'I'm not following.'

'What else is new?'

'Are we done here or what?' I asked.

'Are we done, you and me done, is that what we're asking?'

'I mean Bert.'

'f.u.c.k 'em.'

Nothing but fuzz on my screen. I did not understand. Which was just what he wanted.

'So what is this? Favor done, favor owed?' I thought maybe with the big collar on Jake, he was calling the score even.

He laughed, he roared. There was a phenomenal clanking wallop in my ear when he banged the phone on something hard.

'You done me enough favors. When you're miserable in h.e.l.l, suffering your sins and thinking it can't get no worse, you look behind you and I'll be there. Payback time with me and you ain't gonna end, Malloy. Just so you know. I'm telling you, you're dirty somewhere. I said that from the git-go and I still say so. You're covering your a.s.s, same as you were doing with Goodlookin. So stay tuned. Same time. Same f.u.c.kin station.' He slammed the phone again and this time it went dead. Maybe he'd hung up. Maybe he'd broken it.

But he'd done what he wanted. I sat in that tight little s.p.a.ce and broke a sweat. This time I was really scared.

B. Closing the Circle In the elevator, on the way down, Martin announced his resignation. I suppose he was forewarning Wash and Pagnucci. He seemed to regard his statement as dramatic, but it fell flat. This group had already been through too much, and as Martin had acknowledged before, there was not much left now to resign from. Brushy, a good kid to the last, started to talk to him anyway about changing his mind.

When the elevator doors parted, back on 37, Bert was standing there. He was dressed in supposed formal wear - a leather coat as a dinner jacket and four days' growth. He looked like a rock star. I guess Orleans was picking his clothes. He remained in the elevator doorway confronting us all in an auspicious posture, sneaking a glance to see who was inside. A lot had gone on since we'd last seen him here, and there was an instant so still it could have been suspended animation.

Martin, in particular, seemed undone by the sight of Bert, finally bereft of all his survivor's aplomb, that intense belief in his own powers which ordinarily sustains him. He stared a bit, then shook his head. Finally, he took note of the last diamond stud, still in his fingers. He seemed to weigh it. I think he had some impulse to throw it again, but in the end he simply paused to insert it in his shirt.

'Well,' he said presently, 'some of us have an appointment at the Club Belvedere.' It was time to worry about the future. For the person of importance, the moment never waits. Martin was going to read the firm its epitaph. He was good at that kind of thing. When we'd buried Leotis Griswell last year, Martin had made the eulogy, the usual funeral folderol, stuff he did not fully believe about how Leotis was a lawyer's lawyer who knew that the law in the end is not a business but is about values, about the kinds of judgments that were not meant to be bought and sold. The law, as Leotis saw it, said Martin, is a reflection of our common will, meant to regulate society and commerce, and not vice versa. G.o.d knows what Martin would tell the partners tonight. Maybe just goodbye.

Wash, Carl, Brushy all followed him, going off to get their coats. I tarried with Bert but gave Brushy a palsy little wink as she departed. She responded with a blistering look over her bare shoulder, the motive for which eluded me entirely. Here we go again. f.u.c.k did I do? She said, coolly, that she had a call to make and would wait in her office to walk over with me.

Standing with Bert, I could tell he was shook up to be back. He was near the windows behind the receptionist's desk, facing the gla.s.s where his reflection loomed, vague and incomplete, like an image on water. He looked bleak.

'I wish I'd done it,' he said to me, out of nowhere.

'Done what?'

'Stolen the money.'

I recoiled a bit and gripped his arm to quiet him. But I could see his problem. He had a future again suddenly. His high times and adventures were over. He'd been out there on the edge, mad with love, crazy from danger. Now, if he liked, he could go right down to his office and answer interrogatories. He had lived for a while with all those neat shows playing in his head. Gangsters and athletes - his honey and him doing weird stuff in the moonlit artichoke fields, being covered and chilled by fog in the perfect still nights. Never mind that it was mad. It was his. Poor him. Poor us. Dragged to sea in our little boats by the tide of these irresistible private scenes and crashing come daylight on the rocks. But who can turn back?

'Somebody beat you to it,' I told him. He laughed at that. Eventually, he asked if I was coming to the Belvedere, but I sent him along on his own.

x.x.x. THE END AND WHO'S HAPPY?.

A. Brushy Isn't I went home. A man in a tuxedo boarding a plane would grab too much attention. And although I distrusted the sentiment, I wanted a word with my boy. It was time for the get-tough speech: Hey, I know you think your life is grim. But so is everyone else's. We're all grinning in spite of the pain. Some do better than others. And most do better than I have. I hope in time you grow up to join that majority.

For Lyle, this talk figured to be largely beside the point, but I could feel I'd made a final effort. Upstairs at home, I found him asleep, knocked cold by some intoxicant.

'Hey, Lyle.' I touched his shoulder, sharp-boned and bitten by ugly acne marks. I shook him some time before he seemed to come to.

'Dad?' He couldn't see straight.

'Yes, son,' I said quietly, 'it's me.'

He froze there on his back, trying to focus something, his eyes or his mind or his spirit. He gave up quickly.

's.h.i.t,' he said distinctly and rolled back so that his face went down into the pillow with the lost despairing weight of a felled tree. I understood Lyle's problems. As he saw it, his parents owed him apologies. His old man was a souse. His mother pretended all his young life to be something she only later told him she wasn't. Having found no adults to admire, he'd decided not to become a grown-up at all. In strict privacy, I couldn't even quarrel with his logic. But what's the further agenda? Granted, all of it, guilty as accused, but you tell me how to repay the debts of history. I touched the tangles of his long dirty hair but quickly thought better of that and went off to pack.

I had been at it about twenty minutes when the front door chimes jingled. I was feeling cautious and glanced down through the bedroom window that overlooked the stoop. Brushy was there in her sequins, no coat, stomping one patent-leather pump on the concrete and casting occasional foggy breaths behind her as she looked to the taxi which waited in the street. Once I hadn't shown in her office, she must have checked at the Belvedere, then called a hasty search party of one.

I opened the various locks and bolts I've mounted on the front door to shield me from the Bogey Man and his captain in arms, Mr S/D. We stood with the gla.s.s of the storm door between us. Brushy's long white gloves were wrapped about her, and the flesh of her upper arms, where the daily workouts had never quite slackened the softness, was mottled and goose-b.u.mped from the cold.

'We need to talk,' she said.

'Attorney-client, right?' I'm afraid I was smirking.

She turned to wave off the taxi, then s.n.a.t.c.hed the door open in her own decided way and, as she stepped up on the threshold, smacked my face. She struck me open-palmed, but she's a strong little person and very nearly put me on my seat. We stood in the doorway in the midst of a nasty silence, with the rugged breath of winter flowing around us and invading the household.

'I just predicted to our partners that all the money was going to be returned by tomorrow at 5:00 p.m.,' Brushy said.

'Did anyone ever tell you that you're too smart for your own f.u.c.king good, Brushy?' 'Lots of people,' she answered, 'but they've only been men.'

Brushy smiled then, but the look in her quick eyes would have fit well on Hercules. She was not taking any c.r.a.p. Not that she'd never forgive me. But she wouldn't back off. Those were her terms. I rolled my jaw to make sure I was all right, and she stepped in beside me.

'You've misjudged your man,' I said.

'No, I haven't.' When I didn't respond she approached me. She put her sly little hands on my hips, then slipped her chilly fingertips into the expandable waistband of the tuxedo pants I was still wearing. She shook her wind-draggled hair out of her face so she could see me squarely. 'I don't think so. My man is attractively nuts. Impulsive. A practical joker. But he's in touch. Really. In the end.'

'Wrong guy,' I said. I touched my cheek one more time. 'What's going to happen to you when the money doesn't come back? Huh?'

She kept watching me with the same intent light, but I could see her beginning to melt down inside. Her bravery was fading.

'Answer me,' I said.

'I'm in big trouble. Everybody will ask what I knew. And when.'

I put my arms around her. 'Brushy, how could you have been such a chump?'

'Don't talk to me like that,' she said. She laid her head on the silly frills of my shirt. 'It makes me sad when you pretend you're mean.'

I was going to tell her again she had the wrong guy, but went instead to the front closet and groped in the gummy pocket of Lyle's leather police jacket where he hid his cigarettes. I brought the pack back for us both. I asked her what she had in mind.

'What about the truth?' she asked. 'Isn't that an alternative? Telling the truth?'

'Sure, I'll just give Gino a jingle: "Pardon me, Pigeyes, you got the wrong guy behind bars. I'd like to swap places with Jake." Gino's already hoping for that.'

'But doesn't somebody have to file a complaint? I mean, what if it's all right with TN? I can explain this to Tad. Mack, I know Tad. Give me twenty minutes with him. He'll love you for scaring Jake this way. He'll think it was just what Jake deserved, having someone turn the tables on him for a while.'

'Twenty minutes, huh?'

Her face fell. 'Go to h.e.l.l,' she said. She sat on Nora's old rose-printed sofa and scrutinized the spotted meal-colored rug, caught between anger and some scandalized sense of her life.

'What's your deal with this guy?'

'Not what you think.'

'So what is it? Pals? Sodality meetings?'

She went through a retinue of reluctant gestures - evasive looks, nervous fretting with her cigarette - always committed to protecting her secrets. Finally, she sighed.

'Tad's asked me to be the new General Counsel at TN. I've been thinking about it for months.'

'You replace Jake?'

'Right. He wants somebody whose independence he trusts. And who'll spread TN's business around a lot more over time.'

Tad of course had not arrived at the top by accident. He knew corporate politics, too, and this move was slick. Wash and his coterie on the TN board wouldn't have stood in his way if Jake's replacement came from G & G.

'Martin doesn't think the firm can survive without a big share of TN's work,' I told her.

'Neither do I. Not in the long run. That's why I was reluctant.'

Jake was gone now, though. Tad would make the change anyway. Brushy's course was clear. I saw the future.

'And what happens to Mack under the Brushy plan for the world, with Emilia as General Counsel of TN and G & G a wreck at sea?'

'You're a lawyer. A good one. You'll find work. Or' -she smiled somewhat, the shy-sly routine - 'you can be kept.' She got up and put her arms around me again.

I still had my cigarette in my mouth and I drew back with the smoke in my eyes.

'Wrong guy,' I told her. I broke away and headed upstairs. She followed to the bedroom eventually. She considered my canvas, the Vermeer mounted on the easel, before turning to watch me pack.

'Where are you going?'

'To the train. Which will take me to the plane. Which will take me far away.' 'Mack.'

'Look, Brushy, I told you. My pig-eyed former colleague, Detective Dimonte, already smells bulls.h.i.t in the air. He said so when I called him.'

'You can handle him. You've handled him for weeks now. Years.'

'Not now. He's flat-out said he thinks I'm dirty. He's thick witted but he's like a cow. He always ends up in the right place.' I went to the easel. I thumbed through my sketchbook and threw it in the bag.

'Why, Mack?'

'Because I'd rather live rich and free than in the penitentiary.'

'No, I mean, why? The whole thing. How could you do this? How could you think you wouldn't get caught?'

'You think everybody's as smart as you are? The only reason you figured it out is because screw-loose here ran his mouth. You really believe you'd have seen it if I hadn't told you from the jump about how much I'd love to steal the money myself or how much I hate Jake?' 'But don't you feel bad?'

'At moments. But you know, once it's done, it's done.'

'Look.' She started again. She put her hands together. She lifted her pert rough-skinned face. She tried to sound even and rational, to look persuasive. 'You wanted to make a point. You wanted to get Jake, all of us, you wanted to hit us where we live. And you did it. You felt ignored, undervalued, wounded. Deservingly. And -'

'Oh, stop.'

'- you want to get caught.'

'Spare me the psychoa.n.a.lysis. What I wanted was to do it. There's such a thing as infantile pleasure, Dr Freud. And I got mine. And now I'm doing the adult and responsible thing and saving my a.s.s. Just like you're going to do very shortly when they ask you to account for five and a half million dollars which you said would be repatriated tomorrow.' I pointed at her. 'Remember the privilege,' I said. 'Attorney-client.'

'I don't understand,' she said and bounced herself off the bed in sheer frustration. 'You have to hate everyone. You do, don't you? Everyone. All of us.'

'Don't manipulate.'

'Come on. Don't you see how angry you are? My G.o.d. You're Samson pulling down the temple.'

'Please don't tell me about my own moods!' I'm sure for a moment I looked violent. 'Why would I be angry, Brush? Because I had such great choices? Should I have wh.o.r.ed around like Martin to cover Jake's hind end? Just so Jake could ignore me while Pagnucci pushed me toward an ice floe, after I've surrendered my adult years to this place? I mean, how does Pagnucci put it when he bothers to justify himself? "The marketplace speaking"? I forget the part of the theory, Brushy, which explains why the people the market f.u.c.ks over are supposed to let the tea party continue for everyone else. So I showed some initiative, entrepreneur-ship, self-reliance. I helped myself. Those are free market concepts too.'

She didn't say anything for a while. I took off my pants and my shirt and hopped around in my underwear, putting on clean slacks and a pullover. I wore my athletic shoes. Ready to run.

'What about your son?'

'What about him? He'll fend for himself. Or live off his mother. It's high time, frankly, for either one.' 'You're twisted.' 'Sick,' I said. 'Hostile.' 'Granted.'

'Cruel,' she said. 'You made love to me.'

'And meant it.' I looked at her. 'Each time. Not something every fella could say to you.'

'Oh.' She closed her eyes and suffered. She wrapped her long white gloves around herself. 'Romance,' she said.

'Look, Brush, I've seen ahead of the curve from the start. I told you this was a bad idea. I think you're a great human being. Honest Injun. I'd share your bed and your company for the foreseeable future. But Pigeyes is now on the scene. So that leaves only one alternative: You have a pa.s.sport, you're welcome to come. As I've always said, there's enough for two. The more the merrier. Wanna start a new life? My impression is that you're pretty attached to the one you have here.'

I held out both hands. She just looked at me. The idea, I could tell, had never crossed her mind.

'No sweat,' I told her. 'You're doing the right thing.

Take it from your old buddy Mack. Cause I'll tell you the real problem, what I keep coming back to: Honey, you ain't gonna respect me in the morning, not when you think this whole thing through.'

She eventually said, 'I could visit.'

'Sure. Tell Mr K. He'll love hearing that from his new General Counsel: I'm going to visit that crackpot who destroyed my law firm and looted your company. Face it, Brush, your life is here. But hey, prove me wrong. I think you've got ties. And' - I closed the case - 'I've got to go.'

I grabbed her by the shoulders and kissed her quickly, hubby speeding off to work. She sat on the bed and put her head in her hands. I knew she was too tough to cry, but I said something anyway.

'Let's not be mushy, Brushy.' I whined it. I made it rhyme. I winked at her from the doorway and told her goodbye. I saw Lyle down the hall, dressed only in the jeans in which he'd fallen asleep, groping to make something of the voices. Maybe he'd been roused to check out his dream that it was Mom and Dad, home again and happy, one of those dream things that never really happened. I stood on the threshold considering them both, enduring one of those moments. Up to now I'd been beset by great emotional constipation. Pour me a couple of drinks and I could bawl my eyes out, but in the present I'd felt smug and stuck on myself. Only with the actual instant of departure at hand was the pain beginning to mount.

'G.o.d, Mack,' said Brushy, 'please, please don't do this. Think about what you're doing to yourself. I'll help you. You know I will. You know how hard I've tried. I mean, at least, Mack, think about me.'