Maybe, but Birdie was too old for lugging heavy sacks and tending hot ovens before the crack of dawn. No man should have to worry about his mother collapsing under the weight of a thirty-pound sack of flour.

“You can quit, Ma. I’m making decent money these days.”

“Please don’t make me point out that Mr. Gerald always pays in cash.”

Patrick looked away. When they’d first arrived from Ireland, they were so poor that Patrick had to beg on the streets. That sort of shame never fully went away, and depending on his mother for steady income was humiliating. He would start getting tougher with his clients. Some of them could afford to pay in cash, and he needed to start demanding it.

But first he needed to win the Mick Malone case.

“Ma, you’ve got to stop talking about my cases in public,” he said. “Keep quiet about the Mick Malone case. It’s important that his book gets published before the Blackstones find out about it.”

“They’ll get wind of it sooner or later,” she pointed out.

“Let it be later. The book will hit the shelves in September. The closer we get to that date without anyone knowing about it, the better our chances.”

No one in the city wanted to take on the Blackstones, but sometimes a man didn’t have much choice.

2

The Friday evening soirees at Gwen Blackstone Kellerman’s home were famous. She originally started hosting them as a way for the professors at Blackstone College to relax and unwind after a week of classes, but over the years they had grown into much more. Artists and intellectuals from across the city vied for a chance to attend her soirees, which could last until dawn. The informal gatherings became a place where professors debated new ideas and artists mingled with academics. It was said that Mark Twain was inspired to write a short story based on a conversation he had with an aging English professor in the corner of Gwen’s garden.

These weekly gatherings were Gwen’s proudest accomplishment, since she would probably never become a botany professor like she’d once hoped. Dreams of a successful marriage and motherhood had also passed her by, but her soirees made Blackstone College a thriving intellectual community.

So far tonight she had consoled a professor whose latest experiment didn’t pan out, listened to a musician play his new composition on her piano, and toasted the birth of a baby boy to a physics professor. It was a brilliant, moonlit summer evening . . . which was why the gloomy expression on the college president’s face seemed so strange.