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floor. Three-oh-eight, three-ten, one of those two,” the man
said. “Hey, did he really get shot up?”
    “Yeah. I’m his brother.”
    His face brightened. “Cause I’ve been trying to get hold of him all
week. You see, I caught this case…”
    I had already turned away and was walking toward the stairwell,
hoping he wouldn’t follow me. He didn’t.
    Three floors down things were quieter. I didn’t know which room
was Teddy’s, and in any case I didn’t have the key. I went back down
the stairwell and into the lobby.
    “I must have gotten confused,” I told the guy behind the Plexiglas.
“I’m actually Teddy Maxwell’s brother. It’s his room I’m looking for.”
The man just stared through me as if I were an apparition that might
disappear at any moment.
    “I’m here to pick up some things for him. He’s in the hospital.”
    He stirred, his eyes finally coming to rest somewhere between my
forehead and the ceiling. “Lemme see some ID.”
    I pressed my driver’s license against the window.
    “All you people barging in here all of a sudden, it’s like I’m runnin’
some kind of damn store.” He spoke with rising vehemence, his
eyes sliding away from me, not bothering to look at the license. “All I
know is when Teddy was around I never knew him to have even one
sibling, let alone a pair of them. Or maybe you’re the kind of brother
who keeps clear until a man goes down, then starts nosing around to
see what he might have tucked away under the mattress.”
    “Someone else came here claiming to be Teddy’s brother?”
    “Claiming. You the one claiming. I have half a mind to make you
come back with the sheriff, prove you are who you say you are.”
“Look at my license.” I was still holding it up. “My name is Leo
Maxwell. I’m Teddy’s only brother. Did this other person show you
any kind of identification?”
    He still didn’t look at it. “You a lawyer? ’Cause I don’t talk to no
lawyers. Your brother excepted, but I hear he’s gonna be dead, and then
there won’t be a lawyer left in the world I care to talk to.” His voice
lowered insinuatingly. “Unless the name on that damn driver’s license
is Alexander Hamilton, we ain’t got nothing to talk about.”
    “What did this guy look like? Tall, short? Fat, thin? White, black?” It
was no good, though. He wasn’t going to budge. Anticipating his demand,
I’d palmed a twenty-dollar bill in the stairwell, mindful of the security
camera, and now I slipped it to him through the pass tray, keeping my
hand flattened so that the camera couldn’t make out the exchange.
    Like a fish snapping up bait his hand came down and made the
bill disappear from beneath my fingers. “See for yourself, I guess.” He
buzzed open the door, his manner now one of satisfaction. “Went up
there an hour ago and hasn’t come down. Room three-oh-eight. And
look, I can’t be responsible for all the lies people tell in here. I had to
answer for those, I’d be in the jailhouse long ago.”
    He reached behind him for the key and slid it toward me the same
way the twenty-dollar bill had come.
    “You should have checked his ID,” I said, taking it. He muttered
something about lawyers coming into his place, but the closing door
cut him off.
    I went up the stairs slowly. I had no idea what I was going to say to
the person who’d evidently impersonated me and was now searching my
brother’s room. Again it occurred to me that I ought to be calling the police.
At the third-floor landing I met my dreadlocked friend from before.
    “There you are,” he said. He was drunk or high, I couldn’t tell which,
and not entirely coherent. “I was wondering, did you go to the same
law school as your brother?”
    “Maybe,” I said. “Only what makes you think I’m a lawyer?”
    “You’re funny,” he told me, and we shared a laugh over how funny
I was. Then he got serious. “It’s just, you see, I caught this new case
and the PD wants to plead me out.”
    I