“But doesn’t he have the right to have his say?”

“At the appropriate time, sure. This isn’t it.”

“You know, Victor, if I could have an exclusive interview with Charlie, I could get this thing splashed on the front page of Newsday. Newsday’s feature articles are picked up by papers all over the country. The publicity would be out of bounds. The morning shows would be calling. You could become the next Johnnie Cochran.”

“I always admired Johnnie. Hardly anyone looks good in a black knit cap, but he pulled it off with style.”

“Maybe after the article you could charge as much as he did.”

“So now you’re appealing to both my pathetic hunger for fame and my venality.”

“Is it working?”

“Can I ask you a question? The man you saw in my office. Did you know him?”

“That little gnome? No, thank God.”

“Why ‘thank God’?”

“Didn’t you sense it, the violence in him? I did. I’ve seen enough of that sort in my life. What did he want?”

“He was appealing to my venality, too. It seems to be a disturbing pattern.”

“Then maybe there is something else I can appeal to.”

“Rhonda, are you propositioning me?”

“Oh, Victor. Don’t be silly. It’s just a story.”

“Too bad.”

“What I meant is that maybe I could appeal to your sense of charity. I’ve been fighting to break through at my newspaper for a while. I fell into this business late, and it’s hard being a stringer, but my editor said if I can make this story happen, he’d push to hire me full-time. All I need to make it happen is an interview with Charlie. In person if I can, by phone if I have to. You would be giving a huge break to a struggling reporter.”

“We all have our jobs to do, Rhonda.”

She gently took hold of my biceps, gave me a tug. “Please, Victor. I really need this.”

I stopped, turned toward her, saw her green eyes swell with hope, and I felt an ache. It frightened me what I felt, an ache of wanting. She was a reporter – a life-form lower than a ferret, lower even than a lawyer – and I had no doubt but that she was trying to manipulate me for her own ends, anything for a story, but still I felt the ache. And yes, she was pretty, and yes, I liked her offhand manner, and yes, she treated me with an appealing lack of respect, but no, even then I could discern that my feelings had little to do with the truth of her inner being and everything to do with some pathetic need of my own.

I had felt the same ache for a bicyclist with long blond hair and pretty pink riding shoes who had asked for directions on the parkway. And before that I had felt it for a woman in a short black skirt whom I had spied across the street and who, without bending her legs, had leaned down to tighten the laces on her bulky black shoe. I could walk along the street during my lunch hour and fall in love a dozen times and feel the ache as each woman strode on through her life without me. And it was undoubtedly the same ache that had driven me, insensible with drink, to tattoo a stranger’s name upon my chest in a declaration of love.

Either I was a wildly warm and openhearted person or my life was in serious trouble. And, unfortunately, I am not that warm and openhearted a guy.

Yet still, even if all those other supposed emotional connections were the result of some existential psychosis of the soul, who was to say that this emotion, the one I was feeling right now toward this woman with the blazing red hair and freckled face, might not be the real deal?

“Rhonda,” I said with a slight stutter, “maybe we can go out sometime and get a drink.”

She slipped on a sly smile. “Does that mean…?”

“We’ll talk about it over a drink. And maybe, if everything feels right and the circumstances allow it, maybe I’ll talk to my client about you and your article.”

“That would be just so great, Victor,” she said. “Thank you, thank you so much. When?”

“I’ll get back to you,” I said. I glanced again at my watch. “But right now I have an eviction to fight.”

There are about fifty cases on the list each day in Courtroom 500 on South Eleventh Street, the city’s housing court, yet only about three of those cases ever get tried. Instead most business is conducted, as in all courthouses, in the hallways, which is where Beth and I stood before our hearing when we were approached by a man with blond hair and a snappy green suit. About my age, but you could tell he had climbed higher on the legal ladder, which meant that I disliked him right off.

“Victor Carl?” he said.

“That’s right.”

“I thought so. Funny, you look younger on TV.”

“And heavier, too, I suppose.”

“No,” he said. “Not really. Just younger and better dressed. Wait, please, I have something for you.”

He balanced his briefcase on his palm as he unsnapped it open and pulled out an envelope, which he handed to me.

“A notice of eviction for your client, ordering her to depart her premises at the expiration of her lease,” he said with a smile. “Personally delivered. Give it to Ms. Derringer for us, will you?”

I nodded and handed it over to Beth. “Here you go.”

“Ah, so you are the recalcitrant Ms. Derringer,” said the man. “My name is Eugene Franks, of the law firm of Talbott, Kittredge and Chase, and I represent your landlord.”

“Charmed, I’m sure,” she said, her voice sounding neither charmed nor sure.

“I’m so sorry that your notice of eviction was only sent by mail and not personally delivered or nailed onto your door pursuant to the letter of the law, as your lawyer here pointed out in his rather voluminous brief. Actually, many of our tenants find mail delivery less embarrassing, not to mention less harsh on the front door, but from now on everything will be taken care of exactly by the book. We still expect you out when your lease expires.”

“I don’t think so, Eugene,” I said. “Her original lease was in excess of one year, so your notice has to give her at least ninety days. From the date of notice. Which, based on this, is today.”

“Aren’t you being a little technical, Victor?”

“We’re technicians, Eugene, you and I. Being nontechnical is akin to malpractice. When is construction scheduled to start at the building?”

“Next month.”

“Ooh,” I said as I winced dramatically. “That might be hard, with a tenant living in the building. Does your building permit allow knocking down walls and ripping up floors with a tenant still in residence? And the building is quite old. I wonder if there’s any asbestos in the walls and ceilings. That would mess up the schedule even more than you already have, don’t you think?”

He leaned toward me, lowered his voice. “Can we talk for a minute?”

“Sure,” I said. I waved Beth over to one of the benches and then stepped with Eugene Franks to the far side of the hallway.

“Nice brief,” he said.

“I try.”

“We all had quite the laugh at the firm. Do you really think that the Fourteenth and Sixteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution really have any relevance here in housing court?”

“Maybe you should keep laughing in front of the judge. I’m sure she finds the badges and incidents of slavery hilarious.”

“But your client isn’t even black.”

“Wait till you hear the argument.”

“I’m on pins and needles.” Eugene pursed his lips at me. “Weren’t you the one who took down William Prescott a couple years ago?”

“I might have been.”

“Prescott was the first lawyer at the firm I ever worked with. He was my mentor, he gave me my first big case, and you ruined his career.”

“Prescott ruined his own career,” I said. “I just pointed it out to the proper authorities.”

Eugene Franks looked hard at me for a long moment and then turned away. “I never liked the son of a bitch. What can we do to make this disappear, Victor?”