“Sure.”

“You’ll bring me another little gift?”

“I thought you were Slim-Fasting.”

“You’re allowed one reasonable meal a day. It says it right there on the can.”

“Sure, I’ll bring a gift if you want,” I said.

“And next time, Victor, be a sport and buy them by the sack.”

My car was still at the meter, when I stepped outside the hospital, still with its tires, still with its radio, still with its battery firmly in place, all of which was a pleasant surprise. It was back in my office where the unpleasant surprise awaited.

“THEY JUST WENT IN,” said Ellie, her hands fluttering about her neck. “I tried to stop them.”

“That’s all right, Ellie. Where’s Beth?”

“At a settlement conference. I was the only one here.”

“You did fine,” I said. “I’ll take care of it now.” Ever since I began representing criminals I had made a practice of locking up my most sensitive files, but still I didn’t like visitors free to roam about my office alone, didn’t fancy utter strangers rifling the papers on my desk, the files in my drawers, eyeing which case opinions I was studying in preparation for my court appearances.

“I didn’t know if I should call the police,” said Ellie. “They said it was about business.”

“No, you did the right thing. I don’t want the police in my office either.”

“The little one’s creepy looking, like a troll.”

“It’s fine, Ellie,” I said, staring at the closed door, screwing up my courage to enter my own office. “Don’t worry about a thing.”

“An evil troll.”

I put a hand on her shoulder and gave her a falsely confident smile. “In that case, you better hold my calls.”

I took three steps forward and opened the door.

Two guys. One was tall, dark, and squinty, dressed all in black, with one of those faux-cool ponytails that tries to say, “Hey, I’m hip,” but which really only says, “Hey, I’m a geek trying oh so hard to be hip.” He was concentrating on my tall file cabinet with the vase of dead flowers still perched on top. The cabinet was brown with fake wood grain, fireproof, batterproof, burglarproof, made of heavy-gauge steel for the most security-minded file keepers, and the ponytailed guy was fiddling noisily with the lock. The other guy, short and bearded, with the nasty eyes of a psychiatrist, was sitting at my desk, reading a document he had found there. The sheer brazenness of their actions was comforting, in a way. The most serious dangers, I have learned painfully through my ransacked life, come disguised as gifts.

I cleared my throat like a schoolteacher in an unruly class. The two men stopped what they were doing, looked up at me, and then immediately went back to work.

“Finding anything of interest?” I asked.

“Not really, no,” said the little man. His voice was a natural falsetto. I guess if I was five foot three with a voice like that I’d grow a beard too. “Your desk is a mess. Is all your life this disorganized?”

“Cluttered desk, uncluttered mind.”

“Somehow I don’t think so.”

“We have a problem, Mr. Carl,” said the man in black, in a pretentious husky whisper that went all too well with that ponytail. He was still standing by the file cabinet but apparently had given up his attempt to pick the Chicago Lock Company lock and peek inside. His face was deeply lined and though I had first thought him to be somewhere in his twenties, on closer inspection I believed him to be somewhere in his forties, which made his cry-for-hip outfit all the more pathetic. “We think you can help.”

“Well, I’m a lawyer. Helping is my business.”

That brought a yelp of mirth from the little man.

“Why don’t you gentlemen sit down where the clients are supposed to sit and I’ll sit behind the desk, where the lawyer is supposed to sit, and maybe then we can discuss your situation.”

The tall man looked at the short man. The short man stared at me for a moment before giving the tall man the nod. Then we all do-si-doed one around the other like a set at a square dance. When we were in our proper positions, I appraised the two men sitting across from me and found myself very unafraid, which I didn’t think was their intention.

I guess it was the dealing with all those murderous mob hoodlums in the last few years that did it. It wasn’t that I had turned brave from my association with them. I had been born a coward, raised a coward, and faithfully remained a coward. It was part and parcel of being my father’s son and I would have taken great pride in my cowardice if I didn’t realize it only meant that in my thirty sorry years I hadn’t yet found a cause or a love worth dying for. No, I wasn’t frightened by these two men who had barged into my office in what they had hoped was an intimidating style because my experience with the more vicious elements of the city’s underworld had given me the capacity to judge the truly sadistically vicious from the bad-boy wannabees. The geezer in black, he was a wannabee. The truly sadistically vicious don’t have to go around dressing like Steven Seagal to stoke fear. One look in their eyes and you know to step aside. And as for the little guy, well, would he have frightened you?

“So, gentlemen,” I said. “What is this problem you were telling me about?”

“Harassment,” said the man in black.

“Well, actually, that’s a specialty of our firm. My partner, Elizabeth Derringer, is one of the top sexual harassment lawyers in the city. The surreptitious pat on the butt, the sexual double entendre, the sly brush of protruding body parts as your boss passes you in the hall, the inappropriate suggestion of an after-hours liaison. It’s a terrible problem, yes, but there are laws now under which we can bring suits. Even the stolen kiss in the supply closet, once the province of harmless office fun, has now become actionable. And quite profitable too for the plaintiff and the lawyer. So,” I said with a wide smile. “Which one of you was sexually harassed?”

“That’s not what we’re talking about,” said the man in black.

“No? So what is it? An old girlfriend calling every night? Being stalked by a secret admirer? I want to help.” I roughed my voice a bit. “I just need to know what your problem is.”

“You’re pretty clever, Mr. Carl, aren’t you?” said the man in black.

“With enough rewrites, sure,” I said.

“Well quit the cleverness and shut up.”

“A child has died,” skirled the short man with the beard. “She was a sweet and much-loved child. I find tragedies bring out the best and the worst in us, don’t you, Victor? My name is Gaylord. This is Nicholas. The tragedy of this child’s death has raised a problem for us that you are going to resolve.”

“Well, as you must know, I take a keen professional interest in other people’s tragedy.”

“That’s exactly the problem,” said Gaylord.

“We don’t want you interested in the tragedy of this child’s death,” said Nicholas in his husky whisper.

“All right, gentlemen, let’s stop the playacting,” I said, more curious than anything else. “Who are we talking about and what do you want?”

“You’ve been asking questions about Jacqueline Shaw’s death,” said Gaylord, shaking his head and closing his psychiatrist eyes as if with sadness. “Her death has caused us all much pain and we are trying to put the grief of her loss behind us. Your running around the city like a fool, badgering the police, bothering her friends, is only making it more difficult for our wounds to heal. You are to stop immediately.”

I waited a moment and looked at them, the little squeak of a man and the fraud hard guy in a ponytail, and my only emotion was a sort of indignation that the likes of these two thought they could intimidate me. Didn’t they check me out in Martindale-Hubbell, didn’t they ask around, didn’t they know that with one call to certain of my clients I could have their knees pounded into mash? I leaned forward and clasped my hands together like a choirboy and said what I had to say slowly.