short letter.”
   “The twenty-seventh! That was yesterday.”
   “I know. I presume she’s already in town. I wonder what she wants.”
   “Yeah, and I wonder where she is.”
   “She said her husband had an engagement here in town.”
   “Good. She’ll find us,” Mitch said.


* * *

   Nathan Locke closed his office door and pointed DeVasher in the direction of the small conference table near the window. The two men hated each other and made no attempt to be cordial. But business was business, and they took orders from the same man.
   “Lazarov wanted me to talk to you, alone,” DeVasher said. “I’ve spent the past two days with him in Vegas, and he’s very anxious. They’re all anxious, Locke, and he trusts you more than anyone else around here. He likes you more than he likes me.”
   “That’s understandable,” Locke said with no smile. The ripples of black around his eyes narrowed and focused intently on DeVasher.
   “Anyway, there are a few things he wants us to discuss.”
   “I’m listening.”
   “McDeere’s lying. You know how Lazarov’s always bragged about having a mole inside the FBI. Well, I’ve never believed him, and still don’t, for the most part. But according to Lazarov, his little source is telling him that there was some kind of secret meeting involving McDeere and some FBI heavyweights when your boy was in Washington back in January. We were there, and our men saw nothing, but it’s impossible to track anyone twenty-four hours a day without getting caught. It’s possible he could’ve slipped away for a little while without our knowledge.”
   “Do you believe it?”
   “It’s not important whether I believe it. Lazarov believes it, and that’s all that matters. At any rate, he told me to make preliminary plans to, uh, take care of him.”
   “Damn DeVasher! We can’t keep eliminating people.”
   “Just preliminary plans, nothing serious. I told Lazarov I thought it was much too early and that it would be a mistake. But they are very worried, Locke.”
   “This can’t continue, DeVasher. I mean, damn! We have reputations to consider. We have a higher casualty rate than oil rigs. People will start talking. We’re gonna reach a point where no law student in his right mind would take a job here.”
   “I don’t think you need to worry about that. Lazarov has put a freeze on hiring. He told me to tell you that. He also wants to know how many associates are still in the dark.”
   “Five, I think. Let’s see, Lynch, Sorrell, Buntin, Myers and McDeere.”
   “Forget McDeere. Lazarov is convinced he knows much more than we think. Are you certain the other four know nothing?”
   Locke thought for a moment and mumbled under his breath. “Well, we haven’t told them. You guys are listening and watching. What do you hear?”
   “Nothing, from those four. They sound ignorant and act as if they suspect nothing. Can you fire them?”
   “Fire them! They’re lawyers, DeVasher. You don’t fire lawyers. They’re loyal members of The Firm.”
   “The Firm is changing, Locke. Lazarov wants to fire the ones who don’t know and stop hiring new ones. It’s obvious the Fibbies have changed their strategy, and it’s time for us to change as well. Lazarov wants to circle the wagons and plug the leaks. We can’t sit back and wait for them to pick off our boys.”
   “Fire them,” Locke repeated in disbelief. “This firm has never fired a lawyer.”
   “Very touching, Locke. We’ve disposed of five, but never fired one. That’s real good. You’ve got a month to do it, so start thinking of a reason. I suggest you fire all four at one time. Tell them you lost a big account and you’re cutting back.”
   “We have clients, not accounts.”
   “Okay, fine. Your biggest client is telling you to fire Lynch, Sorrell, Buntin and Myers. Now start making plans.”
   “How do we fire those four without firing McDeere?”
   “You’ll think of something, Nat. You got a month. Get rid of them and don’t hire any new boys. Lazarov wants a tight little unit where everyone can be trusted. He’s scared, Nat. Scared and mad. I don’t have to tell you what could happen if one of your boys spilled his guts.”
   “No, you don’t have to tell me. What does he plan to do with McDeere?”
   “Right now, nothing but the same. We’re listening twenty-four hours a day, and the kid has never mentioned a word to his wife or anyone else. Not a word! He’s been corralled twice by Tarrance, and he reported both incidents to you. I still think the second meeting was somewhat suspicious, so we’re being very careful. Lazarov, on the other hand, insists there was a meeting in Washington. He’s trying to confirm. He said his sources knew little, but they were digging. If in fact McDeere met with the Fibbies up there and failed to report it, then I’m sure Lazarov will instruct me to move quickly. That’s why he wants preliminary plans to take McDeere out.”
   “How do you plan to do it?”
   “It’s too early. I haven’t given it much thought.”
   “You know he and his wife are going to the Caymans in two weeks for a vacation. They’ll stay in one of our condos, the usual.”
   “We wouldn’t do it there again. Too suspicious. Lazarov instructed me to get her pregnant.”
   “McDeere’s wife?”
   “Yep. He wants them to have a baby, a little leverage. She’s on the pill, so we gotta break in, take her little box, match up the pills and replace them with placebos.”
   At this, the great black eyes saddened just a touch and looked through the window. “What the hell’s going on, DeVasher?” he asked softly.
   “This place is about to change, Nat. It appears as though the feds are extremely interested, and they keep pecking away. One day, who knows, one of your boys may take the bait, and you’ll all leave town in the middle of the night.”
   “I don’t believe that, DeVasher. A lawyer here would be a fool to risk his life and his family for a few promises from the feds. I just don’t believe it will happen. These boys are too smart and they’re making too much money.”
   “I hope you’re right.”

Chapter 22

   The leasing agent leaned against the rear of the elevator and admired the black leather miniskirt from behind. He followed it down almost to the knees, where it ended and the seams in the black silk stockings began and snaked downward to black heels. Kinky heels, with little red bows across the toes. He slowly worked his way back up the seams, past the leather, pausing to admire the roundness of her rear, then upward to the red cashmere sweater, which from his vantage point revealed little but from the other side was quite impressive, as he had noticed in the lobby. The hair landed just below the shoulder blades and contrasted nicely with the red. He knew it was bleached, but add the bleach to the leather mini and the seams and the kinky heels and the tight sweater hugging those things around the front, add all that together and he knew this was a woman he could have. He would like to have her in the building. She just wanted a small office. The rent was negotiable.
   The elevator stopped. The door opened, and he followed her into the narrow hall. “This way”—he pointed, flipping on a light switch. In the corner, he moved in front of her and stuck a key in a badly aged wooden door.
   “It’s just two rooms,” he said, nipping on another switch. “About two hundred square feet.”
   She walked straight to the window. “The view is okay,” Tammy said, staring into the distance.
   “Yes, a nice view. The carpet is new. Painted last fall. Rest room’s down the hall. It’s a nice place. The entire building’s been renovated within the past eight years.” He stared at the black seams as he spoke.
   “It’s not bad,” Tammy said, not in response to anything he had mentioned. She continued to stare out the window. “What’s the name of this place?”
   “The Cotton Exchange Building. One of the oldest in Memphis. It’s really a prestigious address.”
   “How prestigious is the rent?”
   He cleared his throat and held a file before him. He did not look at the file. He was gaping at the heels now. “Well, it’s such a small office. What did you say you needed it for?”
   “Secretarial work. Free-lance secretarial.” She moved to the other window, ignoring him. He followed every move.
   “I see. How long will you need it?”
   “Six months, with an option for a year.”
   “Okay, for six months we can lease it for three-fifty a month.”
   She did not flinch or look from the window. She slid her right foot out of the shoe and rubbed the left calf with it. The seam continued, he observed, under the heel and along the bottom of the foot. The toenails were… red! She cocked her rear to the left and leaned on the windowsill. His file was shaking.
   “I’ll pay two-fifty a month,” she said with authority.
   He cleared his throat. There was no sense being greedy. The tiny rooms were dead space, useless to anyone else, and had not been occupied in years. The building could use a free-lance secretary. Hell, he might even need a free-lance secretary.
   “Three hundred, but no less. This building is in demand.
   Ninety percent occupied right now. Three hundred a month, and that’s too low. We’re barely covering costs at that.”
   She turned suddenly, and there they were. Staring at him. The cashmere was stretched tightly around them. “The ad said there were furnished offices available,” she said.
   “We can furnish this one,” he said, eager to cooperate. “What do you need?”
   She looked around the office. “I would like a secretarial desk with credenza in here. Several file cabinets. A couple of chairs for clients. Nothing fancy. The other room does not have to be furnished. I’ll put a copier in there,”
   “No problem,” he said with a smile.
   “And I’ll pay three hundred a month, furnished.”
   “Good,” he said as he opened a file and withdrew a blank lease. He laid it on a folding table and began writing.
   “Your name?”
   “Doris Greenwood.” Her mother was Doris Greenwood, and she had been Tammy Inez Greenwood before she ran up on Buster Hemphill, who later became (legally) Elvis Aaron Hemphill, and life had pretty much been downhill since. Her mother lived in Effingham, Illinois.
   “Okay, Doris,” he said with an effort at suaveness, as if they were now on a first-name basis and growing closer by the moment. “Home address?”
   “Why do you need that?” she asked with irritation.
   “Well, uh, we just need that information.”
   “It’s none of your business.”
   “Okay, okay. No problem.” He dramatically scratched out that portion of the lease. He hovered above it. “Let’s see. We’ll run it from today, March 2, for six months until September 2. Is that okay?”
   She nodded and lit a cigarette.
   He read the next paragraph. “Okay, we require a three-hundred-dollar deposit and the first month’s rent in advance.”
   From a pocket in the tight black leather skirt, she produced a roll of cash. She counted six one-hundred-dollar bills and laid them on the table. “Receipt, please,” she demanded.
   “Certainly.” He continued writing.
   “What floor are we on?” she asked, returning to the windows.
   “Ninth. There’s a ten percent late charge past the fifteenth of the month. We have the right to enter at any reasonable time to inspect. Premises cannot be used for any illegal purpose. You pay all utilities and insurance on contents. You get one parking space in the lot across the street, and here are two keys. Any questions?”
   “Yeah. What if I work odd hours? I mean, real late at night.”
   “No big deal. You can come and go as you please. After dark the security guard at the Front Street door will let you pass.”
   Tammy stuck the cigarette between her sticky lips and walked to the table. She glanced at the lease, hesitated, then signed the name of Doris Greenwood.
   They locked up, and he followed her carefully down the hall to the elevator.
   By noon the next day, the odd assortment of furniture had been delivered and Doris Greenwood of Greenwood Services arranged the rented typewriter and the rented phone next to each other on the secretarial desk. Sitting and facing the typewriter, she could look slightly to her left out the window and watch the traffic on Front Street. She filled the desk drawers with typing paper, notepads, pencils, odds and ends. She placed magazines on the filing cabinets and the small table between the two chairs where her clients would sit.
   There was a knock at the door. “Who is it?” she asked.
   “It’s your copier,” a voice answered.
   She unlocked the door and opened it. A short, hyperactive little man named Gordy rushed in, looked around the room and said rudely, “Okay, where do you want it?”
   “In there,” Tammy said, pointing to the eight-by-ten empty room with no door on the hinges. Two young men in blue uniforms pushed and pulled the cart holding the copier.
   Gordy laid the paperwork on her desk. “It’s a mighty big copier for this place. We’re taking ninety copies a minute with a collator and automatic feed. It’s a big machine.”
   “Where do I sign?” she asked, ignoring the small talk.
   He pointed with the pen. “Six months, at two-forty a month. That includes service and maintenance and five hundred sheets of paper for the first two months. You want legal or letter-sized?”
   “Legal.”
   “First payment due on the tenth, and same thereafter for five months. Operator’s manual is on the rack. Call me if you have any questions.”
   The two servicemen gawked at the tight stonewashed jeans and the red heels and slowly left the office. Gordy ripped off the yellow copy and handed it to her. “Thanks for the business,” he said.
   She locked the door behind them. She walked to the window next to her desk and looked north, along Front. Two blocks up on the opposite side, floors four and five of the Bendini Building were visible.


* * *

   He kept to himself with his nose buried deep in the books and the piles of paperwork. He was too busy for any of them, except Lamar. He was very much aware that his withdrawal was not going unnoticed. So he worked harder. Perhaps they would not be suspicious if he billed twenty hours a day. Perhaps money could insulate him.
   Nina left a box of cold pizza when she checked out after lunch. He ate it while he cleared his desk. He called Abby. Said he was going to see Ray and that he would return to Memphis late Sunday. He eased through the side door and into the parking lot.
   For three and a half hours, he raced along Interstate 40 with his eyes on the rearview mirror. Nothing. He never saw them. They probably just call ahead, he thought, and wait for him somewhere up there. In Nashville, he made a sudden exit into downtown. Using a map he had scribbled, he darted in and out of traffic, making U-turns wherever possible and in general driving like a nut. To the south of town, he turned quickly into a large apartment complex and cruised between the buildings. It was nice enough. The parking lots were clean and the faces were white. All of them. He parked next to the office and locked the BMW. The pay phone by the covered pool worked. He called a cab and gave an address two blocks away. He ran between the buildings, down a side street, and arrived precisely with the cab. “Greyhound bus station,” he said to the driver. “And in a hurry. I’ve got ten minutes.”
   “Relax, pal. It’s only six blocks away.”
   Mitch ducked low in the rear seat and watched the traffic. The driver moved with a slow confidence and seven minutes later stopped in front of the station. Mitch threw two fives over the seat and darted into the terminal. He bought a oneway ticket on the four-thirty bus to Atlanta. It was four thirty-one, according to the clock on the wall. The clerk pointed through the swinging doors. “Bus No. 454,” she said. “Leaving in a moment.”
   The driver slammed the baggage door, took his ticket and followed Mitch onto the bus. The first three rows were filled with elderly blacks. A dozen more passengers were scattered toward the rear. Mitch walked slowly down the aisle, gazing at each face and seeing no one. He took a window seat on the fourth row from the rear. He slipped on a pair of sunglasses and glanced behind him. No one. Dammit! Was it the wrong bus? He stared out the dark windows as the bus moved quickly into traffic. They would stop in Knoxville. Maybe his contact would be there.
   When they were on the interstate and the driver reached his cruising speed, a man in blue jeans and madras shirt suddenly appeared and slid into the seat next to Mitch. It was Tarrance. Mitch breathed easier.
   “Where have you been?” he asked.
   “In the rest room. Did you lose them?” Tarrance spoke in a low voice while surveying the backs of the heads of the passengers. No one was listening. No one could hear.
   “I never see them, Tarrance. So I cannot say if I lost them. But I think they would have to be supermen to keep my trail this time.”
   “Did you see our man in the terminal?”
   “Yes. By the pay phone with the red Falcons cap. Black dude.”
   “That’s him. He would’ve signaled if they were following.”
   “He gave me the go-ahead.”
   Tarrance wore silver reflective sunglasses under a green Michigan State baseball cap. Mitch could smell the fresh Juicy Fruit.
   “Sort of out of uniform, aren’t you?” Mitch said with no smile. “Did Voyles give you permission to dress like that?”
   “I forgot to ask him. I’ll mention it in the morning.”
   “Sunday morning?” Mitch asked.
   “Of course. He’ll wanna know all about our little bus ride. I briefed him for an hour before I left town.”
   “Well, first things first. What about my car?”
   “We’ll pick it up in a few minutes and babysit it for you. It’ll be in Knoxville when you need it. Don’t worry.”
   “You don’t think they’ll find us?”
   “No way. No one followed you out of Memphis, and we detected nothing in Nashville. You’re clean as a whistle.”
   “Pardon my concern. But after that fiasco in the shoe store, I know you boys are not above stupidity.”
   “It was a mistake, all right. We—”
   “A big mistake. One that could get me on the hit list.”
   “You covered it well. It won’t happen again.”
   “Promise me, Tarrance. Promise me no one will ever again approach me in public.”
   Tarrance looked down the aisle and nodded.
   “No, Tarrance. I need to hear it from your mouth. Promise me.”
   “Okay, okay. It won’t happen again. I promise.”
   “Thanks. Now maybe I can eat at a restaurant without fear of being grabbed.”
   “You’ve made your point.”
   An old black man with a cane inched toward them, smiled and walked past. The rest-room door slammed. The Greyhound rode the left lane and blew past the lawful drivers.
   Tarrance flipped through a magazine. Mitch gazed into the countryside. The man with the cane finished his business and wobbled to his seat on the front row.
   “So what brings you here?” Tarrance asked, flipping pages.
   “I don’t like airplanes. I always take the bus.”
   “I see. Where would you like to start?”
   “Voyles said you had a game plan.”
   “I do. I just need a quarterback.”
   “Good ones are very expensive.”
   “We’ve got the money.”
   “It’ll cost a helluva lot more than you think. The way I figure it, I’ll be throwing away a forty-year legal career at, say, an average of half a million a year.”
   “That’s twenty million bucks.”
   “I know. But we can negotiate.”
   “That’s good to hear. You’re assuming that you’ll work, or practice, as you say, for forty years. That’s a very precarious assumption. Just for fun, let’s assume that within five years we bust up and indict you along with all of your buddies. And that we obtain convictions, and you go off to prison for a few years. They won’t keep you long because you’re a white-collar type, and of course you’ve heard how nice the federal pens are. But at any rate, you’ll lose your license, your house, your little BMW. Probably your wife. When you get out, you can open up a private investigation service like your old friend Lomax. It’s easy work, unless you sniff the wrong underwear.”
   “Like I said. It’s negotiable.”
   “All right. Let’s negotiate. How much do you want?”
   “For what?”
   Tarrance closed the magazine, placed it under his seat and opened a thick paperback. He pretended to read. Mitch spoke from the corner of his mouth with his eyes on the median.
   “That’s a very good question,” Tarrance said softly, just above the distant grind of the diesel engine. “What do we want from you? Good question. First, you have to give up your career as a lawyer. You’ll have to divulge secrets and records that belong to your clients. That, of course, is enough to get you disbarred, but that won’t seem important. You and I must agree that you will hand us The Firm on a silver platter. Once we agree, if we agree, the rest will fall in place. Second, and most important, you will give us enough documentation to indict every member of The Firm and most of the top Morolto people. The records are in the little building there on Front Street.”
   “How do you know this?”
   Tarrance smiled. “Because we spend billions of dollars fighting organized crime. Because we’ve tracked the Moroltos for twenty years. Because we have sources within the family. Because Hodge and Kozinski were talking when they were murdered. Don’t sell us short, Mitch.”
   “And you think I can get the information out?”
   “Yes, Counselor. You can build a case from the inside that will collapse and break up one of the largest crime families in the country. You gotta lay out for us. Whose office is where? Names of all secretaries, clerks, paralegals. Who works on what files? Who’s got which clients? The chain of command. Who’s on the fifth floor? What’s up there? Where are the records kept? Is there a central storage area? How much is computerized? How much is on microfilm? And, most important, you gotta bring the stuff out and hand it to us. Once we have probable cause, we can go in with a small army and get everything. But that’s an awfully big step. We gotta have a very tight and solid case before we go crashing in with search warrants.”
   “Is that all you want?”
   “No. You’ll have to testify against all of your buddies at their trials. Could take years.”
   Mitch breathed deeply and closed his eyes. The bus slowed behind a caravan of mobile homes split in two. Dusk was approaching, and, one at a time, the cars in the westbound lane brightened with headlights.
   Testifying at trial!This, he had not thought of. With millions to spend for the best criminal lawyers, the trials could drag on forever.
   Tarrance actually began reading the paperback, a Louis L’Amour. He adjusted the reading light above them, as if he was indeed a real passenger on a real journey. After thirty miles of no talk, no negotiation, Mitch removed his sunglasses and looked at Tarrance.
   “What happens to me?”
   “You’ll have a lot of money, for what that’s worth. If you have any sense of morality, you can face yourself each day. You can live anywhere in the country, with a new identity, of course. We’ll find you a job, fix your nose, do anything you want, really.”
   Mitch tried to keep his eyes on the road, but it was impossible. He glared at Tarrance. “Morality? Don’t ever mention that word to me again, Tarrance. I’m an innocent victim, and you know it.”
   Tarrance grunted with a smart-ass grin.
   They rode in silence for a few miles.
   “What about my wife?”
   “Yeah, you can keep her.”
   “Very funny.”
   “Sorry. She’ll get everything she wants. How much does she know?”
   “Everything.” He thought of the girl on the beach. “Well, almost everything.”
   “We’ll get her a fat government job with the Social Security Administration anywhere you want. It won’t be that bad, Mitch.”
   “It’ll be wonderful. Until an unknown point in the future when one of your people opens his or her mouth and lets something slip to the wrong person, and you’ll read about me or my wife in the paper. The Mob never forgets, Tarrance. They’re worse than elephants. And they keep secrets better than your side. You guys have lost people, so don’t deny it.”
   “I won’t deny it. And I’ll admit to you that they can be ingenious when they decide to kill.”
   “Thanks. So where do I go?”
   “It’s up to you. Right now we have about two thousand witnesses living all over the country under new names with new homes and new jobs. The odds are overwhelmingly in your favor.”
   “So I play the odds?”
   “Yes. You either take the money and run, or you play big-shot lawyer and bet that we never infiltrate.”
   “That’s a hell of a choice, Tarrance.”
   “It is. I’m glad it’s yours.”
   The female companion of the ancient black man with the cane rose feebly from her seat and began shuffling toward them. She grabbed each aisle seat as she progressed. Tarrance leaned toward Mitch as she passed. He would not dare speak with this stranger in the vicinity. She was at least ninety, half crippled, probably illiterate, and could care less if Tarrance received his next breath of air. But Tarrance was instantly mute.
   Fifteen minutes later, the rest-room door opened and released the sounds of the toilet gurgling downward into the pit of the Greyhound. She shuffled to the front and took her seat.
   “Who is Jack Aldrich?” Mitch asked. He suspected a cover-up with this one, and he carefully watched the reaction from the corner of his eye. Tarrance looked up from the book and stared at the seat in front of him.
   “Name’s familiar. I can’t place him.”
   Mitch returned his gaze to the window. Tarrance knew. He had flinched, and his eyes had narrowed too quickly before he answered. Mitch watched the westbound traffic.
   “So who is he?” Tarrance finally asked.
   “You don’t know him?”
   “If I knew him, I wouldn’t ask who he was.”
   “He’s a member of our firm. You should’ve known that, Tarrance.”
   “The city’s full of lawyers. I guess you know them all.”
   “I know the ones at Bendini, Lambert & Locke, the quiet little firm you guys have been studying for seven years. Aldrich is a six-year man who allegedly was approached by the FBI a couple of months ago. True or false?”
   “Absolutely false. Who told you this?”
   “It doesn’t matter. Just a rumor around the office.”
   “It’s a lie. We’ve talked to no one but you since August. You have my word. And we have no plans to talk to anyone else, unless, of course, you decline and we must find another prospect.”
   “You’ve never talked to Aldrich?”
   “That’s what I said.”
   Mitch nodded and picked up a magazine. They rode in silence for thirty minutes. Tarrance gave up on his novel, and finally said, “Look, Mitch, we’ll be in Knoxville in an hour or so. We need to strike a deal, if we’re going to. Director Voyles will have a thousand questions in the morning.”
   “How much money?”
   “Half a million bucks.”
   Any lawyer worth his salt knew the first offer had to be rejected. Always. He had seen Avery’s mouth drop open in shock and his head shake wildly in absolute disgust and disbelief with first offers, regardless of how reasonable. There would be counteroffers, and counter-counteroffers, and further negotiations, but always, the first offer was rejected.
   So by shaking his head and smiling at the window as if this was what he expected, Mitch said No to half a million.
   “Did I say something funny?” Tarrance, the nonlawyer, the nonnegotiator, asked.
   “That’s ridiculous, Tarrance. You can’t expect me to walk away from a gold mine for half a million bucks. After taxes, I net three hundred thousand at best.”
   “And if we close the gold mine and send all you Gucci-footed hotshots to jail?”
   “If. If. If. If you knew so much, why haven’t you done something? Voyles said you boys have been watching and waiting for seven years. That’s real good, Tarrance. Do you always move so fast?”
   “Do you wanna take that chance, McDeere? Let’s say it takes us another five years, okay? After five years we bust the joint and send your ass to jail. At that point it won’t make any difference how long it took us, will it? The result will be the same, Mitch.”
   “I’m sorry. I thought we were negotiating, not threatening.”
   “I’ve made you an offer.”
   “Your offer is too low. You expect me to make a case that will hand you hundreds of indictments against a group of the sleaziest criminals in America, a case that could easily cost me my life. And you offer a pittance. Three million, at least.”
   Tarrance did not flinch or frown. He received the counteroffer with a good, straight poker face, and Mitch, the negotiator, knew it was not out of the ballpark.
   “That’s a lot of money,” Tarrance said, almost to himself. “I don’t think we’ve ever paid that much.”
   “But you can, can’t you?”
   “I doubt it. I’ll have to talk to the Director.”
   “The Director! I thought you had complete authority on this case. Are we gonna run back and forth to the Director until we have a deal?”
   “What else do you want?”
   “I’ve got a few things in mind, but we won’t discuss them until the money gets right.”
   The old man with the cane apparently had weak kidneys. He stood again and began the awkward wobble to the rear of the bus. Tarrance again started his book. Mitch flipped through an old copy of Field & Stream.
   The Greyhound left the interstate in Knoxville two minutes before eight. Tarrance leaned closer and whispered, “Take the front door out of the terminal. You’ll see a young man wearing an orange University of Tennessee sweat suit standing beside a white Bronco. He’ll recognize you and call you Jeffrey. Shake hands like lost friends and get in the Bronco. He’ll take you to your car.”
   “Where is it?” Mitch whispered.
   “Behind a dorm on campus.”
   “Have they checked it for bugs?”
   “I think so. Ask the man in the Bronco. If they were tracking you when you left Memphis, they might be suspicious by now. You should drive to Cookeville. It’s about a hundred miles this side of Nashville. There’s a Holiday Inn there. Spend the night and go see your brother tomorrow. We’ll be watching also, and if things look fishy, I’ll find you Monday morning.”
   “When’s the next bus ride?”
   “Your wife’s birthday is Tuesday. Make reservations for eight at Grisanti’s, that Italian place on Airways. At precisely nine, go to the cigarette machine in the bar, insert six quarters and buy a pack of anything. In the tray where the cigarettes are released, you will find a cassette tape. Buy yourself one of those small tape players that joggers wear with earphones and listen to the tape in your car, not at home, and sure as hell not at the office. Use the earphones. Let your wife listen to it. I’ll be on the cassette, and I’ll give you our top dollar. I’ll also explain a few things. After you’ve listened to it a few times, dispose of it.”
   “This is rather elaborate, isn’t it?”
   “Yes, but we don’t need to speak to each other for a couple of weeks. They’re watching and listening, Mitch. And they’re very good. Don’t forget that.”
   “Don’t worry.”
   “What was your football jersey number in high school?”
   “Fourteen.”
   “And college?”
   “Fourteen.”
   “Okay. Your code number is 1-4-1-4. Thursday night, from a touch-tone pay phone, call 757-6000. You’ll get a voice that will lead you through a little routine involving your code number. Once you’re cleared, you will hear my recorded voice, and I will ask you a series of questions. We’ll go from there.”
   “Why can’t I just practice law?”
   The bus pulled into the terminal and stopped. “I’m going on to Atlanta,” Tarrance said. “I will not see you for a couple of weeks. If there’s an emergency, call one of the two numbers I gave you before.”
   Mitch stood in the aisle and looked down at the agent. “Three million, Tarrance. Not a penny less. If you guys can spend billions fighting organized crime, surely you can find three million for me. And, Tarrance, I have a third option. I can disappear in the middle of the night, vanish into the air. If that happens, you and the Moroltos can fight each other till hell freezes over, and I’ll be playing dominoes in the Caribbean.”
   “Sure, Mitch. You might play a game or two, but they’d find you within a week. And we wouldn’t be there to protect you. So long, buddy.”
   Mitch jumped from the bus and darted through the terminal.

Chapter 23

   At eight-thirty A.M. on Tuesday, Nina formed neat piles out of the rubble and debris on his desk. She enjoyed this early-morning ritual of straightening the desk and planning his day. The appointment book lay unobstructed on a corner of his desk. She read from it. “You have a very busy day today, Mr. McDeere.”
   Mitch flipped through a file and tried to ignore her. “Every day is busy.”
   “You have a meeting at ten o’clock in Mr. Mahan’s office on the Delta Shipping appeal.”
   “I can’t wait,” Mitch mumbled.
   “You have a meeting at eleven-thirty in Mr. Tolar’s office on the Greenbriar dissolution, and his secretary informed me it would last at least two hours.”
   “Why two hours?”
   “I’m not paid to ask those questions, Mr. McDeere. If I do I might get fired. At three-thirty, Victor Milligan wants to meet with you.”
   “About what?”
   “Again, Mr. McDeere, I’m not supposed to ask questions. And you’re due in Frank Mulholland’s office downtown in fifteen minutes.”
   “Yes, I know. Where is it?”
   “The Cotton Exchange Building. Four or five blocks up Front at Union. You’ve walked by it a hundred times.”
   “Fine. What else?”
   “Shall I bring you something back from lunch?”
   “No, I’ll grab a sandwich downtown.”
   “Wonderful. Do you have everything for Mulholland?”
   He pointed to the heavy black briefcase and said nothing. She left, and seconds later Mitch walked down the hall, down the stairs and out the front door. He paused for a second under a streetlight, then turned and walked quickly toward downtown. The black briefcase was in his right hand, the burgundy eel-skin attache was in his left. The signal.
   In front of a green building with boarded windows, he stopped next to a fire hydrant. He waited a second, then crossed Front Street. Another signal.
   On the ninth floor of the Cotton Exchange Building, Tammy Greenwood of Greenwood Services backed away from the window and put on her coat. She locked the door behind her and pushed the elevator button. She waited. She was about to encounter a man who could easily get her killed.
   Mitch entered the lobby and went straight to the elevators. He noticed no one in particular. A half dozen businessmen were in the process of talking as they came and went. A woman was whispering into a pay phone. A security guard loitered near the Union Avenue entrance. He pushed the elevator button and waited, alone. As the door opened, a young clean-cut Merrill Lynch type in a black suit and sparkling wing tips stepped into the elevator. Mitch had hoped for a solitary ride upward.
   Mulholland’s office was on the seventh floor. Mitch pushed the seven button and ignored the kid in the black suit. As the elevator moved, both men dutifully stared at the blinking numbers above the door. Mitch eased to the rear of the small elevator and set the heavy briefcase on the floor, next to his right foot. The door opened on the fourth floor, and Tammy walked nervously in. The kid glanced at her. Her attire was remarkably conservative. A simple, short knit dress with no plunging necklines. No kinky shoes. Her hair was tinted to a soft shade of red. He glanced again and pushed the Close Door button.
   Tammy brought aboard a large black briefcase, identical to Mitch’s. She ignored his eyes, stood next to him, quietly setting it next to his. On the seventh floor, Mitch grabbed her briefcase and left the elevator. On the eighth floor, the cute young man in the black suit made his departure, and on the ninth floor Tammy picked up the heavy black briefcase full of files from Bendini, Lambert & Locke and took it to her office. She locked and bolted the door, quickly removed her coat and went to the small room where the copier was waiting and running. There were seven files, each at least an inch thick. She laid them neatly on the folding table next to the copier and took the one marked “Koker-Hanks to East Texas Pipe.” She unhooked the aluminum clasp, removed the contents from the file and carefully placed the stack of documents and letters and notes into the automatic feed. She pushed the Print button and watched as the machine made two perfect copies of everything.
   Thirty minutes later, the seven files were returned to the briefcase. The new files, fourteen of them, were locked away in a fireproof file cabinet hidden in a small closet, which was also locked. Tammy placed the briefcase near the door, and waited.


* * *

   Frank Mulholland was a partner in a ten-man firm that specialized in banking and securities. His client was an old man who had founded and built a chain of do-it-yourself hardware stores and at one point had been worth eighteen million before his son and a renegade board of directors took control and forced him into retirement. The old man sued. The company countersued. Everybody sued everybody, and the suits and countersuits had been hopelessly deadlocked for eighteen months. Now that the lawyers were fat and happy, it was time to talk settlement. Bendini, Lambert & Locke handled the tax advice for the son and the new board, and two months earlier Avery had introduced Mitch to the hostilities. The plan was to offer the old man a five-million-dollar package of common stock, convertible warrants and a few bonds.
   Mulholland was not impressed with the plan. His client was not greedy, he explained repeatedly, and he knew he would never regain control of the company. His company, remember. But five million was not enough. Any jury of any degree of intelligence would be sympathetic to the old man, and a fool could see the lawsuit was worth at least, well … at least twenty million!
   After an hour of sliding proposals and offers and counteroffers across Mulholland’s desk, Mitch had increased the package to eight million and the old man’s lawyer said he might consider fifteen. Mitch politely repacked his attache case and Mulholland politely escorted him to the door. They promised to meet again in a week. They shook hands like best friends.
   The elevator stopped on the fifth floor, and Tammy walked casually inside. It was empty, except for Mitch. When the door closed, he said, “Any problems?”
   “Nope. Two copies are locked away.”
   “How long did it take?”
   “Thirty minutes.”
   It stopped on the fourth floor, and she picked up the empty briefcase. “Noon tomorrow?” she asked.
   “Yes,” he replied. The door opened and she disappeared onto the fourth floor. He rode alone to the lobby, which was empty except for the same security guard. Mitchell McDeere, Attorney and Counselor at Law, hurried from the building with a heavy briefcase in each hand and walked importantly back to his office.


* * *

   The celebration of Abby’s twenty-fifth birthday was rather subdued. Through the dim candlelight in a dark corner of Grisanti’s, they whispered and tried to smile at each other. It was difficult. Somewhere at that moment in the restaurant an invisible FBI agent was holding a cassette tape that he would insert into a cigarette machine in the lounge at precisely nine o’clock, and Mitch was supposed to be there seconds later to retrieve it without being seen or caught by the bad guys, whoever they were and whatever they looked like. And the tape would reveal just how much cold hard cash the McDeeres would receive in return for evidence and a subsequent life on the run.
   They picked at their food, tried to smile and carry on an extended conversation, but mainly they fidgeted and glanced at their watches. The dinner was brief. By eight forty-five they were finished with the plates. Mitch left in the direction of the rest room, and he stared into the dark lounge as he walked by. The cigarette machine was in the corner, exactly where it should be.
   They ordered coffee, and at exactly nine Mitch returned to the lounge, to the machine, where he nervously inserted six quarters and pulled the lever under Marlboro Lights, in memory of Eddie Lomax. He quickly reached into the tray, took the cigarettes and, fishing around in the darkness, found the cassette tape. The pay telephone next to the machine rang, and he jumped. He turned and surveyed the lounge. It was empty except for two men at the bar watching the television behind and above the bartender. Drunk laughter exploded from a dark corner far away.
   Abby watched every step and move until he sat across from her. She raised her eyebrows. “And?”
   “I got it. Your basic black Sony cassette tape.” Mitch sipped coffee and smiled innocently while quickly surveying the crowded dining room. No one was watching. No one cared.
   He handed the check and the American Express card to the waiter. “We’re in a hurry,” he said rudely. The waiter returned within seconds. Mitch scribbled his name.
   The BMW was indeed wired. Heavily wired. Tarrance’s gang had very quietly and very thoroughly examined it with magnifying glasses while waiting for the Greyhound four days earlier. Expertly wired, with terribly expensive equipment capable of hearing and recording the slightest sniffle or cough. But the bugs could only listen and record; they could not track. Mitch thought that was awfully nice of them, just to listen but not follow the movements of the BMW.
   It left the parking lot of Grisanti’s with no conversation between its occupants. Abby carefully opened a portable tape recorder and placed the cassette inside. She handed Mitch the earphones, which he, stuck onto his head. She pushed the Play button. She watched him as he listened and drove aimlessly toward the interstate.
   The voice belonged to Tarrance: “Hello, Mitch. Today is Tuesday, March 9, sometime after nine P.M. Happy Birthday to your lovely wife. This tape will run about ten minutes, and I instruct you to listen to it carefully, once or twice, then dispose of it. I had a face-to-face meeting with Director Voyles last Sunday and briefed him on everything. By the way, I enjoyed the bus ride. Director Voyles is very pleased with the way things are going, but he thinks we’ve talked long enough. He wants to cut a deal, and rather quickly. He explained to me in no uncertain terms that we have never paid three million dollars and we’re not about to pay it to you. He cussed a lot, but to make a long story short, Director Voyles said we could pay a million cash, no more. He said the money would be deposited in a Swiss bank and no one, not even the IRS, would ever know about it. A million dollars, tax-free. That’s our best deal, and Voyles said you can go to hell if you said no. We’re gonna bust that little firm, Mitch, with or without you.”
   Mitch smiled grimly and stared at the traffic racing past them on the 1-240 loop. Abby watched for a sign, a signal, a grunt or groan, anything to indicate good news or bad. She said nothing.
   The voice continued: “We’ll take care of you, Mitch. You’ll have access to FBI protection anytime you think you need it. We’ll check on you periodically, if you want. And if you want to move on to another city after a few years, we’ll take care of it. You can move every five years if you want, and we’ll pick up the tab and find jobs for you. Good jobs with the VA or Social Security or Postal Service. Voyles said we’d even find you a high-paying job with a private government contractor. You name it, Mitch, and it’s yours. Of course, we’ll provide new identities for you and your wife, arid you can change every year if you desire. No problem. Or if you got a better idea, we’ll listen. You wanna live in Europe or Australia, just say so. You’ll get special treatment. I know we’re promising a lot, Mitch, but we’re dead serious and we’ll put it in writing. We’ll pay a million in cash, tax-free, and set you up wherever you choose. So that’s the deal. And in return, you must hand us, and the Moroltos. We’ll talk about that later. For now, your time is up. Voyles is breathing down my neck, and things must happen quickly. Call me at that number Thursday night at nine from the pay phone next to the men’s rest room in Houston’s on Poplar. So long, Mitch.”
   He sliced a finger across his throat, and Abby pushed the Stop button, then Rewind. He handed her the earphones, and she began to listen intently.
   It was an innocent walk in the park, two lovebirds holding hands and strolling casually through the cool, clear moonlight. They stopped by a cannon and gazed at the majestic river inching ever so slowly toward New Orleans. The same cannon where the late Eddie Lomax once stood in a sleet storm and delivered one of his last investigative reports.
   Abby held the cassette in her hand and watched the river below. She had listened to it twice and refused to leave it in the car, where who knows who might snatch it. After weeks of practicing silence, and then speaking only outdoors, words were becoming difficult.
   “You know, Abby,” Mitch finally said as he tapped the wooden wheel of the cannon, “I’ve always wanted to work with the post office. I had an uncle once who was a rural mail carrier. That would be neat.”
   It was a gamble, this attempt at humor. But it worked. She hesitated for three seconds, then laughed slightly, and he could tell she indeed thought it was funny. “Yeah, and I could mop floors in a VA hospital.”
   “You wouldn’t have to mop floors. You could change bedpans, something meaningful, something inconspicuous. We’d live in a neat little white frame house on Maple Street in Omaha. I’d be Harvey and you’d be Thelma, and we’d need a short, unassuming last name.”
   “Poe,” Abby added.
   “That’s great. Harvey and Thelma Poe. The Poe family. We’d have a million dollars in the bank but couldn’t spend a dime because everyone on Maple Street would know it and then we’d become different, which is the last thing we want.”
   “I’d get a nose job.”
   “But your nose is perfect.”
   “Abby’s nose is perfect, but what about Thelma’s? We’d have to get it fixed, don’t you think?”
   “Yeah, I suppose.” He was immediately tired of the humor and became quiet. Abby stepped in front of him, and he draped his arms over her shoulders. They watched a tug quietly push a hundred barges under the bridge. An occasional cloud dimmed the moonlight, and the cool winds from the west rose intermittently, then dissipated.
   “Do you believe Tarrance?” Abby asked.
   “In what way?”
   “Let’s suppose you do nothing. Do you believe one day they’ll eventually infiltrate?”
   “I’m afraid not to believe.”
   “So we take the money and run?”
   “It’s easier for me to take the money and run, Abby. I have nothing to leave behind. For you, it’s different. You’ll never see your family again.”
   “Where would we go?”
   “I do not know. But I wouldn’t want to stay in this country. The feds cannot be trusted entirely. I’ll feel safer in another country, but I won’t tell Tarrance.”
   “What’s the next step?”
   “We cut a deal, then quickly go about the job of gathering enough information to sink the ship. I have no idea what they want, but I can find it for them. When Tarrance has enough, we disappear. We take our money, get our nose jobs and disappear.”
   “How much money?”
   “More than a million. They’re playing games with the money. It’s all negotiable.”
   “How much will we get?”
   “Two million cash, tax-free. Not a dime less.”
   “Will they pay it?”
   “Yes, but that’s not the question. The question is, will we take it and run?”
   She was cold, and he draped his coat over her shoulders. He held her tightly. “It’s a rotten deal, Mitch,” she said, “but at least we’ll be together.”
   “The name’s Harvey, not Mitch.”
   “Do you think we’ll be safe, Harvey?”
   “We’re not safe here.”
   “I don’t like it here. I’m lonely and scared.”
   “I’m tired of being a lawyer.”
   “Let’s take the money and haul ass.”
   “You’ve got a deal, Thelma.”
   She handed the cassette tape to him. He glanced at it, then threw it far below, beyond Riverside Drive, in the direction of the river. They held hands and strolled quickly through the park toward the BMW parked on Front Street.