Sheer Madness

By Greg Abbott

Sheer Madness picks up where its prequel Sheer Pressure leaves off, only on higher octane and with higher life-and-death stakes. It follows the evolution of Alex and Emily as their once scandalous love affair feathers its way into the Upper East Side Manhattan mainstream jungle. That is where their lives really begin and where the reader learns who they really are and what they’re made of.


A gripping 20-year family saga, Sheer Madness takes the reader to unexpected realms, as a couple with its roots in idealistic love endures a slew of harrowing experiences in schools and boardrooms, hospitals and cafés, courtrooms and prison—all under the shadow of a well-financed black magic curse. All these venues are captured by Greg Abbott with a true savant’s perspective, in a fast-paced, highly readable tale that nonetheless fits together like a grand jigsaw puzzle.


Challenges, tragedies, and surprises abound in marriage, education, high finance, child rearing, near-death illness, the occult, rap music, the media, and prison. As the characters develop in fascinating, unforeseen directions and discover their true destinies, for better or for worse, the reader is treated to a large and delectable story chock full of tragedy, intrigue, humor, injustice, vengeance, betrayal, redemption, and always the unexpected. In the end, through all the breathless tribulations, Sheer Madness is about the triumph of love and the human spirit.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jul 25, 2023
• ISBN: 9781663254016

Greg Abbott

Governor Greg Abbott is a native Texan, born in Wichita Falls and raised in Duncanville. After graduating from the University of Texas with a B.B.A. in Finance, he received his law degree from Vanderbilt University. Shortly after graduating from law school, he was partly paralyzed when struck by a falling tree while jogging. Despite his life-changing accident, he went on to become a justice on the Texas Supreme Court, Texas attorney general, and now governor of Texas. Governor Abbott is an avid sportsman and hunter. He and his wife, Cecilia, have been married for thirty-four years. She is a former schoolteacher and principal and the first Hispanic First Lady of Texas. They live in Austin. Their daughter, Audrey, attends college.

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Copyright © 2023 Greg Abbott.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means,

graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by

any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author

except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This novel is a creation of pure fiction. While certain characters and events from

the author’s experience and observation over decades may inspire certain elements

of the book, as is the case with almost every novel, including the prequel Sheer

Pressure, the overall story line and character portrayals are strictly products of

the author’s artistic imagination. No conclusions whatsoever should be drawn

about any actual people or events, as the author’s sole goal is to tell what he

hopes to be a compelling and entertaining tale. The opinions expressed are

those of the characters and should not be confused with those of the author.

iUniverse

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in

this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views

expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the

views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-6632-5400-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6632-5402-3 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6632-5401-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023911502

iUniverse rev. date: 07/24/2023

Contents

Chapter 1   The Tombs

Chapter 2   Lovebirds and Dirty Birds

Chapter 3   Arranged Marriage Moneymoon

Chapter 4   Inside Baseball: Jackie and The Babe

Chapter 5   A River to His People

Chapter 6   C-Section and the Cyclops

Chapter 7   Election Night Curse

Chapter 8   Cwouching Wappah, Hungry Tiger

Chapter 9   Let’s Hope It’s Only COVID

Chapter 10   Dickless Wonder and Other Euphemisms

Chapter 11   All I Want for Christmas

Chapter 12   Et Tu, Boris?

Chapter 13   Schoolin’ the School

Chapter 14   Why Me, SWAT Team?

Chapter 15   American Nightmare

Chapter 16   Triumph and Treachery

Chapter 17   Keeping Secrets

Chapter 18   The Promised Land

Chapter 19   To Those Who Wait

Chapter 20   The Monied Launderer

Chapter 21   From Hell to Hallelujah

Chapter 22   Amateur Night at the Apollo

WARNING ADVISORY:

For the sake of an optimal reading experience and appreciation, it is recommended that the reader start with Sheer Pressure (available at www.sheerpressure1.com) before tackling Sheer Madness, which picks up where Sheer Pressure leaves off. Not doing so may be hazardous to your psyche—and, more importantly, mine. These non-identical twins must not be separated.

This novel is a creation of pure fiction. While certain characters and events from the author’s experience and observation over decades may inspire certain elements of the book, as is the case with almost every novel, including the prequel, Sheer Pressure; the overall storyline and characters are ultimately products of the author’s artistic imagination. No conclusions whatsoever should be drawn about any actual people or events, as the author’s sole goal is to tell what he hopes to be a compelling and entertaining tale. The opinions expressed are those of the characters and should not be confused with those of the author.

To Lulu, Buckam, and Eeneebee,

My pupils, my teachers, my reasons to be,

My heart, my soul, my family tree,

My shining lights through adversity.

Whatever my faults, whatever I lack,

Just know for sure that Pops got yo’ back!

Have no fear of stormy weather,

Piece of caaaaaaaaake, long as we stick together!

Always remember, Eeneebee, Lulu, and Buckam,

If dey don’t love who you are,

Dey ain’t worth it, so fuck ’em!

So, in conclusion, Buckam, Eeneebee, Lulu,

Know fo’ sure yo’ pops always love you,

Nothin’ in this dedication’s provisional,

My love for you’s un-bleeping-conditional!

So, in dedicating this sequel to Sheer Pressure,

Allow me to say: you be my treasure!

Smile when you read Sheer Madness,

Hide every trace of sadness,

Although a tear may be ever so near,

There be nothin’ to fear, nothin’ to fear.

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Special thanks to the aptly named Joy.

Chapter 1

THE TOMBS

February 2003

Boom!

The iron door slammed behind Alex Halaby with a clang that reverberated throughout the subterranean Tombs, as New York’s downtown holding pens are aptly called. The dimly lit cell reeked of body odor and stale urine. His jailer’s parting advice before depositing him had been Don’t drink water from the spigot. It’ll kill you.

Water was hardly his major concern, as twenty-three African American and Hispanic occupants peered at the newbie with curiosity. On both sides of the dank, dystopian hallway were several cells like this one, filled with street criminals—committers, Alex hoped, of just petty crimes. He was the cell’s sole Caucasian, but the tuxedo, bow tie, silk hankie, cummerbund, and patent leather pumps were what truly distinguished him. Were a prison gang bang to take place, was there any doubt as to who the bangee would be? He hoped his bruised face, half-closed shiner, ripped jacket, and blood-splattered pleated shirt would give him the cell-cred sufficient to blunt any elitist vibe.

It was standing room only. Around the perimeter of the twenty-foot-square cell was an iron banquette on which several of the inmates—most with their jeans halfway down their hips, revealing either dirty briefs or unseemly butt cracks—lay asleep. The rest of the seating was taken up by menacing young men with dreadlocks, do-rags, tats, and attitudes on the sleeves of their hoodies: the welcoming committee. An open metal toilet and mini-sink occupied the far corner; catty-corner to the toilet was an anachronistic pay phone, under which slept a man big enough to anchor the Giants’ defensive line.

Alex’s skull throbbed; his body, especially his ribs and jaw, pulsed with sharp pain. With nowhere for him to sit or walk, his mind began to pace like that of the expectant father he was, thinking that Charles Lukes and the simian bodyguard who’d pummeled his face into mashed potatoes, not himself, belonged in the Tombs. With trepidation, as if he were surrounded by a pack of wild animals, he kept his distance and avoided eye contact—all the while sensing that he was being watched. Then, from out of nowhere, overcome by the utter weirdness of the situation, he let loose a nervous laugh—loud enough that, when he looked up, he was sure he had become the center of attention. He wiped the smile off his face before one of his confreres did it for him and sidled over to relieve his bladder. The toilet seat was splattered with urine, the bowl teeming with human fecal potpourri. He turned away from his cellmates and did his tinkling, aiming with care despite the futility of it all. He then flushed the toilet with the sole of his shiny pump—to be a good citizen, but mainly to keep from vomiting, which would have involved convulsions his ribs couldn’t have handled. That his predecessors hadn’t flushed underscored the apathy around him.

In spite of the restraining order, he had expected to be allowed to stay at Lenox Hill Hospital while Emily Lukes gave birth to his son, but the law proved a rigid, unsentimental beast. With the same professional urgency with which Emily had been ushered into the delivery room, the cops had laid hold of him and driven him off through the freezing February evening to the Nineteenth Precinct on East Sixty-Seventh Street for the requisite paperwork, and eventually downtown to the Tombs. There he’d been forced to stand in line for well over an hour with the nightly haul of street criminals, many of whom seemed to be familiar with their surroundings and on a first-name basis with one another. Processing involved confiscation of all his possessions: wallet, watch, keys, cell phone. He hoped the processors were equally conscientious about seizing box cutters and switchblades. Before consigning him to the holding pen, they had issued him a half-dozen squares of toilet paper and a worm-infested apple, which he declined. Even without the worms, he couldn’t have eaten it—only purees would do for his wobbly tooth and possible broken jaw. But for now, given the open cell’s open toilet, he made the snap decision to take up fasting.

The arresting cops had seemed almost sympathetic and minimized his predicament: It would just be a couple hours before his public defender would summon him to appear before the judge. You’re a first-time offender, I’m betting. You’ll be out in no time with a slap on the wrist.

Even so, he imagined there would be an astronomical bill for damages wreaked on Claire de Lapalisse’s apartment: Lalique vase, Matisse print, Aubusson rug, ornate handcrafted Parisian curtains, and any other charges the conniving Claire, Charles Lukes’s first ex-wife, could conjure up. Just how much legal and financial trouble he was in he had no earthly idea. He certainly couldn’t count on any honest or uncompromised witnesses in the Baroness’s glam crowd to vouch for him (unless Claire’s pooch-adoodles could talk) any more than he had advocates in the Tombs.

His immediate environment and legal worries, however daunting, were mere bagatelle compared to the utter surreality of his life situation. Reverently he closed his eyes and bowed his head in prayer, beseeching God to spare Emily and their illegitimate son any cataclysmic birth scenarios, praying that mother and baby were healthy. Guilt assailed him for being absent for the event (not that he’d had a choice); it pained him that she had no family support and no idea where she would be going afterward. One couldn’t just assume a normal birth outcome, given the past nine months of tension, culminating in the free-for-all at Claire’s lapdog fundraiser. Beaten, bloodied, stuck four floors below ground in the Tombs with a gaggle of homies, the super-victorious feeling of having won Emily was sobered by reality. Down here one had no choice but to keep things real. Her display of courage in the face of New York society and flashing press cameras confirmed his original instincts that they were kindred rebels, but the fact was, he barely knew her. He could count on one hand the number of times they had actually been together, and only twice or thrice alone. Once their original one-night stand (for want of a better term) had led to a baby, the potential scandal, coupled with utterly unexpected business entanglements, had caused her to ghost him. Not once since their night of conception had they had dinner together; not once had they gone to a movie or play, experienced each other’s idiosyncrasies, or even just taken a walk. He had fallen for her at first sight and had spent the gestation period consumed in the chase, pining from afar, obsessing over forbidden fruit while his competitive nature drove him to come out the victor. He knew her no better than he knew his fellow convicts in the cell—there’d been no opportunity—and now he was about to embark on an instant family (assuming Emily, who wasn’t immune to fickleness or family and social pressure, wasn’t being lobbied to change her mind while he was stuck in the Tombs).

In conventional terms, Emily and he were virtual strangers, yet that didn’t bother him as much as it might have as he sought refuge in the metaphysical. From day one, he had sensed their common destiny. Did traditional courtships necessarily result in happy marriages? He couldn’t point to a single couple in any age group whose relationship he admired or envied. He had no choice but to trust his original gut instincts, even if rooted in his own pathologies—and why not? Emily checked all the boxes but didn’t fit any mold, but more importantly he felt inexorably connected to her on a soul level and was determined to validate the power of love and have a marriage for the ages. Without all the drama fueling passions, how would they fare? When it came to love for a woman beyond physical attraction, he was a neophyte; other than loving his parents, had he ever experienced love? Certainly not with his former fiancée Lorna. Suddenly the overpowering desire to get on with his life—to get to know his wife and child, support his instant family by dealing with the fate of Halaby Hosiery, the crumbling family business he’d taken over from his father—consumed him. So what if the courtship process is ass-backwards? Feeling the weight of the world, he was itching to throw himself into his tasks but was helpless in this hellhole.

With mounting desperation, he kept eyeing the pay phone above the sleeping hulk. His pockets contained no loose change. Fearlessly, Alex addressed the gruesome assemblage: Excuse me, but can anyone please spare a quarter? This brought incredulous stares followed by not-so-muffled guffaws.

Oh, maître d’, cackled a toothless older guy who might as well have been wearing a Tombs T-shirt. Fetch me a Hennessy on the rocks. Make it snappy and I’ll give you dis shiny penny, he said, displaying a slug he’d extracted from his pocket. More laughter and some knee-slapping ensued in the entertainment-starved venue. Apart from the banquette nappers, he had the whole cell’s attention.

Look, my girlfriend’s having a baby right now, Alex pleaded, with as much vulnerability and pathos as he could muster, aware of the irony in appealing to their common humanity.

Girlfriend, you say?

Alex nodded. Yes.

Y’ain’t married?

Now Alex was getting somewhere, he was sure. There came more laughter, then the sound of a few pennies and nickels at his feet.

What’s a penguin-assed, shiny-shoed white niggah doin’ havin’ a bastard chile! another prisoner catcalled. More hoots. The cell’s apathy was beginning to lift.

Alex pretended to laugh along, sloughing off the offensive (though technically true) characterization of his love child. The real bastards were Charles Lukes and Frank Shea. Listen, I’ll give anyone here ten dollars for a friggin’ quarter.

Fork it over, boy.

"Once I’m out. And I’ll throw in a whole bottle of Hennessy."

What if you ain’t gettin’ out?

The possibility hadn’t occurred to Alex. Suppressing the thought, he had no choice but to persist.

"Please, I need to make a call! With the desperation of a beggar, he put his hands together in prayer pose. Lives may be at stake. Please? Somebody?"

Alex again heard the rattling of a coin on the dingy concrete floor near his feet. This time it was the requisite quarter. Grunting in pain from his recent beatdown, he knelt down in search of the offering and gingerly picked it up. Thank you! he called out to his anonymous benefactor.

Hey, boy, pick up the rest. That ain’t chump change where we come from.

Alex respectfully complied, then stepped over the slumbering lummox to reach the pay phone. Figuring that the Lenox Hill Hospital switchboard would gobble up his allotted time before he could reach Emily, he grabbed the slimy receiver, thrust his quarter in the slot, and dialed his parents’ townhouse. After several rings, it was Grace who answered: Hello?

Mom, I’m calling from a pay phone, so please just listen. Go with Dad to Lenox Hill Hospital. Ask for Emily Lukes.

Why?

She’s having my baby.

A pregnant pause indeed.

"Your what?"

Baby.

If this isn’t another of your practical jokes, you should be the one going.

I can’t.

Suddenly the background behind Alex erupted. A fight had begun.

Where are you?

In jail.

"Jail? she shrieked. Is this some kind of joke?"

"The story’ll be in the New York Post tomorrow, probably front-page news. You’ll hear the real story once I’m outta here."

It was a lot to throw at anyone, let alone his appearances-conscious mother.

Emily Lukes. Lenox Hill Hospital. Please, she’s all alone. I guarantee you’ll approve of … love her. Just go and make sure she and your grandson are okay.

Silence.

Mom? Mom?

The call had expired, and along with it Alex’s fleeting connection to the outside world and any ability to have an effect on it.

The fight had stopped as suddenly as it had begun. His status as cell curiosity was equally fleeting, to his relief, as his fellow prisoners had slumped back into their dead-eyed malaise. Was that a rat scurrying across the concrete floor? There was one in every prison movie he’d ever watched. With no option but to wait, hoping that Emily somehow surmised his predicament and didn’t feel neglected, hoping his parents would step up to the plate and represent him, he relegated himself to his immediate surroundings and becoming the prisoner he was—yet another piece of human sewage in the bowels of justice, waiting to be flushed back into the real world. His parents had taught him, more by example than in so many words, to treat everyone with kindness and respect. Part of him wanted to start a conversation, dissolve barriers, discover commonality, but he had no idea, given his rarefied attire, how to begin. Which eating club did you belong to back at Princeton? probably wouldn’t cut it.

There was now enough room at the end of the bench for one buttock, so Alex staked his claim, while the neglected cheek awaited its chance. A routine had settled in. Every thirty minutes or so, an unpleasant cop would appear at the cell door and call out a name—Jamal this, José that—whereupon a prisoner would be released into custody, presumably to meet with his public defender. He would be replaced in short order, keeping the cell population more or less constant. The arrival of a couple of white prisoners brought more unease. The pair—a herky-jerky skinhead with facial tats and an eerie Hannibal Lecter type—were scarier than their darker counterparts. Alex’s impression was that crimes by men of color were largely of the one-off variety: crimes of passion, pride, economic necessity. But the white guys? Didn’t they represent the majority of Sons of Sam, mass murderers, and serial killers?

Each time a cop came to call out a name to be released, Alex braced in anticipation, only to have his heart sink. He was in the queue, like the rest of them, Princeton notwithstanding. Then the callouts stopped, signifying that all the judges and public defenders had gone home for the night and Alex wouldn’t be—a realization that sent him spiraling into despair. The desperation that had marked the last nine months of forced separation from Emily filled him with a sense of déjà vu. Emily was always so near, yet so far.

He could no longer keep his eyes open. His name wouldn’t be called until midmorning, at best, and he could never sleep sitting upright on the cramped iron bench. Even if he managed to, his head might come to rest on the shoulder of a prisoner, and then what? He slipped off his tuxedo jacket, bringing stabs of pain, and wadded it into a makeshift pillow before joining some fellow prisoners on the concrete floor, blotting from his mind images of jailhouse rats and water bugs. Curling into a fetal position, he closed his eyes, tried to escape and let everything go.

Alex drifted between sleep and semiconsciousness. The Tombs was an echo chamber, and the nocturnal chatter was nonstop. A white inmate in the neighboring cell roared obscenities and incoherent threats of violence directed at no one in particular. In his own cell, a blubbering Hispanic, with sweatpants halfway down his butt and a fistful of quarters, monopolized the pay phone, begging the girlfriend he’d apparently beaten up to take him back, until the behemoth underneath the phone ordered him to "Shut the fuck up! The n-word was uttered with shocking regularity. Even the white inmates freely used it, especially the skinhead. Alex braced for an outbreak of racial mayhem, but nothing happened; the little Nazi and some black dude found common ground in their mutual profession, drug dealing. It soon dawned on Alex that the n-word was the name drug dealers called each other, and the conversation eventually expanded into a revival meeting. A consensus emerged that they would swear off selling crack and opioids and stick to weed, which one day would be legalized. Holding pens like these were preferable to lengthy prison terms, they all agreed with numerous shouts of Amen!" Apparently they were endeavoring to improve themselves and become more virtuous, higher-class n-words.

Alex eventually awoke. Though he wasn’t sure whether he had actually slept or merely imagined sleeping, he felt a tad refreshed, and somehow the herd had thinned out by roughly a third. There was now ample room on the bench, enabling him to sit down, spread out, and keep to himself. As seconds tuned to minutes, and minutes to hours, his stomach growled from hunger and his mouth was parched from thirst. Sequestered from all natural light, and with no clocks on the wall, he had no sense of time. Perhaps Frank Shea—Emily’s father, the cosmetics king—was conspiring to have the book thrown at him and prolong his incarceration, and keep Rapunzel and baby in the tower. Such notions brought on stabs of panic.

He stepped over to the cell bars and thrust his nose through them in order to be as close to freedom as he could. He’d been arrested the day before in the early evening; it must have been midafternoon by now. What was happening? Would the public defenders and judges soon be going home again? Another night of sleeping on the floor?

Yo, Penguin? came a voice behind him. Alex pretended not to hear. Hey, I’m talkin’ to you!

Alex reluctantly abandoned the bars. A fortyish, dark-skinned black man clad in a ribbed wifebeater showcasing his flabbergasting muscles—the Tombs’ Tony Robbins (he had earlier served as the motivational speaker in the group drug discussions)—was peering at him. What you sulkin’ about, Penguin? Get used to it, ’cause you ain’t gettin’ outta here for a long fuckin’ time.

Rather than rise to Wifebeater’s challenge, Alex sought to defuse it with sincerity and a smidgen of backbone. "They told me a couple hours. Been here, like, twenty and counting? I don’t really know. All I did was defend myself from violence from a hired goon big and strong enough to kick your ass."

This sally produced a cell-wide eye-roll. Here everyone’s guilt was assumed.

Time flies when you’re havin’ fun, don’t it, Penguin? Put a smile on yo sulky-assed face and stop feelin’ sorry fo’ yo’self. Lighten the fuck up. Who do ya think y’are, Hurricane Carter? Universal sniggering. Alex, having seen the movie starring Denzel Washington, was well aware of the reference: The middleweight boxer had spent almost twenty years in prison, framed for a murder he didn’t commit.

More like Rocky Balboa after fifteen rounds, he replied, pointing to his swollen, battered face. Even under these conditions, he couldn’t resist a quip. Only all dressed up fo’ d’Oscars.

The congregation seemed to get a kick out of that.

Yo, Adrian! Alex cried, slyly mimicking Sly Stallone with exaggerated gusto—a relatable reference that brought laughs and broke the tension.

Don’t know and don’t care what y’in fo’, but don’t count on yo’ wobbly penguin ass bein’ sent back to Antarctica any time soon.

That marked the end of the conversation, and as round one ended, he retreated to his corner. What silver linings could possibly arise from this ordeal? How might his Tombs experience ultimately enrich his life with Emily and child? Wisdom? Empathy? A sense of sacrifice and gratitude? For sanity’s sake, he did his best to visualize positive outcomes—namely a stable emotional and financial future for his new family—though the forced mental gymnastics took considerable effort against the onslaught of gloom around him and real-world hurdles and pressures that surely awaited. Only after a few more hours wildly fluctuating between hope and despair, and faint from hunger, thirst, and boredom, did he finally hear the magic words that he hoped would spring him: "Alex Halaby."

Hey, Penguin, stay in touch, said Wifebeater as the cell door opened for Alex. He actually seemed to mean it, prompting Alex to reply from the other side of the bars, I’ll have my people call your people. Wifebeater and Penguin shared a thumbs-up.

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As the cops slapped the handcuffs back on, Alex’s thrill at being released instantly morphed into anxiety over the avalanche of challenges—personal, financial, legal—that likely awaited him. Part of a chained conga line of other prisoners, he was transported up several dingy flights of stairs to another holding pen, this one at ground level with a modicum of natural light and improved air quality, but with no place to sit. The far wall comprised several small booths with sliding smoked-glass windows, where prisoners, when summoned, could converse privately with their public defenders. Another hour or two elapsed before a window slid open and Alex heard his name called. He dashed to the booth and sat down, peering at a surprisingly young, chestnut-haired ingenue who couldn’t have been more than a year or two out of law school—the Ted Mack Amateur Hour School of Law, he thought.

Hi, Mr. Halaby, I’m Serena Carlson, the public defender you’ve been assigned.

Am I ever glad to see you! There was a short, uneasy pause. Or shouldn’t I be?

So sorry for the long wait. Everything’s really backed up.

What a shithole! No food, no water, open toilet, no way to treat—

I know, but I have good news.

What? he said cautiously. Good news was relative.

I checked your file. Choate, Princeton cum laude, successful businessman, no record of any kind.

There was that speeding ticket, blurted Alex giddily, feeling his release was imminent. Do you know that my girlfriend is giving birth at Lenox Hill?

She nodded. That’s why they pay me the big bucks. Both mother and eight-pound son are safe and healthy. Congratulations!

A tsunami of relief swept through him; suddenly he felt eight pounds lighter.

"Frankly, your arrest is questionable. You attended a black-tie party you weren’t invited to. Since when does that qualify as a crime? You did not initiate any of the violence. You never should have been brought here!"

That’s absolutely spot-on!

Siring a child with a married woman, while deplorable, isn’t a crime either.

Will Rogers never met Charles Lukes, so not as deplorable as you might think, Alex quipped, trying to exude calm and reflect his true self: well-educated, humorous, incapable of violence. He wanted the public defender to be his true advocate, not just mail it in. "I support a woman’s right to choose, and the woman chose me. I threw a punch only after I was assaulted by a brute twice my size. A guy’s got to defend himself, no? None of this is who I am."

There’s support for that in the file, she said curtly.

Where did you go to law school, Serena Carlson?

Why do you ask?

Oh, I dunno … Because my life is in your hands?

Columbia—undergrad and law school.

His wariness about public defenders morphed into admiration. She seemed as bright and competent as any other young lawyer. "What’s a well-educated and, may I say without getting sued, attractive girl like you doing working pro bono when you could be raking it in at a prestigious white-shoe firm? Did you flunk out?"

Alex wished that he hadn’t said that, even if intended to generate a laugh, but laugh she did. I was third in my class, but my life’s ambition is to marry a hobo and travel the country by rail. I’ll never find a hobo working in a big white-shoe firm. But look, let’s stay focused. We don’t have much time, and both of us would hate a fumble that would keep you here.

"I freely admit I wasn’t invited to the party,