She was already seated at a round, wrought-iron table draped in a red-and-white-checked cloth when Mason arrived a few minutes before noon. The table and chairs were patio furniture that had been recycled as restaurant furnishings. A series of six large paintings of a nude woman plummeting into a black abyss hung on the wall behind Mason. Each one captured a different frame of her descent. Her raven hair flared around her head like a fan, while her arms and legs were splayed akimbo in the imaginary breeze of her descent. Her bemused expression contrasted sharply with the inescapably fatal course she was on. The artist's name and the price of each painting was written in swirling calligraphy on white cards mounted next to each frame.

Claire had draped her heavy winter coat across an empty chair. It was dark olive, impervious to nature's elements, and by Mason's estimation, weighed at least twenty-five pounds. Or so it had seemed to him when he'd carried it for her as a boy. His aunt didn't throw away anything that worked well, and her winter coat was tireless. It helped that she was oblivious of fashion, since the coat looked as if it were designed for a Prussian Cossack. She was wearing a dark brown pantsuit that was equally utilitarian.

Mason's own sense of fashion hovered in a casual comfort zone. He had three dark suits for court, but preferred jeans or khakis. He'd reluctantly dressed for success that morning, choosing a navy pinstripe suit, white shirt, and red-and-navy-striped tie. The mayor was speaking at a fund-raising lunch for the Salvation Army's Holiday fund drive at the Hyatt Hotel in Crown Center. Mason planned on stopping there after his lunch with Claire, and hoped his suit would help him get close enough to the mayor to ask some questions.

"You look like you're dressed for a job interview," she told him as he sat down.

"Interview, not job interview," he told her. "If I get the chance. I need to talk to the mayor about Jack Cullan. His staff won't work me into his schedule, so I'm going to work him into mine. He's giving a speech at the Hyatt. I'm going to try and catch him after he's done."

"When God said let there be light, He didn't mean Billy Sunshine," Claire said.

"Not one of your favorite politicians?" Mason asked her.

"Favorite politician is an oxymoron. Billy Sunshine has the distinction of being both an oxymoron and a regular moron."

"I take it you didn't vote for him," Mason said.

"To the contrary," Claire answered. "The politicians that disappoint me the most are the ones I vote for. I always feel like a sucker afterward. Billy Sunshine was smart, charismatic, and wanted to do all the right things for the right reasons. Revitalize downtown, pump private investment into the East Side, fix the potholes on every street and not just the mayor's. He wanted to unite the people who lived north of the river with the people who lived south of Seventy-Fifth Street, neither of whom believed they lived in the same city. He wanted the Hispanics on the West Side to have a bigger role in city government since they were the fastest-growing minority in the city. He wanted to pull the public schools out of the black hole the school board had thrown them into."

"And you're disappointed he didn't do all. of that?" Mason asked.

"Don't be cute," she told him with a smile that appreciated his sarcasm. "Half that stuff is impossible and the rest is just too hard for mere mortals. That's not the point. He made the promises, got the job, and sold out quicker than a whore on Saturday night."

"Sold out to whom?"

"Anybody with the price of a vote or a sweetheart deal or a zoning variance or whatever else a big campaign contributor was shopping for."

"Are you saying he took bribes?"

"Maybe. Probably not cash in a brown paper bag. It's usually not done that way. It's more often money that gets funneled to friends or family who get hired by somebody as a favor to somebody who wants a favor. That kind of thing. The mayor ends up with friends who owe him favors and pay him back with big campaign contributions or hidden interests in deals."

"How do you know all this and why isn't it on the front page of the newspaper?"

"I know it because I represent the people who get screwed in these deals. The business owner whose building gets condemned for some new high-rise, or the schoolchildren who can't read by the time they're in the eighth grade but are smart enough to figure out how to shoplift, sell dope, and get knocked up. And it's not in the newspaper because everyone knows it and no one can prove it."

"Rachel Firestone thinks she can, at least on the Dream Casino."

Claire studied Mason over her half glasses. "Since you're short on time, get the lentil soup. They serve it in a bread bowl. It's perfect for a cold day. You probably skipped breakfast, so you need something hearty."

Mason smiled at his aunt, surprised that she had dodged the subject of the Dream Casino. She had never pretended to replace his mother after her death, though she loved him as well as any parent could have and still worried about him.

"I know you didn't invite me to lunch to make sure I'm eating right," Mason told her. "I figured you wanted to talk about Jack Cullan's murder, not local politics."

"Good for you. No beating around the bush," she answered. "Solo practice doesn't leave much time for small talk."

Before Mason could respond, their waitress interrupted with a laconic rendition of the daily specials. She was a lanky white woman, barely out of her teens, whose spiked, violet hair failed to distract from the matching tattoos of elongated suns that ran the length of her arms. Both Claire and Mason ordered the lentil soup. The waitress sniffed the air, gave them a squinty, disdainful look, and scratched their order onto her pad. With a shake of her head, she slowly wandered off as if she'd seen enough and wasn't likely to return.

Mason said, "Harry and I already talked about it. We'll do our jobs and whatever happens, happens. It'll work out."

"Don't kid yourself," she told him. "There's not much chance this is going to work out. At least not for us. One of you, or both of you, will end up bloodied by the other. Blues may end up in prison for the rest of his life. Or worse," she added in a soft voice he had rarely heard from her. "No, there's not much that's likely to work out."

"So what do you want me to do? Walk away? Let somebody else defend Blues?" Mason asked her.

She glared at him as if he'd forgotten everything she'd ever taught him. "Sometimes things don't work out. Sometimes they can't. Sometimes those are the things that have to be done no matter what. You'll live with it and move on, but you won't quit. Don't talk to me about the case. Don't apologize or rationalize to me or to yourself about what you have to do. Just do the best damn job."

Mason didn't have an answer, though he had questions. He wanted to ask Claire about Jack Cullan since she must have crossed paths with him more than once. He wanted to ask her if Harry was capable of pushing a bogus case against Blues just to even a score. More than anything, he wanted to ask her what had really happened between Harry and Blues. Instead, he studied her as she pretended to study the paintings on the wall behind him. His aunt never minded silence, believing it preferable to boring conversation. This silence was uneasy.

The waitress returned, depositing their soup in front of them. Mason watched the steam rise from the bowl in front of his aunt and mix with the tears brimming in her eyes. She turned away, red-eyed and red-faced.

"Damn the work we do!" Claire said, shoving the bowl away from her. She stood, grabbed her coat, and left without another word. The waitress gave Mason a withering look that said she blamed him and not the soup. Mason shrugged in reply.