Choice of Evil

said, sticking her chest out as if that would prove she was telling the truth, “and this isn’t a game. What I’m telling you is. . . I know you could find this man. And you might get into places where you’d have to. . . convince people that you weren’t a bounty hunter, understand?”

“No.”

“Look. A lot of people are trying to find him. There’s some major reward money out there. And word is that there’s a mercenary team looking. That’s another thing I know about you too. You could hook him up. . . get him out of here if you wanted to.”

“If your source for that is as good as—”

“Never mind. You know whatever your truth is. All I can do is tell you mine. Bottom line: If you get in. . . contact with him, why should he trust you? But if I’m there, if I’m in it, then he’d know it was legit.”

“So I’m gonna call him on the phone, tell him I’m really a nice guy, and prove it by bringing you to our next meeting?”

“I know it won’t be like that,” she said, biting at her lip, trying for patience. “I don’t know how it would happen. But if it comes down to. . . credentials. . . if I was there, I could answer any questions. You see what I’m saying?”

“I hear it. But I can’t see it,” I told her. “You got some ragtime story from some loony pal of yours on the force; you got some pssst-pssst bullshit about mercenaries; you think it adds up to you partnering up with me? Not this year.”

“You don’t trust me.”

It wasn’t a question, but I still answered it for her. “No.”

“I don’t blame you for that. You don’t know me. But I’m telling you the truth. Not about”—she waved her hands as if dismissing those stories about me she’d heard—&rlquo;that stuff. About this: I want to find him. And I want to help him get away before they bring him down. The others, they’re just role-playing. Even Lincoln. All that macho rap, it’s just for style points. That’s what it’ll come down to if he’s ever caught: courthouse vigils, talk shows, letters to the editor. . . not what they say they want.”

“Why you?”

“You know how gay people always wonder if some part of them isn’t straight? No, I guess you wouldn’t. Well, we do. I don’t mean we want it. . . although some pray for it. . . but we always. . . wonder. I don’t even know how it works. If you have sex with. . . you know what I mean, does that make you bi?”

“You’re asking the wrong man.”

“Meaning you never did. Or you just don’t know.”

“Both.”

“I didn’t come out right away. It was. . . years. Before I figured out. . . before I. . . Never mind. If I had sex with men once, and I have sex with women now, what am I?”

“I’m the wrong man to ask.”

“You’re the wrong man to ask a lot of things, seems like.”

“True.”

“I love him,” she said suddenly.

“Huh?”

“The. . . executioner. I love him. I never met him. Or maybe I did. None of us could know that. Maybe he was right in one of the. . . places we go. But it doesn’t matter. I know I love him. And I want to be with him. Even if he’s. . . even if we could never have. . . I mean. . . It doesn’t matter. I love him and I want to be with him. So I’ll. . . do things. Whatever things, it doesn’t matter. Things that could help you find him. Understand what I’m saying?”

“Yeah. I always seem to have the same problem with you, Nadine. I understand what you’re saying. I just have problems with believing any of it.”

“What kind of proof could I show you?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know if there is any. It’s not the kind of thing where you —”

“Just think about it, okay?” she whispered, her hand on my forearm, nodding her head sharply to tell me what Pansy’s pricked-up ears had told me a few seconds ago—the rest of them were coming.

I never turned my back, letting Nadine’s eyes mirror their approach for me. She was the first to speak too.

“About time!”

“We are on time.” Lincoln’s voice. “How long have you been here?”

“About five minutes,” she lied smoothly.

Lincoln walked around behind me and took a seat next to Nadine. “We want to do business,” he said, no preamble.

“Everybody wants to do business,” I told him. “It’s the terms and conditions that hold things up.”

“What do you want?” Lincoln asked, as shadowy figures filled in behind him. Some of them stopped behind me. . . no way of telling how many. Pansy was alert, but relaxed, still within herself, not feeling any heat.

“I want you to understand what we’re all doing here,” I told him. “Me, I’m a public-spirited citizen. Or maybe I’m a treasure hunter. For the reward. Yeah. . . I like that better. You all, you’re. . . investors. You finance my investigation, and you get a piece of the pie when and if I turn him up. How’s that?”

“Wait!” A voice behind me, male. “I thought you said we were going to—”

Lincoln held up his hand for silence. “But since we’re the. . . investors. . . you’d naturally report your findings to us before you. . .”

“Naturally,” I told him, straight-faced.

“How do we know he wouldn’t just go to the—?” Another male voice, this one from somewhere in the shadows to Lincoln’s left.

“I’m sure Mr. Burke has professional standards,” Lincoln said, cutting him off, trying to put an aura of threat around his voice.

“Oh, I do,” I assured him. “But I don’t have a private investigator’s license. I don’t need one if I’m working for a lawyer, though.”

“We have—”

“Me too,” I told him. “And I want to use mine. What you have to do, see, is hire my guy. Then he hires me.”

“That seems like a good deal of trouble for—”

“For who? Not for me. And I’m the only one I got to look out for here.”

“Fine,” Lincoln said. “If that’s the way you want it, that’s the way we’ll do it.”

I slid Davidson’s card across the table to him, not saying another word.

“And the money. . .?” he asked.

“What money? Me, I’m not taking any money. Not from you. If this lawyer you’re going to hire decides he wants to compensate me for my trouble, that’s his business. Not yours.”

“That’s all there is to it?”

“Yeah. And forget progress reports. This happens or it doesn’t. Understand?”

I could feel the electric current crackle around the room, call-and-response, question-and-answer, voting in silence. I went back to patience, watching only Nadine’s hard bright eyes.

“All right,” Lincoln finally said.

“How am I supposed to set a fee for something like this?” Davidson asked me later.

“You charge by the hour, right?”

“Not for tort litigation. That’s all contingency. And I front the investigation costs. The client doesn’t pay anything until it’s all done.”

“But in a matrimonial. . .?”

“Sure. That’s an hourly rate. But if I’m representing the non-moneyed spouse, it all has to come from a counsel-fees award. And that’s never guaranteed, I assure you. The only time I get paid in a lump up front is for criminal defense,” he said, nodding at me to indicate that I should know that part real well.

“And that’s all cash, right?” I said, reminding him that I’d always paid him that