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Brooklyn and assigned full-time to the Court Corruption Task Force.”
    â€œEddie Fitz,” I echoed, thinking aloud. “This is Detective Fitzgerald, I take it.” My friend nodded. “He’s the one who testified before the Mollen Commission? The one who started all this bullshit about corruption in the courts? I don’t remember running into him in the courthouses in Brooklyn. What precinct did he work out of?”
    â€œI don’t know,” Lani replied. “Someplace black. Brownsville or Bed-Stuy. The kind of neighborhood that just loves young Irish cops from Long Island coming in like centurions occupying Gaul.”
    â€œI should be able to get the skinny on him,” I said. We were at the head of the line; we placed our orders and watched the man behind the counter wrap black beans and pork in a huge flour tortilla. “My contacts in Brooklyn are second to none. What I need from you is Manhattan dirt.”
    â€œIf it’s dirt you want,” Lani said, making her way through the crowd, paper plate in one hand, giant soda in the other, “you need to concentrate on Fat Jack Vance.”
    She led me to a table in the shade. I slid onto the metal bench and set my plate down. For a moment I wondered whether it was prudent to have our conversation in such a public place, then realized there were very few people who looked like lawyers eating here.
    â€œRiordan’s co-defendant?” I asked; a dumb question. How many Fat Jack Vances were there in Manhattan, anyway?
    Lani nodded. “His crimee, as we used to say in Brooklyn.”
    I smiled the obligatory answering smile, but I didn’t like the implication. Crimee meant that two defendants had committed a crime together, and I wasn’t about to begin Riordan’s defense by believing he was guilty.
    â€œWhat about Fat Jack?” I asked. I unwrapped the burrito and lifted it to my mouth. It was hot and squishy and tasted dark and satisfying. Maybe booth-food wasn’t so bad, after all.
    â€œFat Jack is a sleaze,” Lani said matter-of-factly. “He doesn’t just handle bail bonds, he acts as an investigator—which means he produces phony alibis and pays off corrupt cops who want to sell their cases. And he’s worked for Matt Riordan for about twenty-five years. So when Eddie Fitz says the money he handed Paulie the Cork came from Riordan through Fat Jack, I for one have no trouble believing him.”
    She fixed me with her clear brown eyes, eyes that sat in her makeupless face and challenged me. “And when Fat Jack says he got the money from his boss, I have no trouble believing that either. Nor do I find it outside the realm of possibility that the reason Nunzie got dead in a car is that he crossed Matt Riordan and Frankie Cretella. Is this really,” she asked in an uncharacteristically solemn tone of voice, “the kind of guy you want for a client? I know you and he had a thing for a while, but that doesn’t mean—”
    A thing. Yes, that was what you called it when it wasn’t love and it wasn’t exactly an affair either. A friendship with extras, I’d called our relationship when I tried to describe it. A friendship with bed privileges. A thing.
    And now it was over.
    Or was it?
    â€œThat has nothing to do with my representing him,” I said firmly, hoping to hell I was telling the truth. “I can’t stand the way they’re all ganging up on him. This is part of the war against the defense bar,” I went on. “If Lazarus has his way, every defense lawyer who’s any good will find himself facing indictment on something or other.”
    â€œCass, come on,” my friend remonstrated, the effect only slightly spoiled by a mouthful of black beans, “you can’t really believe the only reason Matt Riordan is facing indictment is that Lazarus has a vendetta against him. He’s played fast and loose with the system