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valuable resource for Laurie and me to call on.
    I nod. “So it appears.”
    “There are a lot of bad guys that don’t like me.”
    “There are a lot of good guys that don’t like you,” I say, in a misguided attempt to bring sports bar banter into a decidedly un-sports-bar environment. “We just have to figure out which guys would go to these lengths to bring you down.”
    “Right. I’m going to have to think about this.”
    “Yes, you are. And while you’re thinking about it, consider two categories.”
    “Which are?”
    “People who have a grudge against you for something you did in the past. But also current cases: people who want you out of the way to stop you from doing something to them in the future.”
    He nods. “Good point. There are a bunch of people in that first category who might be my future roommates.”
    He means that many of the people who would have reason to seek revenge are in prison, mainly because of his efforts. “I know that,” I say. “Once you give us names, we’ll track down where they are now.”
    “I’ll get right on it,” Pete says. “And you should talk to Stan.”
    He means Lieutenant Stan Phillips of the Paterson Police Force. He was Pete’s partner for years before Pete got promoted up to captain.
    “He can’t stand me,” I say. I once won a case by basically demonstrating that Phillips conducted an investigation incompetently, rendering certain key evidence inadmissible. “The extent of his conversations with me for the past five years has been to call me an asshole.”
    Pete smiles. “He tells it like it is, that Stan. He’ll talk to you; I’ll get the guards to let me call him. He’ll be as good a source for coming up with suspects as I am.”
    “And you’ll mention that he shouldn’t shoot me?”
    He shrugs. “I’ll do my best, but Stan makes his own decisions.”

 
     
    There’s no way around it: I am lovable.
    It’s not a status I’ve gone out of my way to achieve; it has come to me naturally. I’m charming, fun to be with, kind to animals … basically I bring joy wherever I go.
    And it can be a burden. Sometimes I admit I would just like to be Andy Carpenter, Ordinary Person, not Andy Carpenter, Mr. Wonderful. But I grin and bear it, because that is who I am.
    Yet occasionally, impossible as it may be to believe, I will run into a person who fails to grasp that essential truth, who seems not to want to bask in my reflected wonder.
    Lieutenant Stan Phillips of the Paterson Police Department is such a person. If I didn’t already know this, his verbal greeting when he sees me waiting for him in the precinct lobby would have tipped me off. “Well, looks like the wind is blowing in a lot of garbage these days.”
    I’m not feeling particularly tolerant of that attitude, in fact I’m not at all in the mood for this crap, so I smile, turn, and start walking toward the door. “Where are you going?” he asks.
    “To speak to my client about finding someone more cooperative to aid in his defense.”
    “Damn, you’re a pain in the ass.”
    “Is that an effort to be conciliatory? Because if it is, you need some work on your technique.”
    “You made me look like a clown and let a guilty guy walk.” He’s still bitter about my blowing up his investigation with him on the stand.
    “First of all,” I say, “the jury said he was not guilty, and they were right. Second of all, I didn’t make you look like a clown. You are a clown. I just peeled away a few layers of bullshit so everybody could see it.”
    He stares at me for a few moments, probably to decide whether to kill me, or talk to me. What I have on my side is that he is Pete’s friend.
    He makes his choice. “You want to talk about Pete?”
    “That’s all I want to talk about.”
    “Come on,” he says, and turns and heads for his office, with me following. It’s a win for me, though I don’t think I’m going to see him at Andy Carpenter Fan Club meetings any time soon.