He crushes his can and leaves it on the table. “I got nothing else to say right now, Sebastian. I’ll see you later.”

“You have my number.”

He opens the door and gets out. Partner watches him as he glances around, looks for the cops, then enters the mall and disappears.

Partner and I drive straight to the bank. The check is no good. I call Arch for an hour and finally get him. He apologizes and promises the check will be good tomorrow. Something tells me I’d be a fool to believe him.

10.

It’s 4:33 in the morning and my phone is ringing. I grab it and don’t recognize the number. This is always trouble. “Hello,” I say.

“Hey, Sebastian, it’s me, Arch. Got a minute?”

Of course, Arch. Oddly enough, I’m not that busy in the middle of the night. I take a deep breath and say, “Sure, Arch, I have a minute. But it’s four in the morning, so this better be good.”

“I’m out of town, okay, officially on the run. I shook ’em off and slipped through their net, and I’m not coming back, so they’ll never catch me.”

“Big mistake, Arch. Better find yourself a new lawyer.”

“You’re my lawyer, Sebastian.”

“The check is rubber, Arch. Remember what I said?”

“You still have it, run it through today. I swear it’ll clear.” His words are fast and clipped, and he sounds as though he’d been running. “Look, Sebastian, I want you to know where that girl is, okay? Just in case something happens to me. There are others involved, and I could easily end up on the short end of the stick, know what I mean?”

“Not really.”

“I can’t explain all of it, Sebastian. It’s complicated. I got folks after me, cops as well as some guys who make cops look like Cub Scouts.”

“Too bad, Arch. I can’t help you.”

“You ever see that billboard down the interstate, about an hour south of here, big bright sign in a cornfield, says, ‘Vasectomy Reversals.’ You ever see it, Sebastian?”

“I don’t think so.” Every reasonable thought and instinct tells me to cancel this call immediately. Just hang up, stupid. And never speak to him again. Physically, though, I freeze and cannot do it.

His voice is animated now, as if he’s thoroughly enjoying this. “ ‘Vasectomy Reversals by Dr. Woo. All insurance accepted. Call twenty-four hours a day. Toll-free number.’ That’s where she’s buried, Sebastian, under that billboard, right next to a cornfield. My father had a vasectomy two years before I was born, not sure what went wrong and my mother was certainly perplexed. Maybe she was seeing someone on the side. So who’s my daddy, right? I guess we’ll never know. Anyway, I’ve always had this fascination with vasectomies. A snip here and a snip there, drive yourself home and shoot blanks for the rest of your life. Such a simple procedure but such dramatic results. You had the Big V, Sebastian?”

“No.”

“Didn’t think so. You’re such a stud.”

“So you buried her, is that what you’re saying, Arch?”

“Ain’t saying anything, Sebastian. Except good-bye and thanks for keeping this a secret. I’ll check in later.”

11.

I wrap myself in a blanket and sit outside on the small terrace. It’s cold and dark and the streets far below are quiet and empty. In moments like these, I wonder why I became a criminal defense lawyer. Why have I chosen to spend my life trying to protect people who, for the most part, have done horrible things? I can justify it on the usual grounds, but at times like this my heart is not really in it. I think about architecture school, my second choice. But then, I know some architects and they have their own issues.

First scenario: Swanger is telling the truth. In that case, am I bound by ethics and duty to stay quiet? Hand in hand is the question, am I really his lawyer? No and yes. We signed a contract, but he breached the contract by paying with a bad check. No contract means no representation, but it’s never that clear. I met with him on two occasions, and during both he considered me to be his lawyer. Both were clearly lawyer-client meetings. He asked for advice. I gave it. He followed most of it. He confided in me. When he told me about the body, he certainly thought he was talking to his lawyer.

Second scenario: Let’s say I’m his lawyer, I never see him again, and I decide to tell the police what he told me. It would be a serious breach of client trust, probably enough to get me disbarred. But who will complain? If he’s on the run, or dead, how much trouble can he cause me?

Third scenario: Plenty. If the body is where he says it is, and I tell the police, then Swanger will be hunted, found, tried, convicted, and given death. He would blame me, and he would be correct. My career would be over.

Fourth scenario: I cannot tell the police, under any circumstances. They don’t know what I know, and I’m not about to tell them. I think about the Kemp family and their nightmare, but there’s no way I can break a confidential relationship. With luck, the family will never know that I know.

Fifth scenario: Swanger is lying. He seemed too anxious to tell me. He’s playing games and sucking me into some awful scheme that will only end badly. He knew the check would bounce. His poor mother has never seen $5,000 in her life, nor has he.

Sixth scenario: Swanger is not lying. I can leak the information to Nate Spurio, my mole deep in the department. The body will be found. Swanger will be caught and put on trial and I will be nowhere near the courthouse. If he killed the girl, I want him locked up.

I kick around several other scenarios and things get foggier, not clearer. At 5:30, I put on the coffee. While it brews I rack all fifteen balls and break with a rather soft shot. The neighbor next door has complained about the noise of clacking balls at weird hours, so I work on my finesse game. I run the table, sink the 8 ball in a corner, pour a cup of strong coffee, and run the table again. Another rack, and I leave the 4 ball an inch from the pocket. Thirty-three in a row. Not bad.

Vasectomy reversals?

12.

The police follow me, but halfheartedly. Partner says they’re tailing me about half the time, that they got fired up when Swanger met me in the van, but that was over a week ago. Partner drops me off at Ken’s Kars, a cheap secondhand lot in the Hispanic part of town. I’ve done some work for Ken, kept him out of jail, and he and I both know that our tag-teaming days are not over. He loves shady deals, the darker the better, and it’s just a matter of time before a SWAT team shows up with another arrest warrant.

For twenty bucks cash, per day, Ken will “lease” me a serviceable car from his sad inventory, no questions asked. I do this occasionally when I think I’m being watched. My black Ford cargo van is quite easy to spot. The dented Subaru wagon Ken has selected for me, however, will never attract attention. I spend a few minutes with him, swap some insults, and hit the road.

I weave through a run-down part of town, circling back here and there, with one eye on the mirror. I eventually find a bypass that takes me to the interstate, and when I’m sure there’s no one following me, I head south. Fifty-two miles from the city limits, I pass Dr. Woo’s sign on the other side of the road. As Swanger said, it’s a large billboard at the edge of a cornfield. Next to the words “Vasectomy Reversals” is the large goofy face of Dr. Woo as he looks down upon the northbound traffic. I turn around at the next exit, drive four miles back to the sign, and park near it. Traffic roars by, the drafts from the big trucks almost lifting my little Subaru. Next to the shoulder there is a ditch covered with weeds and clogged with litter, and beyond the ditch there is a chain-link fence choked with vines. Beyond the fence is a gravel frontage road that borders the cornfield. The farmer who owns the place has carved out a narrow rectangle to lease to the sign company, and in the center of it there are four large metal poles that anchor the billboard. Around them are weeds, more litter, a few stray stalks of corn. Above them, Dr. Woo grins at the traffic as he hawks his skills.