“Jenny?” I lean forward and watch the dark-haired young woman approaching through the rain. It is Jenny. “Give me a break.”

“I mean it. That chick is fixated on you.”

Jenny jogs past the car at a good clip, not paying us the slightest bit of attention. The rain has soaked her T-shirt, leaving absolutely nothing to the imagination.

“She ought to wear a sign,” Caitlin says drily. “Please stare at my tits.”

“I’m surprised you’d comment, after the blouse you wore the day you interviewed me.”

Caitlin takes her eye away from the viewfinder and gives me an elfin smile. “That was different. I was trying to distract you.”

“It worked.”

“It always does. I’m really rather modest.”

“Modesty isn’t what comes to mind when I think of you.”

Her smile changes subtly. “You don’t really know me very well, do you?”

She reaches over and switches off the engine, killing the windshield wipers. “Any word on when Ruby Flowers’s funeral will take place?”

Her quick segues are hard for me to follow. “Mose—Mr. Flowers—is thinking of Sunday, but that’s not set in stone.”

“Sunday? But that’s . . . five days after she died.”

“That’s how the blacks do it. Haven’t you read your own paper’s obituary column?”

“Why do they wait so long?”

“Well, they usually have to wait days for relatives who live up North to get back to Mississippi. Sometimes they have to ride the bus. Ruby has two sons in Detroit, a daughter in Chicago, and another boy in Los Angeles.”

“Can’t you fly them in?”

“I’ll do anything Mr. Flowers asks me to do, but he hasn’t asked. My father already bought Ruby’s coffin and headstone, which probably cost more than the church the funeral will be held in. Personally, I think he overdid it. Ruby never wanted to stand out from her own people in life, and I don’t think she’d want to in death. Why do you care when the funeral is, anyway?”

“I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, Penn, but Ruby’s funeral is going to be the epicenter of a media hurricane.”

“What?”

“Shad Johnson is going to speak, and there are bound to be TV trucks there—”

“Damn it, that’s all wrong.”

“You should thank God for small miracles. Al Sharpton called Shad this morning and offered to come down and ‘help out with the Movement.’ Shad told him to stay in New York.”

Even as I say a silent thank-you to Shadrach Johnson, bitter gall rises into my throat.

“Take it easy,” Caitlin says, touching my arm. “Tell me what you did today.”

“What I did? It isn’t what I did. It’s what the judge did.”

“Which judge?”

“The white one. Franklin. Two hours ago she set our trial date.”

Caitlin goes still. “Our trial date? The libel trial?”