'Another one? Good-lookin's real frisky, isn't he? He's two-timing the other guy?'

'Hey, Gino, call it what you like. But remember, I used to ride with you. I've seen you stop off with three different gals on the same shift.''

He was flattered, of course, by the memory. He stole a glance toward Brushy, hoping she was impressed. Someday I'd have to tell Pigeyes about Nueve.

'Anyway, there's this young man,' I said. 'Bert's piling up a lot of credit on the card, so he's got plenty to share. Now it could be, hypothetically, this young man, he's got a connection to the U. Maybe he's the one who let a certain middle-aged lawyer into the refs' room the other night so Bert and the middle-aged lawyer could confer outside the watchful eye of the law in the hopes of straightening some of this out.'

'That so?' Gino asked.

'Could be,' I said and rested on a chair arm to see how it had gone down. Better, it seemed, than I might have thought. I was trying like h.e.l.l for Bert's sake and my own, vamping like crazy, and when it came to Gino, there was no end to my daring. But I still thought I'd gone over the top. The whole thing was too much, too curious, way too lame. I didn't know what I'd do if, for instance, they wanted to quiz the young man from the U. And there wouldn't be any smart answers if Gino ever started matching the games the guys at the Bath called Kam's Specials with the ones officiated by Friday night's referees.

But the great thing with people is that you never know. After two weeks of riding my f.a.n.n.y, chasing me everywhere, and spooking my dreams, Gino seemed to have run out of gas. Not that he believed me particularly. He knew better than that. But he was clearly afraid the prosecutor's office would toss him out on his keester because he was nowhere near beyond a reasonable doubt. Bogus or not, I'd touched all the bases; it was a comprehensive defense. And my history with Gino was enough to make a conscientious deputy PA think twice anyway. Pigeyes didn't come to these conclusions peaceably. When he looked at me, his eyes were stilled by a hatred entirely void of goodwill, like black being the absence of color, but I could see he knew I had him beat.

He turned to Dewey, who shrugged. Go figure. They both got to their feet. 'Great to see you again, Gino.' 'Yeah, really,' he offered.

Lucinda peeked in, beckoning, and I followed her out, departing with a cheerful wave as Brushy started with Gino and Dewey toward the door. Lucinda had a note: 'Bert's on the phone.' I picked up in my office.

'Listen,' I said. 'I've settled your problems. Those guys won't be looking for you anymore.'

The line gathered static. I could hear from the gray roar behind him that Bert was on a pay phone somewhere near a highway.

'Humor, right?' he asked.

'Don't ask me how. You're done. D, o, n, e. I've got it squared with the coppers too. What you oughta do is get down here. You'll probably need to answer some questions about Jake.' Mathigoris from TN security would want to go over the whole thing many times. The memo, the checks. Jake telling Bert to keep it strictly hush-hush. 'And what about -'

I covered both of you. Go rent a tux and get over here. It's GH Night.'

'G.o.d,' he said softly. I could tell that in the instant of relief the terror suddenly had hold of him. He'd been flying combat again. Now he was on the ground, torn up by what he'd been through, the great concussions of noise and the light that had rattled the plane and trailed him through the sky. 'G.o.d,' he said again. 'Mack, man, what can I say?'

'Just come back,' I repeated.

This was getting exciting, everything falling in place. My phone rang again. 'I'm waiting,' Martin told me.

XXVIII. HOW MARTIN SOLVED THE CRIME.

Martin was dressing. He had on his tuxedo pants, striped in satin along the seam, and his wing-collared tuxedo shirt, into which he was nimbly inserting the studs, little diamond jobs that glimmered in the pearly light of the late-winter afternoon. In an hour or so my partners, all similarly dressed, would stroll down the avenue to the Club Belvedere, share a drink or two and some canapes, and then over dinner get a report on financial results and the size of their share. It promised to be an excruciating evening in every regard.

Martin did not speak at first. Standing, he worked over the shirt for some time. Every now and then he stopped to examine a small blue note card on his desk, reading it to himself. It was, I suspected, his GH Night speech. Rah-rah from the managing partner. Picking up his pen, he made a few corrections. I said nothing either. The large corner office, fully lit from the long windows, was quiet enough that you could hear the whirring of the gyroscope device that powered one of his clocks. I was tempted to play with some of his toys, the shaman stick or the coffee-table games, but I took a seat instead in a wooden sidechair painted up in Southwestern shades. I'd brought along my briefcase.

'I've been too f.u.c.king good to you,' Martin said at last. He didn't talk dirty and this was meant to be shocking. He wanted me to know he was p.i.s.sed, that our partnership agreement didn't include a search warrant for his drawer. He continued fooling with the shirt.

'How much trouble is Bert in?' he asked in a moment.

'Now that I've had a little chat with the police, probably none.'

He glanced my way briefly to be sure I was serious. 'How'd you arrange that? This policeman an old friend?' 'You could say.'

'Very impressive.' He nodded. I was sorry, frankly, he hadn't been there to see it. In a law firm it took all types, and I was one of the best bulls.h.i.tters in town. It was like having a guy in the bullpen who could get away with throwing spitb.a.l.l.s. Witnessing that performance would have rewarded Martin's faith in me, all the time he'd spent telling our partners I might come back yet.

'I've been doing a lot of impressive stuff,' I said. 'I was in Pico Luan over the weekend.'

Martin's eyes stayed with me for the first time. Standing there, his figure was framed by the black iron circle of the enormous arc lamp that cut the s.p.a.ce over the desk.

'Are we forestalling one another with humor?'

'No, I'm demonstrating my investigatory powers,' I told him. 'I'm telling you politely to cut the c.r.a.p.'

I took one of the dupes of the International Bank signature form from my briefcase and threw it on the desktop, where Martin studied it at length. Finally, he sat down in his tall leather chair.

'What are you going to do?'

'I'm done doing. Mr Krzysinski has been informed.'

The last stud, which Martin still had within his thick fingers, caught his attention somehow. He considered it briefly, then let it fly at the windows. I heard it bounce but couldn't see where it went.

'Carl's up there with that doc.u.ment and the memo you were hiding, and Tad and he and everyone else are trying to figure out why Jake Eiger would do something like this.'

Momentarily Martin covered his whole face with his broad hand, blackly pelted on its back. From the hall I could hear through the closed door the phones, the voices of the workday.

'Well, that's not going to take very long, is it?' Martin asked finally. 'The motive is hardly elusive. Jake's planning for his future. He knows that Tad doesn't like him and that sooner or later, when Tad's alliances on the board are firm, Krzysinski is going to be opening the bays and dropping Jake without a parachute, golden or otherwise. So Jake provided one for himself. That's the explanation, isn't it?'

'Seems right,' I said.

Martin looked at me through one eye as he canted back in his chair. 'What else is Carl saying?'

'I covered your b.u.t.t, if that's what you're asking. Which is more than you deserve. You were f.u.c.king around with me, Martin.'

He made some move to deny it and I challenged him.

'I can give you a hundred examples. I don't have to ask who Glyndora called for advice on how to get me out of her apartment last week, do I?'

'No.' He laughed suddenly, and I did as well. I was being a good sport, but a mood of disclosure was also beginning to lighten the air. I suppose it made a great story, the way I went running down the stairs like a little elf, trying not to stumble on my you-know-what.

'Didn't want anybody messing with your girl, huh?'

Martin rolled his jaw. He looked again through one eye. I wasn't sure how he'd take this a.s.sault on his secrets, whether it would make him frantic or if he would get up and try to throw me out of the room. But I guess he knew himself well enough, because he seemed to accept this with a faint resignation.

'Don't let me stop you,' I said. 'You were about to explain.'

'My personal life? That's before the flood.' It wasn't quite a rebuff. He was looking out the broad windows toward his city and its life, and his tone suggested worlds, universes of emotion suppressed. G.o.d, I thought, to have been a fly on the wall for that romance, to have observed these two characters surmounting the many barriers to get into each other's pants. Glyndora must have stuck out all her prominent parts and dared him to touch them - a way to put him in his place. I'd seen that routine: You think you're tough? I'm tough. I'm the best-looking woman in four city blocks. I'd wear you out. I'd get you up four times a night, I'd screw you dry and tell you I needed more, I'd be so much you'd want to unhitch it and put it in my trophy case. You didn't have wet dreams as a puppy 10 percent as good as me. And you won't dare touch it. Cause I ain't gonna have it.

She probably laid it on thick. And he accepted the World Championship Challenge of treating her kindly. Glyndora'd stomp and sulk and he must have signaled in a hundred ways that he thought she was valuable and would never change his mind. He must have worn her down until she had to succ.u.mb to the fantasy that everything she rejected before it refused her might, instead, fold her in its embrace. And Martin visited that shadow zone where not much matters, where pretense and power, every one of his bets which was always on the future, had to surrender to the pure sensation of the present. I'll bet until ten minutes before they were s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g it was no more than daily t.i.tillation for each one of them, a dirty movie that was always shuttered in their minds.

'But what happened?' I said. 'You know. With you and her. Can I ask?'

'It didn't work out,' he said. His hand skirted the air. 'We were kidding ourselves.' The remark hung there, with all its potent sadness - the American predicament. Martin had these kids, this wife - and there was the Club Belvedere, clients who'd sn.i.g.g.e.r that he'd taken up with a colored girl. But the result probably suited Glyndora. It would have been a lot to ask of her, to be herself in his world.

'I am very fond of Glyndora,' he said then, impaled on whatever the remark conjured and concealed. He looked at me. 'Do you believe in reincarnation?'

'No,' I said.

'No,' he said. 'Neither do I.' He was quiet then. Martin Gold, the most successful lawyer I knew, wanted to be somebody else too. It was touching, though. Loyalty always is.

We were silent some time. Eventually Martin started talking about what had happened in a depleted, reflective tone. He had not been fooling with me, he said. Not intentionally. I gave him far too much credit. Circ.u.mstances had mounted. Combined. His honesty as he spoke was beguiling. You so rarely got Martin to talk straight from the heart.

'Glyndora came to me with the memo and the checks as soon as they'd cleared. Early December, I think. Around then. It looked odd to both of us, of course, business checks negotiated offsh.o.r.e, but I didn't feel any great concern until I started doing the research - talking to Bert, Neucriss, the banker down there in Pico. No Litiplex registered anywhere. No records upstairs. I was shocked when I saw where it pointed. I never perceived this in Jake. He'd lie to the Pope for the sake of his vanity, but I was stunned to learn he was a thief. And it was gruesome, of course, imagining the consequences.'

Martin, like any man with an empire, was accustomed to problems - big ones, situations that could bring him and everyone who depended upon him to doom. Like TN walking out as a client, or Pagnucci making a move. He got used to it, accustomed. He learned to walk the highwire, sailing along with gumption and a parasol. This thing with Eiger was a problem too. He left Glyndora on alert for more checks and took some time to ponder the common good.

'At which point,' he said, 'Glyndora's life began coming apart.' 'Bert and Orleans?'

He emitted a sound, the old wrestler's grunt, a little eruption of surprise, self-consciously controlled, when he was s.n.a.t.c.hed for the takedown. He peered, his squat face immobile, engraved by shadow in the dwindling light.

'You know, Malloy, if you'd done half as good a job around here in the last few years as you did looking into this, you would have made my life a great deal easier.'

'I'll take that as a compliment.'

'Please,' Martin answered.

'What's he like?' I asked. 'This son of hers?'

'Orleans? Complicated fellow.'

'He's her heartbreak, I take it.'

Martin made various ruminative gestures. It seemed he had tried to be good to Orleans as a boy.

'Very bright individual. Mother's son, that way. Very capable. But not steady. Temperamentally. Nothing you could do about that. She thought she was going to prohibit him from being the way he clearly was. And he wasn't willing to be prohibited.'

'She found Bert an upsetting development?'

'Not Bert as Bert. It's a situation she's never wanted to confront squarely.' He made a sad face.

'Yeah,' I offered. I got it. But I felt for Bert. In all likelihood, he'd been largely beside the point with Orleans from the start.

'Did you warn Bert?'

'No one here has accepted my warnings. No one.' He remained momentarily forlorn, even as his agitation visibly mounted. 'Jesus, what a mess. What a mess! This one may have been the single stupidest thing -' Martin waved. 'This ludicrous, insane novelty with these basketball games -And worse, both of them, neither had given a moment's thought, not a bare instant, to the costs of this behavior -Imprisonment, bodily harm, my G.o.d, the prospects, and the two of them are surprised by this, shocked, absolutely, positively disbelieving, like tiny children, the two most immature grown men I have ever known, neither with the remotest -' Martin stopped himself; he was losing the thread.

'You were explaining how you decided to cover for Jake.'

'This is part of it,' he said. 'I told you. It's happenstance. Circ.u.mstances conspire. This is part. This is what led Glyndora to it.'

'Blaming Bert? You're saying that's Glyndora's idea? For what? To get even with him?'

He waited. He smiled.

'What kind of mother do you imagine Glyndora is, Mack?'

You could take your choice of adjectives. Intense. Protective. She'd have sheltered Orleans through the ravages of war, scavenged food, or sold her body. For all I knew, that's what she was doing with me that night. But I still wasn't following. Martin saved his partners, his professional life, by covering Jake. I didn't see much gain to the chief clerk in Accounting.

'Look, Mack, Bert's decision to drop out of sight was well-intentioned as far as it went. He thought he was being heroic. But it was hardly a solution for Orleans. Not as far as Glyndora was concerned. She wasn't going to have him running for the rest of his life. She wanted him safe to stay here, and he wasn't.'

I still didn't get it.

'You're the one who asked the question, Mack. Last week. "Where did Bert go?" Where do we say Bert went? This is a lawyer. With sixty-seven partners. And clients. Never mind his family. There's not much. His friends, so-called, were all implicated in the same thing and surely willing to keep their peace. But what the h.e.l.l do we say around here? How do we keep somebody from notifying the police who, in investigating Bert's absence, will promptly discover that whole basketball mess? The only way to insulate Orleans - to completely protect him - was if there was another credible explanation for why Bert disappeared - even if that explanation was understood only by a few people who'd make excuses to everyone else.'

I rolled my head around, this way and that. I sort of liked it. Until I saw the next part.

'That's why you needed some hapless stumbleb.u.m to go look for him.' Someone, I realized, who wasn't supposed to really catch Bert or even figure out what he'd actually been up to - just state convincingly that he was gone. That was what Glyndora had meant in the one sincere moment we'd had. Absorbing my observation about their estimate of me, Martin, I noted, made no effort to differ.

'And that's why you hid the body,' I said. It came to me, just like that. 'Once I started looking for Bert.'

'We what? Martin's entire weight was suddenly planted on one hand fiercely gripping the arm of his chair. This aspect of alarm, of incomprehension, could have been posed, I realized. But Martin didn't look like he was fooling. Instead, I recalculated: Orleans and Bert, already shamed and scolded, yelled at, told they were irresponsible fools, hadn't confessed the worst. Martin and Glyndora thought Bert was running only from threats. Archie's disappearance, when it hit the papers, must have terrified them.

'Figure of speech,' I said. 'The memo. You hid the memo.'

'Oh,' said Martin. He relaxed. 'Right. We hid the body.' He made a brief effort to smile. For an instant, I wondered again about who'd moved the body. The only thing certain was that Archie couldn't have walked.

In the meantime, Martin had resumed his explanation, telling me how they had come to blame Bert for stealing the Litiplex money. The first few times Glyndora and he had discussed it, he said, the whole plan, it was in the vein of magnificent fantasy, a perfect future where all problems came to an end. He worked it out with her dozens of times, calculated how the dominoes would fall, saw at once how advantageous it would be to the firm not to have to sacrifice Jake. It was fun to discuss, lots of laughs, like a couple saying they'll rob a bank to pay the mortgage. Eventually he recognized that she was urging him to pursue what he'd regarded as jest.

'I told her this was lunacy. Worse than that, impermissible. A fraud. But you see. Really.' He sat up. He faced me squarely. 'It's me. It's mine. It's my precious values. My law. My rules. Take that out of the equation - My right,' he said, 'my wrong. My precious abstractions.' He halted in the midst of the litany he must have heard from her for years and lingered like some bug in the breeze, manifestly pained. Watching him, my heart spurted with sudden hope that Brushy and I might resolve what divided us the same way, until I recollected, as quickly, that we were both supposed to believe in the same thing.

'Here are these people,' he said. 'Glyndora and Orleans. My partners. Jake. Bert. Even you, Mack. Even you. This is an inst.i.tution. It's the product of lives. Hundreds of lives. All right. I sound like Wash. Forgive the sanctimony. But do I lay that all on the altar? I've made worse compromises.'

Both hands were thrown wide. He had a touch of priestly majesty. He thought he was revealed.

I said, 'It doesn't hurt you either, Martin. We all know who gets the biggest share.' I was enjoying this - being the man of greater rect.i.tude, even if we both knew it was situational and I knew it was an act. Fact is, I've enjoyed my acts, every one of them - copper, hard guy, smarta.s.s, lawyer. I can be a good anything, if it's only part time.

Martin had absorbed my remark with a lingering, rueful grin.

'Not me,' he said. He backhanded the little note card he'd had on his desk so it spiraled through s.p.a.ce; I picked it up off the rug. Martin's handwriting is atrocious -slashes and squiggles indiscernible to me, even after all these years. But certain words were clear enough. 'Resigning.' 'Mayor.' 'Riverside Commission.' 'Long-held pa.s.sion.' In tonight's speech to the partnership a.s.sembled, Martin Gold was going to quit.

'Think the public sector can handle me?' he asked.

'You've got to be kidding.' I couldn't believe it. The circus without Barnum.

He muled around. Stubborn. Set. It was time, he said. The deal was done. Martin Gold, head of the Riverside Commission. Starting April i. He talked about thirty years in private practice, giving things back, but I understood the imperatives. If he took a dive for Jake, if he didn't march stalwartly to Krzysinski's office and let his law firm pa.s.s into the great beyond, then Martin would punish himself instead. His people might survive, but he wouldn't get to the promised land. It was an old idea, and its mixture of shrewd practicality and highfalutin principles was quintessentially Gold. Lawyerly, you'd say. But still nuts.

'You should have been born a Catholic,' I told him. 'You really missed your chance. There are all these obscure fast days and penitential rites. We've been working for centuries on strategies for self-denial.' He thought I was funny of course. He always did. He laughed out loud.

All these years I've figured that if I somehow eluded Martin's defenses and peered into his core it would be a vision of glory: I'd see a lionheart, beating at mach speed and enlarged by pa.s.sion. Instead, what was within was some little gremlin that made him believe that his greatest n.o.bility came from cutting himself off from what he liked best. Glyndora. Or the law firm. He was cheap with himself, with his own pleasure. It was crushing to recognize: he was more productive than me, but no happier. I didn't want his life either.

He was still disagreeing.

'As of today' - And he nodded toward me - 'I'm not giving up much. Not once the dust settles upstairs. Whether Tad instructs his new General Counsel to cut us off or just cut us back, this place won't hold together. A fellow like Carl -' Martin stopped himself; he never spoke ill of his partners. 'Not everyone will settle for less. In the end, frankly, there will be those who paint me as an opportunist. First man to the lifeboat.'

There was, of course, a subtle accusatory element to these observations. Martin had removed a limb or two for the team. I'd destroyed it. The Catholic boy, ever guilty as charged, still reared up to defend himself. It was comic, of course. I'd stolen nearly six million bucks and wasn't beset by thoughts of giving it back. But in that goofy way we have of thinking we are what we're seen to be, I cared about Martin's impressions.