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rough.”
    “Well, you know, this isn’t an easy racket I’m in.”

Two
    W HEN I GRASPED SEELYE Smith’s hand to shake it, I thought for a panicky moment that I had somehow managed to grab on to his bare foot. I looked down at the thing I held in my hand before I could stop myself. Then, with what I imagined was a sickly grin, I quickly lifted my gaze to his eyes.
    He had a plump woodchuck face. Two large front teeth with a space between big enough to wedge a matchstick into. Fiftyish, fat cheeks, thinning reddish-gray hair. Small, closely spaced pale blue eyes. He wore a hearing aid in his left ear, the old-fashioned kind with a wire running from a white button down into a battery pack in his shirt pocket. He was smiling broadly.
    “It’s okay, Mr. Coyne. Everybody sneaks a look the first time.”
    He held his right hand up for me to see. Where the thumb and forefinger should have been was a red mound of scar tissue. He had half a middle finger. His ring finger and pinkie remained intact.
    He jerked his head toward his office. “Come on. Let’s go in. Hey, Kirk,” he said to his receptionist. “Bring Mr. Coyne and me some coffee, will you?”
    I followed Smith into an unprepossessing office. One wall was dominated by a window giving a view down the hill to the Portland harbor. There were the standard wall-to-wall bookshelves lined with legal tomes, a few framed diplomas, plain gray metal desk, and a small conference table. We sat opposite each other at the table.
    Smith put his mangled hand on the table. Again, I had trouble not staring at it.
    “Mill accident,” he said, flip-flopping his hand around on the table so that I could see all sides of it. “Happened when I was fifteen. My old man owned a sawmill in Lewiston. Did finish work—moldings, valances, door frames, mostly fancy stuff like that. I worked there after school, summers, weekends. Learning the trade, the old man called it. Started by sweeping up the offices, and when I got bigger, I helped with the heavy outside work. Learned to drive the machinery—forklifts, what have you. Summer I was fifteen, Pop figured I was big enough to do some cutting. Thing was, there was this old Frenchman who worked with me, supposed to be breaking me in. Told the damnedest stories. Dirty stories. Raunchy. Very flattering for a kid, the boss’s son, to have this old Canuck tell him dirty stories. One day he really broke me up, and when I started laughing, I ran my hand right through the saw. Didn’t even feel it. The old Frenchie stopped in the middle of his sentence and started bellowing. I looked down, saw the blood gushing out of my hand, and passed out.”
    Smith rubbed his scarred right hand with the palm of his left. “I spent five days in the hospital. For a long time those fingers that weren’t there anymore hurt like hell. After that, they started itching. Still do. Damnedest thing. The itch is up where that thumb and finger ought to be. Can’t scratch it. Drives me nuts sometimes. Anyways, when I came home, the old man sat me down. ‘Boy,’ he said, ‘you sure’n hell ain’t gonna be no use now. Anyone numb enough to saw his hand off belongs in college.’ So he shipped me off to a private school down in Berwick, then got me into Bowdoin. After that I went off to Stanford for the law degree, then came back and set up shop right here in Portland.”
    He smiled at me. “Imagine that was some of the stuff you came to find out. Checking up on me. Tiny Wheeler wants you to corroborate his judgment, way I figure it.”
    “Something like that,” I admitted.
    Kirk, a dark young man in an expensive-looking suit, brought in a tray with two cups of coffee on it. He set it before us and stood back expectantly.
    “That’s just fine, Kirk. Thank you,” dismissed Smith. When Kirk had left the room, Smith said, “You want someone to fetch the coffee, you sure as hell can’t hire a woman. Know what I mean?”
    I grinned and nodded. “I certainly