“Is he any good?” I asked Prescott as Slocum ducked into one of the cars and all three pulled back around the museum.

“The best they have,” he said. “Let’s get our clients out of jail. Chuckie will prepare a statement for the press.”

“Concannon was a little unraveled,” I said.

“He’ll get over it. I’ll tell you what’s really unraveling. The federal case. Eggert had always hoped that Bissonette would revive and finger Jimmy. That’s one of the reasons he wanted to delay everything. Now there’s one less witness to worry about.”

“So who do you think actually did kill Bissonette?” I asked offhandedly.

He looked at me with his cold blue eyes squinted sternly for a moment and then eased his face into a paternal smile. “It doesn’t really matter, does it?” he said.

THE DISTRICT ATTORNEY’S OFFICE was in a narrow, dirty building sandwiched between two glass skyscrapers. Lawyers with offices in the skyscrapers bustled in and out of the revolving doors, the tassels on their loafers swishing, their Rolexes flashing as they hailed the cabs lined up on the street, the drivers all hoping for that apocryphal fare to the airport. Lawyers from the DA’s office passed out of their filthy lobby in weary navy blue waves, pushing shopping carts full of their day’s files, girded for battle in the city’s grimed and undermanned courtrooms. There was about this throng of city attorneys the air of a soon-to-be-defeated army pushing forward only because any avenue of retreat had been cut off.

“ADA Slocum,” I said to the receptionist in the lobby, a flabby-faced woman with wrinkles around her eyes and the tan stains of a smoker between the first two fingers of her right hand. She was ensconced behind a thick wall of Plexiglas with only a circle of airholes for her to speak through. “He’s expecting me. Victor Carl.”

“Have a seat,” she said, gesturing to a dirty row of ruined plastic chairs out of some high school auditorium. I chose to stand. With the lobby’s dim light and its general filthiness, I felt like I was in a subway station. That receptionist, that lobby, it was all quite a leap down from Talbott, Kittredge and Chase.

A few minutes later the elevator opened and a thin young woman stepped out while still holding the door.

“Mr. Carl?” she said.

We stopped at the fifth floor. On the way to Slocum’s office the woman led me past a maze of secretarial desks and cubicles, through the frenzied sounds of drastically overworked assistant district attorneys. What could have possessed them to take such a job, I wondered. They started at less than thirty grand, they worked killer hours pleading with cops and yelling at witnesses on the phone late into the evening, sending out subpoenas that were ignored, glancing at piles of files the night before the day they had to try them. And when it was time to leave the office for private practice it was tough to find a job other than hustling for cases in the city’s criminal courts. With my spirits buoyed by the grand possibilities that Prescott was promising, I could only feel pity.

Slocum was in his shirtsleeves, leaning back in his chair, his feet resting on his desk as he talked on the phone. His shirt cuffs were rolled up, revealing dark and powerful forearms. Behind his desk were two flags on posts, one the Stars and Stripes, one sky blue and mustard with gold markings, which was the city’s flag. Slocum’s office was cramped with boxes and file cabinets and large posterboard exhibits leaning against the walls, a map of one of the city’s parks, a diagram of an apartment with the outline of a sprawled body in the living room, a photograph of a woman with bruising around her face. The walls were covered with a cheap and fraying paneling. One of Slocum’s shoes had a hole in the sole. Slocum was talking to his car repair guy, arguing over what was required for his car to pass inspection.

“That’s got to be the biggest racket going,” said Slocum after hanging up the phone. “I bring in my car for a thirty-dollar inspection and end up paying five hundred dollars for a new exhaust system in order to pass. Isn’t there a law?”

“You tell me,” I said. “You’re the expert.”

“I told my mechanic once I was going to put an undercover unit on his tail. He laughed at me. Said it didn’t matter how many plainclothes cops came into his shop, it was still going to cost me three-fifty for a brake job. He told me what I really needed was a new car. That was four years ago.”

“Maybe your mechanic’s right,” I said. “Judging by the sole of your shoe you do too much walking.”

He laughed. “The real trick is sitting at the counsel table so the jury can see the bottom of my shoes. Jurors like their public prosecutors a little ragged around the edges. It adds to our sincerity. And they don’t want to think they’re paying us too much. If I hadn’t worn it through naturally I’d have filed a hole in there by now. So what do you need, Carl?”

“You know I represent Chester Concannon.”

“Sure,” he said, webbing his hands behind his head. “You took Pete McCrae’s spot. Too bad about him, huh?” A broad smile hid his evident grief.

“On Concannon’s behalf,” I said, “I’m looking into the Bissonette murder.” Prescott had said it didn’t really matter who killed Zack Bissonette, but I couldn’t agree. My client had been accused of killing that man and it was my job to do what I could to defend him. Investigating Bissonette’s murder might not have been in strict accordance with my client’s orders, sure, but I didn’t figure I was risking much by snooping around. If it turned up nothing, no one would ever need to know, and if it turned up something, well, maybe I’d be a hero. So the night before, standing in my tuxedo in the Roundhouse courtroom, with derelicts staring down at me from the glass-enclosed bleachers up above, I had pulled Slocum aside for a few seconds while the defendants were in the lockup and Prescott was out raising bail and I had set up this meeting.

“Your federal trial starts in a week and a half,” said Slocum. “My advice, Carl? Go back to your office and finish preparing for that trial. This will keep.”

“My team’s working on the federal case,” I said.

“How many people in your office?”

“Two.”

“I thought so,” he said with a scornful laugh. “Make a discovery request and I’ll consider it in due time.”

“I don’t have due time. I was hoping I could get something right now.”

He dropped his feet from the desk and leaned forward, his hands now clasped angelically before him. He smiled a broad smile and his eyes, even through his thick round glasses, were glistening. “It’s a sad thing how often in this life our hopes go unfulfilled.”

My eyes started watering as he continued to flash that broad, dashing smile and for an instant I didn’t know what to do so I did what I sometimes do when I don’t know what to do, I laughed, and he laughed with me and we both laughed together, laughed loud and long, laughed hysterically at how he had all the power over me at this meeting and could send me home with nothing if he chose and it looked like he was choosing exactly that. We laughed so hard that he had to take off his glasses to wipe tears from his eyes and I pressed the palms of my hands into my own eyes as if I could squeeze back the water and we laughed some more at how wildly we were laughing. We let our laughter gear down into guffaws and into chuckles until finally we were only shaking our heads in amazement at how hard we had laughed before. And then I stopped even chuckling when I realized there was nothing funny about it.

“So,” I said. “What about it? Am I going to get some help?”

“File your motions,” he said. “The discovery judge should get to them maybe sometime next month.” He started laughing again, but this time I didn’t join in. Polite requests obviously weren’t going to work. I could think of only one gambit, weak though it was, that might.