"Are you back on duty?"

"No. But as a victim of police brutality in four countries, including this one, I have an interest."

"It wasn't a police brutality thing," said Karp. "Not really. It was a police stupidity thing. A hell of a lot more common, to tell you the truth."

"So there must have been a lot of pressure on that case," said the reporter. "White cops, black victim. How come you took the case?"

Karp explained the situation and added, "Even so, I didn't think Jack would let me take it. They usually keep me away from cases with racial overtones, as you know."

"But I don't know. I was out of the country at the time. I'm a foreign correspondent."

"Then what are you doing here?" Karp said, not quite keeping the snarl from his voice. I'm getting drunk, he thought. Am I going to be a mean drunk?

She appeared not to notice. He imagined people snarled at her all the time, given her personality. She said, "Every place is foreign from the standpoint of someplace else. Pretend I'm reporting on the strange customs of American jurisprudence for a Canadian paper. No, really, all I know is the gossip. You punched out a black reporter is what I heard."

"I didn't punch him out," said Karp. "He got in my face in a hallway and I pushed past him and he tripped on some TV cables. Then a guy fell on him with a TV camera and his face got bruised. There was some tape with me scowling and this little guy with blood streaming down his face. The press made a big thing of it. And it was the case I was working on at the time, that had a lot to do with it."

"Okay, now it's coming back. That was that wacko who was after black grannies. You lost that one, if memory serves. Another racial thing?"

"Not really. It was a good jury. I just got beat. The guy, Rohbling, was a weedy white boy with a lot of money. His family hired the best lawyer in the country and the rest is history. He's in Matteawan now, until the shrinks decide he's not a danger to the community. It happens. The African-American sector was not pleased."