One of the top criminal lawyers not only in Boston but in the country, he charges something in the neighborhood of eight hundred dollars an hour for his services, and he’s always in demand. He has homes on Beacon Hill and the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and a summer villa on the island of Majorca. He also has a sister, Elise, whom I extricated from a dangerous situation a few years back. Since then, Cheswick refuses to accept money from me, and he’ll fly fourteen hundred miles for me on an hour’s notice.

But it screws up his life to do so, and when his time gets wasted even further by yokel cops with bad attitudes, his briefcase and Montblanc pen turn into a nuclear weapon and an ignition switch.

Through the grimy window in the interrogation room, I could see the squad room through even grimier venetian blinds, and twenty minutes after Jefferson left me alone, a commotion erupted as Cheswick burst through the scattered desks with a legion of police brass in tow.

The cops were shouting at Cheswick and each other and calling Jefferson’s name and the name of a Lieutenant Grimes, and by the time Cheswick threw open the door of the interrogation room, Jefferson was in the crowd, too.

Cheswick took one look at me and said, “Get my client some water. Now.”

One of the brass went back out into the squad room as Cheswick and the rest filed in. Cheswick leaned over me and looked at my face.

“This is good.” He looked over his shoulder at a sweaty white-haired man with captain’s bars on his uniform. “At least three of these facial cuts are infected. I understand his shoulder blade might be broken, but all I see is a bandage.”

The captain said, “Well—”

“How long have you been here?” he asked me.

“Since three-forty-six in the morning,” I said.

He looked at his watch. “It’s four o’clock in the afternoon.” He looked at the sweaty captain. “Your department is guilty of violating my client’s civil rights, and that’s a federal crime.”

“Bullshit,” Jefferson said.

Cheswick pulled a handkerchief from his breast pocket as a pitcher of water and a glass were placed on the interrogation table. Cheswick lifted the pitcher and turned to the group. He poured some water onto his handkerchief, and the spillage splashed on Jefferson’s shoes.

“Heard of Rodney King, Patrolman Jefferson?”

“It’s Inspector Jefferson.” He looked at his wet shoes.

“Not once I get through with you.” Cheswick turned back to me and dabbed the handkerchief against several of my cuts. “Let me make this clear,” he said to the group, “you gentlemen are fucked. I don’t know how you do things down here and I don’t care, but you kept my client in an unventilated box for over twelve hours, which makes anything he said inadmissible in court. Anything.”