“I’m a friend to dogs and bartenders everywhere,” I said. “Turnoffs are corruption and cops abusing their position. Especially for dirty judges.”

“Those are some big-time accusations,” Chief Armstrong said. “A lot to hear from a guy we caught cruising around with a sixteen-year-old girl.”

“I don’t start leering until they’re twenty-one,” I said. “Beth Golnick reached out to me. I met her regarding a case I’m working on.”

“I bet that piece of paper you carry around impresses these kids,” Armstrong said. “I understand you offered to let her polish your pistol.”

“I don’t mind waiting around for two hours in this craphole,” I said. “But there’s a quota to the bullshit I can hear in one day.”

“You weren’t making advances to Miss Golnick?” Armstrong said. He craned his head over his left shoulder to grin at Officer Murphy. Murphy’s big cheeks brightened with pleasure.

“Nope.”

“She appeared with her mother this morning,” Armstrong said. “The little girl was in tears. She said you told her you were a cop and needed her help to find out secrets about Judge Scali.”

“Jeez, you guys have it all figured out,” I said. “I think this is the part when you look at me over the top of your glasses and wait for me to quiver a bit. After you think I’m scared, good and scared, you kick me loose and tell me not to come back to these parts again.”

“No, sir,” Armstrong said. “You’re being charged with an attempted lewd act.”

“Don’t forget lascivious,” I said. “You leave out the lascivious and the meaning of it all is shot to hell.”

Armstrong thumbed his nose. What was left of his hair was swept back in a large mound, exposing a lot of real estate on his forehead. He blinked at me a few times and pursed his lips. He thumped his fingers and then looked at me again.

“Who’s your client?” he said. “If you even have one.”

“You already know that,” I said. “You’re in cahoots with Officer Lorenzo.”

“What?”

“Cahoots,” I said.

“Are you trying to blackmail Judge Scali?”

I didn’t think that one deserved a response. I waited. Armstrong pushed the half-glasses farther up on his nose, read the report to himself again for emphasis, and then took off the glasses and looked up at me. “This will ruin your reputation,” he said. “No one will want to hire a guy with charges like this against him.”

“People have made up a lot of stories about me before,” I said. “It all works out.”

“I guess we’ll see,” he said, standing. I hadn’t moved. I sat very still and relaxed, keeping both Murphy and Armstrong in vision in case they tried anything.

Murphy reached into his pocket and handed over a digital recorder to the chief. The chief set it in the center of the table and pressed play. I recognized Beth Golnick’s voice immediately. She spoke calmly and without much emotion about our meeting last week. Some of it was true. Much of it wasn’t. A woman was asking her questions.

A: He offered to give me a ride to school.

Q: What did you say?

A: I said no. But he kept asking. He said he didn’t want the local cops to see us in public.

Q: Did he force you?

A: At first, no. He was quiet while we drove.

Q: When did he first touch you?

A: When we stopped near the school. He told me I was pretty. He touched my leg.

Q: And what did he say?

A: He asked me to do something for him.

I held up my hand. “Enough,” I said. “Not that I don’t enjoy the Lux Radio Theatre. Nicely done. I imagine this is what you had in mind when you arrested her in the first place. Really grand job. I have to hand it to you.”

Armstrong leaned back into his seat. He did not smile. The heater cut in overhead and even more hot air filled the small room.

“Judge would look favorably on a confession,” he said. “You think this sounds good on tape? Wait until we get her in front of a jury.”

“Would this be Judge Callahan?” I said.

“You bet.”

“What are the chances?”

“I don’t know your agenda, Spenser, or who hired you to try and shake down some good men, but you can’t act like this up here.”

“Is it the judges or the solicitation?”

“Both.”

“A double play.”

“Call it what you like,” Armstrong said, showing a lot of effort getting out of his seat. He left the recorder and the report on the table and walked out past Murphy.

“Come on, sunshine,” he said. “Let’s get you processed.”

“Do I get to call my attorney, or has the Constitution been suspended in Blackburn for adults, too?”

“You can call who you like,” he said. “But it’d be a shame if you didn’t make your first appearance in the morning. You just might get to stay with us a few days. You know?”

I stood and winked at him. “Murphy, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship,” I said.

“Shut the fuck up.”

“Or perhaps not.”

Tony Ponessa came for the boy late that afternoon. The guards had the kids on the west beach picking up garbage among the rocks and sand. They had sticks with nails in them to poke the trash, and when a stick didn’t work, the guards told them to use their hands. It was disgusting stuff: old soda cans, burger wrappers, and a few condoms. The stuff people put in the harbor was enough to make him never want to eat seafood again. He had a half-filled black plastic bag when he felt the long arm around his neck and a nail in his side. Ponessa put his mouth close to the boy’s ear and told him to get down on his knees and kneel to him.

The boy shot a hard elbow back into Ponessa’s ribs. He heard the boy make an ooof sound and stumble back. The other boys on the cold beach, fifteen of them, started yelling and waving their sticks. None of the guards said a word. Ponessa had his stick in his hand and swiped it at him, the nail snagging the boy’s pants, and then tried to jab it into him.

The shoreline was rocky and tricky to walk across. Old stones and broken pieces of concrete jabbed upward. The skies were gray and growing darker. A few ragged seagulls flew in loopy patterns over the little islands, landing in the tall grass up on the bulldozed dunes.

“Come on,” Ponessa said. “Come on. Get on your knees. And I won’t stick you.”

The boy waited for him to lunge again as they circled. Behind him, the crew-cut guard watched with a big smile on his face. Ponessa made a couple quick pokes and then went hard for it, stabbing at the boy’s center. The boy stepped aside and grabbed the stick. He got a good two hands on it, like you would hold a bat, and twisted it from Ponessa. He tossed it far into the harbor as Ponessa jumped on him.

All the boys had formed a circle around them, closing them at the center, black and white and Asian, and yelling for them to please, for the love of God, kill each other.

Ponessa made a lot of noise when he fought. He called the boy a lot of names and threw sloppy, hard punches into his kidneys. The boy knew he’d have to get him to the ground, spinning quickly and snatching Ponessa’s head to pull him into a headlock. He twisted the kid’s neck, pulling all of Ponessa’s weight forward, and tossed him hard into the sand with a hard thud.