He grabbed the pile of mail that had accumulated where the slat dumped it just inside the front door, and took it to his desk. It was junk mail, mostly, the kind of stuff it was hard to believe people still wasted the postage on. Flyers for lawyer seminars on topics like habeas corpus after dictatorship, conflicts of law in times of interstate military conflict, and federalism under the new Constitution that still only existed in draft form—several different drafts, depending on which faction you talked to. There were three of those mailers offering preapproved ways to get out of debt by getting into more debt, two garish pamphlets for antiaging nutritional supplements, and one solicitation from the North Texas Gun Club that came with a stack of return address labels preprinted with Donny’s name and business address and a little icon of a black-powder rifle. Donny saved the window sticker, which was one of those things meant to signal some fraternal code to any officer of the law that might pull you over. If only he had a car to put it on.

He sorted the pile there on his already-messy desk, tossing the junk mail to the floor after inspecting whatever looked interesting, and making a new chronological stack of what looked like actual business correspondence. And there at the bottom of that pile, earliest to have been received, was the fine white envelope printed with the letterhead of Polson & Chevalier.

“Suggestion of Death.” That about captured how Donny felt as he read it again, and realized how majorly he had fucked up by not having all notices and pleadings sent to his Houston office, which was the one where he actually worked most days, even though his cases were all over the state and sometimes across the country. This office was just a cheap sublet from the prior tenant, who owed Donny for agreeing to take on his cases after he decided to throw in the towel. Donny used it mainly to meet with those clients, and most of those cases had now run their course. This one was his last big one, and the one that would pay his ticket to never have to come to Dallas again. Or that was the idea.

Abogado Harry Martinez Jr. had left Donny his library as well. It was meager, a couple of shelves of basic books, but it did include a current copy of the Rules of Civil Procedure. It was sitting there under a gift-shop bust of Socrates, the inventor of mansplaining. Donny pulled that, and reread the rule about what happens when your fucking client gets himself killed and your last chance at real justice and the retirement money you have been busting your ass to make dies with him. You had to read between the lines to get it, but the part that mattered was as clear as anything in the law ever got.