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for a long time—and you’re running a risk of being tarred with the same brush if you take his case.”
    â€œOh, that’s nice,” I shot back. “You mean I’m supposed to stand back and let Riordan get railroaded so I can keep my skirts clean? This does not sound like the Lani Rasmussen I used to know.”
    Lani finished her burrito and took a swig of soda. It caught in her throat, producing an unladylike burp. She laughed. “Why did you take this case, anyway?” she asked.
    This was a question to which I’d given a lot of thought since I’d sat across from my client at Tre Scalini. And all the reasons I’d come up with really boiled down to one.
    â€œHave you ever heard of a place called Cedar Point?” I asked. Lani shook her head. “It’s a big amusement park in Sandusky, Ohio,” I explained. “We used to go there every summer when I was a kid. My brother, Ron, and I would ride the roller coaster, a big old wooden thing called the Blue Streak.” I leaned back on the picnic table and cupped my knee in my hand.
    â€œWe thought that roller coaster was the scariest thing in the world,” I said, letting reminiscence wash over me. “We’d sit in the front car and scream bloody murder when the coaster went around curves. Sometimes it felt as if all the cars were going to run right off the tracks and land us in Lake Erie. We loved the thing.”
    â€œWhat’s this got to do with—”
    â€œPatience,” I said, holding up a restraining hand. “I outgrew Cedar Point for a while,” I went on. “But then I went with a bunch of college friends one summer. I couldn’t wait to show them the Blue Streak. Only a funny thing happened—they’d built a new roller coaster, bigger and faster and scarier. They called it the Mean Streak.”
    I smiled at the memory. Next to the Mean Streak, the old Blue Streak was a kiddie ride. Or so I bragged to my friends as I made my way to the front car of the big new roller coaster.
    â€œI thought I was going to die,” I told Lani, recounting my first trip. “By the time it was over, I was sobbing with terror and relief. The Mean Streak had lived up to its name.”
    Brooklyn state court, where I knew all the plunges, all the curves, all the acceleration points, was the old Blue Streak. The Southern District, the federal court, was the Mean Streak. It was bigger, scarier, with curves I didn’t anticipate, speeds I might not be ready for. But I had to try it. I couldn’t spend my life on the kiddie rides, afraid to test myself on the big one. I explained this as best I could to Lani, and then we sat in silence, a silence I broke by asking, “What else have they got on Riordan?”
    â€œWord on the street is that Fat Jack is on tape telling Eddie Fitz the money came directly from Matt Riordan.”
    Tape. They had a tape. Maybe tapes plural.
    â€œIs Riordan himself on tape?” I tried to keep my voice neutral, but the panic edged through. Lani’s smile was one part pity, two parts innocent malice.
    â€œI hear your client’s golden voice is on at least two of the tapes,” she replied. “But the bulk of their case is Eddie Fitz and Fat Jack.”
    My defense jelled as I sat across from my old buddy. I saw myself at counsel table, flanked on one side by Matt Riordan—and on the other by the slimeball known on the street as Fat Jack.
    Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the evidence is clear that Jack Vance, known for obvious reasons as Fat Jack, knowingly and deliberately paid money to a corrupt court clerk in return for grand jury minutes. This was a crime. This was wrong .
    And we have Fat Jack’s word — and only Fat Jack’s word, ladies and gentlemen, because Eddie Fitzgerald was only repeating the words Fat Jack said to him — that the money came from Matt Riordan .
    It would be a mudslinging contest