Einstein was out in the World once and finally hit on a winner- selling special limited editions of books by authors who never made the bestaseller list but had real followings among collectors. He did it right: leatherabound, ribbon markers, marbled endpapers...everything. First time he tried it, he ran off a printing of five hundred, and he sold every single one. Then, of course, the genius figured he was on a roll, so he went back for a second printing. Couldn't figure out why that one flopped.

See, Einstein was a citizen in his heart. Only reason he kept coming back to prison, he was always using a gun to turn banks into his personal ATM, grabbing R&D money for his next project.

Einstein read a lot. I mean, a lot. He was always looking for the Answer. Anyway, one day he comes out on the yard, sure he'd finally found It. He just finished some book on the Civil War- it was all about how rich men avoided the draft by paying poor men to fight in their place. So Einstein figured this time he had the perfect scheme: why not let rich men who got convicted of crimes pay other guys to do their time?

He ran it down all excited, the way he always did. The first guy to respond was a stone fool named Vinnie. "I wouldn't do that for a million bucks," he sneered, superior.

But the Prof wasn't going to let anyone riff on Einstein. "Yeah, right. You too slick for that trick, huh? Naw, you wanna keep sticking up your goddamn bodegas for chump change! How much you pull from your last score, Dillinger? Few hundred bucks? And what you doing on this bit, another nickelaandadime? My man Einstein may be loco, but he ain't stupid!"

By the time the Prof was done with my education, I knew a dozen slicker, safer ways to get money. All crooked.

I knew this was one of them- but I didn't know how to do it yet.

I sent the money to Bondi in a plain little box, tightly ductataped inside the brown paper wrapping. It's a bigatime felony to ship cash into Australia, so I put the package together as carefully as a letter bomb- if the cops opened it at the other end, it wouldn't bounce back to me. I did all the lettering with a pantograph- no handwriting, no hands. For a return address, I used a sexadance joint in Times Square. Maybe they'd figure some old customer was sending her a present.

I used the Main Post Office on Eighth, the busiest one in the world. As I walked out, I stripped the surgeon's gloves from my hands, tossed them in a Dumpster, and disappeared into the subway.

Back in the office, I went through the package I'd paid Wolfe for. Kite was born in 1951. Weighed six pounds three ounces. No prior live births listed to his mother. Pediatric records showed regular visits. Nothing remarkable except a bout with whooping cough and surgery to correct an undescended testicle.

Parents both dead, car accident. Drunk driver took them out when Kite was eleven years old. Raised by mother's sister and her second husband, a lawyer in Spokane, Washington. Tonsillectomy, age thirteen. Pretty late in the game for that- must have been painful. StraightaA student in high school. Chess club, debate team, drama society. SAT score of 1540. Full scholarship to college.

In 1970, his aunt's husband was arrested for a series of highway rapes near the Idaho border. The rapist was a crippleahunter, cruising the side roads in bad weather, looking for cars that had broken down...cars with women drivers, alone and stranded. He wore a stocking mask, never left prints. They caught him with an undercover operation, used a woman decoy cop standing next to a car with the hood up. Found the stocking mask, heavy pair of leather gloves, and a lead pipe wrapped in black friction tape. When they let him out on bail, he called a press conference. He said all the evidence had been planted- they had the wrong man and they knew it.

But two of the victims ID'ed him. The mask didn't help- he hadn't been circumcised until he was an adult, and the penile hood had a distinctive flap of darkened flesh where the surgeon had left a piece.

He pleaded guilty on the eve of trial. The prosecutor agreed he was suffering from a "mental disease or defect" and prison wouldn't be appropriate. He was committed to a closed psychiatric facility for an indefinite period, his status to be reviewed periodically.

Three months into his term, he was stabbed to death in the shower room.

His mother's sister remarried a year later. Kite never returned to Spokane. I glanced over the law school stuff- just a fleshaout of what Wolfe had already told me. Law Review, Order of the Coif, American Jurisprudence Award in Contracts. Admitted to the New York Bar in 1975, Federal District Court in 1976.

Never married. No indication he was gay. The Sutton Place address was the only one anybody had. No driver's license. Premises permit for a SIGaSauer P230 semiaauto.

He had a SEP account at a major brokerage house. Started in 1988, rolling over the 401(k) from the last law firm he'd left. Present value: $588,644.22. The Sutton Place joint was a coaop. Mortgage of $860,000, this after a down payment of $750,000 flat. Monthly nut, mortgage, carrying charges, and taxes: $13,100.29. Paid perfectly, autoaEFT from his business checking account. The unit he owned included a basement garage. A 1996 Cadillac STS sedan was registered to him at that address. A white one.

Kite was listed as the sole stockholder of Screentest Supreme Software, a closely held corporation based at the Sutton Place address. Its only asset was a series of copyrights and trademarks. His 1994 IRS 1040 showed a net income of $801,444. Nothing looked cute about the tax return on the surface: no exotic deductions, no tax shelters. No employees either- he paid everything on a contract basis, from word processing to an occasional chauffeur. Heather received checks totaling almost forty thousand in 1994, all marked "research."

Bank accounts, Tabills, a smattering of stocks, mostly technology issues. His real estate portfolio was heavy: five coaop apartments in the city, from a threeabedroom highafloor to a couple of studios. A management company was handling them, and it looked like it was doing a good job- they were all fully rented. They all had mortgages too; he was carrying most of them flat, showing a slight profit on the biggest unit, making his profit off the mortgage deductions and depreciation.

American Express, VISA, MasterCard...all paidatoadate, no balances. Except for the mortgages, he didn't owe anyone a dime.

Wolfe's papers estimated his net worth at $4.3 million, "conservative."

The package also contained photocopies of various briefs and motions he'd submitted when he'd worked as a lawyer, a couple of contracts he'd drawn, even a transcript of oral argument on an appeal. The briefs were more science than law: charts and graphs, citations to articles in psychiatry journals, complicated logic chains painstakingly and elegantly drawn.

One of them was a custody case, Kite representing the father. The mother said she had discovered the man was sexually abusing his son. She wanted him barred from visitation. Kite argued that she'd made the whole thing up, proved that she'd been abused herself as a child, said she was "spooking at shadows" and that she was a "secondary victim of an incompetent therapist." His deposition of the therapist was a masterpiece. He questioned her about the protocols she used, showed she had no special training in the use of anatomically correct dolls, pointed out a few minor exaggerations on her resume, asked why she never videotaped her sessions with the child. And his own brief was full of citations to studies by psychologists pointing out the damage to any child forced to carry the burden of a false allegation.

He won that case. The court said the mother's conduct was so egregious that it warranted an outright change of custody: the mother was allowed to see the boy only under supervision. The decision was upheld on appeal.

A year later, the mother was arrested for trying to kidnap the kid. She was all set to flee- had fake ID for them both. They bagged her at the airport, tickets to France in her handbag.

Kite had an AV rating, the highest, from MartindaleaHubbell. He was listed in Who's Who in American Law. Except for a halfadozen brief mentions in the New York Law Journal over the years, the newspaper search had come up empty- he wasn't a publicity hound.

No. He was a hoverahunter; a bird of prey who didn't need a perch to work from.

The last document was a doubleaspaced list of all the lawyers Kite had consulted to since he went into solo private practice. It ran four pages, went coast to coast. I recognized a couple of the names- mediaaslut matrimonial bombers- but most I never heard of. Wolfe had annotated the list, breaking the names down by specialty and type of case. Mostly custody and visitation, but a good many civil lawsuits and a few criminal cases.

In the matrimonials, Kite worked for whoever hired him. In all the others, he was always for the defendant.

I read it all through, then I read it again, looking for a pattern. The only one I could think of didn't pan out: although most of his clients- or, actually, the clients of the lawyers who hired him- were male, almost a third were female. He wasn't one of those "father's rights" guys.

Wolfe was good, and her microscope went deep. But I didn't see any cracks in the wall.

I took a break. Piled Pansy into the Plymouth and drove down to one of the abandoned piers on the West Side and let her run around a bit.

When I got back, I made us both some lunch. Then I opened the file folder I'd taken from Kite.

Articles by psychologists. Briefs by lawyers. Stories by journalists. Every one about false allegations of child sexual abuse. None of them written by Kite. But then I noticed the highlighting- neonabright seeathrough colors splattering almost every page, sometimes several colors on the same one. At the end of the packet, I found a neat chart marked KEY. Each color was represented by a bold slash from the highlighter. Next to each slash, some tiny, crabbed, handwriting in jetablack ink, so hyperaprecise that at first I thought it was a computer font.

[Red] An "unfounded" allegation of child abuse does not mean the allegation was "false." The "unfounded" designation also applies to cases in which the investigation could not be completed because the suspects left the jurisdiction, etc. And many "founded" cases are never made the subject of a Child Protective Petition.

[Blue] The "statistics" cited are not "statistics" at all. They are extrapolations based on estimates. No scientific validity.

[Yellow] (1) Expert witness for the defense was quoted in an interview in which he defended "pedophilia" as an "alternate lifestyle." (2) Individual testifying here not recognized as "expert" by courts in three separate jurisdictions. (3) The term "validation" is a misnomer: "valid" means "true this time," while "reliable" means "true over time." (4) "Expert" cannot testify as to whether child is telling the truth- this invades the province of the jury.

[Orange] Unsound research (sample too small, insufficient controls, et al.).

[Green] Financial interest in outcome. Hidden agenda. Undisclosed connection to foundation named as principal in lawsuit. Settlement forced on defendant by insurance company.

[Purple] Does not meet DSMaIV criteria for "syndrome." No data collected. Never submitted to refereed journal. Not scientific- merely the carefully packaged pronouncements of a merchant.

[Tan] Case reversed on technical application of the Confrontation Clause. Media reports as "vindication" inaccurate.

[Magenta] Statute of Limitations alert!

[Cyan] (1) "Protective Parent" label entirely selfaawarded, meaningless. (2) Diagnosis of PostaTraumatic Stress Disorder is not axiomatic indicator of child sexual abuse. Pressure to carry a false allegation could induce could stress in a child.

[Pink] Journalists ranked on "Loyalty Index," set up a prediction model. 100% accurate: journalist's name a perfect predictor of the article's "findings."

On the next page following, still in the same tiny handwriting, more notes: Hechler, The Battle and the Backlash...

APSAC protocols...

Salter, Treating Child Sex Offenders and Victims...

"Expert" cites own articles as "source material"...

NAMBLA member...

501(c)(3) criteria precludes lobbying...

And then the coda, all caps, double underlined, centered exactly at the bottom of the page: A TRUE DEBUNKER OPERATES WITHOUT AGENDA.

Kite's religion?

I let it simmer a couple of days, waiting to see if Heather turned up the pressure. But the phone at Mama's stayed silent. Okay.

"I'm ready to talk," I told her when she answered the phone.

"Thank you so much," she whispered into the phone, an undercurrent of promise in her voice. "When can you do it?"

"Tomorrow morning?"

"I'll have to check- no, I know it'll be fine. Is ten all right?"

"Yes."

I docked the Plymouth in an outdoor lot north of the Fiftyaninth Street Bridge near the FDR and walked to Kite's building. I was dressed the same as I was the last time. Not because I thought Heather would pull the same stunt- I just wanted to make sure her memory was refreshed.

She stood on the far side of the grille, wearing a black bustier under a transparent white blouse over black Capri pants anchored with a wide red belt. Her blackacherry hair was a lacquered helmet. Her eyes were little circles of orange glass in the dim light, bright even against the thick makeup. When she turned her back on me to lead the way, I saw she was back to spike heels. The left ankle was wrapped in tape- it must have been painful. I ignored the sway of her powerful hips, my eyes on her shoulders, but she stepped smoothly to one side to usher me into Kite's chambers without a hint of aggression.

The butterscotch leather armchair was in place next to Kite's fanashaped chair. He waved me over like he was an old pal who'd been waiting for me in our regular saloon. I took my seat. He didn't offer to shake hands. If he noticed anything different about my face, it didn't show on his.

I heard the tap of her spike heels behind me. She leaned over with a glass of water, but she kept her head high, her nose almost in my hair. I heard a faint sniff, probably because I was listening for it. She was checking for cigarette smoke, her ankle reminding her not to relax her guard around me, but between the strong shampoo and the heavy gel, she didn't have a chance. I'd washed my hands in rubbing alcohol too, just in case.

"I won't insult you by asking if you read the material I gave you," Kite said by way of opening. "I'm sure you wouldn't be here if you hadn't."

"Okay," I said, staying inside myself. Thinking of that Zen rock, polished by years under the waterfall until it was as seamless as the water itself. Like Kite's rap. Prison is full of raps. Glassily ceramic, keeping your focus on the surface so you never looked inside. The cons who call themselves Aryans say blacks are mud people and whites are sun people. And the cons who call themselves Africans say blacks are earth people and whites are ice people. Two sides of the same smooth stone. And not a speck of truth under the sleek surface.

"Do you have any reaction?" he asked, white eyebrows raised behind the pink glasses.

"Liars lie," I said indifferently. "Guy rapes a woman in Dallas, he says it was consent, okay? Another guy rapes another woman in Chicago, he says it was consent too. That doesn't make it a national conspiracy. But some whore psychologist writes an article about some bullshit mental disorder that makes women who actually consented to sex scream 'Rape!' and all of a sudden, it's a fucking 'syndrome,' and defense attorneys have a field day."

"It cuts the other way too," Kite said, leaning forward. "A gang of pedophiles sexually assault a child in Sweden. On the videotape, they're all wearing black. The same videotape shows up in the house of a collector in the United States. He's got a black shirt in his closet. So the police tell the newspapers they've cracked an international ring of child molesters."