Very somber Rudolph that a bad precedent could be set. With a firm so large, granting a

year's leave to one associate might trigger all sorts of requests from other malcontents.

There would be no safety net. The door would slam when I walked through it.

"Are you sure you know what you're doing?" he asked, standing before my desk. There

were two large storage boxes on the floor next to him. Polly was already packing my junk.

"I'm sure," I said with a smile. "Don't worry about me."

"I tried."

"Thanks, Rudolph." He left, shaking his head. After Claire's blindside the night before, I

had not been able to think about the sabbatical. More urgent thoughts cluttered my brain.

I was about to be divorced, and single, and homeless myself.

Suddenly I was concerned with a new apartment, not to mention a new job and office and

career. I closed the door, and scanned the real estate section of the classifieds.

I would sell the car and get rid of the four-hundredeighty-dollar-a-month payment. I'd

buy a clunker, insure it heavily, and wait for it to disappear into the darkness of my new

neighborhoods. If I wanted a decent apartment in the District, it became apparent that

most of my new salary would go for rent.

I left early for lunch, and spent two hours racing around Central Washington looking at

lofts. The cheapest was a dump for eleven hundred a month, much too much for a street

lawyer.

* * *

Another file awaited me upon my return from lunch; another plain manila legal-sized one,

with no writing on the outside of it. Same spot on my desk. Inside, two keys were taped

to the left side, a typed note was stapled to the right. It read:

Top key is to Chance's door. Bottom key is to file drawer under window. Copy and return.

Careful, Chance is very suspicious. Lose the keys.

Polly appeared instantly, as she so often did; no knock, not a sound, just a sudden

ghostlike presence in the room. She was pouting and ignoring me. We'd been together for

four years, and she claimed to be devastated by my departure. We weren't really that

close. She'd be reassigned in days. She was a very nice person, but the least of my

worries.

I quickly closed the file, not knowing if she had seen it. I waited for a moment as she

busied herself with my storage boxes. She didn't mention it--strong evidence that she was

unaware of it. But since she saw everything in the hallway around my office, I couldn't

imagine how Hector or anyone else could enter and leave without being seen.

Barry Nuzzo, fellow hostage and friend, dropped by to have a serious talk. He shut the

door and stepped around the boxes. I didn't want to discuss my leaving, so I told him

about Claire. His wife and Claire were both from Providence, a fact that seemed oddly

significant in Washington. We had socialized with them a few times over the years, but

the group friendship had gone the way of the marriage.

He was surprised, then saddened, then seemed to shake it off quite well. "You're having a

bad month," he said. "I'm sorry."

"It's been a long slide," I said.

We talked about the old days, the guys who had come and gone. We had not bothered to

replay the Mister affair over a beer, and that struck me as strange. Two friends face death

together, walk away from it, then get too busy to help each other with the aftermath.

We eventually got around to it; it was difficult to avoid with the storage boxes in the

middle of the floor. I realized that the incident was the reason for our conversation.

"I'm sorry I let you down," he said.

"Come on, Barry."

"No, really. I should're been here."

"Why?"

"Because it's obvious you've lost your mind," he said with a laugh.

I tried to enjoy his humor. "Yeah, I'm a little crazy now, I guess, but I'll get over it."

"No, seriously, I heard you were having trouble. I tried to find you last week but you

were gone. I was worried about you, but I've been in trial, you know, the usual."

"I know."

"I really feel bad for not being here, Mike. I'm sorry, '

"Come on. Stop it."

"We all got the hell scared out of us, but you could've been hit."

"He could've killed all of us, Barry. Real dynamite, a missed shot, boom. Let's not replay

it."

"The last thing I saw as we were scrambling out the door was you, covered with blood,

screaming. I thought you were hit. We got outside, in a pile, with people grabbing us,

yelling, and I was waiting for the blast. I thought, Mike's still in there, and he's hurt. We

stopped by the elevators. Somebody cut the ropes from our wrists, and I glanced back just

in time to see you as the cops grabbed you. I remember the blood. All that damned

blood."

I didn't say anything. He needed this. Somehow it would ease his mind. He could report

to Rudolph and the others that he had at least tried to talk me out of it.

"All the way down, I kept asking, 'Did Mike get hit? Did ,Mike get hit?' No one could

answer. It seemed like an hour passed before they said you were okay. I was going to call

you when I got home, but the kids wouldn't leave me alone. I should have."

"Forget it."

"I'm sorry, Mike."

"Please don't say that again. It's over, done with. We could've talked about it for days, and

nothing would've changed."

"When did you realize you were leaving?"

I had to think about this for a moment. The truthful answer was at the point Sunday when

Bill yanked the sheets back and I saw my little pal Ontario finally at peace. It was then

and there, at that moment, in the city morgue, that I became someone else.

"Over the weekend," I said, with no further explanation. He didn't need one.

He shook his head, as if the storage boxes were primarily his fault. I decided to help him

through it. "You couldn't have stopped me, Barry. No one could."

Then he began nodding, in agreement because he understood somehow. A gun in your

face, the clock stops, priorities emerge at once--God, family, friends. Money falls to the

bottom. The Firm and the Career vanish as each awful second ticks by and you realize

this could be the last day of your life.

"How about you?" I asked. "How are you doing?"

The Firm and the Career stay on the bottom for a few short hours.

"We started a trial on Thursday. In fact, we were preparing for it when Mister interrupted

us. We couldn't ask the Judge for a continuance because the client had been waiting four

years for a trial date. And we weren't injured, you know. Not physically, anyway. So we

kicked into high gear, started the trial, and never slowed down. The trial saved us."

Of course it did. Work is therapy, even salvation at Drake & Sweeney. I wanted to

scream at him, because two weeks ago I would have said the same thing.

"Good," I said. How nice. "So you're okay?"

"Sure." He was a litigator, a macho player with Teflon skin. He also had three kids, so the

luxury of a thirtysomething detour was out of the question. The clock suddenly called

him. We shook hands, embraced, and made all the usual promises to keep in touch.

* * *

I kept the door closed so I could stare at the file and decide what to do. Before long I'd

made a few assumptions. One, the keys worked. Two, it was not a setup; I had no known

enemies and I was leaving anyway. Three, the file was really in the office, in the drawer

under the window. Four, it was possible to get it without being caught. Five, it could be

copied in a short period of time. Six, it could then be returned as if nothing had happened.

Seven, and the biggest of all, it actually contained damning evidence.

I wrote these down on a legal pad. Taking the file would be grounds for instant dismissal,

but I didn't care about that. Same for getting caught in Chance's office with an

unauthorized key.

Copying it would be the challenge. Since no file at the firm was less than an inch thick,

there would probably be a hundred pages to Xerox, assuming I copied everything. I

would have to stand in front of a machine for several minutes, exposed. That would be

too dangerous. Secretaries and clerks did the copying, not lawyers. The machines were

high-tech, complicated, and no doubt just waiting to jam the instant I pushed a button.

They were also coded--buttons had to be pushed so that every copy could be billed to a

client. And they were in open areas. I couldn't think of a sin gle copier in a corner. Perhaps I could find one in another section of the firm, but my presence there would be

suspicious.

I would have to leave the building with it, and that would border on being a criminal act.

I wouldn't steal the file, though, just borrow it.

At four, I walked through the real estate section with my sleeves rolled up, holding a

stack of files as if I had serious business there. Hector was not at his desk. Braden Chance

was in his office, with his door cracked, his bitchy voice on the phone. A secretary smiled

at me as I strolled by. I saw no security cameras peeking down from above. Some floors

had them; others didn't. Who'd want to breach security in real estate?

I left at five. I bought sandwiches at a deli and drove to my new office.

* * *

My partners were still there, waiting for me. Sofia actually smiled as we shook hands, but

only for an instant.

"Welcome aboard," Abraham said gravely, as if I were climbing onto a sinking ship.

Mordecai waved his arms at a small room next to his.

"How about this?" he said. "Suite E."

"Beautiful," I said, stepping into my new office. It was about half the size of the one I'd

just left. My desk at the firm wouldn't fit in it. There were four file cabinets on one wall,

each a different color. The light was a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. I didn't see a

phone.

"I like it," I said, and I wasn't lying.

"We'll get you a phone tomorrow," he said, pulling the shades down over a window AC

unit. "This was last used by a young lawyer named Banebridge."

"What happened to him?"

"Couldn't handle the money."