‘They get you for murder, that’ll be the least of your problems.’ This was inarguable, but Graham leaned back in his chair, pondering it. ‘I thought you didn’t want to be a lawyer anyway.’

‘Come on, Diz. Why do you think I went to law school? Of course I want to be a lawyer.’

‘But you-’

‘I just wanted one last chance to play ball. I figured I’d play a few years, make my millions, then go back and practice law. Then imagine my surprise when I came back to the city and found I wasn’t hirable. Good old Judge Draper had blackballed me, called everybody he knew, though of course he denies it.’

‘You asked him?’

‘I didn’t have to. The word got out. I’m untouchable.’ Another scan of the room. ‘And now this.’

‘Couldn’t Giotti help you? He was a friend of your father’s. Wouldn’t he…?’

But Graham was shaking his head before Hardy could finish. ‘No chance. Federal judges hang together. You’ve got to understand that I quit these guys, quit the court, rejected their whole lives. They’re never going to forgive me. Maybe I could find some work in Alaska, but I’m dead in this town. I’ve looked, believe me. I must have sent out five hundred resumes. I’m in the top of my class at Boalt. Not even an interview.’

‘So why didn’t you move to Alaska?’

The maddening hesitation suddenly reappeared. ‘I might,’ he said at last. The ambiguity seemed intentional. Whether he meant ‘I might have except for…’ or ‘I might now someday,’ Hardy couldn’t say. But either way, for Hardy the light came on. ‘Your father. He needed you. That’s why you came back and stayed on.’

But immediately Hardy regretted what he’d said – he might have given his client an idea.

Graham stood up, got to the wall, and stood facing the window. Finally, he spoke without turning. ‘I don’t know. I really don’t know. I didn’t plan it. It just happened. He wrote me the letter – the one you saw yesterday – and I got in touch with him, and we just’ – a pause – ‘I just…’

Graham was silent so long that Hardy rose and crossed over to him. It shocked him to see tears, but in spite of himself, or wanting to, he wasn’t sure he believed them. Not anymore. Graham had already been too duplicitous. His admission about trying to charm Sarah. Maybe now he was playing for his attorney’s sympathy. Hardy put a hand on his client’s shoulder and felt the tension break, the shoulders give.

Graham hung his head, the weight of holding it up apparently too much to bear. ‘I loved him. He was my dad. He needed me.’ His voice went down a notch. ‘I needed him too.’

There was still the money.

Ten minutes later they were both back at the table. Hardy had been there for over an hour and had nothing substantive to show for it. He had to find out about the money.

‘My dad wanted me to take it, to give it to somebody else. He didn’t want anybody in the family to have it, didn’t want it to be part of the estate.’

Hardy took that in. Like nearly everything else to come from the mouth of Graham Russo, the response raised more questions than it answered. ‘Who did he want to give it to?’

‘The children of a woman named Joan Singleterry.’

‘Okay,’ Hardy said. ‘I’ll bite. Who’s she?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Didn’t your father tell you?’

‘He started. Then the phone rang. When I brought it up again when he came back, he looks at me like I’m from Mars. No memory. Just not there. That’s the way he got.’

‘And you didn’t press him?’

Graham spread his palms. ‘That was my dad. He wouldn’t tell me, even if he remembered that he wanted me to know.’

‘The time he did mention her – what was that story?’

He shrugged. ‘He didn’t know where she lived, but he wanted me to find her after he was dead and give her the money.’

‘So he knew he was going to be dead?’

‘He knew he was going to kill himself, sure.’ Graham held up a hand. ‘I know what that sounds like, but it’s the truth.’

‘Why wouldn’t I believe it’s the truth?’ Hardy asked with heavy irony. ‘This happens all the time. Some guy’s father gives him fifty grand to give to somebody he doesn’t know.’ Hardy leaned across the table, punched up his voice. ‘Listen up, Graham, you’ve got to start telling me something I can believe pretty soon or I’m going to be out of here.’

‘This is the truth, Diz. I don’t know, maybe he had some kids with this woman a long time ago and-’

‘Where’d he get the money?’

‘I don’t know that either.’

Hardy slapped the table, shouted. ‘Jesus! What about the baseball cards? What did he want you to do with them, put ’em in a fucking time capsule?‘

It was the moment to leave – this anger wasn’t going anywhere productive. Hardy got his voice back under control, gathered his pen and his legal pad, stood up. ‘Let me tell you what this looks like, Graham. This looks like you killed your dad and stole fifty thousand dollars from him and you just didn’t have the chance – yet – to launder the money, or do whatever it is you do with that much cash. And cash seems to be your thing. I’m not saying that this is what I think’ – although Hardy was perilously close to believing just that – ‘but this is what it’s going to look and sound like to everybody who hears it. And if it looks, smells, and tastes like it, guess what?’

No reply.

Hardy took a breath. ‘Now, I’m still your lawyer and I’m going to listen to what you say, and if you want to change your mind, I’m not going to hold it against you and we’ll go on from there. But these are losing cards. This is a terrible hand.’

Graham looked up. ‘It’s what happened.’

‘Well, if that’s true, Graham,’ Hardy replied, ‘this has not been your lucky week.’

When the DA, Sharron Pratt, got the news that Graham Russo had been arrested without a warrant issued by her office, she angrily demanded that Glitsky report to her. She thought the police had seriously overstepped their bounds, particularly in this case where the larger issues surrounding assisted suicide needed to be thoroughly aired and debated. ‘I don’t understand,’ Pratt was saying, ‘why you didn’t come to me first, Lieutenant. Why did you just arrest him?’

‘We think he’s committed a murder.’ Glitsky didn’t yet understand Pratt’s anger, for while it was true that the police often came to the DA to get a warrant for an arrest, it was nearly as common to have inspectors make the arrest first. This tended to keep suspects from disappearing. ‘But look, ma’am, if you want, you can just dismiss the case.’

That’s what you’d like, isn’t it, Lieutenant?‘

‘No, ma’am. But it’s your right.’

‘Don’t try to con me, Lieutenant. That’s just what you want. If you’d come for a warrant for this boy’s arrest, you knew I would have turned you down, but now that you’ve arrested him first, you’ve focused the issue, putting me on the spot.’

Hands clamped behind her back, Pratt wore her half-moon glasses midway down her aristocratic nose. She looked over them.

Pratt was not Glitsky’s boss, and he didn’t much care how she felt about him, but he was trying to do his job, and considered his reply carefully before he gave it. ‘It was a timing issue,’ Glitsky said. ‘There was plenty of evidence to arrest, but if you want to play political football…’

Pratt’s eyes glared. Her nostrils flared. ‘Don’t you dare accuse me of playing politics with a man’s life. Your people made a mistake arresting this man.’

Glitsky couldn’t stop himself. ‘You know that the arresting inspector was a woman, don’t you?’

It slowed her for a moment. ‘That’s not the issue,’ she snapped. ‘I don’t care who arrested him. The point is we – this office – had not made a decision to prosecute. You knew we weren’t ready to issue a warrant, so you went ahead without one.’

‘I didn’t know that. Why would I even think it? Your office prosecutes homicides. What’s to know?’