"I'm good? Easy for you to say." I let out a long sigh. "Well, I don't know if I'm good, but I'm definitely in. He gave me a big speech about me not fucking him. He even dropped a name, some guy who apparently didn't learn the lesson so well. I just Googled the guy and it turns out, life took a bad turn for him."

"Yeah? What's the name?" Tucker pulled a small notebook out of his back pocket.

"Richard Baroni. Real estate developer. His office was torched in ninety-five, and he almost went down with it. I can only guess it was a deal gone south or something."

Tucker scribbled a note. I looked at my sandwich and the burned hash browns, just how I like them, but I had suddenly lost my appetite. I pushed the food around and took a couple of bites but couldn't taste it. Tucker had no trouble downing his meal.

"So you passed the test," he said, wiping his mouth.

So far, I had passed. I had a feeling there would be some pop quizzes along the way.

"Tell me about his car. Was there anything unusual in the interior? Like, anything that he stuck to the dashboard or anything that looked out of place. Maybe a clock stuck-"

"An air freshener," I suddenly realized. "We're in this souped-up Porsche 911 with this beautiful leather interior and he's got this cheesy air freshener-"

"Okay." Tucker nodded. "Okay. It was a detector. It detects transmitter signals."

"Great." I pushed my food away. "That's just great."

"It just means we can't use a transmitter, Jason. All you're wearing is a simple recording device. A small tape recorder. You're not sending a signal back to us. No detector can pick up a tape recorder. It's only when you're transmitting a signal." He shook his head. "And now we know it's not even an option."

"And now we know," I said, "that he knows he's being watched."

"No." Tucker pursed his lips. "He knows he's a corrupt motherfucker. And corrupt motherfuckers are paranoid."

"That makes two of us." I waved a hand. "I mean, this guy, without notice, takes me somewhere where I have to give up all my clothes, everything on me, and stick it all in a locker that he's going to search. That can happen at any time, Lee. Or he could just come right out and pat me down."

"So we need to be careful."

"That training from Quantico really paid off, Lee." I got out of my seat. Apparently, it wasn't registering with this FBI agent that, had it not been for a gut call on my part, I'd be burned right now. Cimino's thug would have found my recording device, and I might have a piece of concrete tied to my ankle right now, thirty feet under water.

When I pointed this out, Tucker said, "Quit with the drama. You were overly aggressive in your approach with this guy-against my advice-and it's natural that he'd come back with a check on you."

"If it's so natural, why didn't you think of it?"

Tucker worked a toothpick in his mouth. I thought it was less about removing food from between his teeth, and more about showing me his cool. "Jason, what do you think? You think you told me something I didn't know? There was no friggin' way I was going to let you go back there with a wire today. I was just curious if you'd figure it out yourself. And to your credit, you did." He chuckled.

Tucker reached into a bag at his feet and, with a dramatic flourish, produced a CD. He dropped it into the laptop on the corner of the desk. "From yesterday afternoon," he said.

"Hello?" It was Greg Connolly, answering the phone.

"Greg, it's Charlie."

"Yeah, Charlie. Look, I talked to Hector. He says this kid is the best. He says he hates the feds with a passion because they put his dad away. He says this kid isn't afraid of nuthin'."

"Okay." Cimino seemed to be mumbling to himself. "I mean, listen, I want someone like him as much as anybody. I hear you. But I hardly know this kid."

"He's a kid looking for an opportunity, you ask me," Connolly said. "He's down on his luck after what happened to his wife and kid, right? Now he's thinkin', life owes me a thing or two. Maybe it's time I take what's mine. I mean, if he makes you uneasy-"

"No, I'm not saying-"

"-then let's just try him out, real safe or something. I mean, fucking pat the kid down, if that's what you're really afraid of. I mean, here, Charlie. Here it is. I wanna be as careful as you. But this kid, he's not fresh out of school like these other lawyers we got. The kid has some talent. Sometimes I wonder, if anyone ever took a hard look at us-"

"No, I know-"

"I'm just sayin', Charlie, a good lawyer can make this look a lot cleaner. I mean, whatever. I'll do whatever. But just-just think about it. I wouldn't mind having someone good watching my rear end."

"Yeah. Yeah, maybe. Maybe what you said about testing him. Patting him down. All right, I gotta go."

"Yeah, just let me know, Charlie. Whatever you say."

Tucker smiled at me.

"Thanks for sharing that," I said, "after the fact."

He smiled at me. "Better you didn't know." He kicked up his feet on the desk. "Now just put your head down and do the work, like I told you in the first place," he said. "Make him some money, and he'll fall into his comfort zone. You can handle that. I heard you on that first tape. You're good at this. Better than most, you wanna know the truth."

"Oh, gosh, Lee, I'll bet you say that to all the informants."

Tucker seemed to be getting a kick out of this. That made one of us. He had withheld information from me and didn't bat an eye in the process. He would tell me only what he wanted me to know. He would manipulate me and hide the ball and watch me fall when he was done squeezing every last drop of usefulness out of me.

"Maybe I just walk away from this whole thing and roll the dice," I said.

He gave me a yeah-right smirk.

"Hey, you want to be a cowboy, go for it. But just remember," he said, "you're making that decision for Shauna, too."

36.

THAT FRIDAY NIGHT, SHAUNA AND I WENT TO DINNER and a movie. I made the mistake of picking the food (steak house), which allowed her to choose the flick (romantic comedy). I was shocked to discover that the two beautiful leads, after quarrelling throughout an agonizing ninety minutes of cinematic torture, realized that the true love they'd been looking for had been right there in front of them, all along! Fade to credits with a Top 40 adult contemporary love song.

We shared a cab and dropped her off first. I watched her until she was inside her condo building. She gave me a small wave and I nodded back.

She was my responsibility. The feds had her in their sights, however unfairly, because of me. I had to solve that problem. And I thought I knew how.

"PENSIONS," CIMINO SAID TO ME, as we hummed along in his Porsche the next morning. "State employees have pensions," Cimino went on. "Pensions have a lot of money to invest. Everyone wants a piece of that. Next month, the PCB's going to put out a solicitation for three hundred million."

"Someone's going to get three hundred million to invest?" I was wearing a sweater and a black jacket Talia had bought me last Christmas. The F-Bird was resting in my shirt pocket underneath my sweater, courtesy of Lee Tucker, who had come by my house at half past eight this morning through my back gate.

"I've got someone in mind. That's where we're going now. The commissions on this thing-they're unbelievable. We can get a hundred thousand for the governor and something for us, too." He looked over at me, noticing my lack of enthusiasm. "What?"

"Charlie, we can't just pick whatever investment banker we want. I mean, there are all sorts of criteria in the statute that the board will have to consider. We're locked down pretty tight on this."

"What are you telling me, kid? You telling me we can't handpick someone? You can't come up with some fancy legal argument?"

I sighed for Charlie's benefit. "I'm telling you, one, I can't make a good argument. And two, with this kind of money at stake, the spotlight on this, if we fuck around, will be huge. Every major player's going to go after this kind of money. They're not going to let us waltz in and fix this thing."

Charlie went radio silent. He looked like he was going to crush the steering wheel with his grip.

"I have a better idea," I said.

He looked over at me.

"Look," I said, "the way you're doing this now-it's hard. It's hard and it's risky. I mean, you have to comb through all the contracts that will be issued soon, and you have to recruit companies that are willing to contribute to Governor Snow's campaign in exchange for getting the contract and maybe even throw in a little side business to you or me or whomever. So you have to spend a lot of time looking for people who end up saying no, and you run the risk that one of them might do more than just say no-they might decide to report what they know to a news reporter or, even worse, the trench coats. And even if nobody talks, you got some bidder who thinks he should've gotten the contract instead of our handpicked guy, and then there's a lawsuit. Which means they shine a light on what we're doing. It means people testifying under oath. I mean, do I have this right so far, Charlie?"

Cimino had been nodding along with me. "That about sums it up."

"So at best, it's inefficient. And at worst, it's risky. I can live with inefficient, but not with risky."

"Okay, and you got a better idea."

"I do," I said. "Let's stick with current state contracts."

"Current ones." He looked at me. "Contracts already in place?"

"Right. Instead of looking all over the place for people bidding on new contracts, we just go to the people right in front of us-the people feeding at the public trough right now."

"And why would someone pay us squat if they already have a contract with the state?"

"Because," I said, "they want to keep it."

Cimino was silent for a moment, his eyes in a squint. "They want to keep it."

"The principle's the same, Charlie. We tell them the same thing: It's time to pony up. Only instead of offering them a contract with the state, we threaten to take away the one they already have, if they don't pay up."

"Huh." Cimino thought about that. "A stick instead of a carrot."

"Exactly," I said. "Every contract has some kind of termination clause. The state always has some reason why it can fire a contractor. I'll be able to find something to threaten them with. And here's the best part, Charlie: It's all under the radar. There's no disgruntled bidder who lost out on the contract. There's no bending and twisting of the Purchasing Code. There are no losing bidders. The people we'd be approaching already have contracts. Hell, we don't even need the PCB. We narrow the number of players to you and me."

"Right," Cimino said equivocally. "And if they tell us no?"

"Some might. But most won't. This is their livelihood. They have a state contract, probably worth hundreds of thousands, if not millions. They won't say no to a thirty-thousand-dollar contribution. And even those that do say no-they're not going to run to the feds over this. Why piss off the new governor and jeopardize their prized contract?"

Cimino kept thinking, but I could see that my idea was finding a warm landing. It made all kinds of sense from his perspective.

"They won't say no," I said.

"No, they won't." Cimino broke into laughter. "Brilliant." He slapped the steering wheel. "Fucking brilliant, Jason." He reached over and grabbed my arm. "You done good, kid."

I've never been one to shy away from praise, but this was a new one for me. I was being lauded for coming up with a new and improved criminal scheme, congratulated by someone whom I distrusted and disliked, whom I was screwing over in the biggest way. But it wasn't lost on me that I had accomplished my goal, which was to add value, to prove my worth, to further cement Cimino's trust in me. I wasn't going to have to worry about Cimino checking me for a recording device any time soon.

Famous last words.

37.

AFTER THAT DAY WITH CIMINO, I SPENT THE WEEKEND before Christmas alone. Shauna's family had come into town on Saturday so she was occupied, and I resisted her invitation to join in any number of things they had planned. She'd pushed me hard to be a part of Christmas dinner, but so far I'd refused, and I figured once they were staying with her, she'd get caught up in all things family and leave me alone.

That was fine. I wasn't in the mood for a crowd. I did okay with loneliness, which is to say that I didn't pine for the company of others. Racquetball with Cimino had whetted my appetite for sweat, and I fell back into my bachelor routine of intense workouts, which included long runs in the frigid outdoors, my way of proving to myself how tough I was. My diet that weekend consisted of pizza and potato chips. Workouts and junk food, the staples of a contradictory bachelor lifestyle. I threw in a couple of crime novels and movies, though I didn't enjoy the sidelong glances from people when I went to a movie alone. I never really got why moviegoing had to be a shared experience. You go into a dark theater and watch something on a screen; why do you have to know the person sitting next to you?

On Monday, Christmas Eve, I got it into my head that I was going to dismantle Emily Jane's room-remove the crib and the custom rocking chair and changing table, tear down the Beatrix Potter wallpaper, repaint the walls something neutral, and move on with my life. I got as far as walking into the room before my blood went cold and the breath was whisked from my lungs.

It was odd to me how it all worked. On a daily basis, it was Talia who came into my mind more frequently. We'd spent so much time together, so many memories and experiences. Emily came in just at the end, a last, brief chapter in the book-three short months, most of which I spent tied up in the Almundo trial. I didn't remember her face like Talia's. Little things didn't remind me of Emily like they constantly did of my wife.

And yet, if I thought of Emily less often, it was more jarring when I did. It's easy to say the obvious thing, the absolute grotesqueness of a life lost after only three months. Barbaric enough to shake your faith, as it had mine. Sure. Of course. But there was more to it. We hadn't connected enough, Emily and me. Not yet. I can say all the right things-my love for her, my utter devotion-but the truth, I think, is that that kind of bond develops over time, and I simply hadn't had the time. I didn't love Emily Jane in the same way I loved Talia, or as much as I would have loved her over time. That, I had come to realize, is what bothered me as much as anything: I didn't get the chance to love my daughter as much as I was supposed to.

When the doorbell rang, I lifted my face out of the comforter on my bed. It was dark outside my window, which meant it was probably five in the evening, at least. I didn't know how long I'd been asleep, or if I'd even been technically asleep at all. I went to the mirror and saw hair standing in every direction, swollen eyes, and a line running south to southwest across my cheek from the pillow. But I made up for it with a fashionably wrinkled t-shirt and cut-off sweats. The doorbell rang again, and then I heard my cell phone buzzing where I had left it apparently, on the floor of Emily's bedroom. Whatever. I figured the phone caller was the impatient person at the front door, and it took me one second to narrow the candidates down to one.

I was wrong. It wasn't Shauna. It was Charlie.

"Jesus, kid," he said when I opened the door. "Did I wake you?"

He was in an expensive coffee-colored coat and cream scarf. A bit more nattily attired than I.

"I was giving myself a pedicure." It fell flat. Shauna would have laughed.

"Merry Christmas," he said. He handed me a package in silver wrapping. A shoe box.

I shook it. "And here I didn't get you anything. You want to come in?"

"No. Wife's waiting in the car." He nodded at me. "Go ahead. Open it."

I did. It was a shoe box. But it didn't contain shoes.

It was cash. Crisp, clean hundred-dollar bills wrapped neatly in bands.

Five thousand dollars in cash.

"Charlie, I-I-"

"You're doing great, kid. That's a thank-you. We're gonna have a great 2008."

"Charlie-"

"Get something for your lady friend," he said. "Shauna, right? The one you went to the movies with Friday night?"

Our eyes met. This wasn't a casual remark. He wanted me to know.