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Street. I’m three minutes away.”
    Neither one of them said goodbye.
    T hree
hundred and seventy-five miles northwest of the city, in Buffalo, New York,
Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Sugarman took a call from the front desk.
“There’s a James Grisco here to see you.”
    “Okay. Send him back.”
    She had heard all the terms used to describe the
other stars in the office. Dan Clark was a natural born
trial lawyer. Joe Garrett was a genius in front
of a jury. Mark Munson was a courtroom
machine.
    Munson? Really? She’d popped in on him in trial one
day to see what the fuss was all about, only to hear him argue that the
defendant’s story was all an “elaborate rouge.” He even touched his fingertips
to the apple of his cheek, just in case she was wondering if she’d misheard the
word that was supposed to be “ruse.” An elaborate rouge. What an idiot.
    Jennifer Sugarman? Ask around the office, and
they’d say she was a hard worker . Diligent. Detail oriented. Conscientious. Burns the midnight
oil. When men were good, they were born that way. If she was just as
good—better, even—it must have come by way of tremendous effort.
    She didn’t mind those descriptions, though. She’d
made it out of misdemeanors into felonies faster than any ADA on record and was
now first-chairing murder cases after only five years in the office. Rumor was
she’d be named a unit chief in the next round of promotions. And when the big
boss finally retired, her reputation for working hard would come in handy.
Voters liked to know they were getting their money’s worth with public
employees. She planned to be Erie County’s first female district attorney.
    And she was, in fact, harder-working than most.
Take the call she got from the jail this morning about Grisco, for instance.
Most of the ADAs would have blown it off. At most, they would have passed the
information on to the parole officer and forgotten about it.
    But she had been the one to negotiate Grisco’s
release from prison, and she knew ex-cons feared the official power of a
prosecutor much more than they feared the often-empty threats of parole
officers. If there was some reason for a person to call the prison inquiring
about Grisco’s whereabouts, she wanted Grisco to know she hadn’t forgotten about
him. She wouldn’t hesitate to pull his ticket if it came to that.
    He removed his baseball cap when he entered her
office. It was a good sign he knew who was in charge. She told him about the
call that had been made to the prison that morning. She reminded him of his
release conditions, going so far as to read them aloud from his file.
    “You don’t need to remind me, ma’am. I got no plans
of messing this up.”
    “Good to hear, Jimmy. I stuck my neck out for
you.”
    “Yes, ma’am. I appreciate it.”
    She shook his hand and walked him to the hallway.
As she watched him make his way toward the exit, she found herself hoping he
might actually find a decent life for himself. He wasn’t even forty yet.
    It wasn’t until she returned to her office that she
realized she should have covered up the note pad on her desk, the one on which
she had scribbled the information she’d received from the prison. It was a
stupid mistake, but Grisco hadn’t seemed to notice. His eyes had remained on his
shoes the whole time, anyway.
    She flipped the pad to the next page. It was
nothing. She was certain of it.

Chapter Eight
    A s Casey Heinz jogged up from the 6 train at Bleecker, he was thinking that, all in all, it had been a good day.
    Ramona’s school had some kind of teacher in-service Monday, so she’d been able to spend the day with him, starting with a snack at AJ’s. On a day without Ramona, he might have had only a chocolate-chip muffin, forcing himself to chew slowly, careful not to show his hunger. The fact that he was getting sick of that particular food option would have helped to slow the pace of his eating. He was tiring of nearly all the choices at