"Even so, I guess I felt like I was still on Erno's string. Went overseas on vacation and scored in Amsterdam and just fell in with the drugs again. When I got taken down this time, Erno quit on me. Put his own self on the line and this was how I repaid him. That was the speech. I was in medium security in Jensenville and he didn't come visit once.

"I didn't really see how bad off I was until I got out in 1990. I only knew two things, really"slangin dope and travel agenting. Black and white, in my mind, if the truth be told. And I couldn't do either. One more narcotics conviction, I was Triple X and gone for life. And I'd lost my travel license when I got convicted in '89. Should have just moved, but young folks, you know how it is, figured I'd beat the system. Called myself Faro Cole, faked the degree information, and sat the license exam all over again."

"Ah," said Muriel. Collins responded with a rueful little smile.

"Got a job at Mensa Travel, strictly commission, and it was the same as before, tryin hard and no money. Well, that thing with the hand tickets had worked okay the first time. Just had to find somebody who could scratch them off the books the right way. Now, I couldn't go over there to TN myself"Erno would have run me out"but I was hangin in the wrong place one night and in comes Gandolph, tryin like always to unload something somebody or another stole. I knew who he was. I'd worked out at the airport right after high school for a couple of months. He used to buy weed off me. By then, he couldn't begin to reckon my name, but I figured, since he always knew if something had come loose of its owner, he might know a ticket agent out at DuSable who'd like to work something. Promised him if it cooked, we'd look after him. That's how I got hooked up with Luisa.

"She didn't want any part of it at first. How I convinced her finally was when I told her Erno had done the same thing. That had some traction with her. She wasn't gonna be Erno's fool or anybody else's."

Muriel asked when this was.

"Oh, we must have started in January of '91. That's when they all got killed, right, '91? I'd say January, then. And it went along fine till I ran into Gandolph in that same place, Lamplight, and it turned out she wasn't givin him anything from her end. Might be she didn't really get it that she was supposed to cover him. Man, I know I told her, but she hadn't done it, and he went all over the airport runnin his mouth, till she finally give him her cameo, just to shut him up while she tried to get together what she owed him."

"You're saying Luisa basically p.a.w.ned the cameo to him?" asked Muriel.

"Exactly," said Collins. "Said it was like a family heirloom. Course it was too late, cause with Squirrel mouthin off, Erno had fallen to this now and he was trippin. Soon as he heard my name, he knew darn well what was goin down and he got up in my face. He wasn't gonna have me stealin right under his nose, in his shop, specially not as he was the one who taught me how to do it. He told me to quit, or he'd stop it, and next I heard, he'd had Luisa searched for some phony reason""

"Drugs," offered Larry.

"Exactly," said Collins. "Drugs. Said she had drugs on her. Maybe Erno thought since she was mixed up with me, that we were doin that, too. But she wasn't anybody to treat that way. After that, man, it was on. She wanted money anyway for Gandolph, so she could get her cameo back.

"Early July, she give me the word. Said she'd been real careful, but she had some tickets stashed. She wasn't worried any about Erno, either. Said she'd hide those tickets so wasn't anyone would find them, not to worry. Fourth of July, n.o.body around, she figured that was the time.

"So come to July 3rd, actually July 4th, past midnight, we had a meet at Paradise. She wasn't in the door two seconds when Erno runs in behind her. He'd been watching her error reports, sneaking around, following her. 'You had it now, lady,' he says to her. 'I gave you a chance.' Looks at me and says, 'You get the h.e.l.l out of here. And as for you,' he says to Luisa, 'you hand me those tickets you got stuffed in your underwear and write out a resignation right now, or I'm calling the cops.'

"Luisa, man"she was tough. She didn't take it from n.o.body. 'F you,' she says. 'You ain callin no po-lice. You call the po-lice on me, I'll tell them you did the same thing.'"

Lifting a hand, Collins shifted. The sun was straight in his eyes. Jackson stood to rearrange the blinds. Either recovering his place, or responding to the memory of what he was describing, Collins was still for a second.

"See there, when she said that to him, that was what you'd have to call the turning point. Cause Erno, it didn't even enter his mind that I'd have let on about him. He just figured I'd turned on Luisa. But he would never think I'd tell that kind of secret. Not to somebody who wasn't family.

"Erno"he had a temper. Get all red, eyes like saucers. And you could see right then, he was ready to kill somebody. For real. Only it wasn't Luisa he meant to fade. It was me. If he'd had a gun in his hand, he'd have shot me dead for sure. But he didn't. Not yet. He just started busting on both of us, screamin and what not, and Gus came over and told him to get his b.u.t.t out of there, and Erno wasn't hearin it. That didn't go on too long before Gus came back with his pistol.

"After that, it was pretty much like my uncle said in court. Erno told Gus he wouldn't shoot anybody, and Luisa grabbed that pistol out of Gus's hand, and Erno went after it. I don't think it was as much of an accident as Erno made out that he shot her. To me, it looked like he had that gun full out of her hand. But it was all so dang fast. Bang! That sound, man, it was like it was still shaking the restaurant five minutes later. And there's Luisa, looking down at this hole right through the center of her, and smoke, smoke floating up, like it was coming off a cigarette. For a second, none of us knew what to do except stand there and look at her, it was so peculiar.

"Finally, Gus snapped out of it and went for the phone. Erno told him to stop and Gus didn't stop and Erno put him down, like he was shootin a horse."

"And you?" asked Larry of Collins.

"Me?"

"What were you doing?"

"Man, I'd heard all kind of woofin and carryin on, but truth is, I hadn't never seen somebody killed. It was terrible. Truly terrible. All I was thinkin at first was, Now, how am I gonna get him to take this back? It was so crazy, I couldn't make myself believe it was gonna last. Like things just had to snap back to normal. Then it comes to you, that isn't gonna happen.

"After Erno shot Gus I bust out crying and my uncle, man, started in hollerin. 'Whose fault is this, anyway, Collins? Whose fault?' Right then, I figured I was next, and I even started lookin out the windows, tellin myself there were two shots now, somebody had to hear and call the police. But it was the Fourth of July, n.o.body's thinking nothin 'cept firecrackers.

"Then Erno saw the last one. Hiding. Poor dude, he was under a table. Erno pointed the gun and marched him down to the freezer. Then I heard the shot. Didn't sound like the first two, for some reason. Something worse about it. For Erno, too." After he came up and looked at me, all that anger, that was done. He just sat there wasted and told me what to do. We were gonna make it look like a robbery. 'Get this.' 'Wipe that.' I did it all."

"Was he threatening you?" Muriel asked.

"He still had the gun, if that's what you mean. But from the look of him, I wasn't thinkin anymore he was intending to shoot me. Truth of it is that it probably didn't ever occur to him that I wasn't gonna do what he said, cause it didn't ever occur to me either. It was just family," said Collins. He stopped and took a heavy breath over that thought.

"And it was you who dragged the bodies downstairs?" Larry asked.

"Right. Cryin the whole time, too." Collins chucked his face in Larry's direction. "You thinkin about those footprints?"

"That I am." Forensics had matched Paul Judson's shoes with the footprints trailing through the b.l.o.o.d.y drag patterns left by the bodies.

"When I come up the last time, Erno saw that my slip-ons were soaked through with blood. He said, 'You can't go out on the street in those. Go downstairs and see which of them dead men got shoes that might fit you.' That was the first time it even came to me to say no to him. 'I ain putting my foot in no dead man's shoe.' Can you imagine? We actually carried on about that for a while. But I finally did like he said, same as the rest of it."

Collins pointed at Larry. "You go check those shoes that came off the third one, the businessman. Nice pearl-gray pump, I-talian. Faccione, the brand, I think. Too big for him, too. I couldn't ever believe n.o.body noticed those shoes. What businessman goes round in a pearl-gray pump?"

Muriel could see something moving behind Larry's hard expression: the shoes were clicking. It seemed to be hitting home with him that Collins was probably telling a large chunk of the truth. She hadn't had much doubt of that for some time now.

"We were ready to leave outta there, already at the front door, when Erno snaps his fingers. 'Hold this,' he says. He had everything, wallets and jewelry, bank deposit, the gun, all of it wrapped up in one of Gus's ap.r.o.ns. He sort of tiptoed down the stairs and when he comes back up, he's got a johnny in his hand."

"A condom, you mean?" Muriel asked.

"Exactly. Used, too. After everything else"" Collins just shook his head several times. "Anyway, Erno says, 'Stuffed those tickets up her behind. Couldn't have found them with a miner's light, if I hadn't seen the edge of this here.' She had maybe fifteen tickets rolled tight in that rubber."

Collins for the first time looked back to Anne-Marie. Behind him, his wife had sat with her mouth compressed against the heel of her palm, appearing, to Muriel's eye, as if she was doing her best not to react. But when Collins turned to her, she responded at once. She reached out and the two sat holding hands for a second.

"You okay?" Aires asked his client.

Collins wanted water. They took a break. Everyone needed a minute. Muriel searched out Larry's eye, but he looked funky and wrapped up in himself. Out in the hallway, waiting for the john, Muriel asked Tommy Molto what he thought. Molto picked with a fingernail at spots of tomato sauce on his shirt and tie, and said he didn't know what to think. Muriel wasn't sure either.

When they returned, Anne-Marie had slid her chair beside Collins's and was holding his free hand. The other was still gripping his Bible. After a minute or two of fiddling with the tape recorders to be sure they were running, Muriel gave the date and time, then asked Collins what happened when they left Paradise.

"I followed Erno back to his house, and sat with him in his car. He'd been through some changes that night. We both had. At Paradise, he'd been outta-his-mind angry, then all blown away and subdued. Now he was just flat-out scared, trying to think out every angle not to get caught. He had one lecture after another for me. Make sure and mention to some folks how him and me went out for a pop last night. Don't ever get myself inebriated and start braggin about all this to my homes or some lady I was after. The big thing on his mind, though, was how to get rid of that ap.r.o.n full of stuff in his trunk"the gun, the wallets, the jewelry, it was all in there. It was past three by now and both of us were just too messed up and worn out to deal. I didn't want to have no more to do with any of this. And Erno was flat paranoid. All he could see was how we were bound to get caught, if we went to toss the ap.r.o.n in the river, or built a big fire and burned it all, or buried it in the Public Forest. There'd be light by five. But there was a toolshed in his backyard with a dirt floor"if we dug there, no way anybody was gonna see us. And so we each shoveled till we were halfway to China and threw that ap.r.o.n in there. He said he was gonna come up with a better plan when he calmed down, but I knew the both of us would be happy never to look at any of that again. Then he walked me to my car and right there on the street reached up and hugged me. That hadn't happened since I was ten, and in the middle of all that craziness, maybe the craziest thing of all was how good that felt. Murdered three folks and hugged me. I drove off cryin like a child.

"After that night, there just wasn't a way for me to be right with myself. I was done bein Faro for a while, case the police figured out anything 'bout the tickets. It wasn't a week, and I was back in to dopin. Erno tried hard to stop me, but with time to think, I wasn't havin any more of him. One day I'm at Lamplight and there's Gandolph. This has to be two months after all this mess. And with twenty dudes around, he reaches into his pocket, and wrapped in this ratty piece of tissue, there's Luisa's cameo. I knew it straight out. I'd seen it on her neck.

'Faro,' he says to me"that's all he knew to call me"'Faro, man what-all'm I gone do with this thing now? Ain worth nothin to n.o.body else.'

I'm like, 'Word up, n.i.g.g.e.r, you gone put yourself under. You best get rid of that. Po-lice be sayin you the one who busted a cap in her.'

He's like, 'How they do that, when I ain done nothin? I'm in mind to find her kin. They pay good for this here, now that she dead. They owe me, cause of how she held out on me.'

I'm like, 'Do what you have to, brother, but maybe you oughta hold up with that till somebody else is under the weight for dropping her down six. And I don't want to never hear nothin over them tickets.'

He says, 'Ain no chance of that.'

"Uncle Erno, man, he just was trippin when I told him. He was lookin around for Gandolph after that, gonna roust him and get that piece off him before he made trouble for himself and the both of us, but Erno didn't ever find him, I guess. Wasn't quite winter yet, so Gandolph wasn't hangin at the airport."

Muriel made a sound. Winter. As carefully as Erdai had papered over Collins's role, he'd missed that detail when he'd invented his own encounter with Gandolph and the cameo, and she'd nailed him on the witness stand. It was the first instant she was certain he was lying.

"Pretty soon, I had trouble enough on my own," Collins said. "Second of October I got set up on a big buy-bust. Videotape and everything. Cops knew they had me bad, even when they were shovin me in the cruiser. 'Third time for you, boy. Take a good look out the window, cause you ain never gonna see the street again for the rest of your life.' They were cold. But I had to give them something. I would have started in talking on the way to the station, if I didn't figure those Gangster Outlaws I was kickin down to would kill me first night in the jail.

"Anyway, couple hours back inside, and I'd gotten it in my head that this was all Uncle Erno's fault. If he didn't go and shoot those people, I wouldn't be jammed up like this. And if I stooled on my uncle, wouldn't be any g.a.n.g.b.a.n.gers to kill me for doing that. Erno though, he was a smart one. Knew d.a.m.n well what I was fixin to do. He was the first visit I got.

"He's like, 'You told them anything?' I was pretending I didn't understand, but he wouldn't let me get away with that. 'Oh, don't bulls.h.i.t a bulls.h.i.tter. I know what you're thinking. And I'm not gonna tell you not to do it for my sake. But I will say that for yours. You tell them the truth, they'll put you right in the middle of it. Whose shoes are on that dead man? Who was stealing tickets with that girl? You're facing life for the dope. They offer fifty, sixty years for murder, you gotta take it. That's not what you want, is it?' Course not. And I'd rather not blame my uncle, specially when I was lookin at him. And he was right anyhow. Erno knew how the cops worked.

"Said he had a better idea. Put all of the blame on that poor lame Gandolph. He'd been runnin his mouth 'forehand how he was gonna kill Luisa anyway. Sort of made himself suspect number one. Just had to lead the po-lice the right way. I wasn't sure Squirrel'd be silly enough to keep that cameo around after I warned him, but Erno said not to worry, he had all that stuff still buried under his toolshed at home, worse came to worst, he'd figure some way to put a piece of that in Gandolph's hand, say they discovered some stash of his at the airport. Never had to, of course, because that poor hook was still holdin on to the cameo when you-all found him. Still gonna get himself the money he was owed. Dude that soft, once an idea gets into his head, you can't get it out." Collins shook his face in grim wonder.

"Only thing is, I couldn't ever believe anybody would look at that skinny little Squirrel and figure him for a killer. 'Dog'll do it to any b.i.t.c.h he finds,' Erno told me, 'once he smells heat.' My uncle knew the po-lice."

Muriel glanced over to see how Larry had taken that observation, but he was zoned again, staring through the blinds at the parking lot. The truth, as far as Muriel could see, was that Erno had figured things pretty well. His biggest risk was that when Squirrel was arrested, he would start talking about the tickets in order to explain the cameo. But apparently even Gandolph realized that story put him in too deep. Threatening Luisa was way too close to killing her. And even if Squirrel had coughed all of that up, Erno and Collins both knew the police would have a hard time finding Faro.

"That's why you said at the jail in '91 that you'd never testify, right?" she asked Collins. "When you told us about the cameo?"

"Right," said Collins. "Couldn't do that. Rommy would have recognized me as Faro straightaway. No way to keep the whole tale from comin out then. But it worked. I got my ten, and Uncle Erno, he just drove on by like it was an accident on the highway.

"My uncle was good to me all the time I was inside, come visit, packages, whatnot, lecturing me to make the most of this chance when I got out. That came late '96. Old Faro, n.o.body had tumbled to that, so I was Faro again, ready to go back into travel agenting, but the truth is I wasn't on the street forty-eight hours 'fore I had a pipe in my hand. Everything the same. I was strung out, Erno wouldn't even speak my name. Only thing, I was afraid to start in slanging again. I knew it was life for sure if I got busted with quant.i.ty. Couldn't give up my uncle on the murders this time, cause I'd put Gandolph inside already and there'd be n.o.body to believe a different tale.

"One night I was hurtin bad. Needed to cop and didn't even have those moths in my pocket they show in cartoons. And it come to me that Erno had said all that stuff that we took out of Paradise that night was still under his toolshed. I went over there with a shovel and started in diggin till I found that ap.r.o.n. Cloth was full of holes, but everything was inside. All I had in mind to do was sell some of it"the watches and rings"so I could buy a couple bottles, but I saw that gun in there and it come in my head that if I had that, I could shake big money out of my uncle. Might be that his fingerprints were still on the gun, so he'd have no choice, gonna have to give what he owed me. I was back to that. How he owed me. Owed me and owed me.

"My aunt came home and said he was down at Ike's. I run in there holdin that gun by the barrel, so I didn't wipe off any prints Erno'd left on the handle. I was screamin about how he messed me up and owed me. I wasn't thinkin too good, naturally enough. Half the folks in that place were po-lice and armed, and they all had their gats out and pointed straight at me ten seconds after I said my first word.

"'Gimme that thing,' Erno says and takes the pistol straight out of my hand, pushed me outside, trying to talk sense, how I was gonna get killed carryin on like this, and couldn't put those killings on him now that I put them on Gandolph. I said, 'h.e.l.l, that gun probably got your fingerprints all over it.' 'What of it?' he says. 'Twenty cops just saw me take it out of your hand.' He was right, too, probably, but it was the same old doo-doo so far as I was concerned, him right and white, and me black and back. 'Yeah,' I say, 'I got the rest of where that come from back at your house and a hole under your shed where it been, and you ain walkin from what you done this time, I'm goin back in there, tell everybody you know what a murderin coward you been.'

"Erno, like I said, he didn't care for surprises. Not at all. I was sashayin back inside, and he was screamin out to me, Don't do it, don't do it. If I'd been in a better frame of mind, I surely would have remembered Gus. But I didn't. Anyway, last I recall was goin through the door. Don't even remember the bang. Just the light. I saw Jesus' face that night. I truly did. I heard His voice. I was layin on that floor dyin, I think, but wherever I was, I knew I was all right now.

"And I have been. I went down to Atlanta not long after I was out of the hospital. Been there since. Had my life and finally done right.

"Now, course, it was all turned around. Erno was inside and I was outside. I was the one goin to visit and tellin him how Jesus could be lookin out for him, too. Might be he heard me, I was never sure. But somethin come to him once he knew he was sick. Couldn't just die with all those sins on him. I went to see him not long after New Year's, when he got the word about how bad the cancer was. I was tryin to offer comfort and he just looks at me in the middle of stuff, and says, 'They're gonna execute that poor moron pretty soon.' I knew what he meant. Wasn't the first time we'd talked about it. 'We can't let them do that,' says Erno.

"Do what you have to," I told him.

"No," he says, "I ain gonna have shot you through the back to save your life and mine just to put you in the middle of all this now. It's still the same as I said"the po-lice will never believe you weren't in on the shooting. I'll tell what needs to be told. Not too sure I can get anybody to listen. But I'm gonna try. You just keep your mouth shut. Call Lawyer Aires. Fifth Amendment all the way." Collins looked up from his lap and his light eyes found Muriel's again with the same directness as when he'd started.

"That's what happened," he told her.

It was one of those days when it was just going to get hotter until the sun set. Even at 4 p.m., as she stood with Molto and Larry in the parking lot outside Aires's office, she could feel the blacktop softening under her feet. She'd left her sungla.s.ses in her car and she squinted at both men. Facing the tyrannical sun, you didn't have to wonder why people had worshiped it.

"So?" she asked.

Each was mopey.

"I need to think about it," said Molto. "I want to go over the case file. Give me twenty-four. Let's all have a conference on Friday."

Larry and Molto made at once for their cars to escape the heat. Muriel walked to Larry's Concorde before he left. She could feel a touch of the air-conditioned cool inside when he let down the window.

"We never had that talk," she told him.

"No, we didn't." He had put on his Oakleys and she couldn't see his eyes, which was probably just as well. "Any point?"

"I have some things to say."

He shrugged. "I'll be at that house tomorrow night," he said, "putting together a punch list for my crew. Stop by for a beer if you like."

"There or square," she said.

He pulled out without looking back at her.

She opened her car and was still outside, letting the heat escape, when Jackson toddled from the gla.s.s doors toward his Cadillac, his briefcase under his arm. He was in a hurry.

"Got a date?" Muriel asked.

Spry and lively, Jackson nonetheless showed an additional spark when he answered, "As a matter of fact. Taking a fine lady to the Symphony in the Park." He'd been a widower for two or three years now.

Muriel asked how Collins was doing. He was in his wife's arms when they'd left.

"He's in there prayin, like he oughta be doin. Take him some time, but he'll be all right. That was the G.o.d's truth you just heard, Muriel. I hope you're smart enough to know that."

"If G.o.d wants the job, Jackson, I won't even bother trying. But otherwise I'm going to have to figure this out on my own."

"Don't you play with me, Muriel. There wasn't a word that young man spoke that didn't ring true. I'm not even gonna worry about you thinkin otherwise." To start his car and lower the windows, Jackson leaned over the column. After touching the wheel, he cursed the heat and took a second to lick his thumb, but that didn't stop him from wavin a finger at Muriel when he turned her wave again.

"One thing you should know, Muriel. I been representing that young man since he was a juvenile. Bad a hoodlum as all the rest, but Erno, may he rest in peace, he kept up sayin, 'He's all right, he's all right, he's gonna be okay.' Never can tell, Muriel, which of them will come around. You folks don't even care to try these days. Lock 'em up as long as you can, as many as you can, even kill 'em if they give you a chance."

"Did I just hear you use the word 'hoodlum,' Jackson?"

"Hoodlum or not, you can't ever give up on a human being," Jackson said. "You know why? Because there is just no point in that. Can't be any reason to what we're doing here, if we're gonna give up on people."

If you made Jackson Aires the P.A. tomorrow, he'd condemn half his clients faster than he swatted flies. But he never saw a side he wouldn't take, as long as it put him opposite a prosecutor.

"Enjoy your evening, Jackson."

"I certainly intend to." He allowed himself a wicked laugh, then he sat stiffly on the Cadillac's red leather front seat with his feet still in the parking lot, using his hands to drag his legs beneath the wheel. Apparently, his back was giving him trouble, but whatever his infirmities, Jackson was not too old for love. n.o.body was. He revved the engine enthusiastically. With Larry's recent departure, Muriel again was dragged down in an undertow of regret. A few days ago she'd been wondering if she might be willing to trade everything for love. The bizarre ironies of the way this case was working out suddenly pierced her. Somehow it had ended up winner take all. Jackson and Arthur were going to walk their clients and have love to boot. Muriel would get nothing.

"Have you heard the latest on this case?" she asked Jackson before he could close his window.

"What's that?"

"Arthur Raven and Gillian Sullivan. In the chapel of love."

"No," said Jackson. He emitted the same high cackle he had a second before. "How long is that goin on?"

Muriel shrugged.

"Doesn't that beat everything?" Jackson asked. "Arthur Raven and the Junkie Judge."

"The who?"

"Oh, that's just what I called her. The Junkie Judge. Gillian the Junkie Judge. I had several clients who swore they saw her coppin out on the street when she was still on the bench."

"Crack?"