“I did.”

“Well, forget you did.”

“What?”

“Forget about it.”

“I’m just supposed to forget-”

“Yes. That’s an order.” His tone is gruff.

I’m beginning to understand what he’s saying. “I get it-it’s a deal. You want to trade off my partnership and Judy’s for my forgetting about what happened with Lombardo? And maybe to Brent?”

“Mary, it’s none of your fuckingbusiness! ” he explodes, out of nowhere. With his face suddenly florid, he looks like a devil. But I fight the devils now and win. Fuck back, even when you’re fucking with the devil himself.

“Don’t you scream at me!” I lean toward him. We’re almost nose to nose over the desk. Berkowitz, the King of Fucking Back, and me, a pretender to the throne.

Suddenly, he breaks into a sheepish smile. The redness in his face vanishes. “That’s what my wife always says.”

“You ought to listen.”

He laughs loudly. “Lombardo’s right. You got balls.”

“No, I don’t. So what was it about?”

“Would you believe me if I told you it’s not your concern?”

“You mean not to worry my pretty little head?”

“Okay. Down, girl.” He looks amused but still tense. Whatever it is, it’s driving him nuts. “All right, it’s about Delia. She’s got her hand in the till. She’s taken a hundred thou over five years.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Wish I were.” His face falls, he shakes his head. “I thought it was somebody in Accounting, maybe that asshole bean counter we let push us around. I didn’t think it was her. It never even occurred to me it was her. I asked Lombardo to track it down for me, but I didn’t want to believe him.”

“So you hit him?”

He looks pained. “Hey, you know, it hurts. She betrayed me after I took good care of her. I loved that kid.”

I meet his eye. Was Brent right about them?

“Don’t give me that look. I know everybody says I’m running around with her. I let’em think it. Fact is, she’s my best friend’s kid, her father was my sparring partner. He and I were like this.” He holds up two tight fingers in a gesture I haven’t seen in ages.

“For real?”

“For real. I’m her godfather. The first Jewish godfather in history.”

I laugh, with relief. Part of the puzzle falls into place. “Is that why she’s so mad lately?”

“Oh, yeah, Delia’s mad at the world; she must’ve seen it coming. She won’t even talk to me, even though I convinced the policy committee not to prosecute her. All she lost was her job, and we got a payment schedule worked out. She throws in one, I throw in ten. Can I drive a bargain or what?”

“You do okay.”

He slaps his breast pocket again for a cigarette. “Anyway, she left this morning. Now I have no secretary. Got a good one I can steal?”

I think of Miss Pershing. “No.”

“So. We all better here, Mary, Queen of Scots?”

“All better.”

“Okay, I gotta go. I don’t have to tell you not to mention this, do I?”

“Nope.”

“Tomorrow night,” he calls out, as he opens the door and walks out.

I collapse into my chair, hugely relieved. Tired. Drained. So the fight I saw wasn’t about Brent after all, and Berkowitz isn’t having an affair with Delia. I wonder what Brent would say to that revelation, but Brent isn’t here. I miss him. And I think I know who killed him.

My eyes fall on the note, sticking out from underneath the mail. Ned, my lover. My love. I feel heartsick and scared. He must be crazy, really crazy. Maybe that stuff he told me about the Prozac was just a story; I never did go back and check the dates on the bottles. Is the man I slept with really capable of killing Brent? And Mike, a year earlier? Maybe, if he’s obsessed with me like Judy says. And am I safe from him, or will he turn on me now that I’ve rejected him?

I check the clock. 7:02. Too late for me to be alone in the office. Rain falls in sheets on City Hall; I feel the building sway slightly. I lock the note in my middle drawer and leave for Judy’s office.

But I forget all about it when I see her.

“I’m fired,” Judy says flatly.

“What?!”

“I fucked up.” Her eyes are red-rimmed and puffy, as if she’s been crying hard. She slouches in her chair. Her chin sags into a sturdy hand.

“What happened?” I sit down.

“TheMitsuko brief is in the hopper. The Supremes reversed a similar argument in a case decided yesterday. I didn’t even know the case was up on appeal, because I hadn’t checked the cites yet. Great, huh? A first-year mistake.” Her jowl wrinkles into her hand like a basset hound’s. “I’m not paying attention lately.”

“Oh, Jude. How’d you catch it?”

“Guess.”

I flash on Martin, banging into Miss Pershing on the way downstairs. “Martin?”

“Nope. Guess again.”

“Not the client.”

“Yes, the client. Certainly, the client. Who better to catch you in the biggest blunder of your career than the client? The GC faxed us a copy of the Supreme Court decision after we faxed him a draft of my brief. Don’t you just love faxes? You can find out you fucked up when you’re still in mid-fuckup. That’s what I call technology!”

I groan. That must be why Martin had the faxes.

“Wait. That’s not all. The Third Circuit brief is due in two days. I have forty-eight hours to produce a winning brief or I’m fired.”

“Who said that, Martin? He can’t do that!”

“No? I’ve pissed off a house client and embarrassed the firm. Mitsuko’s appeal is in jeopardy-it’s their legal right, not ours.” She rakes her fingers through her hair, and it sticks up in funny places, making her look demented. “It was such a stupid mistake, I should resign.”

“You’d better not. We can rewrite the brief.”

“We?”

“We. I help. We do it together.”

“You can’t help, Mary. You don’t know the record.”

“I don’t need to, you do. Besides, what you need is a new legal argument. A new angle.”

She smiles wanly. “I appreciate it, but it’s hopeless. I’ve thought about every argument. This was the best.”

“Jude! Where’s that pioneering western spirit? The Oregon Trail? The Louisiana Purchase? The Missouri Compromise?”

“Stop trying to cheer me up. And your geography sucks.”

“Listen, I beat the devil today. I can do anything!”

“You’re crazy. We don’t have time.”

“We have all night. It’s pouring outside and I have to stick with you anyway. You’re my bodyguard.”

“Give it up, Mary.”

“No. Tell me why we lostMitsuko, besides the fact that Martin has no business being in front of a jury unless they all went to Choate.”

“Mary, it’s no use.”

“Tell me, Judith Carrier!”

“Aaargh,” she growls, in frustration. “Okay. I think the jury just didn’t understand the case. There were too many facts. Too much financial data. The legal issues were too abstract-”

“Were the jurors allowed to take notes?”

“Yes. Judge Rasmussen always lets-”

“Yes!” I have an idea. I tell it to Judy and she loves it instantly, realizing that even if it goes down in flames, it’ll be a blaze of glory.

She calls Kurt and makes two pots of coffee, one for her and one for me. I call Lombardo and give him the night off, but he doesn’t even thank me. We lock ourselves in a study room in the library and burn up the Lexis hookup. After a couple of hours, we lock ourselves in a war room on Gluttony and start drafting. We send out for Chinese food twice, once at eight o’clock and again at ten o’clock. We order to mein both times. After our second dinner, Stalling’s decrepit security guard, whom Judy calls Mack Sennett, knocks on the door.

“You girls okay in there?” he asks, in a Ronald Reagan voice.

“We’re fine now,” I call back. “But keep checking.”

“Roger wilco,” he says.

Judy changes his nickname to Roger Wilco. I re-check the lock on the door.

At midnight, we persuade Roger Wilco to be our lookout while we stage a giddy raid on Catering Services for potato chips, chocolate cupcakes, and more coffee. Judy tries to snort the Coffeemate, and we think this is wildly funny. The coffee sobers us up and we draft until dawn in the locked war room. Finally, at the end of the night, we put the draft on Miss Pershing’s desk, because she gets in earlier than Judy’s secretary. We shower in the locked locker room, me for the second day in a row. When we get out of the shower, we realize we have no clean clothes.