“Shut up, Herbie, or I’ll have your mouth duct-taped.”

Herbie muttered something about free speech.

“Do you have any duct tape?” Stone asked Dierdre.

“I’ll send out for some,” she replied. “Stone, as I mentioned on the phone, we’re in a bit of a quandary here. We’d like your views on how to handle this.”

Stone looked back and forth between the two prosecutors. He had time to reflect that no D.A. had ever asked his advice about prosecuting a client of his. Then he got the picture. “Oh,” he said. “Right. My client, Mr. Fisher, has been hounded and abused by Carmine Dattila and his employees for weeks. They have beaten him, kidnapped him and his murder has been ordered by Mr. Dattila, a tape of which statement is in your possession. Additionally, after the only other witness against Mr. Dattila was murdered in jail, Dattila sent a hired assassin to the hotel where Mr. Fisher was being held in protective custody, where he murdered the two police officers guarding him and would have murdered Mr. Fisher, had he not had the presence of mind to escape the hotel suite before the assassin found him.

“These events convinced Mr. Fisher that the District Attorney and the police could not ever protect him, so, while the balance of his mind…may have been disturbed by these events, he found himself in the presence of Mr. Dattila and did the only thing he could do to protect himself in the circumstances and entirely in self-defense.” Stone stopped and took a breath. “That’s what I’d say to a jury, and I’d get an acquittal.”

Dierdre nodded. She looked at her boss questioningly, and he nodded. “All right,” she said. “You understand we can’t have people walking around the city armed and shooting people. How about he pleads to one count of illegal possession of a weapon and gets a year, suspended?”

“Done,” Stone said.

“A year?” Herbie asked, sounding horrified.

“Suspended, Herbie. Shut up.”

“There’s a judge waiting for us in his chambers,” Dierdre said, getting to her feet.

Half an hour later, Stone and Herbie stood on the steps of the courthouse in the sunshine. Herbie was examining the contents of an envelope that had been handed to him on the way out of the judge’s chambers.

“Do you have any money, Herbie?” Stone asked.

“Yeah, all my stuff is in here, except the cop’s gun. I guess they kept that.”