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her boss. Does that work?”
    “Fine.” However, I believe I detected a veiled message.
    She said, “Quit jerking me off and tell me what you’re interested in.”
    “It’s called getting acquainted. Familiarity breeds teamwork. Says so in a management book I once read.” Of course, this was the same management book that told me how to conduct interviews, so its validity was highly suspect at this point. I said, “You mentioned your parents were Russian. How come they ended up here?”
    “I didn’t say they were Russian, I said they taught me to speak Russian. My father was Chechen; my mother was the Russian. When they got married . . . well, the Communists didn’t like Chechens or mixed marriages, and things became uncomfortable. They were smart. They came here.”
    “And you grew up in New York City?”
    “TriBeCa, before the yuppies discovered it. It used to be a nice neighborhood before all the condo associations converted it into high-gloss hell.”
    “And college?”
    “That would be CUNY and four years of humping dishes in Broadway restaurants with horny tourists groping my ass as I tried to balance a tray over my head. College sucked.” She paused a moment, then said, “Are we done yet?”
    “Almost. Why law school?”
    “As in, What’s a girl who looks like me doing in your profession?”
    “Hey, that’s a good question, too.”
    “If I had a rack of power suits and a Dooney & Bourke briefcase, you wouldn’t ask. Meet me in court someday and I’ll bust your nuts.”
    “I’ll bet you would,” I replied. Of course we both knew I was lying. “Why criminal law?”
    “It’s my turn.”
    “Who said we were taking turns?”
    “Don’t be an asshole,” she persisted. “What about you?”
    “What about me?”
    “Where’d you grow up?”
    “I was an Army brat. We were migrants. As soon as the bill collectors figured out where we lived, we moved on.”
    “Then this is legacy work for you, huh?”
    “I don’t think of it that way, no.”
    “How do you think of it?”
    “As a worthy trade inside an honorable profession.”
    “Wow. You actually said that with a straight face.” She regarded me a moment, then asked, “Why law?”
    I flashed my ID to the guard at the gate of the big CIA headquarters, and said, “Because back when I was an infantryman, I had the misfortune to stand in front of a few bullets. When the docs were done putting me back together they’d made a catastrophic wiring mistake and turned me into a lawyer.”
    “That sucks. I hope you sued their asses off.”
    “Well, you know how doctors feel about lawyers. They all shot themselves.”
    We pulled into a guest parking space and walked over to the entrance. A young man with a sour expression met us, handed us temporary building passes, actually showed us how to put them on, and then escorted us to the elevator. You have to love these people. We went up four floors and were then deposited at the office of the general counsel, where a secretary with the face of a dried prune eyed Katrina with a disapproving stare, then starchly told us to sit and wait. For all I knew, she had a gun in that desk. We sat and waited.
    A minute or so later, a guy in a nice suit poked his head out of his office and in an unwelcoming way said, “Come in.” We did that, too.
    It wasn’t a big office, but few government offices are. He had his J.D. diploma from Boston University hanging on his wall, as well as your typical rogue’s gallery of photos that showed himshaking hands with or standing beside a whole array of impressive and recognizable faces.
    I took one peek at those photos, realized with a sudden, overwhelming shock how outclassed I was, stood up, and fled. Just kidding.
    His name was Clarence O’Neil—he was somewhere in his late forties, and well along that road of regression from being a fairly fit, reddish-haired young man to becoming a florid-faced, stout, broad-nosed Irishman. His eyes lingered radioactively on