Bix stood, huge in the glass-and-chrome room.

"Thanks for stopping by, Bix," Jack said.

"You're blood," Bix said. "Family's all anyone's really got."

After Bix left, Jack pressed the replay button on his answering machine and heard, "Jack, this is Judge Long. I've been trying to reach you all day. Give me a call at home. It's pretty important."

CHAPTER FIVE.

1.

The cleaning lady was just turning off her vacuum when Caroline let herself into the dim reception area of Milhet & Alvarez.

"What're you doing here in the middle of the night, Miss Wonder?" the cleaning lady asked.

"Couldn't sleep," Caroline said.

"Most people can't sleep drink hot milk, don't go to work."

"That's my trouble, Sue. I've spent my life trying to prove I'm not most people."

As Caroline headed toward her office, the cleaning lady said, "Mr. Slidell ... Guess he couldn't sleep either."

2.

Jack heard Caroline enter his office. Or ex-office. But didn't respond. Jack sat in his desk chair, facing away from his desk, looking out the window at the city and the Hudson River night. His jacket was off, his shirt sleeves rolled up, not to the forearms like a professional, but to his biceps like a laborer.

On his desk was a bottle of Ezra Brooks. In his hand was a half-full glass of bourbon.

"You know," Caroline said, "we don't encourage drinking in the office."

"I didn't need encouragement," Jack said.

Caroline picked up the bottle.

"There's another glass in the cupboard," Jack said.

"I wasn't planning to join you," Caroline said.

"I know."

"In anything."

"You don't know what you're missing."

"Am I supposed to play Twenty Questions to find out what you're doing here?"

Softly Jack sang "Shake, Rattle and Roll."

Wearing dresses, the sun comes shining through ...

"You keep standing in front of the window like that," Jack said, "we could make it an oral exam."

"With you all it would be is a pop quiz," Caroline said, moving away from the window so the lights of the city no longer outlined her body.

She dropped the bottle into the wastebasket beside Jack's desk.

"I'd rather see a church burn than good liquor wasted."

"I never thought I'd hear you quoting Robert."

"I was quoting him quoting his daddy."

Caroline fought a smile. Jack noticed, said, "You hate to admit it, but I can be a charming SOB...."

"Robert does quote his daddy a lot," Caroline said.

"Family's all anyone's really got."

"Another quote from Robert's daddy?"

"No," Jack said. "Someone else."

Jack took a sip of the bourbon.

"I'm moving. Down to the boat basin."

"That creepy place? It looks like a shantytown from somewhere down south. The Mississippi Delta. Someplace."

"Where I grew up," Jack said.

"Sorry," Caroline said, "I..."

"Just until things quiet down," Jack said. "I wrote a general memo with the address. In case anybody needs me. No phone in the place. So I'll keep my cell charged. For a while at least. You got the number. I put that in the memo, too."

"That's what you came in for?" Caroline asked, glancing at the bank of file cabinets lining the hall outside Jack's office. One drawer was not pushed in all the way. "Not to look through Frank's files?"

"In a couple of hours," Jack said, "I went through a couple of decades of paperwork, right."

"Maybe a couple of months?" Caroline said. "Ending a couple of days ago?"

Jack ignored her.

"I can run the cell off the car engine if I have to," he said.

"Find anything interesting in Frank's files?" Caroline asked. "A smoking gun? A confession? Something to flush out Frank's killer?"

"Funny," Jack said, "how we both assume he was murdered...."

"I was joking, Jack," Caroline said.

"Right," Jack said. "I talked to Judge Long." He finished what was in his glass. "Looks like my license is going to be suspended."

"Oh, Jack...."

"At least. Maybe something worse."

Jack swung his chair around.

"Do me a favor, Five Spot?"

Caroline nodded.

"Fish out that bottle for me."

Caroline hesitated, then retrieved the bourbon bottle, which she handed to Jack.

"And on your way out..."

"Don't let the door hit me in the ass?"

"Something like that."

Jack swiveled his chair back around, facing away from Caroline. She left. Jack poured himself another half glass and took a long pull.

3.

Jack parked beside a small fishing cabin in a marsh on the fringe of town. A dozen other cabins, all needing repair, stretched along the Hudson. A few skiffs lay upside down, their curved, ribbed bottoms making them look like giant beetles.

Jack climbed out of his car with a single suitcase and a new bottle of Ezra Brooks in a paper bag and walked along some half-rotted planks into his shack. Jack inhaled the familiar childhood smell of mud and rotting wood.

Inside, he put down his suitcase, tilted the glass chimney of a kerosene lantern, snapped a match on his thumbnail and lit the wick. Over the windows, the white curtains were stiff with soot. On a table beside the bed, which ran along the far wall, was a gray ceramic basin and white enameled pitcher with a chipped red enameled line decorating the pour spout. Above the basin and pitcher a small shaving mirror hung on a twopenny nail. The slate sink had an old-fashioned hand pump. A bottle-gas refrigerator stood on a cinder block next to a two-burner stove.

Jack stretched out on the bed, the springs twanging, and closed his eyes, but couldn't stop his racing mind.

CHAPTER SIX.

1.

Ringing woke Jack, who stumbled out of bed and fumbled in his pants pocket for his cell phone.

"Slidell."

"Sorry to wake you," Sciortino said. "Forty minutes ago, the hooker died. The boys are on their way out to pick you up."

"Accessory, manslaughter 3?"

"You wish. You're a lawyer. They figure you should've known better. It's man 2."

Jack hung up the telephone.

2.

Sciortino walked with Jack from the Columbia County Court House.

"At least," Sciortino said, "you made bail."