"Ah, Sherman." A far-off weariness. The horse is out of the barn. "I wish you had come to me as soon as this thing happened. Now, at this stage-—well, but that's where we are, isn't it? So let's try to go from here. One thing I'm quite sure of. You have got to find the very best representation available. You've got to find lawyers you can trust, imp//citly, because you're putting an awful lot in their hands. You can't just go wandering in to some people named Dershbein—whatever it is. I'm going to call Chester Whitman and Ed LaPrade and sound them out."

Chester Whitman and Ed LaPrade? Two old federal judges who were either retired or close to it. The likelihood of their knowing anything about the machinations of a Bronx district attorney or a Harlem rabble-rouser was so remote . . . And all at once Sherman felt sad, not so much for himself as for this old man before him, clinging to the power of connections that meant something back in the 1950s and early 1960s . . .

"Miss Needleman?" The Lion was already on the telephone. "Would you ring up Judge Chester Whitman for me, please? . . . What? . . . Oh. I see. Well, when you're through, then." He hung up the receiver. As an old partner, he no longer had a secretary of his own. He shared one with half a dozen others, and obviously she, Miss Needleman, did not jump when the Lion opened his mouth. Waiting, the Lion looked out his solitary window and pursed his lips and looked very old.

And in that moment Sherman made the terrible discovery that men make about their fathers sooner or later. For the first time he realized that the man before him was not an aging father but a boy, a boy much like himself, a boy who grew up and had a child of his own and, as best he could, out of a sense of duty and, perhaps, love, adopted a role called Being a Father so that his child would have something mythical and infinitely important: a Protector, who would keep a lid on all the chaotic and catastrophic possibilities of life. And now that boy, that good actor, had grown old and fragile and tired, wearier than ever at the thought of trying to hoist the Protector's armor back onto his shoulders again, now, so far down the line.