David Rosenfelt - First degree

"Pete called to tell me that they went to arrest Hobbs, but he had taken off. Pete tried to call you, but your phone wasn't working. I was worried, so here I am."

"And you didn't think I could handle it?" I say with mock offense.

Suddenly, the house is washed in light, streaming in from police cars outside. "Apparently, Pete had some doubts as well," she says.

I let Tara out of the closet while Laurie goes outside to bring Pete and the other officers in. That gives me about sixty seconds to figure out a way to spin this so I seem heroic.

It's not enough time.

IT'S HARD TO BELIEVE HOW MUCH PROGRESS Willie and I have made in just seven weeks. The renovation of the building is almost complete, we've hired two permanent staff members, and we've arranged for veterinarian care. Willie has been amazingly focused and driven, and I thought he was going to cry when I told him I wanted him to be president of the Tara Foundation.

Laurie is doing great. Her saving my life sort of evened the emotional score, enabling her to stop gushing her gratitude for my keeping her out of prison. I've decided not to belabor the point: that her intervention was not necessary and that neither Hobbs nor anyone else could have survived that right cross.

Cousin Fred is in the office more than I am, counseling Edna and Kevin on their investments. Laurie is no longer thrilled to have to use her share of the Willie Miller settlement to pay for my legal work, and she's been quibbling over the bills.

I've told her that the bills are justified, and I thought she had backed off, but she's just presented me with bills of her own. At first glance they seem unfair. Twenty thousand for a pancake seems high, but I could live with it if she weren't charging me for Kevin's.

And you don't want to know her price for basil.

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BURY THE LEAD

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AS SOON AS I WALK IN, THE WOMAN GIVES ME THE eye.

This is not quite as promising a situation as it sounds. First of all, I'm in a Laundromat. The actual name is the Law-dromat, owned by my associate Kevin Randall. Kevin uses this business to emotionally, as well as literally, cleanse himself of the rather grimy things we're exposed to in our criminal law practice. In the process he dispenses free legal advice to customers along with detergent and bleach.

Also, the woman giving me this particular eye is not exactly a supermodel. She's maybe four feet eleven inches tall, rather round, and wearing a coat so bulky she could be hiding a four-gallon jug of Tide under it. Her hair is stringy and most likely not squeaky clean to the touch.

Truth be told, even if we were in a nightclub and the woman looked more like Halle than Boysen Berry, I doubt I could accurately gauge the situation. I'm no better than average-looking myself and thus have almost no experience with women giving me the eye. In fact, though I'm not in the habit of counting offered body parts, it's safe to say that over the years I've gotten the finger more than the eye. And I've probably gotten the boot more than both of them combined.

To totally close off any romantic possibilities in this encounter, I remain in love with, and totally faithful to, one Laurie Collins. So no matter how this round stranger tries to tempt me, I'm not about to engage in an early evening bout of tawdry Laundromat sex.

I notice that the woman's eyes start alternating between me and the door, though no one else is entering. And as I move in her general direction, she starts to inch toward that door. This woman is afraid of me.

"Hi," I say, figuring a clever opening like that will put her at ease. Instead, she just nods slightly and seems to draw inward, as if she wants to become invisible. "Kevin around?" I ask.

The woman mutters, "No … I don't know … ," then gathers her clothes, which she hadn't yet put into the machine, and quickly leaves. In the process she bangs into Kevin's cousin Billy, who is just coming in. Billy runs the place when Kevin is not around.

"Hey, Andy. What's with her?" Billy asks.

"I'm not sure. I think she was afraid she might succumb to my charms."

He nods. "We've been getting a lot of that lately."

"What do you mean?"

Billy just points toward a shelf high up in the corner of the room, and for the first time I realize that there is a television up there. It's turned to local news, though the sound is off. There was a day when that would have been a problem, but now all the stations have that annoying crawl along the bottom of the screen.

The subject of the newscast is the murder of a woman last night in Passaic, the third such murder in the last three weeks. The killer has chosen to communicate and taunt the police through Daniel Cummings, a reporter for a local newspaper, and in the process has created a media furor. The woman who just left is not alone in her fear; the entire community seems gripped by it.

"They making any progress?" I ask, referring to the police.

Billy shrugs. "They're appealing to the guy to give himself up."

I nod. "That should do the trick. Where's Kevin?"

"Doctor."

"Is he sick?" I ask, though I know better. Kevin has as many admirable qualities as anyone I know, but he happens to be a total hypochondriac.

Billy laughs. "Yeah. He thinks his tongue is swollen and turning black. Kept sticking it out at me to look at."

"Was it swollen?"

He shakes his head. "Nope."

"Black?"

"Nope."

"Did you tell him that?" I ask.

"Nope. I told him he should get it checked out, that he might be getting 'fat black tongue' disease." He shrugs and explains, "I'm a little short this month; I needed the hours."

I nod; the more time Kevin spends at the doctor the more time Billy gets to work here. I hand an envelope to Billy; it had come to the office for Kevin. "Give this to him, okay?"

"You making deliveries now?" he asks.

"I'm on my way to the foundation."

Billy nods. "Listen, do me a favor? When you see Kevin, tell him his tongue looks like a bowling ball."

"No problem."

NORTHERN NEW JERSEY EXISTS IN A SORT of twilight zone. That is, if it exists at all. It is a densely populated, diverse collection of cities and towns, yet it has no identity. Half of it is a suburb of New York City, and the other half a suburb of Philadelphia. The Giants and Jets play in Jersey, yet deny its existence, referring to themselves as "New York".

The most embarrassing part is that all the major TV stations that cover North Jersey are based in New York. Ottumwa, Iowa, has its own network affiliates, but North Jersey doesn't. It should thus come as no surprise that those same stations treat Jerseyites as second-class citizens.

Stories about New Jersey are barely covered, unless they are simply too juicy to overlook. The recent murders have successfully crossed that high-juice threshold, and the networks are all over them. Even more pumped up are the national cable networks, and I've been invited to serve as an uninformed panelist on$$$[MS PAGE NO 147]$$$ eleven of the shows that specialize in uninformed panels. I've accepted three of those invitations, and in the process I fit right in by bringing absolutely nothing of value to the public discourse.

My appeal to these shows is based on the fact that I've successfully handled a couple of high-profile murder cases in the last couple of years. I must've gotten on some list that is shared among TV news producers. "Let's see …", I can hear them say as they check that list when a New Jersey crime story comes up "Here it is … Andy Carpenter. Let's get him. That'll fill twenty minutes."

The one question always posed to me on these shows is whether I would be willing to defend the murderer when he is caught. I point out that he wouldn't legally be a murderer until he's been tried and convicted, but this distinction is basically lost on the questioner and, I suspect, the viewing public. I ultimately and lamely say that I would consider it based on the circumstances, and I can almost feel that public recoiling in shock. "How," they collectively wonder, "could you defend that animal?"