Very thin. I ignored him. "Your names please," I said to the two uniformed cops. They

produced badges. Ralph Lilly and Robert Blower. "Thanks," I said like a real smartass.

"You will be defendants number three and four. Now, why don't you leave."

"Where's the file?" Gasko asked.

"The file is not here because I don't live here. That's why you're going to get sued, Officer

Gasko."

"Get sued all the time, no big deal."

"Great. Who's your attorney?"

He couldn't pull forth the name of one in the crucial split-second that followed. I walked

to the den, and they reluctantly followed.

"Leave," I said. "The file is not here."

Claire was nailing them with the video, and that kept their bitching to a minimum.

Blower mumbled something about lawyers as they shuffled toward the door.

I read the warrant after they were gone. Claire watched me, sipping coffee at the kitchen

table. The shock of the search had worn off; she was once again subdued, even icy. She

would not admit to being frightened, would not dare seem the least bit vulnerable, and

she certainly wasn't about to give the impression that she needed me in any way. "What's

in the file?" she asked.

She didn't really want to know. What Claire wanted was some assurance that it wouldn't

happen again.

"It's a long story." In other words, don't ask. She understood that.

"Are you really going to sue them?"

"No. There are no grounds for a suit. I just wanted to get rid of them."

"It worked. Can they come back?"

"No."

"That's good to hear."

I folded the search warrant and stuck it in a pocket. It covered only one item--the

RiverOaks/TAG file, which at the moment was well hidden in the walls of my new

apartment along with a copy of it.

"Did you tell them where I live?" I asked.

"I don't know where you live," she answered. Then there was a space of time during

which it would have been appropriate for her to ask where, in fact, I did live. She did not.

"I'm very sorry this happened, Claire."

"It's okay. Just promise it won't happen again."

"I promise."

I left without a hug, a kiss, a touching of any kind. I simply said good night and walked

through the door. That was precisely what she wanted.

________________________________________________________________

Twenty

Tuesday was an intake day at the Community for Creative Non-Violence, or CCNV, by

far the largest shelter in the District. Once again Mordecai handled the driving. His plan

was to accompany me for the first week, then turn me loose on the city.

My threats and warnings to Barry Nuzzo had fallen on deaf ears. Drake & Sweeney

would play hardball, and I wasn't surprised. The predawn raid of my former apartment

was a rude warning of what was to come. I had to tell Mordecai the truth about what I'd

done.

As soon as we were in the car and moving, I said, "My wife and I have separated. I've

moved out."

The poor guy was not prepared for such dour news at eight in the morning. "I'm sorry,"

he said, looking at me and almost hitting a jaywalker.

"Don't be. Early this morning, the cops raided the apartment where I used to live, looking

for me, and, specifically, a file I took when I left the firm."

"What kind of file?"

"The DeVon Hardy and Lontae Burton file."

"I'm listening."

"As we now know, DeVon Hardy took hostages and got himself killed because Drake &

Sweeney evicted him from his home. Evicted with him were sixteen others, and some

children. Lontae and her little family were in the group."

He mulled this over, then said, "This is a very small city."

"The abandoned warehouse happened to be on land RiverOaks planned to use for a postal

facility. It's a twenty-million-dollar project."

"I know the building. It's always been used by squatters."

"Except they weren't squatters, at least I don't think so."

"Are you guessing? Or do you know for sure?"

"For now, I'm guessing. The file has been tampered with; papers taken, papers added. A

paralegal named Hector Palma handled the dirty work, the site visits, and the actual

eviction, and he's become my deep throat. He sent an anonymous note informing me that

the evictions were wrongful. He provided me with a set of keys to get the file. As of

yesterday, he no longer works at the office here in the District."

"Where is he?"

"I'd love to know."

"He gave you keys?"

"He didn't hand them to me. He left them on my desk, with instructions."

"And you used them?"

"Yes."

"To steal a file?"

"I didn't plan to steal it. I was on my way to the clinic to copy it when some fool ran a red

light and sent me to the hospital."

"That's the file we retrieved from your car?"

"That's it. I was going to copy it, take it back to its little spot at Drake & Sweeney, and no

one would have ever known."

"I question the wisdom of that." He wanted to call me a dumb-ass, but our relationship

was still new.

"What's missing from it?" he asked.

I summarized the history of RiverOaks and its race to build the mail facility. "The

pressure was on to grab the land fast. Palma went to the warehouse the first time, and got

mugged. Memo to the file. He went again, the second time with a guard, and that memo

is missing. It was properly logged into the file, then removed, probably by Braden

Chance."

"So what's in the memo?"

"Don't know. But I have a hunch that Hector inspected the warehouse, found the squatters

in their makeshift apartments, talked to them, and learned that they were in fact paying rent to Tillman Gantry. They were not squatters, but tenants, entitled to all the protections

under landlord-tenant law. By then, the wrecking ball was on its way, the closing had to

take place, Gantry was about to make a killing on the deal, so the memo was ignored and

the eviction took place."

"There were seventeen people."

"Yes, and some children."

"Do you know the names of the others?"

"Yes. Someone, Palma I suspect, gave me a list. Placed it on my desk. If we can find

those people, then we have witnesses."

"Maybe. It's more likely, though, that Gantry has put the fear of hell in them. He's a big

man with a big gun, fancies himself as a godfather type. When he tells people to shut up,

they do so or you find them in a river."

"But you're not afraid of him, are you, Mordecai? Let's go find him, push him around

some; he'll break down and tell all."

"Spent a lot of time on the streets, have you? I've hired a dumb-ass."

"He'll run when he sees us."

The humor wasn't working at that hour. Neither was his heater, though the fan was

blowing at full speed. The car was freezing.

"How much did Gantry get for the building?" he asked.

"Two hundred thousand. He'd bought it six months earlier; there's no record in the file