“I’ll give you a thousand a week,” he says, slouched in the chair like an insolent teenager, “but it’s gonna be nothing but asses and elbows from here on in.”

I make a dollar sign on the pad in front of me. He’s probably picking up thirty on this case at an absolute minimum. I’ll be doing a lot more than waiting to see if he can’t answer the bell.

“I’ll need two a week,” I say, trying to sound casual, “to make it worth my while.

No telling what I’ll have to turn down.”

For the first time Bracken visibly winces, either in pain or at the way I’m trying to hold him up.

“Okay,” he says, his face a web of tiny creases, “but I want my money’s worth. I’m doing this one on the house.”

I drop my Bic on my legal pad in amazement. One of the sayings about Chet Bracken is that he wouldn’t know a pro bono case if one bit him on the leg.

“Leigh Wallace should be loaded,” I point out, “especially now.”

Bracken says, his ears raising slightly, “I’m doing this one for her father. I’m a baptized member of his church.”

Chet Bracken a Bible thumper? The thought of it is astonishing. There isn’t a nonrational bone in his body, and Christian Life is hard-core fundamentalism. He really must be dying. Yet even my girlfriend has recently dumbfounded me by telling me she has started attending Christian Life. It must be something in the water.

“I didn’t know that,” I say, sounding stupider by the second.

Bracken nods and says without a trace of irony, “You should try it. Page. Money isn’t everything.”