“Sorry I asked.”

“And while you’re worming your way onto this case, you’ll be providing us with other valuable information.”

“Like what?”

“It’s too early to discuss. Right now you need to concentrate on the bar exam.”

“Bless you. I hadn’t thought about it.”

They sniped for another ten minutes, then Kyle left in a huff, as usual. From the backseat of a taxi, he called the realtor and said he’d changed his mind about living in the meatpacking district. The realtor was upset but managed to keep her cool. Kyle had signed nothing, and she had no legal ammo to launch. He promised to give her a call in a few days, and they would resume their search, for something smaller and cheaper.

Kyle moved his junk into a spare room in the SoHo apartment of Charles and Charles, two Yale Law grads who’d finished a year earlier and were now working for different mega-firms. They had played lacrosse at Hopkins, and were probably a couple, though they’d kept things quiet, at least at Yale. Kyle had no interest in their relationship. He needed a bed for a while and a place to store his possessions. And he needed to keep Bennie honest, if that was possible. The Charleses offered him their junk room for free, but Kyle insisted on paying $200 a week. The apartment would be a great place to study because the Charleses were seldom there. Both were being thrashed by hundred-hour workweeks.

WHEN IT BECAME clear that Bennie’s operation had just been stiffed for six months’ rent at $5,200 per, for apartment 6D in the slaughterhouse, plus the costly “decoration” of 5D below it, plus $4,100 a month for a year for the apartment on Beekman, Bennie fumed but did not panic. The wasted money was not a factor. What bothered him was the unpredictability of it. For the past four months, Kyle had done little to surprise them. The surveillance had been effortless. The trip to Pittsburgh in February had been dissected and no longer concerned them. But now Kyle was in the city, where watching him was more challenging. A civilian subject is usually easy because of predictable thoughts and patterns. Why would he try to shake surveillance if he didn’t know it was there? But how much did Kyle know or suspect? How predictable was he?

Bennie licked his wounds for an hour, then began planning his next project — research on Charles and Charles and a quick inspection of their apartment.

THE SECOND detoxification of Baxter Tate began with a knock on his front door. Then another. He had not answered his cell phone. He had been driven home by a cab at four in the morning from a trendy nightclub in Beverly Hills. The driver helped him into his condo.

After the fourth knock, the door was quietly opened with no effort because Baxter hadn’t bothered to lock it. The two men, specialists in retrieving wayward family members with addiction problems, found Baxter on his bed, still dressed in last night’s getup — white linen shirt stained with some strain of liquor, black linen Zegna sport coat, bleached designer jeans, Bragano loafers, no socks over his very tanned ankles. He was comatose, breathing heavy but not snoring. Still alive but not for long, not at the rate he was going.

They quickly searched the bedroom and adjoining bathroom for weapons. Both men were armed, but their handguns were hidden under their jackets. Then they radioed to a waiting car, and another man entered the condo. He was Baxter’s uncle, a man named Walter Tate. Uncle Wally, brother to Baxter’s father, the only one of five siblings who had accomplished anything in life. The family banking fortune was now three generations old and declining at a steady, but not alarming, rate. The last time Walter had seen his nephew he was in a lawyer’s office in Pittsburgh cleaning up after another drunk-driving episode.

Because his four siblings were unable to make even the most basic decisions in life, Walter had long since assumed the role of the family boss. He watched the investments, met with the lawyers, handled the press when necessary, and reluctantly intervened when one of his nieces or nephews flamed out. His own son had been killed hang gliding.

This was his second intervention with Baxter, and it would be the last. The first had been two years earlier, also in L.A., and they had shipped the boy off to a ranch in Montana where he sobered up, rode horses, made new friends, saw the light. Sobriety lasted all of two weeks after he returned to his worthless career in Hollywood. Walter’s limit was two rehabs. After that, they could kill themselves for all he cared.

Baxter had been dead to the world for about nine hours when Uncle Wally shook his leg long enough and hard enough to rouse him from his drunkenness. The sight of three strange men standing by his bed startled him. He backed away from them, scrambling to the other end of the bed, then he recognized Uncle Wally. He’d lost some hair, put on a few pounds. How long had it been? The family never got together; in fact, the family strove mightily to avoid one another.

Baxter rubbed his eyes, then his temples. A skull-cracking headache arrived suddenly. He looked at Uncle Wally, then at the two strangers. “Well, well,” he said. “How’s Aunt Rochelle?”

Rochelle had been the first of Walter’s wives, but she was the only one Baxter ever remembered. She had terrified him as a child, and he would always despise her.

“She died last year,” Walter said.

“That’s just awful. What brings you to L.A.?” He kicked off his loafers and wrapped his arms around a pillow. It was now obvious where this was going.

“We’re taking a trip, Baxter. The four of us. We’re gonna check you into another clinic, sober you up, then see if they can put you back together.”

“So this is an intervention?”

“Yes.”

“Groovy. Happens all the time out here. It’s a miracle a single movie ever gets made with all the damned intervening that goes on in Hollywood. Everybody’s always getting asked to help with an intervention. I mean, look, you’re not going to believe this, but two months ago I took part in an intervention. A link, that’s what I was called, but I guess you guys know all about that. Can you imagine? I’m sitting in a hotel room with these other links, some I know, some I don’t, and poor Jimmy walks in, beer in hand, and gets absolutely ambushed. His brother sits him down, then we go around the room and tell the poor boy what a miserable piece of shit he is. Made him cry, but then they always cry, don’t they? I cried, didn’t I? Now I remember. You should’ve heard me lecturing Jimmy about the evils of vodka and cocaine. If he hadn’t been crying so hard, he would’ve come after me. Could I have a glass of water? Who are you?”

“They’re with me,” Uncle Wally said.

“I figured.”

One of the specialists handed Baxter a bottle of water. He drained it in one long, noisy slurp with water splashing down his chin. “Got any painkillers?” he said desperately. They handed over some pills and another bottle of water. When he had consumed it all, he said, “Where we going this time?”

“Nevada. There’s a clinic near Reno, in the mountains, spectacular country.”

“It’s not a dude ranch, is it? I can’t take another thirty days on a horse. My ass is still raw from the last detox.”

Uncle Wally was still standing at the foot of the bed. He had not moved a step. “No horses this time. It’s a different kind of place.”

“Oh, really. I hear they’re all the same. Folks here are always talking about their latest rehab. Always comparing notes. Great way to pick up girls in a bar.” He spoke with his eyes closed tightly as the pain rippled through his head.

“No, this is different.”

“How so?”

“It’s a bit tougher, and you’ll be there longer.”

“Do tell. How long?”

“As long as it takes.”

“Can I just promise to stop drinking right now and skip the whole damned thing?”