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would be filed on time, and her highly organized brigade of freelance attorneys and legal assistants would become a confused rabble. Chaos would reign, and the firm would fall. At least, that’s how Miss Efficiency sees it. And whenever I come along, well, there goes the schedule.
    Cynthia led me by the hand into her inner sanctum, away from the office manager’s disapproving gaze, and cleared an empty space for me on her file-cluttered leather sofa. She sat in a matching chair across from me.
    Cynthia was wearing a black two-piece suit. The jacket was double-breasted with a shawl collar, the skirt was tight without being too tight and came to the top of her knees, and her blouse was white silk. Lately, that was all she wore. Black and white. I asked her about it once, and she said she was establishing a “definitive image all her own.” More likely it was the definitive image of the consultant at the store where Cynthia bought most of her clothes. Not that I’m complaining. She looks stunning in black and white, with shoulder-length brown hair and matching eyes, with long, shapely legs. I’ve only known two women with more attractive legs. The first was my wife, who was killed along with our daughter nearly five years ago by a drunk driver who Cynthia, in fact, later defended. The second was a twenty-two-year-old murderer I fingered for the Minneapolis cops. She was killed while resisting arrest.
    “So, are you working?” Cynthia asked.
    It was an honest question. I’m a one-man band, and I usually take on only one case at a time, so I often suffer through periods of unemployment. Occasionally, when those droughts linger long enough to cause me financial distress, I’ll obtain lists of unclaimed property from various government agencies and then locate the missing owners for a percentage of the property’s value. Sometimes—when money is real tight—I’ll do bounty work for a Minneapolis bail bondsman I know. Still, I can’t kick. Last year—my best year yet—I worked one hundred and sixty-nine days and took home nearly thirty-six K after taxes, insurance, health care, and expenses. That might not sound like much. But when you live alone (without house or car payments) like I do, it’s plenty.
    “As a matter of fact I am working,” I told Cynthia. “I’m trying to learn what happened to a woman who disappeared last October.”
    “I thought you didn’t do runaways.”
    “This is a little different. The smart money bets the woman was murdered, but the police can’t find a body or evidence of foul play. I was hired to come up with an explanation that the woman’s attorney can live with.”
    “Who’s the lawyer?”
    “Ahh, well …” I stammered.
    “Not Monica Adler?” Monica was Cynthia’s most hated rival.
    “No, no, no,” I assured her. “I haven’t seen Monica since— well, quite awhile. Why would I talk to her?”
    “Good question.”
    “No, it’s not her.”
    “Who, then?”
    “He came to my office—”
    “Who?”
    “Hunter Truman.”
    “That piece of shit?”
    “You’ve met?” I asked.
    “Bastard works the court like a fucking whore; that’s how he peels his banana.”
    “Do you eat with that mouth?”
    Cynthia flushed a deep crimson and not just from embarrassment. I am always amused when Cynthia’s carefully constructed facade of upper-class gentility slips and the street kid peeks over the top, but she certainly is not. She works hard—and pays a great deal of money—to make sure the facade never slips.
    “I am surprised that you would deign to accept employment from that gentleman,” she said, her voice calm and well modulated.
    “A buck’s a buck.”
    “If you are financially embarrassed, I could lend—”
    “Oh, stop it,” I told her. “It’s a job like any other job, maybe a little more interesting than most.”
    “But Hunter Truman?!” Cynthia asked, making the name sound like a disease usually treated with penicillin.
    “He’s no worse than