“His eye was busted up already when I met him.”

“That you can tell me?”

“It’s not privileged information. When you talk to the waiter at La Vigna, a guy named Louis, he’ll tell you the same thing.”

“But you won’t tell me anything else?”

“Sorry.”

“Because right now, Carl, we don’t have a clue as to what actually happened here tonight. His wallet was missing so it could have been a robbery, but his Timex is still on his wrist and word is this Joey Parma never had anything worth stealing. So was this a mob execution? Was this drug-related? Was he stepping out with someone else’s wife? Did he owe someone money? Anything you can tell us would be mighty handy.”

“Joey was never part of the mob. A wannabe maybe, but that’s it. And the drug conviction was well in his past. Best I could figure, he was trying to go clean. But his street name was Joey Cheaps, which means he owed everybody money.”

“Anyone in particular?”

“Me.”

“Oh, I bet he did. Anyone else? Anyone mad enough to extract it in blood.”

“Not that I know of. But as to what we talked about, there is nothing more I can tell you.”

“He’s your client, Carl. Doesn’t that matter?”

“Clients die, Detective. It happens all the time. Rich old ladies with wills to probate. Cancer-ridden smokers waiting on their suits against the tobacco companies. For criminal lawyers there are good ways to lose a client and bad ways to lose a client. A good way is for a client to die in his bed, surrounded by his family, receiving last rites from a priest. A bad way is for a client to be strapped on a gurney with a line in his arm, as the victim’s mother stares stone-faced through the viewing window. I don’t know why Joey was killed, but it wasn’t the state that killed him, or a fellow con with a prison shiv, and so I figure this falls on the right side of my line.”