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only have his home and office.”
    “He just changed it,” she said, and read out his number.
    Now I could get in touch with him, but what would I say? I had a vague sense of my pitch in my mind, trying to be on his side, to be the good guy to Lynch’s bad, but I didn’t know what the ask was, what the terms were.
    Jack had given me some background on Sacks the night before, along with Lynch’s number. I took a walk up and down the block and called it.
    “Who’s this?” Lynch said.
    “Mike Ford,” but I didn’t get much further than that. A Prius rounded the corner, and I recognized a man who looked like Jonathan Sacks if he’d just finished a three-day bender.
    “Shit. He’s here,” I said. “I’ll call you back.” I ducked behind my Jeep.
    From what I could see, Sacks’s car was a mess. A rubber plant in the back seat wobbled back and forth as he stopped in front of the complex and marched toward his town house in a dark blue sweater, khakis, and running shoes.
    He entered his house for a quick inspection, then walked over to the property manager’s office. I could see him through the window as he gestured back toward his unit. His ex-wife must have called him about the leak. This was moving far faster than I’d planned.
    I watched as his confusion gave way to suspicion and he peered out the windows of the office.
    He emerged, started up the Prius, and took off. I jumped in my car and followed, hoping to at least find out where he was staying so I could contrive a way to talk to him.
    I kept my distance, but it hardly mattered. Sacks was in his own world. In his mirrors, I could see him talking to himself at the stoplights. From Southwest he drove along the Mall, then crossed to the Navy Memorial and parked with half his car in a bus zone.
    He walked up Pennsylvania Avenue, then turned toward Indiana. The cold realization hit me. He was heading toward Judiciary Square, my least favorite place in DC.
    The whole area is a palace of nightmares for the criminally inclined. On my left the FBI building hung over the street, a brutalist concrete fortress. On my right stood the Department of Justice, where I’d had the pleasure of nearly being incinerated a while back. Ahead were the main headquarters of the Metropolitan Police and the Superior and District Courts for the District of Columbia. I did a lot of pro bono work there, so you’d think I’d have gotten used to the place, but they never failed to unnerve me.
    The Superior Court was where, when I was twelve, I’d spent weeks sitting on hard plastic chairs, waiting outside as my father navigated a labyrinth of pretrial meetings with DAs and prosecutors, all false smiles as they rushed past me and my brother. It was where I’d had to sit, wearing my church clothes, and watch as a jury foreman announced that my father was guilty, where I’d listened to the judge give him twenty-four years, where I’d watched the bailiff pull him out of my mother’s arms. For most of my life he’d been gone.
    And it was where Sacks was headed. A perfect spot to do my first work for my new criminal confederates.
    Cops filled the sidewalks and wide steps in front of the courthouses. I counted four uniformed marshals as I walked, and who knows how many plainclothes.
    Sacks stopped in front of an ugly 1970s-era building of water-stained concrete and black glass. He stood out front and stared at the entrance, one hand deep in his pocket, the other compulsively picking at something on his neck. I was twenty feet away.
    My phone rang.
    Sacks turned as I silenced it and pretended I’d been casually walking by.
    It was Annie’s number. I checked the time. Damn it. If I didn’t wrap this up soon, I was going to be late.
    Sacks was still staring at the building. He looked as if he might start crying. Finally, he took a deep breath and walked back the way he’d come. He passed a sports bar, considered it for a moment, then ducked into the gloom. I found a spot on the