"Yes. A debt."

"That may be a problem, then, Kimberly, because I don't do collection work anymore."

She looked at her tablet, riffled through it quickly. "Are you sure?"

"Quite sure. Last collection case I ended up with a bullet in my ribs."

"Oogly," she said. "Did it hurt?"

"Oh yes."

"Why would someone want to shoot you?"

"Well, Kimberly, take away a man's money, he gets upset. Take away a man's wife, he gets down right pissy. But take away a man's car, then you've got trouble on your hands."

"Still, someone has to do this case and we figured you were just the man for the job." She gave me another exhorting punch.

"What is that, that fist in the air thing you do?" I said.

"You don't like that?"

"No. It's something they do to old men before they wheel them off to get their prostates removed."

"Helloo. TMI. Can we avoid the prostate metaphors? I don't even want to think about mine. So okay, my bad, no more of the fist thing." She did it again. "But let me show you what we have." She reached into her portfolio, pulled out a legal-sized document, handed it to me with great care like it was the Magna Carta itself.

A note, executed by one Derek Manley, promising to pay the First Philadelphia Bank and Trust one hundred thousand dollars, plus interest, plus collection fees, plus court costs if required.

"Is this the Derek Manley who owns the trucking company down by the stadium?"

"Do you know him?"

"Only by reputation, and most of it bad, by the way. But this debt is owed to First Philadelphia."

"Mr. Manley has already... What's the word for failing to pay?"

"Defaulted."

"No, that's not it. Whatever, my boss bought the note and now wants you to collect it." She gave me a frozen smile before reaching again into her portfolio. "Here is the transfer document."

I looked it over. It was dated about a week ago. A firm named Jacopo Financing had bought the note at a steep discount, which probably wasn't steep enough, considering Manley had already failed to make a number of payments and was probably flat-on-his-back broke. The note allowed the holder to confess judgment without filing a legal case in the event of a default, which meant the only issue facing Jacopo was finding Derek Manley's assets and seizing them.

"It looks pretty straightforward, but like I said, I don't do collections anymore."

"I have the retainer thing you said you needed."

"It doesn't make a difference."

"Is there a magic word or something I need to say?"

"No."

"How about please? Please take the case."

"No."

"Please, please, please."

"Well, Kimberly, in that case... no."

She stared at me for a moment, something welling in her eyes. "What about Joseph Parma?"

"What about him?"

"I thought he was your client."

"He was."

"And you're just going to sit there and do nothing?"

"I don't understand. Are Joseph's murder and this collection case somehow related?"

"I'm not allowed to say."

"You just did."

"Did not."

"Yes, you did, Kimberly. And if you want anything from me, you are going to have to tell me who you are working for, why he cares one whit about Joseph Parma, and how all of that is related to this Derek Manley. Whatever game is being played is no longer amusing. Tell me what I need to know or go home."

She looked at me for a long moment and her jaw trembled, just a bit, but still it trembled, and her eyes glistened, and I remembered what Skink had said about her. I felt like a cad. And then, like a faucet was turned on, the water started running.

"I am in so much trouble," she said, after the tissues had been brought in and the fluids had been wiped away. "I am so dead. And it's not just you. I'm the vice president in charge of external relations and external relations are a total poodle. The caterer got the order wrong and brought in salmon sate when my boss is, like, deathly allergic to fish, and he thought it was chicken and his head swelled so much it almost exploded. Then the carpet cleaner used a chemical that had my boss breaking out in hives and scratching like he was a dog with fleas. And now he gives me one more simple thing to do, hire you to collect a simple debt for a ten-thousand-dollar retainer, and you won't take the case."

"How much was that retainer?"

She just waved her hand as if it didn't matter, as if the amount wasn't even worth discussing in the midst of her failures.

"You have to tell me more, Kimberly," I said.

"Ten thousand dollars," she said, glancing up to track my reaction.

"You have to tell me more about the case."

"I can't. He didn't tell me anything more. I am so fired. I'm going to be, like, the vice president of external relations at McDonald's. Can we super-size that for you? Oh God. For this I could have gone to a party school."

"Maybe I can help, but you need to help me too. Let's start with this. I know you work for a man named Eddie Dean."

"Huh? How did you-"

"So the question is, does Mr. Dean speak with a British accent?"

She stared at me for a moment. "No. Why would he? Helloo. He's from California." Her hand slammed into her mouth. "But don't let him know that I told you or-"

"What is the relation between Mr. Dean and Joey Parma?"

"I don't know. He didn't tell me. But it's something that happened a long time ago, I got that."

"Is it about a suitcase?"

"No. That's ridiculous. What would luggage have to do with anything?"

"That's what I'm asking you."

"I never heard anything about luggage."

"Okay, one final question. What does Derek Manley have to do with any of this?"

"He called him."

"Who did?"

"Mr. Parma. He called him. Derek Manley. Mr. Parma called him right before he called you."

"And Mr. Dean got hold of the phone records and found this out."

"Yes."

"And bought this note from First Pennsylvania."

"Yes."

"Now I understand," I said. And I did, understand. I understood exactly why Eddie Dean had bought Derek Manley's debt and why Eddie Dean's vice president of external affairs had brought that debt to me and why Kimberly Blue had broken down to great effect in front of me all so that I would take this little collection case that was not so little and not so much about a collection after all. I didn't know yet the why behind all the whys, but I knew what Eddie Dean wanted from me and I was ready, now, to give it to him.

"All right, Kimberly," I said. "I'll take that check."

"Does that mean?"

"Just hand it over."

"Oh, Victor, Victor, I am soo... soo..."

"Kimberly, let's play like the shampoo, all right? No more tears. You don't need them anymore, they did their job already. Just give me the check and wait here for a moment."

A check for ten thousand dollars, from the account of Jacopo Financing, signed by Kimberly Blue, made out to Derringer and Carl. Ten thousand dollars. I held it in both hands as I soberly left my office, closed the door, and then skipped like a bunny over to Beth.

"Will this do?" I said to her after I dropped the precious little paper on her desk.

She picked it up, examined it closely, let an expression of wonderment lift her features. "How'd we get this?"

"A retainer. For a collection case."

"We don't do collections anymore."

"I made an exception. It has something to do with Joey. We'll both be working on it, doubling up the billables."

"Are you sure?"

"If you and I, with a steady effort, can't blow out this retainer before the first of the month, then we ought just give up law and become orthodontists."

"How very nineties of you, Victor."

"Why don't you take this to the bank and then pay Ellie and Skink and the landlord. And if there is still something left over, maybe I can pay the cable bill. I miss my ESPN. This is just the start, Beth. Didn't I tell you? Didn't I?"

When I returned to my office, my expression was suitably somber, the tone of my voice was suitably businesslike. "All right, Miss Blue. We have decided to accept Jacopo's representation."

"Oh, Victor, thank you. I am so relieved."

"Yes, I'm sure that you are. Tell your boss that I am on the case. I'll confess judgment right away, just like the note provides, and I'll set up an expedited deposition of Mr. Manley and I'll have him in here within the week and I'll ask him all I need to ask him. Tell your boss I am on the case and I will take care of everything."

Chapter.

16.

I WAS FEELING chipper about things when next I visited my father. I had actual leads in the Joey Parma investigation, I had a paying client in Jacopo Financing, and, for the first time in weeks, there was money in my bank account. Not enough, yet, to get the cable back on, but it was close. I could barely suppress my excitement.

Let me tell you something true: There's not much in this life that can't be cured by the cable guy.

And then to top it off, I had engineered another run-in with Dr. Mayonnaise, the chance meeting in the hospital halls that was not chance at all. But I did it subtly, oh so subtly.

"What are you doing on this floor, Mr. Carl. You're father's on four."

"This isn't the fourth floor?"

So we had gotten to talking and, since she was new in town, we had gotten to talking about restaurants.

"You know a good Chinese place?" she had asked.

"Sang Kee Duck House," I said. "In Chinatown."

"Do they serve anything besides duck?"

"I think so. You want to, maybe, I don't know, maybe, try it sometime?"