I clutched a vodka tonic. "I just can't get it through my head. You heard this telephone conversation on Thursday evening. You didn't say anything to him then, you didn't tell me, and on Friday afternoon you just let the kid go. You knew what was going to happen, and you let it happen! What the h.e.l.l's the matter with you, Toba?"

"I couldn't handle it."

"You ..."

I didn't view my wife as a weak woman, and this was something I had to understand. I thought back then to many years before, when a young a.s.sistant state attorney on my team in Jacksonville, a.s.signed to a case of child battery, had come back to my office from the hospital with tears in his eyes. He said, "I want the mother and father who committed that act to be flayed alive. I can't try this case objectively. I can't handle it."

I hadn't thought of him as weak, and I hadn't chastised him. A month later he went into private practice.

You can't handle it, Toba? All right, I accept that too. Mothers and good women shouldn't have to deal with such things, just as men shouldn't have to deal with kids getting tortured with lit cigarettes, and heads-their own heads or the heads of others-bursting into flame.

The gulls came back, flying so close to the dock and the pool that I could hear the beat of their wings. They hovered against the drift of evening breeze, black eyes scanning the water below.

"I could cheerfully kill him," Toba said, using an expression that she'd inherited from her mother the hotelkeeper. "If you had heard them-"

"I know how young men speak."

"He said something like, 'I couldn't squeeze the money out of her tonight because she drives me f.u.c.king crazy!' Is that fair, Ted? Is that his vision of his mother? Every other word was 'f.u.c.king.' It just wasn't him speaking."

"Who was it, a ventriloquist? It was him. That's the first thing we have to accept."

She let that work around in her for a while, then sighed tremulously. "So what is the way to deal with it now?"

"Maybe another drug program. Therapy, psychiatry-I don't know yet. I need to ask some questions and get some straight answers. And if he tells me again, 'Yes, Dad, I know I'm ruining my life,' I may just take off my belt, like my grandfather in the Bronx did to my father, and whip his a.s.s."

I glanced down at the swollen knuckles of my right hand. Already today I'd hit one man in rage. And now I was threatening to do it to my own son. Where did such anger come from? Where did it usually hide? Was that how people were surprised into the act of murder?

Evening descended; the land that we could see across Sarasota Bay looked a picture blotted in with ink.

"You don't think they might have been boasting?" Toba asked. "He and the Becker boy? You know, being macho, psyching each other up, not really telling the truth ..."

"Toba!"

She hung her head a moment. In the twilight I clasped her hand. The second time in one day that I had held a woman's hand to give comfort.

On Monday morning the partners of Royal, Kelly, Wellmet, Jaffe &C Miller sat round the walnut table in the conference room for their weekly meeting. Don Kelly, our brilliant, two-hundred-ninety-pound tax expert, was negotiating a settlement for several local boatyards represented by the firm. Litigation, he explained, was possible but unlikely. Harvey Royal, the senior partner, a distinguished-looking, sword-thin, and somewhat humorless man in his sixties, was spearheading the defense of the S & L president. He told the rest of us that on Friday he and Marian Miller had met with the attorneys representing the depositors. "They're intractable at the moment. Marian feels they'll negotiate, but I fear the worst."

"And what's the worst?" I asked.

"For them, drawn-out civil litigation. Possible criminal charges. We will almost certainly have to go to Washington to meet with the resolution trust people. Ted, you and I will have to burn the midnight oil this week. Barry?"

Barry Wellmet, a plump and cheerful man who smiled his way to one settlement after another, had been dealing with the local real estate arm of ZiDevco. They were our client, and they were suing the general contractor. Barry detailed the state of negotiations. He also discussed the ant.i.trust case where the government was charging Sarasota and Manatee county milk distributors with price-fixing. "Ted, let's you and me hike up to Bradenton this week and meet with counsel representing the Manatee guys. United we stand, divided we may take a milk bath. And I stopped drinking milk years ago."

Harvey turned to me. "Ted?"

I had found it difficult to concentrate. I moved swiftly through a discussion of several cases, and then the new representation of Jerry Lee Elroy.

"Was that why you went up to Jacksonville?" Harvey inquired. "I needed you on Friday."

"I went up for something else." I told my partners about the Morgan case twelve years ago and my discovery that one of the state's witnesses had been suborned into perjury. I told them what had happened in Jacksonville. I omitted the story of my visit to the death chamber.

Marian Miller, a handsome woman of about my age, and a graduate of Harvard Law, said, "Well, I'm not a criminal attorney, but it strikes me that you've done your duty by informing this Mr. Ruth."

"Agreed," Harvey Royal said. "Beyond that is pure conjecture."

Barry Wellmet nodded. "The toils of the law. And won't it all become moot, Ted, when they pull the switch and fry this poor guy? That's all she wrote, no?"

"Not quite," I said.

There was the possibility, I explained, that Detective Floyd Nickerson, who had suborned the perjury by Jerry Lee Elroy, might also have lied about Morgan confessing to him.

Harvey Royal cleared his throat and frowned.

"Wait," I said. "There's the fact of where this detective found employment after he left the Jacksonville sheriff's department. It's d.a.m.ned odd." I told my partners what I had learned of Nickerson's move to Orange Meadow, the ZiDevco development near Gainesville.

"Coincidence," Don Kelly said, looking at his wrist.w.a.tch.

"Maybe," I said. "And maybe not. I'm not satisfied."

Harvey raised a pale eyebrow. "Ted, you sound a little aggrieved. As if you're taking it personally."

"I sent Morgan to Raiford. To Death Watch, and maybe to the electric chair. Yes! It is personal!"

Harvey Royal would have been calm in a typhoon. "I can grasp that part of it," he said soothingly, "but you were doing your job in a just manner twelve years ago, following the law and the canons of ethics."

"Harvey, you haven't been there. You don't know."

"True enough, and I'm grateful for that. In any event, we need you here. We don't need you in Jacksonville. You and I may have to fly to Washington next week, and we've got to sh.o.r.e up our position before we do so. And Barry made an excellent suggestion that you and he solicit some input from the Bradenton fellows in the ant.i.trust suit. Before the milk curdles, as Barry might say. Table this other business, Ted. That's my strong suggestion. Anything else?" He glanced around the table, but no one spoke. "Meeting's adjourned, gentlemen and madam, and I thank you for your time."

I appeared at the Criminal Justice Building at 11:00 A.M. for a meeting with Buddy Capra, the hard-nosed Sarasota a.s.sistant state attorney handling the case against the man known to them as Elroy Lee. Capra informed me that the sheriff's department had checked Lee's fingerprints with the NCIC computer. He had four prior convictions in other parts of the state, under the various names Jerry Lee Elroy, Lee Jayson, J. V. Lee, and Elroy Lee. "Clearly a man of limited imagination," Capra said.

"Or of unlimited loyalty," I replied. "Buddy, this case may be a bonanza for you guys-if you can cut a deal."

He and I talked for nearly an hour with Charlie Waldorf, his boss, and then I met Elroy in a little bar on Main Street. I ordered steamed oysters and a draft German beer. Elroy said, "Hey, I just found out Pee-wee Herman was born here. That something?"

"How about that," I said.

I had learned the necessity for ritual with clients. You couldn't simply start off with "Let's cut the c.r.a.p, you know you're guilty and so do I. If you plead out, I can get you five years pen time. Take it or leave it." They didn't feel they were getting their money's worth, and the ultimatum didn't include the proper catharsis.

So I said, "Did you find any witnesses to back up the story you're going to tell about the car with the Baggies in it?"

"A couple, yeah."

"Who are they?"

"Well, one's out of town right now. I spoke to him. When's he gotta be here to talk to whoever he's gotta talk to?"

"He has to talk to me first," I said, "and convince me he's a reliable witness. Where is he?"

"In Miami. He's in a little trouble ... he can't get here right away."

"Forget him. Who's the other?"

"My sister."

"Where is she?"

"She lives in Orlando."

"Was she here in Sarasota those three days before the cops picked you up with that cocaine in your trunk?"

"If she says she was, who's to say she wasn't?"

"You're out of your mind, Elroy. Forget it."

The steamed oysters arrived. I let Elroy ramble for a while, offering theories of what might have accounted for the cocaine being in the trunk of the car, while I dipped the oysters and chunks of sourdough bread in hot melted b.u.t.ter and drank cold beer.

"That's it?"

"Yeah ... Well, you're the lawyer. You tell me what to do."

"Depends on your love for adventure. You want to go to trial or cut a deal?"

"I tell you about my pulse bladder?"

"Yes, you did. Let me lay this out for you as simply as I can. You have no witnesses worth a fart in a hurricane. You gave the cops probable cause to search the car. If you go to trial, what can you say? You didn't know the cocaine was there? Before you do that, I have to tell you that a fingerprint expert will take the stand and swear that your prints were on that paper bag and at least two of those plastic Baggies. And when that happens, you can stick a fork in your a.s.s, Elroy, because you're done. You and your pulse bladder are headed to Raiford for a twenty-year bit."

"Okay, okay . .. you made your point." Elroy began to pick nervously at the skin of one thumb. "So what's the deal you can get me?"

"I spoke to Charlie Waldorf, the state attorney for this district. He got on the horn to Robert Diaz, the state attorney in Miami. They know you over there. They know who you work for. Guys named Alfonso Ramos and Marty Palomino, right? I'll give you the bacon without the sizzle, Elroy. They want your friend Ramos really bad. You give them Ramos, you do a nickel. Give them Ramos and Palomino together, you walk away laughing."

"I can't do that," Elroy said quietly.

"Why not?"

"They'll inch me."

"I told you, there's a federal witness protection program. The state can tap into it."

Elroy mulled that over for a minute. "Where would I go?"

"Far away. California, Oregon, maybe North Dakota."

"Yeah, but Florida's where my friends are, my sister and her kids."

"Okay. If you turn Waldorf down and plead guilty, he'll go for fifteen years. You probably won't do more than three or four at Raiford. Plenty of time for your friends and your sister to visit."

"I'll die in there!" Elroy whined. "This thing I got could turn to cancer."

"Then take the deal. Save yourself. You've done it before."

Elroy nodded gloomily. He had hardly tasted his Bud. "I don't wanna go somewhere and freeze my a.s.s off. California sounds okay, but f.u.c.k North Dakota."

"There's another part of the deal," I said, making up my mind how to deal with this lying b.a.s.t.a.r.d.

"What's that?"

"The business in Jacksonville twelve years ago, with that guy Darryl Morgan. You'll have to retract that testimony."

"Are you kidding?"

"Before the same court, whatever judge is presiding."

"I should go up there, face a perjury rap? No f.u.c.king way."

"The statute's run on your old testimony. They couldn't prosecute you if they wanted to."

Elroy considered this. "When?" he asked.

"Soon. First you provide an affidavit. Then you testify. Then you give them Ramos and Palomino. Then you go into the program. Then California," I said, "unless you'd prefer North Dakota."

"Let me think about it."

"Elroy, you have no choice. It's part of the deal."

It wasn't, of course. Neither Charlie Waldorf nor his counterpart in Miami would have stood still for that. I was lying to one client in order to save the life of another one-maybe. No matter how much I tried to justify it on that basis, I knew beyond any doubt that I had no right as a lawyer to do it.

And I didn't give a d.a.m.n.

I knew a bit about things such as laserless holograms, DNA replication, Pica.s.so's blue period, igloo construction, Van Allen belts, virtual reality, even gout. But I did not know how to talk to my own son.

On Sunday night when Alan returned home from Captiva, I faced him with what his mother had overheard.

"I don't yet know how to handle this," I said. "So let's both of us ponder it awhile. Then you come and talk to me. Cards on the table, no bulls.h.i.t."

Monday was a holiday. Alan sulked by the pool, working his way through two packs of cigarettes, while I took Toba sailing in the sloop, aptly named Dreamboat. She slept three comfortably and was small enough to sail single-handed, even though she had no winches, radio, or radar. I hoisted sail and took the tiller; Toba, wearing only the bottom half of a bikini, spread an air mattress and stretched out on the bow.

The bay gleamed bluely in the sun. I headed north on a broad reach toward Whale Key, about an hour away, where I anch.o.r.ed about fifty yards off the lee sh.o.r.e. Few boats would pa.s.s by here. I lowered the sails, tied them loosely on the boom, then dropped a wooden ladder off the stern.

Toba knew exactly what I was doing.

The marital bed after a while can become boring; there seems a limited amount of things for the same two people to do there. Long ago I had studied the Kama Sutra and decided that most of it was silly. Could I really maneuver into those positions without a muscle spasm? Can I nibble on her earlobes and suck her toes and talk dirty and still keep a straight face? But I understood the need for variety, to make the manifestation of conjugal love and hormonal need a bit more memorable than merely the component sequential movements of a routine act. There had to be more to it than driving a golf ball properly off a tee so that it soared true for two hundred yards or more. (That also was an act composed of interlinked sequential movements.) And of course there was more to it. If you connected properly, as sometimes happened with the golf ball, the result was thrilling.

But with us now, that didn't happen often. In fact, lately it happened more often at the golf tee, which was why on certain weekends, weather permitting, I cast off the lines at the dock and sailed Dreamboat to Whale Key, or White Key, or the relatively empty waters off Bay Isles. I had learned a long time ago-and not only from my wife-how stimulating that change of venue could be.

Today a rare white heron stalked the shallows near the key. The sun beating down on Toba's bare b.r.e.a.s.t.s tended to make her feel lascivious. When she was lascivious, so I tended to be-and vice versa. That circle with no beginning that makes so many good things possible.

I dove in, and Toba followed. The coldness of the water stunned us a little. We were quickly back on board, reaching for towels.