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“but.”
    “But,” he said, “Brandon Trescott also told his parents you threatened him in his kitchen and cursed him.”
    “I called him a moron, if I remember right.”
    He lifted a piece of paper off his desk, consulted it. “And a dumbass. And a dumb shit. And joked about his giving people brain damage.”
    “He put that girl in a wheelchair,” I said. “For life.”
    He shrugged. “We’re not paid to care about her or her family. We’re paid to keep them from taking our clients to the cleaners. The victim? Not our concern.”
    “I never said she was.”
    “You just said, I quote, ‘He put that girl in a wheelchair.’ ”
    “For which I harbor him no ill will. Like you said, it’s a job. And I did it.”
    “But you insulted him, Patrick.”
    I tried each word out. “I. Insulted. Him.”
    “Yeah. And his parents help keep the lights on around here.”
    I placed my drink on his desk. “I confirmed for them what we all know—that their son is, functionally speaking, a sub-idiot. I left them all the information they need to go about protecting him from himself so he can keep the parents of a paraplegic from getting their greedy hands on his two-hundred-thousand-dollar car.”
    His eyes widened for a sec. “That’s what that thing cost? The Aston Martin?”
    I nodded.
    “Two hundred thousand.” He whistled. “For a British car.”
    We sat in silence for a bit. I left my drink where it was and eventually said, “So, no permanent job offer, I take it.”
    “No.” He shook his head slowly. “You’re not comprehending the culture here yet, Patrick. You’re a great investigator. But this chip you’ve got on your shoulder—”
    “What chip?”
    “What . . . ?” He chuckled and gave that a small toast of his glass. “You think you’re wearing that nice suit, but all I see you wearing is class rage. It’s draped over you. And our clients see it, too. Why do you think you’ve never met Big D?”
    Big D was the companywide nickname for Morgan Duhamel, the seventy-year-old CEO. He was the last of the Duhamels—he had four daughters, all married to men whose names they’d taken—but he’d outlasted the Standifords. The last one of them hadn’t been seen since the mid-fifties. Morgan Duhamel’s office remained, along with those of several of the older partners, in the original headquarters of Duhamel-Standiford, a discreet chocolate bowfront tucked away on Acorn Street at the foot of Beacon Hill. The old-money clients were directed there to discuss cases; their offspring and the nouveaux riches came to International Place.
    “I always assumed Big D didn’t take much interest in the subcontractors.”
    Dent shook his head. “He’s got encyclopedic knowledge of this place. All its employees, all their spouses and relatives. And all the subcontractors. It was Duhamel who told me about your association with a weapons dealer.” He raised his eyebrows at me. “The old man doesn’t miss shit.”
    “So he knows about me.”
    “Mmm-hmm. And he likes what he sees. He’d love to hire you full-time. So would I. Put you on a partner track. But if, and only if, you lose the attitude. You think clients like sitting in a room with a guy they feel is judging them?”
    “I don’t—”
    “Remember last year? The CEO of Branch Federated came up here from headquarters in Houston, specifically to thank you. He’s never flown in to thank a partner and he flew in to thank a sub . You remember that?”
    Not an easy one to forget. The bonus on that case paid for my family’s health insurance last year. Branch Federated owned a few hundred companies, and one of the most profitable was Downeast Lumber Incorporated. DLI operated out of Bangor and Sebago Lake, Maine, and was the country’s largest producer of TSCs, or temporary support columns, which construction crews used to stand in for support beams that were being restructured or built off-site. I’d been inserted into the Sebago Lake offices of