The Macauley house, off Holabird Avenue as promised, was a hideous 1950s-era ranch, a sprawling structure of brick and sea green trim that looked as if it had crawled out of the bay and died on this lot.

Small yappy dogs threw themselves at the Macauleys' storm door when Tess rang the bell. They didn't seem particularly vicious, but she wouldn't have turned her back on them. After almost two minutes, which seemed longer with dogs panting and snarling, a short, chubby woman came to the door. She wore cherry red pants, a red and white striped jersey, and toilet paper rolls in her tinted strawberry blond hair. Tess knew the look. It was one of the favorite local methods for preserving a salon-made beehive.

"You must be the girl!" the woman said cheerfully. "Just let me get this last bit of paper off my hair. One of those mornings, I guess you know."

"Sure," Tess said, feeling agreeable now that she was on the threshold of an important discovery. On the drive over she had convinced herself Macauley had to be involved in Abramowitz's death. She hadn't figured out the details, but her intuition was practically buzzing.

Inside, the house was early Graceland, decorated with ceramic monkeys and kittens. Mrs. Macauley led her to the family room at the end of a long dark corridor. Here, two recliners sat side by side, facing an old-fashioned console television whose color had taken on a distinct lime tint. TV trays stood in front of both chairs, and two hot microwave dinners waited next to sweating cans of National Bohemian. It was how the O'Neals might have lived if their fortune had been a hundredfold less.

"We always eat lunch in here," said the woman, presumably Mrs. Macauley, although she had never introduced herself. "Abner loves his programs."

"Where is Mr. Macauley?"

"He'll be out directly," Mrs. Macauley said, eyes fixed on the television screen. Her beehive, now unwrapped, was remarkable, a towering structure whipped from hair normally as thin and runny as egg whites. It wasn't a look to which Tess aspired, but she admired its defiance of nature and gravity.

She stared at a door at the end of the corridor, eager to lock eyes with Macauley. In her imagination everything would be revealed in a glance. Her only fear was that her earnest face would inspire an inadmissible confession on the spot.

Finally a door swung open and Macauley stepped out, dragging a reluctant animal on a thin, pale yellow leash. She saw him give the leash a yank, swearing under his breath. A sadist, she thought with some satisfaction as he started down the hall, practically dragging the poor animal.

He moved deliberately, with the measured tread of someone quite sure of himself, a hideous yellowish smile frozen on his face. As Tess's eyes began to adjust to the dim light, she realized he didn't have a pet with him, but something on wheels. Squinting into the dark hallway, she saw the yellow leash was a tube, leading to some contraption at his feet.

"Sweet Jesus Christ," she said under her breath.

What she had taken for a grotesque smile was a breathing tube stretched across his face. The "pet" was his portable oxygen tank. Macauley came down the corridor as slowly as a debutante bride moving across rose petals at the cathedral. And when he finally arrived in the family room, Tess was the one ready to burst into tears, equal parts frustration and pity.

"I've only been on the tank a month or so," he said by way of introduction. "Takes some getting used to."

"Certainly," Tess said, bobbing her head in inane affirmation. She was still trying to reconcile this frail old man with the wrathful monster she had imagined.

"Vonnie says you have news of my check." Each syllable was breathy and measured, a sibilant wheeze. "I was glad to hear of it. I had begun to think I might not live long enough to see my money."

"Yes, the check." She was mesmerized by his face and the tube, staring like a little kid who didn't know any better. "Of course. I'm afraid…it's not good news. You see, Michael Abramowitz's death has only complicated things."

Mr. Macauley flushed, but it was an anemic, blue-tinted rush of blood to his face, so he looked more as if he were choking. In his disappointment he couldn't form any words at all, only a faint hiss.

"Abner! Abner!" Mrs. Macauley cried, looking up from the television, and Tess remembered how Donna Collington and the judge had laughed over her cries in the courtroom. "Control your breaths! Remember, the doctor says you have to control your breaths."

He waved his hand in front of his face, miming he was fine. It was several seconds before he spoke again.

"I don't understand. I read in the paper how some of the others, the ones in the consolidated trial, got their settlements, and they came after me."

"It's a different case. The consolidated trial isn't being appealed, I guess. Truthfully it's all a little over my head. I'm basically an…errand girl for the firm."

"We won two years ago. At first I said, I just want my check before I have to use an inhaler between sentences." He paused for a breath. "And then I said, well, as long as I get it before I have to cart my oxygen tank, that's OK, too. We could go somewhere, I thought, take a little trip. Now-" He paused, waiting for his breath to replenish itself. "Now all I can say is maybe before I'm bedridden. Maybe before I die."

"It's a bum deal," Tess blurted out. "I'm sorry."

"What's $850,000 anyway? Money that big isn't even real. We don't have any children. The lawyer takes his cut, and it's $600,000. It's so much money, more than we ever had, and it doesn't mean nothing. Just a number someone put on me." He paused for breath again. "They plugged it into a formula, you know. It's nice to be worth $850,000, on paper. But until I see the check, I won't believe it. They think they can keep from paying me, you see, because they think I'm not important."

"Is that why you went to the office with the Louisville Slugger? Because you saw other asbestos victims were getting their checks?"

He smiled shyly, proud of himself. "The newspaper got that wrong. It got a lot wrong. For one thing it was an Adirondack, a black bat. I got it right here." Sure enough, there was a black bat leaning against his recliner. "And the other thing the newspaper didn't get was the part about my gun."

"You had a gun?"

"Sure did. Nice little Colt,.38 caliber. Kept it for protection. I put that gun in my pocket and made Vonnie drive me downtown-she hemmed and hawed, but she finally did it-and I told that punk security guard to let me up without announcing me."

"And he did it?"

"After I gave him twenty dollars, he did."

"Blond kid? Lots of wrist watches?"

"Yep." Interesting detail about Joey-it didn't cost so much for him to forget he ever met Miltie and his Minutemen. She'd have to remember to tell Tyner.

"So I went up. I had never seen this Abramowitz-he wasn't with the firm during my trial. Even after they hired him and put him in charge of the asbestos cases, I could never get him on the phone. I just got some youngster."

"Ava Hill?"

"No, Larry Chambers, same guy who handled the case in court. Smooth. Butter wouldn't melt in his mouth."

"So you go upstairs," she prompted, trying to get him back on track.

"So I go upstairs. The lawyer, he's sitting at his big desk, looking out the window at the water. No work in front of him, nothing going on. Just staring out the window, hands folded, like a kid waiting to be dismissed from school. I pointed my gun at him, told him someone should kill him for what he had done."

"Was he scared?"

"No. He smiled, I mean really smiled, like I was his buddy. Then he said: ‘How right you are.' A real smart ass, which pissed me off. So I went for him. But I couldn't catch my breath, and he-well, he kinda hugged me, held on to me like a little boy. Then he took my gun away and called the police."