"Sorry to do this to you, Ted, but we simply don't have the luxury of time." Henry Bartlett leaned back in the upholstered armchair at the end of the library table.

Ted was aware that his left temple was throbbing, and shafts of pain were finding a target behind and above his left eye. Deliberately he moved his head to avoid the streams of late-afternoon sun that were coming through the window opposite him.

They were in the study of Ted's bungalow in the Meadowcluster area, one of the two most expensive accommodations at Cypress Point Spa. Craig was sitting diagonally across from him, his face grave, his hazel eyes cloudy with worry.

Henry had wanted a conference before dinner. "Time is running out," he had said, "and until we decide on our final strategy, we can't make any progress."

Twenty years in prison, Ted thought incredulously. That was the sentence he was facing. He'd be fifty-four years old when he got out. Incongruously, all the old gangster movies he'd used to watch late at night sprang into his mind. Steel bars, tough prison guards, Jimmy Cagney starring as a mad-dog killer. He used to revel in them.

"We have two ways we can go," Henry Bartlett said. "We can stick to your original story-"

"My original story," Ted snapped.

"Hear me out! You left Leila's apartment at about ten after nine. You went to your own apartment. You tried to phone Craig." He turned to Craig. "It's a damn shame you didn't pick up the phone."

"I was watching a program I wanted to see. The telephone recorder was on. I figured I'd call back anyone who left a message. And I can swear the phone rang at nine twenty, just as Ted says."

"Why didn't you leave a message, Ted?"

"Because I hate talking to machines, and especially that one." His lips tightened. Craig's habit of talking like a Japanese houseboy on his recorder irritated Ted wildly.

"What were you calling Craig about, anyhow?"

"It's blurry. I was drunk. My impression is that I wanted to tell him I was taking off for a while."

"That doesn't help us. Probably if you had reached him it wouldn't help us. Not unless he can back you up that you were talking to him at precisely nine thirty-one P.M."

Craig slammed his hand on the table. "Then I'll say it. I'm not in favor of lying under oath, but neither am I in favor of Ted getting railroaded for something he didn't do."

"It's too late for that. You've already made a statement. You change it now and the situation gets worse." Bartlett skimmed the papers he had pulled from his briefcase. Ted got up and walked to the window. He had planned to go to the men's spa and work out for a while. But Bartlett had been insistent about this meeting. Already his freedom was being infringed.

How many times had he come to Cypress Point with Leila in their three-year relationship? Eight or ten probably. Leila had loved it here. She'd been amused by Min's bossiness, by the Baron's pretentiousness. She'd enjoyed long hikes along the cliffs. "All right, Falcon, if you won't come with me, play your darn golf and I'll meet you at my pad later." That mischievous wink, the deliberate leer, her long, slender fingers running along his shoulders. "God, Falcon, you do turn me on." Lying with her in his arms on the couch watching late-night movies. Her murmured "Min knows better than to give us any of those damn narrow antiques of hers. She knows I like to cuddle with my fellow." It was here that he had found the Leila he loved; the Leila she herself wanted to be.

What was Bartlett saying? "Either we attempt to flatly contradict Elizabeth Lange and the so-called eyewitness or we try to turn that testimony to our benefit."

"How does one do that?" God, I hate this man, Ted thought. Look at him sitting there, cool and comfortable. You'd think he was discussing a chess game, not the rest of my life. Irrational fury almost choked him. He had to get out of this spot. Even being in a room with someone he disliked gave him claustrophobia. How could he share a cell with another man for two or three decades? He couldn't. At any price, he couldn't do it.

"You have no memory of hailing the cab, of the ride to Connecticut."

"Absolutely none."

"Your last conscious memory of that evening. Tell me again: what was it?"

"I had been with Leila for several hours. She was hysterical. Kept accusing me of cheating on her."

"Did you?"

"No."

"Then why did she accuse you?"

"Leila was-terribly insecure. She'd had bad experiences with men. She had convinced herself she could never trust one. I thought I'd gotten her over that as far as our relationship was concerned, but every once in a while she'd throw a jealous fit." That scene in the apartment. Leila lunging at him, scratching his face; her wild accusations. His hands on her wrists, restraining her. What had he felt? Anger. Fury. And disgust.

"You tried to give her back the engagement ring?"

"Yes, and she refused it."

"Then what happened?"

" Elizabeth phoned. Leila began sobbing into the phone and shouting at me to get out. I told her to put the phone down. I wanted to get to the bottom of what had brought all this on.

I saw it was hopeless and left. I went to my own apartment. I think I changed my shirt. I tried to call Craig. I remember leaving the apartment. I don't remember anything else until the next day when I woke up in Connecticut."

"Teddy, do you realize what the prosecutor will do to that story? Do you know how many cases are on record of people who kill in a fit of rage and then have a psychotic episode where they block it out? As your lawyer I have to tell you something: That story stinks! It's no defense. Sure, if it weren't for Elizabeth Lange there wouldn't be a problem… Hell, there wouldn't even be a case. I could make mincemeat of that so-called eyewitness. She's a nut, a real off-the-wall nut. But with Elizabeth swearing you were in the apartment fighting with Leila at nine thirty, the nut becomes believable when she says you shoved Leila off the terrace at nine thirty-one."

"Then what do we do about it?" Craig asked.

"We gamble," Bartlett said. "Ted agrees with Elizabeth 's story. He now remembers going back upstairs. Leila was still hysterical. She slammed the phone down and ran to the terrace. Everybody who was in Elaine's the night before can testify to her emotional state. Her sister admits she had been drinking. She was despondent about her career. She had decided to break off her relationship with you. She felt washed up. She wouldn't be the first one to take a dive in that situation."

Ted winced. A dive. Christ, were all lawyers so insensitive? And then the image came of Leila's broken body; the garish police pictures. He felt perspiration break out over his entire body.

But Craig looked hopeful. "It might work. What that eyewitness saw was Ted struggling to save Leila, and when Leila fell, he blacked out. That's when he had the psychotic episode. That explains why he was almost incoherent in the cab."

Ted stared through the window at the ocean. It was unusually calm now, but he knew the tide would soon be roaring in. The calm before the storm, he thought. Right now we're having a clinical discussion. In nine days I'll be in the courtroom. The People of the State of New York v. Andrew Edward Winters III. "There's one big hole in your theory," he said flatly. "If I admit I went back to that apartment and was on the terrace with Leila, I'm putting my head in a noose.

If the jury decides I was in the process of killing her, I'll be found guilty of Murder Two."

"It's a chance you may have to take."

Ted came back to the table and began to stuff the open files into Bartlett 's briefcase. His smile was not pleasant. "I'm not sure I can take that chance. There has to be a better solution, and at any cost I intend to find it. I will not go to prison!"