There was video of Nick Addis taking one of the many sips of water he swallowed during three days of testifying. Next came footage of Clarence Dunne walking with Bob Hanover in the Rose Garden. Hanover had his hand on Dunne’s shoulder, and Dunne was laughing.

The four adults in the room stared at the old Dunne on the screen. Dunne broke the silence: “I remember the joke. He was telling one on himself. It went something—”

Dunne coughed hard and continued speaking through the pain: “They—he and Margaret—were back in Louisiana. They passed through this small town where she, when she was a girl, had spent a summer, and they pulled over at a filling station. Turns out the owner and she had a thing that summer.” Dunne spit out a gob of phlegm. “So when they leave the station, he says to her: ‘Honey, if you’d stayed with that fellow today you’d be the wife of a mechanic.’ She says, ‘No, dear, if I’d stayed with him, today, he’d be President of the United States’ … He liked that one. A lot.”

Commercials had replaced the footage of Dunne and Hanover.

“What are you doing now?” Addis asked Starrell.

“Helping out my unc at the building, looking for a real job.”

“I told him he should join the force, go to the academy,” Dunne said.

“Police?” Addis asked.

“Ain’t happening,” Timmons said. “Too many get capped.”

“Then what?” Addis asked.

“Don’t know,” Starrell said. “I kinda liked what I was doing with all this. Finding things, figuring things out.”

“I know,” Dunne said. “You and I can open up a private investigation firm. Be like something on TV. An old cripple and a young buck from the streets.”

“Should just get on with the TV idea,” Timmons said. “Hell, Anjean’s doing a book. And he can’t write.” The baby was stirring; she took her daughter from Starrell. “Got some white guy, no offense to you”—Addis nodded—“doing all the damn work. You know the name they got for it? Street Hero. That’s a joke. And they’re going to be putting his picture on it. Sent him up to New York—on a plane—for a guy to take his picture.”

She stroked her daughter’s neck, and the baby went back to sleep.

“I ain’t complaining or nothing, but all he got was one lucky shot. And Twayne had to tell him what to do.”

“Leave it, Tamika,” Starrell said.

“And they were going to give you all that money—over a million, right?—and you don’t want to do it,” she said to Addis. “Why’s that?”

“Tamika, hush,” Starrell said.

There was a photograph of Julia Lancette on the television. It had been taken during a rafting trip. Her hair was wet. She held a paddle over her head in a triumphant pose.