The 7th Canon Read Online Free Page A

and stepped over Bo, their Rhodesian ridgeback. Bo lay in the middle of the hallway, trying to get as close to the heater vent as possible. The lights glowed in their bedroom, but Kim had rolled onto her side, with her back to him, covers pulled tight. He picked up the legal file from the filing cabinet doubling as a nightstand, slid into bed, and adjusted the flexible lamp clipped to the headboard. No rest for the wicked. He needed an argument to explain why another of Lou’s clients, Vincenzo Anitolli, was of sound mind at the time he executed a codicil to his will, re-inheriting his three sons.
    It would not be easy. Witnesses for the stepmother, thirty years Anitolli’s junior, would testify that Anitolli claimed to be Elvis Presley the day before he executed the document and had broken into a spontaneous rendition of “Jailhouse Rock” in the retirement-home cafeteria—still apparently nimble enough to get up on a table, arms and hips swinging until his pajama pants slid to his knees and the orderlies corralled him.
    Where Lou found all these people, and how he had managed to run a law firm for forty-plus years without charging them, were two of the great mysteries of his practice. Lou’s clients knew him from every walk of his life, and every one of them professed to know and love Lou like a brother. Thank God one of those was Archbishop Donatello Parnisi, who had grown up with Lou in North Beach, and whose friendship explained why the Catholic Archdiocese had rejected the downtown law firms for the solo practitioner with the crazy clientele to handle its legal matters.
    Too tired to concentrate, Donley set aside the file and reached to turn off the light. He hesitated when he saw Max Seager’s business card on his nightstand.
    Seager was a highly regarded and successful plaintiff’s attorney who had approached Donley in the Superior Court halls after one of Donley’s trials. Seager offered him a job on the spot at a salary three times what Lou could afford to pay him. He told Donley to set up an appointment with Seager’s assistant after the holidays.
    Donley turned out the light. Lightning flashed outside the bedroom window, coloring the cloud layer a purplish hue. He counted, as his mother had taught—a way to calm a frightened child.
    One thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand . . .
    Thunder rumbled, finishing with a boom. Donley listened down the hall but did not hear Benny call out.
    When another streak of light pulsed, Donley reached only “one thousand one” before the boom rattled the windows and rain tapped a ticker-tape beat on the roof shingles. Again, he listened but did not hear Benny. Mother Nature was putting on a show, but Kim, a sleep-deprived medical resident, looked intent on proving she could literally sleep through a storm. He pulled back the covers to check on Benny when Kim said, “Let him sleep.”
    “You’re awake?” Donley slid over and spooned her, feeling the radiating warmth.
    “Who could sleep through this noise?” She rolled toward him. “He’ll be three in a month. You have to let him go to sleep alone; at this rate, you’ll be sleeping in his college dorm.”
    He rested his chin on her shoulder. “I just don’t want him to be afraid,” he said.
    She found his hand under the covers. “You had something to fear, Peter. He doesn’t. And if you don’t start getting to bed earlier, we may never have sex again.”
    The magic word.
    “Is that an invitation?” When Kim didn’t respond, he brushed strands of dark hair from her face, tracing the contours of her Korean features with his finger. “You were quiet when you got home.”
    “Two of my students got into a fight.” Despite her schedule at the hospital, Kim continued to teach tae kwon do classes at a local YMCA. “It’s the stuff they watch on television. Teenage mutant turtles. What the hell are those things, anyway?”
    “Well, it is martial arts,” he said, tweaking her.
    She inched close,