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“Mmm.” She leaned over Graciella’s shoulder and began turning the pages of the contract. As she read she would exclaim. “Ah!” or, “Ho ho!” or, “You shameless bastard.” This went on for several minutes while Messenger and I just stood there like a couple of waiters with no customers.

Finally Ms. Johnson stood back and said, “Well, that is a very fine bit of legal work, that contract.”

I frowned. “So it’s good?”

“It’s great—if you’re not that foolish girl. It gives an entity named Nicolet Productions Inc. complete ownership of any and all works produced by Graciella Jayne in perpetuity, throughout the universe, etcetera etcetera. For which she will be paid two thousand dollars and no royalty.”

“And that’s bad?” I asked cautiously.

“Songwriters make their money off royalties. Every time Nicolet performs a song, cha ching, royalty paid to songwriter. Every time Nicolet sells a download, cha ching, royalty to songwriter. Like that. This is an ironclad contract that means this girl will lose all rights over all her work and never make a penny beyond the two thousand.”

She said thousand as “tou-sand,” which I liked.

“In short,” Ms. Johnson said, “she’s being screwed. Ripped off. Assuming her majority, she’ll never be able to write a song again without giving it to Nicolet.”

“She shouldn’t sign that,” I said.

“Apprentice girl, you must be new. She’s already signed it. She signed it a year ago.”

“Of course.” I blushed. “I knew that.”

“Is that all?” Ms. Johnson asked.

“Thank you,” Messenger said, and the lawyer was as gone as if she’d never been there.

“This job is going to drive me crazy,” I said, trying for “lighthearted.”

“Don’t let it,” Messenger said.

7

AS IF TO PROVE I WAS RIGHT, MESSENGER TRANSPORTED us back to Trent and Pete.

“Psychic whiplash,” I muttered.

It was night. Very late, I thought, because we were in an older neighborhood of small, one-story clapboard or brick homes, but few lights shone from the windows.

Occupying a corner was a low brick building that looked very much as if it might once have been a small elementary school. Blue letters on a small white sign read, Islamic Center of Des Moines.

From the way the two boys staggered and kept having to suppress giggles, I guessed that this was either later in the life of that bottle of peppermint schnapps, or another night altogether with a different bottle. But they were drunk, intent on mayhem.

Each had a can of spray paint. Pete carried a brick. Trent had armed himself with a metal baseball bat.

First they spray-painted the wall facing the street, and then the front door, with their usual unimaginative slurs and death threats.

Then came the windows.

Crash!

Crash!

The baseball bat smashed. The brick flew. The two of them turned to race back to the car, giddy, excited, yipping and howling.

And there was a man.

He was middle-aged, dark-skinned, a large man, but with a body that seemed twisted by some earlier injury. He moved as though half his body was slow to respond. I wondered if he’d had a stroke, or perhaps been injured.

He was neither armed nor dangerous. But he was outraged.