morning.

It requires surmise to plug a few of the gaps, but I suspect that Adam picked Metz for a reason. Lawyer’s intuition tells me that Margaret, Nick’s ex, had lied to me when I talked to her with Susan. She had known about Jamaile Enterprises. Her lawyers would have turned it upside down, looking for hidden assets during the divorce. But timing is everything in life. Nick was lucky. He was still working on the loan papers to buy the hotel.

Adam would have been cultivating Margaret in hopes of gathering dirt on Nick’s vices, even the ancient ones. She turned out to be a wellspring of information. She told him about Jamaile, Metz.

Adam must have thought he’d found the grail. What better to get the cops salivary glands going in the morning than a criminal defense lawyer gone bad, turned to the dark side and doing business with one of his own drug clients. It was a prosecutor’s wet dream. Adam had to figure they would look neither hard nor long at any other theories or, for that matter, waste a lot of time chasing after the shooters.

Tolt had no idea what Jamaile really was or what Nick and Metz were up to in Mexico. It is only my guess, but I think Adam actually believed Nick was involved in drugs. If nothing else, it would have served to cement his resolve, convinced him that he was fighting the good fight, and provided the consolation that no matter how dark his deed, he was doing it for the firm, saving it from the devil. If he had looked more thoroughly at Jamaile, he might have picked someone other than Metz as the patsy. Had he done that, it is likely no one would have been able to connect the dots and find Adam hiding at the end, all the pieces lacking, as they were, reference points like the hieroglyphs of the ancient Maya.

And so Nick Rush left the firm, feet first. Adam’s gamble very nearly paid off. With no general to lead it, the troops scattered, and the coup died with Nick, so by the time I started nosing around, it was history. Why would anyone place their career in my hands, confiding to me their part in a revolution that never happened? It was why Dolson didn’t want to talk when I met with him in San Francisco and why the office building at the address in Nick’s handheld was empty, available for lease. Nick was looking for new office space. It’s what you need when you’re opening a firm.

Even if the thought had dawned on any of Adam’s partners that Nick’s move might be the motive for murder, there was absolutely nothing on their radar scope to link Adam to the shooting. After all, the cops were all looking under other rocks, assuming, as I did, that Metz was the target.

If that wasn’t enough, there was the rock-solid evidence that Nick’s death was an accident, with an insurance check approaching four million dollars conceding that fact. I will never know how many arms at the insurer’s home office were twisted off at the shoulder by Adam on that one. What I do know is that he used every opportunity to boast about my victory, especially in the firm, even to the point of putting out his piece in the firm’s monthly newsletter and making sure it got dropped on every partner’s desk.

It was the thing that started me thinking. Why? It was unlike Tolt to go out of his way to embarrass a carrier after what everyone agreed was a generous settlement. It was also Adam who single-handedly fought off their demand for secrecy regarding the amount paid, a virtually uniform secret in every such settlement. I couldn’t figure what his reason was. How better to cover your tracks? An insurance company doesn’t pay that kind of money unless they are sure it was an accident. Adam’s partners would know that. It would kill any suspicion that might be lingering in their minds.

This morning, as I lean back in my chair and read the paper, my loafers crossed on top of my desk, I can’t help but smile at the story Harry has circled on page three. Not because it is news. I heard it on the radio in the car last evening on my way home, one of the local stations.

It is the final touch, the ultimate irony that even Nick, at his most calculating, could not have anticipated.

The federal government has flexed its muscle. It has exercised its powers of eminent domain and condemned an empty lot with its cavernous hole that was once the site of the old Capri Hotel.

The General Services Administration announced yesterday that it plans to build a new federal courthouse at this location.

I lower the newspaper, close my eyes, and hold my breath. Sitting here motionless, I listen, and I can hear it. Faint as a distant whisper, it lingers in the air, just at the edge of the human auditory frontier. The familiar pitch that became the signature finish to a thousand yarns of combat in court. Somewhere beyond my mortal horizon, I can hear Nick, and he is laughing.

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