“This is Bennie Rosato and I just spoke with him. Can you put me through?” I was standing, phone to my ear, in the middle of the disaster area that used to be my office. The cops had searched and confiscated most of my client files, and the few they left were dumped on the floor. The mess I could clean up, but there was nothing I could do about the breach of client confidentiality.

“You have to hold while I find him,” said a rasp I recognized as Meehan’s. I replaced a casebook that had been torn from the shelves. Papers were scattered over the floor and tables. A jade plant had been knocked over and its dirt spilled out. Fingerprint dust covered everything. What did they expect to find? My prints and Mark’s? What would that prove?

“I don’t know what you think you’re doing,” Grady said, from the wing chair in front of my desk. “We agreed I was running this case.”

“You are. I told you, this is on another matter.”

“A criminal matter?”

“Sort of.” I righted the jade plant, cupped the loose soil in my hand, and dumped it back in the pot.

“You can’t tell me more than that?”

“No.” Before I made this call, I’d checked the ethical rules for lawyers, which is not an oxymoron. I could tell the cops what I knew, but I couldn’t tell an associate, friend, or the intended victim. I didn’t see what good it would do to tell Grady anyway. He’d just try and stop me. “Give me five minutes, okay?”

“You telling me I have to leave?”

“Sorry,” I said, covering the receiver. “I have to make this call.”

“To Azzic? Have you lost your mind?”

“Just trust me, okay? And go, please. I’ll let you win the next power struggle, I promise.” Grady frowned and left the room just as Azzic picked up. First things first. “Detective, this is Bennie Rosato. You boys did a nice job on my office. Why’d you take my client files?”

“They were covered in the first warrant.”

“‘All client files from 1980 to present’? It was overbroad. If you’d tried to serve it on me, I wouldn’t have honored it.”

“Oh really.”

“My clients have nothing to do with this, and it’s their confidential information you took. If I hear that they got a visit or a call from you or your men-”

“I don’t have time for this, Rosato. I gotta go.”

“Wait, I need to talk to you, it’s important.”

“Now you wanna talk? Twenty minutes ago you told me to fuck myself.”

“It’s not about me.” I shoved my law dictionary into place with a smooththunk. “One of my clients, Bill Kleeb, was arrested yesterday for protesting animal rights at Furstmann Dunn. I have reason to believe his accomplice, Eileen Jennings, who was also arrested with him-”

“I don’t know anything about it, Rosato. I do homicide, not animals. You want to talk to the animals, they’re in the cells.” He laughed, then exhaled audibly. I gathered he was smoking, and it had brought his warm good humor to the fore.

“This is about a homicide, Detective.”

“Something you know about, Rosato?”

“The CEO of Furstmann Dunn may be in danger. Eileen Jennings threatened him yesterday with a taser.”

He laughed. “That’s rich. He might like it, who knows, them guys.”

“I’m not kidding around. I wouldn’t call unless I thought there was something to this, I’m breaching my client’s confidence here. Get Jennings in for questioning and put somebody on the CEO, or at least alert him.”

“Don’t tell me what to do. I’m sick of you dictating to this department, Rosato. You think you know what we do, but you don’t. You wanna tell us procedure, you don’t know procedure. You think you can jerk us on a string, but this time you’re jerkin’ the wrong guy.”

Another Great and Powerful. They abounded, and I handled them wrong every time. “You have a choice, Detective. Pick her up or explain later why you didn’t, even after you were warned.”

“Warned? She didn’t do anything about this threat, did she?”

“She told her boyfriend she was going to kill the man, and the boyfriend thinks she’ll do it. They got a new lawyer. I think he put up bail.” I was talking about the man with the Haliburton.

Azzic was silent a minute, exhaling. “Rosato, what’s your angle here? You trying to distract me? Jerk me around? What?”

“Christ, I’m talking about a murder! Why don’t you try protecting and serving, for just one single minute? I won’t tell the other boys, I swear.”

“Don’t tell me I don’t do my job. I’m talkin’ about a murder, too! I’m talkin’ about a lady who would kill her boyfriend for twenty mil. That’s what I’m talking about, so excuse me if I don’t have time to take your crap.”

“It’s not crap. She could be a killer!” I shouted, but Azzic had already hung up.

An army of reporters swelled behind the police barricades outside, laying techno-siege to the townhouse. Grady and I ignored them, or tried to, and cleaned up the second-floor offices, excluding Mark’s, which had been taped closed. Not that I had the heart to go in there anyway. It was hard enough trying to function, but I had to see if I could salvage R amp; B.

None of the associates except Grady stuck around, and I didn’t blame them. I wondered how many would stay on now, assuming there was a firm at all. I drafted a letter to our clients explaining that their matters would be handled through this tragedy, and called to reassure them. Only thirty would even take the call, and some had already been contacted by a detective they chose not to name. Most told me outright they were taking their legal business to a lawyer who wasn’t a murder suspect, and I couldn’t blame them, either. Between Detective Azzic and the press, I was becoming a pariah.

The calls I dreaded most were to the drug companies Mark represented. I’d called Kurt Williamson and Dr. Haupt at Wellroth Chemical all day, but didn’t reach them. I dictated a request for a postponement of the Wellroth trial, then tried Haupt one last time at the end of the day after his secretary had gone.

“Ms. Rosato,” Dr. Haupt said, in a tone as distant as I expected. “I’m surprised to be hearing from you.”

“I left several messages.”

“I saw them, but I didn’t feel it was appropriate to return the calls. I understand that you have been charged with murder,” he said, in his stilted accent.

“No, that’s not true. I haven’t been charged with murder, and I certainly didn’t kill Mark. I want you to know that.”

“I don’t wish to discuss this with you, Ms. Rosato. I find this situation rather… horrifying. We saw Mark only yesterday. He was more than a lawyer to me, he was a friend.”

“I realize that. The purpose of this call is to tell you I’ve prepared a request for an indefinite postponement of the Cetor patent trial. I’d like to file it, with your permission.”

“We don’t wish to postpone the trial indefinitely, Ms. Rosato.”

“I’m afraid there’s no other choice. I’m not in a position to try the case.”

He cleared his throat. “Ms. Eberlein is fully prepared to go forward with the trial. We wish it to go forward, so that it concludes sooner. She has already asked the judge for a one-week postponement, and he agreed, in view of the circumstances.”

“What? How do you know this?”

“I have spoken with Ms. Eberlein by telephone. She is at home. Very upset, understandably, but as soon as she is feeling better we’ll go forward with her. Now I really must go. Please do not call me or Kurt again.”

“But Dr. Haupt-” I said, then the line went dead. I hung up slowly. Eve, trying the case herself? I was trying to process the information when the door to my office burst open. It was Grady, his print tie flopped over the shoulder of a blue oxford shirt. His eyes were bright with excitement behind his wire rims and he carried law books, legal pads, and photocopies.

“Look at this,” he said, shoveling papers over the desk at me. “It’s the will, Mark’s will.”