“Nothing that would matter on the stand.”

“But here. No stand.”

“They’ve arrested her already.”

“You know they have.”

“She’s a kid,” April said. “Twenty-two, and not real smart, and a whiny voice, and my God what is she doing with these—”

“Your gut, though,” Blake said.

“About her?” April said.

“No, not on her. She’s easy,” Blake said. “Heather’s no Patty Hearst. But the Arkoun brothers.”

“We all know what Kamal is.”

“I’m not asking about Kamal. What’s your gut about the others?”

“You have a feel for this. I don’t have it. I—”

Someone was knocking on the door. “Five!” he shouted. “It’s not our call anymore,” he said, sitting down.

“My doing. All my doing.”

“You did the right thing. I mean, you fucked up, but for the right reasons.”

“They gave Linda back the money.”

“Card fraud creates cash.”

“But look how they live—it’s just awful.”

“Not greedy, I’ll give them that. But what I’m saying is that wanting to get inside, to hear voices—that was right.”

“But we don’t have to know them. We can’t, ever. We can just piece something here with something there and draw logical conclusions. It’s flawed, of course it’s flawed. But it’s better than the alternative. Tribes. Posses. No one cares what the Arkoun brothers are really like in a lynching.”

“ ‘Justice is the great interest of man on earth. It is the ligament which holds civilized beings and civilized nations together.’ ”

“Mark, you are a pompous sonofabitch. Even in a crisis.”

“Hey, I’m just quoting from the walls of that brand-new federal courthouse they built us on the waterfront. Daniel Webster.”

Aziz could tell Mourad was happy. Not about the cups— Mourad was down on them—but about Linda Ricco. Ghazi was too. It felt like the Heather tension between them was smaller, outweighed by this thing they’d made right. Ghazi had not hesitated— Mourad saw that—to contribute what had to be all the cash he had. When Aziz brought out the cereal box and Mourad dug into a pair of socks, Heather counted out nearly all that they owed. Maybe they were a hundred or two short.

They had been sitting at the kitchen table writing on the cups for over an hour. American sayings were a good idea, Aziz thought. Ghazi made fun of the overall concept, but he was coming up with sayings anyway. Elli yestenna kheir melli yetmenna, welli yetmenna kheir melli yeqtaa layas. Waiting is better than hoping, and hoping than despair. Ki techbaa elkerch, tqul lerras ghenni. When the stomach is full, it tells the head to sing.

Aziz wanted to use some Yemeni ones. Mourad disagreed. “It honors the one I knew in Brooklyn,” Aziz countered. “There may be Yemenis in Boston.”