"Why, you son of a gun," he said. "I understand the self-styled Will of the People knows he's licked now that you're on the case."

Ages ago, when I turned in my gold shield and moved out on my wife and sons, I took a room at the Hotel Northwestern on West Fifty-seventh Street just east of Ninth Avenue. I've come a long ways since then in certain respects, but geography is not one of them. The Pare Vendome, where Elaine and I have our apartment, is on the downtown side of Fifty-seventh, directly across from the hotel. I kept my room when we moved in together, telling myself I'd use it as an office. I can't say it gets much use. It's no place to meet clients, and the records I keep there would fit easily in a closet or cupboard across the street.

"Adrian Whitfield," Ray Gruliow said. "I ran into him downtown earlier today. As a matter of fact I found myself at loose ends, so I sat down and watched him at work. He's trying a case, as I'm sure you know."

"I haven't spoken to him in a couple of days," I said. "How's he holding up?"

"He doesn't look so hot," he said, "but it could be that he's just plain exhausted. I can't turn on my television set without seeing him. If they're not sticking a mike in front of his face outside of the Criminal Courts Building, they've got him in a TV studio somewhere. He was on Larry King last night, doing a remote from their New York studio."

"What did he talk about?"

"Moral aspects of the adversary system of criminal justice. To what lengths can a lawyer go, and to what extent do we hold him accountable? It was starting to get interesting, but then they took questions from listeners, and that always reduces everything to the lowest common denominator, which is generally pretty low."

"And dreadfully common."

"All the same, he was hell on wheels in court this morning. You know what Samuel Johnson said. 'When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.' "

"Great line."

"Isn't it? I'm surprised the capital punishment people haven't dragged it out as evidence of the efficacy of their panacea for the world's ills."

"I hope you're not getting ready to make a speech."

"No, but I might haul out Dr. Johnson next time I do. Our boy Adrian seemed pretty well bodyguarded. Your doing, I understand."

"Not really. I made a couple of strategic suggestions and gave him a number to call."

"He says he's wearing body armor."

"He's supposed to be," I said, "and I wish he'd keep his mouth shut about it. If a shooter knows you're wearing it, he'll go for a head shot instead."

"Well, Will's not going to hear it from me. Of course, we don't know who Will is, do we?"

"If we did," I said, "he'd cease to be a problem."

"For all you know," he said, "I could be Will myself."

"Hmmm. No, I don't think so."

"What makes you so sure?"

"His letters," I said. "They're too elegantly phrased."

"You son of a bitch. He does have a way with words, though, doesn't he?"

"Yes."

"Almost makes a man want to get a letter from him. Here's something I'm not proud of. You know my immediate reaction when I saw the open letter to Adrian?"

"You figured it should have been you."

"Now how the hell did you know that? Or am I more transparent than I ever thought?"

"Well, what else would you be ashamed of?"

"I didn't say I was ashamed. I said I wasn't proud of it."

"I stand corrected."

"It's true, though. You remember how many actors it takes to change a light bulb?"

"I heard it but I forget."

"Five. One to climb the ladder and four to say 'That should be me up there!' Trial lawyers aren't all that different. In this case, my friend, you could say I've been auditioning for the part my whole professional career. Who's the most hated man in New York?"

"Walter O'Malley."

"Walter O'Malley? Who the hell… oh, the cocksucker who moved the Dodgers out of Brooklyn. He's dead, isn't he?"

"I certainly hope so."

"You're an unforgiving son of a bitch, aren't you? Forget Walter O'Malley. Who's the most hated lawyer in New York?"

"If that's another joke, the answer is they all are."

"The answer, as you well know, is Raymond Gruliow."

"Hard-Way Ray."

"You said it. I'm the one with the most loathsome clients, the ones you love to hate. Wasn't it Will Rogers who said he never met a man he didn't like?"

"Whoever it was, I'd say he didn't get out much."

"And he never met my list of clients. Arab terrorists, black radicals, psychotic mass murderers. Warren Madison, who only shot half a dozen New York police officers. Who did Whitfield ever defend who can compare to Warren Madison?"

"Richie Vollmer," I said. "For openers."

"Warren Madison's as bad as Richie Vollmer. You blame the system for Vollmer's acquittal. For Warren, you have to blame the lawyer."

" 'He said humbly.' "

"Forget humble. Humility's no asset in this line of work. You know the Chinese curse, my friend? 'May you be represented by a humble attorney.' You think our friend Adrian's going to be all right?"

"I don't know."

"Will's taking his time. This is the longest he's let it slide, isn't it? Between the open letter and the payoff. Maybe it's because Adrian's better protected, harder to get to."

"Maybe."

"Or he could be tired of the game. Or for all we know he could have stepped in front of a bus."

"Or he could have been sitting on a park bench," I said, "and somebody could have shot him by mistake."

"Somebody who didn't even know who he was."

"Why not?"

"Why not indeed? You're not thinking about that friend of a friend you mentioned, guy got gunned down on Horatio Street."

"Well, that's probably where the park bench came from," I admitted, "but I think we can safely rule out Byron Leopold. It was a full day's work for him to walk across the street and pick out a bench to sit on."

"So you've made a little progress, my friend. You've ruled one man out."

"I've ruled you out, too."

"Decent of you."

"And myself," I said, "because if I was Will I'd remember. And Elaine, because if she'd done anything like that I'm sure she would have told me."

"Because the two of you have an open and honest relationship."

"Absolutely," I said. "And Marty McGraw."

"What kind of a relationship have you got with him?"

"None," I said, "but I ruled him out. He was addressing a dinner of Police Athletic League supporters while Will was taking out Patsy Salerno up in the Bronx, and he was right here in New York when Roswell Berry got his in Omaha."

"Aborted in the fourth trimester," Ray said. "He mention this in a column? I must have missed it."

"I checked him out myself."

"Seriously?"

"Adrian said something about Marty wanting an exclusive interview," I said, "and in the next breath explained he'd wanted to do it over the phone, not face to face. But that put the idea in my head. I figured the police would have checked him out six different ways, but I couldn't see how it would hurt to see for myself."

"The whole business has been good for McGraw, hasn't it? I can see how he'd want to keep the pot bubbling. But he didn't do it."

"I'm afraid not."

"And neither did you or I or Elaine, or all the guys recovering from bypass surgery. Or your friend who got shot, but it could have been somebody else who got shot or stabbed or fell off a building. Will, the world's foremost anonymous killer, could have been iced by somebody who didn't even know who he was."

"There's irony for you."

"He could have died some kind of anonymous death, and we'll never know who he was. Be a hell of a thing for Adrian, wouldn't it?"

"How do you figure that? He'd be off the hook."

"Think about it."

"Oh."

"You're only off the hook if you know you're off the hook," he said. "How long before you let the bodyguards go? How much longer before you can really relax?"

* * *

I thought about Whitfield, and after dinner I gave him a call. I left a message on his machine. It was nothing urgent, I said, and evidently he took me at my word, because I didn't hear from him.

I saw him on the late news, though. There'd been no developments, but that wouldn't stop them from pressing him for comments. It was the same principle that kept Will's name on the front page of the Post.

He was on the news again the following evening, but this time there was a story to go with it. His trial, due to go to the jury in a week to ten days, had been abruptly settled, with his client agreeing to plead to a lesser charge.

I went to a meeting at St. Paul's. I was still carrying the little elephant around with me, and Ginnie showed up so I gave it to her. I was going to leave on the break but I'd been doing that a lot lately, so I made myself stay to the bitter end. It must have been around ten-thirty when I got home, and I was pouring a cup of coffee when the phone rang.

"Matthew Scudder," he said. "Adrian Whitfield."

"I'm glad you called," I said. "I saw you a couple of hours ago on the news."

"Which channel?"

"I don't know, I was watching two or three of them at once."

"Channel surfing, eh? A popular indoor sport. Well, I think we'd have won if it went to the jury, but I couldn't advise my client to roll the dice. He's essentially getting off with time served, and suppose the jury should wind up seeing it the wrong way?"

"And there's always that chance."

"Always. You never know what they're going to do. You may think you know, but you can never be sure. I thought they were going to convict Richie Vollmer."

"How could they? The judge's instructions ruled that out."

"Yes, but he stopped short of a directed verdict of acquittal. They wanted to convict, and more often than not a jury will do what it wants to do."

"A conviction wouldn't have stood up."

"Oh, no way. Judge Yancey could very easily have thrown it out on the spot. If he'd let it stand I'd have knocked it out on appeal."

"So Richie was going free no matter what they did."

"Well, not right away. What I thought would happen-do you want to hear all this?"

"Why not?"

"I thought Yancey would let it stand, knowing the appeals court would reverse it. That way he wouldn't be the man who put Richie on the street. And I thought Richie'd go off to prison, where some public-spirited psychopath would kill him before his appeal could go through. Like the fellow in Wisconsin. Well, it amounts to about the same thing, doesn't it? Except the psychopath who actually did kill Richie isn't a convict, and it turns out he's a serial killer himself."

"How are you holding up, Adrian?"

"Oh, I'm all right," he said. "It takes some of the pressure off to know I don't have to go to court tomorrow. At the same time there's the bittersweet feeling you get whenever something ends. A trial, a love affair, even a bad marriage. You may be glad it's over, but at the same time you're a little bit sorry." His voice trailed off. Then he said, "Well, nothing lasts forever, right? What goes up comes down, what starts stops. That's the way it's supposed to be."