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Blood trickled from his nose.
    The younger man reached for Travis’s throat. Fighting to clear his blurred vision, Travis grabbed his assailant’s hand and squeezed down on a pressure point. The man cried out. Travis tried to wrench the man’s arm behind his back, but before he could finish, the cigarette man chopped the side of his neck with his flattened hand. Travis fell back against the wall, releasing his grip on the young man’s hand.
    The cigarette man grabbed Travis again, this time by the collar of his jacket, and hauled him up to eye level. Travis’s stomach burned; every movement was excruciating.
    “Lose, asshole.”
    Travis tried to form words, but his lips were numb and unresponsive. “I don’t … understand. …”
    “You unnerstand enough.” The man reached down and clamped his hand onto Travis’s groin. “Feel that? I want you to remember what that feels like. Your balls are in my hands.” He grinned malevolently. “In a minute, we’ll disappear. But don’t be fooled, asshole. Your balls will still be in my hands. You’re gonna lose.”
    The man squeezed tightly. Travis screamed in pain. His knees weakened; he tumbled back down to the floor. The cigarette man shoved him away and started to leave, then whirled around suddenly and kicked Travis in the gut, in the same aching spot he had hit before.
    Tears clouded Travis’s eyes. “What … do you want ?”
    The man sneered. “You know what we want. Now you need to figure out what you’re gonna do about it. If you decide not to cooperate, it’ll be the last decision you make. We’ve taken care of punks like you before and we’ll do it again.”
    Travis wanted to shout for help, but found he had no breath, no voice. He clutched his stomach helplessly.
    “Just remember. We’ll be watching, asshole.” The two men left the bathroom.
    Travis lay in a crumpled heap on the floor beneath the sink. He was gasping for air like a drowning man. His groin and stomach were on fire. He wanted to crawl up to the mirror and see if there was any permanent damage, but he couldn’t manage it. He hurt too much.
    He felt the warm blood flowing out of his nostrils, forming a sticky puddle around his mouth. He hoped his nose wasn’t broken.
    After all, he was due in court in less than five minutes.

10
3:00 P.M.
    C AVANAUGH WAS STILL VOIR-DIRING the jury.
    She was taking no chances. Travis had been on the opposite side of a trial from her at least half a dozen times in the past year, and she had never taken nearly so long to select a jury. Usually it was the defense that wanted to know every minute detail about the jurors’ lives.
    Maybe she was still stinging from her defeat the day before, Travis mused. Whatever the cause, it had gone on too long, and if it took much longer, his head was going to explode. Judge Hagedorn had been relatively understanding when Travis stumbled into the courtroom fifteen minutes late with a bandage on his nose. Hagedorn probably didn’t buy Travis’s story about falling down the stairs, but he let it pass, and he recessed the proceedings every hour or so to allow Travis to soak his head and vomit. Who could ask for anything more?
    For some reason he didn’t quite understand himself, Travis didn’t want to explain what had really happened. He didn’t understand the situation well enough; it might have a negative impact on Moroconi’s case. Or maybe it was just pride—the big burly ex-cop didn’t want to admit he’d been trashed by two goons in the little boys’ room.
    Travis heard a noise in the back of the courtroom. He jumped, jerked his head around. No, it wasn’t them; it was some spectator in a blue-and-white seersucker suit. Never seen him before. Looked harmless.
    It had been this way all day—every time Travis heard a noise, he sprang out of his seat and his pulse shot off the scale. He wasn’t sure what he feared most—that the two men from the bathroom would return, or that they wouldn’t. He dearly