Joey slipped the surveillance to be here. Down into the basement of the Rooms4Rent, along a narrow service hallway, through a sub-basement, and up into the next building. A route he observed a seventy-year-old plumber take one day, a private route that clearly very few knew about but the plumber did, maybe uniquely, no doubt from servicing the building for fifty years. Joey knew he might have only one chance to use it. Maybe more, if he could slip back before the cops in the unmarked knew he’d been gone. But they’d figure it out soon enough. So he had to use it only at the right time. The right time was this.

They are silent at first. Staring at one another. Coffees between them.

GreenGirl on 1st and 15th. Grab a coffee, come to the back. 9am?

Joey’s question mark, Zack noticed, the first note of civility, of consideration, in their torrid, troubled history.

Ok.

Joey smiles thinly now. Clearly, Zack thinks, Joey is struggling a little to figure out where, how, to begin.

“Only one of us knows why we’re here,” says Zack finally.

Joey smiles a little more, seeming to relax a little since at least something has been said. “Always with the funny, huh.”

Zack shrugs.

Joey, morosely, “I didn’t have anywhere else to turn.”

“Obviously,” says Zack.

Joey looks up sheepishly. “I can’t imagine your girlfriend feels too good about this.”

“She has no idea,” says Zack. Honest. Honest with Joey. Lying to Emily. What is he doing?

“I’m amazed you came,” says Joey.

“Me too.” Zack shifts back a little and waits.

“I think they got me out. My employer—”

“Who’s that?”

Joey shakes his head. Better if you don’t know, is how Zack reads it.

“I think they got me out for a last job. A big one. A job I think I’m gonna die doing.” He looks up. “That they’re counting on me to die doing.”

“Are you sure?”

Joey shrugs. “I’m the right guy to do it. The only guy. ’Cause I do the job when I go back to trial.”

Zack frowns, uncomprehending.

“It’s in the courthouse.”

“The courthouse?” Jesus. Surrounded by cops. At least half of them armed and hair-trigger.

“You see why I think they figure I’ll die? Maybe they figure I’ll be dying in prison anyway. What’s the difference, right?”

“Do you know what they want you to do?”

“Not yet. And I don’t think they’ll tell me till the last second.”

Zack furrows his brow. “I don’t get this, Joey. You’re gonna have to go through a metal detector. It’s not like you can carry a gun or a knife in with you.”