That was funny. Did she think I was going to send her a bill for last night? What was I going to bill her for? Conferring with a witness? I snapped off the machine. I tried to work on the motion spread out on the desk, but the print kept jumping in front of my eyes. I tried rearranging the books and papers in front of me. Finally I got up and started to pace around the office. When I’d done the equivalent of two ks, I realized I had to get out of there.

Harvey was in his office drafting a will.

“Hey, man, how you doing?” I asked, peering around his door.

Harvey looked up as though I was speaking a foreign language. I wished he could help me. I wished he could tell me what to do about Monica Fullbright and her strange games.

“You see anybody suspicious around here last night, Harvey?”

“No. He put down his thick black fountain pen carefully, as though he might forget where he had placed it. “Watch your parking meters.”

I was out of my mind if I thought there was anything he could do. I never even knew if he was talking with me or if he simply had old songs from the sixties running through his head all the time. I turned to go back to my office to get my briefcase.

“Whitney, you want to tell me what’s going on? Word is that this building is staked out.”

“Who said so?”

Harvey picked up the pen again and placed it at the top of his desk blotter. Apparently satisfied with this arrangement, he stared up at me. “I heard it on the street.”

“How could you hear it on the streets? You never leave this place.” The concrete must be talking to everybody in town but me.

“Somebody is watching this building. My aura is disturbed. I can feel it.”

Harvey should stop smoking so much grass.

It was at least a hundred out. That’s what happens in August. The smog traps the heat like a pressure cooker. You can feel the pavement starting to crack and everyone along with it. As I drove down Hollywood Boulevard heading east for the arraignment courts at Bauchet Street, I switched on the radio. It was already set on KPFK listener-sponsored radio for the progressive news. I like the alterative music you can’t hear on any other station. I was hoping the next program would be one of the World Beat shows that play lots of African music and reggae. The local news was just ending.

“...at the Federal Building a coalition of groups representing the people of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala are gathering this morning to protest the latest shipment of military aid.... ‘