LAURA DI PALMA NOVELS           THE SMART MONEY                   1988 Bantam Books; 1991 Ballantine Books         1.   MY COUSIN HAL had just moved into a condemned bungalow near the jetty. Everyone else deserted the development when the foundations cracked and dunes began reclaiming the thoroughfares, so Hal's kerosene lanterns provided the only glimmer of light on the wind flogged cul-de-sac. He had none of the amenities there--no heat, no water, no company but scrambling sand fleas and other hungry pests. But apparently it suited Hal to keep his staples in glass jars, knowing that rodents and roaches scratched at them like the little match girl at the window.   I stood at the threshold of his hovel. In the lantern light, I could see boarded-up windows, a sand-choked porch, and exterior walls veined with wet cracks. Behind the house, on the opposite shore of the bay, the old nuclear power plant glowed like a neon dinosaur. My hometown.   "Hotshot lawyer." My cousin regarded me with undisguised disgust. "Opening an office in the backwater just so you can stick it to your ex- husband."   "That about sums it up." The wind whipped sand around my ankles, and I could feel my shoulder muscles knot with the cold. "I'm freezing, Hal."   He motioned for me to enter, then preceded me down a drafty hallway. His sweater was too short and his corduroy pants were threadbare at the seat.   Henry Di Palma, Jr., had once favored button-down shirts and stiffly pressed jeans. Dozens of them still hung in the cedar-paneled closets of his father the mayor's house.   In Hal's living room, three lanterns flickered near a slashed easy chair, and a fire battled the river of cold air whistling down the fireplace flue. Hal had been sitting there doing nothing, I guess. There were no books or papers beside the chair, just a jam jar with the dregs of red wine.   I found a wooden chair and brushed it off, wrinkling my nose at the dirt that clung to my palm.   "Cleaning lady must have missed a spot," Hal commented.   I sat down and took a good look at him: glowering brows, deep lines from cheekbone to dimpled chin; eyes set in a perpetual wince; salt-and-pepper hair that had suffered an impatient and inexpert haircut, self-inflicted. "Whatever it takes to keep the family away?"   "At least I don't go out of my way to kick them in the behind."   "Don't waste your sympathy on my ex-husband. He deserves it." My highschool sweetheart, Gary Gleason, had the town's public defender contract. I was going to take it away from him, and I was going to enjoy doing it. "I'm just opening up an office. The city doesn't have to accept my bid. "   "Except that you're famous."   "There is that."   A year earlier, I'd defended a man called Wallace Bean, who'd shot and killed two Republican senators as they stepped off a chartered jet. I'd managed to assemble that one-in-a-million jury with enough regard for expert testimony to acquit Bean by reason of insanity. The nation--especially the conservatives who'd rallied behind the senators' "bombs for victory" approach to the Vietnam War-- had been outraged; but my career had been made. Time, Newsweek, and other national magazines had carried lengthy articles about the trial--and, inevitably, about me.   "But I'm not exactly popular, Hal."   My hometown was redneck conservative--loggers, fishermen, cannery workers, dairymen; its citizens doubtless disapproved of what the President had called "an abortion of justice." On the other hand, I was a celebrity in a town where people still talked about the time Robert Goulet had stayed overnight at the Hillsdale Inn.   I smiled at my cousin. "All in all, I'd say the smart money's on me."   Hal stroked his jaw--surprisingly clean-shaven--with a long, callused hand. "Well, I happen to like my money the way I like my women: easy."   I glanced around the room. Dust balls scampered across the floor, wood crates did duty as tabletops, broken pieces of furniture glowed in the fire. "I don't see much evidence of either around here."   "No regrets about Bean? Just one more crazy on the street?"   "A medical review board decided my client was sane. I didn't make that decision."   "But you represented him--?   "At the sanity hearing? Of course I did. That's my job."   The state attorney general had argued against me: How can a man be crazy in May and sane in April? And an acerbic psychiatrist had replied, How can the governor gut the mental health budget and still expect us to provide years of inpatient care? "It wasn't me who put Bean back on the street."   "So you'll take the credit, but not the blame?"   "Something like that." A damp draft chilled my legs. I tugged the hem of my skirt over my knees. "Why the hermit routine, Hal?"   He smiled, his expression--except for his eyes-- suddenly rather sweet. "Didn't the family tell you?"   "You use the war as an excuse to be a self-destructive, ungrateful bum."   "Indulge in an 'I told you so,' if you want." Hal lowered his eyelids, transforming his smile into a smirk.   I'd been vociferously horrified when Hal hadn't resisted the draft--and almost gratified to hear he'd come back from Vietnam moody and waspish. I'd only seen him twice since then. In 1981, I ran into him in Golden Gate Park. He looked haggard and filthy. He told me he hadn't been home in six years. In the winter of 1983, I found him outside my apartment wielding a greasy wrench. He stayed a few days, just long enough to repair his coughing old van. He seemed more relaxed, even amusing in a dry, offhand way. But he wouldn't tell me where he'd been living or what he'd been doing. I didn't mention Hal's visits to our family, as I couldn't say he'd looked a bit prosperous, or even happy. From what I gathered, Hal hadn't contacted them in the two years since. He'd simply appeared at the abandoned development one day last week.   "You know how long the war's been over, Hal? More than ten years." Long enough for me to get divorced; run off to the big city; finish college and law school; clerk for a state supreme court justice; put in a year with the U.S. attorney, criminal division; and join the cream of San Francisco law firms, White, Sayres & Speck. "What's this really about? Why the TV-movie torment?"   "Please. Spare me your philippics."   "And you'll spare me yours?"   Hal laced his fingers behind his head and looked me over. I leaned back in my chair and let him look. My pale olive skin had aged well--no wrinkles at thirty-three-- and most men admired my wide-set black eyes and full lips too much to hold my largish nose against me. My belted suit accentuated a small waist, and probably cost more than all Hal's possessions put together. My dainty shoes would cover a month's rent for a three-bedroom house in our mud hole of a town. And my hair, once a wild mass of curls, had been tamed into a damned expensive, sideparted bob. If I didn't look like a competent and very successful lawyer, it wasn't my fault.   "I liked you better when you looked like Mowgli," was my cousin's verdict.   "You're behind the times, Hal. This is how we dress in the jungle nowadays."   "So why come back here? You always hated the rain."   "You just told me. To stick it to my ex-husband."   He shook his head. "So you get the goddamned public defender's contract, and Gleason scrambles a little. He'll get by; he always has."   "Don't bet on it!" I was surprised to hear the venom in my tone; I've had a lot of practice keeping anger out of my voice ("With all due respect, Your Honor, . ."). I changed the subject. "Are you coming to my office-warming party?"   "My parents going to be there?"   "What do you think?" Not a word from them in the years they'd considered me "loose" for running off to San Francisco, but they'd been in the aisles with their cameras when I graduated from law school.   "I think I have a previous engagement." The firelight accentuated the harsh creases in Hal's cheeks.   "And I think you've worn out the war as an excuse."   "Any suggestions for a better one?"   I indicated his surroundings. "Shame that your daddy rammed this boondoggle down the planning commission's throat. "   He sat up abruptly. "Laura, my dear, you should be grateful to my daddy the mayor. He had to put your ex-husband in the hospital to build this little bit of hell."   "Every cloud has its silver lining, Hal."   Hal rested his forearms on his knees. "What did Gleason do to you, anyway?"   "It's something he's going to do for me." There was still a whisper of wrath in my voice, but only a whisper. "Once he sees that nothing else will get me out of town."   Fire shadows capered over the bare walls and cobwebbed ceiling. Hal's voice was unusually quiet. "Gleason coming to your office-warming?"   "I'd say so. He wouldn't want to appear ungracious."   "So you did invite him."   "Why, Hal. There's no one I'd rather see there."   …   _________________________________________________________________         THE GOOD FIGHT      1990 Simon & Schuster; 1991 Ballantine Books           1.     DAN CROSETTI WAS trying to be smart, and his so- called friends were being bastards about it. Worse, I was supposed to be his lawyer, and I was a mess, running on automatic pilot and last-minute continuances.   I looked at Danny and felt guilty. Not that it helped him any.   He'd been to my office looking for me. But I'd walked out after starting my day in a showdown with Doron White, senior partner.   It wasn't easy for Crosetti to get around--a National Guard truck had taken off both his legs in 1972. Today, one of Crosetti's radical gofers had driven him to my apartment and helped him teeter up two flights of stairs on crutches and a prosthesis.   Crosetti's self-styled "comrade" now stood rigidly beside a bay window, hugging the crutches like Scrooge on Christmas morning. He stood as far from my Baluchistan carpet and down-filled chairs as he possibly could, scowling down at the eucalyptus trees and foggy lawns of the Presidio. The scruffy sliver of a man acted as if my extravagance might taint him.   Dan Crosetti sat in a giant cloud of a chair, his legs ending before the seat did. The artificial limb looked lumpy and overlong beside twenty inches of empty denim. With his barrel chest and bulging arms, his round face and full beard, he looked far too heavy to maneuver on a piece of molded steel and two wooden triangles.   Typically Crosetti, he rumbled, "Laura. You're not okay. What's wrong?"   As if he didn't have enough damn problems, that I should burden him with mine. It didn't take a hell of a lot to make me cry these days, but I wasn't going to cry on Danny's shoulder. Not Danny's.   "I'm sorry you had to come all the way across town. I thought I was going to be in the office all day. I--" I what? I haven't done a damn thing for you yet? "I'm really sorry."   He continued looking up at me, concern crinkling the leathery skin around his eyes. I wondered if he could smell last night's vodka, where it had eaten rings into the end table and dribbled onto the floor.   If he noticed, he showed no sign of it. Not like my banker clients, who'd have glanced pointedly at the two-finger run in my hose, at my untucked blouse, at the shoes I'd kicked across the floor, at hair that should have been labeled, sproing! I looked as if I'd gone hand-to-hand with Doron White. Which would have been better than the politely seething "conference" that left my wings clipped to the skin.   Crosetti sat forward, his belly doubling over most of his remaining lap. His eyes were milk-chocolate brown, warm with intelligence and empathy. "I thought something might be the matter. I thought we might need to talk." He extended a hand. "I mean, we're friends first, right?"   Friends. I turned away. Crosetti needed advice, he needed a lawyer. He needed to think about himself and quit showing solidarity.   "Do you want something to drink?"   "Anything." His voice was filled with concern. "Whatever you're having."   I couldn't very well hand him a Stoli, not at ten in the morning. But it would have been my first choice.   Goddamn hospital swore by its "limited visitation policy"; it was hours yet before I could drive down to see Hal.   I crossed quickly to the kitchen, trying to avoid the mental picture: the resentful bewilderment in Hal's eyes, the way he kept opening and closing his hand as if to prove to me that he was whole and well.   I got out three mugs, carefully mismatched to mollify Crosetti's comrade. If I'd had any with broken handles, I'd have used them. I told myself it was for Crosetti's benefit; he didn't need more grief from his "friends" about me. But it was mostly guilt. Crosetti would have found a more utilitarian use for his money than signed mugs.   I filled the mugs with day-old coffee and microwaved them. I wasn't up to grinding beans.   Crosetti took the coffee. The other man waved his away, not deigning to look at me. I knew his rap on me: That my use of trendy new defenses to acquit mass murderers had discredited necessary and legitimate defenses; that I'd made it impossible for "politically correct" lawyers to evolve appropriate defenses. It wasn't that different from Doron White's complaint, however much the two of them would hate having anything in common.   But I'd been honest with Crosetti about one thing. Two luridly publicized murder trials had created an association in the public mind: Laura Di Palma was the hired gun for guilty clients, not innocent ones. The antithesis of Perry Mason.   Crosetti had said, "Then we'll be good for each other."   And maybe we would have been, if I'd kept my act together. "I've been doing a shitty job for you, Danny."   Behind me, the comrade humphed. Crosetti stopped sipping the sour coffee.   "Are you okay?" Crosetti voice, deep and troubled, twisted the knife of guilt. He cared about me. He'd trusted me with his freedom; and I hadn't even taken time to make fresh coffee.   "I'm okay. But another lawyer might--" I thought of the lawyer Crosetti would probably choose, a politics first soapboxer. It would hurt, watching the case go wrong.   Making a political statement was fine if you were looking at two months, or even two years, for trespass or destruction of government property; in those cases, publicity was the whole point. But Crosetti was charged with murdering his right-hand man--a man who'd turned out to be an FBI agent.   Crosetti put the mug down on the end table. His mustache and beard came together in a grim line. "We've got time to figure things out."   I sank into the couch upon which I'd spent the last six nights. I'd permanently creased wrinkles into the plump cushions. I smoothed them, not sure which way to go with Crosetti. He didn't need my excuses; he didn't deserve my problems. It would be unprofessional, and it wouldn't do anybody any good. Especially not Hal--not as long as it cost fourteen hundred dollars a day to keep competent help around him.   Fish or cut bait. I looked at Crosetti. Round and legless, he looked like some bearish Humpty Dumpty. All the king's horses and all the king's men: The federal government had commanded its trucks to roll over protesters' supine bodies, and federal courts had ruled that Crosetti (the only protester to remain in the road) had assumed that risk.   In an era of guilt over the lack of fanfare for returning Vietnam War veterans, people had forgotten the atrocities. They had forgiven everything done in the name of "patriotism." Even soldiers of the "war at home" now rushed to distance themselves from their acts of conscience.   But Dan Crosetti would never appear on Barbara Walters' television show, stammering apologies for having tried to stop that war.   I glanced at Crosetti's comrade. Wouldn't my politics surprise him?   "One thing I have done, Danny. I've waived the speedy-trial date. There's no percentage in hurrying. The delay gives us a chance to find out what really happened."   Crosetti's elbows sank into the soft arms of the chair. His face flushed. "How long--?" He laced his fingers, and for a minute I thought he was going to pray. Instead, he rubbed his woolly chin over his entwined knuckles. "Is it going to be . . . a very long time?"   Fear shined through his veneer of calm. I'd gone to see him in the hospital before the operation to save his legs was deemed a failure. I'd heard the same tone then, when he asked his doctor if the circulation had improved.   Waiting would wear him down.   The stomach cramps started again. I'd practically begged the doctor to tell me Hal would be better by a certain date, that it wouldn't drag on beyond the limit of my endurance.   Crosetti closed his eyes. As if on cue, his comrade stepped forward, clammy with anger, gripping the crutches like a weapon.   "What gets me--" He breathed hoarsely, scowling at Crosetti. "Danny went to a shitload of trouble to keep from killing anyone when it was supposed to be his duty as a good American. I mean, they literally rolled the fucking war right over him, because he wouldn't pick up a gun! Now they're trying to make out that he'd shoot somebody because he was annoyed."   Crosetti squinted at his friend, tears leaking into his crow's feet. "I just want it over with."   "It's the fucking government that should be on trial here, not--!"   "Danny, look." I shifted on the couch, putting the comrade more or less out of my range of vision, and, with luck, out of the discussion. "In this case, the longer the delay, the better for you. I know it's hard to wait, but--" Trust me; even though I haven't spared you half a thought in six days. 'I'll check with my detective this morning. What we need right now is more information. ''   Crosetti seemed to waver, his gaze flicking from me to his comrade, who now leaned heavily on his mentor's crutches.   "There's been some discussion about me going underground." He scraped his hands over his eyes as if to clear his thoughts. Or maybe wipe tears he hoped I hadn't noticed.   "Underground? That's crazy. You don't have any reason to, not at this point. " I glanced at the legless length of denim. He must realize how conspicuous he'd be, how easy to track down.   "What if it came to that?"   I wrapped my arms around my waist. An hour earlier, I'd scornfully assured Doron White that Crosetti would never leave us holding his bond; that Crosetti was a facer of consequences.   "I'd think it was a shitty idea."   For the first time, Crosetti looked around the high-ceilinged flat. "Let's just say I've seen the other side of the system. The side that does this"-- he tapped his prosthesis--"and gets away with it."   "Danny--"   "That sends a federal agent to become the best friend you ever had, and then tries to say you--" His mouth twisted into a red rectangle.   I sank deeper into the cushions. I'd seen that side of the system, too. I saw it every time I visited Hal.   "Danny?" He was my last criminal client; Doron White had made that clear. He was also my first innocent client. The first who'd touched a raw nerve of conviction; who made me want to win for his sake rather than my own. "I'll get you through this. Just stick around; stick it out. Please."   Crosetti slumped, round-backed, shaking soundlessly.   I got up, starting toward him. But he waved me back. His eyes were tightly closed, streaming tears, but he kept his arm extended like a traffic cop's.   I preferred to do my crying alone, too. I left the room…    . . .   _______________________________________________________________       A HARD BARGAIN      1992 Simon & Schuster; 1993 Ballantine Books     _______________________________________________________________       FACE VALUE      1994 Simon & Schuster; 1995 Pocket Books             1.     I watched Steve Sayres walk into my office-warming party.  Maybe he thought he was obliged, as senior partner of the firm I'd recently worked for, to pretend to wish me well.  Maybe the sentiment was even sincere; after all, he'd gotten what he wanted.  He'd turned my mentor, Doron White, against me.  He'd gotten me fired a few months before my partnership vote.  Sayres looked around, a smile curling his lips.  The Law Offices of Laura Di Palma were on a half-empty floor of a renovated box.  I shared a waiting room and two secretaries with a five-person public interest law firm whose partners were long-ago radicals and whose associates did just enough workers’ comp to keep solvent.  My office, across the hall from theirs, was large but ugly, with industrial carpets and leased wood veneer furniture.  It had a view of traffic creeping toward the freeway from Market Street.  It was many blocks from the financial district suites White, Sayres & Speck occupied.  My conference table and desk were spread with trays of cheese and cold cuts and crudités; nothing fancy, nothing catered.  The lawyers from across the hall were drinking so-so wine with good humor.  They seemed pleased to have me as a neighbor.  They doubtless approved of my last client.  Dan Crosetti had been a bellwether activist accused of shooting his best friend, who'd turned out to be an undercover FBI agent.   I’d lost my job over that case.  Sayres had gone to Doron White, founding partner, previously my ally, and made his argument: I was doing pro bono work without the firm's consent; Crosetti's controversial politics might offend our corporate clients; and I had again placed the firm under the jeweler's eye of publicity. Doron had agreed. I'd made the firm a lot of money.  I'd made the firm famous.  But all it took was one refusal to back down and I was out the door. I’d been forced to choose between what mattered and what looked good.  I’d chosen not to become Steven Sayres. Crossing my unimpressive new office, Sayres wore his smugness like an expensive coat.  He was tall and stylishly fit, his emaciated body pumped with stringy muscle.  His face was lightly tanned, with lines of harried ill-temper etched around his eyes and into his forehead.  His graying hair showed comb lines, as if he’d just left the sauna.   His suit looked custom made, his usual dark blue with a wild print tie now that no other kind would do. "Hello, Laura."  He stopped farther from me than was strictly polite.  I was glad. "Steve."  I kept my tone friendly, but I didn't extend my hand. "I wondered if you'd open your own office.  Frankly," he glanced at my relatively ill-dressed neighbors, making lunch of cheese and cold cuts, "I couldn't have given you much of a reference if you'd tried to join one of the big firms here." I felt a smile chill my face.  "A reference from you would have been superfluous, Steve.  Everyone here knows me." "That's right."  He slid his hand into his suit pocket.  "And everyone here knows how Doron died." Doron White had suffered a series of anginas that severely damaged his heart.  A late-night encounter with a friend of Crosetti's--an encounter in my then-office--had triggered Doron's final and fatal heart attack. A group of beautifully outfitted people stepped into the room.  They were White, Sayres clients, formerly my clients; bank vice presidents, mostly.  One, in-house counsel for Graystone Federal, waved at me before smoothing her Lauren Bacall hair.  The others looked around, showing their surprise.  No expensive paintings here, no tree-sized arrangements of exotic flowers. I watched Steve.  A hot redness spread up his neck and over the slack skin of his jaw.  Without motion or overt distress, he'd flamed into a fury.  That's how it had begun with Doron, a sudden flush betraying his anger. The bank clients were upon us now, hand-shaking and well-wishing, smiling at Steve to show they approved of his magnanimous visit.  Of course he'd known they'd come; of course he'd had to come, too.  If I let him, he'd position himself as Daddy, looking in on little girl.  He'd minimize me because he hadn't been able to sabotage me. "Steve was just blaming me for Doron's death," I said.  "And because Doron and I were close, and I resent it, I'm about to ask Steve to leave." Steve's face drained of color.  Behind me, conversations stopped.  Two of Steve's clients stepped back as if my honesty might sully them. "I don't work for you anymore, Steve.  I don't have to play this game.  If you want to insult me, do it out loud for everyone to hear.  Don't stand here looking like Lord Bountiful while you complain in my ear you didn't get a chance to blackball me." He looked at his clients, formerly my clients.  His brows were pinched into a mask of pitying chagrin.  He used that face in court whenever he could.  The clients had seen it there.  But they had their own versions of it.  I was the rule-breaker here.  That's why I was on my own in an office unfashionably south of Market.  That's what Dan Crosetti had done for me.  I blessed him silently as I said, "I asked you leave.  Play cute with your clients somewhere else." "Well," a bank client turned the word into a hearty sigh, "actually Steve, if you'll let me walk you back, I should be moving on." Steve continued looking sad and paternal.  "Let me buy you lunch, Bill.  Margaret, Harry, can you join us?" I took Harry's hand and shook it.  Did the same to Margaret's.  "Thank you so much for coming," I said.  "It was good to see you." Margaret stared at me, open-mouthed.  Bill put his hand on Steve's arm.  "Let's try the new place around the corner.  Maybe they can still seat five without a reservation." Only Margaret seemed to hesitate, her skull-thin face crimped into a silent But.  She finally joined the chorus of good-byes and good-lucks. I watched three major banks and a mortgage brokerage walk out my door.  They would spread the word, no doubt: Laura Di Palma was being hysterical.  Maybe radical.  She'd been gone almost ten months, no one was sure where, not practicing law, having some kind of mid-life crisis, probably.  She hadn't gone back to big-firm practice; she'd gone solo--and not even at a good address.    …             DESIGNER CRIMES      1995 Simon & Schuster; 1996 Pocket Books             2.                         “I’ve had enough of Steve Sayres,” I concluded.  “I want to sue him.” The lawyer sitting opposite me toyed with a black metal tape dispenser.   She’d been doing that the whole time I talked to her.  It was a measure of my general irritation that I said, “Do you need some tape?” She flushed, setting it back on her desktop.  “I’m sorry--I have been listening.”  She scooted the dispenser farther from her, across a litter of file folders and sheets of yellow legal pad turned upside down for privacy.  Damn, she looked young.  Young, indecisive and not quite completely with me.  And yet I’d heard this was the most aggressive and cleverest labor law firm in town.  I’d been told this firm played hardball.  But you’d never guess it from the sweet Renaissance angels decorating the walls of Jocelyn Kinsley’s office, nor from the pink angora sweater beneath her beige linen jacket.  She looked like a woman with a big extended family in the midwest and two cats at home.  A woman who started her Christmas crafts in August.  Not a labor lawyer.  Not a player.  Perhaps it was her law partner, Maryanne More, most people thought of when they mentioned More & Kinsley.  But More, it seemed, specialized in high-tech labor.  And Kinsley, among other things, handled employment-related slander. As if startled by some inner prompt, she picked up a pencil, touching the tip to her yellow pad.  “Steven Sayres,” she said, and wrote.  “And who are some of the people you believe he talked to?” I defused a small volley of anger.  Hadn’t she been listening?  We were talking about my financial survival.  “It got back to me first from--” “What’s that?”  She looked like a pretty rabbit, big-eyed and twitchy. “What?”  I was only a few more irritations from walking out. She had the dispenser in her hand again, sitting straight, staring behind me at, I supposed, her closed door. “Do you want the names?”  I tried to bring her back to business.  I was aware of a slight commotion somewhere in the outer office.  I could hear someone shouting, a few loud cracks, as of party poppers or champagne corks. Kinsley straightened, rolling back slightly in her high-back chair.  She didn’t look at me, didn’t seem to hear me. With a screw-this shake of the head, I started out of my chair.  I’d find a lawyer with a normal attention span. Because it happened so quickly, I didn’t get a chance to analyze her shocked cry or the fact that she suddenly hurled the tape dispenser at me. The metal object caught me in the forehead.  The impact, perhaps coupled with the surprise, collapsed me sideways.  I tried to use the chair for support, felt it slide backwards, legs raking the gold carpet.  I landed on my shoulder and face, in a turmoil of outrage. I wanted to excoriate Jocelyn Kinsley for her stupid behavior, to turn a firehose of rage on her, in fact--rage toward Steve Sayres and all the unfair obstacles and petty bullshit threatening to sink my law practice.  I was too angry to feel pain, but quite ready to use the unfelt pain as an excuse to detonate. I should have known something was wrong:  Kinsley had pitched a tape dispenser at me. I heard explosions again, this time too loud to be distant corks.  I could feel a cool shift of air: the office door was open.  The explosions were almost deafening. From somewhere behind me, somewhere out in the hall, came a staccato of screams and panicked voices.  I inhaled a sharp stink like spent firecrackers.  I looked up.  The ceiling lights wavered like daylight through water.  I felt motion on the floor.  On the other side of her curve-legged, antique desk, Jocelyn Kinsley lay crumpled on the carpet.  Her face was turned toward me, pink foam gargling from her lips. I screamed.  I knew why I was on the floor--but why was she?  Reality had done a sudden somersault.  Her eyes were half-closed, her face was a sweating alabaster white with foam angling from her delicately-painted mouth.  I became aware of commotion around me, someone holding my shoulders when I tried to get up; a voice screaming, “He shot them!” I tried to bat the person’s hands away: I wanted to get up, get oriented, understand what had happened, make everything normal and within my control again.  But pinned by worried hands, I was forced to remain down, staring through the arch of Kinsley’s desk to her pale face. There were people around her, too, but to me they were just sleeves and torsos, hastily ripping off jackets to cover her, talking about pressure points and keeping her warm. Her eyes were half open, she seemed to stare at me across the meter of carpeted floor.  Her lips moved, stopped.  Her tongue came out to push bloody sputum away. Her eyes opened wider, holding my gaze.  For the first time, I noticed they were yellow-brown, similar in shade to her curls.  To me, directly and distinctly, she rasped, “Designer crimes.” Someone hovering over her, a woman in white silk, her jacket partly covering Kinsley, said, “What?  What?  Jocelyn?” Above her, someone else replied, “A sign of the times.  She said, a sign of the times.” “Oh, Joss, no,” said the white shirt woman.  “No, it’s not.  It’s not.”  As if Kinsley would be all right if the shooting weren’t a sign of the times. “Not what she said,” I told the person hovering over me.  But she was busy looking over the desk top, trying to learn from her coworkers’ faces whether Jocelyn Kinsley would be all right. My disorientation was fading.  I struggled to a sitting position, unceremoniously pushing the woman away. I could feel a crawling tickle on my forehead and reached up a frightened hand.  It was blood.  I stared at it on my fingertips for a cold-clutch second before I realized the tape dispenser had hit my forehead and broken the skin.  I hadn’t been shot.  The second I realized it, I knew Jocelyn Kinsley had.   …