“Could you just do us all a favor, Victor,” she said, interrupting me in midsentence, “and shut up. Not just here, in this room, where your voice is grating beyond measure, but on the evening news and in the papers, too. You’re in love with the sound of your own voice, and let me tell you, in your own best interest, you’re no Caruso. So please, please, please, just shut up.”

A little stunned, I looked over at Larry, who was fighting unsuccessfully to stifle his laughter, and then back at Jenna Hathaway. “Is that nice?” I said to her.

“I’m not trying to be nice.”

“And good for you, you’re succeeding. But whatever else all that talking did, it got your attention.”

“What will it take to shut you up?”

“Cutting to the chase, are you? I admire that. Right to the bone of it. So often lawyers spend so much time talking around things that are essentially meaningless. They can go on and on, and it can get so-”

“You’re doing it again,” she said.

“Doing what?”

“Talking too much. Are you doing this on purpose, just to piss me off?”

“Actually, yes,” I said.

She turned to Larry. “Is he a blathering idiot normally, or just a total jerk?”

“Oh, Victor can be a bit of both, but today he’s being the latter.”

She eyed me again, down and up, taking in the scuffs in my shoes, the railroad pleats in my pants, the wrinkled shirt, the weirdly glistening red tie. She rolled her eyes, sighed loudly, and dropped into one of the chairs. I sat across from her. “What can I do,” she said, “to get you out of my life?”

“Make a deal.”

“Terms?”

“We return the painting to its rightful place at the Randolph Trust and you drop all charges.”

“We won’t drop all charges,” she said. “That’s a nonstarter. And what about his testimony? He’d have to talk.”

“With immunity?”

“Be serious.”

“How long have you been going after the Warrick Brothers Gang, Larry?” I said.

“Years,” he said.

“How you guys doing?”

“Not so well.”

“And what’s the life expectancy of those who agree to testify against them?”

“Short.”

“We’ve already received a dire threat against my client’s life and my own. The first is par for the course, but the second I take very seriously. Still, Charlie will talk about his time with the Warricks if you give him immunity and you agree to protect him. He’d be amenable to witness protection.”

“Of course he would,” said Hathaway. “Living his days off some golf course in a condo paid for by the government.”

“And he mentioned something about a plasma TV.”

“Is this clown for real?” she asked Slocum.

“Unfortunately, yes,” he said.

“Then we have nothing more to talk about,” said Hathaway. “The FBI tells me they’re on the edge of finding your client anyway. As we speak, they are chasing down reliable leads.”

“Even if true, it doesn’t mean they’ll find the painting,” I said. “Did I mention the painting gets returned? Isn’t that why you’ve been after him all this time? Isn’t that why you had the FBI stationed outside his mother’s house, so you could get back that painting?”

She looked at me coldly. “I don’t give a good damn about the picture of some dead Dutch guy who painted himself.”

I stared at her for a moment. None of this made any sense. If it wasn’t the painting she was searching for, then what was it? I looked at Larry for help. He just shrugged.

“So what are you after?”

“I want to know how he got the painting.”

“It was stolen,” I said. “Thirty years ago. What more do you care about? There’s nothing you can do to any of them now. The statute of limitations has run. They got away with it. Sometimes bad triumphs. Let’s move on.”

“I’m not moving on,” she said. “If he comes in, he’s going to have to talk not just about his old gang but about the Randolph heist, too. Everything. And he’s going to have to name names.”

“He won’t. He’s already said.”

“Then that is that, isn’t it? You want to make a deal, make it with Larry.”

“But he can only talk about the state charges. There’s still a federal indictment against my client.”

“Yes, there is.”

“What are you really after?”

“Your client knows.”

“Charlie knows?”

“Sure he does. That’s it, those are the terms. If he comes back and talks truthfully about everything, and I mean everything, then we might be able to work something out.”

“I’ll talk to him.”

“Good.” She stood, hoisted her huge briefcase off the floor so that it thunked on the table. “Now I have to get back. There’s still some flesh I haven’t filleted off that accountant’s back. But, Victor, hear this. If I see your face on the television again, or one of your obnoxious quips quoted in the newspaper, the next dire threat you’ll be getting will be coming from me.”

“Can I ask you something more personal?”

She tilted her head, tightened her lips.

“Do you like long walks in the misting summer rain?”

“With my dog,” she said.

After she stalked out, her briefcase banging the doorjamb for emphasis, I remained seated at the table with Slocum.

“Do you have any idea what she’s looking for?” I said.

“None.”

“Don’t you think you should find out? Maybe climb the chain of command to discover what’s really going on?”

“You want to hear something puzzling, Carl? The attorney general of the United States doesn’t return my calls.”

“A shocking breach of decorum.”

“Yes, it is. I would complain, but the vice president doesn’t return my calls either.”

“She’s after something.”

“Evidently.”

“Did you notice that when she talks, she doesn’t really move her lips? Like she’s a ventriloquist.”

“I noticed.”

“It’s a little frightening,” I said.

“She’s a frightening young lady.”

“And, you know, from a distance she looks so sweet.”

Rhonda Harris and her little notebook were waiting for me outside the courthouse. How she knew I was at the courthouse was a bit problematic, but the sight of her in her dark pants and white blouse, her green scarf, her long legs and red hair pulled back, brushed that niggling question aside. She looked oh, so Katharine Hepburn I half expected her to break into a quavering Yankee accent as she called me her knight in shining armor.

“Mr. Carl, I hope I’m not disturbing you.”

“Not at all,” I said. “It’s gratifying to see the working press working. But unfortunately, right now, and for the foreseeable future, I have no further comment on anything.”

“Really? That’s so out of character.”

“We all must change with the times. I know it’s a grave disappointment.”

“Not really. Your comments didn’t quite grind the presses to a halt.”

I checked my watch. “I have to get a move on. I’m due in landlord-tenant court.”

“Can I walk with you a bit?”

“Only if what we say is off the record.”

She put away her notebook, lifted her hands like a magician to show there was nothing here, nothing there, nothing up her sleeve.

“Come along, then,” I said. “How’s the story going?”

“Fine, sort of. My editor says he needs more detail and more human interest.”

“I’m not an interesting enough human for your editor?”

“He told me I need to interview Charlie.”

“That’s a shame, isn’t it? I really liked your Thomas Wolfe angle.”

“How can we arrange an interview?”

“We can’t.”

“Oh, everything can be arranged somehow, can’t it?”

“Not this.”

“Give me a chance, Victor. I’ll only write the most complimentary things. And I’ll give you approval over your client’s quotes if you want. I’m sure the public will find Charlie’s story fascinating.”

“It is, I assure you. But as of today the Victor Carl-Charlie Kalakos media machine has been shut down. And I wouldn’t have let you interview Charlie in any event.”