“Isn’t that what this is about?” I said.

“Unfortunately for you, no,” he said. “We didn’t get dispatched from City Hall. But let me tell you something, Victor. If the mayor’s irritated at you, too, maybe you ought to rethink your life. No, we’re here with a message for your buddy Charlie.”

“Charlie?”

“Yeah, Charlie. Your boy Charlie the Greek. And this is the message. You tell that bald piece of dick we haven’t forgotten that he spilled last time he was in the stir. Fifteen years is but a snap of the fingers to us. You tell him painting or no painting, if he shows his face in this town, I’m going to personally rip it off his skull.”

That’s when Louie piped in. “Off his skull, boysy,” he said, his voice soft and gravelly, like the crush of bones underfoot.

“We’ve picked a bog for him already. He’ll understand. Tell him he’ll be crapping cranberries into eternity.”

“Cranberries,” said Louie.

“And you tell Charlie, wherever he is right now, he ought to be running, because we’ve called in our friend from Allentown.”

“Your friend from Allentown?” I said.

“Allentown, boysy,” said Louie.

“Charlie will know who we’re talking about,” said the man with the camera. “He’ll know enough to take it seriously.”

“Who the hell are you guys?”

“The name’s Fred. Charlie will remember me because I’m the very guy he was running from fifteen years ago. And you, Victor, let this be clear. If Charlie shows up, it won’t be so good for your health neither.”

“What makes you think I’m representing this Charlie?”

“Are you saying you don’t?”

“I’m just saying-”

Fred pushed me. I started going backward and then flipped over some huge solid thing, which turned out to be Louie, bending at his waist. I hadn’t fallen for that since grade school.

“You stupid little pisspot,” said Fred, now standing above my prostrated body. “This thing with you and Charlie and that painting, it’s all over the freaking news.”

I was still on the ground when, side by side, they started walking away from me, south, toward Walnut. I sat up on the sidewalk, my legs spread before me, my arms behind, propping up my torso.

“Hey, guys,” I said.

Fred and Louie turned together. In their twin outfits, they looked like part of a sanitized hip-hop dance troupe. Up with Hoods.

“What was with the photographs?” I said.

Fred took a couple steps forward until he was leaning over me. “Our friend from Allentown,” he said. “After what happened one time in West Philly, he let it be known from here on in we should take photographs. It cuts down on the mistakes. Very meticulous, our friend from Allentown.”

“Why don’t I find that comforting?” I said.

So much for dire threats. And I have to give him this, as far as I could tell, Fred hadn’t been lying, because yes, I was a stupid little pisspot, and yes, Charlie’s story was all over the freaking news.

I had missed the early wave of evening broadcasts, but I caught the eleven o’clock news, and there it was, on all three channels, narrated by each station’s organized-crime reporter, the whole story of the missing painting. They broadcast shots of the Randolph Trust building, pictures of the painting itself – Rembrandt as a young man with his bulbous nose and sharp eyes and goofy hat – they had mug shots of a younger Charlie Kalakos squinting for the police camera, and they had file footage of me talking exuberantly to the press about one of my prior cases.

All in all a good night for a publicity hound, which I shamelessly admit to being, but a lousy night for a lawyer trying to keep his sensitive negotiations on the QT. Which was proved with the very next phone call.

“Carl, you make me so very weary,” said Slocum.

“It wasn’t me.”

“First, this morning I get a call from some high-toned lawyer representing the Randolph Trust, barking in my ear about some missing Rembrandt. Then A.U.S.A. Hathaway calls up, irate as can be, complaining about sudden pressure from higher-ups concerning that selfsame painting. And, funny how it works, both conversations seemed to include your name.”

“That I had something to do with.”

“It was no small thing to calm Hathaway. Watch out for her, Victor, she’s a hard case. But I worked it, yes I did, and just as I’m about to get a meeting set up, you leak the whole thing to the press to apply even more pressure.”

“That’s the part that wasn’t me.”

“You didn’t talk to the press?”

“No, I did not.”

“But you love talking to the press.”

“Like Hoffa loves cement, true, but this time I refrained. And everyone I talked to understood that keeping the whole thing quiet was in everybody’s interest.”

“Obviously not everyone.”

“So do we still have a meeting to work out a deal?”

“Not now, not after this. Hathaway called back and said if they deal now, it will look like stolen art was being used to buy off the righteous arm of justice.”

“Which of course would be true.”

“Of course. Except that when it’s done behind closed doors it is one thing, and when it is headline news it is another. You should have kept it quiet.”

“I tried.”

“So who spilled?”

“I don’t know. That Randolph Trust is a hornet’s nest, with everyone holding their own agendas. There was an old lady there who wasn’t included in the discussions, but I don’t doubt that she knows every nook and cranny in the place and the best locations to eavesdrop. And then, of course, our friend in the U.S. Attorney’s office could have leaked the information herself to give her an excuse to torpedo the deal.”

“Are you accusing a federal law-enforcement official of using the press to further her own ends?”

“It’s happened before.”

“Yes, it has. Why didn’t you just let me know about the painting right off?”

“I thought a little outside pressure would get the lard out of the FBI’s ass.”

“Well, you were right about that. The search for Charlie the Greek has been accelerated. All the field offices in New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland are in on the hunt.”

“Crap.”

“I knew you had stepped into it, yes I did.”

“Hey, Larry, you ever hear anything about some hit man from Allentown?”

Pause. “Where’d you get that?”

“Just something I heard in the street.”

“Oh, I bet you did. Remember all those murders through the years we’re trying to link up to the Warrick Brothers Gang?”

“Yeah.”

“Word is the finger man was some old pro from Allentown.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“This isn’t so good, is it?”

“No, it isn’t. Sleep well, Victor, ’cause you’ll be needing it.”

It took me a while to figure it out, what I could do to salvage my client’s chances to make it home, to give his dying mother his heartfelt good-byes, to let me cash in my pile of jewels and chains, and for both of us to survive it all without prison time or serious bodily harm. It had to be something that would push the feds to deal and something that would work fast enough to kick in before their revived manhunt pulled in Charlie, or the friend from Allentown mooted the issue. It took me a while to figure it out, because usually when a solution to a difficult problem congeals in your consciousness it ends up requiring sacrifice and daring, it ends up requiring you to transcend your baser instincts and rise to the occasion. But not this time. This time my baser instincts were spot-on.

I hadn’t courted the wave of press attention that flowed like sewage into Charlie’s messy life story, but now that it was here, I was going to ride it for all it was worth. Time for A.U.S.A. Jenna Hathaway to learn how low I could go.

The next morning at my office, the phone didn’t stop ringing and I didn’t stop answering. The television crews were lined up like rush-hour aircraft on the runway, waiting for their exclusive interviews.