“Let’s not argue that, okay? It gets us nowhere. We need to focus on you and whether or not you are up to the challenge.”

“I’m sure you have a plan.”

“Yes, a very detailed one.”

“I quit my present job, then what?”

Pace pushed the lemonade aside and leaned lower, as if the good stuff was about to be delivered. “You establish your own law firm. Rent space, furnish it nicely, and so on. You’ve got to sell this thing, Clay, and the only way to do so is to look and act like a very successful trial lawyer. Your potential clients will be brought into your office. They need to be impressed. You’ll need a staff and other lawyers working for you.

Perception is everything here. Trust me. I was a lawyer once. Clients want nice offices. They want to see success. You will be telling these people that you can obtain settlements of four million dollars.”

“Four is much too cheap.”

“Later, okay? You have to look successful; that’s my point.”

“I get the point. I grew up in a very successful law firm.”

“We know. That’s one of the things we like about you.”

“How tight is office space right now?”

“We’ve leased some footage on Connecticut Avenue. Would you like to see it?”

They left Kramer’s through the rear entrance and ambled along the sidewalk as if they were two old friends out for a stroll. “Am I still being followed?” Clay asked.

“Why?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Just curious. Doesn’t happen every day. I’d just like to know whether I’d get shot if I broke and ran.”

Pace actually chuckled at this. “It is rather absurd, isn’t it?”

“Damned silly.”

“My client is very nervous, Clay.”

“With good reason.”

“They have dozens of people in the city right now, watching, waiting, praying there are no more killings.

And they’re hoping you’ll be the man to deliver the deal.”

“What about the ethical problems?”

“Which one?”

“I can think of two—conflict of interest and solicitation of litigation?”

“Solicitation is a joke. Just look at the billboards.”

They stopped at an intersection. “Right now I represent the defendant,” Clay said as they waited. “How do I cross the street and represent his victim?”

“You just do it. We’ve researched the canons of ethics. It’s sticky, but there are no violations. Once you resign from OPD, you are free to open your own office and start accepting cases.”

“That’s the easy part. What about Tequila Watson? I know why he committed murder. I can’t hide that knowledge from him, or his next lawyer.”

“Being drunk or under the influence of drugs is not a defense to a crime. He’s guilty. Ramon Pumphrey is dead. You have to forget about Tequila.” They were walking again.

“I don’t like that answer,” Clay said.

“It’s the best I have. If you say no to me and continue to represent your client, it will be virtually impossible for you to prove he ever took a drug called Tarvan. You’ll know it, but you won’t be able to prove it. You’ll look foolish using that as a defense.”

“It may not be a defense, but it could be a mitigating circumstance.”

“Only if you can prove it, Clay. Here.” They were on Connecticut Avenue, in front of a long modern building with a three-story glass-and-bronze entrance.

Clay looked up and said, “The high-rent district.”

“Come on. You’re on the fourth floor, a corner office with a fantastic view.”

In the vast marble foyer, a directory listed a who’s who of D.C. law. “This is not exactly my turf,” Clay said as he read the names of the firms.

“It can be,” Max said.

“What if I don’t want to be here?”

“It’s up to you. We just happen to have some space. We’ll sublease it to you at a very favorable rent.”

“When did you lease it?”

“Don’t ask too many questions, Clay. We’re on the same team.”

“Not yet.”

Carpet was being laid and walls painted in Clay’s section of the fourth floor. Expensive carpet. They stood at the window of a large empty office and watched the traffic on Connecticut Avenue below. There were a thousand things to do to open a new firm, and he could only think of a hundred. He had a hunch that Max had all the answers.

“What do you think?” Max said.

“I’m not thinking too well right now. Everything’s a blur.”

“Don’t blow this opportunity, Clay. It will never come again. And the clock is ticking.”

“It’s surreal.”

“You can do your firm’s charter online, takes about an hour. Pick a bank, open the accounts. Letterhead and such can be done overnight. The office can be complete and furnished in a matter of days. By next Wednesday you can be sitting here behind a fancy desk running your own show.”

“How do I sign up the other cases?”

“Your friends Rodney and Paulette. They know the city and its people. Hire them, triple their salaries, give them nice offices down the hall. They can talk to the families. We’ll help.”

“You’ve thought of everything.”

“Yes. Absolutely everything. I’m running a very efficient machine, one that’s in a near-panic mode. We’re working around the clock, Clay. We just need a point man.”

On the way down, the elevator stopped at the third floor. Three men and a woman stepped in, all nicely tailored and manicured and carrying thick expensive leather briefcases, along with the incurable air of importance inbred in big-firm lawyers. Max was so engrossed in his details that he did not see them. But Clay absorbed them—their manners, their guarded speech, their seriousness, their arrogance. These were big lawyers, important lawyers, and they did not acknowledge his existence. Of course, in old khakis and scuffed loafers he did not exactly project the image of a fellow member of the D.C. Bar.

That could change overnight, couldn’t it?

He said good-bye to Max and went for another long walk, this one in the general direction of his office. When he finally arrived, there were no urgent notes on his desk. The meeting he’d missed had evidently been missed by many others. No one asked where he had been. No one seemed to notice that he had been absent during the afternoon.

His office was suddenly much smaller, and dingier, and the furnishings were unbearably bleak. There was a stack of files on his desk, cases he could not now bring himself to think about. All of his clients were criminals anyway.

OPD policy required thirty days’ notice before quitting. The rule, however, was not enforced because it could not be enforced. People quit all the time with short notice or none whatsoever. Glenda would write a threatening letter. He would write a pleasant one back, and the matter would end.

The best secretary in the office was Miss Glick, a seasoned warrior who might just jump at the chance to double her salary and leave behind the dreariness of OPD. His office would be a fun place to work, he had already decided. Salaries and benefits and long vacations and maybe even profit-sharing.

He spent the last hour of the workday behind a locked door, plotting, stealing employees, debating which lawyers and which paralegals might fit.

He met Max Pace for the third time that day, for dinner, at the Old Ebbitt Grille, on Fifteenth Street, two blocks behind the Willard. To his surprise, Max began with a martini, and this loosened him up considerably. The pressure of the situation began melting under the assault of the gin, and Max became a real person. He had once been a trial lawyer in California, before something unfortunate ended his career out there. Through contacts he found his niche in the litigation marketplace as a fireman. A fixer. A highly paid agent who sneaked in, cleaned up the mess, and sneaked out without a trace. During the steaks and after the first bottle of Bordeaux, Max said there was something else waiting for Clay after Tarvan. “Something much bigger,” Max said, and he actually glanced around the restaurant to see if spies were listening.