“Miss Nichols,” I said, “you’re not supposed to deal with people like Cody Falk. Do you understand that? No one is. He’s just a bad person and you didn’t do anything to cause this. He did.”

“Yeah?” She managed to get a full smile out, but fear and confusion still swam in her eyes.

“Yeah. He’s the bad guy. He likes making people afraid.”

“He does.” She nodded. “You see it in his eyes. The more uncomfortable he made me feel in the parking lot one night, the more he seemed to enjoy it.”

Bubba chuckled. “You wanna talk uncomfortable? Just wait till we visit Cody.”

Karen Nichols looked at Bubba and for just a moment she seemed to pity Cody Falk.

In my office, I placed a call to my attorney, Cheswick Hartman.

Karen Nichols had driven off in her boyfriend’s VW. I’d instructed her to drive straight to her insurance company and drop off a replacement check. When she said they wouldn’t honor the claim, I assured her they would by the time she got there. She wondered aloud if she could pay my fee and I told her if she could afford one day, she’d be fine, because that’s all this would take.

“One day?”

“One day,” I said.

“But what about Cody?”

“You’ll never hear from Cody again.” I closed her car door, and she drove off, giving me a little wave as she reached the first traffic light.

“Look up ‘cute’ in the dictionary,” I said to Bubba as we sat in my office. “See if Karen Nichols’s picture is beside the definition.”

Bubba looked at the small stack of books on my windowsill. “How do I tell which one’s the dictionary?”

Cheswick came on the line and I told him about Karen Nichols’s trouble with her insurance claim.

“No missed payments?”

“Never.”

“No problem. You said it’s a Corolla?”

“Uh-huh.”

“What’s that, a twenty-five-thousand-dollar car?”

“More like fourteen.”

Cheswick chuckled. “Cars really go that cheap?” Cheswick owned a Bentley, a Mercedes V10, and two Range Rovers that I knew of. When he wanted to be one with the common folk, he drove a Lexus.

“They’ll pay the claim,” he said.

“They said they wouldn’t,” I said, just to get a rise out of him.

“And go up against me? I hang up the phone without satisfaction, they’ll know they’re already fifty thousand in the hole. They’ll pay,” he repeated.

When I hung up, Bubba said, “What’d he say?”

“He said they’ll pay.”

He nodded. “So will Cody, dude. So will Cody.”

Bubba went back to his warehouse for a while to clear up some business, and I called Devin Amronklin, a homicide cop who’s one of the few cops left in this city who will talk to me anymore.

“Homicide.”

“Say it like you mean it, baby.”