"So is a Santa suit, but we don't usually wear them in the courthouse."

"I could rush home through the freezing snow and change into something more funereal. Have I made you ashamed of me? Again?"

"A little. Look, I'm going to go hide in my office. Spread the word that I'm out of the building. Tell Flynn to hold the calls, too. Except from my family."

Karp glowered in a friendly way and vanished more easily than you would have thought possible for someone that large. His office was across the hall from the DA's, and its door had a jolly wreath on it, like all the others in the suite. Karp frowned at the wreath, went in, took off his sufficiently funereal navy pin-striped jacket, and sat down in his big black judge's chair. He swiveled and faced the window.

For a while he amused himself by seeing how long he could keep a single snowflake in focus. The burble of voices outside declined in volume. Karp knew that there would be a coven of old pols gathered around Keegan, sipping discreetly at his scotch, glad of the unscheduled demiholiday. They would be stroking or stinging one another in the ancient old-pol way. When pressed, Karp knew he could slip into that style and stroke and sting with the best of them, establishing himself as an in-guy, as he would clearly have to do now that Keegan was going. The difference was that, unlike Jack Keegan, he didn't love it. He sucked no nectar from the schmoozefests. They left him drained and irritable, as now. If he were a little more paranoid than he was (which was more paranoid than most people not actually on lithium), he would have imagined that Jack had done it for just that reason: to make him writhe. He leaned forward and pressed his nose against the glass. The streetlights were already on, made into haloes by the snow. The glass was cold. A chill ran across his shoulders, and he got up to put on his jacket. It was colder in his office than it had been this morning, and he recalled something, a memo, about the building's boilers being replaced over the Christmas break. They must have already started the work.