Slider was the one who collected the refund from O’Brien, but he spent the money on other things they needed at the time.

11

Thelen’s visit should have helped Donny focus, but it mostly had the opposite effect.

After Thelen left, the first thing Donny did was try to tally up his available assets. He had less than twelve grand in cash on hand, most of that fees recently collected from clients and deposited in his business account. More pathetic was that he only had another seventeen in his 401(k). At one point it had been close to four times that, when he’d had a nice chunk of the fee on a case he shared with Miles and Percy, but it only took a few months before Donny started dipping into it. That some of the dipping was to advance loans to clients did not persuade the IRS auditors that Donny should be released from the excise tax, especially since loaning money to clients was also against the rules—and since they figured out that Donny had spent three grand of the money on clothes. “Business attire.” Including the suit he had worn to court that morning, and was still wearing, a suit that had started to fray, just like the suits it had replaced a few years earlier. It might have been a good investment if it had helped him make money. But the time and effort he had invested in his caseload was proving to be the worst investment of all, judging from his balance sheet, and the dismissal that morning of the one case into which he had sunk it all.

Donny had one car back home, but it wasn’t his to sell. It was the vintage Lincoln Town Car Miles had bequeathed him, which Miles had inherited from his dad. Everything else he rented or borrowed, including his apartment and his offices. He had his books, but they weren’t worth much to anyone but him.

What he did have was the bling. Most of the watches and jewelry were in Houston, but he had a decent stash right there in the locked cabinet in his office.

He opened the cabinet. There wasn’t as much as he thought, and he already knew what the pawnshops were willing to pay.

There was no choice: he would have to lawyer his way out of this one.