AN UNEXPECTED CALL

In my line of work, I've been asked to do a lot of unpleasant things over the years, and I've performed these tasks more or less without complaint. So maybe certain recent events in my life shouldn't have upset me. Shouldn't have knocked me back a step. But they did. Hey, I'm a little older now. The gray is really coming in, though my wife, Carol, says she likes it. In New York City, guys like me end up accumulating dings and bruises and scrapes, just like the banged-up delivery vans you see in Chinatown. Battered, dented, suspensions shot. Engines work but not at high speed. Run, for now. High mileage. That's me, especially these days, after what I found myself asked to do. A strange and unexpected task. Well, I did it but I can't say it was a good thing for anyone, especially me.

I got the call on the second Friday of last April, a sloppy, cold day. The price of oil was bouncing around violently, pushing gold and the dollar in opposite directions with each move. Oil down, dollar up. Oil up, gold up. Dollar down, gold up. The stock market, so recently up after being so recently down, was down again, and everyone I knew was hoping that we wouldn't all be sucked into a giant, cheap-dollared vortex of inflation. Or jolted by yet another sudden drop in economic confidence. Many of the folks in my firm had been slyly loading up on gold for months and no doubt counted themselves smart for betting against the American economy. Me, I'd done nothing slick to prepare for the fiscal apocalypse of the century. All I wanted to do was to go home and have dinner with Carol, maybe sit out on our balcony and drink some cheap wine while we ate. Usually I ask if she's heard from our daughter, Rachel, who was in her first year in college then. Or we gossip about the neighbors, speculating about their sex lives, pill habits, and overall psychic cohesion. Living in an apartment building, you learn things about people, whether you want to or not. Otherwise we'll often go to the movies a few blocks away on Broadway. Or ride the train up to Yankee Stadium, take in a game. Such is the state of our marriage these days. A lot of domestic ritual, laced with middle-aged decay. The occasional halfhearted fight, over the usual topics. Just to clean out the pipes. But neither of us stays angry too long. There's wine to drink, gossip to enjoy. Carol and I usually check in with each other around 4:00 P.M., to see what the evening's plan is, and that was when Anna Hewes called me from the other side of our floor.

"George, I just spoke to Mrs. Corbett."

"The original Mrs. Corbett?"

"Of course," said Anna. "I'm coming over to talk to you."

Mrs. Corbett's late husband, Wilson Corbett, was the founder of our firm, back in the sixties. Anna Hewes was Corbett's old secretary — and I mean old as in "former" but also as in "long past retirement age." Anna spends her time in the personnel office now; they ginned up a job for her when it was clear she was slowing down. But she still arrives early, makes the coffee on her floor, sits in for the receptionist on her breaks, alphabetizes files — that kind of thing. Back in the day she sat in the red-hot center of the universe, when Wilson Corbett was personally running thirty cases at once, sometimes on two phones, working the London bosses, the Chicago investigators, all of them. The guy was a pistol, buckets of energy. He had Anna, and she had two younger women working for her, just trying to keep up.

I'd really liked the guy, admired him. And I owed him a lot. It was Wilson Corbett who'd hired me when I was a kid, pulled me out of the muddy waters of the Queens DA's office back in the eighties. I've been here ever since, too. After Corbett retired, he showed up from time to time, trying to get a whiff of the good old days, but he slipped fast. He'd worked so hard all those long decades that not much was left. Within a few years he didn't recognize people, forgot how to get around the office. His visits dribbled down to just the Christmas party, when he'd shake hands with the people who still remembered him, and then he finally went off and died, as we all do. The whole firm attended the funeral. No one had much discussed Mrs. Corbett, figuring she had plenty of money, a couple of sons — Wall Street guys, as I remembered — and would do whatever old ladies who live on Park Avenue do with themselves at that age.

Now Anna Hewes poked her head in my office. She takes great care with her appearance. Makeup tasteful, dye job perfect, dentures glued in.

"What's Mrs. Corbett want?" I asked.

"She says please tell George Young to come up to her apartment at five o'clock today."

"That was it?"

"If I knew more I'd tell you."

"I'm surprised she even knows my name."

At this Anna gave me a little extra look, but then glanced down, as if she were keeping something to herself. I didn't give it much thought, though; Anna's been at the firm so long that she's gone a little bat-wango. I've learned over the years that 15 percent of the staff is either useless, incompetent, too old, or plain nuts. We get our occasional drunk or heroin addict, too. Anna's been in the 15 percent category for some time now, if you ask me, and frankly, I've wondered why she's still around. But this is the kind of thing the managing partners worry about, not me.

"You have the address?" I finally said.

Anna handed me a piece of paper.

"Five o'clock."

"You have any idea what she wants?"

"She didn't say much, except that her health isn't good."

"She wants me to drop all that I'm doing, prance uptown, and go see her, with no explanation?"

"Yes."

"I'd rather go another time, when it's not totally inconvenient."

"She wants you now, she said."

"I'm very busy shuffling around the fates of desperate people here, Anna."

She gave me a look. She does know the business, I'll give her that.

"It's the right thing to do, George," Anna said. Then she left.

I returned to the work on my desk. I had a lot to do. I always have a lot to do, and generally I get it done in the time there is to do it. The firm is busy, carries about 160 cases at any one moment. Not bad for a small shop. Just a few partners. Plus a handful of career pack mules like me, and the young hotshots who don't stay long once they realize not much changes at the place. Why? Because Patton, Corbett & Strode has a very specialized clientele. One client, actually, a huge, multinational insurance company headquartered in one of the major European capitals. It has a famous old name, but I'm not going to say what it is. Everyone has heard of it, but this company is our client, and we maintain their confidentiality. People hear the company's name and think, What's a few hundred thousand, a million, for a company like that? It's exactly what it sounds like: money. We protect their money. Especially these days, when there's so much risk out there.

Our client's business is simple. Some people can't...