He tried to shake off the arm I put around him, but I kept a grip on his shoulder. “Please don’t cut me out of your life, or take yourself out of mine. I’m not going to say something stupid, like I know you’ll come around in the end. Maybe you will, maybe you won’t. But you and I have been friends a lot longer than I’ve known Conrad. It would bring me great pain to lose you.”

He mustered a smile from some depth. “Right, doll. I can’t talk about it anymore right now. Anyway, I been away from the princess too long. She needs to get out more often while she’s nursing.”

I felt melancholy after my neighbor left. I’d started an affair with Rawlings because an erotic spark had always jumped between us, and the time had somehow been right last week. But I didn’t need Jesse Helms or Louis Farrakhan to tell me the road ahead would be rocky if Rawlings and I got serious about each other.

As I was listlessly poking through the refrigerator Murray called, practically slobbering into the phone in his eagerness for my story. This morning’s Herald-Star had had a fine photo of the wreckage of Simon’s truck and the Impala, but the text was short and ambiguous. The paper didn’t want to accuse the Felitti boys of any malfeasance, not with their political connections. They didn’t want to take me on, though, since I’d been an important source for them over the years. I gave Murray my version of events: I had nothing to gain and everything to lose by being snappy with him while the Felittis gathered ammunition. When we finished, I sent him to Ben Loring in the hopes that Paragon Steel could provide some hard documentation to shore up my own case.

By then it was almost six. I braced myself and called Luke Edwards to tell him about the Impala. He was furious. The fact that his baby was at the police labs and would be featured as an exhibit in a murder trial only enraged him further. He threatened to take a jackhammer to the Trans Am just so I’d know how he felt. I was on the phone with him for almost an hour. We weren’t exactly friends again by the time I hung up, but at least he finally agreed to let me pick up the Trans Am.

“Although a less generous man would keep it as a hostage, Warshawski,” came his parting shot.

I also gave Freeman Carter a call. I wasn’t sure I wanted him representing me in the trials and suits that lay ahead. Freeman was at home, but he’d heard a pretty complete version of events from some of his old associates. He brought up the representation issue before I did.