"Well, she's cuter than him. I'll be right back."

I went down to the cafeteria, bought a cup of coffee, a soggy egg salad sandwich, a bag of chips. I sat down at a table and had my dinner. I took my time, I was in no hurry. I chewed the egg salad very carefully. I ate the chips one at a time instead of in handfuls. I spent a long while deciding on which color Jell-O for dessert.

When I slipped back into my father's room, he was lying peacefully, asleep, his wet breaths rising and falling softly like the waves of a distant ocean. I spoke to him and he didn't respond, but I didn't want to leave him just yet. I turned on the television. The Sixers' game was in the third quarter, they were up by three. It looked to be a pretty good game, a game I couldn't get on my currently cable-free TV. I sat back in the chair, propped my foot on my father's bed, watched the telly, wondered when Dr. Hellmann might check back in so I could flirt a little more.

It was turning out to be a rather nice visit with the game on and my father asleep and Mrs. Parma's signed contingency fee agreement in my briefcase. It had worked out just as I had hoped when I went to the nursing station to complain of his pain because I didn't, I didn't, I didn't want to hear his story about the girl in the pleated skirt. There are some things a son just doesn't want to hear from his father, and his story of the girl who got away was, I was sure, just such a thing.

And I was right, yes I was, right at least about it being a story I didn't want to hear. But I was wrong when I thought I had dodged it, because my father, for some perverse reason of his own, which I was only to discover much later on, was determined that I hear it, every damn breath of it, and I would, yes, yes I would.

And in its own peculiar way, his story told me everything I needed to know about the plague that had reached out to kill Joey Parma, the plague of slavery to the past that had doomed Joey's life, and maimed my own life as well.

Chapter.

7.

"WHAT ARE WE supposed to do with this?" said Beth Derringer, from behind her neatly organized desk, holding the Parma contingency fee agreement in front of her like a floppy piece of moldy bologna. We were having a firm meeting, which meant that I had strolled into her office, the two of us comprising the whole of the less than prosperous law firm of Derringer and Carl.

"Investigate," I said. "Isn't that the first part of our three-part motto? Investigate, sue the bastards, collect gobs of money. I wonder what that would be in Latin. Vidi, vici, contingency fee?"

"Did you get a retainer?"

"Mrs. Parma is seventy-something, she can barely see, she lives off her husband's Social Security. How was I going to ask for a retainer?"

"Victor," said Beth, shaking her head, "we need money."

"Who doesn't?" I said.

"But we need it now. Immediately. We need money or it's over. The rent is long past due, Ellie has been two weeks without pay. I just got off the phone with the bank and they won't extend our line. We're in trouble."

"Let's go out and get a drink."

"This is serious."

"That's why I want to go out and get a drink."

"Victor, you're avoiding."

"Of course I'm avoiding. What sane person wouldn't avoid what I'm avoiding. I don't have enough money. I'm not getting laid. I have a glove compartment full of traffic tickets and a date in Traffic Court, where I'll most likely be stripped of my license. I'm stuck every night or so visiting my father in the hospital and watching him die. And did I mention they shut off my cable? How is it possible to lead a meaningful life, I ask you, without the Golf Channel?"

She looked at me with almost pity in her eyes.

"Yes, it's true," I said. "No Golf Channel."

"How is he?"

"Who?"

"Your father."

"They want to slice him open and chop up his lungs. But I'd rather talk about business. What about our accounts receivable?"

"The accounts receivable, I'm happy to say, grow by the hour. But receivables don't pay the rent. Guy Forrest still owes us for his murder trial. Why don't you give him another call?"

"He can't be reached. Whatever he had he sold and put in a trust for his kids. He says he'll pay us when he can, but who knows when that will be. Now he's hit the road. Bali. Tibet. Off to find himself."

"Wow," said Beth, spinning in her chair. "That sounds nice." She took a moment to imagine herself walking through an exotic marketplace, bargaining over batik, or hiking high into the Himalayas.

Beth was more than my partner, she was my best friend, and I loved practicing law with her, but our long-term goals were quite dissimilar. I had a fierce ambition to succeed and prosper and rise, which made our struggles all the more despairing for me. But Beth, Beth always had the attitude that she was just passing through. She didn't seem to have long-term goals. She saw the legal profession as a helping profession, God help her, and was pleased to be of some use. But she could also see herself trying something else, going somewhere new, dedicating herself to some other life. She sometimes mused about the Peace Corps. Really, she did, which, like, boggled my mind. I mean, my life had turned bleak because my cable had been cut off. Cold showers, long hours, no golf on TV, porridgy gluck masquerading as dinner? Philadelphia was too tough for me, how would I handle the Peace Corps? But she was right, I was avoiding, avoiding the whole precarious perch of our practice. For her, bankruptcy would have meant a new beginning, which I think she secretly found attractive. For me, the idea of bankruptcy was too brutal to even contemplate. If I wasn't a lawyer, what was I? It would take some deep soul searching to figure that out and, frankly, I firmly believed my soul, like certain biohazard properties, was better left unsearched.

"Are you ever tempted," she said, "just to go off and find yourself?"

"God no. I might succeed."

"Yes, that would be frightening. And isn't it weird to think that you might be somewhere out there to be found. Can you imagine the poor sap who goes off on a walkabout to find himself, climbs the highest peaks, the widest valleys, and when he gets to the final spot what he finds, instead of himself, is you?"

"We were talking about accounts receivable," I said drily.

"I suppose we should cross Joseph Parma and his thirty-five hundred dollars off the list."

"He was never good for it anyway."

"So why'd you take the case?"

"He needed someone. But don't put it all on me," I said. "You brought in Rashard Porter."

"Yes, that," she said, nodding her head. "I know his mother, she's a wonder, and he's basically a good kid. But I got a retainer for that."

"Three hundred dollars, which didn't cover the arraignment."

"She's a single mother paying half her salary in rent. The three hundred itself was a struggle for her."

"His suppression hearing is day after tomorrow."

"How's it look?"

"Not good. The joint they found lying next to him on the front seat was the size of a small dog. Mr. Magoo would have seen that spliff from across the street. But I have a plan."

She sighed, turned again to look out the window, saw, I was certain, not the grimy strip of Twenty-first Street visible from her office but the great Plateau of Tibet at the base of the Himalayas.

"Without some paying clients," she said, "we're not going to survive through the summer."

"Oh come on. We'll make it, we always do."

"Struggling to pay the rent was charming when we were first out of law school," she said, "but it's getting old."

"Don't go south on me, Beth. I have a hunch about the Parma case. I think there is money here."

"You always think there's money here, but it always ends up being there, not here. What was Joey's nickname, Victor?"

"Joey Cheaps."

"And he died owing us thirty-five hundred dollars. What makes you think a man whose life was so devoid of value he earned the moniker 'Cheaps' could suddenly become a cash cow in his death?"

"It's that image from his story, the one I can't seem to shake. A moonlit night on the waterfront. A man lies dead. Joey Parma holds a bloody baseball bat in his hand. And in the distance, Joey's partner in crime is walking away with a suitcase full of cash."

"Victor, wise up. The suitcase is empty. The money's long gone. Cash gets spent, that's the beauty of cash."

"Maybe, but twenty years pass and then two goons show up, beat the hell out of Joey, and then start asking about the suitcase? That same suitcase? Joey was scared out of his wits, scared enough to call me, and then twelve hours later he's dead. There's a connection here between Joey's death and that suitcase. I think it's still around, I think it's still in play. You find that suitcase, you find a murderer, Beth. A murderer with a pile of money."

"And how do we do that?"

"McDeiss is looking into Joey's homicide, but we know things he doesn't know, things we're not allowed to tell him. Maybe we should do what we can to help his investigation. Twelve hours passed from the time I met with Joey at La Vigna to the time of his murder. If we can suss out those twelve hours, we'll be far on the road to finding our killer. We know Joey saw his mother in the afternoon. And we know he was one other place for sure."

"Where?"

"Let's go out for a drink. Let's you and I step out for a drink at Jimmy T's."

Chapter.

8.

THEY SAY PHILLY is a city of neighborhoods, but it's really a city of neighborhood taps. There they sit, one on every corner, with the same hanging sign, the same glass block windows, the same softball trophies, the same loyalty among their denizens. When you're a Philly guy you can count your crucial affiliations on the fingers of one hand; you got your mom, you got your church, you got your string band, you got your saloon, you got your wife, and the only thing you ever think of changing is your wife.

Jimmy T's was just such a neighborhood joint. When Beth and I stepped inside we were immediately eyed, and for good reason. We were strangers, we were wearing suits, we had all our teeth.

The dank, narrow bar was decorated like a VFW hall, Flyers pictures taped to bare walls, cheap Formica tables, a pool table wedged into the back, a jukebox in the corner with its clear plastic cover smashed. Someone had made an unwise selection, maybe something not sung by Sinatra. Workingmen of all ages slumped at the bar, leaned on the tables, wiped their noses, sucked down beers, complained about politics, the economy, the Eagles, the cheese steaks at Geno's, the riffraff moving in from the west, their girlfriends, their wives, their kids, their lives, their goddamned lives. Before we stepped in, it had been sullenly loud, but the moment we opened the door it had quieted as if for a show. It didn't take long to realize we were it. I figured we might as well make it a good one.

"You sure yous are in the right place?" said the bartender, a crag of a man with a great head of white hair and a missing arm. The thief, Lloyd Ganz, I presumed.

"We're in the right place," I said. "I'll have a sea breeze."

Ganz blinked at me. "Say what?"

"A sea breeze. It's a drink."

"Hey, Charlie," said Ganz without looking away, "guy in the suit says he wants something called a sea breeze."

A slim-jim at the end of the bar, long, brown, and desiccated, said in a rasp, "Tell him to drive his ass on down to Wildwood, face east, open his mouth."

I turned away from the derisive laughter swelling behind me. "You don't know how to make a sea breeze?"

"Are you really sure yous in the right place? We don't got no ferns here."

"Careful," I said. "My mother's name is Fern."

"Really?"

"No, not really. Do you have grapefruit juice?"

"It's late for breakfast, ain't it?"

"Cranberry juice?"

"You kidding me, right?"

I let out a long disappointed breath. "Why don't you then just inform me as to the specialty of the house?"

Lloyd Ganz blinked at me a couple times more. "Hey, Charlie. Man here wants the specialty of the house."

"Give him a wit, Lloyd," said Charlie.

"A wit?" I said. "Something Noel Coward would have ordered, no doubt."

One of the guys behind me said, "Wasn't he the councilman up in the Third District, caught with that girl?"

"Yes, he was," I replied. "All right, Lloyd, let me have a wit."

Lloyd took a beer glass, stuck it under the Bud spigot, pulled the spigot with his stump, placed it before me.

I looked up at him, puzzled. "That it?"

"Wait."

He took a shot glass, slammed it on the bar next to my beer, filled it with tequila. When I reached for the tequila, he slapped my hand away. Then he lifted the shot glass, hovered it over the beer, slop-dropped it inside. The beer fizzled and foamed and flowed over the edges of the mug.

"What the hell's that?" I said.

"A guy comes in," said Lloyd, "sits down, says, 'Lloyd, let me have a Bud,' he gets just the beer. But he says, 'Let me have a Bud wit,' then this is what he gets." He leaned forward, cocked his head at me. "Mister, it's the closest we got to a specialty of the house."

I stared at the still foaming drink for maybe a bit too long, because an undercurrent of laughter started rising from behind me.

Beth reached over, snatched the beer with the shot glass still inside, downed it in a quick series of swallows, slammed the empty glass back on the bar so the shot glass shook. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, swallowed a belch.

"How was it, missy?" said Lloyd.

"It's not a sea breeze," said Beth, "but it'll do."