"How?"

"Flip a coin," the detective said.

"One blows it off."

"A lot of rookies think that. But you tend to spit and ruin the whole print. No, use a brush. Now, powders only work on smooth surfaces. If you've got to take a print from paper there are different techniques. If the print's oily maybe it'll show up in iodine vapor. The problem is that you have to expose it in an enclosed cabinet and take a picture of the print very quickly because the vapors evaporate right away. Sometimes latents come out with a nitrate solution or ninhydrin or superglue. But that's the big league, probably over your – one's – skill level.

"Now, once one has the print, he or" – a nod toward her – "she has to capture it. You lift it off the surface with special tape or else take a picture of it. Remember Fingerprints are evidence. They have to get into the courtroom and in front of an expert witness."

"Now," she said, "just speaking theoretically, could someone like me take fingerprints?"

"If you practiced, sure. But could you testify that prints A and B were the same? No way. Could you even tell if they were the same or different? Not easy, mama, not at all. They squoosh out, they move, they splot. They look different when they're the same, they look identical except for some little significant difference you miss. No, it isn't easy. Fingerprinting is an art."

"How 'bout a machine, or something? A computer?"

"The police use them, sure. The FBI. But not private citizens. Say, Ms. Lockwood?"

" Taylor," she prompted.

"Perhaps if you told me exactly what your problem is I could offer some specific solutions."

"It's somewhat sensitive."

"It always is. That's why companies like us exist."

"Best to keep mum for the time being."

"Understood. Just let me know if you'd like another lesson. Though I do recommend keeping in mind the experts." He grew serious and the charming banter vanished. "Should the matter become, let's say, more than sensitive – a lot of our people here have carry permits."

"'Carry'?"

"They're licensed to carry weapons."

"Oh," she said in a soft voice.

"Just something to think about."

"Thanks, John." Then she said, "I do have one question."

The hand in which a basketball would look so at home rose and a finger pointed skyward. "Allow me to deduce. The inquiry is 'Where you can get a Dick Tracy fingerprint kit?'" Before she answered yes, he was writing an address on the back of his business card. "It's a police equipment supply house. You can buy anything but weapons and shields there."

"Shields?"

"Badges, you know. Those you can buy – one can buy – in Times Square arcades for about ten bucks. But you're not supposed to. Oh, not to be forward, but I did happen to write my home phone number on the back of the card. In case any questions occur to you after hours, say."

She decided she liked this guy. "This's been fascinating, John. Thank you." She stood and he escorted her toward the elevator, pointing out a glass case containing a collection of blackjacks and saps.

"Oh, and Miss Lockwood? Taylor?"

"Yes?"

"Before you leave I was just wondering. Would you like to hear the lecture I give to our new employees on the laws against breaking and entering and invading privacy?"

Taylor said, "No, I don't believe I would."

She'll be moody today.

Ralph Dudley sat in his creaky office chair. The nape of his neck eased into the tall leather back and he stared at the thin slice of sky next to the brick wall outside his window. Gray sky, gray water. November.

Yes, Junie would be in one of her moods.

It was a talent, this intuition of his. Whereas Donald Burdick, to whom he constantly – obsessively – compared himself, was brilliant, Ralph Dudley was intuitive. He charmed clients, he told them jokes appropriate to their age, gender and background, he listened sympathetically to their tales of sorrow at infidelities and deaths and to their stones of joy at grandchildren's births. He told war stones of his courtroom victories with a dramatic pacing that only fiction – which they were, of course – permits. With his patented vestigial bow Dudley could charm the daylights out of the wives of clients and potential clients.

He had sense and feeling while Burdick had reason and logic.

And, sure enough, he was now right. Here came fifteen-year-old Junie, a sour look on her face, trooping sullenly into his office, ignoring the woman from the word processing pool who was handling a typing job for him.

The girl stopped in the doorway, a hip-cocked stance, unsmiling.

"Come on in, honey," Dudley said. "I'm almost finished."

She wore a jumper, white blouse and white stockings. A large blue bow was in her hair. She gave him a formal kiss on the cheek and plopped into one of his visitor's chairs, swinging her legs over the side.

"Sit like a lady, now."

She waited a defiant thirty seconds then slipped on her Walkman headset and swiveled slowly in the chair, planting her feet on the lime-green carpet.

Dudley laughed. He picked up the handle of his dictating machine. "Look, I've got one, too – a recorder."

She looked perplexed and he realized she couldn't hear what he was saying (and would probably have thought his joke was idiotic if she'd been able to.) But Dudley had learned not to be hurt by the girl's behavior and he unemotionally proceeded to dictate a memo that gave the gist of some rules of law he believed he remembered. At the end of the tape he included instructions to Todd Stanton, his associate at the firm, who would rewrite the memo and look up the law Dudley hoped existed to support his points.

Ralph Dudley knew they sometimes laughed at him, the young associates here. He never raised his voice, he never criticized, he was solicitous toward them. He supposed the young men (Dudley had never quite come to terms with the idea of women lawyers) held him in all the more contempt for this obsequiousness. There were a few loyal boys, like Todd, but on the whole no one had much time for Old Man Dudley.

"Grandpa," he'd heard that the associates called him. Partners, too, although somewhat more subtly, joined in the derision. Yet though this treatment soiled his days here – and obliterated whatever loyalty he had once felt for Hubbard, White & Willis – he was not overly troubled. His relation with the firm became just what his marriage to Emma had been one of respectful acknowledgment. He was usually able to keep his bitterness contained.

Junie's eyes were closed, her patent-leather shoes swaying in time to the music. My God, she was growing up. Fifteen. It gave him a pang of sorrow. At times he had flashes – poses she struck, the way the light might catch her face – of her as a woman in her twenties. He knew that she, abandoned in adolescence, earned the seeds of adulthood within her more fertilely than other children.

And he often felt she was growing up far too fast for him.

He handed the dictated tape to the typist, who left.

"So," he said to the girl, "are we going to do some shopping?"

"I guess."

That question she heard perfectly, Dudley observed. "Well, let's go."

She shrugged and hopped off the chair, tugging at her dress in irritation, which meant she wanted to be wearing jeans and a T-shirt – clothes that she loved and that he hated.

They were at the elevator when a woman's voice asked, "Ralph, excuse me, you have a minute?"

He recognized the young woman from around the firm but couldn't recall a name. It stung him slightly that she had the effrontery to call him by his first name but because he was a gentlemen he did nothing other than smile and nod. "Yes, you're Taylor Lockwood."

"Sure, of course. This is my granddaughter, Junie. Junie, say hello to Miss Lockwood. She's a lawyer here."