“Is this cash?” I asked.

“That’s right. What’s wrong with cash?”

“Nothing. But I have to give you a receipt. It’s an IRS reporting requirement. This is the whole ten?”

“It’s all there.”

I took the top off of a cardboard file box I keep on the seat next to me. My receipt book was behind the current case files. I started writing out the receipt. Most lawyers who get disbarred go down because of financial violations. The mishandling or misappropriation of client fees. I kept meticulous records and receipts. I would never let the bar get to me that way.

“So you had it all along,” I said as I wrote. “What if I had backed down to five? What would you have done then?”

Vogel smiled. He was missing one of his front teeth on the bottom. Had to have been a fight at the club. He patted the other side of his vest.

“I got another envelope with five in it right here, Counselor,” he said. “I was ready for you.”

“Damn, now I feel bad, leaving you with money in your pocket.”

I tore out his copy of the receipt and handed it out the window.

“I receipted it to Casey. He’s the client.”

“Fine with me.”

He took the receipt and dropped his arm off the window sill as he stood up straight. The car returned to a normal level. I wanted to ask him where the money came from, which of the Saints’ criminal enterprises had earned it, whether a hundred girls had danced a hundred hours for him to pay me, but that was a question I was better off not knowing the answer to. I watched Vogel saunter back to his Harley and struggle to swing a trash can-thick leg over the seat. For the first time I noticed the double shocks on the back wheel. I told Earl to get back on the freeway and get going to Van Nuys, where I now needed to make a stop at the bank before hitting the courthouse to meet my new client.