He thumped the tabletop with a forefinger. “If you have something to sell me, Hammer, put it on the table.”

“What I have isn’t tangible. It’s the results of my investigation into your hit-and-run and the various killings that followed.”

He huffed a laugh. “You can’t use anything you may have found. You work through an attorney, so you’d be violating the client confidentiality privilege.”

“Not at all. Oh, it’d be shaky ethically, I grant you…but you’re not my client, Vincent. Daddy is.”

His blank expression was all the response I got, or needed.

“Your first line of defense,” I said, “is not terribly impressive. You have alibis for the killings of Kraft, Jordan, and Mazzini. All performed over the span of a few days, by the way, and that is impressive. But back to your alibis. Your father? Your current squeeze? Weak, Vincent. Thin. Parents, wives, lovers, the most worthless alibis in the book. Now, you may be rich enough, successful enough, respectable enough, to make that play, just the same. I mean, I’ll bet your pater would hire one hell of an attorney. Gerry Spence, maybe. How about F. Lee Bailey? Dershowitz would be perfect!”

For the first time a frown had its way with that smooth skin. “Why would I need a defense lawyer? I didn’t do a damn thing.”

I raised a gently lecturing forefinger. “What’s interesting to me, Vincent, is that while you’re clearly deranged, your victims are never random, as is so often the case with someone who gets off on murder the way you do. No, you always pick out someone…deserving. Someone who’s done you dirty—like Sheila Ryan’s abusive ex, for instance. Or like the prostitute who blackmailed you…oh, I know, I know, not established, but that will come out. And I’m guessing Roger Kraft tried to squeeze more money out of you, too, although you may just have been tying off a loose end. And Shannon—a decent man, but he hounded you unmercifully even after he was no longer a cop. Why should you have to put up with that? By the way, did he have anything? On that floppy disk you stole, I mean…and after all the trouble I went to in finding it!”

He stood. “That’s enough of this bullshit. You don’t have anything to say that even vaguely interests me. There’s a coffee shop a few blocks from here. I’ll call for a ride from there. Goodbye, Hammer. I’ll tell my father to fire you first thing tomorrow.”