Bernie’s voice rose. “You can’t go now. We’ve got cases as far as the eye can see. You’ve got an obligation to our clients!”

“There’s Roxson-Maguire, and then my calendar’s clear.” Bernie’s rising voice was a danger signal. He’d try to drag Mitch into a swamp of Latin passion, and when they were through they would be enemies.

“What are you leaving for? What you got to prove, this alone-against-the-sea shit? I wish you’d been flying off that carrier, with your asshole grabbing silk. You never had a chance to be scared, that’s all.”

“We can’t all be heroes,” grated Mitch. His pulse was beginning to pound.

“But we all got to try it for size, just once? At forty-two?” He sat back triumphantly. "That’s your problem. It’s too bad you have to drag Lindy along, too.”

Mitch gripped the desk, fighting an impulse to vault it and jam Bernie’s silly airplane down his throat. The last time he had hit Bernie, at seventeen, he had knocked him on his ass. He wanted to do it again. He forced himself to keep down his voice. “We’re going, Bernie.”

“I’m OK, pull up the ladder?” Bernie flared. “You always were a spoiled son of a bitch! That ivory penthouse on the hill!”

For a moment Mitch thought he was talking about the Belvedere house; then he realized that Bernie meant his childhood home. “I didn’t know you cared,” he said tersely.

“You’d have been a better lawyer born on the Beach,” snapped Bernie.

He was damned if he would let his partner get to him. He calmed himself by force of will. “Can we skip the up-from-North-Beach crap?” he proposed. “Your old man did all the groundwork anyway.”

"Yours cut off your balls up there!”

“You live up there now.”

“I earned it!” yelled Bernie.

“Then you won’t need me to keep it,” said Mitch. And softly, again: “We’re shoving, Bernie.”

Bernie hurled his model at the wall. It shattered and lay broken on the rug, cowering under its own wings. “Well, go,” choked Bernie. “Goddamn it, go!”

Mitch picked up the plane and laid it on the desk. His partner’s eyes were glittering with tears.

“I’m sorry, Bernie,” he said quietly.

“Will you just get your ass out?"

Mitch left him there. Barring the adolescent brawl, it was the first argument between them he had won for twenty-five years. It did not feel good at all.

Chapter 12

CHAPTER 12

The sun peaked. The cabin was becoming a steambath. Dripping sweat, he braced himself under the skylight and tried to read his noon shot on the silver arc of the 100-year-old sextant. Despite his polishing, the tiny figures on the quadrant were almost erased by time.