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night. One can assume Poppy knew. There was little she didn’t know. As long as discretion was maintained, it was a trade-off she could handle.
    Poppy was a piece of work.
    Occasionally I would see J.J. in the courthouse. He had stopped saying we should get together sometime for lunch. I think I had him nervous. I hope so. He didn’t like to be read, and he thought I could read him.
    I thought I could, too.
    Begin with his appearance.
    You can pick up things there.
    He was a forty-two regular, high-end off-the-rack, nothing Italian, of course, I doubt there was a single Armani in Cap City, maybe Blass or Hilfiger with the designer label removed, he would be scrupulous about that, he wouldn’t want people whispering at the office Christmas party that he bought the basics on Poppy’s ticket, and although he wasn’t tall, five-ten or so, but definitely under six, he did a very good languid. He seemed born to put his feet up on a desk or a conference table, kicking first one shoe off and then the other, loafers usually, never lace-ups, they were for the five-hundred-an-hour corporate boys, he would say, sometimes black Mephistos for the common touch, and he made his feet on the table seem an act of grace. He didn’t work out that I knew of, no jogging, no aerobics, no StairMasters, exercycles or treadmills, no gym membership, but he didn’t carry weight either, and his hair always looked as if it was the day before a cut, not long, not short, no discernible after-forty loss, no scalp desert and definitely no comb-over; he had a private way of pointing out to a jury when opposing counsel was wearing a hairpiece, he’d keep running his hands through his hair at a lawyers’ sidebar with the judge, he thought wigs were funny, wigs were untrustworthy, a bad piece might tip a juror toward a guilty verdict, and a defendant might be remanded to Durango Avenue in part because of his court-appointed attorney’s unfortunate head ornament.
    Women thought he was attractive. Which is why he tried to stack juries with them.
    J.J. knew I had known his father, probably even that I wasn’t sold on Walter’s relentless bonhomie, but his name never came up. It was as if he had no family. After Walter’s suicide, I wrote J.J. the usual platitudes, and on the bottom of the printed card I received in return—THE FAMILY OF WALTER MCCLURE APPRECIATES YOUR EXPRESSION OF CONDOLENCE—he had scratched three words,
Max—Thanks—J.J.
    I suppose what I am trying to say is that J.J. did not encourage intimacy, but then who among us does. Christ, I wouldn’t want anyone poking around my memory closet.
    Take his brother, Emmett. A very complicated story, that. As it turned out. But first the day that Percy Darrow was executed.
    I think I can put together a plausible narrative.
    CHAPTER THREE
    J.J.
    J.J. closed the door of the conference room, checked his digital Casio, then took his seat at the head of the empty conference table. The sandwich Allie had bought sat on a paper plate in front of his chair. Along with a plastic knife and fork and split of bottled water. Lunch. He took a bite and a swallow. The water was room temperature, the sandwich ice cold. He picked up the remote and clicked on
News at One.
    Poor Percy Darrow. Probably the last day of his life, the first man to die in the state’s electric chair in over forty years, and the poor son of a bitch didn’t even lead the news. “Holding on to life is like holding on to a handful of sand,” Percy Darrow had said in his NewsFront interview the night before, hands and feet shackled, wearing an orange prison jumpsuit. Not bad as last-day quotes go. Manufactured by one of his New York and Los Angeles pro bono death-penalty lawyers. Probably Elsie Brand. She had a gift for the telling phrase, befitting an entertainment lawyer from Century City. And a former federal prosecutor with the U.S. Attorney in San Francisco, she had