'It's about the Stoddard case,' she said, looking across the chaotic mess of his desk. She noticed, lying in front of him, a small tape recorder about the size of a credit card and perhaps half an inch thick attached to a fountain pen by a thread of wire.

'What about Stoddard?' Vail said.

'I'm not sure, I think the case is still loose in places. Some of it, I don't… it doesn't quite…' She stopped, looking for the proper word.

'Make sense?' he offered.

'Yes. I know you want a perfect case.'

'I don't expect perfection from us mortals,' Vail said with a wry smile. 'Perfection is a perfect sunrise on a clear day. A baby born whole and healthy. Mortals have nothing to do with it.'

'Some people…' she said, and then aborted the sentence.

'Some people what?'

'It was a bad thought. I shouldn't have started—'

'Some people what, Parver?'

She took a deep breath and her cheeks puffed as she blew it out.

'Some people say you only go to court when you have a sure thing.'

Vail thought about that for a few moments. 'I suppose you might look at it that way,' he said.

'How do you look at it?'

He took out a cigarette and twirled it between two fingers for a while. Finally he said, 'What I expect is a case without any holes. I don't want to get halfway through a trial and discover we're prosecuting an innocent person. I want to know they're guilty - or forget it. If that's playing it safe, so be it. On the other hand, if we know, if we're absolutely, no-shit positive that the party is guilty, like Darby, I'll send them to hell or burn out my brain trying.'

'Can we ever be that sure, Marty?' she asked.

'What do you mean?'

'I mean, if it's not absolutely open-and-shut, can we ever be sure?'

'We're sure about Darby.'

'You're going to make a deal.'

'Because we don't have a case yet. Even with old Mrs What'shername's fantastic auricle sense. Rainey will have the son of a bitch back on the street before the time changes. I told you at the time, better to get him off the street for twenty years than have him back at Poppy Palmer's bar with two hundred fifty K in the bank.'

'Maybe that's what they're talking about.'

'Who are 'they'? Who've you been talking to?'

She shrugged. 'I swear I don't even remember. Some smartass young lawyer at the bar in Guido's.'

'Did it bother you?'

'Made me mad,' she said, her forehead gathering into seams.

'That's being bothered.' He laughed and after a minute or so she joined him. 'Who cares what those loudmouth suits think, anyway?' he said.

When their laughter had run its course, he fell quiet again. She looked across the desk at him and it occurred to her that she had never, since she had started working for him, seen him really blow up. When he was truly angry, he became the ultimate poker player. His face became a mask. He quieted up. Only his eyes showed anything. His eyes did the thinking. They became alert and feral. Otherwise, his attitude had always been typically Irish: either 'Don't sweat the little ones' or 'Don't get mad, get even.'

His eyes were alert and feral right now.

'What's bugging you?' she asked, surprised that she had asked the question and concerned that perhaps she had crossed the line between business and personal things. He stared almost blankly across the desk, not at her, at some object on the other side of the room. He put the cigarette between his lips but did not light it.

'Stampler,' he said after a while.

'Stampler?'

'I saw him today.'

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