“They make deals, Jacob, like you’d make with Gar­finkel for a diamond; they grab the momzers† and they all sit in a chamber . . . lawyers in ties and the judge in his robe . . . and they handel.‡ You did first-­degree murder, they say, but that’s hard to prove and expensive to try and it takes too long, so even though we know you’re guilty, even though you killed a man, or woman, or little child . . . plead guilty to second-­degree, or third-­degree. No jury. No big news trial . . . and oy, the money we save! The time! And at least we get your rat’s ass off the streets for a year or two. . . .”

“A year or two?” Levy asked.

“More like ten,” Hawkins pleaded. “Maybe twenty.” If we’re lucky, he thought. But they were young, there were five of them, and he knew twenty years was a dream.

“And with parole,” Luria hissed, “good behavior, and aptitude tests . . .”

“That shit won’t buy much time from a murder rap,” Hawkins said.

Luria was ready. “But some, right? A year, six months. So what are we talking about, Inspector, six years for killing Adam, seven?”

Levy put his hands over his ears but Luria pulled them away. “Listen to it, Jacob. You can’t hide now any more than you could then. Tell him, Hawkins. Tell the truth. Seven years for murder . . . tell him!”

Levy appealed to Hawkins, “It’ll be fifteen, won’t it? Twenty . . .”

Suddenly it was an auction. Do I hear twenty-­five?

“I don’t know.”

“Then they’re right?” Levy was begging him, but he didn’t know for what. Luria waited, the whole circle waited.

Hawkins said, “Maybe.”

Levy looked at Hawkins for a long time, then said sadly, “Seven years isn’t enough.” A verdict he didn’t want to come to, Hawkins thought, but he didn’t know who was on trial for what. “Just not enough,” Levy said, and the circle shifted and seemed to ease back.

“Time to eat,” Dworkin said. He touched Hawkins’s arm. Hawkins shrugged him off. “Jacob, we’ll get them and they’ll go to prison. Shit, Jacob, it’s hell in there . . .” Levy wasn’t listening and Dworkin’s hand was back on Hawkins’s arm. “You have to eat, Roger.”

Hawkins didn’t know what he’d lost, only that he had.

Levy said softly, finally, “Go eat, Roger.”