Karin just hadn't had the time to get his shirts. Both of the twins were down with one of what seemed like the never-ending cycle of children's ailments and his wife hadn't been able to get out all day. She was cooped up, going crazy. So he'd told her, no sweat, on the way home he'd pick up the cleaning.

He really did try to do his share with the household stuff, but when you're a black man in a professional job your first priority had better be to give your bosses no reason on the planet to think you weren't giving a hundred and fifty percent at all times. Which was what Arthur Wade, a four-year associate attorney at Rand & Jackman, did. It didn't matter that Jess Rand and Clarence Jackman were both African-Americans themselves. They had set themselves up to compete with the best of the all-white firms, pulling in major corporate accounts from all over the country, and their associates could get to partner if they gave every minute of their time for eight years and were also brilliant, tireless and blessed with an entrepreneurial spirit.

Which, fortunately, most agreed, Arthur Wade was.

He got out of his BMW and slammed the door, in a hurry, his mind still on his work. Shivering at the sudden blast of heat, he realized he'd been isolated from the weather all day – ten hours of grueling depositions. Luckily the depos had finally burned everyone out, which was why he had time to help Karin. Getting off work any time before eight was more or less a holiday.

He had closed the car door, but he wasn't even walking fifty feet in this heat with his coat on. He took it off, and holding it, reached inside his pants pockets to take his keys out and put his coat back over the seat. The keys weren't there. They were still in the ignition.

Locked out.

He slammed his hand in frustration on the roof of the car, which set off his two-toned, shrieking, ear-piercing alarm. EEEEeeee! EEEEeeee! EEEEeeee!

Peter McKay was still standing on the bar, in the middle of his rave against the release of Jerohm Reese, the rotten unfairness of the way black people could get away with absolute murder, all of that, when he heard the racket of the car alarm and could see Arthur Wade outside the Cavern's front window, doing something around a nice new-looking BMW. Stealing it, he thought, the black bastard.