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said, ‘I am the way and the truth.’” That got many more amens. “Not a way and a truth. The way and the truth, the one and only way and the one and only truth.”
    â€œHallelujah,” the chorus sang.
    â€œSo, am I next on his list?” he asked, then pointed out to us in the congregation. “What about you? And you? And you?” And into the camera. If you were watching at home, he pointed at you through your TV. “And you?”
    â€œWe are in a war ,” he declared. “Our enemy has no hesitation to kill. No hesitation at all. Our enemy is barbaric and violent. This is not a war between civilizations. It is the war for civilization.
    â€œI call upon you all to uphold the faith and the gun. This is a war we must win!
    â€œThere is no middle ground. Compromise is appeasement, and appeasement is death. Giving aid and comfort to the enemy is treason.”
    He didn’t point at me or call out my name. But I felt as if he was talking directly to me.
    I felt as if he was talking about me.
    Walking out afterward, I felt like eyes were all over me.
    The criminal justice business is a small world. Anyone in it knew who Manny Goldfarb was, and he would have been hated as thoroughly as the ACLU itself, except that he made so much
money. Doing it for money made it right. I can’t say exactly how or why, but that was the fact. Doing it for ideals made it suspect and twisted, subversive and evil, part of the plot against America and the War against Christianity.
    A lot of them knew that Manny was defending Nazami, and quite a few would have known I was Manny’s number one investigator, something I’m normally proud of, as he has the hot cases and the deep pockets.
    But now, it was as if Plowright had hung a scarlet A around my neck, one that stood for ACLU, for Ahmad, for apostate and atheist, friend of the Antichrist.
    Jeremiah Hobson gave me one of those cold, don’t-fuck-up looks that high school football coaches practice in front of the mirror. He used it a lot when he was running my squad in narcotics.
    Alan clapped his hand on my shoulder. He didn’t say anything—nobody actually said anything. Maybe I was being paranoid. Alan’s expression said, Good luck. Do what you gotta do.
    Manny was my number one individual client, but the Christian community that connected through the Cathedral of the Third Millennium, as a group, gave me more business than he did. So I was trying to figure out how to keep everyone smiling, drop the case, and have Manny understand.
    Then Leander Peale came up to me, the CO who’d brought Nazami to us. He gave me the kind of smile a hard man with a lot of hard biker miles beneath him has. An inexpensive flipper covered the loss of three teeth on his upper right. He came up close, his idea of discretion, the tobacco smell coming off of him, ashtray sharp, and said, “You gotta do something for that kid.”
    â€œI gotta?”
    â€œIf that kid kil’t mor’n a roach, I’ll draw you milk from a bull’s tits.”
    â€œAnd you know that?” I asked.
    â€œCarl, I walked C”—that was C block, not the worst, but bad enough—“seven years. Worked the hoo’ d’ow’”—midnight to morning, the hoot owl shift. “You know they cry. They call you
over, hunk’ by the grate and whisper tales. Done the mainline three, and the row two”—that was central block and death row. “Heard every line of shit, every con, hustle, prayer, conversion, the born-agains, Nation of Islam, Black Israelites . . . . Makes you a judge a character, Carl, seeing what I seen.
    â€œThat Persia kid, he di’n’t do the crime, and you know he can’t do the time.
    â€œA’other thing, those Homeland Security guys, there’s something ain’t right. I don’t know what, but they give me the feelin’ like some guy pissed on my leg, then tol’