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I refrained from hitting him and said, “I’m sure his high school records will say that he’s a special needs student.”

“A retard?”

“Let me take him home, Bud, before you and the department get sued.”

McEnery wore a gray suit that had gained its silvery sheen with age. He stared at me, distaste outlining his lips, and finally said, “You’re not one of us anymore, are you?”

“Jacob’s a good kid,” I said to Willa, “but I don’t think of him as a trustworthy reference.”

“Jackie was a stock boy in my father’s hardware store,” she said. “He was kind of like my friend. He told me about you, and his mother said that you were able to get him out of jail in just a few hours. When I asked her about using you, she told me that you were committed to service and truth.”

I don’t believe in the supernatural, but some people I’ve met seem to see things that are hidden from me. I don’t know if it’s intelligence or a mode of perception beyond my understanding, but there are those whom I trust beyond the borders of simple logic; Margherita Storell, though I had met her only once, was one of these people.

“So you’ll go over the papers tonight?” the untried lawyer asked.

“Give me two hundred and fifty from the cash and I’ll read it. Maybe I’ll have some advice about it, maybe not.”

“Maybe you’ll take the case if you think there’s some merit?”

I waited four heartbeats before saying, “Maybe.”

Willa departed, and for a while I was alone and at peace the way a soldier during World War I was at peace in the trenches waiting for the next attack, the final flu, or maybe mustard gas seeping over the edge of a trench that might be his grave.

I was thinking about Acres and Summers and now Man too.

To get my mind off these troubles I logged on to my IP, hoping for good news or at least a worthwhile ad.

The seventeenth e-mail in the list was from [email protected]. The only message was a phone number.

8.

After work I took Aja-Denise to a new French bistro on Montague called Le Sauvage. I had boeuf bourguignon and she coq au vin. The red wine was good and I only let her have a sip.

“Are you gonna take Willa’s case?” she asked after I refused her a second taste.

“How much did she tell you about it?”

“That guy A Free Man is innocent and she thinks you can prove it.”

“You can’t mention that to anyone,” I said.

“I won’t. I’m just talking to you.”

A man two tables away was giving us side glances now and then.

“There’s another thing,” I said.

“What?”

“Do you use the computer I gave you?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“Do you ever take it home?”

“It’s a laptop, but it weighs twelve pounds. I wouldn’t take that thing anywhere.”

“So you never took it home.”