“IT WAS REALLY quite simple,” Walter Scott told Wilfrid Mack. “Alfred was due at my place at eleven. He was only an hour late. There wasn’t any work, and Herbert was taking his nap in the cellar, face-down on his comic book. I didn’t think anything about it. When Alfred’s only an hour late, I figure it must be a national holiday, showing me some special consideration. Doesn’t bother me at all. The later Alfred is, the less chance there is he’ll set the place on fire, drop his joint in a display casket or something.

“Mavis called me,” he said. “Must’ve been close to two in the morning by then. ‘I need some help,’ she said. I was mostly asleep. At first I thought it was somebody calling from the Southern Mortuary for a pick-up. Pissed me off. Those guys’ve got the regular number. There’s no need to wake me up. That’s what I have Herbert and Alfred and the station wagon for, along with the business number: so I can have a decent night’s sleep. It was okay, I got waked up when I first started and I was building the business, but I’m gettin’ along in years now, and I need my rest. Man my age.

“I was kind of grumpy,” Scott said in Mack’s office. “I was more than half asleep, and I wanted to be all asleep, which I had been until the damned phone rang. So I said, ‘Call the regular number. You guys know the regular number. Call that. I got two kids to handle this kind of thing at this hour.’

“Then it hits me,” Scott said. “I never heard of any women working the early shift at the Southern Mortuary. Now I admit, it’s been a while. There’s women all over the place, doing things I never heard of women doing. I’ve had kids down in the cellar for several years, handling the early-morning stuff. ‘Pick ’em up and stick ’em in the icebox. I’m going to bed. See you in the morning, and I’ll see the customer in the morning too.’ How do I know if they got a woman working the early shift at the Southern? I haven’t taken a call from the Southern on the early in years. But it’s still kind of hard for me to imagine. I say, ‘Who is this?’ Because generally when somebody calls for a hearse, they do not say that they need help. That is not what they usually say. See, I was starting to wake up.

“ ‘Mavis,’ she says,” Scott said. “ ‘Mavis Davis.’ By now I am pretty much awake. At least I am not trying to figure out when they started hiring fine ladies at the Southern to work the early. ‘Mavis,’ I say, ‘the hell’s the matter?’ ‘You know where Alfred is?’ she says. ‘In the basement, I guess,’ I say. ‘He’s supposed to be in the basement anyway. I didn’t check, but then I never do. He comes in at night and he goes out in the morning. I don’t pay much attention to him. I pay him once a week and that is that. Why? You think he’s somewhere else?’

“ ‘I know where he is,’ she says. ‘He’s down at the station house.’

“ ‘Oh,’ I said,” Scott said.

“ ‘He is down at the station house,’ she said, ‘and they have locked him up and he has to go to court in the morning at ten, and I don’t know Wilfrid’s home phone, now that he moved.’

“ ‘Oh,’ I said,” Scott said, “because I was still waking up and everything, of course.

“ ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘He is down at the station house and he is in a cell and they will not let him out unless somebody goes there and brings a bondsman. And he probably ought to have a lawyer.’ ”

“Wonderful,” Mack said.

“Yes,” Scott said. “I thought I was employing the kid and doing his mother a favor because she is an old friend, and now I find out I apparently adopted the pair of them. This was not what I had in mind.”

“No,” Mack said.

“ ‘Mavis,’ I say to her,” Scott said, “ ‘I can’t call Wilfrid at this hour of the morning and tell him to go down to the station house and get Alfred out. Wilfrid is most likely sleeping. Wilfrid needs his sleep as well. He is a busy man, and he cannot be running around all over hell and gone all night and expect to do anything the next day. He needs his rest. Besides, if Alfred has to have Wilfrid come down and do something for him, Alfred is going to have to come up with some money, same as any other nigger.’ ”

“Good for you,” Mack said.

“I said, ‘Mavis, Alfred is a considerable amount of trouble to most of the people that know him, and Mister Mack is one of those people. Alfred gave Mister Mack a ration of shit the other day, and I know because I was present. Mister Mack is not going to take kindly to me calling him while he is trying to get a good night’s sleep, to go fish Alfred out of the can. Besides which, nobody can probably fish Alfred out of the can at this hour of the morning anyway. He will have to do the best he can, and when the sun comes up you go down and see if the judge will let him out. But it is not a good idea to call Mister Mack at home at this hour.

“What time was it?” Mack said.

“About two-thirty,” Scott said. “By now I was just about awake. So I said to her, ‘Mavis, are you telling me that the only person I have in the basement, to go and get somebody who turns up dead between now and sunrise, is that dope-head, Herbert?’ And she says, ‘I don’t know who’s in your basement, but Alfred is in jail.’

“ ‘Jesus Christ, Mavis,’ I said,” Scott said, “ ‘what in the goddamned hell did the little bastard do this time, when he was supposed to be sittin’ in my cellar and waiting for somebody to die that needs to get picked up?’ And she says, ‘He went down to the store and he waited for Selene to get off work and Officer Peters came around. And that is what Alfred was waiting for.’ ”

“Oh, my God,” Mack said.

“It gets worse,” Scott said. “I said, ‘Mavis, not that I’m asking what Alfred did, because I’m not sure I want to know, but what the hell did Alfred do?’ ”

“What did Alfred do?” Mack said.

“It seems that Alfred may have had a tire iron,” Scott said.

“On the assumption that Alfred had a tire iron,” Mack said, “is there any theory as to what he did with it?”

“There is,” Scott said. “It seems to be a little more than a theory, actually, but I leave that to your trained legal mind.”

“Thank you,” Mack said. “I’m not a bit sure I appreciate it, but your courtesy’s appreciated.”

“Could you embalm a high mucky-mucky-muck of the Improved Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks?” Scott said.

“Not successfully,” Mack said.

“No,” Scott said. “I will do the pickling and leave the lawyering to you.

“It appears,” Scott said, “that when Selene Davis came out of that store in her little uniform with the short skirt and the reasonable impression from the eye of the observer that she was not wearing any underwear, Officer Peters arrived in his cruiser. That was all he did, as near as I can tell. Peters and his partner showed up at the store just as Selene was getting off work. They could’ve been there for a cup of coffee, or they could’ve been there because Peters had some plans for Selene. I don’t know, and neither does anybody else.

“Alfred,” Scott said, “was in the alley. With his tire iron. Alfred started yelling when he saw Selene coming out of the store and Peters getting out of the car. This was a mistake.”

“Wait a minute,” Mack said. “The way I get it so far, only three things’ve happened. Selene comes out of the store. Peters comes out of the cruiser. Alfred comes out of the alley.”

“Right,” Scott said. “Alfred is supposed to be sitting in my cellar, waiting for the phone to ring so he can wake up Herbert and the two of them can go get a stiff, but Alfred instead is in the alley with his tire iron.”

“Now Alfred is out of the alley,” Mack said.

“He is certainly out of the alley,” Scott said. “And he is howling like a fellow who has lost his mind. The trouble is that what he is howling is what he is about to do to Officer Peters for messing around with his sister, with this tire iron that he happens to have with him.”

“Good,” Mack said. “What did he do?”

“Well,” Scott said, “as you know, and I know much better’n you, Alfred is not the most successful brother on the earth. He is not much better with a tire iron and a cop than he is with reporting to work on time, which if he had done it, he would not have gotten in this scrape with the cop that he was charging with the tire iron.

“Peters’s partner,” Scott said, “saw Alfred coming out of the alley and waving the tire iron, and he got out of that cruiser right smart. Alfred was on the way to giving Peters a couple hard licks upside the head when Cole tackled him around the knees and brought him down. Alfred thought it would be a good idea to get loose of Cole by hitting him with the tire iron.”

“Alfred is just full of good ideas,” Mack said.

“This was not one of them,” Scott said. “Cole knows a hell of a lot more about hand-to-hand combat than Alfred does. Alfred ended up without his tire iron, and with a large number of bumps and bruises and cuts. Alfred, in other words, had the livin’ shit beat out of him.”

“Good,” Mack said.

“It gets better,” Scott said. “According to Mavis, once Cole’d quieted Alfred down by whacking his head against the pavement a few times, Peters gave him a kick or two just for good measure. Then they cuffed him and heaved him in the back seat and drove him down to the station and locked him up. And all the time, of course, Selene was standing there and screaming.”

“Sounds great,” Mack said.

“Now,” Scott said, “the reason I am here this morning is to obtain counsel for Alfred Davis, and you are it.”

“Walter,” Mack said, “you are my old friend, and a good one, and I will do this for you. Just as soon as I see ten thousand dollars in American money on this desk. But not until.”

“Wilfrid,” Scott said, “you are an old friend of mine as well. And so is Mavis Davis. It has always been my point of view that one old friend of mine should be relied upon to help another old friend of mine who does not happen to have ten thousand dollars but has a son in trouble.”

“Walter,” Mack said, “Alfred is a very troublesome son. He is a hateful child. He is mean and he is vicious and he is a liar. When I say the fee is ten grand, it is five for the case, which I will surely lose and he will go to jail again and that will be a damned good thing for almost everybody, and five for putting up with that little cocksucker and his antics. Ten grand.”

“Mavis is on her way to the courthouse,” Scott said. “Alfred is going to be brought in one hour and twenty minutes from now.”

“Have her get him a Public Defender,” Mack said.

“Mavis does not want a Public Defender,” Scott said, “any more than you would want a pauper’s funeral, and for just about the same reason. Those guys’re good, but they are overworked.”

“On this case,” Mack said, “it probably wouldn’t make much difference. There isn’t any way to win it.”

“That doesn’t matter to Mavis,” Scott said. “She wants you to represent him.”

“Ten grand,” Mack said.

“Okay,” Scott said. “The Elks’re going to be sorry to hear you took this attitude.”

“What do you mean?” Mack said.

“Just what I said,” Scott said. “Comes around primary time, Senator Mack is up for reelection, the Elks’ll still be sorrowful.”

“Uh-huh,” Mack said.

“There is nothing worse’n a sorrowful Elk,” Scott said.

“You made your point,” Mack said. “I’ll be in court. What time?”

“Ten,” Scott said. “I knew I could count on you to take care of a good friend.”