Later the Dred Scott ruling was reversed.

Using that as the historical reference to show the fallibility of the Supreme Court on the issue of standing, animal-rights activists like his friend Sandy Toshiabi had been trying unsuccessfully for years to obtain legal standing for primates. But the courts were constantly shifting the boundaries that defined humanity. At one point the federal courts said that humanity was simply the ability to walk upright. But then when chimps were taught to do that, they said that speech was the threshold. With Lucy, the "talking" gorilla who used American Sign Language to communicate, a new threshold was found. A species had to be capable of believing in God to claim standing. Sandy Toshiabi fought that one and had managed to prevail. "What is God?" she had argued. "When your dog looks up at you, does he see God?" Currently there was no standard… but for one: beings must be classified as Homo sapiens to have legal standing. But what, Herman wondered, constituted Homo sapiens?

He had one other thorny problem to overcome. He had no attorney-client relationship with the chimera. His lawsuit could be voided on that fact alone. In order to represent these chimeras, one of them had to ask him to represent it. He needed a creative loophole.

The boat was at a yacht anchorage on the eastern tip of Lido Island, in Newport Beach. There were several hundred slips just across a parking lot from a high-end trailer park. It was 7:00 p.m. when they found Ted's fifty-five-foot Bertram Sportfisher stern-tied to the dock. When they parked behind it they saw the name printed in foot-high, gold-leaf letters: The Other Woman.

Jack walked down the ramp to the dock, listening to the halyards on the surrounding sailboats rattling against their metal masts in the sharp evening breeze. He went aboard and found the keys hidden where Louise said they would be. After Susan turned off the alarm, Jack opened the rear doors and they entered, flipping on lights.

The main salon was beautiful: dark mahogany cabinets filled with cut-crystal glasses backed a mahogany bar, beige carpets, an antique table with chairs, and a beautiful, off-white silk sofa completed the decor. It seemed more like a stylish New York condo than a fishing boat.

Susan went below and forward where she found the master suite. A brass plaque on the door read: Ink-an homage to the show Ted and Mary had co-starred in. The suite had a queen-size bed and a large bathroom featuring a shower complete with steam heads. There were two guest staterooms aft.

They went back outside to help Herman onto the boat, then settled him in the master suite, where he flopped back on the quilted bedspread, still exhausted from the surgery.

"I'm starved," Susan complained, looking at them. "How about you, Dad?"

"There's nothing in the fridge," Jack said. "I already looked. We could go out and get something."

"Why don't you two get dinner?" Herman suggested. "Get me something to go. Bring it back after you've eaten. I saw a fish restaurant on the way in just a block from here. You could walk it." He wanted to get them out of there so he could work.

"What do you want?" she asked.

"Surprise me, honey," he answered, then closed his eyes, put his hands across his chest, and feigned sleep.

Susan stood there for a long moment, then hesitantly turned to go. "Okay, if you think it's all right."

"I'll be fine," he said. "Just turn off the light."

As soon as he heard them leave the boat, Herm pulled himself upright, turned on the bedside lamp, opened his PalmPilot, and began scrolling for Sandy Toshiabi's number.

"I think I owe you an apology," Susan began as the drinks arrived, "an apology and some money." She took out her checkbook and a fountain pen, then wrote him a check for thirty-one hundred and eighty-one dollars. She blew on her signature to dry the ink, then handed it to Jack. "For three days' work, your airline tickets, lunch, and an hour of parking."

"I'm getting a nice little collection of these," he said suspiciously.

It was 6:00 p.m. and they were seated on the patio of a Newport Beach fish restaurant named The Cannery. Small boats were tied to the wharf below the sprawling deck. "That one will clear."

Jack studied the check skeptically. "How? I thought Herm said you guys were out of money."

"We're liquidating some things." Earlier he had noticed that her rings and the gold graduation watch were gone. "You sold your watch?"

"We've sold a lot of stuff," she said. "None of it important."

"I can't take your graduation watch."

"Listen, Jack, this money didn't come from my watch, okay? If it's easier for you, pretend it's from Dad's old clunker station wagon that we also sold. Besides, what does it matter? We've got bills, obligations, and we're meeting them.

"If it hadn't been for you, Dad and I would probably be dead. In the face of that, I think your thousand-dollar-a-day fee is a remarkable bargain."

"Viewed in that context, you're right. Maybe I'm not charging enough," he smiled down at the check in his hand. "I'll use you as a reference."

"Any time."

The waitress returned and Susan ordered swordfish and a shrimp cocktail. Jack had a steak and mixed green salad. They ordered two more drinks.

Jack's cell phone rang. He looked at it, hesitating. "I'm beginning to hate this thing. It feels more like a locator device than a phone."

"It might be Dad. What if he needs us?"

"Yeah." So he opened it. "Hello."

"Jack, where the hell you been? I've been trying to reach you for three or four hours." It was his ex-partner, Shane Scully. "You were right. Paul Nichols doesn't own that spread in Beverly Hills."

"Not surprising. Who does?"

"The house is owned by an Indian tribe."

"You're kidding. Which one?"

"They're called Ten-Eycks."

"Thank God they're just Indians," Jack said softly.

"They have a reservation out by Palm Springs. I punched 'em out on the Internet. They've got a Web page: Ten-Eyck-dot-com. You'd love this site… got an Indian sitting on a blanket smoking a peace pipe, Indian prayers, medicine-man poetry. All that's missing is the price sheet for peyote. It's a small tribe. Only thirty people in the entire Ten-Eyck nation. The administrator's a guy named Scott Nichols."

"Not Paul?"

"It's Scott. He was voted in as Tribal Administrator a few years back. He took over for the chief, some guy named Russell Ibanazi. There's a picture of Chief Ibanazi on the site. He's about thirty and looks like a Calvin Klein model. Since they own that one house on North Canon Drive, I ran the tribe through the Real Estate Tax Board and found out they own a few other houses in Beverly Hills. Got a pencil?"

Jack pulled one out of his pocket and grabbed a paper cocktail coaster. "Gimme the other address."

"Aside from the one you gave me at 2352 North Canon, there's another one at 2443 and a house at 160 Charing Cross Road. Then, there's a big, three-acre spread at 264 Chalon Road. Altogether, this tribe owns over thirty million worth of prime dirt."

"Those Palm Springs reservations got valuable," Jack said. "The property out there's probably worth a fortune."

"Only, the Ten-Eycks got boned on that score. I checked around, and their reservation is located way out in the desert, past Indio, near the Mexican border. The property out there isn't worth much, unless you're breeding jackrabbits. So, your question is, how do they get to own all of this expensive housing in West L.A.?"

"Thanks, Shane, I owe you, man." He said good-bye and closed the phone.

"What is it?" Susan asked. Jack told her what he'd just learned. After he finished she sat quietly thinking, then asked, "You think they're using Indian DNA for the gene splicing, using it for the chimp upgrades?"