“Because you're-”

“I didn't say I'd take the case.”

Leonard lifted his hands, placating. “I was just going to say I'm glad you'll consider it. That's all I'm asking for. Willingness.” He pressed his palms against his lap and rose. “Let me take you to lunch. Give me a chance to find your weak spot.”

Leonard's confidence annoyed Seeley. “I have to be in court at two.”

“My flight's at three-thirty. Is the Hatch still open?”

“The places on the lake close down after Labor Day.”

“Let's go and look. It's worth a try.”

The Hatch was little more than a lunch counter on a built-up part of the Lake Erie shore, locally famous for its grilled bologna sandwich-a massive slab of meat tucked into a hard roll along with a pile of grilled onions and a slathering of bright yellow mustard. Seeley remembered childhood outings when Leonard would inhale the sandwich as greedily as if it were a communion wafer.

Seeley again thought about motives-Leonard's in pursuing him, his in resisting-as he lifted the camel-hair coat from the stand by the anteroom door and handed it to his brother. He took a maroon scarf from the other hook and threw it around his neck. At her desk, the surface filled with a collection of creams and lotions, Mrs. Rosziak beamed. The office's exterior walls were the original lath and plaster, but the partition that divided Seeley's office from the receptionist's anteroom was thin wallboard, and from the officious bustle of papers Seeley knew that she had eavesdropped on the conversation. As soon as the door closed behind him, she would be on the phone to the airlines, checking on flights to San Francisco.

The sky had been a muddy gray since the beginning of October, and Buffalo wouldn't see the sun again for months. Over the past week, an errant snowflake or two would materialize out of the crisp air and as quickly disappear. Any day could bring the first snowfall. But more than the snow and bitter cold, it was the prospect of this unrelenting, joyless sky that defined the season for Seeley.