Gavin almost laughed at the lowball request. Gavin’s mom gave him four times that amount as a yearly allowance. Allowance. He liked that term. It was a word he and his mother agreed upon in their negotiations. It sounded much more refined than terms like extortion or hush money.

“I assume you brought a retainer agreement?” Gavin said.

Reecey put his briefcase on the table and popped it open.

As Reecey dug to find the retainer agreement, Gavin rang a Pavlovian bell that he knew would make Reecey salivate. “I’ll give you two hundred thousand dollars up front to be held in trust. I assume that would constitute sufficient resources to get the ball rolling?”

Reecey could just as well have done a spit take, the way he reacted. When he pulled himself together, he said, “That’ll do fine.” He began writing Gavin’s name in the blank spaces on the retainer agreement.

“I want you to add a couple lines to the contract. Once we get past the contested omnibus hearing, you’ll get a flat fee bonus of fifty thousand dollars on top of your hourly rate.”

Reecey stopped writing and looked at Gavin. “Why would you do that?”

“By then, I’ll know whether or not I have an alibi, and you’ll have earned the bonus one way or the other.”

Reecey put his pen down. “What will I have done to earn a fifty-thousand-dollar bonus?”

Now came the test—the question that had sent the other two lawyers scurrying away. “What I say here is confidential, correct?”

“Attorney-client privilege. I can’t utter a word of it.”

“Not to anyone? Not ever?”

“Not ever.”

“What if I told you that my alibi is a woman—a married woman?”

“Wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened.”

“But here’s the thing. I’ve been in here a while now, and she hasn’t come to see me. I have to assume that she’s not willing to give up her marriage to save my neck. But if I could get ahold of her…”

“Have you tried giving her a call?”

“I can’t do that. We only communicated through text messages. Her husband’s crazy jealous, so she bought a special phone, one she could use to text with me. If I could communicate with her—text her—I could convince her to give a statement.”

“I could send an investigator—”

“No. It has to come from me. She won’t talk to anyone else.”

“Well, how do you propose we do that?”

Gavin leaned in to the table and lowered his voice. “That’s how you earn your bonus. You’ll need to buy a burner phone and let me use it.”

“They won’t let me bring a phone here.”