It was so familiar!

Hector had his own office, a small room with no name anywhere in sight. I saw him

through his halfopen door, and I immediately burst in and slammed it behind me.

He jerked back in his chair with both palms up, as if he were facing a gun. "What the

hell!" he said.

"Hello, Hector."

No gun, no assault, just a bad memory. His palms fell to his desk, and he actually smiled.

"What the hell?" he said again.

"So how's Chicago?" I asked, resting my butt on the edge of his desk.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, in disbelief.

"I could ask you the same question."

"I'm working," he said, scratching his head. Five hundred feet above the street, tucked

away in his nondescript little room with no windows, insulated by layers of more

Important people, Hector had been found by the only person he was running from.

"How'd you find me?" he asked.

"It was very easy, Ilector. I'm a street lawyer now, savvy and smart. You run again, I'll

find you again."

"I'm not running anymore," he said, looking away. It was not entirely for my benefit.

"We're filing suit tomorrow," I said. "The defendants will be RiverOaks, TAG, and Drake

& Sweeney. There's no place for you to hide."

"Who are the plaintiffs?"

"Lontae Burton and family. Later, we'll add the other evictees, when we find all of them."

He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose.

"You remember Lontae, don't you, Hector? She was the young mother who fought with

the cops when you were evicting everyone. You saw it all, and you felt guilty because

you knew the truth, you knew she was paying rent to Gantry. You put it all in your memo,

the one dated January twenty-seventh, and you made sure the memo was properly

Indexed into the file. You did this because you knew Braden Chance would remove it at

some point. And he did. And that's why I'm here, Hector. I want a copy of the memo. I

have the rest of the file, and it's about to be exposed. Now I want the memo."

"What makes you think I have a copy?"

"Because you're too smart not to copy it. You knew Chance would remove the original to

cover his ass. But now he is about to be exposed. Don't go down with him."

"Then where do I go?"

"Nowhere," I said. "You have nowhere to go."

He knew it. Since he knew the truth about the eviction, he would be forced to testify at

some point, and in some manner. His testimony would sink Drake & Sweeney, and he

would be terminated. It was a course of events Mordecai and I had talked about. We had

a few crumbs to offer.

"If you give me the memo," I said, "I will not tell where it came from. And I will not call

you as a witness unless I am absolutely forced to."

He was shaking his head. "I could lie, you know," he said.

"Sure you could. But you won't because you'll get nailed. It's easy to prove your memo

was logged into the file, then removed. You can't deny writing it. Then we have the

testimony of the people you evicted. They'll make great witnesses before an all-black jury

In d.C. And we've talked to the guard who was with you on January twenty-seventh."

Every punch landed flush on the jaw, and Hector was on the ropes. Actually, we had been

unable to find the guard; the file did not give his name.

"Forget lying," I said. "It will only make things worse."

Hector was too honest to lie. He was, after all, the person who had slipped me the list of

the evictees, and the keys with which to steal the file. He had a soul and a conscience,

and he couldn't be happy hiding in Chicago, running from his past.

"Has Chance told them the truth?" I asked.

"I don't know," he said. "I doubt it. That would take guts, and Chance is a

coward ....They'll fire me, you know."

"Maybe, but you'll have a beautiful lawsuit against them. I'll handle it for you. We'll sue

them again, and I won't charge you a dime."

There was a knock on his door. It scared both of us; our conversation had taken us back

in time. "Yes," he said, and a secretary entered.

"Mr. Peck is waiting," she said, sizing me up.

"I'll be there in one minute," Hector said, and she slowly backtracked through the door,

leaving it open.

"I have to go," he said.

"I'm not leaving without a copy of the memo."

"Meet me at noon by the water fountain in front of the building."

"I'll be there."

I winked at the receptionist as I passed through the foyer. "Thanks," I said. "I'm much

better."

"You're welcome," she said.

* * *

From the fountain we went west on Grand Avenue to a crowded Jewish deli. As we

waited in line to order a sandwich, Hector handed me an envelope. "I have four children,"

he said. "Please protect me."

I took the envelope, and was about to say something when he stepped backward and got

lost in the crowd. I saw him squeeze through the door and go past the deli, the flaps of his

overcoat around his ears, almost running to get away from me.

I forgot about lunch. I walked four blocks to the hotel, checked out, and threw my things

into a cab. Sitting low in the backseat, doors locked, cabbie halfasleep, no one in the

world knowing where I was at that moment, I opened the envelope.

The memo was in the typical Drake & Sweeney format, prepared on Hector's PC with the

client code, file number, and date in tiny print along the bottom left. It was dated January

27, sent to Braden Chance from Hector Palma, regarding the RiverOaks/TAG eviction,

Florida warehouse property. On that day, Hector had gone to the warehouse with an

armed guard, Jeff Mackle of Rock Creek Security, arriving at 9:15 A.M. and leaving at

12:30. The warehouse had three levels, and after first noticing squatters on the ground

floor, Hector went to the second level, where there was no sign of habitation. On the third

level, he saw litter, old clothing, and the remnants of a campfire someone had used many

months earlier.

On the west end of the ground level, he found eleven temporary apartments, all hastily

assembled from plywood and Sheetrock, unpainted, but obviously built by the same

person, at about the same time, with some effort at order. Each apartment was roughly the

same size, judging from the outside; Hector couldn't obtain entry to any of them. Every

door was the same, a light, hollow, synthetic material, probably plastic, with a doorknob

and a dead bolt.

The bathroom was well used and filthy. There had been no recent improvements to it.

Hector encountered a man who identified himself only as Herman, and Herman had no