I get the impression Rico Vargas isn’t listening very intently to Shane, not to the particulars. Something is clicking over in his nimble brain, calculations based on one or two of Shane’s details. If I’m not mistaken, the look in his eyes betrays worry, if not outright fear. “I think you should both leave now,” he announces. “I really can’t discuss these matters.”

“Give us Alonzo’s street address,” Shane demands, sounding very much like a police detective who won’t take no for an answer. “Give us her address, and we walk.”

Vargas shakes his head regretfully. Wanting us to think he’d really love to help, were it not for his deep moral conviction that he can’t betray a client. “No can do. I’d be breaking confidentiality. I’m afraid we have nothing further to discuss.”

“Give it up, Mr. Vargas,” Shane suggests, not bothering to disguise an air of barely restrained menace. “Any way you want. Write us a note. Walk out of the room and leave your briefcase behind. Say it in pig latin. Whatever method salves your conscience. But we’re not leaving without her address.”

Vargas sighs deeply, theatrically, and then has the nerve to look to me for support. “Please tell him, Mrs. Bickford. Threatening me will only get him in trouble.”

Something has been bubbling inside me for the last few minutes, a kind of outrage at the whole bantering conversation between the two men. How dare they quip and posture when the underlying subject of their conversation is my missing son!

“Tell him yourself, you son of a bitch!” I demand, waving the letter opener in front of the lawyer’s chubby, self-satisfied face. “That woman may have my son, do you understand! Tell us what we want to know, or so help me God I’ll poke your lying eyeballs right out of your head!”

Both men are shocked, but then, so am I. Who is this woman threatening a two-hundred-pound man with a sharp weapon? Has she lost her mind? I don’t even remember picking up the opener, so how did this happen?

The scary thing, the really scary thing, is that if I thought assaulting Vargas would get me back my son, I’d do it. Do it in a heartbeat.

Vargas has backed his chair against the wall, eyes clocking the waving blade of the letter opener. Ready to duck if I lunge.

“You’re a witness,” he tells Shane, pleading. “Your client has threatened to blind me.”

“It’s not exactly a switchblade, Rico.”

“Yeah? For your information people get killed with office implements all the time. I had a client once who murdered a guy with a tape dispenser.”

Shane shrugs calmly. “My advice, Rico? Take her very seriously. Think about it. How would you feel if it was your kid got snatched, and some fat shyster wouldn’t give up the name of a possible abductor?”

Something about Shane’s reasonable tone makes me lower the blade and toss it on the table, where it clatters like a cheap toy.

Vargas sighs in relief, then slyly retrieves the blade, slipping it into his briefcase.

“The address. I want to talk to this woman. I want to ask her about my son.”

Vargas stands up, as much to keep out of my range as to impose his size on the room. “I wish I could help, Mrs. Bickford. I really do. But I can’t.”

He’s about to add something else when his cell phone rings. He picks it up, flips it open with the dexterity of a man who lives and dies by phone connections. Raising a practiced finger to indicate that he simply has to take this call, and he knows we’ll understand. “Attorney Vargas,” he says, giving me an apologetic, just-be-a-minute smile. “Yeah, yeah,” he says into the phone. “Funny you should ask. No, of course not. Right here with me, yes.” He pauses, listening for a few beats, and his expression grows somber. “Uh-huh,” he says. “I suppose that’s a possibility.” Then he snaps the phone shut and stands up.

“I may have something for you after all,” he announces. “Wait right here. I have to return this call.”

“So return it here,” Shane suggests.

“Sorry, no, Mr. Fed. Has to be a secure location. Meaning I have to be able to talk freely without being overheard. I’m sure you understand.”

“We’ll come with you,” Shane suggests.

Vargas shakes his head, dislodging a thick lock of dark hair. “Not if you want any further information from me. That’s the deal. Five minutes.”

“Five?”

“Wait here. If you follow me, I can’t take the call.”

Shane glances at me and shrugs. “Five,” he says.

Vargas snags his briefcase, gives me a wink that implies my troubles will soon be over, and strides from the room, leaving the door ajar. He has that comfortable, fat man’s agility that suggests he’d be a good dancer, nimble and balanced and graceful. His feet pad down the hallway, seemingly in no particular hurry, and then he’s gone.

21 mr. smith goes to the bathroom

Vargas hurries. Some edge to the voice on the phone puts urgency into his normally measured pace. He’s keenly aware of how he looks in motion, preferring to glide into a room, using his bulk to impress, not to inspire smirks. Nobody likes to see a big man go too fast, unless they’re looking for comic effect, the old high-speed waddle perfected by funnymen from Fatty Arbuckle to John Candy. Vargas loathes the very idea. Thankfully the dimly lit hallway is vacant and nobody can see his blubber shifting from side to side, distorting the cut of his fine, Italian wool suit.

As he moves down the hallway he’s calculating whether or not to hit the mysterious Mr. Smith up for another fee. Vargas had been aware from the start that the custody suit wasn’t exactly kosher, that the custody filing was either a smoke job or a mindfuck of some kind. Smith had assured him that nothing would come of it—certainly he’d never have to appear in court—that the purpose of the suit was simply to intimidate Mrs. Bickford into settling out of court.

All along, Vargas had been assuming that the man who called himself Smith was the biological father, although he’d never claimed to be. Never said word one about why he was involved, or why he was acting for the mysterious Ms. Alonzo. Personally Vargas had his doubts that the woman really existed. Not that he really cared. Five grand in cash to file papers? Easy money. Now it didn’t look quite so easy, not with an investigator nosing around. Certainly not with the mother showing her face. And he absolutely had not envisioned that the filing might somehow have triggered a felony murder, or any felony whatsoever, other than the rather ordinary, everyday felony-intent he’d committed by pocketing Smith’s cash with no intention of reporting it on his Schedule C.

As Vargas backs into the communal bathroom he already has his cell phone in hand, ready and waiting for Smith to call back. His idea of a secure location is somewhere he can’t be overheard by the hard-eyed investigator. What was his name, Shane? Ought to be Shame, for fibbing to set up an appointment.

The big man stares at the tiny little cell screen, willing the phone to trill. Can’t simply call back because Smith, who must be some sort of paranoid, has a blocked number. “Come on,” Vargas says to the silent cell phone. “I haven’t got all day.”

A toilet flushes. Vargas’s beefy heart does a flip-flop. Mother of God, he hadn’t checked to make sure no one was in the stall. And now he’s been caught talking to himself. He’s about to back through the door, find a closet or an unoccupied office, when the stall door opens and Smith himself steps out.

“Hey, Rico.”

Vargas is aware that he’s blushing. His face is hot, and tiny beads of sweat have begun to form along his hairline. That’s always been his response to being taken by surprise, which is just one more reason why he hates to be surprised, and orders his life to avoid the experience.