Cade eyed me carefully. Then he leaned forward, chin resting on his folded hands, as if musing. “You know, Adam, I begin to see it more clearly. A young man, a little bored with his work, perhaps disappointed with himself, and then suddenly a friend is in trouble and it’s only the young man who’s sensitive enough to understand the friend, and smart enough to save him. The police are on a witch hunt, and the friend’s lawyer is only involved out of ego—he’s an older man and the young man can see how others in their firm have indulged him until he’s become like a spoiled child, blind to his own limitations.” He paused to give me a look of infinite comprehension. “Isn’t that how it is?”

His grasp of my view of him, the disparaging inversion of my motives until they were those I saw in him, left me off balance. I took a long swallow of coffee. “That’s fascinating, Roland. Maybe you should try it out on Henry.”

Cade’s eyes flashed. His mouth opened, then closed. In a cold voice he said, “You’ll do no good with this.”

“You can’t know that.”

“It’s enough that I think it. If you want to survive in this firm you’ll do what I tell you and no more.”

“Unless Henry overrules you.”

“He’s still in shock, for God’s sake.”

“That was my point yesterday. Unlike Rayfield I’m willing to wait until Henry knows what he’s saying. We can talk to him tomorrow.”

Cade looked astonished. “You’d do that, wouldn’t you? Even with what he’s gone through.”

I sipped some coffee. “If I have to.”

Cade considered me a moment longer. Then he picked up a file with an air of infinite weariness. “Go ahead, then,” he answered, suddenly bored. “I’ve got real work to do. But it goes no further than the Parsons woman. I want an end to this before you ruin Henry.”

I stood, surprised but ready to leave. “I’ll try not to get him arrested,” I murmured, and closed the door carefully behind me.

I opened the door and got out, looking up and down the street. The ripe morning sun captured its neglect with merciless clarity. The place next to Etta’s had boards for windows and a picket fence like a row of bad teeth. But her own house was whitewashed, with red roses growing behind the neat square of lawn and honeysuckle near the porch. I went there and knocked.

The door was opened by a light-skinned black woman with processed hair and obsidian eyes which seemed centuries old. A shadow crossed her face. “You’re Mr. Shaw.”

It was less question than an affirmation of surprise: I was out of place here, had ventured where I did not belong. “May I come in?”