Fatal Reaction

of due diligence, stock splits, and black-lined drafts, I had been trapped in a place where the air was filled with talk of receptor assays, X-ray diffraction, binding sites, and autoreactivity. It was nice, for an hour or two at least, to be back on home ground.
    As I made my way through the still-empty corridors I was surprised to see Tom Galloway pacing the floor in front of my door. My heart sank. No one, not even Stephen, knew I would be coming to the firm that morning. Only something truly disastrous would be enough to propel Galloway to wait for me on the off chance I’d show up. Even from the other end of the hall I could see that he was agitated. There must have been another Serezine death over the weekend. There was no other explanation.
    Six-thirty in the morning is no time for small talk so I unlocked the door, switched on the light, and ushered Tom Galloway into my office.
    “Have a seat, Tom,” I said as I unwound the cashmere scarf from around my neck and slipped out of my coat.
    “I heard you were looking for me,” he said in a voice so charged with emotion that it was practically a snarl. Not knowing what else to do I retreated to the relative safety of my desk.
    “I don’t think so,” I answered, genuinely bewildered. “Don’t insult my intelligence by denying it,” snapped Galloway. His fair skin was flushed to the roots of his jet-black hair, and his blue eyes flashed. His emotions, displayed so close to the surface, made him seem very attractive. No wonder juries loved him.
    “Tom,” I insisted calmly, “please sit down and tell me what it is you’re talking about.” He sat, but only reluctantly. After all, there was no pretending that this was a conversation between equals. I was a partner and Tom was an associate. When I said sit, he sat. “Now, what’s this all about?”
    “It’s about you sending private detectives to every restaurant in town trying to catch me.”
    I sat back in my chair and wondered whether Tom had just told me what I thought he had. I took a deep breath and slowly clasped my hands together, making a steeple with my index fingers and pressing them to my lips. It was one of the lawyerly gestures I had learned from John Guttman. He used it to buy time when he was caught off guard and I put it to the same use now.
    After all the talk of the “famous fuck” theory, as Blades had dubbed it, the mystery man in Danny’s life was a fourth-year associate at my own firm with a politically prominent wife and dreams of partnership.
    “So you and Danny were involved,” I said, careful to make it a bald statement of fact—nothing more.
    “What business is it of yours?”
    “None,” I replied, clasping my hands together in front of me on my desk and looking him in the eye. My brain exploded with questions competing to be asked, but all litigators are actors and anyone, like Tom, who made his living by thinking on his feet would soon have the upper hand in any exchange. Instead, I decided to turn my silence against him. Surely he would be smart enough to realize that if I didn’t ask the questions then someone else would come along who would.
    “Do you want to tell me why you hired a private detective to find me?” he asked, after several seconds of painful silence.
    “There are questions about Danny’s death,” I replied, but offered no details.
    “What kind of questions? I thought he died of a heart attack.”
    “Who told you that?”
    “The girl who answered the phone at Azor when I called on Monday.”
    “Why did you call?”
    “I’d just received a letter from the carrier of Azor’s liability insurance and I needed to talk to Danny about it,” he replied defensively. “When he didn’t answer his line, it flipped over to the receptionist. She was the one who told me about the heart attack.”
    “That’s not how he died,” I replied. There must have been all kinds of stories floating around that day, I thought to myself. The girl at the desk must have just repeated something she’d heard.
    “So then how did he die?”
    “A complication from his ulcer.”
    “I didn’t know he had an ulcer.”
    “As far as I know, no one did. Maybe not even Danny.”
    “So if he died from an ulcer, why the private eye?”
    “When did you first learn he was dead? What time did you call?”
    “Oh, I don’t know. Some time in the afternoon.”
    “Had you seen him since he came back from Japan?”
    “Yes.”
    “When?”
    “Sunday