“I don’t know anything about that,” the lawyer said. “I guess I’m only into rehabilitation, small favors, maybe something we might be able to do for you. Were you working?”

“I was a bartender, but I quit.”

“I could get you something like that. How about Miami Beach?”

“Well”-seeing the black people standing around, all the victims, witnesses, relatives of defendants-“I used to live in Florida about ten years ago.” Thinking in that moment, the Mediterranean, Florida, what’s the difference? Seeing himself going to the cops to get his passport pictures back? No way. “Yeah, Florida sounds like a good idea.”

“Get you into one of the hotels, bartender-what do you want to do?”

Thinking of the ocean, the sun, being outside, getting a tan-

“When I was there before I worked with dolphins. Maybe something like that’d be good.” He felt funny talking to a guy younger than he was about a job.

“Dolphins,” Marshall said.

“Porpoise. You know, they call them porpoise but they’re really dolphins. Not the fish, they’re mammals.”

“Yeah, dolphins,” Marshall said. He was nodding, thinking of something. “I believe we’ve got a client-yeah, I’m sure we have-they’ve got an interest in one of those places. You mean like Sea World, they put on the porpoise show, a guy rides a killer whale, Shamu?”

“Yeah, only the place I worked,” Maguire said, “it was more a training school. Down in the Keys, with these pens right out in the ocean. They put on a show, but not with all the bullshit, the porpoise playing baseball and, you know, coming out of the water to ring a bell and the American flag goes up-not any of that kind of shit.”

“But you’ve had experience.”

“I worked there almost a year, down on Marathon. The pay wasn’t anything, but I liked being outside.” He thought about the fifteen hundred again. “What about this money somebody owes me?”