It was almost noon before Tess could face being vertical. She sat on the floor of the shower and let hot water pound on her, trying to decide if this made her feel better or worse. It was a draw. Finally she slicked her hair back into a tight, damp ponytail-the tension from the elastic band seemed to help her headache-and set out for the courthouse pressroom.

"Feeney's law," a sign on the door warned. "The second-worst editor is a failed reporter. The worst editors were all successful reporters."

She pushed open the door and found the Beacon-Light courthouse reporter leaning back in his ergonomic chair, his feet on the antique rolltop he had salvaged with the help of a friendly custodian. He had the phone cradled in his ear, a computer keyboard in his lap, and an entire bag of Utz potato chips in his mouth. Sour cream and onion. She could smell them from across the room.

"I don't care what you told 'em at the eleven o'clock budget meeting," he drawled, crunching between words. "You see, unfortunately, it didn't happen that way. The judge just didn't understand your need for simplicity, for-what do you call it?-a hard, clean narrative line. Maybe by the time you go to the three o'clock budget meeting you can get it right. If not, try for the four o'clock meeting. Hey, but it's not your fault. You're an editor. You're a moron."

He placed the phone carefully back in its cradle. If Feeney had slammed down phones or raised his voice, he might have been fired long ago for insubordination. That or the death threats he made against editors every other day. But he was so calm, almost jovial in the way he verbally abused his bosses, that they assumed his attitude was a joke. They never guessed, or at least never admitted, that Feeney's contempt for them was genuine.

Feeney was everything his office sanctuary was not-untidy, with hair forever straggling over his collar and his shirttail always slipping out of baggy khakis. He ate only those foods that could be purchased within fifty yards of the courthouse, a self-imposed restriction guaranteeing a steady diet of hot dogs, which had added a slight paunch to his lanky frame now that he was in his forties. Once a month he shaved, usually on the day he went in to file his expense account. He had been at the newspaper for almost three years, and most of his coworkers were not sure what he looked like. He preferred it that way.

"Darlin' Tess-what can I do for you? Are you going to run around again with a man's coat over your head? I didn't get a chance to see that, but it's the talk of the courthouse."

"Next time I'll tip you off. Today I just want to figure out how to track down an individual asbestos plaintiff."

"What do you know about him?"

"He's an elderly man."

"You've really narrowed it down. Next I guess you're going to tell me he worked at the shipyards."

Accustomed to Feeney's sarcasm, Tess pulled out the clipping and consulted it. "He was awarded $850,000 in one of the last nonconsolidated trials, whatever that means. And Sims-Kever was the only defendant, at least in his case."

"That's a start." The keyboard still in his lap, Feeney tapped in the command for the Beacon-Light's library system. "Luckily I got a hard drive. A lot of the bureaus don't have the library hookup, but I told 'em I did too much deadline work not to have access."

"It keeps you out of the building, right?"

"You got it. Now I'm trying to convince them to give me my own Lexis/Nexis account. But they keep bitching about the invoice I put in for a microwave. Damn, the system's slow today." He punched the keys viciously and, eventually, a form appeared on the screen, requesting information for a search. Feeney typed: "Sims-Kever" and "asbestos."

"I'm gonna put in a time line," he explained to Tess as he jabbed at the keys with two fingers. "They consolidated all the asbestos cases into one big trial a few years back, trying to free up the courts, but before that there were dozens every year. I'm going to tell the computer to search before consolidation."

He pushed a button. Ninety-seven items found, the computer replied.

"Jesus, ninety-seven stories. That's way too much to go through. We gotta narrow it down. Hand me that clip." He skimmed it. "Whatta piece of shit. Why'd they give this guy a column, anyway? Wait, here's another little detail." He typed in "Eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars."

Three items found, the computer replied.

"That tells me there are three stories in the system in our time frame that mentioned Sims-Kever, asbestos, and $850,000." Tess looked over his shoulder, enthralled. Electronic data bases were new to her. The ailing Star had never been on-line. In fact the morgue at the Star was famous primarily for being about five years behind at any given moment. And for filing photos of Mickey Mouse under "Rodents, famous."

Feeney called up each story, the words rolling so fast beneath his fingers that Tess could barely skim them. "You've lucked out. Here are three plaintiffs who got $850,000 from Sims-Kever, two in the same trial, both in the same court, Judge West. If I were you, I'd take these names over to his clerk, see if any ring a bell. But I wouldn't count on it."

"I also could just call 'em up, if they're still alive."

"Yeah, but what are you going to say? ‘Hey, are you the old dude who chased that lawyer with the bat?' Or are you going to pretend to be doing a telephone survey on baseball bat ownership?"

"Good point. You're better at this than I am."

"What exactly is ‘this'? You a private eye now? Or are you planning on law school?"

"I'm not sure, Feeney. But if there's a story here, I promise to tell you before anyone."

"Even Jonathan?"

"He'll be the last to know. Hey-you didn't tell him that I called the other day, did you?"

Feeney shook his head. "I didn't know I had anything to tell. Even now that I've seen the clip and know where you're headed, it seems like a long shot, Tess. What are you trying to prove, that some little old man did the lawyer? It's a big leap from running around with a baseball bat and banging someone's head to a pulp."

The phone rang. He let it ring five times, then picked it up as if he had all the time in the world. His voice was sweet and mellow, even if his words were not.

"Feeney here. What? Well, that's the stupidest fuckin' idea I ever heard. How'd you get this job anyway? You sleeping with somebody over there?" Tess could hear the editor's nervous laughter on the other end. She pantomimed good-bye and slipped out. An old political reporter on the Star had once given her three rules for success in journalism: Be a star. Be a columnist. Report from a different city than the one in which your newspaper is based. Feeney had found his own city, just six blocks from the Blight's offices.

It was still lunchtime, but she thought she might find Judge West's clerk at her desk, wolfing down a sack lunch. Courthouse employees didn't make enough to dine out regularly at any place finer than Taco Bell. Sure enough, a round-faced young woman was hunched over her desk, a can of Coke, a bag of chips, and an egg salad sandwich on a napkin in front of her.

"Hey, I'm Tess Monaghan. I used to work at the Star. I think we met a couple of times, Ms… Collington." She had never seen the woman before in her life, but the clerk was considerate enough to have a nameplate on her desk: D. COLLINGTON.

"Donna. Donna Collington." She was a black woman with a reddish undercast to her skin, no more than twenty-eight or twenty-nine, with a sweet baby face and fingernails long enough to rip someone's heart out. Plump, she strained the seams of a tight purple dress, but in a way most men would find attractive.