“Aren’t they Moonies?” asked Veronica.

“Moonies have a right to eat too,” said Concannon.

“And we need a pin with it,” said Jimmy.

“Two dollar,” said the girl into the window. She was far too perky for that time of night.

“Help her on with it, Victor,” said Jimmy.

I took the flower and slipped my fingers beneath Veronica’s shoulder strap so as not to jab her collarbone, fiddling the stem’s pin into the thick cotton of the strap. I felt the softness of her skin on the back of my fingers. She looked down at my hands as I worked and I wished I’d had a manicure at least once in my life. There was something about Veronica that was so delicately beautiful it hurt. Her face had a sad cast about it, and the coltish way she moved was sad, and the way her head hung low was sad. But every now and then, like a gift, was that smile, brilliant, promising. Though she watched closely as I fastened the flower to her strap, and though I was embarrassed at my peeling cuticles and cracked nails, I couldn’t help but linger.

I was in an entourage, and the very idea of it was thrilling. At some point in the evening a few others joined up, a state senator, an afternoon disc jockey, a famous jazz musician, and we rode around in that car together, hitting place after place, first the waterfront, then South Philly, then an after-hours place above a storefront off Market. Each club was different in design but all had the same atmosphere of practiced decadence. I was tired, and I knew I had to be in court the next day, but there was something about being in an entourage, even the entourage of a luminary as small-time as Jimmy Moore. Whenever Jimmy Moore arrived, his group trailing behind him, doors opened, greetings were warmly given, corks popped like firecrackers off perfectly cooled bottles. He could have been Eddie Murphy, Leon Spinks, hell, he could have been Elvis. And as I was with him, part of the grandeur splashed off on me. It didn’t seem to matter a whit what I actually thought of the man. Throughout the night I had tried to pull out, to get to bed, but always Jimmy would tell me one more place and Veronica would flash that smile and I would duck with the rest of them back into the limousine.

“Club Purgatory,” said Jimmy.

“Yaboss,” said Henry through the partition and we were on our way.

“Prescott says you do real estate law,” said Moore.

“Just this fraud case we’ve settled,” I said.

“We might need a real estate lawyer,” said Moore.

“I don’t really do too much.”

“Ronnie’s having trouble with her landlord,” said Moore.

“He is being quite unreasonable,” said Veronica.

“Give me your card, Victor,” said Moore.

I nervously patted my jacket. In the inside pocket I found a card, corners bent, the old, still optimistic name of our firm listed, but my name front and center in solid black printing. I handed it to him.

“Guthrie, Derringer and Carl,” said Moore.

“Guthrie left,” I said.

“Here, Ronnie,” said Moore. “If that Greek bastard hands you any more trouble you give Victor here a call.”

“I will,” she said, and she tossed me that smile and then and there I hoped that the Greek bastard, whoever he was, gave her a peck of trouble soon.

“You’ll do a fine job, Victor,” said Jimmy Moore. “I know it. I wouldn’t leave Chester with anyone but the best.”

“I appreciate your confidence,” I said. Concannon was looking out the window as we spoke.

“Be sure you do,” said Jimmy. “I have a feeling you’re going places, Victor. And I’ll help you get there. Just be sure where you’re going is where you want to be.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Up or down, boy?” said Jimmy. “It’s your choice. Choose up.”

“He wants to make sure you stick with the program,” said Chuckie.

“Up or down, boy?”

“Victor will stay out of trouble,” said Chester softly.

“Keep your eye on this one, Ronnie,” said Jimmy with a loud and dangerous laugh as he wagged a finger at me. “He is going places.”

That’s what I remembered as I dressed for court, hurrying out of the shower and putting on my shirt while my skin was still wet, so that the cotton stuck to my back, and tying my tie frantically and sloppily. And I remembered also that as the limousine had dropped me off in front of my building and slid away into the night, leaving me alone on the deserted street, facing nothing but the emptiness of my apartment and the loneliness of my bed, and with the bud of nausea starting its gorgeous blossom in the pit of my champagne-sloshed stomach, I couldn’t help but laugh, long and out loud, a laugh that had echoed like the howl of a hyena through the dark, empty street and had announced to the whole of the world that finally, dammit, I was on my way.

JUDGE GIMBEL’S COURTROOM was like all the courtrooms in the Federal Courthouse, two stories high, wood paneled, dark, designed with a ridged modern texture that was dated even as the workmen were slapping it onto the new building’s steel girders. Scattered in the benches were twenty-five lawyers waiting for Judge Gimbel’s status call, twenty-five lawyers at, let’s say, a total of $5,000 an hour, waiting for His Honor, who was already half an hour late. He had probably stopped off at the ACME to pick up a sack of potatoes on special, saving himself forty-nine cents and costing all the litigants together $2,500. Thus the efficient engine of the law. Seated with the lawyers racking up their billable hours were the print and television reporters covering the Jimmy Moore case. Some were clustered around Chuckie Lamb, who was releasing the councilman’s statement for the day. Moore, Concannon, and Prescott huddled together in the corner. I was sitting alone, merrily letting my meter run at my new and inflated rate of $250 an hour. Safely within my inside jacket pocket was a fifteen-thousand-dollar check drawn upon the account of “Citizens for a United Philadelphia,” or CUP, Moore’s political action committee. When I saw it was CUP that was paying my retainer for Concannon’s defense I balked a bit, but not too much.

“I’d rather it come from a different source,” I said to Prescott after he had handed the check to me outside the courtroom. “Like from Concannon himself.”

“I don’t believe Chester could pay two hundred and fifty dollars an hour,” explained Prescott. “By the way, there is a CUP fund-raiser for the councilman’s new youth center tonight at the Art Museum. You should come. Definitely. I’ll put you on the list. You do have a tuxedo, don’t you?” asked Prescott, his voice suddenly as snide as Winston Osbourne’s in its prime.

“Yes,” I said, conscious of the insult.

“There will be some people there you should know,” he said, his tone once again avuncular. “It’s never too early to start meeting the right people.”

“But about the check.”

“Don’t worry, Victor. Concannon is on the board of directors of CUP and his indemnification is provided for by the committee’s bylaws. It is all perfectly legal, I assure you. Take it.”

So I took it, and stuffed it in my pocket, and sat with it in the courtroom, thinking of the black-tie affair to which I had just been invited, wondering at all the important people there to whom Prescott would introduce me. I was imagining the scene, sparkling with tuxedos and gowns in a pure black and white, like a Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movie, when I was tapped on the shoulder by a tall, pale man.

“You Carl?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Let’s talk,” he said, giving a toss to his head in the general direction of the hallway.

He wore a blue suit, a red tie, black, heavy police shoes, the generic uniform of a prosecutor. There was a weariness in his eye, a sense of having seen it all before. Prosecutors have two primary expressions, one of weary cynicism when they think they are being lied to, which is often, and one of weary self-righteousness when they believe themselves to be the last bastions of truth and justice in the world, which is always. These expressions are as much a part of the uniform as the red ties. When they hire on with the government they must be sent down to Washington to train with an army of mimes in a basement of the Justice Department building, mastering their weary expressions.