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“Yes, it is, but that’s not the question.”

“Then what is?”

“Do you need me to kill you right now?”

There was no smile on my old friend’s lips. I couldn’t remember him ever without at least the hint of a grin somewhere on his face. I took the question seriously, and from somewhere in the depths of my mind an answer rose to the surface like the carcass of some long-dead deep-sea creature.

“No,” I said. “No.”

Sleep came with my last negation. I don’t remember whatever else Glad might have said. I don’t remember him leaving my subterranean cell. I just passed out, unable to defend or save myself.

But in that deep repose the answer to my quest remained in light.

I couldn’t repair my career. I couldn’t achieve a reprieve for A Free Man. All I had was the truth and the certainty that I had to do something about that truth. If that meant breaking the law, I was ready. If it meant missing my child’s graduation, that would have to be.

33.

The hangover returned with consciousness, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been. The only aftereffects were jitters in my extremities.

I got out of bed, used the water-closet toilet, and sat in the chair that my old friend and near assassin sat in to sprinkle water on me.

It all started with a letter from the Midwest. My life was in shambles, but sometimes you had to break things down to see what was wrong.

I knew what to do and half the way to do it. It wasn’t so much a plan as it was a suicide mission aimed at the heart of enemy territory. I was now an enlightened terrorist planning to show the all-powerful enemy that I could hurt them, that I could take away their shiny baubles and false judgments.

“Mel?” I said when he answered the phone.

“My liege.”

It was 10:16 a.m. and I was at the coffee emporium again. This time I drank what I bought.

“Am I right that you sit around workin’ on timepieces all day; that and thinking about stickin’ it to the law?”

“Every hour of every day,” he said. “Rain or shine. Sound asleep or wide-awake.”

“I like your plan about that baseball team escaping to Panama. But I need to add a little to it.”

We talked for more than an hour, during the first thirty minutes of which my new best friend was quite leery. But by the end I had brought him around to my way of thinking. Around 11:30 he expressed an excitement that could only mean that something bad was bound to happen.

It was chilly that morning, but I still had my heavy disguise coat so I wandered down until I came to a Times Square street that the previous mayor had blocked off so that touristical pedestrians could stroll freely and sit on benches placed here and there.

He answered the call on the first ring.

“Hello?” His tone was anything but confident.

“Mr. Braun,” I said. “Tom Boll here.”

“Boll?” he whined. “What do you want now?”

“I misled you in the beginning, Mr. Braun. I wasn’t hired to find Johanna Mudd but to prove your case that A Free Man was innocent. My clients had heard that you were backing off and they wanted to keep that engine running.”

“Man?”

“Yeah. I found Johanna too. She’s dead on top of a heap of dead bodies provided by the cops your client killed.”

“I had nothing to do with any of that.”

“You sent men to kill me.”