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purpose in talking on the phone about it. That only leads to misunderstandings.”
    “Goodbye, Bertha.”
    “Goodbye.” The line went dead and I replaced the receiver.
    David appeared in the doorway. “So what was all that about?”
    “Looking under levees,” I said.
    “Oh,” he said. “The same-old, same-old.”
    I got up from my desk and made two fists. “Someday that goddamn woman …”
    “Now you know why they had the flood of ’27,” he said. I didn’t think Bombast was that old, but I wasn’t going to dispute it.
    Understand: I am not against women. I find them wonderful and intriguing creatures, and once I even married one. But there are times when it seems that I, a poor male, am beset by the worst the other sex has to offer. First P. E. Courtney, offering to take away my business, and now Bombast, the corps battle-ax, feeding her neuroses.
    Give me two miles of briars to walk through any day.
    I picked up my morning paper, telling myself that gnashing my teeth accomplished nothing. If I looked through the news I’d find people with far worse trials to endure than a gauntlet of harpies. Not that Courtney was a harpy, exactly. Stripped of the power clothing, she might look pretty good. Stripped…
    CONTRACTOR ACCUSED OF CHEATING GOVERNMENT.
    I sighed as my eye picked out the headline. I already felt sorry for the poor bastard. Why didn’t headlines ever say DRONES CHEAT GOVERNMENT , and detail the endless meetings, coffee breaks, and training sessions that gobbled the taxpayers’ money? But no, it was always some poor devil trying to keep his company’s head above water.
    Okay, so I’m biased.
    Then my eye fell on a headline in the “People” section: ANGOLA WARDEN BELIEVES IN REHABILITATION.
    And there was a photo of a smiling Levi Goodeau. I skimmed the story, picking out the facts that Goodeau had a doctorate in sociology and was the first warden of the penitentiary ever to hold such a credential. He’d worked his way up, serving as a counselor and an assistant warden, while attending graduate school at night, and all along he’d retained his faith in humankind. I wondered how that was possible, but graduate school has a way of warping people. He’d held his post for only a few months and he’d made a number of substantial changes: increasing educational opportunities and hiring more counselors. I sympathized with the sentiments, but I hoped he wasn’t a fool; the warden’s job was no place for somebody with a weak stomach. Three thousand hardcore convicts could shake Mother Teresa’s faith in humanity.
    I was folding the newspaper when David walked in.
    “I finished the Allison report,” he said. “So I’ve got some time.”
    “Time for what?” I asked.
    He grinned in his little-boy way.
    “Well, I thought maybe if I went back and talked to old Absalom, I might get a little more out of him. He seemed to be interested in the fact that we were connected by our first names. If he’s a Bible reader, I figure I can hold my own.”
    It was my turn to smile: David was a Talmudic scholar and could hold his own in a room full of Jesuits. More importantly, though, he had a way of talking to people, and I’d seen him succeed in gaining rapport more than once where others, including me, had failed.
    “Take the cell phone,” I said.
    “Keep it,” he replied. “I’m just going up for a couple of hours.”
    I shrugged. “Then call me tonight. If we have to put a team into the field, we’re going to have to call some folks in a hurry.”
    I watched him leave, wishing I could go, too. But being away all morning had left me with a stack of paperwork and some letters to write. My progress, however, was desultory. I couldn’t stop thinking of T-Joe, dead at the wheel of a car that had left no skid marks. A dead man with more teeth than nature allows. Finally, I succumbed and called the forensics anthropology lab at the university. I was in luck: The phone was picked up by the lab head