Rating: ★★★★☆ Tags: Mystery Detective, General, Fiction

just us guys here
.
Bolt deliberately chose not to sit behind his desk. He
ushered me toward a two-man table as if we were going to
play chess. 
This is a conversation for us partners
, Bolt
said without having to say it. 
We’ll sit at our little war-room
table and get down to it
.
‘My retainer, Mr Dunne, is a hundred thousand dollars.
That’s a lot of money, obviously. So I want to be clear on
what I offer and on what I will expect of you, okay?’
He aimed unblinking eyes at me, a sympathetic smile,
and waited for me to nod. Only Tanner Bolt could get away
with making me, a 
client
, fly to 
him
, then tell me what kind
of dance I’d need to do in order to give him my money.
‘I win, Mr Dunne. I win unwinnable cases, and the case
that I think you may soon face is – I don’t want to patronize
you – it’s a tough one. Money troubles, bumpy marriage,
pregnant wife. The media has turned on you, the public has
turned on you.’
He twisted a signet ring on his right hand and waited
for me to show him I was listening. I’d always heard the

---

phrase: 
At forty, a man wears the face he’s earned
. Bolt’s
fortyish face was well tended, almost wrinkle-free,
pleasantly plump with ego. Here was a confident man, the
best in his field, a man who liked his life.
‘There will be no more police interviews without my
presence,’ Bolt was saying. ‘That’s something I seriously
regret you did. But before we even get to the legal portion,
we need to start dealing with public opinion, because the
way it’s going, we have to assume everything is going to
get leaked: your credit cards, the life insurance, the
supposedly staged crime scene, the mopped-up blood. It
looks very bad, my friend. And so it’s a vicious cycle: The
cops think you did it, they let the public know. The public is
outraged, they demand an arrest. So, one: We’ve got to
find an alternative suspect. Two: We’ve 
got
to keep the
support of Amy’s parents, I cannot emphasize that piece
enough. And three: We’ve got to fix your image, because
should this go to trial, it will influence the juror pool. Change
of venue doesn’t mean anything anymore – twenty-four-hour
cable, Internet, the whole world is your venue. So I cannot
tell you how key it is to start turning this whole thing around.’
‘I’d like that too, believe me.’
‘How are things with Amy’s parents? Can we get them
to make a statement of support?’
‘I haven’t spoken with them since it was confirmed that
Amy was pregnant.’
‘Is pregnant.’ Tanner frowned at me. ‘Is. She 
is
pregnant. Never, ever mention your wife in the past tense.’
‘Fuck.’ I put my face in my palm for a second. I hadn’t
even noticed what I’d said.
‘Don’t worry about it with me,’ Bolt said, waving the air

---

magnanimously. ‘But everywhere else, worry. Worry hard.
From now on, I don’t want you to open your mouth if you
haven’t thought it through. So you haven’t spoken to Amy’s
parents. I don’t like that. You’ve tried to get in touch, I
assume?’
‘I’ve left a few messages.’
Bolt scrawled something on a yellow legal pad. ‘Okay,
we have to assume this is bad news for us. But you need to
track them down. Nowhere public, where some asshole
with a cameraphone can film you – we can’t have another
Shawna Kelly moment. Or send your sister in, a recon
mission, see what’s going on. Actually, do that, that’s
better.’
‘Okay.’
‘I need you to make a list for me, Nick. Of all the nice
things you’ve done for Amy over the years. Romantic
things, especially in this past year. You cooked her chicken
soup when she was sick, or you sent her love letters while
you were on a business trip. Nothing too flashy. I don’t care
about jewelry unless you guys picked it out on vacation or
something. We need real personal stuff here, romantic-
movie stuff.’
‘What if I’m not a romantic-movie kind of guy?’
Tanner tightened his lips, then blew them back out.
‘Come up with something, okay, Nick? You seem like a
good guy. I’m sure you did something thoughtful this past
year.’
I couldn’t think of a decent thing I’d done in the past two
years. In New York, those first few years of marriage, I’d
been desperate to please my wife, to return to those loose-
limbed days when she’d run across a drugstore parking lot

---

and leap into my arms, a spontaneous celebration of her
hair-spray purchase. Her face pressed up against mine all
the time, her bright blue eyes wide and her yellow lashes
catching on mine, the heat of her breath just under my nose,
the silliness of it. For two years I tried as my old wife
slipped away, and I tried so hard – no anger, no arguments,
the constant kowtowing, the capitulation, the sitcom-
husband version of me: