I wondered sometimes if anyone would even say anything if I didn’t show up. But I did show up and I worked hard, in large part because I had nothing else to do. My fellow prosecutors did not, as far as I knew, have anything against me personally, but they recognized my lowly status in the office, my office in exile, and understood that friendship with me was not going to advance their careers. Besides, most of them were married and I no longer was, which limited opportunities for social interaction outside the office.

Strangely—to me, anyhow—some of my better friends were the defense counsel I opposed in court on a regular basis. Guys like Jimmy Shelley, Alphonse Carbona, Buzzy Daizell; guys with senses of humor about their place on the legal food chain, guys who took their victories where they found them: getting a felony reduced to a misdemeanor, getting a not-guilty on five counts even if it meant being hit on another ten; securing a Colombian client.

“Colombians are near and dear to my heart,” said Buzzy one time. “They pay in cash.” That was defense-counsel humor.

Sometimes these guys would invite me out for a beer, or to attend a cookout, or even to a Red Sox game. But I had to be careful. It would not look good if I appeared to be too close to any of them, and while I was relatively sure that there was almost no offense that would cause Mitch White to fire me, I did not want to be ostracized any more than I already was.

In my eight years as his employee, I could remember being in Mitch White’s commodious corner office only three times. Once was on the day he hired me. Once was on the day he found out my wife was divorcing me. And I cannot remember the third occasion. Maybe it was when he told me I would be getting all my assignments directly from Dick O’Connor, but mostly I was going to be the office’s “Operating Under the Influence” guy.

My visit after my conversation with Bill Telford was, therefore, my fourth to Mitch’s inner sanctum. It took just two calls to his secretary.

MITCH GREETED ME WITHOUT getting up from his desk. Like every other male in the office, he worked without his suit jacket when he was not in public. Unlike every other male, Mitch kept his tie in a knot pulled tightly to his neck. Even though I had put on my suit jacket for this visit, he made me feel I was a little more casual than the situation required.

“Yes, George.” Yes, George, I’m a busy man. See all these papers on my desk?

“Last night I talked to a guy who indicated he was having a problem with our office.”

The wheels on his chair made scuttling noises as the D.A. pushed himself back from the edge of his desk. He used his hands to position himself at exactly arm’s-length distance. George from the basement is telling me this?

I nodded, confirming the question he had not actually vocalized. “He feels we’re not paying attention to a very serious matter.”

Now I wasn’t just from the basement, I was George with friends in high places, conveying a criticism of his operation. He gripped the edge of the desk until his fingers blanched. “Who we talking about?”

“Bill Telford.”

“Anything new.” It was hard to tell if he was making a statement or asking a question, but the color returned to his fingers. Anything New Telford wasn’t quite as much of a threat as, perhaps, others were.

“He says he’s been handing in stuff on his daughter’s murder for some time and nobody is following up on it.”

“There’s no case, George. No suspect, no file, nothing for this office to do except pass along what we get to the police.” He lifted his hands about six inches, dropped them quickly to the security afforded by the edge of the desk. Having done that, he waited.

“If I read him correctly, he seems to be of the mind that we’re not doing anything because the Gregorys might be involved.”

The name. The magic word. Mitch White’s muddy brown eyes popped from their sockets, his pupils magnified by his ugly oxbow glasses. And then, within the space of a second, his expression changed. But wait, it seemed to say, the Gregorys are your ticket, too, George. Now he saw me sitting before him not as a threat but as an ally. I had come not to attack him but to warn him. And to work with him. We had done it before, right? The time that young Kirby Gregory had gotten arrested for driving with a .20, we had made it go away—he and I.

“That’s a lot of horse manure,” he said, raising one eyebrow tentatively, making sure I agreed.

“I was wondering if I might take a look.”

Now both eyebrows went up, and then they softened. Of course. George Becket, friend of the Gregorys, checking on the Gregorys, what better solution?

“This goes back,” he said, sitting up straight, pulling himself into the desk, “almost ten years, you know. Bill and his wife, Edna, are fine people, and the murder has devastated them. They still keep Heidi’s room just as it was, you know that? Kind of creepy, I know, but that’s how much they were affected.”

He peered through his lenses. Did I see how difficult this was?

“Bill quit his job. I don’t know, he may have lost it, but this search for the killer became an obsession with him. Always coming up with some theory or other.”

Mitch stopped talking for a moment. His fingers began to beat on the desk. A rhythmless sound like typewriter keys clacking.

“After a while they all seemed to revolve around the Gregorys. There was a party that didn’t really happen. A pickup at the general store that nobody is quite sure actually took place. You know the kinds of things I’m saying. A horrible thing happens in the Gregorys’ neighborhood and all of a sudden conspiracists are everywhere, feeding the grieving parents information that doesn’t really have any factual basis. All that does is make us have to be extra-careful on our end. Pressure like the kind Bill puts on almost makes you push back harder than you otherwise would. You listen, sure, but after a while you grow pretty skeptical and you just say, okay, show me what you’ve got, but I’m not carrying the water for you just because some right-wing nut who has it in for the Gregorys says one of them was seen talking to a pretty blonde girl on the night Heidi died. Heck, that’s what the Gregorys do. Probably isn’t a pretty blonde girl on Cape Cod who hasn’t been talked to by at least one of the Gregorys.”

He gave a modified laugh. It sounded like a steam heater. His mouth laughed, his chest laughed, his eyebrows stayed put, elevated above his glasses. Like his mustache, they were too dark for his pale skin. The image they presented distracted from his message.

Still, I smiled, because that is what he wanted me to do. Eight years we had barely spoken to each other and now, in a matter of minutes, we were so inextricably intertwined that we could make little in-jokes about our mentors. If things kept improving like this, I might soon get out of the basement. Maybe even get invited to the Pops concert. Sit at a round table and help Mitch look for celebrities.

Hey, there’s Regis Philbin.

4

.

“DON’T WE PAY FOR ALL THE THINGS WE DO, THOUGH?”

Who said that? Hemingway. Lady Brett to Jake Barnes, the protagonist in The Sun Also Rises.

What had she ever done to compare with what I had?

Better yet, is what she said even true? Or is it true for some but not for others? Was Peter Martin paying now that he was a doctor in San Francisco, living in Pacific Heights, attending opening night at the opera in black tie? What about Jamie Gregory, now a Wall Street banker, living in a landmark four-story townhouse in the Village?