David Rosenfelt - First degree

Dylan pauses for a moment, considering his options. "You looking to deal?"

I'm not, of course, but I don't want him to know that. "I sometimes find it helpful to know what my client is up against before I advise him on what to do."

He sighs; there's no way around this. "Okay. I'll have the file copied and sent over to you with the police reports."

"Good. I'd like it today. Can you also give me the shorthand version?" I ask.

"What do you know so far?"

"About the 911 call and the fingerprints at the warehouse. Unless that's all you have …"

"Come on, Andy, if that was all we had, your boy Oscar would be out in the park peddling dope, and you wouldn't be sitting here. Dorsey's gun was found in Garcia's house."

I'm surprised by this, but only because I know Oscar is innocent. "You think Garcia murdered Dorsey, then took his gun and left it in his house?" I ask, trying to exaggerate my incredulity at the stupidity of such a move.

He shrugs. "You visited with Garcia, right?" he asks. "You see any diplomas hanging in his cell?"

I ignore that. "What about motive? That seems to be in short supply."

"We're not there yet. Dorsey was into some bad things, maybe Garcia was a partner, or a competitor. We'll get to motive, but if not?" He throws up his hands. "So what? We don't have to prove motive. Even you public defenders know that."

Dylan has opened up an area I had planned to get into: Dorsey's illegal activities. I nod and say as casually as I can, "I also should look at what the department had on Dorsey."

The fake affability immediately vanishes. He shakes his head firmly. "No can do."

"Why not?" I ask.

"I don't have it myself," he says. "They tell me it doesn't relate in any way to this case."

"Let me see if I understand this," I say. "Dorsey takes off and goes into hiding because the department had something on him, he gets murdered a week later, and what they had isn't relevant? Earth to prosecutor, come in please, come in please."

His look turns cold as he changes the subject. "It's time to make this case go away, Andy. Twenty-five to life, Garcia can be out in ten."

"He can also be in for fifty." I shake my head. "I'll talk to my client, Dylan, but the answer is going to be no."

"I might be able to do better," he says, then sees my look of surprise. He explains, "Dorsey is not a person the department brass wants to read about every day."

Warning bells are going off in my head. The offer of twenty-five to life was actually very generous on his part for the brutal murder of a cop. If he's going to try to better that, it's more than just a desire to get the conveyor moving, or to appease the higher-ups in the police department. There's something here that's interesting and waiting to be discovered.

"Do the best you can," I say. "But my guess is that the day Garcia gets out is the day the jury comes back."

He shrugs his disappointment. "Then I guess we're finished here."

"Not according to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals," I say.

"What is that supposed to mean?" he asks.

The fact is that it doesn't mean anything; it's simply a significant-sounding non sequitur of the kind I occasionally drop to get the other side curious and thinking unproductively.

"You want me to do your homework for you?" I ask, and then turn and walk to the door. He doesn't stand up as I leave. I guess pretending to be pleasant can really tire a person out.

On the way home I call Edna, who is still in a state of shock that I would turn down a prize like Stynes and take on a loser like Garcia. I tell her to call Kevin Randall, who was my second chair on the Willie Miller case, and ask him to meet me in the office first thing in the morning. I ask Edna if Laurie has called, and the answer is no. It wasn't the answer I was hoping for.

Then I call Lieutenant Pete Stanton and ask if I can buy him dinner tonight. He says that's fine, as long as he can pick the restaurant. When I say it's okay with me, he tells me he'll leave the choice on my machine, after he prices a few out and comes up with the most expensive one.

By the time I get home, he has already left the name of a French restaurant which, in his tortured attempt to pronounce it, sounds like La Douche-Face. There is no message from Laurie. I call her, but she's either out or screening my call, so I leave word on her voice mail that I'd like to talk to her. Our last conversation has left me with a sort of throbbing emotional ache, which my work-related activities haven't been able to mask.

The restaurant Pete has chosen looks like a French villa, and when I arrive, he is at the bar drinking from an old and no doubt very expensive bottle of wine. Pete is generally a meat-and-potatoes kind of guy, unassuming and easily able to get by on a lieutenant's salary. Imported beer is usually too fancy for Pete's taste, so it's obvious that his intent is to reduce my financial level to his own.

Pete and I have gotten to be pretty good friends. The relationship began when I helped get his brother out of a legal situation brought on by drug use, and his brother has since turned his life around. Pete and I started playing an occasional game of racquetball, though we haven't played in a while. We still refer to ourselves as racquetball partners, but that's only to maintain the guise of exercise.

Our friendship takes occasional hits, most notably when we're on the opposite sides of a case, but we seem to get through it. The Garcia case presents no such danger, because Pete is not directly involved in the investigation.

We get the menus, and after a quick glance I assume the prices are not just for the food but also for a down payment on the property itself. Or maybe they charge so much because they have to pay for the twelve different forks that are provided for each of us.

The menu is in French, but that doesn't really concern Pete, since he's only interested in the numbers on the right. Pete points to what he wants, and when he gets to the chateaubriand, the waiter explains that it is for two. Pete shrugs and says, "That's no problem, I'll bring what I don't eat home for my dog."

Once the waiter has left, I waste my time by pointing out, "You don't have a dog."

He nods, acknowledging that truth. "It'll give me incentive to get one." He looks around. "I think we need another bottle of wine."

"I can get information cheaper from paid informants," I complain.

He looks up, surprised. "You're looking for information?"

"I agreed to come here, didn't I?" I ask. "What did you think I was going to do, propose marriage?"

"Information about what?"

"Alex Dorsey."

He laughs. "I'm not on the case, asshole. You could have found that out at Burger King."

"I'm not talking about the Garcia case. I'm talking about Alex Dorsey. I'm talking about whatever he was doing, and why he wasn't busted for it back when Laurie turned him in. And why he was going to be busted now."

"I don't know," he says.

"What do you mean you don't know? You're a hot shit lieutenant, plus you're a nosy son of a bitch. You know everything that goes on down there."

He shakes his head. "Not this. This is buried deep." Then he adds, "Besides, 'down there' may not be where you think it is, or want it to be."

"What the hell does that mean?"

He puts down one of his forks, I think the third-smallest one, and stares at me. It is the kind of stare that has made felons confess for the last twenty years. "I'm going to tell you something, but if anyone ever learns that it came from me, I'm going to beat you to death with your wallet."

"Trust me, if there's one thing I've learned this week, it's that I can keep a secret."

Pete nods. The truth is, he knows this without my having to say it. "The Bureau is involved."