Mike said, “The man to see about Hanrahan’s conflict of interest is the U.S. Attorney. We’re going to have to protect ourselves—we should have copies of everything we turn over. I think we should go to the newspapers, too. You know better than I do that we can’t take the chance of letting these people learn that we know about them without putting on the appropriate pressure. They’ll be after us whether we make them suffer or not.”

Leland sat forward. “The client was told that she would hear first of any evidence of a crime. I’ll handle that. I don’t want to get sandbagged. If we go to the U.S. Attorney and then find out that the newspapers won’t handle it, we’ll be in even worse shape than if we didn’t see the newspapers at all. It would get around that we have a story nobody wants. The people in Rainbow will feel that they can grind us out like cigarettes. Last, as you point out, the material we have doesn’t tell everything. The Hanrahan thing may be enough for the U.S. Attorney to go around the city snapping locks on everybody’s files—but only maybe. That’s not the important thing. Go back. MacIver went to people telling them they could be rich if they could raise fairly large amounts of capital in a hurry. For that reason—if no other—you can figure that there are silent partners. I don’t want to go up against them without knowing more than I do. I want to talk to some people. My father, for one. Maybe Warren Johnson in Manitou.”

“You’re right,” Mike said, but he was disappointed. Leland did not want to look at him. There was nothing now that his father could tell them about the trouble in Port Smith. Who the U.S. Attorney in this district was and how one went about dealing with him. The matter of protection was as Mike had said: copy everything.

It was the client who stopped Leland. She had to be told, but he could not help thinking of how she would react. What would be her attitude toward her money now? He knew what she had been through, what she hoped to become, and what the money meant to her.

Roberts was in more terrible trouble than he could possibly imagine. A man could hit low when there was something to protect that he thought was good, that was easy to understand. Roberts knew enough about marriage to have been able to see that what he said would eventually have its effect on Karen, too. Because of his anger, Leland was willing to believe that Norma would have no problem putting Roberts in proper perspective, but Norma had gone a long way with Roberts, far too many years. It could not be that simple.