"I don't think so, no."

"Mr. Gutierrez, I think it is entirely possible that the chemicals in the air your wife breathed every day at work while she was pregnant may be responsible for her present condition and the fact that your daughter is blind and has brain damage. If that is the case, you have an actionable claim against Allied Chemical, and it is my advice that you retain a lawyer and file a personal injury suit against the company for damages."

Pedro Gutierrez was thunderstruck. "But...the priest said it was God's will-children are born every day that have such defects."

"That may be true, but the mothers of those children don't usually get sick during pregnancy and then stay sick for four years after giving birth. And it doesn't matter what your priest says-it matters what a jury says."

"We don't have enough money to pay our electric bill right now," Pedro said with guilt in his voice. "There is no way to pay a lawyer, as you suggest."

"In personal injury cases, the lawyers typically get paid only if they win the case. If that happens, they keep one-third of the cash settlement and you get the other two-thirds." Raymond saw that this news startled his guest.

"You are right that a woman feeling dizzy and sick and a child with brain damage may not be enough to convince a jury that Allied Chemical did anything wrong. On the other hand, they might award you enough money to get long-term care for both your wife and your daughter." And it might never even get to trial Raymond was thinking. Becker AG isn't apt to want to buy a company with this kind of lawsuit pending. You might get a quick settlement out-of-court.

"Lambert, Burns does securities law-contracts between companies. I can refer you to good law firm that deals exclusively in personal injury cases."

Pedro Gutierrez was overwhelmed at the way pouring out his troubles had turned into a discussion of suing Allied Chemical for a large amount of money. In spite of this, he made a decision. "Mister Johnson, I don't want to go talk to another lawyer. I want you to be my lawyer on this thing. Will you do that?"

"Mister Gutierrez, you have to realize that what I do all day is write and review contracts between public companies that do business with each other. Furthermore, it was less than one year ago that the State of New York authorized me to practice any kind of law at all. I would be breaking my oath under the law if I were to tell you that I was the best lawyer to handle a personal injury case like yours. I am not. Since a personal injury specialist will not charge you anything up front, I can't claim to be less expensive, either.

"From what you have told me, I think you have a case against Allied Chemical for your wife's illness and your daughter's blindness and brain damage. Let me give you the name of a man to call who will do a good job for you."

"You can give it to me, but I will not call him, Mister Johnson. If you think the case is good, then you must believe you can win it. I want you to be my lawyer." He stuck out his hand for Raymond to shake in agreement.

Raymond took it, then stood up. "I have to get going. We'll talk more after I've discussed it wi th the partners in the firm. I can't promise you anything until I get their go-ahead."

Pedro Gutierrez nodded and smiled for the first time in weeks.

"I think we can do better than that," Walter Bowman said as he looked at the Smith & Wesson with the smaller grips. "Those don't feel too good, do they?"

"Not really," Henry admitted, gripping the revolver in his right hand. "They need more wood in front, like the bigger ones, but not so big on the bottom."

"I think I have an idea." Walter Bowman left his workbench and started rummaging through a box on one of the shelves in the workshop. He pulled out something wrapped in waxed paper and set it on the workbench. Then, using a small screwdriver, he removed the walnut grips from the revolver and laid the weapon on a piece of 3/8" plywood. He carefully traced the outline of the frame on the wood using a pencil, then took the pattern over to the scroll saw and cut out the shape. Walter unwrapped the waxed paper to reveal a chunk of modeling clay, which he sliced in half with his pocketknife and pressed around the wooden mockup of the revolver's frame. He trimmed the excess off the back of the dummy frame and handed the result to his son.

"Hold it like you would the real one, and work your fingers into the clay. Use your other hand if you need to. Get it to where it fits your hand exactly." Henry spent a few moments molding the clay to where it fit into his palm and fingers comfortably. He handed the wood and clay back to his father. Walter inspected it carefully. "I think I can duplicate this shape pretty closely in walnut. Do you think that would be better than either of these standard grips?"

"Much better."

"Okay then. You go up and see if your mother needs any help with dinner, and I should be able to get these roughed out before the food's ready. We ought to be able to finish them by tomorrow. I'll inlet them with the router and get them rough shaped, and I'll let you do the final handwork with the rasp and sandpaper. That sound good?" Henry beamed at his father. He loved working on projects with him.

"Can we go shoot it tomorrow?"

"I can't think of any reason why not," Walter Bowman said with a big smile.

The boy ran up the stairs to see if his mother needed anything, but his mind was not on dinner. Henry was thinking about how he intended to reread as much of the McGivern book as possible before the following morning.

Joe Hammond rolled over and fumbled for the telephone receiver. "Hello?" he mumbled. "Governor's office calling. Is this Joe Hammond?"

"Yes, it is."

"Please hold."

"Joe, that you?"

"Yes, Governor, what can I do for you today?" As if I don't already know Hammond thought cynically.

"Joe, I won't waste words. We need your vote on House Bill 310. It's a close one, but I think that with your vote and a couple others I believe we can get, it will go through. You were in construction, and you know how important a new bridge can be to a community that's growing and finds its roads barely able to cope with increased traffic. Jackson County needs that bridge, and the state has an obligation to see that it gets built."

"I didn't realize it was that important to you, Governor." You're goddamn right I was in construction Hammond thought, and I realize exactly how important it is to you, you grinning, pardon-selling mushmouth. Your wife's ne'er-do-well brother-in-law owns the land where that bridge is going to be built, and the price the state is going to pay for it will make him a rich man. By putting the bridge a hundred yards east, you could save the taxpayers a lmost a million dollars. And I know damn well that the firm, lined up to do the concrete work is owned by your lawyer's cousin. He'll use non-union labor, which is fine, but he'll charge double what I could get the union boys to do it for, and five-to-one he goes light on the mix and pays off the engineering firm that'll be testing the casting samples.

"I always take a strong interest in the growth of our state."

Does he think I'm an idiot, or does he realize I know the score and just expect me to play ball with him? Hammond wondered. He had not been in the legislature long enough to be able to always read all the other politicians accurately, even one as normally transparent as the Governor.

"Governor, I'm flattered you remember my construction background, but the fact is that I haven't had a chance to look into the guts of this deal and make up my mind on it."

"Joe, would it save you any time and trouble if I just told you that it was very important to me, and that I won't forget your support on this bill?"

There it is. Out in the open. No more dancing around. Hammond took a deep breath. "If you put it that way, Governor, then yes, you've got my vote."

"Thanks, Joe. I won't forget you on this one." The Governor broke the connection.

You're fucking right you won't thought Joe Hammond as he hung up the telephone.

"Your group looks good," Walter Bowman told his son as he stared at the shirt cardboard with the black spot drawn on it. Six bullet holes were clustered in a group about an inch in diameter, three inches to the left of the spot and an inch high. "Let's adjust the rear sight. Windage first-I'm not sure what the graduations are." He took the revolver from his son and fitted the screwdriver blade into the slotted screw head on the right side of the rear sight.

"That's odd," Walter Bowman said in surprise as he turned the screw counterclockwise. The rear sight was moving to the left-the opposite direction of his intention.

"Smith & Wesson rear sights have their windage adjustments work backwards from the normal way," Henry declared. "The elevation adjustment is standard."

"So I see." Mind like a steel trap when he reads things Walter Bowman reflected. He twisted the adjustment screw clockwise to its original setting and watched as the rear sight moved satisfyingly to the right. Then he gave the screw another three-quarter turn. "Try it now."

His son took the gun from him and reloaded it. Then he returned to his spot on the riverbank where he sat down with his shoulders against a big rock and his knees up, and held the revolver in both hands, resting his hands on his knees. It was the position he had read was steadiest for deliberate shooting, other than resting the gun on sandbags. Henry was thirty yards from the cardboard target.

Cocking and firing the gun deliberately as before, Henry put six shots into another tight circle, about an inch left of his aiming point and still an inch high. He handed his father the revolver as they walked up to look at the target. "It needs about half again as much right windage," Walter declared, and made the adjustment with the small screwdriver. "You want the elevation changed at all?"

"No, let's leave it where it is, for now. It makes it easier to see the target if you have to hold just under it, instead of right on it, where the front sight covers half of it up." This was something he had discovered when shooting quickly with his rifle, and it was doubly true with a handgun, where the front sight was closer to the eye and obscured a larger portion of the target.

Henry took the revolver back from his father and reloaded it. Instead of sitting back down he stood and held the gun in both hands and cocked and fired it six times at the target from a slightly shorter distance than before. A two-inch group of holes appeared in the cardboard in the center of the black spot Walter had drawn with a laundry marker. "I held a little lower that time," the boy explained.

"Time to shoot something more fun." Henry walked over to a paper grocery bag they had brought along and reached into it, pulling out a 2" cube of pine. He tossed it twenty feet out into the river and brought the Smith & Wesson up into a two-hand hold, cocking the hammer as he did so. The gun cracked and the cube appeared to vanish. Henry and his father both instinctively looked up in the air, and saw the pine block spinning as it reached a height of about fifteen feet before it fell back into the water. Henry had already recocked the gun, and when the wood block bobbed back up in the water after landing, he fired again, just underneath it as before. The block repeated its flight. Henry tried to repeat his trick, but his third shot was high and nicked the top edge of the block, splintering off a chunk of pine and driving the rest of the cube briefly underwater. He looked up at his father.

"Harder to hold the sights exactly right than with the rifle." Henry could keep a floating block flying for a full magazine with his Winchester, and had taken to firing a second shot at it in the air every time it flew up, to make the trick more challenging. "This is fun." He fired the remaining three shots at the floating block double-action, sweeping the trigger through its full stroke and firing the gun without cocking the hammer first. All three shots missed the wood by a couple of inches.

It was at that instant that Henry Bowman fully realized the magnitude of Ed McGivern's accomplishments with a revolver. Decent accuracy was fairly easy for almost anyone to accomplish. Accuracy with speed was a lot harder. Henry reloaded the revo lver and handed it to his father. "Hold about two inches under the front edge of the block if you want it to make it jump. Hold on the front edge if you want to try to split it in two."

Walter took the gun without comment and held it with the same technique he had seen his son use. The handmade walnut grips were a little small in his large hands, but felt comfortable nonetheless. He cocked the gun and took aim on the block. As the revolver cracked, the block vanished underwater for a brief moment, then reappeared. Walter cocked the gun again and fired a second shot with the same results.

On the third shot, he waited until the floating piece of wood rotated ninety degrees in the calm water. At the sound of the report, the block split in two and the halves floated a foot apart in the muddy water of the Mississippi River. "Hit it in the end grain to split it cleanly," the man advised his son. Both of them smiled at that. Walter Bowman fired the last three shots in the cylinder double-action, just as his son had done, and missed the fragment he was shooting at by at least six inches each time.

"I can see how you got hooked on this stuff," he told Henry. "I guess you need one of these, huh?" Henry was afraid to say anything. "I don't much believe in borrowing other people's tools, but I guess you won't hurt it any, using it for a bit." Walter Bowman realized he was talking mainly to himself. "Just the same, let's get this back to its owner pretty soon, okay?" Henry nodded. "You keep at it. I'm going to get out my camera and take some pictures."

That day on the river, Henry found he could make a 2" block jump out of the water and hit it in the air with the second shot about a third of the time. He also regularly hit a three-pound coffee can at eighty yards, which amazed Walter.

By the time they packed up and went home late that afternoon, the boy had fired 900 rounds through Doc Wiemann's revolver. Henry was hooked again.

"Arthur, may I talk to you about something?" Raymond Johnson was standing in the doorway of Arthur Lambert's office. Arthur Lambert was the senior partner of Lambert, Burns.

"Certainly, Raymond. Come in, sit down. What's on your mind?"

Raymond eased himself into one of the maroon leather chairs in front of Lambert's large mahogany desk and came to the point.

"There's a potential case that has come up, involving someone I know, and I'd like to handle it." "A securities case? From a contact you've made?" Lambert inquired.

"No, nothing like that. Actually, I tried to refer the man to another firm, but he would have none of it. He insists that I handle the case. It's not what we normally do here, and I told him that. He doesn't want another lawyer, though. I explained to him that it would depend upon the firm's approval." He took a deep breath before going on. "I'd like to accept the case, sir, and I will make sure that it in no way interferes with my current caseload. Frankly, I don't expect it to require a lot of time."

"So what is this case, Raymond? Who's the client?"

"It's the janitor in my apartment building, Arthur. His name is Gutierrez." At the mention of the man's name, Arthur Lambert's eyes became more distant. He's probably thinking of 'West Side Story' Raymond thought. George Chakiris showing off his dancing skills on the floor of a high school gymnasium, getting all the girls wet and pissing off all the clean-cut Caucasian males. He pressed on with the explanation about the daughter, and Lambert began to pay attention again after a short while.

"She has a serious health problem, and because of it he is near bankruptcy. When I learned of the circumstances, I realized that Mr. Gutierrez may have an actionable claim. I told him this, and offered to recommend a firm well-versed in personal injury cases. He insisted I take the case." Raymond broke eye contact with the senior partner.

"I don't think Mr. Gutierrez has had many breaks lately, and he reminds me of the men that Dad always hired to work at the ranch. I'd like to try to help him out. As I say, I don't think it will take much of my time. I'll keep track of my hours on it, and I can work on Sundays, since I'm not married. If there's any problem with it taking more time that I expect, I can forfeit vacation days to make it up." Arthur Lambert was startled by this last suggestion.

"We don't typically handle personal injury cases, and I don't see how this might lead in any way to further business for Lambert, Burns." Ray imagined the rest of the message, which was left unspoken. Arthur's thinking that the last thing Lambert, Bums needs i s to have one of the associates off doing pro bono work for Puerto Ricans.

"You really think the case is a winner?" Lambert asked bluntly. Raymond shrugged.

"Any judgment at all for the plaintiff would be a huge help to the family. They're almost destitute. I seriously doubt the case will ever go to a jury. I think the defendant will make a settlement offer, and Gutierrez will take it. He regards his problems as God's will, and he's amazed at the concept that he might get any money at all."

"Lawyers need more clients like that," Arthur Lambert said with a small smile. "And the last thing I need is to have you moping around, thinking about how I said you couldn't help someone out." Fifty-nine-year-old Arthur Lambert sat back in his chair.

"When I was just out of law school, right after the Crash, any work at all had been welcome, and every case was exciting." He stared at Raymond. "Do you expect this sort of extracurricular activity to crop up often?" Raymond could not help but smile at the question. He wants me to get it out of my system. "No, Arthur. I don't intend to make a habit of soliciting maintenance men for their legal business."

"Then I think we can allow you to try to help this Mr. Gutierrez with his case. Keep track of your hours, as you say, and stay on top of your regular caseload."

'Thank you, Arthur." Raymond stood to leave. "Ah...what sort of sharing arrangement do you think appropriate?"

Arthur Lambert was startled by the question. At first he thought Raymond was referring to the split with the client. "You mean with the firm?" He waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. "Just stay on top of what we're throwing at you, and keep doing the kind of work we've come to expect from you. If you manage to get your janitor any money, you're entitled to whatever share you and he agree upon." Arthur Lambert turned his attention to the papers on his desk, and Raymond left the room.

No mention had been made of the defendant in the Gutierrez case.

"Mr. Gutierrez, you have a lawyer." Ray Johnson said to the maintenance man. "I talked it over with the senior partner, and although this isn't the kind of case our firm handles, he's letting me run with it. We're a 'go'." Raymond handed the older man a single sheet of paper and a pen.

"This is a contract which says that you are authorizing me to file suit and negotiate on your behalf in this case. It says that I will assume all legal costs incurred in the case, and as payment for my efforts and expenses, I will receive one-third of whatever settlement is awarded, and you will receive two-thirds. It also states that you are aware that it is possible we will be unsuccessful and no settlement will be awarded at all."

"I understand." Pedro Gutierrez read the contract and put his name to it. He still found it difficult to believe that Allied Chemical might pay for any part of his family's medical problems.

"I'll need to meet with your wife and daughter, and then arrange for a medical specialist to examine them. I'll also need to talk to your wife at length about the conditions at Allied when she worked there. The sooner we can get moving on this, the better."