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Ted’s nap had upset his internal clock. It was the middle of the night and he couldn’t sleep. Lester seemed to have no such problem. The pain pills must have helped. Lester’s admission that he snored was confirmed. In triplicate.

Too much hung on their success the next day. Ted knew the best thing he could do was relax and rest. He would need all his faculties to outwit the Judge. Ted somehow needed to get him to implicate himself or one of the other actors in this convoluted drama. It wasn’t going to be easy. Another beer might have helped Ted to think—or sleep—but he’d finished his one long ago. Water wasn’t having much effect other than to give him an urge to revisit the toilet.

The bathroom was a closet-sized room with a single small window a few inches above eye level. Ted was not a short man. He had to look up at a sharp angle to see out.

The view wasn’t much, but at that moment it was magic. A full moon hovered above the church steeple, bathing the ancient slate roof in mercury. Ted couldn’t move. Moments when he took the time to look up at a New York night sky were as rare as good luck. There was never much to see.

He washed his hands in the bowl-sized basin and crept back to the dark church sanctuary. He found his pew and sat, adjusting the thin blanket as best he could in the vain hope of creating comfort. Something had changed. There was a strange stillness in the air.

Lester was no longer snoring.

“You mind if I ask you something?” Lester spoke quietly, his voice almost dreamy from the medication.

“You breathing?” Ted said. “For a second there, I wasn’t so sure.”

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“Come again?” Ted said.

“You don’t need this. You went to school. Law school. You got to play with the big dogs. Hell, man, the only thing I’ve ever done was serve two years working in an army warehouse in Stuttgart, where I wrenched my back. Never worked a straight job again. But you had it made. Why? What happened? Who’d you piss off?”

Ted was sure it was written—somewhere. Thou Shalt Not Divorce Thy Boss’s Daughter.

They had not spoken to each other in months, but he was not surprised to see her name appear on his phone. Jill would have heard. Someone in that family of sharks would have been delighted to deliver the news.

“Security took my notebook, laptop, work phone. They wouldn’t let me touch anything on my desk. I was out the door, on the street, by eight-twenty.” Ted pried the top off the second bottle of Bass ale and took a long swallow.